Alicia handed him her car keys. “Go. I’ll call the sheriff and tell him what happened. Be careful,” she said and leaned toward Sam to kiss him good-bye.
“Thank you,” Sam said and kissed her on the forehead.
43
7:00 a.m.
Ruth was sitting on the running board of her car, tilting her head back and holding Trooper Sullivan’s handkerchief to her nose when she heard the gunshot. At first she cheered, “He got him.” Then she felt embarrassed by her reaction. The death or injury of anyone, even a criminal, was reprehensible. She was angry and in pain from her injuries, but she felt that was no reason to delight in her attacker being shot. Well, maybe just a little.
Ruth stood and rummaged under the front seat for her slippers. Her hand barely fit under the bent seat frame, and one of the slippers was wedged between the seat and the console. She yanked it loose, tearing the front tip. An open-toe slipper was better than none.
Ruth retied her belt and smoothed out her robe. Trooper Sullivan would be back soon and she would have to face the arrival of more police, but hopefully no reporters. Ruth checked her nose in the side-view mirror. The bleeding had stopped. She licked the corner of the handkerchief and wiped the dried blood from her upper lip. This was not a face anyone would be pleased to see on the evening news. She stuffed the handkerchief into her robe pocket and suddenly realized that the revolver was no longer there. Had she lost it in the accident? She scoured the floor of the car and the area around and under it. Nothing. Dennis must have taken it when they struggled while she was in a semiconscious state. He had been pulling on her robe, though at the time she had assumed that he was just trying to force her from the car. The question that now concerned her was, assuming Dennis had again taken possession of the gun, did he also have ammunition? The revolver had been stolen from Franklin’s home; why shouldn’t she assume that he had also stolen more than just the five bullets that were originally in it? Now more questions began to flash across her mind like the cars of an express train streaking through a local subway station.
Did the police officer shoot Dennis? Did Dennis shoot the police officer? Did either one of them shoot Franklin?
The fallen tree lying between the ravine and the rock outcropping on the other side of the road made the police car inaccessible unless one climbed through the dense branches. She had neither the strength nor the appropriate apparel to make such a climb. Besides, it would take too long. She needed to go to the cabin and try to help, whatever the current situation.
The sun filtered through the trees as it crested the horizon. Chickadees and nuthatches sounded their familiar calls, and chipmunks and squirrels scurried about their morning collection of nuts and acorns. None paid attention to the bedraggled woman in the torn, bloody robe and one open- and one closed-toe slipper who limped up the hill.
***
7:20 a.m.
The bell rang, and the capital letter “P” illuminated above the stainless steel door of the hospital elevator just before it slid open. A man carrying a bouquet of flowers in a white ceramic vase stepped to the side and extended his arm in front of his wife to shield her from the man rushing out the door while snapping a full fifteen-round magazine into the grip of his Sig Sauer P226. The woman gasped when she saw the weapon and tried to blend into the wall behind her husband. Sam tucked his gun into the waistband of his trousers without acknowledging the couple and rushed into the parking lot.
He held Alicia’s key over his head and pushed the button marked “open” until flashing lights and a single tone from the horn alerted him to her car’s location. Sam slid into the driver’s seat of the metallic-red BMW. His knees were jammed against the steering wheel, and he groped at the side of the seat for the controls. Smoke rose from the spinning tires until they made purchase with the garage floor and launched the BMW into a fishtailing dash for the exit.
Sam knew he was in a difficult situation. He knew his duty; it was clear. Ruth was in danger from what now appeared to be a lunatic that Sam had had in custody and then released. If anyone else was hurt by this man, Sam would feel personally responsible. True, he didn’t have all the evidence he had needed to hold him for more than twenty-four hours, but his “police sense,” that instinct that he had developed in twenty years of chasing criminals, should have alerted him to the possibility that Franklin was his man. He had pursued suspects in the past purely on the strength of his instincts and had eventually gotten the evidence needed to put the perpetrators away. He had had much less of a personal stake in those cases than he did in this one. If Ruth were killed or injured, he could never forgive himself.
