Chapter 4

4: 4

“Because I was worried about the bad blood between me and Stanley. If I went to pick up his father and something happened along the way, I knew I'd never be able to explain myself.”

I cut Stanley off before he could finish.

“You can't pin all of this on me. I said from the start I didn't want to go get Old Mr. Mason, but Stanley insisted on me by name.”

“Plenty of people at the ambulance station can back that up.”

Everything I said was the truth, and there wasn't a flicker of guilt in my eyes.

“I made the nurse get off because I was afraid she wouldn't let me call an ambulance from another hospital.”

The officer beside him nodded. “We have confirmed there's a grudge between Stanley Mason and Evan Finch, so that part's plausible.”

“But the other driver had no connection to Stanley at all. If he's the killer, what's his motive?”

The other driver suddenly lunged forward and grabbed me by the collar.

“Tell me, does this have something to do with you or not?”

“Or did you already know what was going to happen, so you set me up to take the fall on purpose?”

My eyes wavered. I had known in advance, yes. But I never meant to make him the fall guy.

Seeing me hesitate, Stanley frowned at me again.

“Evan, don't tell me you pulled some dirty trick to have someone else kill my father, so I'd be the one to answer for it!”

Stanley turned to the officer. “Officer, just to be safe, maybe you should send someone to Evan's place and take a look. What if there's a clue at his house?”

The officer nodded. Half an hour later, the officer sent to my home called in.

“We searched Evan Finch's residence and found poison of the same type that was in the victim's stomach. The bottle was already empty.”

“Talk. Why is there poison in your home? And where did the empty bottle's contents go?”

What?

I staggered. Why would there be poison in my house?

Before I could deny it, the officer pressed me again. “That footage you took of the old man boarding the ambulance.”

“We found that his lips were already purple when he got on. He was showing signs of poisoning.”

“And we went back over the surveillance at the gate of Kent Lambert's complex and outside his building.”

“When Kent pulled the old man out of the vehicle, the old man had already lost consciousness, with blood at the corner of his mouth.”

“So by that point the old man may already have been dead from the poison.”

At that, Kent suddenly shouted. “I remember now. Before I drove off, Evan handed me a bottle of water. The nurses can testify to it!”

“Could there have been something wrong with that water?”

Thirty minutes later, the test results on the water came back. The liquid contained a large amount of a hallucinogenic drug that would cause hallucinations once ingested.

The officer's face went hard as he looked at me. “So you're the one who spiked the water, right?”

“We now have grounds to suspect that you poisoned the old man before he ever got into the ambulance.”

“Then you got the driver to drink the hallucinogen, made him force his coworker off the vehicle partway, and hauled Old Mr. Mason's body to your own home.”

“The surveillance outside the driver's building shows that when he carried the old man over his shoulder, the old man was already unconscious.”

“So the one who poisoned the old man may not have been Kent Lambert at all. It was you, Evan.”

“Answer the officer's question. The old man's lips were purple when he boarded the ambulance, showing signs of poisoning. Kent, had you already administered the poison?”

“I did not!”

“And that bottle of water was given to me by Stanley's father!”

I denied it fast, but a familiar voice rang out from the doorway.

“Evan! You wouldn't listen to me. You just had to keep going at Stanley.”

“I told you not to hurt Old Mr. Mason, and you went and did something this stupid anyway!”

At the door, I watched my wife walk slowly inside.

“Evan, just come clean already.”

She gave me no chance to speak and turned straight to the officer. “Officer, it really was my husband who did the poisoning. Please, arrest him right away.”

A jolt shot up my spine. My eyes moved between my wife and Stanley, and all at once I understood the truth of it.

I kept my voice even as I looked at the officer. “You're welcome to arrest me. But only on one condition: that Old Mr. Mason was never poisoned at all, and certainly isn't dead.”

“What? Old Mr. Mason isn't dead?”