128: “Mother, give Sam your phone, please,” Bishop said, smoke from the gun distorting the air at his face.
Sarah’s hand reached out, held the phone out to him. “Anson, baby, why would you tell this nice man your father was dead? We raised you better than that. That whole little book of yours is scribbled full of lies.”
The body fell from Porter’s hands, crumpled at his feet.
He dropped the knife.
His heart thudded.
Bishop knelt, retrieved the knife, and set the .38 down on the counter next to the popcorn machine.
“Not all of the book, Mother. Only some. Little white lies here and there. You were always so good at those.”
Porter’s eyes flew from Sarah’s outstretched hand, to the phone, to the body on the ground.
“You look pale, Sam. You should sit. I worry about you sometimes.” Bishop reached to his side and grabbed an old wooden chair from a pile of ruined furniture and shook the dust off. The floral print on the back and seat was riddled with holes, worn through to the stuffing. Something had chewed on one of the legs. Bishop slid the chair behind him and Porter dropped into it, his own legs becoming Jell-O.
“What the fuck is this?” he breathed. “I don’t . . .”
“Language, Sam.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Christ, Anson. You’re no better than your father.”
Porter looked down at the body at his feet. The bullet had left a small, round hole in her forehead and very little blood. There was no exit wound, probably a hollow-point, lodged inside. Her eyes stared forward, her last words trapped forever on her lips.
We’re even now, Anson. I can’t run anymore. I did everything you asked of me.
Everything.
“Who . . . ?” The word sputtered out, caught on the edge of his tongue.
Bishop knelt beside the body on the floor, looked into her vacant eyes. “Her name was Rose Finicky, and she deserved to die, she deserved to die a hundred times over—hardly pure at all.”
“Finicky?”
“Yes.”
“Who . . . Did she kill Libby? Is that why . . . ?”
“I wish we had time to go into all that, but like I said earlier, you’re late. The world waits for no one, and we have a lot of balls in the air today.”
Porter felt Sarah’s eyes on him. Bishop’s mother. He couldn’t look at her, though. He couldn’t see her face. Not now, maybe not ever. He somehow knew she was smiling, and that made this all the worse. “Are you going to kill her too?”
Sarah shuffled, “He won’t hurt me. Will you, Anson?”
“No? We’ll see. We’ll see about that.”
“I brought Finicky here, just like you asked,” Sarah shot back.
Bishop tilted his head and smiled. “And she brought you . . . just like I asked. Funny, how things have a way of working themselves out.”
Bishop brushed the blade of the knife against his pants leg, closed it, then dropped it into his pocket.
“Finicky did some horrible things. Many of them here, right in this building.” Bishop said. “And I had been searching for her for a very long time, nearly as long as I searched for Mother. Both had reasons to hide, of course, some more than others, but nobody hides forever.”
Porter’s eyes returned to the gun on the counter. He was only about four feet away. He could get to it. “If your father is still alive, where is he? Why make up some story about his death?”
Bishop let out a soft chuckle. “He hasn’t figured it out yet, Mother.”
“Not yet, but he will. I’ve got faith,” Sarah said. She came up behind him and ran her hand through Porter’s hair.
Porter dove for the gun.
He was off the chair and pushing past her before she could react. His hand fell over the gun, and he scooped it off the counter, shuffled to the side, and leveled the weapon on both of them. “Neither of you move.”
Bishop smiled. “Sam, that’s not going to—”
Sam fired a round past Bishop’s head. The report echoed through the room, the bullet landing in the far wall with a thud.
Bishop’s mother let out a soft gasp. “I told you he’d shoot you, Anson.”
“He didn’t shoot me, Mother.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Give Detective Porter your phone, Mother.”
“I tried to give him my phone earlier, and he got twisted all out of sorts.” She stepped forward and handed the phone to him.
Porter snatched it from her hand and swiped at the screen with his finger. “Get back beside him.”
No signal.
“You’ll want to go upstairs to place a call. These old buildings are not cell-phone friendly at all. I left something for you in room 405. It will work just fine in there. You can call when you go up.”
Porter glanced around the room and located the stairs winding up from the far corner. “We’ll all go up. You’re going to tell me where the bomb is, where those girls are, then you’re both going to jail. If you don’t, I’ll shoot again, maybe her this time. Maybe this time I won’t intentionally miss.”
Bishop shoved his hands into his pockets. “I want to thank you for bringing Mother to me, Sam. Finicky as well. Two birds. My ability to travel lately has been a bit . . . restricted. You’ve been so helpful. The last few months have been challenging, but it’s coming together now. I feel good about the future, I really do.”
“Toward the stairs, now.”
Bishop smiled. “You’re going to let us leave, Sam. Then you’re going to head upstairs to room 405 and make a phone call. Not the phone call bouncing around your head right now, something altogether different.”
“Last warning—toward the stairs.”
Bishop reached over, took his mother’s hand, and smiled. “You’re going to do exactly as I say, Sam. Here’s why.”