Part 14 The Resurrection of Samuel J. Speedman #4
Then I threw myself into Garrett and our final fight began.
I crashed into Garrett and pushed his gun hand away . . .
. . . just as he jammed down on the trigger.
A flurry of gunshots boomed in the tight confines of the elevator, hitting the walls and hitting Vasha as well.
Her dying body convulsed as at least eight bullets slammed into it and pretty soon she was fully dead.
Vasha slumped against the back wall of the elevator and then slid to the floor, landing on her butt so that it looked like she was sitting, but her open eyes were devoid of life.
Then Garrett’s pistol went dry and all we had were our fists.
‘You little four-eyed fuck!’ (129) Merritt Garrett yelled as we struggled.
He threw me clear of him and suddenly I saw that we actually did have more than our fists.
He dived for Vasha’s CZ 75 pistol, lying on the floor beside her.
I was too far away to stop him.
He grabbed the gun, whirled and aimed . . .
. . . just as I grabbed a handful of concrete dust from one of my jacket pockets and flung it into his eyes.
He roared with pain, squeezing his eyes shut.
Then he just fired blindly, indiscriminately, not knowing where I was.
I dived under his gun hand, scrambling behind him and wrenched his Bowie hunting knife from Vasha’s throat, turned and launched myself at him.
I crunched into Garrett’s stomach and we both went tumbling into the side wall of the elevator. We hit the wall and fell apart . . .
. . . and there was the knife, buried deep in Merritt Garrett’s stomach.
Garrett gasped but his breath sounded weird. I’d punctured one of his lungs. Blood dribbled from his mouth. He was going to die.
I stood.
He clutched at his stomach, blood oozing over his fingers.
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ he coughed. ‘I’m better than you . . . I’m supposed to be . . . the world’s greatest detec—’
He slumped and his eyes closed and he said no more.
Merritt Garrett, the third and last client of Modern Alchemical Solutions, was dead.
But my work wasn’t done.
I went to the panel and released the emergency stop switch.
I made one brief stop on the way before I allowed the elevator to resume its rise to the roof.
With a soft ping, my elevator arrived at the roof.
The doors opened.
Uri was waiting for the elevator, with his pistol raised and aimed.
His eyes sprang wide at the sight that met him.
Blood and gore everywhere.
Merritt Garrett on the floor, a knife in his stomach, dead.
Vasha slumped against the back wall, riddled with bullet holes, her throat a grisly mess, also dead.
And me nowhere to be seen.
I was, of course, hiding on the roof of the elevator, watching through a crack in the hatch.
I watched as Uri hurried over to Vasha.
‘Vasha, moya sestra!’ he said as he crouched before her.
He was wearing his worn jacket with its sheepskin cuffs—the cuffs to which I’d surreptitiously attached one of Monty Woods’s tracking devices, the device that looked like fluff or lint, back when Uri had patted me down with the touch of an ironworker at Winnie’s mansion.
That was why I’d needed to consult the ‘Find My’ app.
It was how I’d known in advance that the Unperson and his team were here.
Then, as I watched him in the elevator from above, Uri did what I hoped he’d do.
Searching hurriedly for a wound, he yanked open Vasha’s jacket . . .
. . . in doing so, triggering the small wad of C-4 plastic explosive I’d taken from the 28th floor—the Unperson’s backup trap—and positioned inside Vasha’s jacket with the detonator tied to one of her jacket’s buttons.
By opening her jacket, Uri had activated the small bomb.
He had a split second of horror to realise what was about to happen.
The plastic explosive detonated.
Uri was blown apart, his blood and body parts pasting the walls of the elevator.
I didn’t climb back down into the elevator.
Instead, I exited through the machinery space above it, stepping through a hatch onto the roof of 59West and into the cold night air.
I didn’t see the Unperson anywhere.
But I knew he couldn’t be far away.
I stepped around to peer into the blood-smeared elevator.
Which was when he pounced.
The Unperson was on me in a heartbeat, grabbing me around the throat from behind with one forearm while jabbing me in the neck with a syringe filled with Duramorph with his spare hand.
I sagged in his grip as he injected the anaesthetic into my bloodstream.
‘Oh, Samuel. You won’t wake up after this injection. This time, you have to die.’
He turned me around so he could look into my eyes.
‘Nighty-night,’ he said.
My head wobbled unsteadily, my eyes blinked.
He grinned meanly.
Which was when I headbutted him.
Hard.
He jolted backwards, stunned and shocked that I had all my faculties.
Then I grabbed the front of his jacket and held him close to me . . .
. . . as I withdrew my own hypodermic syringe from the pen pocket on my jacket’s left shoulder.
‘You gave this to me in that concrete box,’ I said. ‘Thought I’d give it back, motherfucker.’
I jammed my needle into his throat and thumbed the plunger, injecting its anaesthetic into his bloodstream.
A look of pure confusion spread across his face.
‘How . . .?’ he said.
How did I resist the Duramorph? That’s what he wanted to know.
‘I stopped at a Walgreens earlier tonight,’ I said. ‘Bought some Narcan. Took a nice strong dose of it before I went into Winnie’s party.’
Dumbfounded understanding spread across his face.
The doctor in him knew what I’d done.
Narcan—or naloxone—was usually used after a drug overdose, since it blocked a person’s opioid receptors. But surgeons had to make sure that naloxone was not in a patient’s system before surgery, since it could also do the same thing in advance.
It could block the effects of Duramorph.
As his body began to fail, the Unperson’s glazed eyes widened in absolute shock.
Shock at the realisation that I’d beaten him.
At the galling fact that I’d done it using his own medication, indeed, the very drug he’d given to me back at the construction site so I could die in my sleep.
And also at one other thing.
At the fact that I wasn’t going to kill him.
I was going to bring him in alive.
‘Nighty-night,’ I said.
Then his eyes closed and he slumped to the ground, succumbing to the drug.