“Take your gun out, Pat.”

I did. I went to toss it into the frozen snow.

“No, no,” Gerry said. “Hold on to it.”

“Hold on to it?”

“Absolutely. In fact, jack a round into the chamber and point at me. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

I did as he asked, raised my arm and centered it on Gerry’s forehead.

“Much better,” he said. “I’m kind of sorry you’re all burned out on me, Patrick.”

“No, you’re not. That was one of the alleged points of this. Wasn’t it?”

He smiled. “How do you mean?”

“You wanted to practice your bullshit theory of dehumanization. Right?”

He shrugged. “Some people would say it’s not bullshit.”

“Some people would buy sunblock in the Arctic, Gerry.”

He laughed. “Worked on Evandro pretty well.”

“Is that why it took you twenty years to come back?”

“I never went away, Patrick. But, in terms of my experiment with the human condition in general, and a certain belief I have in the charm of threes, yeah, Alec and I had to wait until you had all grown a bit and until Alec had found a worthy candidate in Evandro. And then there were all my years of planning and all Alec’s efforts with Evandro until we could be sure he was one of us. I’d say it was all a great success, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure, Gerry. Whatever.”

He cocked his arm so that the baby’s head was pointed directly at the ice and stared at the ground as if looking for the perfect impact point.

“What’re you going to do, Patrick?”

“Don’t know there’s much I can do, Ger.”

He smiled. “You shoot me now, the mother definitely dies and the baby probably does.”

“Agreed.”

“You don’t shoot me now, I might just hurl this baby’s head against the ice.”

Danielle bucked against the gun.

“I do that,” Gerry said, “you lose them both. So here we have choice. Your choice, Patrick.”

The ice under Gerry’s car was darkened by Oscar’s shadow as he inched along the other side of it.

“Gerry,” I said, “you won. Right?”

“How do you see it?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong. I was supposed to pay for what my father did to Charles Rugglestone. Right?”

“Partially,” he said and looked up at the baby’s head, tilted it so he could see the clenched eyes.

“Okay. You got me. Shoot me, if you want. It’s cool.”

“I never wanted to kill you, Patrick,” he said, his eyes still on the baby. He pursed his lips and made cooing sounds. “Last night at your partner’s place? Evandro was supposed to kill her and leave you alive with the guilt, with the pain.”

“Why?”

Oscar’s shadow was preceding him across the ice. It leaked out in front of the car and spread raggedly across the stone animals and hobby horses directly behind Gerry. The shadow was thrown by the streetlight in the rear of the playground and I found myself wondering which genius hadn’t thought of shutting it off before Oscar went through the fence.