A Tap on the Window

Sixty-seven

Phyllis Pearce lived, and the story came out. About how one night her son had cracked a chair across Harry Pearce’s back, then thrown him down the stairs. How they had covered up the crime, faked his death, and looked after him for seven years.

The rest we more or less knew.

Phyllis faced a raft of charges, including the unlawful confinement and murder of her husband, Harry Pearce. Even though she hadn’t actually strangled Hanna Rodomski, or shot Dennis Mullavey, she was charged as an accessory in those crimes, too.

Patchett’s was up for sale.

Augustus Perry submitted his resignation as Griffon’s chief of police, and Bert Sanders accepted it. Augie believed the actions of Officer Ricky Haines reflected so badly on his own leadership that he had no moral authority to continue leading the department. He was talking about moving to Florida with Beryl.

He wanted to put Griffon behind him as much as I did. We both carried a heavy burden from this place.

We were damaged men.

Haines wasn’t going to be facing a trial, of course. When they brought him into Emergency he had no vital signs. I think he may have been dead before he hit the pavement.

I’d never wanted to kill a man, but I was having a hard time working up any sense of remorse for what I’d done. First of all, I did it because Haines was firing at my brother-in-law.

So it was, as they say, justifiable.

But there was something else going through my head in the initial moments after I’d pulled the trigger twice.

This is for Scott.

What I didn’t know, and wouldn’t for another few seconds, was that it was for Donna, too.

It was that one wild round Haines got off when he ran past the end of the car. The bullet had ripped past me, past Phyllis Pearce, and found a home in Donna’s stomach.

I’d told her to stay in the house.

I’d told her.

Things had been looking so good, minutes earlier. I thought Phyllis had done something to Donna’s wrist, but she’d been holding it to keep the fixative from sliding out of the sleeve of my sweater.

Clever.

There have been some who’ve suggested, as horrible as it was, that maybe I should find some small comfort in the fact that Donna went quickly.

People say a lot of astonishingly stupid things when they’re trying to console you, and it can be hard to accept that they mean well. I suppose they think, in the overall scheme of things, in the course of a lifetime, that five minutes is quick.

It’s not.

Not when you are easing your wife gently down to the ground, rolling up your jacket to put under her head for a pillow, applying pressure to the wound, telling her that things are going to be okay, waiting to hear the siren of an approaching ambulance, wondering what’s taking it so long to get here, getting down on your knees and touching her hair and her face and telling her you love her and that she just has to hang in, that help is coming soon, putting your head close to her mouth so you can hear her whisper that she loves you, too, that she is scared, that she wants to know what it is you wanted to tell her, and you say you can’t wait to ride the cable cars, that as soon as she’s okay we’re going to go away, and she says that sounds nice, but she still doesn’t have anything to wear, and also doesn’t feel too good, and you tell her she’s going to be okay, that the ambulance is almost here even though you still don’t hear it, and she finds the strength to raise one hand and touch it to your cheek, and she says now it doesn’t even hurt that much, and that she’s not all that scared after all, that things really are going to be okay, and you tell her again to be quiet, to just hang in, and her hand comes away from your cheek and falls to her breast and her eyes go glassy and you finally hear the ambulance coming but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Five minutes. Long time.