CHAPTER 56

She was looking at me with the same expression what’d been on her face when Mr. Picton had revealed that we knew about the grave behind her family’s barn: surprise and shock. Again I got the feeling that she hadn’t been in such positions many times in her life; and that fact, I knew, might lead her to do some unpredictable things. But I had my own little dose of unpredictability up my sleeve, one what I was getting set to administer.

Her eyes dancing in fear and anger, Libby’s mouth first tightened up, then cracked open long enough for her to say, “I’ll kill him! I swear I will!”

I nodded to her. “I know,” I said. “Question is, do you wanna go, too?”

“What choice do I have?” the woman shouted back. “Damn you, you’re just like the others-you don’t leave me any choice!”

“I’ll give you a choice,” I said. “You let the Doctor walk over here, then you run. We won’t follow.”

The Doctor, still reeling a little from the blow to the head he’d taken, looked as confused as Libby Hatch. “Stevie, what are you saying?”

Once again I paid him no mind. “Well?” I said, keeping my eyes on Libby.

She did a little dance in her head with the idea, looking tempted. Then I got some unexpected help when Mr. Roosevelt’s voice boomed up from down in the street:

“They’re retreating! Lieutenant Kimball! Detail some of your men-I want Knox taken into custody!”

I let myself have a little smile just then. “You hear that?” I said, nodding toward the front edge of the roof. “Your pal Goo Goo’s beating it out of here. So what’s it gonna be? You gonna play smart and go with him?”

“How do I know you won’t follow me?” Libby asked.

The next part of my performance had to be the best: I took a deep breath, kept my eyes on hers, then said, “You can take this gun. It’s the only one we got.”

The Doctor wasn’t so dazed as not to understand that. “No!” he said. “Stevie, do not-”

But Libby cut him off: “You slide it over here first.”

I shook my head. “You let go. Let him take two steps clear. Then I will.”

“Stevie,” the Doctor insisted, “you can’t trust-”

He stopped as Libby jammed the barrel of her pistol hard against his head. “Oh, yes, that’s right, isn’t it, Doctor? You can’t trust Libby-you can’t trust the woman. She’ll break her word. She’ll shoot you in the back. After all, she killed her own children, didn’t she? And all those others, too. How can you possibly trust someone who could do all that? Well, let me tell you, Dr. Kreizler…” Moving the barrel of the gun a couple of inches away from the Doctor’s skull, Libby swayed a bit, like things were really starting to get to her. “Let me tell you,” she said again, her voice getting softer and what you might call detached. “I did everything for those children. My own, I went through the agony of bearing. The others, I went through the long, sleepless, endless hours of caring for. Feeding, cleaning, changing… and for what? For what, Doctor? They never stopped crying. They never stopped getting sick. They never stopped needing.” With her free hand Libby clutched at her hair, as her face and voice filled with truly desperate anger and sorrow. “Needing-always needing. It never stopped. I did everything I could, everything, but it never stopped! It should have been enough. It was all I could do-it should have been enough! But it never was… it never was. And so-can’t you see? They were better off after I-” Suddenly she glanced down at the roof and mumbled, “They didn’t need anything, then…” Shaking herself hard, Libby looked back up, the gold light of the clever killer suddenly back in her eyes. “All right, boy. He takes two steps, then you slide the gun over.”

I nodded. “That’s the deal.”

The Doctor tried one more time to stop me: “Stevie, do not do this-”

“Go on, Doctor,” Libby almost chuckled in her most frightening voice. “Take your two steps…”

As the Doctor started to move, Libby kept her gun trained squarely on his head. When he’d gotten what I figured was far enough from her, I leaned down and placed Miss Howard’s revolver on the tar.

“Stevie-” the Doctor tried again; but I just looked up at him, hoping that he could read the message in my eyes. It took him a second or two, but he did eventually get it. Then he closed his mouth and nodded.

“All right,” Libby said. “Slide it over.”

I did as I was told. The Colt came to a stop just at Libby’s feet, and she quickly leaned over to pick it up. Then she stood again, without either turning to run or lowering her own weapon.

“Actually, Doctor,” she said, with one of her most cunning, seductive little smiles, “you were quite right.” Her revolver clicked loudly as she pulled back the hammer. “I’ve no intention of allowing any of you-”

She never finished the sentence. A small hissing sound cut through the night air, and I jumped over to grab the Doctor’s legs and pull him down to the roof. A shot went off, but it struck only an iron furnace chimney on the house next door with a loud clang. Then both the Doctor and I looked up.

Libby’s smile was gone now, but her eyes were still open and she was still clutching her smoking gun. The better part of a small, crude arrow was sticking out of the side of her neck, and I knew that, though she was still on her feet, there was a good chance that she was already dead: the strychnine could’ve killed her before the muscles of her legs had a chance to give way. After another second or two she did collapse, first to her knees and then, after another pause, over onto her side.

The Doctor and I ran over to her immediately, myself taking care to quickly pry the pistol from her hand. For his part, the Doctor lifted her head and examined her eyes, then felt her neck for a pulse. He must’ve sensed something, being as he said, “Elspeth? Elspeth Franklin?”

As the last air left her lungs, Libby managed to form the words “always needing.”Then she was gone, and the Doctor reached out to close the golden eyes for the last time.

I don’t know how long the pair of us crouched there looking at her, but I do know that what finally brought us around was the sound of knocking on the underside of the hatchway cover.

“Sara?” It was Mr. Moore’s voice, shouting up from below the closed entry way. “Stevie, Kreizler-what the hell happened, are you all right?”

Both the hatchway cover and Miss Howard’s body jumped a bit as Mr. Moore tried to get up onto the roof; and with the bumping movement Miss Howard began to come around, first groaning and then, as her eyes opened, rolling over and falling onto the roof with a small grunt.

“Sara,” the Doctor said urgently. He lay Libby Hatch out on the roof quickly, then ran over to where Miss Howard lay just as Mr. Moore leapt up and out of the hatchway.

“Good Christ,” he said, taking in the scene. “What the hell happened here?”

Ignoring the question, the Doctor pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and lifted Miss Howard’s shoulders up onto his knee. Then he began to wipe at and examine the spot on her head where she’d been hit, soon satisfying himself that it wasn’t a serious wound. Gently rubbing and patting her cheeks with his hand, he finally got her to focus on him.

“Doctor,” she breathed. Looking around, she tried dizzily to make a move. “What happened-where-”

The Doctor held her still. “Be calm, Sara,” he said with a smile, brushing her hair out of her face as Mr. Moore and I gathered round. “It’s over. At least, this part of it is.” Then he turned her so that, without moving her head much, she could see Libby Hatch’s body.

“She’s-dead?” Miss Howard said; and in spite of the fact that she was still a little groggy, I could hear a faint touch of sadness in her voice.

“Yes,” the Doctor answered gently, sensing, I think, how she felt.