The red BMW roared out of town and headed north on Route 62, then slid through exit 5 to Route 69 toward Russell. Fifteen minutes later he saw the Finger Lick’in Ribs sign on the right and knew that Destiny Road was no more than fifty yards ahead. He had expected, but did not see, a police car parked somewhere in the bushes, posted by Sheriff Thompson to monitor the traffic in and out of the small lane leading ultimately to the cabin.
Sam turned into Destiny Lane. He slowed to what he thought was a reasonable speed for the terrain but continued to bounce over rocks, branches, and uneven gravel, knowing it would probably cost six months’ pay to repair Alicia’s BMW, even if he just dented a fender. At the fork in the road, he chose the branch to the right. The last time he had driven this road, he chose the Lake Front fork and had ended up in a ditch. He hoped there were no more decisions to make before the cabin appeared.
Up ahead the state police car that he had expected to see at the forest entrance sat at an angle across a road that was blocked by a massive fallen tree. The BMW slid to a stop, and Sam assessed the situation. The colored roof lights of the police car were flashing, and the driver’s door was open. Sam stopped and squatted behind the open door of the BMW and began to reconnoiter. Several broken small branches of the felled tree indicated to Sam that someone had climbed over the downed tree to gain access to the continuation of the road. He assumed a crouching position with his gun held in both hands and approached the police car. When he felt comfortable that the area was secure and the trooper was nowhere to be found, he inspected the fallen tree. Through its branches he saw Ruth’s empty car, with its crumpled front and sideswiped doors, lying at an angle against the splintered stump of the tree.
The police car radio crackled, then the voice of the dispatcher sounded.
“Four-two-three Lima, report. Sullivan, where are you?”
Sam entered the police car and clicked the mike button.
“Dispatch, this is Lieutenant Sam Peirce, shield number five-two-nine-seven. I just found your unit, car four-two-three, abandoned on Destiny Lane off Route Sixty-Nine near Russell. There is a tree blocking the road and a disabled car on the other side of the tree. I’m going to investigate and look for your officer, over.”
“Shield five-two-nine-seven, is the trooper’s X-unit in the vehicle?” Sam looked around the console and dashboard of the police car and spotted the handheld radio. He heard another blast of static and then the dispatcher’s voice. Sam released the talk button on the car radio, placed the earphone from the X-unit in his ear, and pressed the talk button.
“I have the unit, dispatch.”
“Switch to channel three and stay at the vehicle until backup arrives. They’re fifteen to twenty minutes out.” Sam switched the radio to standby, placed it in his pocket, and began to climb through the branches to Ruth’s car.
Sam made his way through the tangle of branches, snapping many of them out of frustration as he approached the SUV. He gritted his teeth when a broken twig poked him in his ribs. The earphone connected to the radio in his pocket hissed, but he had no intention of answering it or waiting for backup. Twenty minutes could be the difference between life or death for the trooper and for Ruth.
In Ruth’s SUV he found the deflated air bag stained with blood and began to feel sick to his stomach. He knew it wasn’t the blood that upset him. He had seen hundre
ds of wrecks in his career, many with crushed, lifeless bodies embedded in the twisted metal. No, it wasn’t the sight of blood that upset him; it was the fact that he knew to whom the blood had belonged.
***
When Ruth arrived at the cabin, she was met by an eerie silence. The heavy oak door was ajar. Ruth called, “Hello, Trooper Sullivan? Franklin?” Ruth picked up the blood-stained shirt that Franklin had left on the chair. He had intended to soak it so that the stain wouldn’t set. She hoped this stain would be the worst of Franklin’s problems.
The door to Franklin’s bedroom was open, and she rushed to the threshold. Using the doorframe to obscure her body, she leaned and tilted her head into the room.
On the far side, Trooper Sullivan was sitting in a chair, bound and gagged by strips of duct tape.
