“Shit!” Leah snapped.
Noah knelt back down beside Caroline, whose head, if Leah had things visualized correctly, was facing away.
“We have to!” Dan said. “It’s now or never.”
“Dan, I have no shot.”
“Then we hit the door. Do it that way.”
Just then, Caroline must’ve felt the barrel of the Glock press against the back of her head on account of she started to scream.
“No! No! Please don’t!” Her words were flooded with tears.
“Hit the door!” Leah yelled, stumbling over Dan. “Now!”
CHAPTER 70
Still stuck in the cramped cabinet, Jonathon listened as Carry’s cries increased. His heart was thundering against his chest. He knew he had to make a move and he had to do it soon. Where the hell was Miss Leah and the rest of the police? They certainly weren’t going to make it in time to do anything.
“Now,” he heard Stork say, “this part. This is where you start cryin’.”
Then he heard the slider of a gun.
Then Carry started to scream.
Jonathon didn’t even pay attention to her words. Running on full adrenaline, he kicked open the cabinet door and pushed himself out. His legs complained from being bent so long, but he forced them to stand. Forced them to move.
He stumbled over the narrow table but managed to see Stork bent over Caroline with the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her head. The noise Jonathon made coming out of the cabinet made Stork snap his attention over his shoulder. Surprise filled his eyes as Jonathon heaved the table out of his way and practically dove at Stork.
It didn’t take long for Stork to react, though. His gun hand came away from Caroline’s head and he spun his body around and began leveling his weapon at Jonathon.
Jonathon was on the verge of launching himself at the man, when he realized the gun was pointed directly at his chest. Fear overcame his adrenaline and Jonathon froze. The surprise in Stork’s face melted away as a grim smile took its place.
“My, my,” he said, his gun steady in his grip. “What have we here? Somebody’s Romeo?”
“Jonathon!” Carry screamed. “Run! Get the hell out of here!” Her voice sounded raw. Her body began to convulse as she broke into tears. “Please,” she said, quieter. “Please don’t hurt him. Just let him go? Please?” The words broke into more sobs.
“I won’t hurt him much,” Stork said, matter-of-factly. “Just enough to kill him.”
CHAPTER 71
Leah and Dan were on the verge of going through the door when a cacophony of noise from inside brought Leah back to the window. Jonathon now moved through the garage, tackling the table, trying to make his way to Stork. At first, Leah thought he’d done it. Thought he was going to tackle Stork before Stork even knew what hit him, but that damn table was giving him too many problems. Finally, Jonathon just threw it aside, but by then it was too late. The surprise factor no longer worked for Jonathon. And Stork had now managed to wheel around and point his Glock right at Jonathon’s chest.
Now Jonathon just stood there, probably scrambling for an idea of what to do next. Leah was doing the same.
Finally, she looked to Dan. “Radio Ethan. Tell them to open the garage door.”
“Okay . . .” Dan said. “Why?”
“It will distract Stork enough to get us in through there.” She pointed to the door.
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s hope it’s a good one.”
Dan went around the side again and radioed Ethan. He came back and told Leah to be ready to go on three.
It wasn’t even two when the rattle and tumble of the big garage door’s wheels echoed through the room as Ethan and Chris brought the door up.
Without even making noise, Leah and Dan opened the back door. Dan went in first.
By the time Leah was inside, Stork’s gun was no longer pointed at Jonathon, it was trained on Ethan, who stood out brightly on account of the fluorescent lights above his head.
Ethan had his .38 out and pointed right back at Stork. Only difference was, Ethan used both his hands to grip his gun, and Leah knew now that for Stork, this wasn’t an option.
“Drop it, Stork!” Ethan said.
Slowly, Stork stood from his crouch, never once taking his eyes or aim away from Ethan. Leah wasn’t even sure if he knew she and Dan were inside yet.
They both took a firing stance as Stork said to Ethan, “You’re my biggest threat, therefore, you go first.”
Just then Chris stepped out of the night’s shadows and came in under the lights. His gun was gripped the same as Ethan’s. They stood about seven feet apart.
