He walked back to a bench that was just down the street from the sushi restaurant, a vantage point that would allow him to see them all leave. It was hot, humid, and he felt oddly short of breath. He could no longer actually watch Andy Candy and Moth and the person they were speaking to, but he had an adequate idea of what was being said. He just didn’t yet know who they were saying it to-although he knew instinctively that he would be following her later that night. He needed to achieve at least that small bit of certainty as he was making his mind up. Whoever it is, he thought, she is probably dangerous.
His food seemed ashen in his mouth, as if every slice of cold cut, every tomato, and every piece of lettuce had spoiled, the bread was stale, and his diet soda was watery and flat. He tossed the sandwich after a couple of bites.
30
Student #5 was stretched out on the floor of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, in an executive suite. It was just before midnight, he couldn’t sleep, and he was naked, doing one-hand push-ups on the carpet. Ten with the right. Ten with the left. Ten with the right. Ten with the left. Sweat burned his eyes. The hotel was hosting a tech company start-up convention, and out on a patio a rock band doing ’60s covers was entertaining the young executives. The music seemed out of place to him. What should have been modern hip-hop or rap became leftover Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, and the Rolling Stones. Screeching guitar and power vocals wafted up to his room, which overlooked the hotel’s immense pool and adjacent golf course.
Between rasping breaths, he listened, then said out loud, his up-and-down exertions keeping time to the music, “Absolutely right: I clearly, unequivocally, can’t get no satisfaction.” A conundrum, he thought. There’s a clever word to describe my situation.
The word made him want to spit.
He had always liked to think of himself as an intellectual killer, someone who understood the psychological chapter and verse of murder, who saw the profound emotional depths that killing another person explored. Killing is like spelunking, he thought as he continued to snap off push-ups. Dark caves, mysteries, and each step takes me farther into the unknown.
Not only had revenge killing freed him, he believed it had made him psychologically larger. He imagined himself part Buddhist, a Zen master of death, part James Bond-the book spy, not the movie action hero-who delivered simplicity of decision with a Walther PPK. Killing, to him, was an important process, not something spur-of-the moment or rushed. No drive-bys or convenience store, gas station, or liquor mart holdups with gunfire for me. It was artistic, like sculpting a shape out of stone, or filling a canvas with color. The deaths he’d created had reason-and not anything as mundane as money, power, madness, or cruelty. That was why, he inwardly insisted, his killings weren’t easily categorized, and, indeed, weren’t really murders at all. He thought everything he’d done belonged in a special definition that was unique but highly appropriate.
Others would do the same.
If they only could.
How many times has a person said “I’d like to kill that guy…” and it made complete, total sense. And then they didn’t act? Foolishness. You can either go through life crippled by what others do to you… or you can take charge.
Up, down. Up, down: Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. Don’t stop.
When he reached fifty, he dropped to the floor, breathing hard.
It took a few minutes before he rose, muscles burning, and went to his laptop computer. Google Earth gave him bird’s-eye and street-view visions of three addresses: The Nephew’s. The Girlfriend’s. The Prosecutor’s.
This last bit of information had been the result of some clever computer searching after he’d watched the woman he now knew was Susan Terry walk into her condominium building. He’d tailed her deep into the night, a little surprised at the obvious drug connection she’d made before she’d returned home. He’d taken the address, compared it with recent sales and tax rolls, easily obtained a name, then discovered that there had been more than one mention of Susan Terry in the Miami Herald. He’d read several articles and said, “Well, young lady, you seem to be on something of a courthouse losing streak. Need to do better for us taxpayers, ’cause we’re paying your salary. Do you think that little boost of nose candy is going to help you win cases?”
Major Crimes. That was the section she worked in-and even if she was as incompetent and drug-addled as he guessed, she still couldn’t possibly be a total fool. He was not the arrogant sort of killer who automatically assumed all police detectives to be dull-witted incompetents until the moment some cop sat across the table with a notepad, a recording device, and the arrogance of knowing they had the absolute goods.
He went to the window, stared out across the night. The lights from Coral Gables and South Miami gave the distance a faint glow across the dark expanse that he knew was the golf course, but which looked in the ink dark to be an ocean. Below him, the music finally stopped.“Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love?” were the last words he could make out as he watched the party dissipate. “No,” he said, “I do not need someone to love.” You could sleep now, he thought, knowing this was untrue. No sleep until he’d made some decisions.
Take charge, he admonished himself. Figure it out. Dissect what you know.
“If you kill The Nephew, even if it looks like an accident, what happens?”
Full-scale murder investigation. No delay. His suspicions about his uncle’s death immediately gain complete credibility. Inevitable: newspaper and television headlines.
“If you kill The Girlfriend, what happens?”
Same. Added idea: Young Timothy will become more obsessed with me.
“If you kill The Prosecutor, what happens?”
The full weight of the Miami investigative services will descend upon that crime. The FBI will get involved. And The Girlfriend and The Nephew will tell them precisely where to start looking. Those cops and agents will never quit until they find me.
“Suppose I just disappear?”
I have to do that anyway. He traced rivulets of sweat still running down his chest. Nor would I ever know for one hundred percent certain that I was free. I would have to constantly monitor those three people, God damn it to hell.
He thought hard, and the beginnings of an idea started to form in his head: Death for death. “Bring them closer. Close enough to kill.”
“And how do you do that?”
“Fear and weakness.” People think that fear causes someone to run away and hide. In actuality the opposite occurs. He went to a bathroom mirror and stared into his eyes, nodding his head in agreement.
He could see dangers everywhere, and he wondered whether he had enough time to properly plan it out. Designing sudden death was something he enjoyed and took pride in. A delicious idea crept into his head. It relaxed him, and he believed it was almost time to finally go to bed. This day was nearly over.
Andy Candy felt like she was late, although no specific time had been agreed upon, so she was hurrying through morning rush-hour traffic, weaving aggressively from lane to lane down South Dixie Highway. She figured that if she were pulled over by a trooper, Susan Terry could get her out of any ticket the cop might write. This sudden sense of automotive impunity made her grin, and she was almost laughing when her cell phone rang.