Part 41 (2/2)

”This has all been for Phil.”

”He got some of that c.r.a.p on his skin, didn't he? Phil did. Back before you knew how it affected people. Back when it was in a more potent form. When it didn't take five months to make someone sick.”

”Took about five days,” Donovan said, gasping for breath.

DiMaggio leaned forward, licked a finger, and turned a page on her desk calendar. ”Our hands were tied. If we'd talked about it publicly, the sale would never have gone through.”

”There's a letter on your desk says your husband died from D number fifty-six. Others in the company got contaminated, too, didn't they?”

DiMaggio scanned the papers strewn across the top of her desk until she found what I was referring to. ”Armitage was a criminal.”

I looked at Clarice and the man at the window. ”I'm guessing you guys don't know about the antidote?”

”You want the truth?” DiMaggio seemed to be speaking more to her coworkers than to me, but it was obvious from Clarice's reaction that this was the first she'd heard of an antidote. ”We had a deadline. We didn't have time to file affidavits and watch federal inspectors crawling all over the office. Mr. Swope, I don't expect you to understand, but whenever science makes breakthroughs, there are casualties. I warned Holly. I warned her, in the event of an accident, she was to call before she let anybody inside that truck. But by the time she called, you'd all been inside. There wasn't enough antidote for that.”

”There really is an antidote?” The man at the window was sweating even more heavily now, his s.h.i.+rt stained with it.

”We'll talk about this later.” DiMaggio took a deep breath and picked up the phone on her desk.

I said, ”Did you know what they had planned for Achara?”

”Scott handles the cleanup operations.”

”That's what you call murder? Cleanup?”

”Achara's dead?” Clarice was dumbstruck.

”In a fire,” DiMaggio said. ”The police think this man set it.”

”Donovan set it. He told me as much. He thought I was inside with my kids. He killed Achara.”

When all eyes in the room froze on something behind me, I turned slowly and saw two SWAT team members in black jumpsuits and Kevlar vests. They had rifles pointed at my chest.

”Drop it, buddy!” one of them shouted.

”Shoot him!” DiMaggio screamed. ”He's got a gun. He's going to kill us. Shoot him.”

”Drop the gun, a.s.shole! Drop it now!”

There was only one way I could think of to stall them and at the same time to avoid getting killed on the spot.

I pointed the pistol at my temple and pulled my swollen and bloodied mouth into the most addlepated grin I could muster. ”Make a move, I'll pull the trigger. Swear to G.o.d.”

64. DON'T BURY ME UNTIL I GIVE THE SIGNAL It took a few minutes for the standoff to move outside, the two SWAT team members, joined by six more men and one woman, all pointing rifles or shotguns at me, another eight or ten uniformed police officers dispersed behind trees, and in the darkness additional gun-happy officials arriving each minute.

As for myself, I held a c.o.c.ked pistol in one hand, Stephanie's cell phone in the other. It wasn't easy to scramble up onto the roof of a police cruiser with both hands full, but I managed. Bare-a.s.sed.

Wingdoodle flapping in the breeze.

I almost felt as though I were playing a role in a film, a part in which a flubbed line could precipitate my death. Forget the nursing home. If everybody here fired at once, I could easily catch thirty bullets before I hit the ground.

When a couple of the SWAT team boys tried to move in closer, I said, ”Back off, kids. I'll do it! Swear to G.o.d!”

”Come on, buddy. We've got you for illegal entry and a.s.sault. That's nothing. You might get three months. Let's not make it worse.”

”Stand back, ladies and gents! Stand back and pray for me!”

I'd come to terms with the fact that tonight was my last night. Now I was coming to terms with these as my last minutes.

Strange as it seems, I was all right with it.

I really was.

Sounds dumber than a fence post in the rain, but I was always always going to die. going to die.

Everybody dies. It was simply an event most of us never really gave much thought to. Now that I knew when, or pretty much thought I did, the terror had been stripped away. There was a genuine serenity in knowing. In fact, the knowledge was almost comforting as I stood on the roof of the police car, a dozen rifles trained on my chest, Donovan's pistol pressed to my brain.

I hadn't seen Stephanie during our tense procession out of the building. No telling whether she had fled or was still hiding upstairs. It worried me. I needed her to be safe and free, so she could take care of my girls, so she could administer the antidote to Karrie, but most of all, so that someone would be around to tell the truth after this was over. If DiMaggio had her way, this would go down as a mental patient caught in a burglary.

The nearby police cars were empty, but had they arrested Stephanie, they would hardly have placed her where I could see her.

The police had yet to ask about an accomplice.

And why would they?

I had all the characteristics of a cla.s.sic maniac, and cla.s.sic maniacs operated alone.

I was armed. Bloodied. Naked. Toothless. Berserk.

And now word had gotten around that I'd stabbed a man. I could hear them talking about it, rumors buzzing about in the darkness like mosquitoes. The cops were like big-game hunters wondering who was going to get the privilege of turning me into a rug, discussing my dementia in the same breath they discussed the best way to make the shot. They all thought I belonged in Western State Hospital. A woman cop cracked a joke, something about not having a camera.

DiMaggio and a.s.sociates had remained upstairs, observing the festivities through the window. Sooner or later, tired of cupping their hands to the gla.s.s, one of them would turn out the overhead lights.

That's when the real entertainment would begin.

The thought made me laugh aloud, and of course, laughing made me look loonier than all the rest of this put together.

”Shoot him,” said the bald man through the now-open upstairs window. ”For G.o.d's sake, shoot him, so we can all go home. Can't you people please just shoot him?”

The officer with the megaphone told him to shut up, then told me he had doughnuts and coffee on the way-as if they could appease me with twelve dollars' worth of lard, sugar, and coffee beans. And why didn't I make things easier for myself, he said. If I gave myself up, I would be treated with dignity. They would provide clothes. I would be fed. Didn't that sound like a fair trade-off?

The phone in my left hand rang.

”h.e.l.lo?”

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