Fell sat on one end of the sofa, I sat on the other. I noticed his hand was trembling slightly, which, given the circumstances, was not an encouraging sign. Nervousness is not something you want to see in a man holding a gun on you. He pointed to the bottle of Black Label on the coffee table with his chin. “Pour me a shot,” he ordered.
“I’ll get you a clean glass.” I started to get up.
He raised the Glock slightly. “Stay right there. That one will do fine.”
“I might have something really bad.”
“In the circumstances, I don’t think it matters. Pour.”
I did as I was told.
“Now push the glass toward me.”
I did that too. Fell reached over with his free hand and picked it up without taking his eyes off me.
“You realize you’ve ruined my life,” he said after he’d taken a sip. “You’ve made it impossible for me to do the only thing I like—teach.”
“You mean if you did research you wouldn’t be sitting here?”
Fell put the glass down. “I don’t think you’re in any position to make smart-ass remarks.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not.”
“This wasn’t my fault,” he continued.
“Then whose was it? Melissa’s?”
“Yes.” Fell shrugged off the tweed overcoat he was wearing, switching the gun from his right to his left hand and back again in the process. “Actually it was. She came at me with this gun.”
“I know. She was having a bad day and she said why don’t I go attack my psych professor. Sorry,” I quickly said as the hand with the Glock came up a little. “I forgot myself.”
Fell waved his hand around. I found I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun. “See. This is the reason I put her where I did. I knew no one would believe me.”
“What wouldn’t they believe?” I asked as I wondered if I could make it across the couch and grab the gun before Fell shot me.
“That she attacked me.”
I did the math and decided I couldn’t chance it. Fell might be distracted, but he wasn’t that distracted, and even if he were, he wasn’t close enough and I wasn’t fast enough. “She attacked you?” I raised an eyebrow. “Now, why should she do that?”
“She blamed me for her friend’s death.”
“I take it you were the guy seeing Jill Evans.”
Fell wiped his forehead with the palm of his free hand. “It wasn’t my fault,” he repeated, trying to convince himself more than me. “I didn’t know she was a borderline personality.”
“It must be nice to have a name for everything.”
“I warned you before about being sarcastic,” Fell snarled.
“What if I told you I was being sympathetic?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.” Fell took another sip of Scotch. “She came on to me. I knew I shouldn’t get involved with her. I knew it. I kept telling myself I shouldn’t. But it didn’t help. I kept saying one thing and doing something else. All of a sudden, there I was. And when I realized how many problems she had ...”
“You tried to break it off.”
“I did. Yes.” Fell nodded emphatically. “Which was when she told me she was going to kill herself. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help.”
“By giving her Prozac?”
“It was just a couple of months worth. I figured it would get her over the hump.”
“Melissa said it made her worse.”
“She said that to me too.”
“But you didn’t listen.”
“I did stop giving it to her.” Fell swallowed. He wiped his forehead again with the back of his hand. Even though it was cool in my house—the thermostat was set to sixty-five degrees—Fell’s face was beaded with sweat. “Then I told Jill I really wasn’t going to see her anymore, that this time I meant it. And I didn’t.”
“But you kept calling.”
“I was concerned. I wanted to make sure she was all right.”
“Or maybe it was that you got off seeing this girl fall to pieces every time you got done with her.”
Fell’s eyes blazed. “You sound like Melissa now. I made a mistake. I admit it. I should never have gotten involved with her. But that doesn’t mean I should have to give up my career, something I worked for for twenty years, because some girl is unstable. Jill Evans was a catastrophe waiting to happen. What happened to her could have occurred at any time. I was just the one who was unlucky enough to trigger it.”
“Why didn’t you try to get her some help?”
“I did!” Fell’s tone was anguished. “I pleaded with her to get counseling. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to do anything to help herself. That’s why I kept calling.” Fell took another sip of Scotch. “I was trying to help.”
“But Melissa didn’t see it that way.”
“I tried to explain. At first I thought she understood. She said she did. But she just wouldn’t let go of the topic. She wanted me to go to the dean and tell him what had happened. She kept on telling me I had to confess.”
“Why didn’t she go herself?”
“Because she didn’t have any proof. Jill hadn’t talked about me to anyone but her.”
“Lack of proof hasn’t stopped anyone lately.”
Fell shrugged. “She didn’t think she’d be believed.”
“A belief, no doubt, you encouraged her in.”
“I just wanted things to go back to the way they were before. Was that so wrong?”
“It turned out that way.”
Fell looked confused.
“Three people dead.”
“Three? How do you get three?”
“Jill Evans. Melissa. Myself.”
“You?” Fell wrinkled his brow. “Why you?”
“Because when you shoot me with that gun, I’ll be dead.”
“Shootyou?” Fell laughed shrilly. “Is that what you think? That’s a good one.” He slapped his knee with his hand.
“I didn’t think it was that funny.”
“Oh, but it is. I thought you’d realized. I came here to kill myself.”
“Kill yourself?” I asked stupidly.
