“That’s easy,” she said. There was so much hysteria circling around her, reaching out and seizing some to parcel onto a phone call to a police dispatcher seemed simple.
But just hearing her own voice seemed to help her regain some control over her racing emotions. She had the odd thought, So that’s what it’s like to see someone murdered.
She punched the numbers on her phone, all the time thinking she was caught up in some strange out-of-body experience. Moth pushed past her, walking out the front door to the rental car. Then the clipped dispatcher’s voice came on the line, and she heard herself giving an address, although it seemed like it was someone else, someone reliable and unfazed, summoning the police.
“When you ran outside, did you see anyone or anything?”
Moth had hesitated before shaking his head. He asked himself the same question and realized “Nothing” was the only answer. Or maybe, “Nothing out of the ordinary.” Except that a 180-grain deer slug had exploded in the doctor’s head seconds earlier. That wasn’t ordinary. But Moth realized that nothing in his life any longer was ordinary. He hoped Andy Candy recognized the same.
“No. I’m sorry. Nothing.”
The detective wrote down every word Moth uttered.
There were other questions for both of them. Routine questions, like, “What flights were you on?” and “Did the doctor say anything before being shot?” There were photos taken and crime scene technicians called, just as there had been when his uncle was killed. There was some commotion when a detective walking the bullet path came across the murdered deer and someone said “Hunting accident,” which didn’t seem totally convincing-though Moth and Andy Candy heard it repeated several times. There was a lot of “How do I get in touch with you?” exchanges of e-mail and cell phone numbers. Neither Moth nor Andy Candy could tell exactly what the policemen thought about the psychiatrist’s death, even when they asked the obvious question:
“Do you know of anyone who wanted to kill the doctor?”
And both replied:
“No.”
They didn’t have to agree beforehand about this lie. It just came naturally.
21
The scream bothered him immensely.
It was out of place and unexpected.
Little in any of his killings had gone wrong. Then-as he replayed the scream in his memory-it transformed systematically into a concern. And concern quickly changed into a completely new consideration that went beyond simple curiosity, into something akin to worry, which was a feeling utterly alien to him. And this worry deepened with each passing moment. It made him feel decidedly strange, almost light-headed, his pulse accelerating, and his skin tingling, as if he was getting a small electric shock. These were all new sensations in the process of murder, and he didn’t like any of them.
There should have been silence.
Silence and death. That was how I’d planned it.
Maybe some rustling sounds from tree branches as I retreated. That’s all.
Who screamed?
Who was in that house?
No one was supposed to be there.
Cleaning lady? No. Neighbor? No. Cable repairman? No.
I should have gone back.
Student #5 canceled his next-day flight to Key West, where he’d intended to vacation, leisurely drinking a Cuba libre at the bar at Louie’s Backyard restaurant as he’d plotted out the remaining, nonlethal phase of his life. He had lately been indulging in pleasant fantasies-perhaps finding a job in the therapeutic community to take advantage of all his long-dormant psychological expertise. Maybe he’d work in a halfway home for former patients, or answer phones at a suicide prevention line. He didn’t need to make money. He needed to fill his remaining life with the deep satisfactions he’d expected when he’d first gone to medical school so many years earlier.
He’d even considered reconnecting with what relatives he had left-scattered cousins who believed him dead. He liked to envision the shock and surprise as news traveled around the family: He’s alive! He would be like one of those Japanese soldiers discovered on abandoned Pacific Ocean islands, still thinking the war was being fought thirty, forty years later, unable to bring themselves to surrender, being greeted as heroes with parades and medals when they returned in confusion to their strange and modern homeland. Possibilities had seemed endless. He could regain his name, his identity, and more critically, his potential-and no one would ever know how he’d achieved this.
It should have been like being young again.
Suddenly the new history that he’d thought was magically going to be delivered to him by freeing himself from his old history was threatened.
Rage instantly filled him.
Son of a bitch. Goddamn son of a bitch. A goddamn scream.
He had already spent some hours gathering all the elements of Jeremy Hogan’s murder together and disposing of them alclass="underline" Computer hard drives and handwritten notes. Pictures, maps, schedules, routes. Weapons. Ammunition. Electronic voice-masking devices and throwaway cell phones. All the detailed information, personal history, and daily routines that he’d used preparing for and executing the psychiatrist’s death. He had hoped that when he’d destroyed each link to the murder, he could finally start in on a new life.
God damn it to hell. Wasted time.
He told himself to be rational and begin investigating that scream, but this admonition made his breathing even tighter.
Late at night, in his New York apartment, Student #5 forced himself to once again turn to his computer. It took him a few minutes to install a brand-new hard drive, time he spent cursing wildly.
His first visit was to the website for the Trenton Times, the largest local paper in the nearest city. It carried only a single story: Retired Doctor Killed in Apparent Hunting Accident.
He read the half-dozen paragraphs thinking, That’s right, that’s exactly right-but the story didn’t contain enough detail to diminish his nervousness. Indeed, the article quickly degenerated into a listing of Jeremy Hogan’s professional accomplishments beneath a single police lieutenant’s quotation: “There are indications that the doctor might have been a victim of an out-of-season hunting mishap.”
“Mishap,” he blurted out loud, on the edge of outrage. “Mishap?” He was staring at his computer screen and wanted to punch it. “No shit.”
Student #5 looked up and out his window. Manhattan night’s glow greeted him. He could hear traffic out on the streets, the usual combination of cars, trucks, horns sounding, and occasional sirens. Everything was just as it should be and yet, something seemed decidedly wrong. All the sounds that should have reassured him in their normalcy did no such thing.
Like any scientist reviewing data from his latest experiment, Student #5 went back over every aspect of the kill. Even more than some of his others, this one had seemed to be perfect-right down to the final bit of conversation, the hesitation before he’d caressed the trigger. He recalled the solid pressure against his shoulder and the small image he’d seen through the scope. He’d been 100 percent certain that Jeremy Hogan had experienced the absolutely necessary moment of fear and recognition and known at the very end he was about to die and who it was that was doing his killing-even if he didn’t remember the name. Just a heart-stopping second or two for Hogan to flood with terrible and completely deserved memories, feel terror in his stomach, and realize he was lost despite every precaution he’d taken. And then, deliciously, as all these things flooded him, his brain exploded.