Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

“So tell me,” he said. “What happened? Who was it?”

I leaned so far toward the glass that he actually drew away on the other side. “I want the truth from you, Collie, do you understand? Don’t run any kind of a game on me. Don’t hold back. Don’t lie. Talk straight. If you’ve got any kind of a heart, use it now. You owe me that much.”

“What the hell do you mean, Terry?”

I enunciated every word very clearly into the phone. “Did… you… know?”

“Did I know what?”

“Did you have any idea at all who it was?”

He shook his head. “No, of course I don’t know who it was. If I’d known I wouldn’t have needed you to check into it. What happened? What did you do?”

I said, “Does it really matter?”

He glanced away again. “No, I suppose not.”

I looked at my brother for so long that his expression shifted several times. He smiled, then frowned, then a hint of real concern began to ply his features.

“What is it, Terry? What do you need to say?”

My throat was raw. I swallowed several times. I looked at my reflection and then realized it wasn’t my reflection. I was staring at my brother. We were the same. Maybe it was the onset of Alzheimer’s, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there really was no reason. Maybe Grey had none either. It might not have been the girl who broke his heart. It might have been anything at all. And me. And me. Was I going to wind up collecting Toby mugs or would I murder young women who reminded me of Kimmy? I was already a murderer. I should be sitting on the other side of the glass. I had a premonition that I would be someday.

“What is it?” he repeated.

I sucked air like I was suffocating. “Collie, I have to tell you something.”

“Okay. That’s okay, Terry. You can tell me anything you need to. Go on. What is it? Tell me.”

I said, “I love you.”

He couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d opened all the doors and ushered him to a limousine and driven him out of there. His face grew a healthy, youthful pink again. It took ten years off him. He looked like a kid again. “What?”

“You’re my brother and I love you. But I can’t forgive you. Do you understand? I’ll never forgive you. When they put you on the table, when they put poison in your blood. When they murder you, Collie… I’m sorry, but I’m going to be glad. What you see when you look at me that last time? You’re going to see someone who’s wishing that you burn in hell. But I’m not lying. I love you.”

I put my hand to the glass and fanned my fingers. His eyes were wide and his mouth had dropped open. He looked frozen in the glare of open emotion. He didn’t respond to my gesture. I hung up the phone. The screws came and put chains on my brother and led him out. I watched him shuffle through the door. He started to turn his silver head and look back a alrIt me but didn’t complete the motion. I sat there until one of the screws told me to leave.

The next day Collie gave it one last romp for posterity’s sake. He was going to go out having some fun. He fought them with a huge smile on his face. I knew he wasn’t really trying to hurt anyone. He was just putting on one last show for his own entertainment. The screws wrestled him down to the floor and fell over themselves. The priest stepped away and kept reading from the Bible in a shaky voice.

I concentrated on Collie. I put my will into it. I focused all my attention and directed it with all my mental wattage and tried to find him in the distance between us. I thought maybe it would be enough for him to make a last-ditch effort to connect with me.

Collie glanced up once and grinned at me through the window even while they swung their billy clubs at his back.

They strapped him down to the table and stuck the needle in. He had no last words. Not even for his wife. Lin sat expressionless beside me. I wanted to jump out of my skin but she seemed relaxed, almost serene. She’d married him knowing this would be the final outcome.

I didn’t know any of the other witnesses. I had wondered if the Clarkes would show up. I wondered if anyone else here was a relative of one of Collie’s other victims. I tried to read their expressions. I couldn’t. We all looked about the same kind of haunted.

His eyes were stone, but I imagined what it must be like staring at a group of pitiless people who all wanted you dead. Even your own brother. It felt like they wanted me dead too.

The machine took no time at all.

Collie shut his eyes and then it was over.

As we were leaving Lin folded up and almost fell. I reached out and took her in my arms and turned her to my chest. I let her sob for both of us. It went on for a long time. When she was done she pushed off me and walked away.

There was cheering outside. People hooting and flashing their headlights. Protesters were holding candles and singing hymns. It was an emotionally charged moment. I didn’t know which camp I fit into more. Vicky and her news crew were interviewing folks. I thought Eve would be on hand but she wasn’t. Maybe she’d already moved off to a new story.

Gilmore stood out beyond the gate. I walked over to him. He was smoking a cigarette. He was a touch pale. It only peripherally had to do with my brother. I knew he was thinking about family again, the family an orphan like him had never had, and the family that he couldn’t hold on to himself.

He said, “I don’t know what to say, Terrier.”

“You don’t have to say anything. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Your mother, she-”

“What happened between you and Phyllis?” I asked.

He looked down and let a stream of smoke out. When he looked back up it was like he’d forgotten I was there. It took him another moment to respond. “She left me.”

“Any chance you can win her back?”

“I doubt it.”

“Is it what you want? To have her back?”

He paused. He/p› up the way.

“Then do whatever she needs you to do, right? Quit the force if it’s that. Be a straight arrow if it’s that. Be a better father if it’s that. Spend more time with the family, whatever it is she needs. Do it.”

“It’s easy advice but hard to change.” He shook his head. “She won’t take me back.”

I thought about him bringing my father into his ordeal. My old man breaking in to houses again, but not to juke the places, just to snap photos or to stand among the dreams of what might have been, the wreckage of our reality. “Then move on. Stop hanging around executions and people like the Rands.”

His lips crimped into that fucked grin again. I wanted to slap it off like it was an insect that had landed on him. “Why are you saying this? You know how ridiculous you are, Terry?”

“As a matter of fact I do. That’s proof that I know what I’m talking about, Gilmore. I’m Exhibit A.”

I walked away. He had as good a chance as anyone at pulling it together and getting himself back on track. So long as he stayed out of our backyard.

I got into my car. I sat there in the lot, watching the crowd. From a distance I couldn’t tell the divergent groups apart anymore. The moon climbed into the night sky. The candles went out one by one. I turned the key and threw the car into drive, then put it in park again and turned off the engine. My brother was still inside somewhere. I thought I would wait with him a little longer.

My mother phoned. She spoke my name and then said nothing more for a time. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to tell her, how much detail to give. A heavy numbness had settled on me. It was lulling and I shut my eyes.

She finally managed to ask, “Did he say anything?”

“No.”

“Are you all right?”