Final Hour (Novella) (8 page)

Pogo had been shot.
Undine fired two rounds as Pogo squirted her with the Sabre 5.0, and the second bullet tore through him.

Makani couldn't believe he stayed on his feet, but he launched himself at Undine, struggled with her for possession of the pistol, as Bob attacked her from behind. The gun fired again, and the sound seemed to pierce Makani's heart, arrested her breathing, for she was certain he was dead, shot at such close range. But it was the woman who dropped, still holding the weapon, as Bob skittered out of the way and as Pogo staggered backward.

In life, the dazzling blue eyes of both twins had appeared luminous, though the glow had been demonic. Their depthless stares were lightless now, their eyes as flat as buttons in the cold fluorescent glare.

Pogo sat on the straight-backed chair, breathing hard, his left hand pressed lightly against the wound in his right shoulder. There was an exit wound, too. He said that was good. The bullet wasn't in him. He said that made everything easier.

Makani wanted to call 911, but he refused to let her, even spoke sharply to her, which he had never done before—
“No!”
—because there was too much at stake.

She said, “Your
life
is at stake, damn it. You're
bleeding.
”

“Exactly. My life, your life, our future. We have to be smart about how we deal with this.”

How they dealt with it was so scary, so stressful, that Makani found herself talking aloud to herself, which rattled her each time she realized that she was doing it.

She had to wipe clean whatever they might have touched. The picnic cooler contained, among other things, foil packets of moist towelettes. She used those, pocketing each of the empty foil squares lest she inadvertently leave a thumbprint on one of them.

She wiped down the door handle to the death room, though she had no memory of touching it. Fingers wrapped in a towelette, she switched off the lights in each area from which they retreated, the darkness flowing in behind, swelling toward them like a tide.

Pogo needed her help to climb the stairs. Bob dashed ahead of them, but kept pausing to look back, clearly worried.

Makani didn't douse the lights on the ground floor. She would be returning.

The brightness of the day surprised her. She knew that night was still hours away, but for some reason she expected a menacing coagulum of dark clouds, although there had been none earlier, and bleak light that belied the California promise of a golden life.

Although Pogo didn't need to lean on her to get to the Honda, the distance seemed greater than it had earlier. He settled in the front passenger seat, looking nearly as gray as the primer coat on the car.

“I can't just leave you here alone.”

“I have Bob,” he said, and from the backseat, the dog chuffed. “But hurry.”

She closed the door and returned to the factory. With each step she took away from Pogo, she felt as if she were stepping out of her life, this life, and into another, meaner world where she would be someone different—and less than—who she had been until now.

In the factory again, she ran to the south end. Here, in more prosperous days, an enormous roll-up door had allowed trucks to pull partway into the structure to load or unload. Most likely, it had not been used in years. Maybe it would work; maybe it wouldn't. She found the control box. Groaning and creaking, the big segmented door traveled up and overhead on rusted tracks.

Outside again, she glanced toward the Honda. She could make out Bob in the back of the car. She couldn't see Pogo; he was slumped in his seat.

He's okay. He's all right. It's not a mortal wound.

The electronic key that she had taken from Ursula Liddon's body was in her pocket, and the push-button ignition brought the Mercedes engine racing to life. She hung a U-turn, drove to the open roll-up, into the building, and parked.

With another moist towelette, she wiped down the parts of the car that she had touched. She kept the electronic key.

She opened the hood and, as Pogo had instructed during their exit from the factory, she disconnected the leads from the battery. When the vehicle was disabled in this manner, maybe its transponder would cease to emit a signal, so it couldn't be located by GPS. Pogo wasn't sure about that. Simon could follow up here later today.

In a day or two, or five, the police would be notified that Ursula Liddon was missing. When they realized that, of her eight cars, only the Mercedes was not in her garage, they would hope to find it—and her—by GPS. It was essential that they be delayed.

