She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. She said, “I just remembered her before I called you. And only because I looked at a photo with her name on it. I forgot I had a daughter, Amos. For a time there was no Sandy Lancaster in existence for me. Can you understand how…terrible that is?”
He could almost sense the tears tumbling down her sallow cheeks.
“I was this close to…to not. Ever again. Forgetting my own child. My flesh and blood.”
“You shouldn’t be alone, Mary. I know what you said but I can’t believe that Earl—”
She cut in. “Earl doesn’t know that I am alone. He wouldn’t want that. He’snormallyvery careful about that.”
Decker stood, rigid in hushed anxiety. Her response was stealthy and, far worse, coolly victorious. He could feel clammy sweat forming all over him.
“Then who’s with you? The aide?”
“She was, but I made her leave.”
In a bewildered tone he said, “How exactly did you manage that? She shouldn’t have—”
“I have agun, Amos. My old service automatic. I haven’t held it in years. But it fits my hand so fine. I remembered the gun safe combination, can you believe that? After I forgot pretty much everything else, I rememberedthat. I suppose it was…anomenof sorts,” she added offhandedly.
Every muscle that Decker had tightened. “Wait a minute, Mary. Hold on now.”
“I pointed the gun at her. And she left, very quickly. Right before I called you. I woke her up, you see. With the gun. It makes you wake up fast, you know that.”
Decker was now moreawakethan perhaps he’d ever been in his life. He glanced wildly around trying to think of something, anything. “Look, Mary, put the gun away right now, just put it down. And then go and sit as far away from it as you can, and just close your eyes and take deep breaths. I’ll have someone there in two minutes. No,oneminute. Just one minute and help will be there. I won’t disconnect from you. Stay on the line. I’m going to put you on hold for just a sec—”
She wasn’t listening to any of this. “I forgot my daughter. I forgot S-Sandy.”
“Yes, but then you remembered her. That’s the point. That’s…You have to keep…”
Decker clutched his chest. His breathing was ragged, his heartbeat gonging in his ears, flailing pistons of disruptive sound. He felt a stitch in his side, as though he’d run a long distance when he hadn’t taken a single step. He felt nauseous and unsteady and…helpless.
He thought fast. Surely the aide would have called the police. Surely, they were already on their way there.
“What about tomorrow?” she said, interrupting these thoughts. “Will I remember her tomorrow? Or Earl? Or you? Or…me? So what does it matter? Can you tell me that?”
“Mary, listen to me—”
“She was crying so hard, my little girl was. ‘Mommy doesn’t know who I am.’ She said it over and over and over. She was so sad, so unhappy.Idid that to her. To my own little girl. How can you hurt someone you love so much?” Her tone was now rigid, unforgiving, and it froze the surging blood in Decker’s body.
“Listen to me, Mary, listen closely, okay? You’re going to get through this, okay? I’ll help you get through it. But first you have to put the gun down. Right now.” Decker put a hand against the wall to steady himself. He imagined the gun in her hand. She might be staring at it, considering things. The floor under his bare feet felt fluid, rocky, a ship’s deck in pitchy seas. He searched his mind for the right words that would draw her back from the edge she was on, that would make her put down the little automatic that he knew she had killed at least one man with during her professional career. If he could just come up with the right words that would let this episode end well when it could so very easily go the other way.
He was about to speak again, to convince her to wait for help. He had his lines ready. He was about to deliver them. They would make her put the gun down, he was sure of it.
Then he heard what he had prayed he would not hear.
A single shot, which he believed—because he knew Lancaster—had been delivered with deliberate care and competent accuracy. She would have chosen the temple, the chin, or the open mouth as her entry point. Any one of those would get the job done.
And then came the oppressive thud of Mary Lancaster’s body hitting the floor. He was certain she was dead. Lancaster had always been a good planner, results oriented. Such people excelled at killing themselves.
“Mary? Mary!” he shouted into the phone. When no response came, his energy wilted.Why are you screaming? She’s gone. You know she is.
He leaned back against the wall and let gravity transport his big body down to the floor, similar to the one on which Lancaster’s corpse was now lying.
He was alive. She was not. Right now it was a difference without significant distinction for him. He sat there as his little room was lit by the electric blue of a death that had touched him from nearly a thousand miles distant.
Years ago Amos Decker had once come within a centimeter’s width of a trigger pull of shooting himself in the mouth and ending his life.
But right now, part of him was as dead as Mary Lancaster.