“Tonight,” Sandy said in a stage whisper.
The heads all started to nod.
“No delays,” said Fred. “We all know what happens when you delay doing something important.”
He wasn’t speaking about anything other than addiction.
“Tonight,” Moth said.
“All right,” Susan said. But what she thought was, I guess I’ll live a little longer. How much longer she couldn’t say. She forced herself to her feet, knowing she had to clean up some to meet with Moth. She stared at the two remaining lines of cocaine. Not nearly enough, she thought. Her cell phone was in her hand, and she scrolled through her contacts until she saw the name of her dealer. Meet Moth. Meet the dealer. She continued to eye the small amount she had left. She suddenly didn’t know whether she should leave the cocaine behind on the table, or leave the gun. Or perhaps she should take both with her. For a woman who prided herself on the ability to make wise decisions in a timely fashion, this doubt was as fierce as any desire.
On her lap were Jeremy Hogan’s handwritten notes.
Like any good scientist, he had tried to organize them in an easily understandable fashion, but Andy Candy wasn’t a doctor and so she both struggled and was fascinated. There were headings following each conversation the old psychiatrist had with his killer, and then key words scrawled on pages, along with abbreviated and truncated analyses. Some phrases had been underlined, others starred, and some circled. It seemed free-form, and she was reminded of reading the cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy in a course on Renaissance literature. School seemed suddenly very far away from her. She had an odd thought: These notes are like the poetry of death.
She saw that his initial conversation with the man who would kill him was brief. At the top of one page he had written “Initial Talk.” And below that he’d scribbled: Fault. Last account.
Beneath these entries his scrawl continued:
“Others”? Means I am part of a group.
Rule out: Killers I testified against. Individual acts.
Unless “group” includes prosecutors, arresting police, judges, juries, forensic specialists-everyone associated with criminal prosecution.
Very possible. How to check?
Rule out: Ex-colleagues.
Any longtime hatreds, academic slights that might prompt murder?
Unlikely. But possible.
Rule out: Students? Did you flunk someone?
Slight possibility. Go over school records?
Likelihood of finding person that way: Small.
Then he’d written:
Essentiaclass="underline" Assess what sort of killer he is.
That was the final entry on the first page.
On the second page of notes, Doctor Hogan’s handwriting seemed hurried, and Andy Candy guessed that he’d been writing as he spoke, cupping the phone in the crook between shoulder and ear, pen in hand.
She saw:
Educated. Not prison or street. Not self-educated.
Product of Ivy League-like Unabomber?
Controlled obsession. Manages his compulsions. Puts them to his use. Intriguing.
Not disoriented. No mood/affect influences in speech patterns. No colloquialisms. No accent.
Not paranoid. Organized.
She paused and considered a notation that had been both underlined and circled:
Sociopath. But none like I’ve seen.
The word none was underlined three times.
At the bottom of the page, Doctor Hogan wrote in block letters:
He will want to look me in the eyes before killing me. Prepare for that moment. My best chance.
She took a deep breath.
“Wrong about that, Doc,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. But you were wrong about that.”
She hesitated. An idea crept into her head.
“Were you wrong?”
Maybe he’d already…
She stopped herself. It was suddenly hot in the car-no: stifling-and she flicked on the ignition and rolled down the windows. She drank in some of the humid air that slid in, hardly different from the stale air inside the car. It was like the distinctions of night had dissipated around her. She had the same uncontrollably nervous sensation that she did when reading some unsettling thriller, or watching a scary movie. She was absolutely certain that if she lifted her eyes and started staring into the night, even in the safety of the parking lot, she would start to see ominous shapes and those shapes would morph into ghostlike killers. So, instead of looking out, she lowered her eyes back to the entries in front of her.
She flipped over to the last page of notes.
She read Jeremy Hogan’s final entry over and over again, unable to stop herself.
He’s already won. I’m already dead.
“Timothy, just tell Susan what you told us. Tell her the same way. She’ll believe you.”
“Or, at least, believe enough to take the next step, whatever that is. She’s a state employee. Hell, she’ll at least want to cover her ass.”
“But Timothy, be careful. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
Admonitions ringing in his ears, Moth fairly jumped down the stairs outside Redeemer One and jogged through the shadows in the parking lot. He saw Andy Candy lift her head as he approached. She had a furtive look about her, but seemed relieved that he had returned.
“We have another meeting tonight,” he said as he slid into the passenger seat.
Andy Candy nodded, started up the car, and backed out of her parking spot. Around them other cars-ranging from the philosophy professor’s small hybrid to the corporate attorney’s big Mercedes-were pulling out of the church’s lot. She paid no attention to the car that headed out in the same direction as them.
“No,” Susan Terry told the waitress, “just ice water for all of us.” She also ordered sushi for the table, although she was absolutely certain that the raw fish would make her violently ill.
The waitress departed, probably mentally adjusting her tip without a liquor tab added in, and Susan turned to Moth and Andy Candy. “Okay,” she said. “Lay it out for me.”
She looked across the table with as tough a glance as she could muster. “No bullshit,” she added. “This isn’t a game or like doing some college paper. Don’t waste my time.”
Moth knew this was a lot of posturing, but said nothing. Andy looked down at the sheaf of handwritten notes from Jeremy Hogan that was rolled up in her hand. Moth shifted in his seat. Both of them thought Susan looked terrible. The change from the prim, put-together prosecutor they’d seen in her office, in charge and organized, to the jean-clad and scraggly-haired, pale and slightly shaky person in front of them was striking. That Susan was able to sound the part-her voice steady and demanding-only made the contrast more profound. Moth instantly recognized what the change implied. Andy Candy had a terrible thought: She looks like I must have when I came out of the abortion clinic.
There was a momentary quiet, while Moth tried to organize his words. But what he finally said was designed to have the maximum impact.
“Four days ago, in rural New Jersey, Andy and I witnessed a murder,” he said.
Student #5 hated sushi, so after seeing the trio get seated he’d walked over to a nearby fast food restaurant and got a sandwich to go. He was something of a health food nut, and it was rare for him to ever eat anything made at a counter or that came off a fryer. But things seemed oddly different for him this night, as if he was suddenly going to have to make all sorts of changes, and this made him anxious.