Snake followed the catheter line to where it disappeared under Morehouse’s boxer shorts. The knife vanished under the shorts.
“I’m counting to three,” Snake said. “After that—”
Morehouse hurled the Live Alert necklace across the room, where it caromed off the wall and rattled on the floor.
“I oughta cut ’em off anyway,” Snake said, “just for the aggravation.”
The ringing telephone froze them all where they stood. When it rang the second time, Morehouse began to laugh.
“I called ’em with my credit card last Friday!” he cried. “What you gonna do now?”
Wilma snatched up the cordless phone and checked the caller ID. “Oh, God. He really did. It’s the Live Alert people.”
“Goddamn it!” Snake shouted.
“I’ll tell them it was a false alarm,” she said, moving quickly to the door.
“You need a password for that,” Morehouse told her, giving Snake a defiant glare.
The phone kept ringing in Wilma’s hand.
“False alarm’s no good,” Sonny said, thinking aloud. “Not if he turns up dead in the morning.”
Something changed in Snake’s demeanor. He looked like a big buck realizing he was being watched from a tree stand. Turning to Wilma, he said, “Tell the dispatcher Glenn just died.”
Wilma’s mouth fell open.
Glenn began to scream.
“Hurry!” Snake shouted. “Go in the other room. Tell ’em it looks like a stroke or a heart attack. No breath sounds, no heartbeat. He’s already going gray.”
Wilma scuttled through the door on her macabre errand.
Sonny saw Snake looking at him the way Frank used to look at him when they were about to assault a hostile beach. “Take his right hand, Sonny,” Snake ordered. “Don’t bruise him any more than you have to.”
Without a word, Sonny laid the fentanyl syringe on the bedside table, then grabbed his old friend’s thick wrist and held it against the mattress. Snake had already done the same on the opposite side. Sonny was surprised it was that easy, even after the cancer. Glenn Morehouse had been physically stronger than any man he’d ever known.
“Pass me that syringe,” Snake ordered.
“Wait!” Wilma cried from the doorway. “They’re sending an ambulance anyway, just to be sure. It’s already on the way.”
Fear bloomed in Sonny’s chest, and his mouth went dry.
“You son of a bitch,” Snake said, looking like he wanted to stab Morehouse in the heart. “Give me that syringe, Son.”
“Will it kill him in time?”
“If you’d hurry up it will!”
As Sonny reached for the syringe, Morehouse yanked both arms up off the mattress with such power that Sonny’s head crashed into Snake’s. It was all Sonny could do to cling to the big wrist.
“Watch out!” he cried, stunned by the strength flowing through Morehouse’s arm. His old comrade’s eyes were nearly white with panic, like the eyes of a coyote trying to rip itself out of a trap.
“This ain’t gonna work!” Sonny shouted, as Morehouse slung him against the bedside table with almost superhuman strength. The impact knocked the syringe to the floor. “What do we do?”
“I heard a siren!” Wilma shouted. “Jesus, do something!”
“You’ve gotta do it, Willy!” Snake told her. “Grab that syringe and shoot it into the port!”
Wilma had gone white. “I can’t do that!”
“It’s got to be done, and we ain’t got enough hands.”
Morehouse howled like a senseless brute with no power of speech. He had become fear incarnate. Wilma stood shaking like a child pushed beyond its limits. Sonny heard the siren now; its distant scream turned his bladder to stone.
“Do it!” Snake roared at Wilma. “Do it now, or we’re all going to jail!”
Morehouse was still fighting, but Sonny felt the great strength waning at last. Wilma’s eyes sought him out, silently asking permission for this act of blood betrayal. Sonny had done many things he regretted, and this might be the worst sin of all, but they had no choice anymore. As Snake cursed and Morehouse bellowed like a steer going to slaughter, Sonny nodded.
Wilma closed her eyes, her lips moving in silence. Then she picked up the syringe off the floor and moved quickly to the far side of the bed.
“Don’t fight me, Glenn,” she said softly. “It’s time to go see Mama.”
CHAPTER 21
I’M NO STRANGER to perverse crimes, but Henry’s tale of Brody Royal’s revenge on two female whistle-blowers has sickened me.
“Royal’s son-in-law forced one woman to kill the other?” I ask in disbelief. “And then he killed the other one anyway?”
“He had Snake kill her. That’s the story I got today. And I believe it.”
I gulp the rest of my bourbon and hold out my cup for a refill. “You hate him, don’t you? Royal, I mean.”
“Yessir, I do.”
Henry’s hatred for Brody Royal is obviously proportional to his love for the Norris family, but I don’t have time to plumb that connection now. “There’s no way my father was friends with a man who could do that,” I tell him. “No way.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Henry says, but he sounds less than sure.
“My daughter’s going to be wondering where I am. Tell me about the Revels case. No offense, but I came to find out about Viola Turner. I came to help my father.”
“I know. And though I don’t quite understand how yet, I believe that whatever saves your father is going to be what destroys Brody Royal.”