Chapter 75
Eddie didn’t bother to elaborate. He motioned with his gun for Charlie and Joe to exit back the way they came. They passed through the computer lab and climbed the stairs in the main stairwell. Once at the top, they opened the door that led out onto the roof.
“Walk single file,” Eddie said. “If one of you so much as takes a single step out of line, I will shoot to kill. Worst case, the other gets me, but one of you dies no matter what. So walk.”
The outside air had turned chilly. The wind was strong, blowing dust and sand into their faces.
“What are we doing up here, Eddie?” Charlie asked. “Why don’t you end this now?”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Eddie said. “We’re ending this now.”
“I still don’t understand how Joe’s blog factors into this,” Charlie said.
“Because,” Eddie said, “it gave me the idea for how to kill you.” He pointed his gun back at Charlie. “You see, Giles, just shooting you didn’t seem an appropriate ending for you given how you’d humiliated me. You took away everything I had and everything I’d worked for. I survived that fall for a reason. Very few people do. It’s mostly the lucky ones who somehow manage to land in a seated position. They have the best chance. So when I got myself to the shore, I knew that I was meant to complete what I had started.”
“What does that have to do with me and Joe?” Charlie asked.
The brothers were pinned up against the stairwell housing. Eddie kept his gun leveled at them. His back was to the street side of the building.
“I faked my death to give me time to think,” said Eddie. “But I wasn’t coming up with anything. No death I could fathom would serve you right. And then I read Joe’s blog—about his seizures and the music that put him into a trance. I realized that I had built a product that could be used to control another person. And then the idea hit me. What if I could get you, Charlie Giles, self-important asshole, to put a bullet in your own head?”
“You sick bastard,” Charlie said.
“The irony was inspiring. I wasn’t going to die by my own hand. You were going to die by yours. But I knew that wouldn’t be easy. You would have to think you were a true monster to take your own life. I mean, a real savage that you never knew was lurking inside you. Look at me,” Eddie said, lifting his cane slightly off the ground. “The fall made me a cripple. I couldn’t do the dirty work to frame you. I could have used hit men, but that would have left a trail, because hit men have memories. Joe, at least according to his blog, would have none.”
“You hijacked his InVision system?” Charlie said.
“Yes. I did. But I needed more anxiety in his life to make sure the seizures were triggered. It seemed that emotional stress was a key ingredient … so I poisoned your mother. And to think, I used toxin from a Brazilian caterpillar to do it.”
“You did what?” Charlie shouted.
“Sim, senhor,” Eddie answered in perfect Portuguese. “I took a little trip to Brazil and paid some locals a hefty fee to help me track down the lovely and deadly Lonomia obliqua caterpillar. Then I extracted a plentiful supply of venom. It’s an impressively potent anticoagulant venom, really toxic stuff. I was careful to apply just the right amount to her lipstick so it wouldn’t kill but would cause kidney failure and, if I got lucky, a massive stroke. But I got even luckier.”
Charlie now understood why his mother was also hemorrhaging and needed the IV platelets and vitamin K drips. The poison could have made a small bruise potentially lethal.
“What do you mean, you got luckier?” Charlie asked. By now he was shaking with rage.
“Well, it was pure luck that she had a living will,” Eddie said. “To make my plan work, I needed Joe to be anxious. Lengthy hospitaliza-tion was what I was after. What I didn’t know was that you’d end up living with the schizophrenic brother you so despised.”
“Don’t say that about Joe,” Charlie said. “You know nothing about our family. Fuck you, Eddie.”
“No, Charlie.” Eddie laughed. “Fuck you.”
A blinding flash erupted from the barrel of the gun. Charlie turned just in time to see Joe crumple to the ground.