worked my way up to 704.
When my eyes opened, the room was silent. I’d nodded off, and it horrified me to think I might’ve been snoring or lost precious hours asleep in his closet. Checking my watch, I saw that 9:30 had just passed, and I felt relief knowing that Walter and I still had the majority of the night to kill my brother.
From the bed — deep breathing. I recognized the pattern of Orson’s long exhalations. Almost certain he was asleep, I withdrew a syringe and a vial of Versed. Flicking off the plastic cap, I stuck the hollow needle through the rubber seal and pulled the plunger back until the bottle was empty. I then aspirated the contents of two more vials. With fifteen milligrams of Versed in the syringe, I secured the caps and placed the three empty vials back into my fanny pack, closing the zipper so slowly, I couldn’t even hear the minute teeth biting back together. The needle in my left hand, the Glock in my right, I poked my head through the hangers and proceeded to inch my way out.
As I came to my feet on the hardwood floor of the walk-in closet, it occurred to me that he might not be asleep. Perhaps he was merely resting, breathing patiently in a yogic trance. After three steps, I stood at the threshold of the closet, staring down at Orson on the bed.
His chest rose and fell in an unhurried rhythm indicative of sleep. I went down on my knees, held the plastic syringe with my teeth, and crawled across the dusty floor. At the edge of his bed, I stopped and spurned another wave of nausea and hyperventilation. Sweat trickled down my forehead and smarted in my eyes. Under the latex skin, my hands were wet.
Squatting down on the floor, I took the syringe from my mouth, then, holding it up before my face, squirted a brief stream through the shaft of the needle to remove air bubbles. Orson shifted on the bed. His back had been to me, but he turned over, so that we faced each other. All he has to do is open his eyes.
His left arm was beautifully exposed. Withdrawing a penlight and holding it between my teeth, I spotlighted his forearm and could see numerous periwinkle veins under the surface of his skin. With great patience and concentration, I lowered the eye of the needle until it hovered just an inch above his skin. There was a chance this would kill him. Because I was attempting to inject intravenously, the substantial dose of Versed would be tearing through his bloodstream, and when it slammed into his central nervous system, he might stop breathing. Steady hands.
As I slipped the needle into the antecubital vein opposite the elbow, his eyes opened. I injected the drug. Please have hit the vein. Orson shot up and gasped. I let go of the syringe and jumped back, the needle still dangling in his arm. He pulled it out and held it up before his face, flabbergasted.
'Andy?' he whispered, cotton-mouthed. 'Andy? How did you…' He swallowed several times, as though something was blocking his windpipe. Standing, I pointed the gun at him.
'Lie back, Orson.'
'What did you give me?'
'Lie back!'
He leaned back into the pillows. 'God,' he said. 'That’s strong.'
He sounded medicated already, and I thought his eyes had closed. I turned on the bedside lamp so I could be sure. They were slits.
'What are you doing, Andy?' he asked. 'How did you…' His words trailed off.
'You killed my mother,' I said to him.
'I don’t think you…' His eyes closed.
'Orson?' I could see the red dot on his arm where the needle had penetrated the skin. 'Orson!' He still didn’t move, so I reached forward and slapped his face. He groaned, but it was an incoherent response, which only assured me that the drug had taken control of him.
Backpedaling toward the closet, I took the walkie-talkie from my fanny pack.
'Walter?' I said, breathless. 'Walt…Fred?'
'Over.'
'You close?'
'A hundred yards.'
'Get up here and come inside.'
I leaned against the wall and wiped the sweat from my eyelids.
Orson lunged from the bed and drilled his head into my stomach before I could even think about my gun. As I lost my breath, he drove his knee between my legs and grabbed the back of my neck with both hands. He butted his forehead into my nose, and I felt the cartilage crunch and then the subsequent burn. Cool blood flowed over my lips.
'What are you thinking, Andy? You can just do this to me?'
I’d just managed to fill my lungs with air, when he shovel-punched me in the gut, right below my navel. As I hunched over, he kneed my face, and I dropped to the floor.
Instantly, he was on me, his fingers digging under my stomach, where my hands retained an iron grip on the Glock. A sharp, brutal pinch speared through my shirt into my back, and I moaned.
'Yeah, you like that, don’t you? I’m gonna do it again and again.' He’d stuck me with the needle. I felt it wiggling in me. 'You’re gonna give it up,' he said, 'and I’m gonna spend the weekend killing you. What were you thinking, Andy? What?'
I kept thinking that I should at least try to fight him, but if I moved, he might wrangle the gun from my hands.
A hard bone pummeled the back of my head, and it hurt like hell. I felt the needle pull out and enter again.
'Ah shit,' he muttered. He struck the back of my head again, but it wasn’t nearly as powerful a blow. 'Ah, fuck you, Andy.' He slumped onto the floor, crouching on his hands and knees, trying to preserve his consciousness. 'Stay with it,' he mumbled. 'No. No.'
Yanking the needle out of my back, I stood up and moved to the open doorway of his bedroom. My face felt swollen, and I could not see as clearly through my left eye. But the adrenaline masked the pain, even the deep microscopic holes in my back. Beneath the mechanic’s suit, lines of blood streamed down my legs. Orson fell over onto his side on the floor.
'No.' He sighed sleepily, his speech beginning to slur. 'Andy. Don’t do things…' He shut his eyes and was still.
There was a knock on the front door. I held the gun by the muzzle and hammered Orson across the forehead until I saw blood. Then I ran into the hallway and rushed down the staircase.
'Walter?' I yelled through the door.
'It’s me,' he said, and I let him inside. The coldness of the night radiated off his clothes. 'Where’s your broth — Oh God, your face…'
'I’m fine. Come on,' I said, starting back up the steps. 'Put on your latex gloves. He’s upstairs.'
26
WHILE Walter dragged Orson down the steps in his boxer shorts and rolled him up in the florid Persian rug, I again searched every crevice of my brother’s bedroom. Searching under the bed, I located the shoe box of microcassettes and two more videotapes, but this was the extent of my discovery. Another thorough inspection of the closet produced nothing out of the ordinary. In the guest room, I found nothing, and by the time I’d begun a second perusal of the study, I waxed furious.
'You see this?' I said, exiting the hallway on the first floor and lifting the shoe box above my head. 'It’s all he keeps in his entire house that would clue anyone in to what he is.'
In a mechanic’s suit like mine, Walter sat on top of Orson, who was now cocooned inside the rug.
'There are more pictures than this,' I said. 'Pictures of me doing horrible things to people. In a self-storage unit or a safety-deposit box. You know what happens when this son of a bitch can’t pay the bill ’cause he’s dead? They clear out his space and find pictures of me digging a heart out of a woman’s chest.' Now you know.
