Part 39 (1/2)

He considered just long enough to give me a glimmer of hope that maybe he wasn't going to kill us. It didn't last long. ”Okay. That's fair. I killed her. I poured gas around your living room. I thought you were inside. I thought it was over right there.”

That he was willing to admit culpability in the burning of my home meant he thought we weren't going to tell anybody. That we were as good as dead already. I said, ”Three years ago you flew to Tennessee pretending to help while you were pulling strings in the background to make sure n.o.body learned anything. You did the same thing in North Bend.”

”I can't deny there was some strange stuff happening in Chattanooga.” He laughed.

”And who called the fire investigators and told them I set up the explosion? And last night, my house? Somebody you know?”

”Mrs. DiMaggio insisted on doing that herself. She used to be in summer stock. Loves playing a part. Practically begged me for it.”

I was sparring. Wasting time. Holding out for a miracle.

Any minute now he would shoot us, wrap us in a big plastic tarp, and drag our bodies downstairs to dispose of.

We might stall him for five minutes, but in the end he was going to shoot us.

Running wouldn't work-he would easily line me up in his sights before I reached the end of the corridor. And Stephanie didn't have a chance standing along the far wall of DiMaggio's office under the Paul Klee. For her, running was not even an option.

I'd been facing my own demise all week, and now that it was here, panic gripped me in a way it hadn't during the past seven days. I laughed aloud. I was destined to turn into a vegetable tomorrow, and here I was panicking over the thought of getting shot. I guess I was really panicking over the thought of Stephanie getting shot. My life was already over-Donovan would be doing me a favor-but Stephanie was being robbed of the next fifty years. I had an ugly vision of Morgan and my daughters waiting in the hotel room for days before contacting the authorities.

”As long as this is all settled and you're not going to change your mind,” I said, ”maybe you could clear up a few things.”

”Like what?” You could tell he didn't mind the stalling-the more delay the better. He was still trying to work himself up to this.

”I don't understand why you dragged Max Caputo into this,” I said.

”Who? Caputo?”

”Remember the trailer on Edgewick Road?”

”Oh, him. I followed the fire engine the day before. After you packed him off to the hospital, I did some reconnoitering and decided his property was ideal for what we had in mind.”

”You mean for wiping out the whole department.”

”Well, yeah. Anybody who might have been exposed in the truck accident.”

”So you killed Max and filled the place up with ammonium nitrate?”

”I didn't kill him.”

”Who did?”

”I'm a.s.suming it was the explosion. I left him in a closet.”

”I don't understand any of this,” Stephanie said. ”Why were you s.h.i.+pping D number fifty-six without precautions? Especially after that first accident in Tennessee. Why take another chance?”

”The odds were one in a million that anything would happen. Maybe one in ten million.”

”That clearly wasn't true,” I said. ”You'd already had an accident right here in the plant. Another one in Tennessee. Who knows what else that you won't tell me about? It's got to be easier to take precautions than it is to run around murdering people.”

”We took precautions.”

”Putting it in Bibles?”

”That and having our own driver handling it. The mistake was hers. Your sister's the one who screwed up.”

”Like h.e.l.l she did,” Stephanie said. ”You even tell her what was in there? Did you bother to tell her how lethal it was? She didn't know anything about it. I've got her journal. She never mentioned it.”

”You're still s.h.i.+pping it in Bibles, aren't you?” I said.

”It was a fluke. That accident. It'll never happen again.”

”You're a piece of work, you know that?” I s.h.i.+fted in the doorway, more to see what he would do than to make an escape.

”You're the ones who don't get it. This is what always astonishes me about people in your position. If you could see this from my point of view, you'd realize if it was you with the gun you'd do the same thing I'm doing. It's just how it is.”

”You're really so blind you think that?”

”Abso-f.u.c.king-lutely.”

”Jesus Christ. You need a psychiatrist.”

”Why did you kill Achara?” Stephanie asked.

Donovan tensed and then relaxed, as if once again deciding it didn't matter what we knew. I had the feeling he was happy to brag about it, to tell someone, anyone. It must be tough to pull off a nice murder and not be able to tell anyone. His tone grew gruffer, like a preacher working himself up to a bout of cussing. ”b.i.t.c.h needed killing.”

He laughed, but it rang false. He was trying his best to be The Great Evildoer, but somewhere deep down he knew it was wrong and twisted, and he wasn't proud of himself-even though he was trying to convince himself he was. I don't think villainy came naturally to him, although self-deception certainly did.

”She made the wrong choice. It was as simple as that.” He clearly regretted killing Achara. He stared at the floor between us, and his voice grew softer. ”What happened after she made that choice, well, that was out of my hands.”

”Please let us go,” Stephanie said.

”Sorry. Letting you go is not an option.”

”Sure it is,” I said, moving toward the telephone on the desk. ”I'll call the police. We'll turn ourselves in.”

Donovan stepped forward and centered the pistol on my chest. We were fifteen feet apart now.

Stephanie was at the outer edge of his peripheral vision. I took another step toward the gun.

”Just stay where you are,” he said.

Donovan wanted to kill us both in a civilized manner, but I was determined not to make it easy for him. He killed me, he was going to remember it. He'd already made the transformation, and now I was, too, reverting to the primordial, moving backward through evolution, returning to a time before civility, a time when men brained each other with rocks.

A man as large as Scott Donovan didn't spend his spare time lifting weights and practicing karate because he felt he was in control. He was compensating. I had no idea what he was compensating for, but it was for something something. And a man compensating as hard as he was didn't take goading well.

So I called him a tub-o'-lard.

Okay, I know, but I was under a lot of pressure, and I couldn't think of anything else. Besides, it seemed to actually work. The natural pink in his cheeks began turning bright red.