Six weapons were trained on Brinkley as I cuffed him, exhilaration flowing through me — even as Brinkley laughed at us.
I pulled off my mask, gagging a little from the phosphorus still in the air. I didn’t know what Brinkley found so funny.
We had him. We had him alive.
“He was going to kill me!” Elena Brinkley shouted at Jacobi. “Can’t you keep him locked up?”
“What happened?” Brinkley said, looking over his shoulder into my face.
“Remember me?” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “My friend, Lindsay Boxer.”
“Good. You’re under arrest for your prison break,” I said. “And I think we’ve got a reckless endangerment charge to go with it. Maybe attempted murder, too.”
Behind me, Jacobi was telling Elena Brinkley to hold still and he’d get her out of that chair.
“You have the right to remain silent,” I said to Brinkley.
Elena freed herself — ripped the fabric loose on one sleeve and, tearing open her blouse, released the other arm. She walked over to her son.
“I hate you,” she said. “I wish they’d killed you.” Then she struck him hard across the face.
“Wow. What a shock,” he said slyly to me.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you,” I continued.
“Who are you kidding?” Brinkley shouted at me, seeming oblivious to the roomful of pumped-up law enforcement officers who’d love nothing more than to kick the crap out of him.
“All you can do is take me back to Atascadero,” Brinkley said. “Nothing you charge me with is going to stick.”
“Shut up, asshole,” I said. “Be glad we aren’t zipping you into a body bag.”
“No, you shut up!” Brinkley said, shouting me down, spit flying, a hellish brightness lighting his face. “I’m not guilty of anything. You know that. I’m legally insane.”
And suddenly I heard Elena Brinkley scream, “No!” — as the dishwasher started its run.
Epilogue
THE 6TH ROUND
Chapter 134
I DIDN’T KNOW THE POOR MAN laid out in his birthday suit on Claire’s table, only that his death might have been related to the Del Norte tragedy. Claire had peeled and folded the patient’s scalp down over his face like the cuff of a sock, sawed off the top of his skull, and removed his brain.
She now held a shard of a bullet in the grip of her thumb and forefinger.
“It passed through something first, sugar,” Claire told me. “Piece of wood, maybe. Whatever it was, it reduced the velocity and the impact but finally killed this guy anyway.”
I called Jacobi, who said, “You know what to do, Boxer. Tell him your story, but keep it simple.”
Then he patched me through to the chief.
I told Tracchio the cut-to-the-chase version — that Wei Fong, a thirty-two-year-old construction worker, had just died that morning. That he’d been in a persistent vegetative state for months at Laguna Honda Hospital long term care because of an inoperable gunshot wound to the head. That he’d taken that bullet the day Alfred Brinkley shot up the passengers on the Del Norte.
“Brinkley’s sixth round went wild,” I said. “And it finally killed Wei Fong.”
“You’ve got my cell phone number?” Tracchio asked.