by Tim Downs
Riley looked mildly annoyed.
“What’s the matter?” Sarah said. “Can’t a girl look out for her big sister?”
“It’s just that … it’s kind of hard to say.”
“Stop being a weasel. Do you love him or not?”
Riley glared at her, but her countenance slowly softened, and she finally nodded.
“Then say it. Say, ‘I love Nick.’”
“Cut it out, Sarah.”
“Go on—tell the truth and shame the devil.”
“I don’t have to say it.”
“You don’t mean it ’til you say it.”
“I thought you weren’t a baby anymore. You can be so annoying.”
“Chicken. Coward. Yellow belly.”
“OK!” Riley said, turning to face her. “I love him! There, are you satisfied? I love Nick Polchak!” She stopped abruptly, stunned by the force of her own admission.
Sarah paused. “Does he love you?”
Riley rolled her eyes. “How am I supposed to know?”
“He hasn’t told you yet?”
“Well, not in so many words.”
“Not in words? How did he tell you, in smoke signals?”
Riley turned away and started down the road again. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Well, I do,” Sarah said, following right on her heels. “So you think he loves you?”
“I think he has a hard time saying it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think love is his primary language.”
“That’s a crock. Men always say that.”
“He didn’t say that—that’s just what I think. Nick comes from a pretty rough background.”
“What is this place, Shangri-la?”
Riley stopped and looked at her. “Sarah, Nick has been hurt in the past.”
“Oh, Riley, not another three-legged dog.”
“No, it’s not like that. He just needs … we both need to take it slow, that’s all.”
Sarah put her hands on her hips. “You haven’t told him, have you? Nick doesn’t know you’re dying.”
“He knows I’m sick—nothing more.”
“He has a right to know, Riley.”
“It’s not that easy,” she grumbled.
“‘Nick, I’m dying—I thought you should know.’ Sounds easy enough to me.”
“Easy for you, maybe—you’re not the one who’s dying. When was I supposed to say this, Sarah? ‘Hello, Nick, I’m Riley. It’s so nice to meet you; by the way, I’m dying, so don’t get too close.’ Or maybe after the first date: ‘I had a nice time tonight, Nick. If you want to ask me out again, you’d better make it fast—I’m dying.’”
“Come on, Riley, you know what I mean.”
“I didn’t want his pity, OK? And to be honest, I didn’t want to run him off either. For the first time in years I met a perfectly wonderful guy, someone who’s just as weird and twisted as I am, and I wanted to know if we had a chance together—just as people. Is that so wrong?”
“Would you?” Sarah said. “Have a chance together, I mean?”
“I think we would,” Riley said, “if only.”
Sarah paused. “All the more reason to live.”
“Do you think I want to die?”
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
“What is it I’m supposed to do, Sarah? You tell me.”
“OK, I will. How about moving to another transplant region—rich people do it all the time. Somewhere where you can be higher on the list, somewhere where there’s more placement activity.”
“More activity than Presby? You must be kidding—it’s one of the top transplant centers in the country. Besides, Sarah, I can’t just pack up and move—I’ve got a career to think about.”
“Dead women don’t have careers. How about moving overseas, have you ever thought of that? Someplace where the procurement laws are more flexible—somewhere where your odds might improve.”
“You expect me to move overseas? Be serious.”
“I am being serious. You said it yourself, your odds are one in a million here. Well, that’s not good enough, Riley. You can’t just sit around and wait to die.”
Riley kicked stubbornly at the ground. “Well, it’s my life.”
“Sorry—it’s not that simple. I love you, Riley, and so does Nick. That means a piece of your life belongs to me, and a piece belongs to him. You can’t just take your ball and go home—you have a responsibility to both of us.”
“I’m sick of responsibility.”
“Well that’s just too bad. Welcome to Mencken, Riley, welcome home. It’s a world of responsibility—it always has been and it always will be. You have to do something to improve your chances. You’ve gone the conventional route—now you need to consider extreme measures.”
“This all seems so simple to you, doesn’t it?”
“You think it’s hard to be the one who’s dying? Try being the one who has to live—the one who has to stay behind. You’re all I have in the whole world, Riley. Did you ever think of that? If you die, my whole world dies with you.”
Riley looked into her sister’s eyes; she saw the love, the devotion, the same furious intensity that used to fill her own eyes before her blood began to grow tainted and her spirit began to leech away. Now the last of her energy was leaving her—even her grief—and exhaustion weighed her down like a suit of armor. Her head throbbed, and her entire body felt like one dull ache. She threw her arms around her sister’s neck—less out of affection than to support her own failing legs—and she began to gently weep.
“Oh, Sarah, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to live,” Sarah said, “even if it kills us both.”
They turned together toward the house, Sarah half-dragging, half-carrying her sister the last quarter mile. They struggled up the front steps together.
“When was your last dialysis?” Sarah said, pushing open the front door.
“Five days ago.”
“That’s too long. We need to—”
They stopped.
Standing in the center of the room, pointing a handgun directly at them, was Cruz Santangelo. He looked at Sarah.
“Hello, Angel,” he said.
