“Not clever enough, apparently,” I said.
“According to an interview in the Observer a few years back,” said Timitz, “the infamous Allen Grimes never writes his column at home. He’s always out and around the town somewhere. He brags about it, too, like it somehow makes him more of a New Yorker. Had you read the same interview, Professor?”
“No. I heard it straight from the source,” I said.
Timitz smirked. “I rest my case.” He turned to Grimes. We’d both been talking about him as if he weren’t in the room. He wished. “Of course, there’s a first time for everything, right? How’s it looking so far, Allen?”
So that’s what Grimes was writing. Timitz was using Grimes’s column as a mouthpiece, a chance to tell the world his side of the story. It also explained the endless scribbled pages. Every inch of every paper spread around Grimes was covered with the musings and motives of a serial killer. The Dealer had his own manifesto.
Grimes tilted the screen of his laptop, gazing at what he’d written. Or was it transcribed? “I think it’s what you want,” he said.
I had a real bad feeling about where this was all heading. I could picture it, the scenes flickering in my head. Like a movie.
Grimes finishes the piece, hits Send to e-mail it to the Gazette, and Timitz thanks him for his time before bidding us both adieu. That damn detonator keeps our asses plastered to our seats right up until the moment that Timitz, along with Elvis, has left the building. At which point Timitz lifts his thumb, triggers the vest, and the only thing left of Grimes and me are some DNA samples.
At least Grimes would probably win a Pulitzer posthumously.
I could picture it, all right. I just couldn’t believe it.
Maybe Grimes had served his purpose for Timitz, but my role still seemed underwritten. There had to be something more, something I was missing. Every instinct I had was telling me the same thing.
The Dealer still had something up his sleeve.
Chapter 97
TIMITZ STUBBED out his cigarette, using nothing but the glass of Grimes’s coffee table as an ashtray. With his free hand he motioned inside his jacket. “How rude of me,” he said. “Would you like a smoke, Professor?”
“That depends,” I said. “Will it be my last?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he answered.
“I think you have.”
“You do, huh? Have I become that transparent now?”
Engagement. I could see it in his eyes, the way they lit up from anything or anyone that challenged him.
“Wasn’t that the idea?” I asked. I leaned back against the couch, matching his pose. “Wasn’t that what you wanted, to challenge me?”
“You say ‘challenge,’ I say ‘use,’” he said.
“Either way, here I am,” I said. “Why me, though? Why my book?”
“Don’t you know?” asked Timitz.
“Let’s just say I have a theory,” I said. “But you don’t agree with it.”
“The opposite,” said Timitz. “I think permission theory is an excellent approach to understanding abnormal behavior. In fact much of what I’ve done is modeled after it.”
“A simple fan letter would’ve sufficed,” I said.
“In a way, you’ll get that, too,” said Timitz. He turned to Grimes. “Did you send it yet?”
Grimes nodded.
There was something almost poetic about the faith Timitz placed in Grimes to e-mail what might be his very last column. Timitz didn’t need to watch him hit that Send button or even read exactly how he’d distilled his manifesto. Grimes loved to drink and chase women. But he lived to write. It was only fitting that was how he’d spend his last remaining hours before dying.
As if on cue, Timitz leaned forward again. He held the detonator out in front of him. His words were all too familiar. “Can we ever really judge behavior simply by the behavior itself?”
“What else can you quote from the book?” I asked. “Go ahead—tell me that the differences between normal behavior and abnormal behavior have nothing to do with behavior but, rather, the circumstances in which they happen. Tell me all the exceptions to Thou shalt not kill. Tell me about wars and self-defense. Or capital punishment. Then tell me how killing us will help you prove your point.”
“It’s not my point; it’s yours,” said Timitz. “There’ll be a lot written about me. That I was evil. That I was cruel and unjust. But you know what the truth is, and, in time, so will others. Because you know me, Professor. You’ve already written about me. For everything that I am, everything that I’ve done, the one thing I’m not is abnormal, and you know it. I’m the asterisk, the exception that proves the rule. Crazy is our security blanket, the word we use instead of the truth when the truth scares us even more. Justice isn’t blind. It’s lazy.”
Timitz locked his elbows, his arms shooting straight out in front him. His grip tightened on the detonator, every knuckle going white.
“Shall we count down together?” he asked.
Chapter 98
THE SERIAL killer who had thought of almost everything. Did he forget to frisk me?
Or did he choose not to?
I whipped my arm around, grabbing the grip of Elizabeth’s G42, tucked into the back of my pants.
All I could see was the way Timitz was holding the detonator. It was out over the coffee table, ripe for the taking.
If you want to shoot to kill, you aim for the head or the heart. If you want to shoot to stun, you aim for the stomach.
I literally had one shot.
My arm came whipping back around as I found the trigger, squeezing it hard and fast a few times before dropping the gun. I lunged forward, my hands outstretched and reaching for his before any law of physics could kick in and kill us all.
He was shot, he was bleeding, but he hadn’t let go—his thumb was still lodged on top of the dead man’s switch as I slammed my palm down to keep it that way until I could pry it from him.
You gettin’ this all down, Grimes?
Grimes?
He was gone. No—he was behind me. He’d scooped up the gun. “Don’t!” I yelled.
I knew what he was thinking. Shoot Timitz again. He wanted to help, to do something, but Timitz and I were now one big moving target above that glass table, and I could practically hear Grimes’s hand shaking.
I was bigger than Timitz. I was stronger. He was bleeding out and losing strength. It was only a matter of time. The only thing I needed to do was keep that thumb of his—
Huh?
Whatever fight Timitz had left in him drained out of his arms in an instant. He wasn’t pulling or pushing anymore. He wasn’t doing anything except surrendering.
“You win,” he whispered.
I’d sooner lick an electric fence than trust a serial killer, but he was coordinating the transfer of the detonator, moving his thumb just enough underneath my grasp so I could take control of it without triggering the switch. Suddenly it was all mine.
You son of a bitch—are you kidding me?
It took only two seconds of holding it in my hands to realize the detonator was fake, a fugazie. It had the weight of an empty Pez dispenser and was just as hollow.