hadn’t heard, put two and two together and come up with five. The last thing he wanted was to give the cops another nail for his coffin. He saw no one.
Whoever was in the house didn’t move or make a
sound.
“Margaret—can I call you Margaret? I’m here as a friend. I need to speak to you. It’s about the insurance company, Pinnacle Investments.”
“Go away,” she shrieked.
Shocked by the sudden outburst, Josh’s head
snapped back from the door and he took one step back.
He peered through the grubby window to the right of the door and only made out shapes in the gloom.
“Mrs. Macey, I’m here to help.” A tinge of resignation clouded his resolve. This isn’t going to be easy, he thought.
Ever since the pizza boy incident, Margaret Macey had made herself a recluse. The evil man on the phone had called twice since then. Now, she feared the phone, the outside and people. She’d never seen her tormentor and he could be anyone. He could be the man standing
next to her at the bus stop, the man who packed her groceries at Albertson’s or the man at the front door right now.
The police had told her they’d spoken to a suspect.
By going to the cops had she aggravated the wound, only making the situation worse for herself? Maybe if she told the cops to drop the investigation he would leave her alone. She would do anything for peace. The man at the door interrupted her train of thought.
“Margaret, can’t we talk? I think the same man who is trying to hurt you is trying to hurt me,” he said, his words muffled by the windowpane.
He sounded convincing to Margaret, but he’d sounded convincing when he called the first time. He’d sounded just like a salesman, all bright persona and fake interest in her welfare, but he’d turned into a monster. He could be doing the same now, offering her something sweet before the bad medicine came.
“Please, leave me alone. I know you’re him. You’re the one on the phone calling at all hours,” she said.
He started talking to her again, but she didn’t hear him. Sweat broke out across her body. For a moment, objects became shapes, losing their integrity as solid forms. As Margaret’s heart beat faster and faster, a tingle crept along her arm, numbing it. She needed her
medication.
“Please, let me in, Margaret,” he pleaded. “I know I can help you and you can help me.”
“Please, don’t kill me,” Margaret said.
“I’m not trying to. Please, don’t think that.”
Margaret picked herself up from behind the armchair.
She’d ducked behind it after she glanced at the
visitor at the door. Getting up was easier said than done. The strength needed to do so was an effort at the best of times; currently, it was a near impossibility. Using supreme effort and her one good arm she pushed
herself to her feet and tottered like a babe for a moment before gaining her balance.
“Margaret, I can see you. Please let me in. I only need a few minutes of your time.” He sounded excited by the sighting and charged with new vigor.
She ignored him in favor of her medication. The
stuff was here somewhere. The bathroom cabinet was full of nothing, filled with medication for coughs and colds, Band-Aids and toothpaste, although it was hard to see anything as her vision faded to primary colors, then back to Technicolor. She grappled with the cabinet’s contents, which went tumbling into the sink below.
The pills weren’t there. She couldn’t remember
where she’d last seen her drugs. Why can’t I think straight?
In her bedroom, the nightstand proved as fruitful as the bathroom. She stumbled back to the lounge with the ever-present visitor still whining at the window. He was telling her something, but she didn’t care what he had to say.
Margaret moaned the feeble utterance of a creature without a tongue. She didn’t feel good. Something bad was happening. It felt as if her heart had been folded into a shape it was never meant to be in. The pain in her chest was excruciating and the tingle in her arm was ablaze; millions of hot needles pressed into her flesh at once. She fought to take a breath, but the air stopped in her mouth. Breathing, something she’d done all her life, was now an alien concept.
Standing became too much. Her legs buckled and she crashed to the floor. She struck the telephone table, sending it and the phone smashing to the floor in sympathy.
She hardly registered the impact on her body. It
no longer fed the information back to her brain.
Margaret lay on her back. The visitor rattled the door and tried to force it. A recorded female voice from the telephone told her to hang up and try again or dial the operator. Margaret wasn’t compliant to the request.
“I’m coming round the back,” he called.
She could hear it—the rustling of his movements, the creak of the screen door, the attempts on the door before the tinkle of shattering glass cascading onto the vinyl flooring. She saw the figure come for her, the Michelin man, crudely shaped without definition.
Even now, she still couldn’t identify the man coming to kill her.
Margaret Macey was in bad shape. Josh dropped to his knees at her side. He propped her up on his lap. Her eyes looked at him, but didn’t focus.
“Is there anything I can do? What can I do? Tell me, Margaret.”
“You got what you wanted. I’m dying,” she said.
“No. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted to talk to you about the man who’s been calling you. He’s been pursuing me as well.”
The old woman stared back blankly. She wasn’t going to tell him anything now. She was the color of the dead and breathing erratically. She needed a hospital.
But that was a problem. Suspected of frightening this woman, he’d now broken into her home and given her a heart attack. It wouldn’t look good for him with the cops. He cursed.
“Margaret, do you take any medicine for your condition?”
The woman didn’t seem to hear him. “Do you
have any pills or shots? Is there anyone I can contact?”
The woman in Josh’s arms stiffened. Her face contorted in pain. Tightly, her boney hands balled up.
White knots at every joint threatened to break through the paper-thin skin. He cradled the old woman like she was a bomb with the seconds disappearing off the
clock. Flecks of spittle sprayed over her chin.
Josh didn’t know what to do for her.
Her last word came out as an accusation. “Killer,”
she said.
She gurgled like a blocked drain before her body relaxed and became still. Josh knew he was holding a
dead woman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Oh, Christ. Oh, no. Please, don’t be dead.” He
clutched the frail old woman to his chest and rocked back and forth. He thought fast. What could he do?
What should he do? Gently, he placed her body on the floor and started CPR. He had his CPR certificate, but he couldn’t remember a damn thing now. He hoped to God he was doing it right. He tilted the woman’s neck back, pinched her nose and breathed into her mouth.
Disgusted, Josh dismissed the unpleasantness of her spittle on his mouth. After several attempts, he stopped.
