Goodnight Beautiful(74)

“You told her to call the police,” Albert says, his body trembling, his face ghost-white. “You said I was dangerous.”

“Albert—”

“You said you’d get me help, that you’d come with me to the hospital. But you lied to me, Sam. Again.”

Albert walks out of the room, and Sam hears him in the kitchen, banging drawers open and shut. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Sam says, crawling his way to Annie. “You’re going to be fine.” He gently pushes back the hair from her face. “We’re both going to be fine.”

Sam sees it then: a pool of blood spreading from under her head. “Albert, call an ambulance!” he screams. “Call an ambulance. NOW.”

The kitchen is silent. Albert reappears in the doorway, his jaw trembling. “I can’t do it, Sam.”

“That’s fine, Albert, I can. Give me her phone,” Sam says. “Come on, man.” Tears slide down his cheeks. “Give me Annie’s phone so I can get her help.”

Albert spots the blood spreading from under Annie’s head. “Look what I’ve done.” Covering his face with his hands, he starts to weep.

“Please just give me her phone,” Sam pleads. “I’ll help you, I promise. We’ll go to the hospital,” he sobs. “I swear to god. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I hate to say it, Dr. Statler, but I think you might be suffering from a grandiose sense of self-importance. We both know you don’t have the power to keep me from prison.” Albert leans his head against the door and closes his eyes. “I’m tired.”

“You can sleep,” Sam says. “At the hospital.”

“I told you, I’m not going to the hospital.” He’s slurring his words.

“Albert?” Sam says. “Are you okay?”

Albert laughs, and his knees buckle. “You don’t have to flatter me anymore, my dear Dr. Statler,” he says, sliding down the door. He keeps talking, but Sam can’t make out what he’s saying, and then he goes quiet, slumping over, his head hitting the floor with an echoing clunk. Something falls from his hand and rolls toward Sam: an empty pill bottle. Sam picks it up and reads the label. “Margaret Statler. Zolpidem, 15mg at bedtime.”

His mother’s pills.

Albert was drugging him with his mother’s pills. It happens again—he starts laughing: a loud, delirious cackle that rises up from inside of him, carrying with it a wave of fear and panic more powerful than anything he’s ever known. He drags himself toward Albert and digs in his empty pockets for Annie’s phone.

“Yoohoo! Albert?” He stops cold. It’s a woman’s voice, coming from the kitchen. “Anyone home. The door was open—”

“I’m here!” Sam screams. “I’m back here!”

“Albert, is that you? I saw Annie’s car, and I have something for her—” He hears footsteps, and then the door opens. It’s Sidney Pigeon. She’s wearing workout clothes and is holding a baking dish.

“Oh my god,” she gasps, her hand flying to her mouth, the dish falling to the floor, sour cream and refried beans splashing into the air. “Sam?”





Epilogue




Sam hears the cart rattling down the hallway, outside the room, just as he’s falling asleep. He bolts upright and opens his eyes. The footsteps get closer, and he waits, immobilized, for the sound of the key in the lock.

But the sound passes and he exhales, reminding himself he’s not at the Lawrence House. He’s at Rushing Waters, reclined in his mother’s favorite chair, where he must have dozed off after the Wednesday lunch special, fettuccine alfredo. Margaret’s asleep in her bed, and he clicks off the television and kicks the footrest into place, checking the time. He has to go meet the movers.

He stretches his legs and stops at Margaret’s bed to fix her blankets before sneaking into the hall, closing the door quietly behind him. He signs out at the reception desk, passing a woman on her way in. She pauses and does a double take.

That’s right, lady, he thinks. It’s me.

He guessed correctly: the story is a big deal. Six months since the tabloids got wind of things, and they continue to outdo each other, competing for who can snap the creepiest photo of the Lawrence House, enticing shoppers at the checkout lines with yet another interview with “The Neighbor Who Called 911!”

Sam was impressed with Sidney Pigeon’s take-charge attitude about the whole thing. On the phone to 911, summoning the chief of police and an ambulance that apparently took no more than four minutes to arrive. It was the same driver who had come for the body of Agatha Lawrence three years before, this time arriving to cart away her biological son, who’d died in the same room. Cause of death: overdose of zolpidem, leading to cardiac arrest. In other words, Albert put himself to sleep and then died of a broken heart.

The Monster of Chestnut Hill. That’s what people have come to call Albert, and Sam has to admit it’s catchy. But one thing they haven’t written about Albert Bitterman is that, like his mother, he was found to be generous at the time of his death. He took care of Sam’s debt. The copies of the credit card bills Sam had discovered in the purple binder—Albert wasn’t merely filing them away for posterity. He was also paying them down, sending out checks, wiping it all away, as well as making a hefty donation to Rushing Waters that would cover, among other things, Margaret Statler’s room and board for the next thirty years.