“Please just give me her phone,” Sam pleads. “I’ll help you, I promise. We’ll go to the hospital,” he sobs. “I swear to god. I’ll make sure of it.”
“I hate to say it, Dr. Statler, but I think you might be suffering from a grandiose sense of self-importance. We both know you don’t have the power to keep me from prison.” Albert leans his head against the door and closes his eyes. “I’m tired.”
“You can sleep,” Sam says. “At the hospital.”
“I told you, I’m not going to the hospital.” He’s slurring his words.
“Albert?” Sam says. “Are you okay?”
Albert laughs, and his knees buckle. “You don’t have to flatter me anymore, my dear Dr. Statler,” he says, sliding down the door. He keeps talking, but Sam can’t make out what he’s saying, and then he goes quiet, slumping over, his head hitting the floor with an echoing clunk. Something falls from his hand and rolls toward Sam: an empty pill bottle. Sam picks it up and reads the label. “Margaret Statler. Zolpidem, 15mg at bedtime.”
His mother’s pills.
Albert was drugging him with his mother’s pills. It happens again—he starts laughing: a loud, delirious cackle that rises up from inside of him, carrying with it a wave of fear and panic more powerful than anything he’s ever known. He drags himself toward Albert and digs in his empty pockets for Annie’s phone.
“Yoohoo! Albert?” He stops cold. It’s a woman’s voice, coming from the kitchen. “Anyone home. The door was open—”
“I’m here!” Sam screams. “I’m back here!”
“Albert, is that you? I saw Annie’s car, and I have something for her—” He hears footsteps, and then the door opens. It’s Sidney Pigeon. She’s wearing workout clothes and is holding a baking dish.
“Oh my god,” she gasps, her hand flying to her mouth, the dish falling to the floor, sour cream and refried beans splashing into the air. “Sam?”
Epilogue
Sam hears the cart rattling down the hallway, outside the room, just as he’s falling asleep. He bolts upright and opens his eyes. The footsteps get closer, and he waits, immobilized, for the sound of the key in the lock.
But the sound passes and he exhales, reminding himself he’s not at the Lawrence House. He’s at Rushing Waters, reclined in his mother’s favorite chair, where he must have dozed off after the Wednesday lunch special, fettuccine alfredo. Margaret’s asleep in her bed, and he clicks off the television and kicks the footrest into place, checking the time. He has to go meet the movers.
He stretches his legs and stops at Margaret’s bed to fix her blankets before sneaking into the hall, closing the door quietly behind him. He signs out at the reception desk, passing a woman on her way in. She pauses and does a double take.
That’s right, lady, he thinks. It’s me.
He guessed correctly: the story is a big deal. Six months since the tabloids got wind of things, and they continue to outdo each other, competing for who can snap the creepiest photo of the Lawrence House, enticing shoppers at the checkout lines with yet another interview with “The Neighbor Who Called 911!”
Sam was impressed with Sidney Pigeon’s take-charge attitude about the whole thing. On the phone to 911, summoning the chief of police and an ambulance that apparently took no more than four minutes to arrive. It was the same driver who had come for the body of Agatha Lawrence three years before, this time arriving to cart away her biological son, who’d died in the same room. Cause of death: overdose of zolpidem, leading to cardiac arrest. In other words, Albert put himself to sleep and then died of a broken heart.
The Monster of Chestnut Hill. That’s what people have come to call Albert, and Sam has to admit it’s catchy. But one thing they haven’t written about Albert Bitterman is that, like his mother, he was found to be generous at the time of his death. He took care of Sam’s debt. The copies of the credit card bills Sam had discovered in the purple binder—Albert wasn’t merely filing them away for posterity. He was also paying them down, sending out checks, wiping it all away, as well as making a hefty donation to Rushing Waters that would cover, among other things, Margaret Statler’s room and board for the next thirty years.
Sam puts the car into drive and is about to pull out when he sees the green Mini Cooper speeding into the parking lot toward him. The car stops next to his, and Annie rolls down her window.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks. “It’s my day to visit.”
“I know.” She nods at the passenger seat. “Get in.”
“Why? I thought you said I had to meet the movers.”
“I lied. They’re coming tomorrow. Get in.”
Sam does as he’s told. “Where are we going?” he asks, buckling his seat belt.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” she says, plugging in her phone and hitting play on a song list marked “SAM.” Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” blares as she pulls out of the parking lot. At the bottom of the hill she heads out of town, toward the interstate. He puts it together. It’s the chase.
“We robbed a bank,” he whispers, venturing a guess, adrenaline rushing. “And we’re making a quick getaway.”