We both yelled as we cannonballed all the way down to the pool.
I hit the surface of the water with my backside first, and I was punished severely. My body went splat. My insides felt as if they’d been hastily rearranged.
I shot to the bottom, hit it pretty hard, but then I was paddling to the surface, swimming as fast as I could toward the far wall. I was trying to clear my head, to focus my eyes, to think clearly about stopping the Mastermind’s escape.
I climbed out of the pool and saw Francis running onto the property of the bordering condominiums. He was throwing off water like a duck.
Betsey and I started after him. Our shoes were squeaking and sloughing water. Nothing mattered except that we had to catch him.
Francis was picking up speed, and I did the same. I guessed he must have had a car parked in one of the neighboring lots — or maybe even a boat in a nearby marina.
I was gaining very little ground for all my efforts. Francis was running barefoot, but it didn’t seem to slow him down.
He peered over his shoulder and saw us. Then he straightened his head and saw something that changed everything.
Up ahead of Francis in the parking lot were three FBI agents. They had their guns drawn, aimed at him. They were yelling for him to stop.
Francis came to a dead stop in the crowded lot. He looked back at us, then faced the three agents. He reached into his pants pocket.
“Francis, don’t do it!” I yelled as I ran toward him.
But he didn’t pull a gun. He had a clear bottle in his hand. He poured the contents into his mouth.
Dr. Francis suddenly clawed at his throat. His eyes bulged to double their normal size. He fell to his knees, which cracked hard against the pavement.
“He poisoned himself,” Betsey said in a hoarse voice. “My God, Alex.”
Francis rose from the ground with a burst of strength. We watched in horror as he thrashed wildly around the parking lot, flailing both arms, doing a strange, straight-backed dance. He was frothing from the mouth. Finally, he smashed his face into a silver Mercedes SUV Blood spattered onto the hood.
He screamed, tried to tell us something, but it came out a tortured gargle. He had a severe nosebleed. He twitched and spasmed, and there was nothing any of us could do to help him.
More agents were flooding into the parking area. So were condo residents and visitors. There was nothing any of us could do for Francis. He’d killed people, poisoned some. He had murdered two FBI agents. Now we were watching him die, and it was horrifying. It was taking a long time.
He fell and thudded heavily to the ground again. His head cracked hard against the pavement. The spasms and twitching slowed noticeably. A terrible gargling sound escaped from his throat.
I got down on my hands and knees beside him. “Where is Agent Doud? Where’s Michael Doud?” I pleaded. “For God’s sake, tell us.”
Francis stared up at me, and he said the last words I wanted to hear. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
Then he died.
Epilogue
THE RIGHT MAN
Chapter 123
THREE WEEKS HAD PASSED, and my life was finally returning to something approaching normal. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about getting out of police work, though. I didn’t know if it had been the intensity of the Mastermind case, or an accumulation of cases, but I was experiencing all the basic symptoms of job burnout.
Most of the fifteen million dollars from Francis’s share hadn’t been found, and that was driving everybody at the FBI a little crazy. Locating it was consuming all of Betsey’s time. She was working weekends again, and I hadn’t seen much of her. She had said it all in Florida, I suppose. I’m going to miss you so much.
Tonight was Nana Mama’s fault; at least I blamed her for it. Here we were — Sampson and I — trapped inside the ancient and venerable First Baptist Church on Fourth Street near my house.
All around Sampson and me, men and women were sobbing. The minister and his wife were busy telling everybody that the outpouring of emotion was for the best — just to let it all out, the anger, the fear, the poison inside. Which just about everybody in the church was doing. Everybody but Sampson and me seemed to be crying their eyes out.
“Nana Mama owes us big time for this little number,” Sampson leaned in and said in a whisper.
I smiled at what he’d said, his lack of understanding of this woman he’d known since he was ten years old. “Not in her mind. Not to her way of thinking. We still owe Nana for all the times she saved our little butts when we were growing up.”