Through the darkness she saw his arm come up, and she knew that his gun was pointed at her. She knew that what happened next was always meant to happen, that it was set in motion on a night twelve years before, the night Bradley died. This gunshot tonight would be only an echo of that earlier one, an echo twelve years delayed. It was a bizarre form of justice all its own, and she understood why this was about to happen, because she was a mother, and if anyone hurt her child she, too, would demand her revenge.
She did not blame Kimball Rose for what he was about to do.
She felt strangely prepared as he pulled the trigger, and the bullet slammed into her chest.
THIRTY-EIGHT
This is where it could all end, I think, as I lie on the floor. My chest is on fire with pain, and I am scarcely able to breathe. All Kimball has to do is take a few steps closer to me and fire the killing shot into my head. But footsteps are pounding up the hallway, and I know he hears them, too. He is trapped in this bedroom, with the woman he has just shot. They are kicking at the door-the door I so stupidly locked, thinking it would keep me safe from an intruder. I never anticipated that it would be my rescuers I was locking out, the police who have followed me home, who have watched over me this past week, waiting for this attack. We have all made mistakes tonight, perhaps fatal mistakes. We did not expect Kimball to slip into my house while I was gone; we did not expect he would already be waiting for me in my bedroom.
But Kimball has made the biggest mistake of all.
Wood splinters and the door crashes open. The police are like charging bulls. They rush in with shouts and pounding feet and the sharp smells of sweat and aggression. It sounds like a rampaging multitude, but then someone flicks on the light switch and I see that there are only four male detectives, their weapons all trained on Kimball.
“Drop it!” one of the detectives orders.
Kimball looks too stunned to respond. His eyes are grief-stricken hollows, his face lax with disbelief. He is a man accustomed to giving orders, not taking them, and he stands helplessly clutching his gun, as though it has grafted itself to his hand and he’s unable to release it even if he wants to.
“Just set the gun down, Mr. Rose,” says Jane Rizzoli. “And we can talk.”
I did not see her enter. The male detectives, so much bulkier than she is, blocked my view of her. But now she steps past them into the room, a small and fearless woman who moves with formidable confidence despite the cast on her right arm. She looks in my direction, but it’s only a quick glance, to confirm that my eyes are open and that I am not bleeding. Then she focuses again on Kimball.
“It will go easier if you just put the gun down.” Detective Rizzoli says it quietly, like a mother trying to soothe an agitated child. The other detectives radiate violence and testosterone, but Rizzoli appears utterly calm, even though she is the only one not holding a weapon.
“Too many people have already died,” she says. “Let’s end it right here.”
He shakes his head, not a gesture of resistance but of futility. “It doesn’t matter now,” he murmured. “Cynthia’s gone. She won’t have to suffer through this, too.”
“You kept Bradley’s death from her all these years?”
“When it happened, she was sick. So sick that I didn’t think she’d survive the month. I thought, Let her die without ever hearing the news.”
“But she lived.”
He gave a weary laugh. “She went into remission. It was one of those unexpected miracles that lasted twelve years. So I had to keep up the lie. I had to help Jimmy cover up the truth.”
“It was your wife’s cheek swab they used to identify the body. Your wife’s DNA, not Carrie Otto’s.”
“The police had to be convinced the body was Jimmy’s.”
“Jimmy Otto belonged in prison. You protected a murderer.”
“I was protecting Cynthia!”
He was sparing her from the harm he believes I caused their family twelve years ago. While I refuse to feel guilty of any sin except self-preservation, I do acknowledge that Bradley’s death destroyed more than one life. I see the destruction in Kimball’s tormented face. It’s not surprising that he wants vengeance, not surprising that he has continued to search for me these past twelve years, pursuing me as obsessively as Jimmy Otto did.
He has still not surrendered his gun despite the firing squad of detectives now facing him with their weapons aimed. What happens next cannot possibly surprise anyone in that room. I can see it in Kimball’s eyes as surely as Jane Rizzoli can. The acceptance. The resignation. Without any preamble, any hesitation, he shoves the gun barrel into his own mouth and pulls the trigger.
The explosion sends a scarlet spray of blood onto the wall. His legs buckle and his body drops like a sack of stones.
It is not the first time I’ve seen death. I should be immune to the view by now. But as I stare at his destroyed head, at blood that seeps from his shattered skull and pools on the bedroom floor, I suddenly feel as if I am choking. I tear open my blouse and claw at the Kevlar vest that Jane Rizzoli had insisted I wear. Though the vest stopped the bullet, I still smart from the impact. The bullet will almost certainly leave a bruise. I pull off the vest and toss it aside. I don’t care that the four men in the room can see my bra. I rip away the microphone and wires that are taped to my skin, a device that has saved my life tonight. Had I not been wired, had the police not been listening, they would not have heard my conversation with Kimball. They would not have known that he was already inside my house.
Outside, sirens are screaming closer.
I rebutton my blouse, rise to my feet, and try not to look at the body of Kimball Rose as I walk out of the room.
Outside, the warm night is alive with radio chatter and the flashing rack lights of police vehicles. I am clearly visible in that kaleidoscopic glare, but I do not shrink from the light. For the first time in a quarter of a century, I do not have to hide in the shadows.
“Are you okay?”
I turn and see Detective Rizzoli standing beside me. “I’m fine,” I say.
“I’m sorry about what happened in there. He should never have gotten so close to you.”
“But it’s over now.” I take a sweet breath of freedom. “That’s all that matters. It’s finally over.”
“You still face a number of questions from the San Diego PD. About Bradley’s death. About what happened that night.”
“I can deal with it.”
There’s a pause. “Yeah, you can,” she says. “I’m sure you can deal with anything.” I hear a quiet note of respect in her voice, the same respect I’ve learned to feel toward her.
“May I leave now?” I ask.
“As long as we always know where you are.”
“You know where to find me.” It will be wherever my daughter is. I sketch a small salute of farewell in the darkness and walk to my car.
Over the years I have fantasized about this moment, about a day when I would not have to look over my shoulder, when I can finally answer to my real name without fear of consequences. In my dreams, it is a moment of incandescent joy, when the clouds would part, the champagne would flow, and I would shout out my happiness to the sky. But this reality is not what I expected. What I feel instead of delirious, foot-stomping joy is more subdued. I feel relieved and weary and a little lost. All these years, fear has been my constant companion; now I must learn to live without it.
As I drive north, I feel the fear peel away like layers of timeworn linen that flutter away in streams and float off into the night. I let it go. I leave it all behind and drive north, toward a little house in Chelsea.
Toward my daughter.
