I moved around the counter. He followed me with the gun.
I stopped at the edge and lowered my hands to my sides, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. “I know you’re probably feeling trapped, but I can help. I can talk to the police and the prosecutor, and we’ll make a deal.”
“They’re not going to offer any kind of deal I’d want to a multiple murderer.” Saul’s arm stiffened, his finger tight against the trigger. He slapped the arm of his wheelchair with his left hand. “I’m better off dead than in prison in a wheelchair.”
His gaze met mine, and I had the feeling that I realized it at the same time he did.
He was going to kill me.
25
I prayed that whatever officer responded to the scene of my murder would recognize me soon enough to call in a different medical examiner. Mark would never know that I hadn’t intentionally come here on my own to talk to a murderer. I prayed that his faith would be strong enough to see him through losing another person he loved rather than letting it destroy him.
The desire to close my eyes so that I didn’t have to watch Saul as he pulled the trigger was overwhelming. But I wasn’t going to go out that way. Without a fight.
One deep breath and I dropped and rolled backward to the counter behind me. My knee smashed into the edge, and pain burned up and down, filling my head with a roaring sound.
I ignored it and scrambled the rest of the way behind the counter, using it as a shield. He couldn’t chase me in his wheelchair. If he moved around the counter island to reach me, I might be able to run for it.
I strained to listen for the sound of his wheels moving, but all I could hear was my own ragged breathing, the loudness of my blood pounding in my head. The fire in my leg made it hard to concentrate on anything other than the pain. Could I run even if I got the chance, or had I injured my knee badly enough that it wouldn’t carry my weight?
“It’s not going to work,” Saul’s voice came from the same spot where I left him. “I’ll just wait for you.”
Three loud bangs sounded on the pharmacy’s outer door, rattling the glass.
“Police,” Quincey Dornbush’s voice hollered. “Open the door.”
“He has a gun!” I yelled.
“Last chance,” Quincey said. “Put the weapon down and open the door.”
I crawled around to the edge of the island counter. Saul had twisted in his chair, looking back over his shoulder in the direction of the door. He might be able to see it from where he was. I wasn’t sure.
Please, Lord, let this not turn into a shoot-out.
I could hide behind the counter and probably be okay, but Saul might shoot Quincey and whoever else was with him, or they might shoot him. As much as I wasn’t about to let Saul kill me to hide what he’d done, I also didn’t want to see him die. Death was final. As long as there was life, there was a chance for repentance and redemption.
Besides, if he was dead, there wouldn’t be even a chance of getting him to admit to what he’d done—and that could mean Clement went to prison for the rest of his life.
The gun in Saul’s hand tilted like he was about to drop it, then his arm lifted, turning the muzzle toward his own temple.
I screamed and launched myself out from behind the counter. At the edge of my mind, I thought I heard glass shattering, but all I could think about was stopping Saul in time.
My knee gave out, and black dots spun like a carnival tilt-a-whirl across my vision. I smashed into Saul.
His chair shot backward, and the gun’s muzzle flashed past my face. Then the chair went over.
I tumbled to the side and hit the floor. Where was the gun? Had Saul managed to hold onto it?
Before I could reorient myself enough to look for it, shouting voices surrounded us, and someone’s body blocked my view. At first I thought they were shouting at me, but they weren’t. The shouting was over by Saul.
The person in front of me knelt down on one knee, and Quincey’s face and balding head came into view, leaning over me, a little closer than was comfortable. His forehead was all scrunched up, and he’d lost his hat somewhere.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I accepted his help to sit up. Except for how fast my heart was beating and the throbbing in my knee, everything else felt fairly normal. “My knee’s hurt, but I did that to myself.”
Quincey rocked back. “That’s a relief. I didn’t want to be the one to have to notify Mark if anything happened to you. I’m not sure he’d go along with the whole don’t shoot the messenger thing.” He climbed back to his feet. “Now, as soon as they get Saul secured, I’ll go out and get Mandy. She followed us here and was ready to break down the door herself if we didn’t.”
26
Clement shook my hand hard enough that I felt it all the way up into my shoulder. “I didn’t tell Darlene what you thought,” he whispered as he let my hand go. “We’ll keep that between us.”
I mouthed the words thank you. It turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong about Darlene. She hadn’t been cheating on Clement. The man she’d been meeting with was the leader of her grieving spouses support group, for people who had or were about to be widowed.
It turned out there was no knitting group. Darlene had been going to the grieving spouses group and hadn’t wanted Clement to know because she hadn’t wanted to burden him with how much she was struggling with losing him. She’d been attempting to protect him in what small way she could.
He joined Darlene, who was waiting a little further down the courthouse hallway, and they walked out hand in hand.
I’d laid out all the evidence for the judge, including testimony Saul gave about how he’d given Clement extremely powerful stimulants. He’d been right when he said prisons weren’t designed for people in a wheelchair. Given how many people he’d killed, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. I’d convinced him that he’d be better off making a deal in exchange for some small things that would make the rest of his life more bearable.
Along with the case precedent I’d found for murders committed while people were sleep-walking, that convinced the judge to let Clement go. Both the judge and the prosecutor seemed to recognize that putting Clement in front of a jury trial would be a waste of time. To most people, it’d feel like a victim was being put on trial.
Privately, Clement told me he wouldn’t have felt that way. He would carry the guilt for Gordon’s death for the rest of his life. Even though he hadn’t been responsible for his actions when Gordon died, he had hurt Saul back in high school. Saul had been offered football scholarships from multiple schools. He’d lost them when a dirty hit by a jealous Clement during a practice skirmish seriously injured Saul’s back and made it impossible for him to ever play again.
Mark and Anderson came up behind me.
Mark slid an arm around my waist and nodded toward Clement and Darlene. “I hope we’re like that twenty or thirty years from now.”
