Page 123 of Gone Tonight
I’m too weak to move yet, and James seems to be, too. He is still sitting on me, but it’s like he’s made out of putty.
Catherine rises to her feet, rubbing her elbow, and walks over to him.
As if he is no more substantial than a mannequin, she lifts her foot and pushes him over.
He topples onto the pavement beside me, his eyes open. He’s alive but seems unable to control his body. He reaches out toward me, then his arm flops down.
Catherine stretches out a hand and I take it. She helps me sit up.
I immediately retch and she rubs my back. “Easy,” she says.
“What did you do to him?” I croak, echoing James’s question. My throat is so raw it hurts to talk.
“Insulin. I injected almost two months’ worth of doses directly into his bloodstream.”
A thin line of drool oozes out of James’s mouth. His eyes are half-closed, but they are still watching us. His mouth twitches, as if he is trying to speak.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I ask.
“If he doesn’t get help now, he’ll die.”
I stare at Catherine. She looks steadily back at me.
Neither of us moves.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREECATHERINE
No one was with me in the Campbells’ kitchen when I opened their refrigerator and tucked June’s insulin pens into the waistband of my shorts. Most people know insulin tilts the scales of life and death for diabetics. Fewer are aware of how lethal it can be when injected into a nondiabetic.
When people have low body fat and high muscle mass, like James, their veins tend to be more prominent. Even before we left the Campbells’ apartment, I’d identified the one that would be my target.
As I help my mother into the passenger’s seat of the Bonneville, I assess her vitals. Her heart rate has slowed, but her skin still feels cool and clammy. The whites of her eyes are stained red with burst blood vessels, and her forehead is swelling up.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her as I close the car door.
I know it may be disconcerting for her to be alone with James’s body, which we lifted into our trunk. My job means I often brush up against death, but she has never witnessed it up close.
But I need to retrieve my mother’s purse, her knife, and James’s gun before we drive off.
After I’ve collected the items and returned to the car, I slip into the driver’s seat. The only sign James was in the parking lot is the small,reddish-brown stain from the blood that spilled from his arm. As it dries and its hemoglobin breaks down, it’ll darken and eventually disappear.
I start the engine and ease our car out of the lot.
My mother seems to be in shock, but I’m functioning well.
The only sound in our car is the low growl of our wheels moving across the pavement. My mind is spinning, too, as I probe every corner and seam of my plans, making sure they are airtight.
I already took James’s phone out of his pocket and made sure he wasn’t carrying anything else that could identify him. The only thing I discovered was a single car key. It must belong to the vehicle he used to get to the Thai restaurant before he caught a ride with the Campbells.
When I’m a few miles down the road and no other headlights are in sight, I wipe down the key on the hem of my T-shirt and toss it out my open window, aiming toward the grass on the side of the road. A mile or so later, I wipe down James’s phone. I press the brakes of the Bonneville before I hurl James’s phone onto the road ahead of us. Then I drive over it, pulverizing it beneath a tire.
The crunch it makes is satisfying.
Disposing of James’s body will be more challenging.
Insulin overdoses are very difficult to trace forensically. Even autopsies can’t pinpoint them most of the time, which means it would be hard to ever prove James was murdered.
George and June are the only witnesses who saw the two of us together, other than Paul the guard, who waved when James and I walked out. But James ducked his head and pretended to scratch an itch by his eyebrow, so I doubt Paul even glimpsed his face.
