“The text message on my pager. ‘M—Meet me at Cooke County fire scene ASAP. Urgent. BB.’”
“That message came from my cell phone?”
“Yes. Wait. I don’t know. It said ‘private number.’ I figured you’d just changed your settings.”
“I’ve never sent a text message in my life,” I said. “I don’t even know how.” Alarms were shrieking in my head, and either Miranda saw the fear in my eyes or she’d figured something out on her own. “I think we should get out of here.”
Miranda held up a hand, then froze, and then spun to face something behind her. I heard the beginnings of a gasp, and then the gasp turned into a grunt, and suddenly Miranda was falling, tumbling backward into empty space, her arms and legs windmilling as she fell. If this had been a scene in a movie, that’s when everything would have happened in slow motion; I’d have lunged and somehow managed to catch her, or at least managed to break her fall. But this was not a movie, and I stood rooted to the spot, not even comprehending the fact of her fall until the moment she thudded to the floor on her back and her head snapped down onto the concrete with a sickening crack. Her body convulsed once, then lay still. I felt horror rising in my throat, and suddenly I was retching again, retching and crawling through the wreckage of the basement to where she lay.
I felt for a pulse in her wrist. When I couldn’t find it, a blind panic began racing through my veins and nerves—a primitive, wild-animal sort of panic, the kind that short-circuits all semblance of thought, all powers of language. I forced myself to slow the rapid, racking breaths that were pouring oxygen and adrenaline onto the blaze of my fear. I laid a hand on Miranda’s neck, guiding my fingertips to the left side of her throat, to the hollow between her windpipe and the muscles at the side of the neck—the valley where her carotid artery lay. I stilled the pounding of my own heart enough to feel the faint flutter beneath my praying fingertips. She was alive. I felt a shudder of relief run through my frame, heard a gasp or sob of some sort coming from my chest, and then shuddered again as the words floated down from above. “I hope the fall didn’t kill her,” said a familiar voice mildly. “I have a much better death in mind.” I looked up to see Garland Hamilton standing at the top of the wall, sneering down at Miranda and me.
CHAPTER 35
“YOU PIECE OF HUMAN SHIT,” GROWLED A VOICE THAT resembled my own. “You twisted son of a bitch.”
Hamilton laughed. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t think my mother had much to do with this. I think most of the credit goes to you, Bill.”
“Bullshit,” I said without turning around. “You’re insane or you’re evil. Or both.”
“But why, Bill, and since when? I was a model of decency and stability until a year ago. Until you ruined me.”
Now I turned to face him—above me, silhouetted against the fading daylight—though I remained kneeling beside Miranda. “I pointed out a mistake you made in an autopsy, Garland. A mistake that would have cost an innocent man his life. It was a bad mistake, but it didn’t have to ruin you. You chose the path of ruin.”
“The path of ruin? The path of ruin?” He sneered it, coating the words with the slime of mockery. “Christ, it’s tough to pick just one thing,” he said, “but I think it’s the simplistic Brockton sanctimoniousness I’ll miss least of all.”
He bent down briefly, and when he straightened, he was holding a large container: a five-gallon gas can. He shook it, and light sparkled through a broken stream of liquid the color of tea. Then I felt the sting of the gasoline on my skin and in my nostrils.
“Fitting, don’t you think? Instead of me burned to death here, it’s going to be you and Little Miss Lovely.”
“No!” I jumped to my feet and lunged toward the corner of the basement. Leaping up as I ran, I planted a foot on the wall and transferred my forward momentum into vertical motion. I managed to grab both walls at the top and scrabbled at the concrete with my toes as I pulled with my arms.
Something swatted me down like a giant’s fist. I collapsed into the corner, bewildered at first. Then I felt a searing pain in my chest and realized I’d heard a loud pop. It gradually dawned on me that I’d been shot.