Page 67 of Too Old for This

His voice is still raspy but not weak.

I do as Burke says. The knife thumps against the carpet, my hands now empty. He pushes the butt of the gun into my back, forcing me into his office.

I turn around to face him.

He is sitting in a wheelchair. Burke’s face is drawn and gaunt; only a few hairs are left on his liver-spotted head. He doesn’t just look old, he looks frail. But his gaze is sharp and alert. Burke is coherent, and he has a gun pointed at my chest.

Not the way I thought this was going to go.

A large desk takes up most of the room. Behind it are two filing cabinets and a stack of boxes. The computer screen on the desk is turned on, and the background image makes me gasp.

A picture of me.

This is like the modern-day version of a stalker hanging pictures all over his wall. Now it’s on the screen he looks at every day. Obsession is always the same. And always dangerous.

“You didn’t surprise me,” he says.

I raise an eyebrow.

Burke holds up his phone. “My son made me download a location app so we could always find each other. He wouldn’t pretend to be an hour away when he was right down the street. But you would.”

What is it with these location apps? Is everyone tracking every family member? That is a genuinely disturbing thought.

“Did you kill my son?” he asks.

I have not said one word to Burke since 1985, right before our first interview at the police station. Now I stare at him, at his tissue-paper skin and hollowed eyes, and wonder if I should give him the satisfaction. One way or another, this is the last chance we’ll have to talk.

“No,” I finally say. “I did not kill your son.”

He perks up a little, unable to hide the surprise. “And Norma?”

“She attacked me. You saw that for yourself, didn’t you?” I tilt my head to the side, daring him to deny the camera in my home.

He switches his gun from one hand to the other. It’s not huge, though the silencer probably makes it heavier. And scarier. His neighbors won’t hear him shoot me.

“But you did kill Plum.” He skips right over the camera, neither admitting nor denying any part of it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He raises the gun, tries to look threatening.

It works, but only on the side of me that wants to keep fighting. A natural reaction when faced with death. That’s still inside me. It isn’t completely gone.

The other half of me is tired. Ready to stop fighting, ready to stop trying, ready to stop everything. It takes so much energy to be scared. I don’t have enough anymore.

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it already,” I say.

He stares at me. I stare back.

But he doesn’t pull the trigger.

Burke could have killed me anytime in the past few months, ever since he figured out where I was. But there’s something he wants more.

I consider my options. Yes, I could run. I could probably even overpower him, even with my injured arm. Neither is possible until I get out of the line of fire. Burke and I are too close, maybe three feet away from each other. All he has to do is aim low, at my leg, and I’d never get out the door.

I glance over at those filing cabinets in the corner. The storage boxes.

“You have all the evidence here, don’t you?” I ask. “Everything from my case.”

Burke rests his elbow on the arm of the wheelchair, bracing his hand up. He doesn’t answer.

“Those murder cases must still be open,” I say. “How did you get everything?”

“Does it matter?”

“I bet no one has the time to investigate those old murders. They were probably happy to give you everything.” I touch the tip of my chin with my finger. “But doesn’t this break the chain-of-evidence rules?”

“Did you kill Kelsie?” he asks.

He caught me with that question. I wasn’t expecting it.

Burke smiles. His teeth are his own, not dentures, and they are very yellow. Wonder how long it took him to quit smoking.

“What about the hair?” I ask.

“The what?”

“The hair from the Paul Norris case,” I say. “You showed it to me. It was a strand of brown hair in a plastic bag.”

“What about it?”

“I assume you had it DNA tested. Back then, you couldn’t. But now…” I open my hands up, indicating that the scientific world is his oyster.

His smile vanishes. As expected.

“Wait,” I say. “You couldn’t have it tested, could you? No, no, no, that wouldn’t have worked, because you knew it didn’t belong to me, didn’t you? That was another one of your lies.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You faked that. Otherwise, you’d have DNA evidence. As soon as you found me, I would’ve been charged with the murder of Paul Norris.”

“You killed him,” he says. “Just like you killed Marilyn Dobbs and Walter Simmons and Plum Dixon. Not to mention her mother.”

I give him my best patronizing smile. “You know you sound a little crazy, right?”

Burke has an instant, visceral reaction. The gun shakes a little. His other hand grips the armrest. He grits those old yellow teeth.

“You don’t get to talk to me like that.” The words sound like a hiss.

I soften my voice. “You can’t think I killed all those people. Not really.”

“Don’t—”

“Look at me. Does that even seem possible?”

“Yes.” His voice does not waver.

I sink back in my chair, sighing with defeat. “Then go ahead. Stop teasing me and shoot.”

He does.