“Now you got a decision to make,” Chris said. “You get one of us, we get you.”
“Actually, the decision’s even more complicated than that,” Dan said.
From Stork’s reaction Leah realized he’d had no idea they were there. Now his head snapped in their direction, and he found himself being sighted down the barrel of four weapons.
Something flickered behind Stork’s eyes. An idea, perhaps.
Stepping back, Stork grabbed Jonathon and pointed his gun to the side of Jonathon’s head. “Okay, you guys all get a shot and kill me four times. I only get one. And it’s for Romeo here. As they say, all is fair in love and war.” He was smiling. Leah wanted so badly to shoot that smile off of his crazy goddamn face.
Leah looked down at Caroline, lying tied up on her side, gently sobbing. She could only see Leah and Dan from her position. “Mom?” she asked. “Mom, what’s goin’ on?”
“Just work stuff,” Leah said. “We’re getting you out of here.”
“Where’s Jonathon?” Carry asked, her voice on the brink of hysteria.
“He’s fine, baby,” Leah said, taking a step forward. “He’s safe.”
Stork let out a laugh. “A strange definition of the word safe you have, my dear. But do me a favor and take a step back.”
Leah didn’t move.
Stork screamed. “Do it! Do it right now, or so help me I’ll blow his goddamn head off!”
Leah stepped back.
“So you have friends, little girl. And this one’s a pesky one. Like a cockroach. They get into everything, too. I assume you were the one who moved my ax?” Even though his words were directed at Jonathon, he never stopped looking at the cops, his eyes going from one to the next to the next and to the next. And all four of them had their weapons trained directly his way.
He smiled. “I know, you all want a piece of me right now. Well, you can have it, but only on one condition. And that’s that I get Romeo. Quid pro quo. You shoot me, I shoot him. As they say in Babylon, ‘An eye for an eye . . .’ Well, you know the rest.”
“It doesn’t have to go that way,” Dan said. “We can still all walk out of here alive. Just lower your weapon.”
Stork let out a little laugh. “Don’t you see? This was going to be my last one anyway. I can’t do it anymore. I’m not physically able. I can’t even lift someone as light as your daughter without pain shooting through my arm. Besides, I’m tired of it all. All the killing, all the screaming. All the pressure.”
“What pressure?” Leah asked. She wanted a shot so bad.
“In my head. Pressure. I have to do this, I have to do that. I’m sick of being a slave to my brain. I welcome death.” He cut a quick glance to Jonathon. “What about you, Romeo? How welcoming are you to death? If I were you, I’d start making my peace real soon now.” As he finished his speech, his gaze went back to Dan.
“Stork,” Dan said with incredible calm. “See this gun I’m holding? It’s a DoubleTap Derringer loaded with .45-caliber ACPs with two rounds already chambered. I know, awfully nice of my lieutenant to let me carry such a piece. But I want you to realize this ‘thing’ I have pointed at you right now has the capability to kill you twice before you even realize I squeezed the trigger. I suggest you lower your weapon now and not make me prove it.”
Leah often wondered what kind of gu
n Dan had. It was different from any she’d seen before, with two barrels lined up vertically.
“Noah,” Dan said.
“Who are you?” Noah asked. “The group’s ‘spokesman’? Why have I never seen you before?”
Dan took one hand off his weapon, stepped forward, and extended his hand. “Dan Truitt, detective out of Birmingham. I—”
“Go back where you were!” Stork screamed, freaking out. “I swear I will pull this trigger!”
Dan looked to Leah. “Not the most polite guy I’ve ever met. I thought you said he made you sweet tea?”
Leah shrugged. “Must’ve been a good day.”
Stork looked back and forth between them. “Just fuckin’ shut up!”
Dan sighed. “Look, you say you’re tired of being sick. You don’t have to die to fix that. There are medications that will work. You just haven’t found them yet. Think back to the night you lost Harry. You went five years without killin’ anyone. If you did it then, you can do it now. You don’t have to be an executioner all the time.”
