The only answer lay in the last act.
He returned to the busy task of preparing. Duffel bag. Camouflage clothing, including a carefully constructed ghillie suit that he thought rivaled those he’d seen professional soldiers create. Heavy boots with a distinctive waffle tread, a complete size too small-he’d cut extra space in the toes. Backpack with emergency headlamp, entrenching tool, water bottle, and PowerBar. All these items had been transported from his trailer in Western Massachusetts-where they didn’t attract attention the same way they would in New York City.
Student #5 paused and picked up a hand-drawn map of the interior of Jeremy Hogan’s house, along with an hour-by-hour schedule of the doctor’s daily routine. He wondered: Does he know he goes to the bathroom at the same time every morning? Does he realize he sits in the same chair in the living room to read or watch the few television shows he likes? British comedy-dramas on PBS, naturally. He also sits in the same position at his desk, and in the same place at the dining room table when he eats his microwaved dinner. Does he see that? Does he have any idea how regular his routines are? If he did, he might be able to save his life. But he doesn’t.
Each routine was a possible killing moment. Student #5 had considered each moment from this perspective.
Gutting knife. Disposable cell phone. He double-checked the weather report, examined the GPS track he’d established, and for the third time went over the time the sun set in the West and calculated how many meager minutes of light he would have between death and total darkness.
Like any good hunter, he thought.
He used an old deer-jacking, out-of-season trick: a small salt lick placed a week earlier in a tiny forest clearing. He was deep in a wooded area, a little over a mile from Jeremy Hogan’s home through rough but manageable territory. Though it was early in the afternoon, damp cold seeped into his clothing, but he knew that once he started moving he would warm rapidly. He remained motionless, downwind from the salt lick, concealed by camouflage, rifle snugged up against his cheek, barrel resting on deadfall to steady his shot. From time to time he would fiddle with the adjustment screws on his scope, making sure the image was clear and the crosshairs were perfectly aligned.
He was lucky this day. Only ninety minutes had passed when he caught the first movement through the thick branches.
Shifting his weight ever so slightly, he readied himself.
Solitary doe.
He smiled. Perfect.
The deer moved cautiously into the open space, lifting its head to pluck scent or sound from its world, alert to potential threats, but unaware that Student #5 was drawing a bead.
Death memories distracted him and he forced himself to concentrate on the deer moving tentatively toward the salt lick.
“I want to help you,” Ed Warner had said.
“You missed your chance. I needed help when we were young. Not now.”
“No,” the psychiatrist had persisted, voice a little unsteady with tension, “it’s never too late.”
“Tell me, Ed,” Student #5 had persisted, “how will you explain this? What will it do to your practice when the world knows that you couldn’t even prevent an old friend from killing himself right at your feet?”
A wonderful lie he’d designed.
He had stood up then, his gun placed up against his temple, pre-suicide. It was persuasive theater. Student #5 knew that Ed Warner would read all the body language, hear the hoarse tension in his voice, and the picture he would create in his mind was that his onetime classmate meant to kill himself in front of him right at that moment, just as he’d promised. Shakespearean drama. Or maybe Tennessee Williams. Student #5 had moved around the side of the desk, closing in on his target. He had rehearsed the necessary movements a thousand times: finger on trigger, bent over slightly; then, suddenly, before Warner could recognize what was truly happening, shove the gun directly against the psychiatrist’s temple.
Head shot.
Squeeze.
And fire.
He fixed the crosshairs on the deer’s chest. He imagined he could see it rising and falling with each hesitant breath. It was wary. Afraid. It had every right to be so.
Heart shot.
Squeeze.
And fire.
The deer’s carcass was still warm, and a small trickle of blood dripped down his jacket. Sixty pounds, he thought. Hard. Not impossible. You trained for this moment.
Before slinging the body over his shoulders, Student #5 had used a small folding entrenching tool to cover up the remains of the salt lick. Then, following a trail through the woods that he’d trudged several practice times carrying a heavy backpack to simulate a dead deer, he set out for Jeremy Hogan’s house. Light was just beginning to shallow up and flatten out, but he believed he had enough left. It would be close, but manageable.
Killing was like that, he reminded himself. It was never exactly as precise as one hoped for nor as sloppy as one feared.
His slung rifle bounced uncomfortably against his backside as he maneuvered through thickets and deadfall. He wished he could’ve brought a machete to clear some of the tangled bushes away, but he didn’t want to leave an obvious path through the woods that some crime scene expert might identify. He knew he was leaving tracks, but the mis-sized boots-cramped and painful as they might be-created imprints that seemed haphazard and erratic. This was important.
The sky above was sullen gray, thick with clouds and the threat of cold rain. This was good. Rain would help cover any signs of his presence.
A thorn tugged at his pants leg.
He was breathing hard. Exertion. Weight. Excitement. Anticipation. He told himself to slow down, be careful. He was getting closer.
When Student #5 spotted the location he’d selected, he forced himself to hesitate with every step. No abrupt, attention-seizing motion.
Stealthily, he moved to the very tree line.
He kept his eyes on Jeremy Hogan’s home, perhaps forty yards of ill-kept lawn from the edge of the forest.
He’s there. He’s inside. He’s waiting, but he doesn’t know how close he is.
Student #5 lowered the deer carcass from his shoulders just at the last tree before civilization and grass took over.
The body thumped against the soft ground.
He made sure that the carcass appeared as it did when he’d first shot it. A collapsed-in-death deer. Not a carefully arranged deer.
Crablike, crouched to lower his profile, he backed away from the deer shape, carefully maintaining his sight line, letting the scrub brush and foliage hide him. Perhaps twenty yards back into the forest he stopped at an old oak tree. Right at his shoulder height there was a notch where a branch had broken off. It formed the perfect shooting position.
The forest in front of him created a tunnel-like window straight to the house. No stray limbs that might deflect his shot ever so slightly and throw it off. The dead deer on the ground was directly in the path his bullet would travel.
He lifted the rifle and eyed down the scope.
He hesitated, inwardly asked himself:
What will the cops see?
A simple answer:
A murder that isn’t a murder at all.
Student #5 reached for his throwaway phone.
He was so focused that he did not hear the car pulling to the front of the house, and from where he was poised he could not see it.
Jeremy Hogan was at his desk, feverishly writing notes on a yellow legal pad. Every snatch of conversation, every impression, anything that might help discover who Mister Who’s at Fault might be. He scrawled words across the page, disorganized and hurried and lacking all the scientific precision he’d developed over the years. He had no idea what might help him, so every random thought and observation flooded the pages.