Gordon had taken a couple more steps toward me, bringing him within ten feet of me. But when I said the word “killed,” he stopped in his tracks.
“I’m not a killer,” he said.
“You killed Mom. You tried to kill my friend Neal.”
“That punk. If I wanted to kill him he’d be dead. I defended myself.”
“And Ronnie?” I asked. “What about the pills? The heart pills?”
“It needed to be done,” Gordon said.
Ronnie darted forward. He lunged at Gordon’s face with his hands, clawing and digging. He took Gordon by surprise and sent him stumbling back a couple of steps. But then Gordon regained his balance and pushed back against Ronnie, bringing up both his hands and releasing his grip on whatever was in his pocket.
“Ronnie!”
Ronnie continued to struggle for a moment; then Gordon regained the upper hand. He shoved against my brother as hard as he could. He sent Ronnie flying backward, where he crashed against a shelving unit. I watched Ronnie’s eyes close in pain as he made contact and fell to the floor. The shelves fell on top of him along with the picture frames and other items. I heard glass break, but Ronnie was silent.
“No,” I said.
I started forward, my hands up. I swung at Gordon, making contact with the side of his head, feeling my knuckles against his skull.
The blow didn’t faze him. He swung back at me, knocking me down. He stepped toward me, reaching for his pocket.
I’m dead, I thought. I’m dead. This is how I’m going to die.
Then I saw Beth moving behind Gordon. A quick, blurred movement. Something swinging and a sickening thump of an object against the back of Gordon’s head.
I saw the look on his face when the blow connected. His face lost all animation, and his eyes rolled up in their sockets, revealing nothing but white. His mouth formed an oval shape, the beginnings of a cry he never made.
He fell forward, his body limp. He landed at my feet, where I still sat on the floor.
I looked up. Beth held a lamp, a thick glass lamp. The base was cracked but not broken where she had smacked Gordon on the back of the head. Her eyes looked crazed and fearful. She held the lamp in two hands like it was a baseball bat. She looked at the lamp and her hands once. She stepped forward, standing over Gordon.
“Beth,” I said.
She swung the lamp again, striking another blow against his head.
Gordon’s eyes were open, still showing white. I pushed myself up. Beth prepared to swing again. I put my hands on hers. I tightened my grip, tried to hold her in place.
“Stop,” I said, my voice firm. “Stop.”
She looked at me, her eyes wide and glazed. She started to pull back, trying to break out of my grip.
“No,” I said. “It’s over. Drop it. It’s over.”
She came back to herself slowly. Her eyes regained their focus. She seemed to see me, to recognize me. She dropped the lamp and it crashed to the floor.
“Check him,” I said, pointing to Gordon. “I need to see about Ronnie.”
I stepped over Gordon’s body and ran to my brother. Ronnie was under the shelf, his eyes half open.
“And call 911, for Christ’s sake,” I said.
She looked down at Gordon. She nudged him with her shoe. He didn’t respond. She went to her purse and pulled out a phone.
“Ronnie?” I said. I touched his forehead. A trickle of blood ran down from near his ear. “Are you okay? Ronnie?”
He groaned.
I pushed the shelf off of him, felt the broken glass cutting my fingers.
“Ronnie? Tell me you’re okay. Ronnie?”
Beth came to my side, her face white.
“The police are on their way. And an ambulance.”
“Good,” I said.
“Elizabeth?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I think I just killed my father.”
Chapter Sixty
A paramedic with a shaved head tended to the cuts on my hands, which I’d suffered when I removed the broken glass covering Ronnie. I sat on the back bumper of the open ambulance, a blanket wrapped around me against the cool autumn night. Ronnie sat next to me, and while my wounds received attention, another paramedic examined Ronnie, asking him to turn his head first one way and then the other. He shined a penlight into Ronnie’s eyes and asked him to follow the path of his finger in the air.
“You’re looking okay, buddy,” the paramedic said to my brother. “You’re going to be sore tomorrow, but I don’t think you have a concussion.”
“He was bleeding,” I said.
“I saw that,” Ronnie’s paramedic said. “It’s a small cut. Superficial. He’s lucky. With all that glass around him he could have really been sliced up.” The man pointed at my hands. “You got it worse, trying to help him.”
“She’s tough,” Ronnie said.
“Is that right?” my paramedic asked.
“He’s tough,” I said. “He saved me.” I looked to the house. It glowed with light, and the front door stood open. Richland and Post were inside talking to Beth. “They both did,” I said.
The wind picked up, rustling leaves in the street. I shivered.
“Should he go to the emergency room?” I asked.
“He’s fine,” Ronnie’s paramedic said. “He should take some ibuprofen and sleep it off. He’ll be back to his old self in a couple of days.”
“Thanks,” Ronnie said.
“Have they taken the body out?” I asked.
My paramedic turned and looked at the house. “Not yet. Usually the medical examiner and the cops take their sweet time with that stuff.”
I knew that well. Two bodies removed from the house in just over a week. Another big night for the neighborhood. They were going to ask us to leave—or turn us into a reality show.
“So she killed him just by smacking him with that lamp?” I asked.
My paramedic nodded. “He was probably gone before he hit the floor. You can do that to someone if you get them in the right spot.”
I hoped that was the end of all of it.
Ronnie and I gave our statements to Detective Post. We took turns sitting in the backseat of her warm sedan while Richland remained inside talking to Beth. It didn’t take that long. I could recall the events vividly, could still hear the sickening sound of that lamp against the back of Gordon Baxter’s skull.
When I finished my statement, Post told me she needed to get back inside to wrap things up.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“Beth,” I said. “My… half sister… What do you make of her?”
“She seems like she’s been through a lot,” Post said. “Hard years. We see a lot of people like that in our business. People whose lives just don’t go the way a life is supposed to.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Is there something else you want to know?” Post asked.
“I guess I just want to know if you believe her,” I said. “If I should believe her.”
“I think you know I can’t decide that for you,” she said. “She’s your family, so you have to make up your own mind about her.”
“I thought you might say something like that,” I said.
“My cop instincts say she’s on the level,” Post said. “She saved your life and your brother’s life tonight. That’s not a small thing.”
Saved my life. I never thought I’d be the kind of person who would need her life saved.
“And,” Post said, “if you want to know something else, we looked into the story she told you about why she disappeared back in 1975. It turns out there’s a detective still alive from back then, an old guy named Ron Forest. They broke up a ring of drugs and pornography in Haxton about a year after your sister ran off. The guys who were behind it were involved with a lot of things, and it doesn’t look like Mr. Baxter’s name ever came up in association with that investigation. But something like that was going on in Haxton back then. It’s a little corroboration for her story from a reliable source. And I guess learning something like that about your father when you’re fifteen years old could really strip your gears, you know? It might take a long time to get over that.”