by J. D. Barker
My arms shook, my legs vibrated, but I kept going. One knot at a time.
I would have made it if I hadn’t reached for the mouth of the door early. I was so close, and that wooden edge felt like the finish line, so I made a grab for it. Had I been a few inches higher, my fingers would have hooked it, and I would have pulled myself right up. I wasn’t quite there, though, and instead of wrapping around the lip of the opening, my fingers brushed it and went past, and my balance went with them.
I tipped forward, and my other hand stretched for the door too, but it was even farther away, so it found nothing but air. I dropped toward the unforgiving ground, looking nothing like the graceful pirate I had promised to be.
Michael was still beneath me, but I came down hard and fast and at this weird angle. I hit him first, then the ground hit me. I tasted dirt and grass, and then somehow I stood right up, thinking everything was just fine.
I’d knocked Michael over, and he stood too, and I knew immediately from the look in his eyes things were not fine. When I followed his gaze to my left arm, I understood why he was so pale and why his mouth was hanging open. My left arm did not look the way it was supposed to. While a normal arm had a single joint at the elbow, I now had two—my arm bent at the elbow and again right under it. Something white and sharp poked out of my skin behind my elbow, and I think if someone had told me it was my bone, I would have puked on my bare feet.
My legs wobbled under me, and I toppled over.
Michael caught me.
I know he shouted, screamed for help, but what I remember most is how he held me so close, put his lips right at my ear, and said, “Pick a number between one and five, Meg.”
“It hurts, Michael,” I said between the sobs that came whether I wanted them to or not.
“It only hurts because you’re thinking about it,” he told me. “Pick a number between one and five. Concentrate on that, and the pain will go away.”
He was a liar, but I appreciated the effort.
My left arm felt no better right now, and that was the least of my problems.
Chapter Ninety-Four
Written Statement,
Megan Fitzgerald
I didn’t remember passing out, but that’s how that kind of thing works, right? You don’t flip a switch or pull the covers up around your neck and slowly drift off. Someone else’s hand is manning the power button, and that individual is not big on giving you warnings.
My eyes opened.
I heard breathing.
First my own, then from the seat next to me.
The digital clock above the car’s radio read 5:35 a.m. The sun was creeping out.
I was facing forward, and this was a problem because I wouldn’t be able to see the person in the driver’s seat without turning my head, and I couldn’t turn my head without tipping off that person to the fact that I was now awake.
“You’ve been out for a while.”
Shit.
Michael’s voice. Calm. Sounding half asleep too.
We weren’t moving. The motor wasn’t running. The car was parked on the side of the road—a narrow residential street with small houses in neat little rows, each one nearly identical to all the others, as if they’d been planted by some kind of large machine with only paint color and landscaping to set them apart.
“Where are we?”
“Nicole Milligan’s house.”
“I didn’t give you her address.”
“I found it in her file. Dr. Bart kept tabs on her.”
“Oh.”
I still hadn’t turned my head. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. My mind played the footage back like a DVR—Michael running across the path; Michael in front of the car. An impossible distance to cover in only seconds.
“What color was his hair?”
Michael asked the question as if he’d just been poking around in my mind. I’d never been able to keep secrets from him. He read me like yesterday’s paper. It had been like that since we were kids.
“‘I saw two Michaels. I saw two of you,’” he went on. “You kept repeating that while you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. I figured restless sleep was better than no sleep.”
I did turn then. I looked right at him.
He wasn’t looking at me, though. He was staring at a house across the street. Dark windows. A yellow Volkswagen Bug in the driveway. A house not much different from all the others on the block. In the space between the houses, I could see a giant expanse of water. Nicole Milligan lived someplace called Ashtabula, Ohio. This would be Lake Erie.
“How long was I out?”
“Hours.”
He’d rebandaged my arm, wiped away all the blood. I wiggled the fingers of my left hand. They worked again. Still a little numb, but they moved. My filthy dress had been replaced by a white tank top and jeans. A pair of tennis shoes were on the floor next to my feet. All things from my bag. From the corner of my eye, I saw my bag perched on the back seat, Michael’s beside it. Dr. Bart’s files too. All our stuff from the SUV. There was also a black nylon bag, one I didn’t recognize. A rifle was on the floor, the barrel resting on the transmission hump. “Whose car is this?”
“I found it. Not far from Jeffery Longtin’s house.”
I noticed the steering column then—the plastic around the ignition was missing. Several wires dangled under the dash near Michael’s legs, their ends twisted together. “When did you learn to hot-wire a car?”
He didn’t turn to me. His gaze remained fixed on the house. “I didn’t. It was already like that.”
“When you found it?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get the rifle?”
“I took it from the man who was shooting at you.”
“Is this his car?”
“I think so. I bashed his head in with a rock.”
He said this nonchalantly, as if it were nothing. As if he’d just mentioned he’d made the guy a sandwich.
“What color was his hair?” Michael asked again.
