Nodding as he slowly crossed the room toward her, Proctor said, ‘I’m all that and worse. I have no scruples, no morals. One thing and one alone matters to me. My work, my science, my vision. I’m a sick and despicable man, but I have a mission and I will see it through.’
Although the past would surely remain immutable, as unchangeable as the iron hearts of madmen, Dylan found himself moving between his mother and Proctor, with the irrational hope that the gods of time would in this one instance relax their cruel laws and allow him to stop the bullet that had ten years ago killed Blair O’Conner.
‘When I took those diskettes off Jack’s body,’ Proctor said, ‘I didn’t know he’d been given two sets. I thought I had them all. I’ve only recently learned differently. The set I took from him – he had intended to turn those over to the authorities. The others must be here. If they’d been found, I’d already be in jail, wouldn’t I?’
‘I don’t have them,’ Blair insisted.
His back to his mother, Dylan faced Proctor and the muzzle of the handgun.
Proctor looked through him, unaware that a visitor through time stood in his way. ‘Five years is a long time. But in Jack’s line of work, tax-law considerations are damn important.’
Trembling with emotion, Dylan approached Proctor. Reached out. Put his right hand on the pistol.
‘The federal statute of limitations in tax matters,’ Proctor said, ‘is seven years.’
Dylan could feel the shape of the handgun. The chill of steel.
Clearly, Proctor failed to sense any pressure from Dylan’s hand upon the weapon. ‘Jack would have been in the habit of saving all his records at least that long. If ever they’re found, I’m through.’
When Dylan tried to close his hand around the pistol, to pull it from the killer’s grip, his fingers passed through the steel and folded into an empty fist.
‘You’re not a stupid woman, Mrs. O’Conner. You know about the seven years. You’ve kept his business records. I’m sure that’s where the diskettes will be. You might not have realized they existed. But now that you do… you’ll search them out, and you’ll go to the police with them. I wish this… this unpleasantness weren’t necessary.’
In a fit of useless fury, Dylan swung his clenched fist at Proctor – and saw it pass, with an ink-black comet’s tail, through the bastard’s face, without eliciting so much as a flinch.
‘I’d have preferred your assistance,’ Proctor said, ‘but I can conduct the search myself. I’d have had to kill you either way. This is a vicious, wicked thing I’m doing, a terrible thing, and if there were a Hell, I’d deserve eternal pain, eternal torture.’
‘Don’t hurt my son.’ Blair O’Conner spoke calmly, refusing to beg or cower before her murderer, aware that she couldn’t humiliate herself enough to win his mercy, making her argument for Shepherd’s life in a level voice, with logic instead of emotion. ‘He’s autistic. He doesn’t know who you are. He couldn’t be a witness against you even if he knew your name. He can barely communicate.’
Sluggish with dread, Dylan backed away from Proctor, toward his mother, desperately assuring himself that somehow he would have more influence on the trajectory of the bullet if he was nearer to her.
Proctor said, ‘I know about Shepherd. What a burden he must’ve been all these years.’
‘He’s never been a burden,’ Blair O’Conner said in a voice as tight as a garroting wire. ‘You don’t know anything.’
‘I’m unscrupulous and brutal when I need to be, but I’m not needlessly cruel.’ Proctor glanced at ten-year-old Shepherd. ‘He’s no threat to me.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Dylan’s mother said, for she had been standing with her back to Shepherd and had not realized until now that he’d abandoned his puzzle and that he waited just this side of the doorway to the dining room. ‘Don’t. Don’t do it in front of the boy. Don’t make him watch… this.’
‘He won’t be shattered, Mrs. O’Conner. It’ll roll right off him, don’t you think?’
‘No. Nothing rolls off him. He’s not you.’
‘After all, he’s got the emotional capacity of – what? – a toad?’ Proctor asked, disproving his contention that he was never needlessly cruel.