Santangelo motioned them into the room.
“Ordinarily, I’d tell you to shut the door,” he said. “But out here in the sticks I don’t suppose it matters—does it, Angel?”
“Shut up, Cruz,” Sarah said.
Riley looked from her sister to Santangelo and back again. She stared at Sarah wild-eyed, but Sarah refused to meet her gaze. Slowly, understanding began to break over her in pummeling waves.
“You’re the one … the woman with the red hair. But then you must have … oh, Sarah, what have you done?” Riley sank down on the floor.
“Those were lousy directions,” Santangelo said. “I thought I made a wrong turn somewhere. Do you know this place isn’t even on the map anymore?”
Sarah lifted her sister to her feet and helped her to a chair—then she turned to Santangelo and held out her hand for the gun.
Santangelo shook his head. “Sorry—you are sisters, after all.”
“You won’t need the gun,” Sarah said.
“I hope not—but then, that’s up to you, isn’t it?”
“We have a deal, remember?”
“Sure—the same deal we had in Tarentum.” Santangelo looked at his watch. “You’ve got ten minutes.”
Sarah helped Riley struggle to her feet again; they turned toward the back hallway.
“Whoa,” Santangelo said. “Where do you think you’re headed?”
“The kitchen,” Sarah said. “Do you mind? This is personal—we’d like a little privacy.”
Santangelo shrugged and took a seat on Riley’s chair. “Make it fast. There’s not much to do around here.”
In the kitchen, Sarah deposited Riley in a chair and stood at the counter across from her. Riley looked u
p at her sister in unbelieving horror.
“Tell me it’s all a mistake,” Riley said. “Tell me he’s confusing you with someone else.”
“You’re confusing me with someone else—with a baby sister who doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve grown up a lot lately, Riley.”
“Oh, Sarah—in God’s name why?”
“To get you your kidneys, of course. Didn’t you hear what I said back there? It’s time to consider extreme measures.”
“Like killing someone else to save my own life? Did you think I’d ever agree to something like that?”
“You were never supposed to know. When we found a match for you, all we had to do was make sure he had a donor card—we could have let his kidneys come up for transplant through the regular system. With your compatibility problem, you would have been number one on the match list. You would have gotten your kidneys, Riley, and you never would have known. That was the deal I made; that’s why I agreed to work for them.”
“And who would this ‘donor’ have been, Sarah? A mother? Someone’s husband? A woman my age with a sister just like you? Would you really trade my life for someone else’s?”
“You don’t understand. When they pick a donor, they consider more than medical factors. The man in the drive-by shooting—he was a wife-beater, did you know that? Do you know why he pulled over in that alley in Homewood? Not to change his tire, to change mine. I stood there by my car in a low-cut dress looking helpless—looking available—and he practically skidded to a stop. Do you think he would have stopped if I was old or ugly or overweight? Not a chance. That guy owed his wife a debt he could never repay, but there he was trying to hit on a younger woman. Are you asking me if I would trade that scumbag’s life for yours? I’d trade ten of him for you.”
“And what about your clients?” Riley said. “What do you know about them? Is Mr. Vandenborre some kind of angel? How does he treat his wife? Does he have an eye for younger women too—or is he even worse than that? You have no idea at all, do you?”
“I don’t know—and I don’t care. I know you, Riley. I love you. You’ve been my whole world since I was a little girl. What was I supposed to do, just stand by and watch you die?”
“So you find a match for me, and you help commit another murder; then I get my kidneys, and I marry Nick, and we all live happily ever after—is that the picture? Only we wouldn’t all be happy, would we, Sarah? Because you couldn’t live with yourself. You’d end up just like this town—burning underground, smoke seeping out through cracks, ready to collapse at any time. How many people have you helped murder?”
“No more than necessary.”
“Necessary? Necessary for what—for me to live? For you to keep your happy family? Remember that verse from Sunday school: ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”
“First we save your life,” Sarah said. “I’ll worry about my soul later.”
“I worry about my soul all the time—it comes with dying.”
“You need to start thinking about the future.”
“Dying is the future—it’s everybody’s future. So now what, Sarah? Why are we here in the kitchen? What is Santangelo expecting you to do? Are you supposed to try to change my mind about all of this? Are you supposed to convince me? Is that what these ten minutes are for?”
Sarah pulled out the chair across from Riley and slowly sat down. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I didn’t ask to work for these people, Riley—I never knew they existed. They asked me. Now, why do you suppose they did that? They liked the way I looked, sure. They also liked the fact that I’ve been a surgical nurse; but most of all, they knew I would have a motive. They knew about you, Riley. These people know everything—they’re incredibly thorough.”
“You could have said no.”
“Could I? Remember about a week ago, that wealthy woman from Sewickley—the one who drowned? What was her name … Heybroek, wasn’t that it?”
“I remember,” Riley said. “I assisted on her autopsy.”