I thought about this for a second, tried to focus the images in my head, but the truth was, I couldn’t tell. His hair looked dark, but it had been matted down by the rain. Everyone’s hair looked darker when it was wet. Besides, it wasn’t exactly a moment for attention to detail. I looked at the back of Michael’s head as he looked out the window. Blond hair. The color I dyed it. Dry now. “Where are the glasses I gave you?”
“I lost them in the woods.”
My eyes fell on his right wrist.
No watch.
His left arm was resting on the open window. I craned my head slightly to get a look at that wrist.
No watch there either.
“I’m going to ask you a question,” I said. “It may seem weird, but I need you to answer. It’s important to me. Important for us. Understand?”
He nodded slowly in the pale light. “What is it?”
“When I broke my arm, when we were kids, whose fault was it?”
“That’s your question?”
“It is.”
Michael considered this, still watching the house. “Johnny Depp. If it wasn’t for that stupid movie, we wouldn’t have been playing pirates. Although you’ve always been clumsy. Not much of a climber either.”
We’d always blamed Depp—our little secret. Only Michael would have known that. Some of the tension slipped from my body.
Michael added, “Meg, I saw him too. In the woods.”
Chapter Ninety-Five
Dobbs
Dobbs watched Begley pound on the front door of the Fitzgerald home with the back of his fist for the third time, five quick hits in succession. “Dr. Rose Fitzgerald, this is Special Agent Waylon Begley with the FBI! I have a search order for the premises and an arrest warrant for your daughter, Megan Fitzgerald! Open the door immediately or we will have no choice but to break it down!”
Back in Los Angeles, a warrant serve-and-search would have played out a little differently, Dobbs thought. The bat
tering ram would have cleared the door, concussion grenades would have flown through the opening following the team leader’s half-assed shout of a warning, and a dozen SWAT officers dressed in full battle gear would have plowed inside, destroying everything in their path while disabling anyone they encountered. The good doctor would have been on the floor chewing on carpet with her arms pinned behind her back before the first tear from the gas fell from her eye.
Not in the burbs.
Not in this ritzy neighborhood.
Here, they get a subtle knock and the chance to extend an invitation. No need to damage a hand-carved, ten-thousand-dollar door.
“We know she’s in there,” Dobbs told Begley. “You’ve given her plenty of time to respond. She’s not answering. We need to use the ram.”
Begley nodded.
Half a dozen agents stood behind them at the ready. Begley beckoned to an agent holding a two-and-a-half-foot-long black cylinder. Dobbs recognized it as a Blackhawk Monoshock Ram, not unlike the ones his department used. Newer, though, and missing the telltale scratches of near daily use. This one spent most of its life in the trunk of someone’s car.
The agent stepped up, held the ram by both handles, and swung it with an arc at the door about an inch to the inside of the dead bolt. The wood splintered and cracked; the heavy oak door swung inward.
Begley stepped inside first. “Dr. Fitzgerald, this is the FBI—we’re coming in!”
Dobbs followed after him, the palm of his hand resting on the butt of his gun. He didn’t draw the weapon, but he had unsnapped the leather clasp. There was a round in the chamber, and the safety was disabled. He hoped to God he wouldn’t have to shoot some old woman today.
With hand gestures, Begley signaled for two of the agents to go upstairs, another toward the kitchen, two more down a hallway on the right. He motioned for Dobbs to follow him.
They found Dr. Rose Fitzgerald in what appeared to be a library sitting at the end of a plush leather sectional sofa. A bottle of Scotch rested on the table beside her next to a half-empty glass and several nine-volt batteries. There was a cordless phone in her hand. She appeared to have just finished up a call, had a disgusted look on her face.
She dropped the phone onto the cushion beside her, reached for the glass, and raised it to them. “To the finer things and the trials that pave the road to them.”
The doctor drank down the Scotch, dabbed at her mouth with the back of her hand, and set the glass on the table. With a heavy sigh, she stood, smoothing the pleats of her pressed slacks. “You said you have an arrest warrant. Does it extend to me?”
Begley took a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “You can access the warrant with this URL. It includes a full search of the premises here and your offices at the university, and there’s also an arrest warrant for your daughter, Megan Fitzgerald, for aiding and abetting your son, Michael Kepler Fitzgerald, in connection with more than a dozen homicides.”
This news didn’t seem to faze her. The stony expression on her face didn’t falter. She took the card and set it on the table beside the bottle. “Those two were never my children. They don’t have my blood, my DNA. I share nothing with them other than my home. They were leeches, feeding off me. Parasites in a petri dish. Something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe on the stoop before stepping inside. I hope you put bullets in both of them.”
Dobbs glanced over at Begley. Neither of them was quite sure what to make of this.
Dr. Fitzgerald went on. “My attorney has advised me that if the warrant includes no arrest for me, I’m to leave the premises.”
“We may have questions,” Begley said.
