SEVENTY-EIGHT
Natasha stared into her husband's open eyes through a veil of warm tears. His pupils were fixed and dilated.
“Oh, Ward, don't leave me,” she called, cradling his bloodred face between her wet hands.
“Is he dead?” Alice asked.
Natasha eased Ward's head down and began giving him chest compressions. After a dozen, she put her fingers to his throat and felt a faint pulse, then nothing.
“No, he's still alive.”
Natsaha gathered her thoughts. “Alice, on top of the refrigerator-bring me the black case!”
Alice tossed the gun to the couch cushions, ran, and returned in seconds with the case in her hands. Natasha opened it with bloody hands and turned on the defibrillator, purchased after her son's death.
“Now, look under the sink and get the trash bags. In the utility room there's a roll of duct tape in the cabinet over the washing machine. Bring those to me,” Natasha ordered in as calm a voice as she could manage. “Can you do that?”
“Sure I can,” Alice said, rushing from the room.
Natasha felt the blood flowing freely from Ward's open wounds, but she had to get his heart beating, and it might, at least until he had lost so much blood that his heart was starved.
“Oh, Ward, please stay with me. Please don't leave me.”
SEVENTY-NINE
Alice found the garbage bags and rushed to the utility room. In the collection of tools in the cabinet over the washing machine, there was a large roll of gray tape, which she grabbed up and carried from the room.
When she turned the corner she ran headlong into a solid mass holding a gun. It grabbed her with its free hand.
Alice screamed.
From the den, Natasha yelled, “Alice!”
“FBI,” the man yelled.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” Alice hollered, struggling to break away.
The man released her and she ran back to the den, jumping over the body of Evelyn Gismano and handing the bags and tape to Natasha, who had pulled Ward's wet shirt up over his chest. Agent Mayes rushed into the room behind her, then froze in place as he took in the scene. Before he did anything to help, he moved from Evelyn to Louis Gismano, checking each for a pulse. Natasha glanced up and noted his presence with relief.
Taking a plastic bag, Natasha laid it over the open wound and said, “Agent Mayes, grip him under his shoulders and lift him up for me.”
The FBI man put his gun in its holster, and did what Natasha told him to do.
Alice stood back as the man and Natasha raised Ward's torso, and she watched as Natasha pressed his guts into the cavity, placed the trash bag around her husband's stomach, took the roll of tape, and, with difficulty, secured the bag in place.
“There's no cell signal,” Agent Mayes told her. “And the driveway is blocked.”
“We have to get him to the emergency room,” she said. “We can't wait for EMS or he'll bleed out.”
“My car is up the driveway.”
“Can you carry him?” Natasha asked.
Mayes knelt, picked Ward McCarty up from the floor, and carried him. Passing the front door he began to run, with Alice and Natasha at his side. Natasha had the defibrillator case under her arm.
“Stay with us, Ward,” the FBI agent said.
The man put Ward in the rear of his car, then ran around and pulled him completely inside.
Natasha climbed in the backseat and kneeled on the floorboard. The agent slammed the doors and, as Alice Palmer climbed into the passenger seat, he placed a blue light on the dashboard, flipped it on, and roared out in reverse, turning the heavy sedan out onto the road. He jerked the shifter down and peeled rubber heading down the highway. A mile down the road, he picked up his phone and dialed 911 without looking.
“Please hurry,” Natasha commanded.
“I'm hurrying as fast as I can,” he replied, the speedometer passing rapidly through eighty miles an hour.
“Don't you like have a siren?” Alice asked him. And she realized, to her amazement, that she was crying.
EIGHTY
When Ward opened his eyes slowly, the first thing he saw was Natasha, sitting beside the bed holding his left hand.
“Welcome back,” she said, wiping away a tear from her cheek.
He turned his head the other way to see Alice Palmer asleep in the reclining chair by the window. There were small droplets of blood, like freckles, dotting her lax features.
A tall, stooped man in whites, with a gleaming bald head, finished checking the machines. Ward looked across the bed, fixing him in his gaze. He recognized the man, but couldn't seem to remember his name.
“Ward, you're in the hospital and you're fine. Don't try to talk. You need to rest and gain your strength. Your injuries are very serious, but you're going to be fine.”
Ward tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak.
“Don't try to talk,” Natasha said. “You're safe. We're all safe.”
“I was dead,” Ward managed to say. “I was with Barney,” he told her. “I really was.”
“Your heart stopped,” Natasha told him. “But just for a few seconds.”
“I saw…” Ward started. “I saw you put the garbage bag around me. I was watching from…” He tried to point up, to remember more, and did. “I was with Barney and I saw you leaning over me trying to help me.”
Natasha's perplexed expression reflected confusion, but he was sure she believed him.
“You have to get some rest. You can tell me about it later.”
“We repaired everything, Ward,” the doctor said. “You're stable, and your vitals are getting stronger by the minute.”
“Thank, you, Scott,” he said, his voice cracking with gratitude. Scott Boggs was the doctor's name and his son had played Little League with Barney. Ward's right hand was throbbing and he looked down at the encasing bandage. He remembered the knife. “My hand…”
“There's extensive damage to your hand. Dr. Levingston, our orthopedist, took a look at it, and he's going to operate to reattach the tendons when you're stronger. Hopefully the nerves will grow back together in time.”
“I understand,” Ward said. “Thank you, Scott.”
Boggs put a hand on Ward's shoulder and squeezed gently. “You are so welcome, Ward. Mind your wife and get some rest. We'll manage the pain, and get you back on your feet in no time.”
“It could use some pain management,” he said.
“We're on top of it,” Natasha said.
A nurse had come in and Natasha stepped back to let her take her place. The nurse raised a syringe, looked at it, and inserted it into the IV tube culminating under the bandage on Ward's hand. As she depressed the syringe, Ward felt a cool sensation in his right hand as the pain faded.
He was aware of Natasha kissing him on the cheek as he floated away.
EIGHTY-ONE
Outside the overcast sky was cooling the summer air, and a pair of deer grazed without fear on grass near the tree line. FBI Agent John Mayes stood in the McCartys’ den watching the FBI's crime scene technicians gathering evidence. The case wasn't federal, but Mayes had decided that the least the FBI could do was process the scene to make sure things were done right, and the local authorities would be able to close the case as soon as possible.
He turned to see into the kitchen where Dr. McCarty sat looking out the window, her hand trembling as she brought a bottle of water to her lips. The rectangular bandage that covered the sutured knife wound on her neck was visible- that would be lasting evidence of the events of the night before.
Alice Palmer sat on a stool beside Natasha, playing her video game, lost in her own thoughts. The odd young girl had killed an extremely dangerous man, and had she not done so, she and the McCartys would be dead. And maybe he would have even killed Mayes.