He lifted his mother’s feet off his legs and stood up. He slipped off his camouflage jacket and hung it on a hook behind the front door. Jessie noted the shoulder holster and revolver without comment. Her own philosophy was to make sure you had a gun within reaching distance of your fingers at all times.
He went to her bedroom at the end of the hall, where the twin bed was unmade. The gun safe was on the wall. He undid the combination lock and stored the handgun in a sleeve on the door. There were six others. The safe allowed room for more than a dozen rifles, too. It was full.
With the safe open and the hardware in front of him, Ross heard a knocking on the front door.
That was the moment he’d long dreaded. The knock on the door. He thought about the woman at the mall. The cop’s wife. It seemed impossible that she could have recognized him, or that they could have tracked him down so quickly. He was a phantom in Duluth. The only one who had ever come close was the black bastard at the newspaper who’d stumbled onto his practice field. He wasn’t a problem anymore.
Even so. Be prepared.
Another knock.
‘Ross,’ his mother called.
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not decent.’
Ross had no way of knowing if this was the moment. This might be the beginning of the end.
He left the safe open and crept to the doorway of the living room, where he could see windows facing the nighttime yard. No flashing lights. No cars on the street. Then fingernails tap-tapped on the glass, and he saw a girl’s face. Two girls. They called through the window to him.
‘Hey, hello!’
He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled.
Ross crossed to the front door and yanked it open. The girls jumped and giggled. They were taller than he was, both around sixteen or seventeen, probably sisters. Their hair was too long, their makeup too loud, their jeans too tight. He had no expression on his face, and he watched them catch their breath, smirk, roll their eyes, and whisper back and forth. They weren’t scared of him. They were laughing at him and could barely hide it. He felt a roaring in his head, his fury as calm as an ocean wave gathering force as it rolled toward shore.
‘Hi,’ the first girl said. She had red hair, cheap earrings. She twisted a curl around her fingers.
‘Hi,’ her sister echoed.
He said nothing at all. They were strangers, but he knew their type. These were the girls at school. These were the girls at the mall. These were the girls on television. They were all the same. They didn’t know who he was, but he wanted to shout at their painted faces: I AM GOD.
I am the Decider. I am the Bringer of Life and Death.
Kneel for your Judgment.
Unbidden, his fingers curled into fists, and his breath came faster.
‘Um,’ the first girl said.
‘We’re your neighbors across the street,’ the second girl added.
He didn’t know the neighbors, and they didn’t know him. I AM GOD. The girls peeked over his shoulder and saw Jessie on the sofa, her T-shirt riding up her stomach. They giggled again, as if looking down their noses at both of them.
Kneel.
‘Our dog’s missing,’ the first girl said.
‘Have you seen him?’ her sister asked.
He could barely hear his voice over the blood pulsing in his brain. ‘No.’
‘He’s a black Lab.’
‘We call him Ducks. He’s a hunting dog. Dad hunts ducks.’
Ross saw a tall silhouette in the house across the street. A man was at the window, peering out, keeping an eye on his girls. ‘I haven’t seen the dog.’
‘Well, if you do, could you call—’
He slammed the door in their faces. Behind the frame, he heard silence, then an explosion of laughter. Heels skipped on concrete. He closed his eyes and measured each breath, in, out, slowly, carefully. Count to ten. Relaxation washed over him. Your only real weapon is the clearness of your brain.
Ross sat down on the sofa again, and his mother presented her feet for his attention. He began to massage them again, but in no time, she gave an annoyed yelp as he squeezed too hard.
On television, two girls on a reality show discussed the penis size of a man who lived in the dormitory with them.
Disgusting.
‘Is that the dog who’s been pooping in our backyard?’ Jessie asked when the show went to a commercial.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s missing?’
‘I guess.’
Jessie’s face got a curious little look. ‘Did you take that dog along on one of your trips?’
‘No.’
‘I thought I heard barking when you went out.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘Oh. Well, whatever.’
Ross got up from the sofa. ‘I’m going to my room.’
‘Okay.’ She hugged him around the waist. ‘I told you that you were the best son ever, right?’
‘Yes.’
She wanted him to say she was the best mother in the world, but he didn’t do that.
He separated himself from her and headed to the hallway. His bedroom door was the first on the left. It was painted black, and he pulled out a key to unlock the deadbolt he’d installed. He went inside and shut the door behind him and locked it again.
It was the middle of the night when Jessie Klayman awoke on the sofa. Six empty beer cans were spilled across the table; the pyramid she’d built had toppled when she kicked it in her sleep. The TV was still on, and she used the remote control to switch it off. She stretched out her bare leg, fighting a cramp. Her head throbbed. When she stood up, she felt dizzy.
It was stupid to drink so much the day before a job. She hoped she could get in a few more hours of sleep before the alarm rang in the morning.
Jessie zigzagged to her bedroom, steadying herself on the wall.
As she passed Ross’s room, she saw a crack of light under the door. He was still awake. From inside, she heard what she usually did. Gunfire. Explosions. Screams. He was killing zombies or aliens or mutants or whatever else was in the silly games he liked to play. Sometimes he was up all night, fighting his wars.
17
Dan Erickson smelled blood.
Stride hadn’t known the new St. Louis County attorney for long, but he recognized Dan’s pattern. When they were close to making an arrest on a major case, Dan began taking a more personal role in the investigation, nudging the police aside and inserting himself into the news. Like most politicians, he had a radar for cameras.
Dan went to the judge personally to get the search warrant approved for Janine’s condo above Michigan Street. He also fast-tracked an immunity deal for Melvin Wiley to get the private detective talking about his surveillance of Janine Snow and Nathan Skinner. Stride wouldn’t have let Wiley off the hook so readily. The detective was guilty of breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, and blackmail, and Stride would have preferred to get the information they wanted somewhere else.
Dan didn’t see it that way.
The three men stood in the hallway outside Janine’s condo while Stride’s team conducted a search inside. Wiley drank Perrier supplied by Dan and wiped his mustache after each swig from the green bottle. He wore a Twins baseball cap, a gray sweatshirt, and blue jeans. The man’s face bore a smug grin. He was enjoying his turn in the spotlight. There was nothing a private detective liked more than having the police and prosecutors come to him for information.