Page 58 of The Dearly Departed

Without a second thought, I grabbed his arm within my hand and twisted his wrist until he dropped the gun. I felt his bones break within my grasp as a sickening snap met my ears, and although he didn’t cry out, he gritted his teeth against the pain. I shoved his back into the shelves with such force that a few books fell from their perch and into the spreading puddle of blood.

"His death is your fault," I replied, my tone disguised and eerily calm. "You fired the gun. You put the bullet in his head."

The guy's painted face twisted into a look of unabashed horror as he faltered in a nod. "Y-yeah, that's true. I-I did, b-but, man, he came at me. He was grabbin’ me and shit. I told him to get off but—"

“He was poisoned,” someone said from behind me, and I looked over my shoulder just enough to see Dean—the guy who had come to find Gerald outside—was crouched over my adoptive father’s lifeless corpse.

“Poisoned,” I heard Gerald repeat, malice heavy in his tone. “What the fuck do you mean, he was poisoned?”

“I mean, boss, someone poisoned him,” Dean rephrased.

“Obviously,” Gerald growled, coming closer and standing over the two men—both dead and alive.

My eyes scanned Leonard’s face. His blank stare, his parted lips. I had seen countless dead people in my life—it’s what I did. But not even the sight of my mother’s body had incited such heavy emptiness in my heart, such an impossible anguish, as seeing Leonard lying dead on the library floor with a bullet in his brain.

What am I supposed to do now? I wanted to ask him. What am I supposed to do without you?

What am I supposed to tell Shawn and Isaac?

How am I going to tell them? What the fuck am I supposed to say?

“He is foaming at the mouth,” Dean said, pointing at the corner of Leonard’s slack lips. Then he turned to look up at the man I still held within my grasp. “You said he came at you?”

I brought my attention back to the Joker.

He gave an affirming nod. “He was grabbin’ at me, just like this creepy motherfucker here,” he said with a little less panic, smacking at my wrist with his good hand. “Thought he was tryin’ to kill me.”

“You thought a dying man was trying to kill you,” I assessed through a sneer, pressing him harder against the bookshelf.

“Yeah, I agree,” Gerald said, unamused. “That was pretty fuckin’ stupid.”

A shot rang out, piercing my eardrums. A splatter of blood and brain matter hit the shelves as the man before me went limp in my hands. I quickly released him from my grip, and I took three hurried steps backward as his corpse crumpled to the floor.

“Not the books, Gerry!” Virginia exclaimed from somewhere in the room. “Jesus Christ …”

I hadn’t even been aware she was there, amid the crowd of stragglers. But then again, it was her who had screamed for Gerald, wasn’t it? While we were still outside, she must’ve witnessed Leonard’s murder. She must’ve seen something.

Maybe she knows something.

I could talk to her, find out more, find out why …

Leonard is dead.

The thought struck hard and swift, an abrupt reminder that the man who had helped me to become the man I was, was now … gone. His life, snuffed out like it’d meant nothing. Like he was nothing.

The chilled fingers of death and despair clawed at my throat, tightening their hold, but I tamped it down.

There would be time for all that later.

Right now, I had to figure this out. Who had killed him—and why?

I turned and pointed at Gerald. “You.”

He raised a brow and tucked his pistol away into the waistband of his pants. “What about me?”

“Talk.”

“And what do you want to talk about?”