“I’m not an executioner,” Noah hollered back at least twice as loud as Dan was. “I’m the executioner. I’m the Stickman. I’m the Strangler.” He paused, as though he was letting this sink in.
“We know, Noah,” Dan said. “We figured it out. It took a thirteen-year-old boy to do it, but we figured it out. Why do you think I said ‘five’ years and not ‘fifteen’?”
Stork obviously decided none of that mattered. “I went to sleep for five years,” he said. “Goddamn doctors and their medication. They just lull you into a walking coma. So I stopped taking their meds, and lo and behold, I woke up. I managed my way outside of the box, and from here, I can see it all now. The cover-ups, the conspiracies, how the medical community links to the military, how everything leads to everything else in one big connection. I’m more lucid now than I’ve ever been.”
“I think I have a shot,” Dan whispered to Leah.
“No!” she whispered back. “He’s too close to Jonathon. He’ll blow his head apart.”
“I’m a good shot,” Dan said. “And the muzzle velocity of this pistol is nothin’ short of truly amazing.” Leah couldn’t believe how calm he was.
Leah thought hard. They had to do something mighty quick. Stork had a loaded, chambered pistol, its barrel pointed six inches from Jonathon’s temple.
“Try it,” Stork said. “Take your shot.”
“Shit, he heard me,” Dan whispered to Leah.
“Of course I heard you. Do you think I’m deaf?”
“Don’t do anything rash, Stork. We will shoot. You don’t need to die today.”
Then Noah Stork began quoting Shakespeare. Leah knew it was Shakespeare because it happened to be from one of the two plays they had to learn for high school English. “By heaven,” he said, theatrically, “I will tear thee joint by joint and strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs. The time and my intents are savage, wild, more fierce and more inexorable far than empty tigers or the roaring sea.”
Leah remembered the speech and where it came in the play—right before Romeo died. Then she realized why Stork had quoted it, but that realization came too late. Noah Stork had just told Jonathon good-bye.
“No!” Leah screamed. “No! Don’t!”
Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion as, without any sign of emotion, the Stickman, the Strangler, and the man named Noah Stork gently squeezed the trigger on his 9 mm semi-automatic.
The garage exploded with the massive sound of gunshots. Leah thought she heard three near on simultaneously. Instinctively, her eyes closed from the intensity of the noise. Everything went black. The room filled with the smell of cordite.
CHAPTER 72
Leah opened her eyes as the echo of gunfire died away, only to be replaced by Caroline’s screaming.
Jonathon’s body collapsed, crumpling and tumbling onto the concrete floor. He wound up falling on his side, his head lying in clear view of Caroline. Blood pooled rapidly around his head before tributaries formed, taking it away from the growing red lake. Caroline’s screams were wicked. They filled the garage, and, Leah suspected, even the neighbors a mile up the road must be able to hear them. The top part of Jonathon’s skull seemed to detach slightly from the other. Leah had to look away. Unfortunately, because of how she was bound, Caroline couldn’t. She sounded like a wild animal being butchered.
The two shots from Dan’s gun had blown Stork backward against the wall, putting two new splatter patterns across the unfinished wall. Dan’s gun made two obvious bullet holes in Stork’s body, one in the chest and one slightly lower.
For a moment, Stork stood there, his back against the wall, his gun still held in the hand of his outstretched right arm, his left arm dangling useless at his side. Something about him reminded Leah of a scarecrow. Or a crucifix.
Then, horrifically, his lips formed a smile and a small laugh escaped his throat. He spoke, and his voice sounded like dust. “Poor Romeo,” he said.
Leah mistakenly thought Stork was going to live. That was when she took aim and squeezed a shot off herself, this one going straight through Stork’s heart.
He slid down the wall, leaving a trail of fresh red in his wake. Reaching the floor, he looked like he’d sat down for a nap with his head tilted forward. Around him and from under his legs, bright red pools of blood began to form.
