CHAPTER NINE
The mask threatened to suffocate me as I leaned against the bookshelf and stared at Leonard’s lifeless frame.
I watched his chest, seemingly oblivious to the pool of blood continuing to spread across the floor, as if it might be at all possible for him to defy the laws of science and find the ability to breathe.
Please, please, please breathe.
He couldn’t be dead. Denial held tight to my psyche, protecting what little was left of my sanity.
I had been around plenty of dead bodies in my life—God only knew how many—but none of them had ever been him.
And in that moment, all logic seemed to escape me, as I was suddenly a little boy once again, begging the only person I could rely on to please, please, please wake up.
But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t.
He would never wake up again.
I can’t just stand here, I told myself. I need to do something.
Somehow, I regained my strength and found my grasp on reality, standing to my full height.
A cold rush of hatred pulsed through my veins to wash away the paralyzing despair, chilling my blood and taking control of my limbs as I stepped toward the man in the Joker costume with the gun still in his hand.
Quicker, quicker, I moved through the room, over the mismatched carpets, over the spidery limbs of Leonard’s blood reaching across the floor, until my hands could reach the lapels of his Joker suit.
He lifted the gun and pointed the barrel at my chest, digging its gaping mouth against the pressed lines of my suit.
"Hey, man. It's not my fault. He came at me."
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?”
My eyes noted the people still inside the library. They had been told to leave, yet they continued to whisper among themselves, looking on as if this was all nothing but a performance or minor inconvenience.
They’re used to this, I noted. None of them are shocked. None of them care that two men are dead on the floor.
Like it was all just dinner and a show, a part of Gerald’s big fiftieth birthday bash.
They need to leave. Now.
“Get these fucking people out of here,” I ordered.
Gerald raised a brow, his lips quirking into an approving smile, as he said to the other man, the same one who’d retrieved him from the terrace, “You heard him, Dean. Get these people out.”
Then he raised a hand and gestured for me to follow him out of the library, and for the first time in my life, without a second thought, I did as he’d asked.
***
“Right this way, my boy,” Gerald said, heading down the upstairs hallway.
For someone who had just witnessed the murder of two men, he certainly seemed unfazed. But come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I was as affected as I probably should’ve been either, given the circumstances.
Maybe I’m in shock, I thought as Gerald led me into a room enclosed by twin wooden doors.
An office, as it would seem—a space not unlike the library downstairs—with lots of dark woods, tall bookshelves surrounding the perimeter, and black leather furniture.
In here though, there was a massive desk in the center of the room, an executive chair on one side, and two smaller armchairs on the other.
Gerald approached a bar cart behind the sofa and asked, “Want a drink?”
“No,” I replied flatly.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. And, by the way, you can take off that stupid mask in here. It’s just the two of us.”
“And if someone else comes in?”
“Door’s locked, and I’m the only one with the key.”
“Hmm,” I replied, knowing I probably shouldn’t trust him. Yet, despite my better judgment, I pulled the mask off anyway, grateful for the moment of fresh air.
He poured himself a drink of straight whiskey into a tumbler while keeping his eyes on me the entire time. His stare was scrutinizing and—dare I say—held a hint of concern.
After I had enough of him staring, I asked, “What the fuck are you looking at?”
He dropped his eyes to the glass, now full, and said, “I was just wondering if you were okay.”
I barked a laugh at the sheer audacity. “Am I okay?”
He held the glass in hand and rounded the couch to take a seat. He crossed his ankle over his thigh, then looked up into my eyes as he nodded and said, "Yeah. I'm asking, are you okay?"
"Wow," I said with a snort, then rubbed beneath my nose with the back of my gloved hand. "Thirty-three years."
"What?"
I continued to chuckle, stuffing my hands into my pockets as I turned from him to pace the length of the room.
"Thirty-three fucking years of abuse and abandonment, and finally, after I found the only person who ever gave a single fuck about me with a bullet in his fucking brain, you ask me if I'm okay. "
"Well”—he shrugged nonchalantly—"are you?"
I spun on my heel to stare at him with an incredulous look in my eye. "What the fuck do you think, Gerry?"
"I think you have a right to be angry with me," my father replied in an eerily calm and understanding tone. "And I think you have every right to question everything you've seen here tonight."
I stood in front of the window and looked out over the bluff and toward the water. It was a clear night; the water's surface was still. An exact opposite of what I was feeling inside.
"Wow, thank you so much for your permission. That makes me feel a lot better."
"I came to talk to you that night all those years ago,” he began, and I turned from the window to watch him, my eyes narrowing with equal parts suspicion and interest. "I asked if you wanted to make some money. You turned me down."
"Yes, because your methods of making money usually either involve getting me in trouble with the cops or getting hurt."
He offered a curt nod. "Yeah, that's true … in the past. But now?" He lifted his glass and gave his head a shake. “If you get hurt or in trouble, that’s entirely within your control, son.”
I leaned against the window frame and stared in his direction, watching as he took a sip of a drink in a room that, alone, was worth more than any house I'd ever lived in.
I tried to believe he didn't belong in this setting, and yet, in that expensive suit, wearing a shiny gold watch and that diamond-encrusted wedding band, sitting on that couch, he looked like he fit right in.
He'd been conditioned for well over a decade to fit in with this lifestyle. And I just couldn't understand how … and where the hell Leonard had fit into it all.
Oh God, Leonard.