CHAPTER fifty-eight
Oakes let out a bellow of rage and catapulted himself out of the chair. Philip now pointed the gun directly at me and my eyes darted to the staircase.
"I’m all alone," he said, following my eyes. Then where was Jay, I thought desperately. "The watchdog met me at the door."
Chris was sobbing and kneeling on the floor cradling the bloody dog in his arms. Philip waved the gun at me and I instinctively backed up. My gut was turning over and sweat had broken out all over my body. Philip’s eyes were locked on mine and he ignored Oakes on the floor.
"You got away from me earlier, and now I’m pleasantly surprised to find you here. I’m running around the Metropolitan Toronto area looking for you and here you are." His calm voice gave me shivers and bolts of fear were shooting up my spine and through my stomach. The hand holding the gun slowly raised up and he stretched his arm outright until the gun was pointed directly at my face. My eyes closed automatically in anticipation of what was to come next. My senses were heightened and the sour smell of scotch that permeated the air wafted to my nostrils. Blood was pounding in my ears and I could hear my breath and Chris, whose sobs had now turned to a high-pitched keen.
"Your voice message, Chris," Philip was saying, "was very timely. Thank you very much. Open your eyes. Look at me." I forced my eyes open and looked at him where he was still standing in the same position, about eight feet away from me. The gun remained pointed at my face.
"Mr. Information Technology here left me a voice message. Said he’d told the girl it’d been an accident. I assumed he meant you but I couldn’t be sure because he was so drunk. Now that’s what I call dangerous. A drunk who spills the beans."
I glanced downwards at Oakes who was still only interested in his damn dead dog. There was no way I was going to escape this situation and I obviously could not depend on Oakes for support. As usual.
I was praying inside that if Jay were still alive upstairs, he’d get some help but in the meantime, my only hope was to try and talk my way out of the situation.
"I agree," I told Philip. "A drunk is dangerous. But I don’t drink. Guaranteed. So I’ll never spill the beans, as you put it. Just let me go and that’ll be the end of it."
He slowly shook his head. "Sorry. No can do. There’s too much at stake. I’ve been working at this for most of my life and I will not let you, or him," he waved the gun at Oakes on the floor, "get in my way."
My hands came up, slowly, to my mouth and I pressed them over my face, trying to hold in the sobs that were building in my chest. I had stupidly got myself into this situation and my actions to this point had been impulsive. Impulsive and stupid. I tried to think clearly and logically but panic boiled around inside me.
I thought of Sadie and her deep, motherly love for her son and decided to try to appeal to his human side. "Your mother wouldn’t be very proud of you right now."
"You keep my mother out of it!" he screamed at me and I backed up another step. The step backwards put the back of my knees up against the low coffee table and I felt completely trapped. "I’m doing this for my mother. She was shamed and humiliated when my father died. We were poor for so many years. I promised." He said this slowly and his voice was quieter and respectful when he talked about his mother and I wondered what the promise was all about.
"Then think about your mother," I said quietly.
The next instant happened in slow motion, and every detail remains engraved on my brain. I saw the muscles move ever so slightly in the hand that was holding the gun. Chris had put his right hand on the floor and was trying to push himself into a standing position but he fell over into Philip’s leg at the same moment he pulled the trigger. Later on I would credit Chris for saving my life. The hot, searing pain I felt on my right ear automatically made me think I was dead. I fell back on the coffee table with both of my hands protecting the side of my head where the bullet had hit me. My hands filled with warm fluid that I knew was blood and in a panic now that I realized I was still alive, I rolled off the coffee table onto the floor behind Chris’s La-Z-Boy chair.
"Goddammit Chris," Philip screamed. "You’re always screwing things up." I could hear Philip’s breath coming in short gasps. And then his voice changed again and he said calmly, as if we were standing around at a champagne reception, "If he hadn’t knocked my leg, I would have had you right between the eyes. But before you die, let me tell you, you were close. Close to finding out the truth."
My eyes darted around the room from my hiding position. The clock on the VCR now read one thirty-one and I realized that it had only been a few minutes since Jay had gone up to make coffee. If he had any idea of what was going on down here, assuming he were still alive, help should be on the way soon.
"The truth Philip, the truth is what everyone is going to know after tonight," I said defiantly. "You’re blackmailing Chris and Chris had something to do with Evelyn’s death. All of it’s going to come out. You’ll never survive this Philip. Your career and Oakes’ is over." I was tempted to call him some names too, but I didn’t want to push my luck, whatever little I had left. He didn’t respond to this so I pushed on.
"So tell me," I continued. "What did Oakes and Everly do that made your father’s company go bankrupt?" My right hand was full of blood now from my ear and I wiped my hand on the carpet.
