But these details didn’t interest them.
What did show up made Andy Candy want to shout out loud, but that would have aroused everyone in the library.
She’d turned toward Moth and seen that he was rigid, ramrod-straight, next to her. His face had paled a little and she saw his fingers quivering above the keyboard of his laptop.
“What are the odds…” he’d whispered so softly she could barely hear him, as he turned the computer toward her and pointed, “that out of fourteen names, four are already dead?”
Low, she thought. Impossibly low. Improbably, incredibly, unbelievably low. Andy Candy stifled her desire to scream and wondered if it should be: homicidally low.
17
A Third Conversation
Jeremy Hogan had spread a deadly array of weaponry on the dining room table: shotgun, handgun, boxes of ammunition, the fireplace poker, a selection of kitchen carving knives, a six-battery black steel flashlight that he thought could effectively double as a club, and a ceremonial replica of a Civil War-era cavalryman’s sword that he’d been given after a speech fifteen years earlier at a military college in Vermont. His subject that day had been post-traumatic stress disorders in victims of crime. He wished he could remember what he’d said. He wasn’t sure whether the sword was sharp enough to actually penetrate skin, although it might be intimidating if he waved it around.
He practiced loading and unloading the revolver, and then the shotgun. He wasn’t quick, sometimes fumbling the rounds, and he feared he would shoot himself in the foot or leg. When he ejected one live cartridge from the 12-gauge’s magazine, it fell to the floor and rolled underneath an antique sideboard. It took him a few minutes to extricate it, finally using the ceremonial sword, still in its tasseled scabbard, to reach to the back. The cartridge and the sword came up covered with dust.
Mid-morning, he constructed a makeshift target, stuffing an old shirt with rags, frayed towels, and rolled-up newspaper. He added some kindling wood from the fireplace to give the target heft and retrieved a broken dining room chair from the attic to prop it all up. He took the target outdoors, across his flagstone patio, into the yard that led to thick deer-infested forest and onetime farmers’ fields that stretched behind his house. It was not lost on him that he was putting the chair in the middle of the landscape his dead wife had once loved to paint in vibrant watercolors.
After retrieving the weapons from inside, he paced off a ten-yard distance and squared up. Handgun first. He raised the weapon, realized he’d forgotten his earplugs on the table inside, put the gun down on the damp grass (hoping the moisture wouldn’t harm it), trotted back inside and fitted the ear protection, then went back out again and assumed the firing stance the gun store owner had demonstrated. He thought he got it right. Two hands on the weapon, feet slightly apart. Knees slightly flexed. Weight on the balls of his feet. He bounced a little, trying to find the right position, one he’d be comfortable in. The gun store owner had emphasized this.
Deep breath. Odd thought: How can I be comfortable if I’m facing someone who wants to kill me?
He fired three rounds.
All missed.
Maybe this is too great a distance, he considered. He moved several yards closer. I mean, isn’t he likely to be only a few feet away? Or maybe not. What sort of Wild West shoot-out do you think is going to happen?
Jeremy pursed his lips together, held his breath again, took significantly more careful aim, and fired the remaining three rounds. The gun jumped and bucked in his hand like an electric current, but this time he managed to control it a little better.
One shot winged the shirt collar, one missed, and the third smashed into the center, knocking the target over.
Good enough, he told himself, knowing that this was a lie.
He set the Magnum down, walked over, and lifted the target back into position, then returned to his ten-yard firing spot. Again mimicking the position he’d been shown the day before, he snugged the shotgun to his shoulder and fired.
The blast staggered him slightly, but he saw the target absorb the brunt of the shot. The shirt shredded, some of the kindling and paper flew in the air, and the whole thing toppled backward and sideways.
Jeremy lowered the weapon.
“Not bad,” he said. “I do believe I’m becoming dangerous.”
The shotgun is better. Don’t need to be nearly so precise.
He worked the plugs out of his ears and felt a tingling in his shoulder. For a moment, he was confused, because the force of the shotgun’s explosion seemed to be echoing, and then he realized that the phone was ringing inside his house, muffled but insistent. Clutching his weapons, he hurried inside to the kitchen.
As before, the caller ID was blank.
I know who it is.
He did not pick it up. He simply stared at the receiver, as if he could see the ringing.
It went silent.
I know who it is.
The phone rang again.
Jeremy reached for the receiver, but stopped his hand. One ring. Two rings. Three.
Most routine, ordinary callers would give up. Leave a message. Telephone solicitors don’t allow more than four or five rings before they irritatingly decide to try later.
Six rings. Seven. Eight.
When I was a child, when people had a telephone on the wall-like I do in the kitchen, or sitting on the desk; like I do upstairs-one had telephone manners. Before auto- answering machines and cell phones with an “ignore” button and video conferencing, before cloud data storage technology and all the other modern things we take for granted, it was considered polite to let the phone ring ten times before hanging up. No longer. Now people get frustrated after three or four.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
The phone kept ringing.
Jeremy smiled. I just learned something. He’s very patient.
But then, a second, chilling thought: He knows I’m here?
How? He can’t.
Impossible.
No, not impossible.
He picked it up. Thirteeenth ring. Was that bad luck?
“Whose fault is it?”
He’d expected that question. Jeremy took a deep breath, mustered years of knowledge, and replied rapidly.
“It’s my fault, of course. Whatever it is. Disagreeing with you on this point makes no sense. Not any longer. So… Any chance that by conceding your position, apologizing profusely, offering up some sort of mea culpa in a public forum, maybe donating a large sum to your favorite charity, I can avoid being murdered?”
His own question-a little rushed, spoken like an academic lecturer-was almost flippant, maybe even a little ridiculous. He’d thought hard about the right tone. Every decision he made was a gamble. Would sounding unafraid make his killer act precipitously? Would he live longer, be able to find a way to protect himself, if he sounded cowed, terrified? Contradictions flooded him. Which would draw out the process of murder? What would buy him the time he needed?
Clutching the phone tightly, Jeremy raced through options. Every word he spoke was a decision.
An actor on the stage becomes one person or another, wears his emotions outwardly as he speaks his lines. Method acting. Become what you have to portray.
He breathed in sharply.
What do the poker players say? All in.