“Bob,” said Mike, “you’re a little early. We said one thirty.”
“Sorry about that. Okay if I come a little closer?”
“Are you carrying?”
“Not since Frankie died.”
Mike lowered the rifle. Bob took two steps toward the rearing black bear, picked up the stool in front of it, placed it in the circle and sat down.
“Turned out well,” he said with a nod to the dog.
“Thank you.”
Bob took in the circle. Met the red, pleading eyes of the two children and the woman. He recognized her, she was the woman who had come in to talk about the eyes with Mike. Bob nodded to them, trying to convey to them that this would turn out okay, they weren’t about to die. He doubted he’d succeeded. He looked back at Mike again.
“How are you feeling?”
“How do you think?”
Bob shrugged. “Like me. Angry. Aggressive. That’s the way we get when we don’t take our antidepressants. But you’re better at hiding it than I am.”
“Maybe.”
Bob folded his hands. “What is it you want, Mike?”
“Hm. You guessed your way this far, you should be able to work out the answer to that one too.”
Bob nodded. “Revenge for your family. Finish that masterpiece you talk about all the time, the one you had me believing was the dog. But then all these staged murders, and this mysterious figure that kept disappearing. Tomás Gomez. Actually you told me everything I needed to know to flush you out, but I couldn’t put it together. Did you want me to stop you?”
“No,” said Mike. “But maybe I wanted you to understand me. Afterward, at least. That’s what every artist hopes for, right?” He gave a cautious smile.
“The thirst for revenge isn’t so hard to understand, Mike.”
“But there’s more than that. There’s a message.”
Bob saw something moving on the chest of Mike Lunde’s white shirt. A red dot. SWAT had arrived.
“But if there’s a message, surely you don’t have to kill innocent people.”
“Gomez, Dante and Karlstad were not innocent people, Bob. Nor was the Milkman, or Die Man either. And Hector I shot only in the shoulder, I hope.”
“I don’t know anything about any Milkman and Die Man, I’m thinking about these people in here.”
“In here?” For a moment Mike seemed not to understand. Then he started to laugh. Looked over at Mrs. Patterson and the children as though he expected them to laugh along with him. “You surely didn’t think I would kill women and children that have nothing to do with this. I’ve explained to them. That the only reason they are here is to show that theycouldhave been killed. By a depressed, free citizen with access to weapons, the Second Amendment and theDistrict of Columbia versus Heller.”
Bob leaned over sideways, across SWAT’s line of fire. The red dot on Lunde’s chest vanished.
“But now that you’ve made your point, shouldn’t you let them go?”
Mike shrugged. “It was all such a long time ago. Thirty years. Give or take a few minutes.”
“The children are so afraid, Mike. Experiences like this leave their mark. And I’ll work just as well as your hostage.”
Mike looked at Bob in silence. Then he bent forward and picked something up from under his chair. It was the scalpel Bob had seen him using in his work.
“Cut them loose.”
Bob took the scalpel from him, stood up and carefully continued to cover the line of fire between the display window and Mike Lunde as he cut the strips binding Mrs. Patterson and the children. He indicated to the mother that she could pull the duct tape off their mouths, but either she didn’t understand or for some reason didn’t want to understand. Bob nodded toward the street, and she took her children by the hand and hurried them to the door.