"They stole from him." His voice was above me and without moving my head I raised my eyes up from the mess I was making on the carpet and looked at Philip’s shoes. My eyes continued up his pants leg and I finally had to move my head and when I did, I looked directly in his face. The gun was held steadily in his hand and it pointed directly at me, less than a foot from my face. "They stole his money. And he was going to the police when they killed him. I came home early from school. The nurse had sent me home because I wasn’t feeling well. Mommy wasn’t there so I went to look for daddy." His voice had changed and now he sounded like a young boy.
"There were voices in daddy’s den and I was never allowed to interrupt when he was having a meeting but I wasn’t feeling well. So I went outside and peeked in the window to see. They were there. One of them was holding daddy in the chair and the other one was holding daddy’s hand to his head. And then there was a loud noise. Mommy said daddy went to live with the angels."
The poor child had witnessed his father’s murder. No wonder his mother thought she’d lost both her husband and child. The shock of seeing something like that had obvious, lasting effects.
Philip’s voice changed again and this time, a man’s voice spoke to me. "We suffered. Mom and me. And I promised myself that I’d make it better for us. I was probably 15 or 16 before I realized what it was I witnessed that day."
"I believe you Philip. But why did my friend Evelyn have to die?"
"It was an accident. She was only supposed to get sick. We wanted Rick Cox out of the picture but things went wrong. We needed to fire him. The woman was never supposed to die. Just get sick and be out of the picture for a couple of days. We disabled her EpiPen. Put a little peanut oil on the food. It was supposed to be no big deal. We needed access to her computer system."
I thought sadly about Evelyn and the tragic way this madman had ended her life.
"You bastards," I whispered.
Philip didn’t hear me, he just continued. "Chris promised me Rick’s job. He was going to pay for what he did. I wanted money. And lots of it. For my mother. Chris said if we got rid of Rick I could have his job and his stock options. He said Larry would find another company to buy TechniGroup and then we’d all make lots of money on our stock options."
Fucking stock options. The level of greed amazed me.
"Well you’ve succeeded. Rick’s out of the way. We’re about to receive a take-over bid. Your options’ll make you scads of money. So just leave it at that. Let me go."
"Sorry."
I watched in horror as the shoulder mus
cle of his arm holding the gun twitched imperceptibly and as I waited for the shot that would kill me, my life virtually passed before my eyes. An overwhelming sense of sadness took over and I willed myself to pass out.
A groan from the other side of the room told me that Chris was still alive. And then a voice, that definitely wasn’t Chris’s said, "Mr. Winston. Drop the gun."
From my position on the floor, I watched Philip’s eyes dart up in reaction to the voice. The voice was unfamiliar to me but I felt a surge of relief that help had arrived. Philip crouched slightly and without moving his eyes, he grabbed my arm and pulled me up. He spun me around so my back was against his chest and held me tightly with his left arm around my neck. My hands grabbed instinctively at the arm across my throat and I tore at his forearm with my fingers. My fighting made him tighten his hold. I saw one eye of a policeman’s face peek around the wall at the end of the staircase. His left hand held a gun pointed directly at us.
"Just drop the gun, Mr. Winston," he was saying calmly as he looked directly at me. His eyes were telling me not to do anything stupid but I felt the situation dictated otherwise. I manoeuvred my chin under Philip’s forearm and his grip tightened, which luckily forced my mouth open around his arm. So I bit down as hard as I could and stomped on the top of his foot at the same time. Philip’s reaction was exactly what I expected. He yelled out and loosened his grip slightly from around my neck. I took the opportunity to pull down on his arm with my hands and then I let him have an elbow in the stomach. His arm dropped and I fell to my knees on the floor behind the chair, covering my head with my arms.
One shot rang out and the sound was deafening so I knew the police officer was the one who had fired. I heard a rush of footsteps on the staircase and voices filled the room. I remained frozen in place and listened to the sounds around me.
"He’s alive," I heard someone say and then the same voice was talking to me.
"Miss. Are you all right?" An arm snaked around my shoulders, where I was huddled.
"Fine," I managed to say.
"There’s an awful lot of blood, Miss. Where are you hurt?"
I put my hands on the floor and pushed myself up to a kneeling position. "My ear, I think," I said as I pointed. Adrenaline continued to rush through my body and I felt no pain from the wound. Yet. I swivelled my body around to see Philip lying behind me, face down on the floor with his hands handcuffed behind his back. I used the arm of the La-Z-Boy to pull myself to my feet and stood there on shaky knees looking down at him. He stared back at me silently with hate in his eyes.
"Can you stand him up?" I asked the police officer. "I hate to kick a man when he’s lying down."