Page 122 of Statler

“Why?” His laugh bordered on hysteria. “Because when you stare, I see her watching me. Accusing me. Reproaching me,” he snapped.

Eliza almost recoiled in horror as her father became…unraveled.

“I had to do it,” he whined. “I had to. It gutted me, but… She was going to blow the whistle on me, and I couldn’t have that.”

Eliza still didn’t want to believe what he was saying, but she couldn’t block it out.

“My… My mother died of the flu.”

Her lips felt numb as she forced the words from her mouth.

“Of pneumonia, brought on by the flu,” Eliza continued weakly.

“She had the flu,” William agreed as if reciting the alphabet. “That’s true. And it gave me…an opportunity. The treatment we gave her; the inhalers we told her would help? They were heavily laced with sulfur dioxide, which impeded her breathing, constricting her airway until eventually her lungs filled up and she died.”

Tears overflowed from Eliza’s eyes and it felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

“But… You loved her.”

The heinous crime defied any logic.

“I did,” William admitted with what might have been regret in his voice if his anger hadn’t been bleeding through. “But she was going to ruin everything.”

Eliza closed her eyes for just a second, trying to process the information.

How could he⁠—?

William was on her in a flash.

“Ooof.”

The wind was knocked out of her as he hit her with the entire weight of his body and they staggered across the room.

She managed, somehow, to knock his gun from his grip with her one free hand, but his strength was greater than she’d imagined.

It wasn’t long before he’d wrestled her to the marble floor and sat triumphantly atop her.

“And now I have to kill you, too,” he screeched maniacally, bringing one of the damning capsules that he’d managed to hold onto, close to her face.

Eliza felt clarity in that instant.

She knew what she had to do.

Her grip still tight on her sig.

She waited for the right moment.

As the pill came closer and closer to her lips, she slowly and quietly extracted the gun from her jacket, and⁠—

The gunshot reverberated in Eliza’s ears.

William flinched and grunted.

He looked at her, startled, then clutched his chest where a crimson stain had begun to spread. He gazed down at the gun in her hand in disbelief.

“You…” He coughed, choking up blood. “You shot me.”

Eliza nodded, but didn’t understand.