THE LIFE LEFT: A GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

by L. W. WEDGWOOD

  He suddenly knew what he had to do. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost ten o’clock. He may just have time.

  * * * * *

  By the time Abn reached Henry’s house, it was almost eleven. On the bicycle ride there, he’d tried to use the most deserted streets. He counted a total of seven people who possibly saw him along the way. During an investigation, what were the odds that those seven people would be questioned? He’d been seen before. He could not afford to make that mistake again.

  With the hood of his jacket cloaking his head, he climbed off his bicycle and leaned it against a large bush on the front lawn of a neighboring home. Examining his work, he felt relatively certain that no one casually walking by would see the bike.

  The wind that had buffeted the city all day had dulled to a steady breeze. However, he felt some comfort that the night wasn’t completely calm. There was a certain level of cover that the sound of a breeze gave you in the dead of night. And this wasn’t the first time he’d used that advantage to good effect. Many times, as a youth in Iraq, he’d had to sneak around at night to steal food. It had been imperative to his survival and something he’d become very good at.

  No lights glowed from the windows of Henry’s house as he approached the driveway. It appeared just as he had imagined. Undoubtedly, Henry had drunk himself into a coma by now.

  His confidence lifted further as he unslung his backpack and removed the plastic jerry can. Noting that the can only felt as if it were half full, he hoped its contents would be enough for the job at hand.

  With one last look around at the neighboring houses to check that the coast was clear, he unscrewed the top of the can and began gingerly making his way up to Henry’s front door. He started there, tipping a small amount of the fuel into the trash covering much of the porch. From there he worked his way around the small shotgun-style house, trailing the liquid along the edge of the walls as he went. The task proved slow going. Various piles of belongings and endless trash skirted the structure. More than once, he stepped on unknown objects that made much more noise than he would have liked.

  Only when he completed the circle back to the front door, with empty can in hand, did he feel any kind of release in his tension. He took a moment to breathe deep at the warm night air. He considered this action to be a well-earned reward. He looked around for a while to make sure his activities remained undetected. A few lights were on in the street, but no one showed themselves. No yells of alarm came from open windows or doors. And he soon felt secure in his approach to the next step.

  Digging into a pocket, he pulled out a box of matches. But even as he was about to open the box and make good use of his handywork, a calm voice breathed from somewhere behind him.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Abn didn’t shock easily, but on this occasion, the sound of the voice made him drop his box of matches and almost jump clear out of his skin. He spun on his heel to find Henry’s head protruding from the window of the Holden Kingswood. The car; why hadn’t he checked the car?

  “Put the matches down, Bro.”

  “God!” Abn managed, while feeling as if his entire body had been frozen in a block of ice. He wanted to run, but he remained riveted to the spot by the overwhelming force of shock.

  “Don’t look so worried, Bro,” Henry said. “I knew you would come. I know you. We’re birds of a feather.”

  “You do not know me.”

  Henry stepped from the Holden as he answered. “I do know you, Bro. Now, go home. You need to get your sleep. You have a big day tomorrow.”

  “I cannot do what you ask.”

  “Why not, Bro? Just now, you were about to burn my house to the ground with me inside of it. Ain’t that harder than ending the life of a terminally ill leukemia patient?”

  “It is different.”

  “Christ, Bro. How is it so different?”

  “It is different because you are a bad man.”

  “What do you mean? I’m a nice enough fella,” Henry said with an expression of genuine offence.

  Abn wasn’t quite sure he understood. “What is a fella?” he asked.

  “Jesus, Bro. You really are a stranger in a strange land. And I don’t have time to stand round educating you. Go home, Bro. And remember, if my son is still alive after four o’clock tomorrow, I will go to the detectives.”

  “Go to the detectives. I will take my chances with them. And do you really think they will believe you over me?”

  “Maybe not, but they will believe me when I show them this.”

  Abn watched as Henry held up a phone and punched the play button on the screen. It was all there in vivid color; everything but lighting the match after emptying the jerry can around the house. He had wildly underestimated Henry. There was nothing more he could do but do what had been demanded of him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Three o’clock loomed as Abn neared the hospice. It wasn’t like him to do things at the last minute, yet here he was doing just that. He had one hour left. If he’d not done what he had to do by the time that hour was up, then he would be charged with murder.

  Much of the night, he had spent tossing and turning, mulling the possibility of arrest. And much of the day, he had spent trying to imagine how he would carry out what Henry wanted. Being arrested didn’t concern him too much. The hurt that his conviction would cause Jane did concern him. He could not hurt her. Whatever happened, he could not get caught for what he had done, or for what he was about to do.

  A hundred different possibilities of how to end Henry’s son’s life presented themselves. Most of them would only be successful with time, planning and preparation. He had no time. Preparation for anything elaborate was out of the question. All he had on his side were the tools that had kept him alive this far in life. Chance and courage topped that list.

  He locked his bicycle against a lamppost on Owen Street, just around the corner from the hospice. Employing the reflection of a nearby house window, he checked his appearance. The Allblacks cap he’d purchased from the two-dollar store, and the matching hoody seemed to offer a respectable level of anonymity. A set of horn-rimmed studio glasses topped off the look. Nothing he wore came from his regular wardrobe.

