Stealing Flowers (48 page)

I found the pistol under a plant, and with
the shells in one palm, the gun in the other, both hands still
behind my back, I raced in my briefs down the back stairs and
through the pantry into the kitchen. I placed the gun and shells on
a chair, climbed on the counter under a muted light and drew out a
cutting knife with a twelve-inch blade from its casing. I held it
behind my back and easily cut the tape.

I caught my reflection in the mirror as I
loaded the Ruger, or should I say, I caught the reflection, once
more, of a complete stranger. My face had dried blood on it and my
hair was matted with blood from the three blows. As well, my eyes
were alive with agitation, I no longer looked like a banker or an
unfriendly loans-officer, and that at least was some
improvement.

Placing the remaining shells in my jacket, I
crept out to the garage, again turning off the lights as I went.
Was Josh still okay? There hadn’t yet been shots. I slowly opened
the door and peeked in. From Josh’s eyes, I saw that Tim hid
somewhere nearby. I quietly retraced my steps through the laundry
room to a telephone and dialed 911. The house was dark but I caught
a flicker of movement and dropped to my hands and knees. The phone
landed several meters away. I heard the operator’s voice come on, a
plain spoken female voice. I fired one shot blindly down the
hallway toward where I had come. I scrambled under a dinner table
and over to a tall oak buffet.

A shot was fired and grazed the buffet. I
ducked to the floor again, turned and fired in the direction of the
shot. A cold sweat came to me. I reloaded with shaking hands. I put
my back against the side of a wide wall-unit, finding some
protection on two sides. I waited for several seconds to go by, and
when flashlights appeared on the window, I nearly jumped out of my
skin, but then crouched down. “Police,” came the sharp shouts, but
I didn’t answer.

I heard retreating steps running on the
stairs and I raced through the pantry up the backstairs just in
time to see Tim make the top of the stairs. He saw me as well.

For some inexplicable reason, The First Law
of Life must have fled the mansion at that moment.

I fired first, hitting him in the shoulder
with a lucky shot. I jumped to my feet triumphantly, crying out in
joy, and fired repeatedly into his chest and head, then reloaded
quickly before the police came, and emptied the chambers at him
again as I kicked him backwards down the bloodied stairs. For a
moment, all noise receded and I sat on the top step, rejoicing as
the blood formed in a pool around his body below. To my surprise, a
calmness overcame me and my nose-bleed stopped.

“Put your hands into the air!” a harsh voice
said from behind.

I raised my hands high, and several sets of
arms seized me from behind and pushed me roughly to the floor, but
I really didn’t mind. “Check the garage,” I said softly when the
lights came on. “Detective Burgess is tied up down there.” My voice
was just a whisper as though I talked to myself. “Show him some
respect too, unlike me, he does this for a living, and I can tell
you, it’s no easy job.”

Within an hour, the police and ambulance had
gone.

I phoned Una Mary and Stan and told them
what had happened. They were relieved that the dangerous turn of
events had gone my way. I cleaned up the blood and took a
shower.

Peter Burgess came by the next day to tell
me Lloyd Mills had escaped, possibly via JFK. Peter had patches of
gray hairs showing on the sides, but generally looked his old self.
I returned to work on Monday as though nothing had happened, but of
course, it had made the papers and everyone around me was gossiping
all day. I didn’t care.

I was at my office on 9/11. We all stopped
and watched CNN, CNBC, and the other news networks. I remember how
it came to me like a science-fiction movie, jumbo-jets slicing into
skyscrapers, surely it was a joke, but no. My disbelief lasted all
day and none of us at the office could turn away from the windows
or the televisions even as the dust-cloud came toward us.

As the days passed, my disbelief turned to
anger. I felt I knew what made those eighteen young men kill
themselves. They themselves were high jacked as teenagers, just
like Sally. They did it for an ideal that they didn’t understand,
for a heaven of which no one has any proof, or of a supernatural
being no one can agree on.

Claude Vorilhon, the media-thirsty head of
the worldwide Raelian cult, an alleged ‘atheist-religion’ believes
Elohim, an alien race of beings who started the human race through
cloning, communicates through him to mankind. They’re claiming to
be cloning human-beings. Vorilhon asserts that the French Secret
Service and the CIA are out to assassinate him that his followers
may have to be prepared to die for him. In the late 2000s, cults
like Landmark Education, Scientology, and the Art of Living grew
incrementally innocuous and were marketed for those with
middle-class middle-age naïveté who had in their high school years
rejected reason as a tool to manage their lives. They turned away
from secular or political idealism to the supernatural, embracing
gurus on the right, science fiction in the center and sharmas on
the left. The cults are all as dumb as dirt but are now slickly
packaged to fool the unsuspecting and disillusioned soul.

Although I killed Tim Daniels, I found out
that he too had been an orphan, and that The First Law of Life for
orphans and people born unlucky had not been utterly defeated at
all. I dread to even visit Una, Mom and Dad any longer for fear of
bringing on calamity. I thought I could outrun it, ignore it, join
it, defeat it, pay it off, but no. I had read that some people
believe that if you are born unlucky, you can’t defeat the first
law no matter what you do. It is predestined. I have resigned
myself to this inevitable truth.