The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [343]
I let myself have a little smile just then. “You hear that?” I said, nodding toward the front edge of the roof. “Your pal Goo Goo’s beating it out of here. So what’s it gonna be? You gonna play smart and go with him?”
“How do I know you won’t follow me?” Libby asked.
The next part of my performance had to be the best: I took a deep breath, kept my eyes on hers, then said, “You can take this gun. It’s the only one we got.”
The Doctor wasn’t so dazed as not to understand that. “No!” he said. “Stevie, do not—”
But Libby cut him off: “You slide it over here first.”
I shook my head. “You let go. Let him take two steps clear. Then I will.”
“Stevie,” the Doctor insisted, “you can’t trust—”
He stopped as Libby jammed the barrel of her pistol hard against his head. “Oh, yes, that’s right, isn’t it, Doctor? You can’t trust Libby—you can’t trust the woman. She’ll break her word. She’ll shoot you in the back. After all, she killed her own children, didn’t she? And all those others, too. How can you possibly trust someone who could do all that? Well, let me tell you, Dr. Kreizler …” Moving the barrel of the gun a couple of inches away from the Doctor’s skull, Libby swayed a bit, like things were really starting to get to her. “Let me tell you,” she said again, her voice getting softer and what you might call detached. “I did everything for those children. My own, I went through the agony of bearing. The others, I went through the long, sleepless, endless hours of caring for. Feeding, cleaning, changing… and for what? For what, Doctor? They never stopped crying. They never stopped getting sick. They never stopped needing.” With her free hand Libby clutched at her hair, as her face and voice filled with truly desperate anger and sorrow. “Needing—always needing. It never stopped. I did everything I could, everything, but it never stopped! It should have been enough. It was all I could do—it should have been enough! But it never was … it never was. And so—can’t you see? They were better off after I—” Suddenly she glanced down at the roof and mumbled, “They didn’t need anything, then…” Shaking herself hard, Libby looked back up, the gold light of the clever killer suddenly back in her eyes. “All right, boy. He takes two steps, then you slide the gun over.” I nodded. “That’s the deal.”
The Doctor tried one more time to stop me: “Stevie, do not do this—”
“Go on, Doctor,” Libby almost chuckled in her most frightening voice. “Take your two steps …”
As the Doctor started to move, Libby kept her gun trained squarely on his head. When he’d gotten what I figured was far enough from her, I leaned down and placed Miss Howard’s revolver on the tar.
“Stevie—” the Doctor tried again; but I just looked up at him, hoping that he could read the message in my eyes. It took him a second or two, but he did eventually get it. Then he closed his mouth and nodded.
“All right,” Libby said. “Slide it over.”
I did as I was told. The Colt came to a stop just at Libby’s feet, and she quickly leaned over to pick it up. Then she stood again, without either turning to run or lowering her own weapon.
“Actually, Doctor,” she said, with one of her most cunning, seductive little smiles, “you were quite right.” Her revolver clicked loudly as she pulled back the hammer. “I’ve no intention of allowing any of you—”
She never finished the sentence. A small hissing sound cut through the night air, and I jumped over to grab the Doctor’s legs and pull him down to the roof. A shot went off, but it struck only an iron furnace chimney on the house next door with a loud clang. Then both the Doctor and I looked up.
Libby’s smile was gone now, but her eyes were still open and she was still clutching her smoking gun. The better part of a small, crude arrow was sticking out of the side of her neck, and I knew that, though she was still on her feet, there was a good chance that she was already dead: the strychnine could’ve killed her before the muscles of her legs had a chance to give way. After another second