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threat,” he countered.
     
    “How
could a little old lady have been a threat to you?”
     
    “I
think you’ve figured that out,” he said.
     
    “She
was going to accuse you of malpractice, wasn’t she?  Of some mistake you made
that cost your patient his life.”
    “Maybe
you don’t have it figured out, after all,” he said, eyebrows rising slightly. 
“I guess you’re not as good at unraveling mysteries as everyone says you are.”
     
    “Why
don’t you explain it to me?” she suggested, desperate to keep him talking.
     
    “No,
I don’t think so.”
     
    “Can
you at least put the gun down, and we can talk?”
     
    “I
can’t do that,” he answered.  “This thing has gone too far.”
     
    Without
taking her eyes off Banner or the weapon in his hand, Heather shifted her
weight to the foot that was closest to the door.
     
    “I
wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Banner said.  “In Vietnam, I got used to
hitting moving targets.  Even with a handgun, I could hit you dead center from
a hundred yards away.”
     
    “You
served in Vietnam?” she asked, scrambling for something, anything, to say in
order to keep him talking.
     
    He
went on as if he hadn’t heard her.  “Of course, most of my targets in ’Nam were
much farther away than that.  Fifteen hundred yards.  Two thousand.  My longest
confirmed kill was at 2,150 yards.”
     
    A
sniper?  He’d been a sniper in Vietnam?  Oh, dear God, she was doomed.
     
    “You
should know,” she began, trying to keep her voice steady, “that someone is
meeting me here.  He should be here any second.”  She strained to hear even the
faintest crunch of car tires on gravel.  But she heard nothing.
     
    “Your
cop boyfriend is busy on another case,” Banner said.  “You’re bluffing.”
     
    “I’m
not bluffing,” she said, trying to sound confident.  It was hard, with her
heart pounding a staccato rhythm in her chest.  “He should be here any time.”
     
    “If
you’re talking about William, he won’t be coming to rescue you, either.  He and
his wife and their children are meeting with the minister who is going to
preside over the funeral.  Don’t you think I checked out the whereabouts of the
only person who would have a right to be here before I came?”
     
    “I’m
sure you did,” she said.  “But you don’t have to kill me.  You really don’t. 
Nobody’s going to believe the word of a volunteer over the word of the Chief of
Internal Medicine.  Your patient was close to death, anyway.  Even if Verna had
some sort of records here of what she thought, whatever she believed your
mistake was, no one would take her word over yours.”
     
    Heather
knew she was babbling.  Repeating herself.  But it was all she could think of
to do.  Banner’s eyes were fixed on her, his expression alert but not
flustered.  Calm.  Eerily calm.
     
    “You
really don’t get it, do you?” he said.  “Verna wasn’t going to accuse me of
making a mistake.”
     
    “But
you said she was going to accuse you of malpractice,” Heather protested.
     
    A
scornful smile lifted one corner of his mouth.  But he said nothing, instead
watching her intently.
     
    And
in a blinding flash of insight, she realized what he meant.  Verna wasn’t going
to accuse him of making a mistake that caused his patient’s death.  She was
going to accuse him of causing the death on purpose .
     
    Oh,
dear God.
     
    “You
killed him on purpose,” she whispered.
    “I
‘released him from his suffering,’” he corrected.  “Him, and a few others.  So
now you understand.  I assume you also understand why I have to kill you.”
     
    “But
you don’t,” she protested.  “There’s no way I could prove it.  You could walk
out of here scot-free.”
     
    “No,”
he said.  “It’s too late for that.”
     
    She
made one last-ditch effort.  “Any second, now,” she said, “William will be
here, and—”
     
    Banner
interrupted her.