  Despite the disguise, Abn new that his cover would be blown if he bumped into anyone who’d seen him during his regular visits. He may be able to fool the fleeting surveillance of security camera’s, but a set of human eyes would be a very different story.

  The nurse on reception, would be his most challenging obstacle. She knew him at a glance by now. She always said hello when he visited. He would have to find a way of getting around her without alerting her attention.

  A side door into the hospice would be the best option. Less traffic. Less eyes. But he had used one of the side doors before. He knew they could only be opened from the inside. And sometimes they were locked altogether. They could not be relied on. This left him with no choice but to use the main entrance.

  A minute later, he stepped through the double doors of the hospice and entered the lobby. At a glance, seven people came into view. Two were at the reception, talking with the receptionist. Two more stood further back, waiting to see the receptionist. And lastly, two children were playing with a pile of magazines near the lounge area.

  He didn’t hesitate. This was his opportunity. The receptionist would be too busy to see him as he walked by.

  With his eyes to the ground, he made his way casually through the lobby, expecting that any second, his name would be called. Nothing happened. Seconds later, he was in the clear and making his way through the hallway toward William’s room. As he moved, he tried to remember the exact angle of the camera that had taken the video the detective had shown him. To avoid it would be best. But at the very least, he had to minimize his exposure.

  As he passed an empty wheelchair in the hallway, he wondered for a moment if it was the same one the lung cancer patient had been sitting in. It appeared to be. Something in
the chair’s presence unnerved him. It seemed as if some higher force were giving him a warning. What did the warning mean? Why had the wheelchair been left there? Did they just remove the dead body and oxygen tank, leaving the chair for another day? Wouldn’t the chair be crucial evidence in the murder investigation? Was this carelessness, or was it something else?

  He ignored his nerves and tried to use the chair’s presence as a benchmark. If the chair did mark the location of the lung cancer patient, then the camera would be only four doors away and to the left. With this new detail in mind, he lowered his eyes to the floor again and kept them there as he walked.

  Then he arrived, stepping into the relative safety of William’s room.

  The curtains were drawn here, the light much softer, a welcome relief compared to the dazzling fluorescents in the hallway. In the yellow gloom, Abn lifted his eyes to see William, the single occupant of the room. He could hear his breathing above the background hum of hospice noise. This was not the breathing of a healthy young man. Much rather, it sounded as if it was the breathing of someone in extreme distress. Abn had heard the sound many times before in the many field hospitals he’d grown up in. He had developed such an expert ear that he could calculate to the day when someone would die, just by listening to them breathe. Witnessing the process several hundred times had that effect on you. By the sounds coming from William, he had weeks of life remaining. Or weeks of Hell remaining, depending on your perspective.

  Moving to William’s bedside, he examined the surrounding tubes and bags. The action went unnoticed. William appeared to either be sleeping, or doped to the gills on something that made a stranger’s presence irrelevant.

  The IV bag connected to the central IV line was what he needed to access. As he’d anticipated, the access point to this bag was needle free. It was simply a matter of screwing the syringe directly into the access point and plunging away.

  He’d had no time to concoct anything ingenious to send William into the afterlife. And smothering him with a pillow would prove far too risky. A struggle could generate attention. Therefore, he’d had no choice but to choose from the various home toxins that would kill. He knew that the chemical he’d chosen didn’t offer a comfortable way to die, but Henry hadn’t said anything about comfort.

  Getting the syringes hadn’t been a problem. A full box of them had been left in the bathroom medicine cabinet, a leftover from Ron’s daily injections before he’d been admitted to the hospice.

  Together with a pair of rubber gloves, Abn removed the pre-prepared three mL syringe from his hoody pocket. He unscrewed the cap and carefully placed it aside. Stretching into the gloves, he noted that the bag of meds attached the IV line was only one-third full. He tried to calculate how my much of the toxin should be added to the bag in order to be fatal. There was no room for error. The last thing he wanted was for William to survive the poisoning and suffer even more.

  He quickly decided that he wouldn’t be able to use the bag at all. The dilution of the toxin might be too great. The resulting mixture may not kill fast enough. Instead, he would have to go through the peripheral line on the back of the hand. This was the only sure way.

  He wasted no more time. Gently taking William’s hand, he screwed the syringe into the line.

  “Dad?”

  Abn looked up to see William’s eyes flutter open.

  “Dad… is that you?” William said.

  Abn hesitated. He had no idea what to say. He tried to resist the urge, but he was unable to keep his eyes from William’s. He saw boundless suffering in there; an endless void of Hell. But he also saw the same love he saw in Jane’s eyes whenever she looked at him.

  “Dad… is that you?” William asked again.

  “No,” Abn managed.

  “Who are you?” William said, his eyes opening further. “Are you him?”

  Abn had no idea what him meant. Instead, he said the first thing that popped into his mind. “Your father says he loves you. He says goodbye.” Then he pushed on the plunger.