“I want you to see what you’ve done.” And Fell put his gun to his head.
He was starting to pull the trigger, when someone knocked on the door.
Chapter 36
“Get it,” Fell ordered. His gun was leveled at me. “Tell whoever is there to leave.”
“Right.” Zsa Zsa was barking again. The knocking had set her off.
As I stood up, I couldn’t help thinking that it was too bad whoever was knocking hadn’t waited a couple of seconds more.
Fell stood up too. He followed me out of the living room and down the hall.
The knocking got louder.
“I’m coming,” I yelled over Zsa Zsa’s yapping. Surprisingly, Fell didn’t say anything about it. The banging stopped. “Now what?” I asked Fell when we reached the front door.
Fell kept the Glock trained on my back. “I told you. Tell them to go away.”
I half turned toward him. “You could always go out the kitchen door.”
“Robin,” a voice on the other side of the door yelled. The pounding had started again. It was louder now. “Are you there?”
The noise seemed to unnerve Fell. He licked his lips. His gun hand was trembling. “Just do what I say.”
I raised my hands. “I was only making a suggestion.”
“Robin. Answer the door.”
It was Marks. I recognized his voice.
Fell nodded at me. “Go ahead.”
I swallowed. Suddenly I realized my mouth was dry. “I’m here,” I cried.
“Open the door.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I looked at Fell.
“Tell him you’re not dressed,” he whispered. “Tell him you have no clothes on.”
“I don’t have any clothes on,” I repeated.
There was a
short pause, then Marks said, “Fell’s in there, isn’t he?”
I turned back to Fell. “What should I say to him?”
“Tell him ... tell him ...” he repeated. He tugged on his beard with his free hand. “Tell him ... I’ll shoot you if he doesn’t leave.”
Terrific. “What happened to your other plan? I think I liked it better.”
“Just do it,” Fell shrieked.
“Sorry.” I took a deep breath and put my hand on the door to steady myself. “Marks, he says he’s going to shoot me if you don’t leave.”
I heard what I thought was a curse, but I couldn’t be sure. Then I heard a “how are you?”
“Things were actually going very well up until five minutes ago. ”
“Fell,” Marks said. “Let her go.”
Fell didn’t reply. His face was beaded with sweat.
“I know you can hear me.”
Fell blinked several times in rapid succession. He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“Walk out the door now, and I’m sure we can arrange something,” Marks told him.
Fell motioned to me with the gun. “We’re going back to the living room.”
“Fell,” Marks yelled. “Fell.”
But Fell didn’t reply.
This time Marks’s curse was audible.
“You really should talk to him,” I told Fell.
“I have nothing to talk to him about.”
“On the contrary.”
Fell cupped his free hand and ran it over his face. “God, what a mess.”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
“Walk,” Fell ordered.
I stopped by the coffee table. Fell was about a foot away from me.
“Sit there,” he said, indicating the sofa.
“You should give yourself up, because in about twenty minutes this place is going to be crawling with cops,” I told him. As I sat down I noticed one of the sofa cushions was tearing along the outer seam.
Fell slowly lowered himself into the armchair across from me. “So what?” His eyes never left me.
I refrained from commenting that it made a big difference to me.
He poured himself a drink with his free hand and finished it in one gulp. “Go to the window and tell me what you see. Go that way,” he said, indicating my route with the barrel of his gun.
I got up and peered through the blinds. “I see Marks’s car outside.”
“What else?”
I pushed the slats farther apart and looked down the block. Flashing lights were approaching from down the street. “Another cop car is coming.”
“That was fast,” Fell observed.
“They must have been in the area.”
In a little while the whole street would be swarming with patrol cars. My neighbors weren’t going to be getting any sleep tonight, I thought as I let go of the slats. They were definitely going to be pissed.
“Sit back down,” Fell said.
I did. “You mind if I light a cigarette?” I asked.
“Yes. I do. Keep your hands folded in your lap. And be quiet,” he said as I was about to say something. “I need to think.”
Fell and I sat in silence for the next five minutes, listening to the crackle of the police radios and the muted mutterings of people talking outside. It was hard sitting there, watching Fell chew on the ends of his mustache, not knowing what was going on. I felt as if ants were crawling on my skin. I wanted to scratch myself, but every time I moved so much as a finger, Fell told me to cut it out.
“I never meant for this to happen,” he finally said.
“So you said. Several times.”
“Missy showed up at my office. We were supposed to have an appointment the next day, but I had to cancel. She asked me to wait for her, and I said I couldn’t, I had to leave in fifteen minutes. I was walking out the door, when she came in with the ... the gun. She was out of breath. From running.” He raised the gun sligntly. “I thought this was a toy, something that she bought at Toys “” Us. I don’t know ... I didn’t expect ... She wanted me to go to the dean and tell him what had happened with Jill. She said I had to do that, that it was the right thing to do, that otherwise people wouldn’t know why Jill had acted the way she had.” “What did you say?”
