It took her an hour to stack her current cases on her desk in as orderly a fashion as she could manage, and leave behind some notes so that whichever prosecutor took them over wouldn’t be hopelessly lost from the get-go. Then she took her badge and her handgun and slid these into her briefcase.
The only file she didn’t leave behind was ED WARNER-SUICIDE.
Near hysteria, verge of panic, tears and clammy sweat, quaver in the voice, quiver in the hands. Moth saw all the fear in Andy Candy’s eyes, face, and body and thought it was like delirium tremens after an alcohol bender, or the pallid, near-dead look of someone coming down off a two-day crack cocaine binge. He was familiar with the looks created by substances, less accustomed to the looks created by terror.
Andy’s voice was plaintive, trapped. “What do we do now? He knows who we are.” A pause. “What do you think he will do?”
What she wanted to say was Kill him, Moth. Kill him for me. She did not say this and did not know why she didn’t because it made sense.
Moth wanted to pace aggressively around his apartment, like a general planning a siege, at the same time that he wanted to sit beside Andy Candy, throw his arm around her, and bring her head to his shoulder.
Andy dropped her face into her hands, and very much wanted to be comforted except that she doubted there was anything Moth could say right at that moment that might comfort her. She was actually a little surprised that she’d managed to drive the remaining blocks to his apartment with the killer’s words ringing in her ears. She seemed to ricochet between sobbing breakdown and cold, determined resiliency. Any sensation of toughness surprised her and seemed new. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but hoped it would stick with her.
She looked up at Moth. He’s afraid for me. She thought he looked stricken, like she imagined she must have looked on the day her father was given his deadly cancer diagnosis. No brave words, no stiff-upper-lip, let’s-keep-our-eye-on-the-ball-and-we’ll-get-through-this bullshit, she thought. Just murder waiting in the doorway, ready to push inside.
Cancer and abortion and murder all blended together in her imagination as if they weren’t all different moments in her twenty-two years, but were somehow combined into a single entity.
“All right,” Moth said, his voice even-keeled. “We talk to Susan Terry and see what she says.” He smiled wanly, trying to encourage Andy Candy. “Call in the cavalry. Bring in the Marines. Whatever will keep us safe. Susan will know exactly what we should do.”
But she did not.
“Christ,” Susan blurted.
The three of them were standing in the parking lot adjacent to the Miami-Dade Office of the State Attorney. It was late morning, nearly noon, heat was building, and the steady drone of nearby traffic punctuated their conversation. Moth could see a line of sweat forming on Susan’s forehead. She seemed pale to him, as if she was sick or hadn’t slept. He thought Andy should be the pale one. Or maybe him. Their threat was real. But it was Susan who seemed shaky-more shaky than she’d been in the sushi restaurant-as if something was terribly out of kilter. He thought he recognized this for what it was, but said nothing-although the words up the nose fixed in his head. He wasn’t sure whether Andy Candy saw the same integers that added up to a single quotient: cocaine.
“Go through it again,” Susan said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to ask.
“What he said was: Had I ever spoken with a killer before? Of course not. Scared the hell out of me.” Andy Candy tried to minimize the frantic tone in her voice. She wanted to seem in control when she felt anything but. “Still scares the hell out of me. Susan, what do we do?”
Moth had said nothing up to this point. He’d hidden his surprise when Susan told him to meet her outside.
Moth finally spoke, filling his voice with no-nonsense demands: “Look, Susan, we need protection. Like round-the-clock bodyguards. We need the cops to take over. We need to open a real investigation and find this guy before he…” Moth stopped there, because he did not want to start suggesting what this anonymous killer might be capable of.
Susan nodded, but said, “I don’t know if I can help.”
There was a momentary silence.
“What the fuck?” Andy Candy blurted.
Susan looked at the two young people. Tell the truth? Find a convenient lie? She swallowed hard. Timothy will know, she thought. Can’t fool another addict. “I’ve been suspended. All I’m supposed to do is-”
Moth interrupted her. “Get straight.”
“That’s right.”
“I fucking knew it,” Moth said, turning his head away so that Andy wouldn’t see the frustration there.
“But you could call someone, right?” Andy said. “Someone else who could help us.”
This simple request didn’t compute with Susan. Call her boss and say what exactly? “I’m sorry I’m suspended but there’s this killer or maybe not because it’s a case I already cleared. So I fucked up more than once. Like fucked up squared.”
Or maybe I should call some homicide detective who will think hearing from a suspended prosecutor with a cocaine habit and a pressing need for a big-time favor is precisely the last thing in this world he wants on his plate and who will kiss me off so fast I won’t even feel it happening. Like a razor cut, Susan thought. I’m radioactive. “No,” she said slowly. “I think the only thing is to handle this ourselves. At least until I can…” She stopped. Can what? She knew this was a singularly stupid approach. She did not see an alternative.
“Then what,” Moth said abruptly, “is our next move?” He hesitated, then added, “And it should be some move that keeps us all alive.” He racked his brain trying to envision one.
“Right,” Susan said. She did not add, “And what move might that be?”
Andy felt her imagination crowded: Doctor Hogan wasn’t safe. Uncle Ed wasn’t safe. None of the others were safe.
“We should do what he has done,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Moth asked. ‘We can’t toss away who we are, like he did.”
Andy Candy turned to him. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. She reached out and grabbed his hand, the same gesture someone might make to lead another into an embrace.
She wanted to form her words cautiously, but they came out in a rush. “What we know is that someone thirty years ago went to medical school, fell into a psychotic episode, got kicked out, was hospitalized, got out, allegedly died in Manhattan’s East River a suicide, except he didn’t, and then he devoted the remaining years right up to this moment arranging deaths that didn’t exactly look like murders. Five people are dead. So, this killer had to become somebody. There’s a trail there, and we have to find it. Then we can protect ourselves. Look, there’s a mistake. Gotta be. Somewhere. I mean, no crime is perfect and no criminal is always a genius. Right, Susan?”
Susan nodded, although she thought even that small reassuring gesture was a lie.
Moth thought Andy’s plan to find the killer’s trail would be nearly impossible to accomplish.
He also realized that it was exactly what they needed to do.
Two blocks away, Student #5 was thinking very much along the same lines, only from a different perspective. Create a trail they can follow, and bring them to your doorstep. Flypaper-hangs seductively from the ceiling, the perfect place for flies to land. Except it kills them.