“And he—what?—went to jail willingly to protect you?”

Gerry shrugged. “Jail meant nothing to someone like Alec. His freedom is total, Patrick. It’s in his mind. Bars can’t hold it. He’s more free in jail than most people are on the outside.”

“So why punish Diandra Warren for sending him there?”

He frowned. “She reduced Alec. On the stand. She presumed to explain him to a jury of dunces. It was fucking insulting.”

“So, all this”—my arm swept the playground—“is about you and Alec getting back at who exactly?”

“Whom,” he corrected me and his smile returned.

“God?” I said.

“That’s a bit reductive, but if that’s the sort of glib shit you have to feed the media after I’m dead, be my guest, Patrick.”

“You’re going to die, Gerry? When?”

“As soon as you make your move, Patrick. You’ll kill me.” He tilted his head in the direction of the police. “Or they will.”

“What about the hostages, Gerry?”

“One of them dies. Minimum. You can’t save them both, Patrick. There’s no way. Accept that.”

“I have.”

Danielle Rawson searched my face to see if I was joking and I met her eyes long enough for her to see I wasn’t.

“One of them dies,” Gerry said. “We’re agreed on that?”

“Yup.”

I pivoted my left foot to the right and then back and then to the right again. To Gerry, hopefully, it seemed an absent-minded gesture. To Oscar, again hopefully, it was more than that. I couldn’t risk looking at the car again. I’d just have to assume he was there.

“A month ago,” Gerry said, “you would’ve done anything to save both of them. You’d be racking your brain. But not now.”

“Nope. You’ve taught me well, Gerry.”

“How many lives did you shatter to get to me?” he asked.

I thought of Jack and Kevin. Then of Grace and Mae. Phil, of course.

“Enough,” I said.

He laughed. “Good. Good. It’s fun, isn’t it? I mean, okay, you’ve never killed anyone intentionally. Have you? But I’ll tell you, I didn’t exactly plan for it to be my life’s work. After I killed my wife, in pure fury, not premeditated at all, really…after I killed her, I felt awful. I threw up. I had the cold sweats for two weeks. And then one night, I’m driving out on an old stretch of road near Mansfield, no other car for miles. And I pass this guy riding his bike, and I got this impulse—strongest impulse I’d ever had in my life. I’m passing him on the right, I can see the reflectors on his bike, see his face all serious and full of concentration and this voice says to me, ‘Flick the wheel, Gerry. Flick the wheel.’ So I did. I just turned my hand a quarter inch to the left and he went vaulting off into a tree. And I went back to him, he was still barely alive, and I watched him die. And I felt fine. And it just kept getting better. The nigger kid who knew I’d gotten someone else to take the fall for my wife, all the ones after him, Cal Morrison. It just kept feeling better and better. I have no regrets. Sorry, but I don’t. So when you kill me—”