“I told her she needed to calm down. I told her she needed to get some counseling. All she did was laugh.” “And then?”
“Then I told her she had to stop this, that I needed to go. That I was going to be late for my appointment. She just laughed some more.” A vein under Fell’s eye twitched. “I told her if she didn’t leave and stop this nonsense, I was going to call security.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No,” Fell whispered. “She didn’t.”
The noise from the voices outside my house was growing. Individual words like ... hostage ... situation ... drifted into the house. I watched the lights from the police cars on the street streaming through the blinds, form patterns on the floor.
Fell swallowed. The noise was making him nervous. I asked him what happened next because I wanted to keep him talking.
“I walked toward the phone. She told me to stop. I didn’t listen. She was standing close to me, close enough so I could touch her. She told me if I didn’t stop, she’d shoot me, and I told her not be ridiculous and turned around, and I’m not sure, I think I accidentally hit the gun. It fell out of her hand and landed on the floor and went off. Melissa just stood there for a minute. And then she fell to the ground. It was like she was a balloon and someone had let the air out of her. I didn’t believe it. I still don’t. I expected people in the other offices to come running, but no one did. The noise from the construction site must have masked the sound.”
Fell gnawed on the tip of his mustache again. “I didn’t know what to do. It was like being in a dream. I just locked up the office and left. I went home and drove my wife to her doctor’s appointment and then I did some errands and came back home, walked the dog, and had my dinner. I don’t think I believed what had just happened. I think I thought when I unlocked the office door, Melissa wasn’t going to be there, you know? That she’d be gone. Only she wasn’t.
“It’s really kind of funny when you think about it.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “I was terrified I was going to be charged with sexual harassment. Now I’m going to be charged with murder. I must have sat in my office in the dark for two hours, looking out the window and wondering what to do.”
“And then you remembered they’d just poured the concrete.”
“I rolled her up in my rug and carried her out. My heart was hammering. I was positive security was going to come by. Part of me wanted them to.” Fell pushed his glasses up his nose with his free hand. “The funny thing is, I thought I’d feel worse than I did about doing it. The worst part was waiting to be caught. I expected to be,” Fell told me. “I did. Every time I saw her face on one of those posters I thought, today is the day. I waited and waited for the police to show up. I even told myself that if they didn’t, I’d turn myself in, but they never came.”
“And you never turned yourself in.”
“Somehow the time never seemed right. I always had papers to grade or the grass to mow. And then an odd thing happened. I began to forget. Forget that she was in the foundation. I erased the idea from my mind. It was as if the whole event had never happened.”
“Until I walked through the door.”
“Exactly.”
I heard the squeal of another car’s tires.
“They must have quite a crowd out there by now,” Fell noted.
“You should have gone to the police.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have, but it’s too late now.”
“No, it’s not. If you explain what happened, I’m sure you’ll be able to work out a deal. Let me call my lawyer. He’s very good.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Fell cried. “Don’t you get it? My life is over. It can never go back
to being what it was. Ever. I’m too old to start again. I don’t want to.” Tears trickled down his cheeks. “I shouldn’t have to.” He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. “Enough of that.” He sat up straighter. He laughed. “You’re going to enjoy this.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What?”
“Get up.”
“Why?”
He gestured with his gun. “Because I say so.”
My knees were shaking as I stood.
“Come over to the chair.”
I stopped about five feet away.
“Closer.”
I took another step.
“Closer still.”
I took two more steps. By then I was standing directly in front of Fell.
“Over to the left a little.”
I did as told. The side of my thighs brushed against the arm of the chair. I was just thinking that if I were fast enough, I might be able to lean down and grab the gun, when Fell slapped gun into my palm, clamped his hand over mine, and jammed the gun’s muzzle against his head.
The whole thing happened so fast, I didn’t have time to react.
“I want you to shoot me,” he said.
The gun felt heavy in my hand. For some reason, I noticed Fell’s hair was thinning on top.
“This is something you should do for yourself.” I tried to move my hand, but I couldn’t. Fell’s fingers enclosed mine like a vise.
“You destroyed my life. Now I want you to finish it.” He began to squeeze the trigger.
I made my fingers as stiff as possible, but I wasn’t able to resist the pressure from Fell’s finger over mine. My finger began to move back anyway. The metal bit into my skin.
“I’m not doing this,” I said through gritted teeth.
“You should have thought of that before,” Fell said as he pressed the trigger back another millimeter.
I managed to move the gun up a fraction of an inch as it went off.
Chapter 37
“I hear you’re going to some of your classes these days,” I said to Raymond. The cut on his face seemed to be healing nicely.
“Once in a while,” he allowed. He clasped the box with the iguana close to his chest as if he was afraid his uncle would change his mind and make him give it back.
George, Raymond, and I were standing outside Noah’s Ark. It was fifty degrees. That morning, in the cemetery at Melissa Hayes’s funeral I’d heard a flock of Canada geese flying by. The first of the season. Spring was truly on it’s way.
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