  The spasm the racked William’s body gave Abn the impression that he was witnessing an exorcism in mid throw. The back arched into the air at an impossible angle. The arms flayed out as if charge by a bolt electricity. And immediately following the first jolt, William’s body began writhing and twisting in all directions, threatening to bounce off the bed.

  Abn threw his body across William’s in an effort to stabilize him. But his weight barely proved to be sufficient. Staying atop of a raging bull would have been easier. He marveled at the power of the broken body beneath him as wave after wave of spasms surged and surged again. For a moment, he imagined that the toxin wasn’t going to do its work. Possibly, it wouldn’t extinguish William’s life after all. Further suffering would ensue where peace and been sought.

  Then it ended.

  The waves of limitless energy collapsed beneath Abn as suddenly as they’d arrived. All became still. Despite this, he remained where he was for fear of a resurgence. Only after a minute of stillness had passed did he dare move again.

  Sliding from the bed, he stood back and took in the resulting scene. Indeed, William was no more. Blood splattered foam oozed from his mouth. His eyes remained open, bloodshot, bulging, reflecting terror and agony, even in death.

  A pang of compassion waved through Abn. He’d not anticipated that the death would be so prolonged, so filled with agony. His only consolation was that it was now over.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw that ten minutes had passed since he’d entered the hospice. He knew that he was now on borrowed time. A nurse or a visitor could walk in at any second.

  Forcing his emotions aside, he removed the syringe from the IV line, replaced its cap and put it back into his pocket. The gloves followed. But even then, he didn’t leave. He looked around to see if he had missed anything during the struggle. Nothing on the floor and nothing on the bedcovers. He checked his pants pockets. His wallet was there. So were his keys. All appeared to be in order.

  He turned and left William staring from nothing into nothing. He opened the door a crack and looked west along the hallway. No one appeared to be in sight. And his ears told him that the eastern direction was also clear. A moment later, he closed William’s door behind him, pulled his hood around his head and walked.

  So far, so good. The deed had been done. All he had to do now was make a clean exit.

  As he passed the wheelchair again, an idea sprang into his mind. Seconds later, he wheeled himself down the hallway in the chair, a borrowed rug laid over his lap. But as he rounded a corner and the reception area came into view, he almost leapt from his seat in a panic. Both of the detectives stood there with their backs to him.

  It took him every ounce of his control to resist the urge to cut and run. His breath froze in his lungs. His heart pounded. But he somehow maintained his casual composure as he wheeled by. He passed only feet from the detectives’ backs. He tried to imagine that nothing in the world existed except himself and the chair. There was no one to notice him in this world. An impenetrable bubble surrounded him, shielding him from everyone and everything.

  Somehow this illusion held.

  No voices of alarm called from behind him. No long arm of the law halted him. However, only when he reached the double doors of the exit did he dare have a hope. And only after he’d passed through the doors did he dare breathe again.

  The fresh air of the outside world felt marvelous as he sucked it into his starved lungs and stood from the chair at the top of the exit ramp. Something in that breath represented freedom, the reward for the accomplished task.

  However, his path became barred as he reached the bottom of the ramp leading from the hospice exit. Henry stood there; a mountain of meat, an immovable obstacle of immense proportion. He looked into Henry’s eyes, almost expecting a fist to lash out in anger. After all, he’d just murdered the man’s son. Surely this would be justice. This should be justice, shouldn’t it?

  “You’re leaving,
Bro?” Henry said as he placed both of his hands on his hips, effectively widening the wall he represented.

  “It is done,” Abn managed.

  Henry’s hands dropped from his sides and his presence softened a little. “You’re sure?” he said.

  “It is done. And I would not go in there right now. The detectives are there.”

  Henry didn’t answer. He stood there looking at Abn. Abn tried to imagine what he was thinking. The eyes gave away nothing. He had no time to wait. He had to rely on the possibility that Henry would honor the deal they’d made. He had to leave now.

  He nodded at Henry. “I have to go,” he said.

  He waited only a second for Henry’s consent. Then he slinked around him and walked away. A wave of relief washed over him as he made his way back out onto the street. Apparently, Henry’s need had been satisfied.

  A few minutes later, he was riding his bike back toward home. As he peddled away, the tension further evaporated from his body, but vivid images of William’s fate returned to his thoughts. What was the process from here? Would the body be autopsied? And if so, what would the toxicology report say? What had he missed? When would that knock at the door from the detectives come? Would it come?

  For now, he felt certain that he was at least safe from Henry. For now, that would have to do.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Are you going to get that?”

  “What?” Ed said, looking up from his drink.

  “Your phone, Ed. It’s the third time in the past ten minutes it’s rung,” said the bartender.

  “Oh… thanks, Jena,” Ed said.

  Before he had a chance to pick up the phone, the call went to his answering service. He tussled with the prospect of checking the message, but then a fresh shot of whiskey landed beside his beer and he decided otherwise. He nodded another thanks at Jena. He liked her for that. She never pushed him. She always kept the beer and the whiskey flowing. He liked this place; The Office Bar & Cafe, one of Newtown’s last remaining decent watering holes. The shadowy depths of its deserted interior offered him daily sanctuary from the chaos of the world.