Diana sat cross-legged on the floor with her husband’s head resting on her lap. She looked pale and exhausted. The doctor looked a whole lot worse. He lay motionless, his eyes closed. This was a life-or-death situation, and I had a good idea which side of the equation Nicholson was favoring.
I glanced at Fowler, who’d edged around the room but was still covering me with the shotgun. He was less manic than when I’d left him more than four hours before. His eyes were droopy, as if he’d taken something to counteract the methamphetamine, which meant he was vulnerable. That was good; if he almost passed out, it would give me a chance to subdue him. But if he went back to the meth, he’d quickly turn unpredictable.
“Why are you wearing the vest?” he asked, and I thought I smelled liquor.
“My boss made me wear it,” I replied as I moved toward Nicholson and his wife. “Said I couldn’t come in here without it.”
“Means they’re coming soon,” Fowler said.
“Only if you want it that way, Henry,” I said, kneeling next to the wounded doctor to take his pulse. It was slow, erratic, but it was there.
“He’s dying,” Diana whispered. “And there’s nothing I can do.”
“That’s all right,” Henry said behind me. “Let them come.”
I heard the tap, tap, tap of steel on glass, looked over my shoulder, and saw exactly what I did not want to see. Fowler had dumped the rest of his meth in the vial out onto the coffee table.
“That necessary, Henry?” I asked.
“Course,” he said, grinning at me maliciously with his rotten teeth. “How else am I going to be alert enough to see all this to its logical conclusion?”
He bent over, booted a line up each nostril. He sat up and shook his head, as if the meth had lit a fire in there. “There you go,” he said. “That’s how you get the edge on.”
“Henry, we’ve got to get Barry some help.”
“You’re like everybody else here, Cross,” Fowler said, skin flushing as he went into another one of his rages. “Nobody listens. Or if they do happen to listen, they don’t understand what I’m saying. That was Diana all the way. In one ear and out the other. What I’m saying is Barry boy’s going to die anyway. We are all going to die anyway. Now, I could plug another bullet into his belly to finish the job, but I want Diana to see him slowly wind down like a goddamned toy. Yeah, a toy. Like that stupid electric poodle that Chloe has. Bark-bark-bark. Then two barks, then one bark, then no bark.”
I found myself shaking my head in amazement at his bizarrely directed venom. Diana, however, looked weary and close to collapse. She ignored Fowler’s ravings and just kept gently stroking her husband’s pale hand.
“Henry, I came in here because I had some questions about the story you told me earlier.”
“What story?” he asked.
“Why you’re here,” I said, getting up. “Why you’re doing this.”
“I told you everything you needed to know,” Fowler sneered.
I looked around, trying to feel my way through uncharted territory and help Nicholson without setting Fowler off. I spotted an unscathed bottle of Absolut vodka on a shelf opposite the downed Christmas tree.
I moved toward it, saying, “But you didn’t tell me everything there was to know, did you, Henry?”
“You got all you’re going to get,” Fowler said as I picked up the bottle. “What are you doing?”
“Helping Barry,” I said.
Fowler flicked off the safety on the shotgun. “I told you that was not happening.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to shoot me,” I said, spotting a dress shirt in a gift bag that had been torn open during Fowler’s long tirade.
I looked up to see him aiming the shotgun at me. Somehow I stayed calm and said, “But if you shoot me and the rest of your family, no one will ever know what became of you, Henry. You’ll be written off as just some lunatic rather than a man who couldn’t stomach being himself.”
CHAPTER 35
Sweat broke out on Fowler’s brow, making him look greasy. “What is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
I tossed the shirt to the wounded doctor’s wife. “Get the straight pins out of this thing. We’ll use it as a clean dressing.”
“What the hell are you doing, Cross?” he said, jittery. “Just-just what the hell are you doing?”
I turned back to Fowler. “However this turns out, it’ll be better for you without a murder charge on your hands. I want to help Barry make it through so that you can atone for what you’ve done already.”
Fowler narrowed eyes that had turned black and beady. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s your only hope of redemption,” I said, opening the vodka bottle. “The only thing that you can do that will make this all seem, hell, justifiable.”
“All the pins are out of the shirt, Mr. Cross,” Diana said. “What now?”
I ignored Fowler and knelt beside her wounded husband. I poured about a cup of the Absolut over and into the entry wound. The sting and burn of the vodka contacting the traumatized area startled the doctor, causing him to groan and come awake for a few seconds.
Nicholson’s eyes opened but didn’t focus. Diana leaned in closer to him and whispered, “I love you, Barry,” before his eyes closed again.
She didn’t whisper softly enough. Fowler heard it too, and it destroyed whatever doubt and whatever hope I might have sown in his disturbed mind.
Fowler lifted the shotgun, and fired…right through the ceiling, almost directly over his head. It was deafening, and it made a gaping hole.
“Get away from him right now, Cross, or you’re going to have a hole in you.”
The phone rang. I grabbed it and shouted: “No one is hurt! This is Cross.”
I tossed the phone and returned to Nicholson, hearing Fowler run the pump action on the shotgun. “Who said you could answer the phone?” he said.
“Give me a minute with him, Henry, and then the attention will be right back where you want it. Please?”
I don’t know if it was the word please or the promise of undivided attention, but something brought Fowler back to a few seconds of sanity.
“Do what you want,” he said, returning to the coffee table and the remaining lines of meth. “Take the bullet out with a steak knife and a fork, for all I care.”
I poured vodka on my hands, took the shirt from Diana, and ripped it in half. I unbuckled the belt that held the throw pillow to Nicholson’s back, and his wife and I rolled him up onto his side so I could pour vodka into the exit wound; I prayed that the alcohol would kill some of the bacteria that had to be spreading in the doctor’s abdomen. The pillow was wet with blood as well as a yellowish fluid, which couldn’t be good. I hit the area with an extra dose of vodka. Then I drenched the rag, folded it, and pressed it to the wound.
As I did, I heard Fowler snorting the last of his meth. Good, I thought. He’ll be about as unbalanced chemically as he can be when I try to really unbalance him. We set Nicholson down gently and then dressed the entry wound with the second vodka-soaked piece of the shirt.
“You think your Boy Scout first aid is going to help him?” Fowler jeered. “You just wasted perfectly good vodka on him.”
He was probably right. What I’d done was Civil War-era medicine.
“Why, hello, offspring,” Fowler said, and then started to sing. “‘Welcome, welcome, Christmas Day.’”
I turned and saw him standing a few feet from the twins, holding the shotgun and one of the semiautomatic rifles. His children cowered, crouched against the fireplace.
“Don’t be scared, boys and girls,” he said. “We’re all in Whoville. And we need everyone to sing and greet Christmas.”
“Henry,” I said.
He ignored me and shouted, “On your feet! We’ve got to sing so the Grinch comes down from the mountain!”