Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [149]
As for myself, I held a cocked pistol in one hand, Stephanie’s cell phone in the other. It wasn’t easy to scramble up onto the roof of a police cruiser with both hands full, but I managed. Bare-assed.
Wingdoodle flapping in the breeze.
I almost felt as though I were playing a role in a film, a part in which a flubbed line could precipitate my death. Forget the nursing home. If everybody here fired at once, I could easily catch thirty bullets before I hit the ground.
When a couple of the SWAT team boys tried to move in closer, I said, “Back off, kids. I’ll do it! Swear to God!”
“Come on, buddy. We’ve got you for illegal entry and assault. That’s nothing. You might get three months. Let’s not make it worse.”
“Stand back, ladies and gents! Stand back and pray for me!”
I’d come to terms with the fact that tonight was my last night. Now I was coming to terms with these as my last minutes.
Strange as it seems, I was all right with it.
I really was.
Sounds dumber than a fence post in the rain, but I was always going to die.
Everybody dies. It was simply an event most of us never really gave much thought to. Now that I knew when, or pretty much thought I did, the terror had been stripped away. There was a genuine serenity in knowing. In fact, the knowledge was almost comforting as I stood on the roof of the police car, a dozen rifles trained on my chest, Donovan’s pistol pressed to my brain.
I hadn’t seen Stephanie during our tense procession out of the building. No telling whether she had fled or was still hiding upstairs. It worried me. I needed her to be safe and free, so she could take care of my girls, so she could administer the antidote to Karrie, but most of all, so that someone would be around to tell the truth after this was over. If DiMaggio had her way, this would go down as a mental patient caught in a burglary.
The nearby police cars were empty, but had they arrested Stephanie, they would hardly have placed her where I could see her.
The police had yet to ask about an accomplice.
And why would they?
I had all the characteristics of a classic maniac, and classic maniacs operated alone.
I was armed. Bloodied. Naked. Toothless. Berserk.
And now word had gotten around that I’d stabbed a man. I could hear them talking about it, rumors buzzing about in the darkness like mosquitoes. The cops were like big-game hunters wondering who was going to get the privilege of turning me into a rug, discussing my dementia in the same breath they discussed the best way to make the shot. They all thought I belonged in Western State Hospital. A woman cop cracked a joke, something about not having a camera.
DiMaggio and associates had remained upstairs, observing the festivities through the window. Sooner or later, tired of cupping their hands to the glass, one of them would turn out the overhead lights.
That’s when the real entertainment would begin.
The thought made me laugh aloud, and of course, laughing made me look loonier than all the rest of this put together.
“Shoot him,” said the bald man through the now-open upstairs window. “For God’s sake, shoot him, so we can all go home. Can’t you people please just shoot him?”
The officer with the megaphone told him to shut up, then told me he had doughnuts and coffee on the way—as if they could appease me with twelve dollars’ worth of lard, sugar, and coffee beans. And why didn’t I make things easier for myself, he said. If I gave myself up, I would be treated with dignity. They would provide clothes. I would be fed. Didn’t that sound like a fair trade-off?
The phone in my left hand rang.
“Hello?”
“Jim?”
“Stephanie.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I’m at the hotel.”
“The girls okay?”
“Everything’s fine. It took longer than I thought. What’s going on there?”
“We’re just chatting.”
“You and my aunt?”
“Me and the police.”
“What happened after I left?”
“Nothing. I’m just