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42
WE’D DECIDED BEFORE I REENTERED THE HOUSE ON THIRTIETH STREET THAT WE couldn’t afford to let Dr. Nicholson stay there much past seven thirty. Not if we wanted to have a chance at saving him. If I didn’t get Fowler to surrender, it was my job to lure him into the kitchen, where there were windows.
Seeing the red dot on his body, I knew Fowler was dead, and his
ex-wife, his children, and Dr. Nicholson had a chance to live.
Fowler saw the dot on his chest and knew it too.
Call it something in my DNA, I don’t know. But I couldn’t watch this man get shot down on Christmas morning.
I launched myself at him, wrapped him up, gun and all, and drove him hard to the floor.
A rifle shot. Glass broke in a kitchen window. The picture of Fowler’s family shattered as a bullet passed through it and into the wall.
I threw a forearm against the back of Fowler’s head, bouncing his face off the hardwood floor, and then ripped the gun from his hands. I got up fast and put my boot on his neck, the muzzle of my gun against his temple. “Henry Fowler, you’re under arrest.”
By the time I finished reading him his rights, the front door was rammed open, and Nu’s men were breaking through the door between the porch and the kitchen. They ran to us, used zip ties on Fowler’s ankles and wrists.
Medics rushed into the house. The two SWAT officers lifted Fowler to his feet. He was going to have a hell of a black eye from the pounding he’d taken against the floor.
He stared at me. “Why didn’t you let them kill me?”
“Like I said, I believe in the redemptive power of Christmas.”
“Not for me.” Fowler shook his head. “I’ll be in a jail cell. I’ll be tortured by what I’ve done for the rest of my life.”
“Unless you testify,” I said.
“What?”
“Come forward with what you know. Tell the truth about the Huntington’s drug and the hepatitis vaccine. You can still save lives, prevent brain damage.”
Fowler stared at me as if this had never occurred to him.
“Merry Christmas, Fowler,” I said. Then SWAT took him away.
My eyes began to water, and I wiped them on the back of my sleeve. Maybe what my grandmother had always said about Christmas was true.
“You okay, Alex?” Nu asked.
He’d come in through the broken-down back door.
“Yeah,” I said, watching Fowler disappear. “I’m doing fine.”
We went to the living room, where McGoey was on top of everything. Crime scene photographers were already snapping away at the broken lamps, the shot-up gifts, and the busted Christmas tree. Social workers were talking to the kids—wiping faces, feeding them fruit, getting them to the bathroom. EMTs were working on Dr. Nicholson.
A gurney was brought through the front door. Two EMT guys slid a board under the badly wounded man. They carefully hoisted him onto the gurney and carried him out.
Diana followed the gurney. She stopped for a second and turned to me.
“God bless you, Detective.”
“You too. Take care of your husband, your kids,” I told her.
“Somebody close the damn door,” Nu shouted. “It’s cold in here.”
“Yeah, you’ve got it rough, Adam,” I told him.
