He looked up only when he heard the car come down his drive.
“That’s them. Got to be,” he said out loud.
Jeremy glanced out the window and saw a young couple exit the nondescript rental car.
He smiled. “She’s beautiful,” he whispered. It had been a long time since he entertained a young woman as striking as the one hesitating in his driveway. He had the odd thought that the young woman was far too pretty to talk about murder.
Grabbing the yellow legal pad, he jumped up and hustled to the front door.
Neither Andy Candy nor Moth knew what to expect when the door swung open. They saw a tall, lanky, white-haired man, clearly both pleased and nervous as they greeted one another.
“Timothy, Andrea, delighted to meet you, though I fear the circumstances are problematic,” Jeremy Hogan said rapidly. With a small wave, he ushered them into the house. There was a small, awkward moment.
“This seems very nice,” Andy Candy said, just being polite.
“Lonely and isolated, alas,” Jeremy replied. “All alone now.” He looked over at Moth, who shifted, unsettled.
“I suppose we should get right to it,” the doctor continued. He held up his legal pad, filled with notes. “Been trying to get organized, so we’d have a place to begin. Sorry it all seems so confusing. Let’s go into the living room and sit.” Before they could agree, the phone rang.
Jeremy stopped. The corner of his mouth twitched.
“He’s called me,” Jeremy said slowly. “Several times. But I don’t think he will call again. Our last conversation…”
His voice faded, as the phone continued to ring.
The old psychiatrist turned to the young couple.
“Odd,” he said. “Ironic? The phone is either a killer or some damn fund-raiser for yet another worthy cause.”
He pushed his notes to Andy Candy.
“Wait here,” he said, leaving them in the entry.
They watched as he walked into the kitchen and stared at the caller ID on the phone. It read Anonymous. His first instinct was to ignore it, but instead he picked up the phone.
Student #5 sighted down the rifle barrel.
He heard Jeremy’s voice: “Yes?”
Now there was no more need to conceal his voice with an electronic scrambler. He wanted the doctor to hear the real him.
“Now, Doctor, listen very carefully,” he said slowly.
Jeremy gasped. Surprised. He felt frozen in position.
In the crosshairs of the scope, Student #5 could see Jeremy’s back. He adjusted slightly, keeping the phone to his ear, finger caressing the trigger.
“A history lesson. Just for you.” As he’d expected, Jeremy didn’t reply. “A couple of decades ago, four students came to you and wanted your help in getting the fifth member of their study group dismissed from medical school because they thought he was dangerously crazy and threatening their careers. They wanted to sacrifice him so they could get ahead. You did their bidding. You were the enabler. The facilitator. I was the person who suffered. It cost me everything. What do you think it should cost you?”
Jeremy stammered. His words were misshapen. Incomprehensible. The only word that he was able to choke out that made any sense was, “But…”
“The cost, Doctor?”
Student #5 knew Jeremy would not respond.
He had thought hard about what he would say. Ending with that question had a specific design: It would hold the doctor in position, confused, hesitant.
“That’s a fine blue shirt you’re wearing, Doctor.”
“What?” Jeremy asked.
A poor choice for a final word, Student #5 thought.
He dropped the cell phone to the soft earth at his feet, steadied his left hand against the rifle stock.
He took a single breath, held it, and gently pulled the trigger.
Familiar solid recoil.
Red mist.
The immediate death thought: All these years and now I’m free.
The only thing that surprised him was the sudden piercing scream that followed. There should have been deep silence marred only by the fading echo of the rifle’s report. This unexpected noise troubled him-but he still had the internal discipline to pick up the cell phone, make a quick check of his surroundings for any telltale evidence he might have left behind, and start his rapid retreat through the darkening woods. His first few strides were accompanied with the belief: It’s over. It’s over. Then each subsequent step was marked by the whispered Bob Dylan song lyric to carry him away: It’s all over now, Baby Blue.
And then a last word that fed his fast pace: Finally.
PART TWO: Who’s the Cat? Who’s the Mouse?
20
Moth lied.
Sort of. What he found was a way of answering questions that created an impression of truth while obscuring the larger falsehood. He was surprised at how easy this was for him. So much of maintaining sobriety stemmed from being aboveboard, he was a little frightened at how easily dishonesty fell from his lips.
The doctor’s home was suddenly crawling with cops and EMT personnel. Moth had been taken into one room, while Andy Candy was put in another so they could be questioned separately. From where he was standing, he could no longer see the doctor’s body.
“So why were you here, again?” the detective asked.
“My uncle passed away recently-a suicide down in Miami,” Moth answered. “We were very close. Doctor Hogan was one of his important teachers in medical school. I’m trying to gain some understanding for the reasons behind my uncle’s death and I was in contact with the doctor the other day. He invited me to come speak with him. I gather he felt he was too old to travel and whatever he was going to say wasn’t appropriate for a telephone conversation.”
“Did he say anything about any sort of threats…?” the detective persisted.
“Well,” Moth said hesitantly, “we intended to talk about my loss-and I believe he thought he might be able to help me come to grips with it. He was a prominent psychiatrist, after all. Maybe he was just being polite. Maybe he was lonely because he was living here all alone, and he wanted visitors. I didn’t ask.”
Moth looked at the detective. Nothing in the way the man was standing, sounding, questioning made Moth think, This is the moment to tell this person everything.
“This is a long way to travel for a single conversation.”
“My uncle was really important for me. And I got a cheap fare.”
Andy Candy lied, too.
It left an odd taste in her mouth, as if her fictions were sour foods, but at the same time it quickened her pulse, because with every falsehood she felt she was surging into an adventure.
“And exactly where were you standing when you heard the shot?” The detective, a young woman only a half-dozen years older than Andy Candy, affected a tough-gal, no-nonsense tone, wielding her notepad and pen with the same authority as she might the weapon strapped to her waist.
Andy Candy hesitated, pointing first, then actually walking to the position she’d occupied when Doctor Hogan died. “Right here. Then here after we heard the…” She didn’t finish this statement instead, continuing instead with, “… Then I went into the kitchen.” She breathed in hard and imagined it was a little like rewinding a tape recording, because she replayed in her mind’s eye what she had seen and heard.
Gunshot.
Distant. Muffled. Barely registered: What was that?
Split second.
Look up.
Glass fracturing.
Then: a sight that was as loud as any noise-the back of the doctor’s head exploding in a red cascade of brains and blood.