Caroline still stared at what was left of Jonathon’s head. His eyes were wide open and almost seemed focused on her as she sobbed, screaming between chest heaves. “Why did you kill him?” she yelled to the dead man sitting behind her. “Why? Why him?”
But the Stickman couldn’t answer, because he was dead.
And this time, he was staying that way.
CHAPTER 73
All Carry did now was cry, all the time.
She had to go to therapy and everything. I heard my mother talking to Dan about it. They said that when the medical examiner came to take the bodies away, Carry wouldn’t get off of Jonathon. My mother finally had to pick her up and carry her to a car. She kept screaming with tears streaming down her face as she watched them “bag and tag” him, an expression I remembered from the book I’d read. I guess that meant Jonathon was evidence now, too. Funny, how all that forensics stuff meant so much to me before, and now it just seems so far away and pointless.
But all Carry does is cry. And screams. She bursts into screams a lot. Things like, “Why did he have to die?” and “It’s not fair!” Well, actually, to be honest, she usually yells it a bit more like, “It ain’t fucking fair!”
The first time I heard her scream out the F word, I thought my mother would come down the hall and throw a fit at her, but she didn’t. In fact, I don’t think she even said anything about it. I guess when you’re so sad you can’t control what you say, then it’s okay to break some of the rules. I don’t know.
Sometimes she’ll start screaming in the middle of the night, and it jolts me awake, but I don’t get mad. You don’t get mad at people when they are filled up with sadness. I didn’t even need my mother to tell me that.
Dewey was really sad when I told him what happened. I think he may have even cried, but he tried to hide it so I won’t ever ask him. He definitely took it hard. It’s been two days, and he hasn’t been over or called or nothing. I miss Dewey, but right now I’m kind of glad it’s just me, my mother, and Carry. Well, I guess Dan’s here, too, but I don’t notice him much. Carry stays in her room so the TV stays off and, I guess, I have been pretty much staying in my room, too.
I sure do miss Jonathon. I miss everything about him. He bought me and Dewey lady fingers for the Fourth all on his own because he wanted to be nice. Nobody told him to. In fact, by her reaction to him giving them to us, I don’t think Carry even knew.
Yeah, I sure do miss him.
Want to know a secret? Well, it’s not really a secret. I’m not ashamed of it or anything, I just . . . I don’t know. It’s kind of weird. But I’ve been crying
a lot, too. The thing is, though, I’m not entirely sure what I’m crying about. Sometimes I think I’m crying for Jonathon on account of him dying, but then other times it feels like I’m crying for me since I don’t get to see him anymore. And other times? I feel like I’m crying for Carry, although I think Carry does enough crying for all of us.
Everything’s different now. It’s not even like when my grandpa died. Things were different after that, but . . . well, it was different.
Today, I asked my mother when things would go back to normal.
“They may never go back to the way you remember them, Abe,” she said. We were both sitting on my bed.
I told her I didn’t like that answer. “What about Carry?” I asked then. “Will she ever be normal again?”
My mother thought this over. “Your sister’s been through a lot, Abe. Everyone handles death differently, and you have to remember, she loved Jonathon. She loved him and she watched him die right in front of her. These kind of things affect you forever.”
“You mean like when I looked into the eyes of Mary Ann Dailey when she was lying beneath that willow?”
Concern fell over my mother’s face. “You still remember that?”
I nodded.
“Do you have nightmares about it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t usually remember my dreams.”
She reached out and tucked a lock of my hair back behind my ear. “How often do you think about that?” she asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “All the time. I ain’t never seen anythin’ like it.”
My mother seemed to consider this. “Do you wish you hadn’t seen her that day?”
I shook my head. “I’m glad I did.”
My mother looked puzzled. “Why?”
I looked into her eyes. “On account of everybody else there were just police doin’ their jobs. Nobody ’cept maybe you really cared about her just lyin’ there, and you were too busy really anyway. ’Sides, you’re a grown-up. Mary Ann Dailey needed someone her own age—well, closer to her age, anyway. She needed someone she could tell her story to who would understand.”
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