“Funny, isn’t it, a woman in a wheelchair falling into her own swimming pool? How careless of her. She didn’t slip, Riley, she was pushed—but I don’t suppose that showed up in the autopsy, now, did it? Do you want to know her real cause of death? She said no to Julian Zohar. He approached her about being a client, and she turned him down. But then she knew about the system, and Zohar couldn’t have that—so she had to have an ‘accident.’ Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s what happens when someone tells them no.”
“You could have agreed at first—then you could have gone to the authorities later.”
“I could have; I didn’t want to. They knew me, Riley; they did their homework well. They offered me a chance to save your life—without you ever knowing about it—and I jumped at it. I wanted to say yes.” Sarah reached across the table, took both her sister’s hands, and looked intently into her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about me, Riley. I was talking about you. You can’t say no.”
Riley jerked her hands away. “What are you telling me—that they’re offering me my kidneys, and if I say no they’ll kill me? Are you joking? Sarah, I’m dying anyway! What difference do a few months make?”
“It’s not that simple. They’re not just offering you your kidneys, Riley—they’re offering you a job.”
Riley’s jaw dropped open.
“It’s Lassiter,” Sarah said. “He’s an idiot. He’s put the entire process at risk—he’s the reason you caught on in the first place. They need a person at the coroner’s office, Riley. They need someone to replace Lassiter.”
“And what happens to Lassiter?”
Sarah shrugged. “Does he own a pool?”
“So that’s the deal: I get my kidney, so I can no longer turn them in; then I spend the rest of my life working at the coroner’s office, covering up strange little anomalies, passing off deliberate murders as accidental deaths. Are you out of your mind, Sarah? What in the world would ever motivate me to do such a thing?”
Sarah’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Try this for starters: If you don’t, they’ll kill us both.”
Riley stumbled out of her chair and reached for the counter to steady herself; Sarah was right behind her.
“When you and Nick started poking around—when you uncovered the system—they knew they had to deal with both of you. But with you they saw another option; they saw the chance to replace Lassiter. That’s why they agreed to give me a chance to talk with you. That’s why we came after you in Tarentum.”
“You called him,” Riley said. “You called Santangelo from the motel in Tarentum—and you were the one who wanted to come to Mencken!”
“They wanted us to get away. They wanted a quiet place where we could have some time together, where we would have a chance to talk.”
“And if things didn’t work out, they wanted a quiet place where they could kill us! And what about Nick, Sarah? What deal are they planning to offer him?”
Sarah said nothing.
“That’s just great. Do you understand the choice you’ve given me? To live with you or to die with Nick. Well, I love Nick too, Sarah.”
Sarah glanced nervously at her watch. “I tried to save your life,” she said. “Now you have to save us both.”
Riley turned on her. “Don’t you put this on me! I was the only one dying here. Now you’ve killed us both—and Nick—and Leo! Oh, Sarah, Leo! If only you’d known him. I’ll never forgive you for that!”
“It would have worked,” Sarah grumbled.
“Then what would have happened, Sarah? Did you really think they’d let you stop working for them? That they’d let you retire? What would have happened when you started to get a little older, or when you gained a few too many pounds—when the men would no longer pull over just to get a better look? You would have turned up in some swimming pool yourself.”
“I didn’t care,” she said. “It was for a greater good.”
Riley took her
sister by the shoulders. “Listen to me. The greatest good is the good that’s right in front of your nose. You cannot take an evil path to a good goal.”
“All I did was love you.”
“That’s the problem, Sarah—all you did was love me. You’ve got to love something more than me, something greater, or even love gets twisted.”
Sarah held out her watch. “Time’s up. What are we going to tell Santangelo?”
Riley paced back and forth across the kitchen, her mind racing. “We have to buy some time,” she said. “We’ll tell him I agreed—that I bought the whole thing.”
“These people are not idiots, Riley. Santangelo doesn’t want this to work out—he despises loose ends; he’d rather kill us both and be done with it. If he detects the slightest hesitation on your part, if he picks up any hint of deception … all he wants to do is go back to Zohar and say, ‘It didn’t work. I took care of it.’ Can you look Santangelo in the eye and convince him—unless you really mean it?”
Riley shook her head, trying to sort through the barrage of thoughts.
Sarah took her by the arm. “This can still work,” she whispered. “You’re right, we need to buy time—so take your kidneys, Riley, do that much—we can negotiate from there. Even about Nick—who knows what we might be able to work out?”
Riley twisted her arm free.
“Nick is coming back here,” Sarah said. “If you say no, he’ll be dead the minute he walks in the door. Do you really love him, Riley? You’re the only one who can save him—you’re the only one who can save us all.”
Riley lunged for the back door.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to save my soul,” she said. “I’ll worry about my life later.”
“You can’t run—not in your condition.”
“It’s a world of responsibility, Sarah—I can do anything I have to do.”
“He’ll follow you.”
“Not where I’m going.”
“Riley, he’ll follow you—you don’t know him.”
She started out into the darkness.
“I won’t be here if you make it back,” Sarah called after her. “When he realizes you’ve run, I’m finished.”
Riley didn’t look back. She kept moving forward with all of her remaining strength, heading for the base of the bony pile. Now she was just a distant shadow, and Sarah called out to her sister for the last time.