Pogo's car had been parked inside the chain-link gate. Anyone passing could have seen it. Although it was far less memorable than Makani's highly customized Chevy, the Honda was not as nondescript as a car fresh off the dealer's lot.

If the twins were found in mere days, the Honda would be fresh in the memory of anyone who had seen it. But if the bodies were not discovered for months or years…

She put down the roll-up, went to the side door, switched off the lights, and locked the place with another key that they had taken from Ursula's body.

Although the day was not blistering-hot, only pleasantly warm, Makani perspired heavily as she hurried back to the Honda. The sweat felt as cold as ice water.

When she went to the passenger door to check on Pogo, his eyes were closed. He was still and pale, and blood saturated the entire front of his T-shirt.

He opened his eyes. She could see herself reflected in them. “The gate,” he reminded her.

“Yeah. I know. I just needed to…see.”

The portion of the gate-motor housing that he'd removed lay on the blacktop with four screws. He had described the cut wires to her. Holding them by the insulation, she crossed the bare-copper ends, and they sparked, and the gate rolled open.

Using the flip-out screwdriver in Pogo's Swiss Army Knife, Makani replaced the section of motor housing, so that a police patrol—if one ever looked close—wouldn't notice it and be curious. Although this once-humming neighborhood was desolate, traffic passed in the street, and she expected every vehicle to be a black-and-white. Her hands shook, she kept dropping the screws, and the task took longer than it should have.

Pogo was okay. He looked tired, but he was okay.

She drove off the property and parked in the street, leaving the engine running and the driver's door open when she got out.

From this side, the gate could be closed only manually. She got the job done.

In the driver's seat, when they were rolling again, she said, “You need a doctor.”

“There'll be one soon.” His voice was hoarse and weak. She thought maybe he was delirious or something.

“Where? Where will there be one soon?”

“Where I'm house-sitting, where you left your Chevy.”

“The owner isn't a doctor. And anyway, he's in Europe.”

Pogo indicated the phone in his lap. “I called someone.”

“Who?”

“Your only reliable resource in times of crisis.”

“Simon? Simon's not a doctor.”

“He'll have one at the house soon after we get there.”

She didn't like the look of the viscid mass of blood, dark and clotted, bibbing him from neck to waistline, but she couldn't stop glancing at it.

“You need a doctor
now,
” she worried.

“Any doc you take me to will have to file a police report. It's the law when there's a bullet wound. Simon's doc will be discreet.”

“How can he be discreet if it's the law?”

“Probably he lost his license. He's practicing without it. Or he's willing to take risks. Moonlight for the right money. Doctors don't do as well these days as they once did.”

“This sucks.”

“It sucks,” he agreed.

Bob was lying down in the backseat. He usually liked to sit up in a car, to enjoy the passing view. He lay quiet, as if he wasn't in the mood to enjoy anything right now.

She glanced at Pogo. “You don't look so good.”

“Thirsty. Dizzy. Tired. That's all.”

She almost ran a red light, braked in time. The last thing she needed was to draw the attention of a cop.

Pogo closed his eyes.

She watched him.

She said, “Pogo?”

“Hmmm?”

“Don't you go anywhere.”

“Only where you take me,” he promised.

She didn't want to upset him by crying. She wasn't a girl who cried often or easily. She cried quietly all the way to the house on the harbor.

She parked the Honda in the garage and helped Pogo into the kitchen.

He sat on the hardwood floor with his back against one of two Sub-Zero refrigerators, worried about getting blood on the furniture. “Not good for my reputation as a house-sitter.”

When she gave him a bottle of water from the second fridge, he drank greedily. He seemed to have a little trouble swallowing.

Makani hurriedly collected blankets, fashioned a makeshift bed on the kitchen floor. Pogo hissed in pain as he stretched out there.

She elevated his feet with pillows, in case he was in shock. Shock could kill.

