The rules were always simple. Her parents had told Martin a thousand times. He was never to cross the road. And she knew the rules too. She was never to park across the road and wait for him there; she either parked on his side of the road, or she walked over. Her parents reminded her time and time again, but the problem when people remind you so often is that you start to ignore it. The words go in, but they don’t settle anywhere. The other problem was she was late. Only by two minutes. How many times has she remembered the route she took to his school that day? A red light there that could have been green. A person towing a trailer ahead of her at twenty-five instead of thirty miles an hour. A pedestrian crossing with people taking their time to cross it. It all added up, and in the end it came to two minutes. It all added up the same way all the ages in the graveyard add up and divide to get an average of sixty-two. Just simple mathematics combining to end a life.
She’d pulled up outside the school two minutes later than she should have. She’d opened her car door two minutes after she should have opened it. And Martin had seen her from across the road. It all came down to mathematics, basic physics, and human dynamics. Martin getting excited. Martin running over the road to meet her while she was getting out of her car. Martin getting in the way of an object moving much faster than he was, weighing much more than he did. She’d run to him and knelt by his side. He was alive, but that had changed two days later. She’d let her brother down when he’d needed her most.
She won’t let Joe down. He needs her. He needs somebody to look out for him, to protect him from whatever madness he’s got himself involved in.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The walk home takes me through streets that smell like wet dog. My clothes stick to me, my underwear keeps on bunching up into my ass. When I get home, I bury the murder weapon and the gloves in the yard. I make my way upstairs, pulling my keys from my pocket to. .
For fuck’s sake!
On the floor directly outside my apartment door is Pickle. Or Jehovah. It’s too damn difficult to tell. I spin around, looking for the fluffy bastard that did this, but it’s gone. I crouch down, and touch my dead fish with my finger. It feels rubbery.
I find an evidence bag in the kitchen. I’m bending over the fish when I hear the meowing. I look up, and at the end of the hall is the Goddamn cat. On the floor ahead of it is the other goldfish. Slowly the cat reaches forward with its paw, pushes the fish a few inches toward me, then pulls its paw back. He tilts his head, then meows at me. I take a knife from my briefcase, which is still by the door. Keeping his eyes on me, the cat reaches forward and pushes the fish even further toward me. Then it sits. What the hell is it trying to do? I get hold of the biggest knife I can find.
“Come on, pussycat. Come on.”
It starts toward me, covers half the distance, stops, turns back toward the fish, stops, then turns back toward me. It meows. I tighten my grip on the knife. Then it moves slowly back to the fish, picks it up softly between its teeth, and carries it toward me. It stops a few feet away, lowers the fish to the floor, then takes a few steps back. Once again it meows. I get on my hands and knees so I can slowly crawl forward. I keep the blade of the knife ahead of me.
And then I understand what it’s doing. It’s offering my fish back to me. It meows again, but this time it is more of a whispering whine.
“There’s a good boy,” I say in my friendly voice, happy to lull it into believing I no longer have any urge to see it skinned.
“Come on, fella. I’m not going to kill you, boy. I’m not going to break your neck.”
It meows and comes another few steps closer. I keep moving toward it. Closer now. Less than an arm’s length away. Closer still. .
We reach each other, and it pushes its head down and head-butts my fist.
Then the bastard starts purring.
And me? What do I do?
I start petting the damn thing. I’m tickling it beneath its chin as if it’s just the greatest little cat in the world.
I look to the floor where my two dead goldfish are. I’m going to have to bury them again. I tighten the grip on my knife, then use the tip of it to start scratching the top of the cat’s head. It tilts its face sideways to get a better scratching position for itself.
All I have to do is thrust down, and this little cat that I saved will. .
Saved. Now that’s the key word. I saved this thing, I spent money on it, I brought it into my home, it repaid me by killing my goldfish, and after all of this I’m saving it again. Saving it by not killing it. I put the knife away.
Under the observing eyes of the cat, I put the two goldfish into an evidence bag. I will bury them later.
Back inside I sit down on the sofa. The cat jumps onto my knee and I keep petting it. After a few minutes it falls asleep.
Before I go to bed, I stare at the coffee table and wonder if I will buy any more fish. Maybe when all of this is over. Without them, I feel like a piece of my life is missing. I feel empty. Though not as empty as I felt yesterday.
When I wake the next morning, I’m sweating and the cat’s on the end of my bed. I’ve had another dream. I can remember Melissa. We were together somewhere, I think a beach or an island, and I realized I’d formed a misconception about our violent relationship. Rather than killing her, I was lying with her, both of us enjoying the sand, the sound of the sea, and the sun. It was as though we were having a good time.
A nightmare.
The smell of the sea comes with me from the dream and lingers in the room for a few minutes. I get away from it by climbing into the shower. I wash away the night, the tackiness, and the dregs of the dream. When I come out, the cat’s sitting on the kitchen floor cleaning itself. I find something in the fridge that looks like meat and the cat seems happy enough to believe it.
Before leaving for work, and after making myself some toast, I check through the briefcase and study my assortment of tools. More importantly I check to make sure the Glock I took from Calhoun is fully loaded. It is. All fifteen rounds ready to react to the tip of my finger pulling in the mechanical trigger. The first cartridge ready to be introduced to the chamber, ready to be struck by the firing pin, the powder inside ready to be ignited. The gas, the pressure, the explosion.
The power.
It takes less than a quarter of a second for the trigger finger to obey the command of the shooter. Milliseconds later, the firing pin is hitting. For the whole cycle to progress from nerve impulse to firing of the cartridge, I’m looking at a third of a second. The bullet travels at nearly a thousand feet per second. The target can be dead in less than a second.
I place the gun back in the briefcase. Let the cat out of my apartment. Go to work.
The place is a madhouse.
I step into a flurry of detectives and officers. The buzz is much bigger than any of the previous days. The men have their sleeves rolled up, their ties loosened. Conversations are spilling from every corner, every cubicle, every office. Excitement hangs in the air like a half-deflated balloon. I don’t hear any full conversations as I make my way through the clusters of people to my office, but I pick up on several snippets.
“How long have you known him?”
“I heard his son killed himself.”
“Has anybody checked his hotel?”
“Where else can he be staying?”
“How many do you think he’s killed?”