Just over the trunk of the car I noticed a piece of the fence push forward in the darkness and a gaping space open in its place. Then the fence fell back and the space disappeared.
“Apathetic?” Gerry said. “Tell you what, Pat—let’s see how apathetic you are.” He reached behind his head and came back with the baby, his fist gripping its clothes at the back, and held it aloft. “Weighs less than some rocks I’ve thrown,” he said.
The baby was still drugged. Maybe dead, I didn’t know. His eyelids were clenched shut, as if from pain, and his small head was feathered with blond whiskers. He seemed softer than a pillow.
Danielle Rawson looked up and then she banged her head into Gerry’s knees, her screams muffled by the tape over her mouth.
“You going to chuck the baby, Gerry?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
I shrugged. “Why not. He ain’t mine.”
Danielle’s eyes bulged and their pupils damned me.
“You’re burned out, Pat.”
I nodded. “I got nothing left, Gerry.”
“Take your gun out, Pat.”
I did. I went to toss it into the frozen snow.
“No, no,” Gerry said. “Hold on to it.”
“Hold on to it?”
“Absolutely. In fact, jack a round into the chamber and point at me. Come on. It’ll be fun.”
I did as he asked, raised my arm and centered it on Gerry’s forehead.
“Much better,” he said. “I’m kind of sorry you’re all burned out on me, Patrick.”
“No, you’re not. That was one of the alleged points of this. Wasn’t it?”
He smiled. “How do you mean?”
“You wanted to practice your bullshit theory of dehumanization. Right?”
He shrugged. “Some people would say it’s not bullshit.”
“Some people would buy sunblock in the Arctic, Gerry.”
He laughed. “Worked on Evandro pretty well.”
“Is that why it took you twenty years to come back?”
“I never went away, Patrick. But, in terms of my experiment with the human condition in general, and a certain belief I have in the charm of threes, yeah, Alec and I had to wait until you had all grown a bit and until Alec had found a worthy candidate in Evandro. And then there were all my years of planning and all Alec’s efforts with Evandro until we could be sure he was one of us. I’d say it was all a great success, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure, Gerry. Whatever.”
He cocked his arm so that the baby’s head was pointed directly at the ice and stared at the ground as if looking for the perfect impact point.
“What’re you going to do, Patrick?”
“Don’t know there’s much I can do, Ger.”
He smiled. “You shoot me now, the mother definitely dies and the baby probably does.”
“Agreed.”
“You don’t shoot me now, I might just hurl this baby’s head against the ice.”
Danielle bucked against the gun.
“I do that,” Gerry said, “you lose them both. So here we have choice. Your choice, Patrick.”
The ice under Gerry’s car was darkened by Oscar’s shadow as he inched along the other side of it.
“Gerry,” I said, “you won. Right?”
“How do you see it?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong. I was supposed to pay for what my father did to Charles Rugglestone. Right?”
“Partially,” he said and looked up at the baby’s head, tilted it so he could see the clenched eyes.
“Okay. You got me. Shoot me, if you want. It’s cool.”
“I never wanted to kill you, Patrick,” he said, his eyes still on the baby. He pursed his lips and made cooing sounds. “Last night at your partner’s place? Evandro was supposed to kill her and leave you alive with the guilt, with the pain.”
“Why?”
Oscar’s shadow was preceding him across the ice. It leaked out in front of the car and spread raggedly across the stone animals and hobby horses directly behind Gerry. The shadow was thrown by the streetlight in the rear of the playground and I found myself wondering which genius hadn’t thought of shutting it off before Oscar went through the fence.
All Gerry had to do was turn his head, and this whole mess would reach boiling point.
Gerry turned his hand, pivoted the baby back and forth.
“Used to hold my own son like this,” he said.
“Over ice?” I said.
He grinned. “Mmmm. No, Patrick. Just hold him in my
arms and smell him and kiss the top of his head occasionally.”
“And he died.”
“Yes.” Gerry peered up at the child’s face, scrunched his own in imitation.
“So—what, Gerry—because of that everything makes some sort of sense?”
It was in my voice, I’m not sure why or how, but there it was—the barest hint of emotion.
Gerry heard it. “Toss your gun to your right.”
I looked at it like I didn’t care, like I hadn’t even known it was there.
“Now.” Gerry opened his palm and the baby dropped into space.
Danielle shrieked against the tape and banged her head into the shotgun.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
The baby’s head was plummeting toward the ice when Gerry closed his hand over the ankles.
I tossed my gun into the slushy sand pit under the jungle gym.
“Now your backup,” Gerry said and swung the baby like a pendulum in his hands.
“Fuck you,” I said and watched his perilous grip on the small ankles.
“Patrick,” he said and raised his eyebrows, “it sounds like you’re coming out of your stupor. The backup.”
I pulled the gun Phil had been grasping when Gerry slashed his throat, tossed it beside my own.
Oscar must have noticed his shadow, because it began to recede back behind the car and his legs appeared between the front and rear tires again.
“When my son died,” Gerry said and pulled Campbell Rawson in against his cheek, nuzzled his soft face, “there was no warning. He was out in the yard, four years old, making noise, and then…he wasn’t. A valve in his brain slipped.” He shrugged. “Just slipped. And his head filled with blood. And he died.”
“Tough way to go.”
He gave me his soft, kind smile. “Patronize me again,
Patrick, and I smash the child’s skull.” He tilted his head and kissed Campbell’s cheek. “So, my son’s dead. And I find out there’s no way what happened to him could have been predicted or prevented. God decided Brendan Glynn dies today. And so it was.”