His head was hanging forward and he was slumped over, restrained from falling to the floor by the tape that bound him. Ruth could clearly see a bullet hole in his shirt in the center of his chest. She didn’t need her biology training to tell her that the bullet had been aimed at his heart, and its aim had been true. She rushed to the trooper and placed her hand over the wound. It was dry. Ruth could feel the gnarly fabric of the Kevlar vest under his shirt and the stiffness of the steel plates suspended within. Ruth placed her hand on his neck and found the carotid artery. She felt a pulse. The force of the bullet must have knocked the wind out of him and rendered him unconscious. Next Ruth looked at Franklin, who was still sitting on the bed. On the floor in front of him was Dennis’s hooded jacket. There was a small bloodstain in the center of the back of the jacket. He must have been struck by some of the BBs from her shotgun blast as he ran through the woods after shooting Sam.
Franklin looked as though he had been beaten about the face. His eye was beginning to swell, and he sniffed and wiped the blood from his nose on his sleeve.
“Franklin, are you all right? What did he do to you?” Ruth asked.
“Dennis,” Franklin said as he pulled the revolver from behind his back and pointed it at her. “I’m Dennis, and it was you who did this to me.”
His voice was sharp and lower in tone than Franklin’s usual slightly whiny pitch. It was a voice she remembered hearing before. It was just days ago when he spoke of his fear of death. Ruth looked at the shirt in her hands. The bloodstain on the back of the shirt matched the location of the stain on Dennis’s jacket. She spread the shirt in her hands and now noticed two small holes from the BBs. In a flash Ruth began to process much of the information she had gathered from her sessions with Franklin but had been too distracted by Sam Peirce’s shooting to form a diagnosis. No one—no one that she knew of, that is—had spoken with or seen Dennis other than Franklin. Ruth had been pursued by a hooded man she assumed to be Dennis, and Sam had been shot by the same hooded figure, but the hooded man and Franklin were never seen at the same time. Ruth chastised herself for not seeing it sooner. The insomnia, the personality shifts, complaints of lost time, and now assuming a totally different persona—they were all symptoms of dissociative identity disorder. Franklin had multiple personalities, at least two anyway. How could she have missed it?
“Where is Franklin?” Ruth said. “I’d like to speak with him.”
“He’s here, but you can’t talk to him. He’ll be back in time to take the blame for everything that happens here. The policeman here saw Franklin shoot him. When he wakes up and finds you dead, he’ll be the witness who puts Franklin at the scene and in possession of the murder weapon.”
“But why? Franklin is your best friend.” Ruth thought that by appealing to his sense of loyalty and love for Franklin, he might let him reappear. “I know you loved Franklin, and I’m sure he loved you.”
“Wrong,” Dennis shouted. “I loved him, but he never returned my love. He abandoned me for the first girl that came along. I didn’t mind him wanting to be with a woman, but he didn’t have to ignore me, to end our friendship over her, to choose her over me, to reject me completely. I gave my life for him.” Dennis began to shake, and his features seemed to change. Ruth tried to process his last raging statement. Dennis is dead?
Ruth was standing several feet away from Trooper Sullivan’s chair, looking across the room at Franklin, who was sitting on the edge of the bed aiming his revolver squarely at her chest. Ruth noticed movement in the mirror behind and to the right of Franklin. It was a reflection of the window to Ruth’s left. Ruth glanced directly at the window and saw Sam outside, crouched at the corner of the sill. He was raising a short-barreled riot gun and aiming it at Franklin. He saw Ruth’s eyes flit in his direction, and he signaled her with his hand to back away and give him a clean shot at Franklin.
Now Ruth could have moved closer to the trooper and both would have been out of Sam’s line of fire, but Ruth felt that she was making progress and enough people had been hurt and killed. She stepped to her right, causing Franklin to turn slightly in her direction. This now placed the window and Sam’s shotgun at Franklin’s back but put Ruth directly in line with the blast. Shotguns fire hundreds of small BBs from within every shell, and the BBs expand in an ever-wider spray as they leave the muzzle of the shotgun. Ruth knew that Sam would not fire at Franklin because the spray of shot would be wide enough for much of it to pass either around or through Franklin and bring Ruth down as well.