She raised an eyebrow. “I should hope so. And you’re welcome to ask them of my counsel. You wouldn’t question me without an attorney present, would you?”
Begley didn’t respond to that.
“Nor would you attempt to detain me without the proper authority to do so. Imagine the public relations mess that would create. I am a public figure, after all.”
She offered them both a cold, snakelike smile, bitter, full of bile. She stepped past them and started down the hallway in the direction of the garage. At the corner, she paused, the smile gone. “While you’re welcome to stay, I strongly suggest you gentlemen exit my home immediately.”
That’s when Dobbs smelled it.
Smoke.
Chapter Ninety-Six
Written Statement,
Megan Fitzgerald
“I want you to see something,” Michael said, reaching into the storage compartment of his door. He took out a cell phone and handed it to me. It was a cheap disposable, like the ones both Michael and I had now, the kind you could buy anywhere—prepay and toss when you’re done.
“Is it yours?”
“It belonged to the man who was shooting at you.”
I bashed his head in with a rock.
I pressed the power button. The screen flashed some Chinese logo, then asked for a pass code.
“It’s one, two, three, four.”
“How’d you figure that out?”
Michael shrugged. “People are lazy. If they don’t use four zeros, it’s one, two, three, four. If that’s not it, it’s usually the last four digits of their Social or their street address. Same thing with bank PINs.”
I made a mental note to change my PIN code when this was all over.
I keyed the numbers in, and a menu came up.
“Go to his text messages.”
Texts were the second option on the menu. I pressed the button, and a single conversation appeared. “He was in contact with only one person?”
Michael nodded. “Read it.”
The conversation wasn’t very long—
You didn’t tell me there would be federal agents involved.
You didn’t ask.
You didn’t tell me about him either.
?
You should have told me what he was capable of.
?
At least six dead marshals here, maybe more.
It’s under control.
You need to pull back.
Are you there?
Are you there?!?
“You think they’re talking about whoever we saw?”
“I know it wasn’t me,” Michael replied.
“Would you remember if it was?”
Michael didn’t answer.
I bashed his head in with a rock.
“I didn’t see his face, Michael. Not really. I saw a blue shirt like yours. I wanted it to be you, but then I saw you in front of the car.” I looked back down at the phone. “It was pouring rain. Pitch-black out. I’d lost blood, I was crashing from adrenaline. It really could have been anyone.”
“You’re making excuses now.”
I didn’t want to say it, but I did anyway. “You read the files, Michael. You heard the tapes.” I turned to him. “Tell me the truth. Did you lose time back there?”
Michael looked like I’d punched him in the gut. He didn’t answer my question, though. I’m not sure he knew the answer.
I went back to the phone. “Maybe we should call whoever this is.”
“And say what? ‘Sorry we killed your friend’?”
“Okay, text, then. Pretend to be him.”
Michael didn’t reply, just kept glaring out the window.
I keyed in a quick message. Michael heard the tones and turned to me but not before I hit Send.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Sorry, here now.’”
He seemed ready to object, but a reply came in before he had the chance.
What happened? Where did you go?
“Write ‘I pulled back, like you said,’” Michael told me.
“Yeah, that’s good.” I keyed it in.
Where are you now?
I thought about this for a second. “Awaiting instructions,” I said aloud as I typed.
A moment passed. Then:
They’ll go to the girl next. Like I told you
.
Both our faces were glued to the small screen. I think we both knew what was coming.
I typed in, Address?
I gave it to you.
“Tell him you lost it,” Michael said.
I typed that.
Nothing.
No response.
Then an address filled the screen: 148 Summerset, Ashtabula, Ohio.
Both Michael and I turned to the small house across the street. On the mailbox, in large reflective numbers, was 148.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Michael took the phone from me and typed in, What do you want me to do?
No answer. Then the phone began to ring in his hand.
“Don’t answer it,” I spat out.
“He knows we’re not him.”
“How can you be sure it’s a him?”
Michael said, “We should answer.”
“Don’t.”
Michael’s finger hovered over the answer button, but he didn’t accept the call. The phone rang half a dozen times, then went to voice mail. The caller didn’t leave a message.
Another phone rang somewhere. Loud, obnoxious. One of those old-school landlines with actual bells inside. It was coming from inside the house.
A light turned on. A window on the far left side.
A shadow moved past the window.
Michael dropped the phone and grabbed the rifle from the floor in the back seat. He snagged the bundle of wires sticking out from under the dash and pulled them apart, and the engine died. “Come on—”
He was out the door and walking swiftly toward the little house before I could respond.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Dobbs
From the Fitzgeralds’ garage, Dobbs heard the throaty growl of a car starting. The tires chirped as they quickly reversed. Through the window, he saw Dr. Rose Fitzgerald behind the wheel of a black BMW, 7 Series, maybe 8. She performed a quick three-point turn and weaved through the various law enforcement vehicles toward the road.