Bob wanted to lie down beside his uncle Pogo, and Makani said no, but Pogo said yes. Bob cuddled up against him, nobly resisting what would have been an ordinary doggie urge to lick the blood.

“Where's the damn doctor?” she wondered.

“He's coming.”

“What can I get you?”

“I'm okay.”

She felt useless. Worse, she felt responsible. Her gift. Her curse. And all of it for what? Neither twin worth saving.

When she asked him if he was all right, he didn't answer. He was unconscious. Breathing shallowly.

His skin was cool, clammy. She took his pulse. It was rapid.

Doorbell.

The doctor wore tennis shoes without socks, khaki shorts, and a Hawaiian shirt that blazed with a colorful pattern of parrots and palm leaves. He carried a black medical bag and a small ice chest.

The ice chest contained two units of blood. Apparently, on the phone, Pogo had told Simon his blood type.

The doctor wanted to add padding to the kitchen table and use it for his surgery. Makani quickly gathered up more blankets, and they carefully transferred Pogo from the floor.

She said, “He's unconscious. Why's he unconscious?”

“Just the body conserving its resources.”

The physician was clean shaven, well barbered, with a broad kind face. He seemed competent. She should have believed him, but she didn't.

The first time she asked his name, he only smiled at her. The second time she asked, he said, “Just call me Harry,” though she suspected even that name was a lie.

After he had taken the patient's vital signs, inspected the wound and addressed it, sutured both the entry wound and the exit wound, and administered two units of blood, he decided they could risk moving Pogo upstairs in the elevator, to a second-floor bedroom.

Makani hadn't known that the house contained an elevator, but Pogo had informed Simon of its existence.

They found a wheeled office chair in a downstairs study, sat him in it, and rolled him into the elevator, still unconscious and in fact now sedated.

“This is so wrong,” Makani said. “This is crazy, he isn't getting the right care.”

“I swear to you,” Dr. Harry said, “this is way better than a government-run hospital.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“He's young, he's strong, we'll see.”

Throughout the ordeal, she tried not to touch the doctor. Twice, however, she brushed one of his hands with one of hers. She read him: the boating accident when he'd been drinking and should not have been at the helm, his young wife and child drowned, the little boy lost forever to the ocean, the subsequent descent into even heavier drinking, and the eventual sobriety.

She saw, too, that the texture of his guilt was as coarse and bristled as ever it had been; the years had not softened it. Nor had time diminished his shame. He recognized that continued suffering offered him the best chance of redemption, and he made the difficult choice to ignore the move-on-and-love-yourself advice of current pop psychology. He found a kind of happiness in taking responsibility for what he'd done. A peace settled upon him when he acknowledged that his selfishness and recklessness had destroyed two lives and that the only right consequence was that the prospects for his own life be shaped and constricted by his thoughtless actions; it was the peace of genuine contrition.

Following the second unintended touch, the physician seemed to recognize some difference in the way Makani regarded him. He met her eyes with a new intensity and cocked his head and said, “Something you want to say, something you think I'm missing? Please be frank. You can't offend me.”

She nodded. “I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier. You're doing right by him. I know that. I see that now.”

For all the terror and grief her paranormal talent brought into her life, it also sometimes revealed to her whom she could trust.

“It's just that…Pogo means so much to me. Every day, I'm afraid of losing him. Maybe that sounds crazy. But every day. That's just the way I feel. Every day. And now this.”

“It's not crazy,” he assured her. “It's the sanest thing of all to live your life with the understanding that every hour may be the final hour.”

The harbor raced with color under a red sunset so bright that it seemed even saltwater should burst into flame from its fiery reflection. From a window in Pogo's bedroom, Makani watched as the scene slowly darkled, until no sunshine remained in it and the only lights glimmering on the black water were from the houses around the harbor, from the docks that served the houses, and from the moored boats that wallowed gently in the receding tide.

Pogo woke shortly past eight o'clock. He knew who he was. He knew where he was. He said he loved her.