“Franklin,” she said, “I know that Dennis is dead, and I know you must feel guilty for rejecting his friendship, but whatever the circumstances of his death, I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”
“He’s not going to talk to you,” the deeper Dennis voice said. “He took away my life, and I’m going to take away his. I’ll make sure he suffers for the rest of his days for deserting me.”
Sam put down the shotgun and drew his Sig P226 automatic. At this range, with a single bullet he could fire a kill shot that would end Franklin’s life without any messy scattershot to cause collateral damage to Ruth. Ruth saw him raise the pistol and continued to call Franklin out.
“Franklin, it’s your guilt talking,” she said in a loud voice. As she spoke, attracting Franklin’s or Dennis’s attention, whoever he was at the moment, she walked forward and placed herself between Franklin and the window. Her body now blocked Sam’s shot and also blocked Franklin’s view of Sam.
Sam cursed under his breath. Do you want to die? he thought.
“Franklin, I understand you feel that Dennis hates you and wants to hurt you and anyone you care about, but before it’s too late, tell me why. I can help you through this; just tell me why.”
Franklin’s voice returned to its normal higher pitch. “It’s my fault that he drowned. I was a terrible friend, and he died trying to save my life. He had to hate me just before he died; he had to swear he would get even if he could.”
Sam touched the earpiece from the police radio and pressed it to his ear as he heard: “This is Sniper One at the back of the house. I have a clear shot at the target through the bathroom window. Please authorize the shot.” Sam thought for a moment. He looked back at Ruth, and although the gun was still aimed at her, she and Franklin were talking.
“This is Sniper One. I say again, do I have a green light to fire?”
Sam held the radio close to his lips and said, “Abort, Sniper One, do not fire.”
Franklin heard Sam’s whisper and leaned to the right to see where the sound had come from, and Ruth immediately snatched the gun from his hand. Franklin looked at the trooper tied in the chair and then at Ruth holding the revolver pointed at the ceiling. He said, “Dr. Klein, you look terrible. What happened?”
Two police officers in riot gear burst through the bedroom door and lifted Franklin to his feet. He looked confused. They cuffed his hands behind his back.
“You’re going to be OK, Franklin. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of,” Ruth said.
Sam ran into the room, took the revolver from her hand, and handed it to one of the officers leading Franklin out of the room.
He placed a hand on each of Ru
th’s shoulders. “You’re a crazy woman,” he said, but he was smiling when he said it. He put his arms around her and held her close. Sam groaned as Ruth’s body pressed against his bruised ribs, and Ruth cringed as his cheek brushed against her swollen nose, but neither pulled away.
Epilogue
Ruth and Sam sat across from each other in a corner booth of the Bluebird Diner on Airport Road in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The swelling of Ruth’s nose had diminished; it was almost back to its normal size. Only a small Band-Aid across its bridge and a slight darkening around her eyes remained as evidence of the events two weeks ago. Emma had carefully administered makeup to compensate for the dark rings.
“You have a natural talent,” Ruth said, pleased with her daughter’s effort. The sight of Ruth’s injuries caused Emma to forget her displeasure at having to leave the cabin and return home early. Ruth knew she would be forgiven but slipped the fifty-dollar bill into Emma’s allowance envelope anyway.
Sam, on the other hand, showed no outward signs of the gunshot wound he had received. He moved gingerly and seemed in perfect health, although he did occasionally protect his bruised ribs with his left arm if anyone walked close to him.
“Have you seen your patient since he tried to kill you?” Sam asked, opening a packet of sugar and then placing it on his saucer instead of pouring it into his coffee.
“I saw him last week. Dr. Thornhill, a psychiatrist, has taken over the case. Franklin will get good care at Cedarcrest. They have the facilities to manage his illness,” Ruth said, winding the wrapper from her straw around her finger.
“I still don’t understand what made him go nuts like that. I’ve dealt with my share of murderers and violent criminals. I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming. Franklin never seemed to be violent,” Sam said.
“Guilt,” Ruth said. “Guilt is a powerful emotional force. Franklin had done something that he considered unforgivable when he was just nineteen years old; he abandoned Dennis, his best friend.”
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