“What are we going to do?” Andy asked, except this was a rote question and she already knew the reply.
“What we started out to do,” Moth answered. “What else can we do?” Again, this was an expected response.
Neither really understood what they meant by this. They had more or less the same thought: what had begun as a bit of barely controlled bravado and revenge fantasy had progressively become more and more real. They had seen one man die, and now they knew that someone else had to die. It’s one thing to say I’m going to kill someone and another thing altogether to actually do it. Neither-although they would not share this doubt-believed they could kill someone. They had moments where they imagined it might be possible-others where they had zero confidence.
In a world that seemed to take violence and killing for granted, they were naïve about methods of murder. No military or police training. No mafia or drug cartel culture of killing. They weren’t psychopaths or sociopaths who could flick off death like an unwanted bug landing on an arm. They were normal-even if Moth’s alcoholism and Andy Candy’s victimization and subsequent abortion made them feel unique. Secretly, both longed for the simplicity of teenage days past that seemed to have suddenly been stripped away from them.
“We have a gun,” Moth said. “And we have someone who knows about killing. At least, intellectually.”
For a moment Andy Candy stiffened, and then she realized that Moth was referring to Susan Terry. A law school understanding. An after-the-fact comprehension that went along with being a prosecutor, Andy Candy realized. Can Susan pull a trigger? Hell if I know.
“What will happen to us?” Andy Candy asked.
Moth smiled, stroked her hair. “We will get through this, grow old, fat, and happy, and never think about it again. I promise.”
He left out the word together. And Andy Candy didn’t actually believe the word promise.
“Well, if we do nothing, we know what will happen,” she persisted.
“Do we?” Moth replied.
The two of them began to unfold, and within a few seconds were seated side by side, upright on the edge of the bed, like a pair of wayward children being disciplined and forced to sit still as punishment.
“Maybe he thinks he can just scare us into silence.”
Andy Candy nodded. “That would be great. Except how would we ever know? Silence for how long? He took years and years to kill off the other people. Who’s to say we wouldn’t look up fifteen years from now-you know, living some nice suburban, soccer mom and coach dad life-and suddenly be staring at a gun. Bang! That’s what he did to the others.”
“What the fuck good does silence do for either him or us?”
Moth rose from the bed and began pacing around. “You know, the great men I study in history-they were always trapped into decisions. They never knew with absolute one hundred percent certainty if any course was right. But they believed that failing to try was worse than actually failing.”
Andy Candy smiled wryly as she watched Moth travel back and forth, gesturing with his arms with each point made. It reminded her a bit of the moody but energized Moth of high school, somehow grown into someone familiar but different. Moth liked to drift into lecture tones. He will make a good academic, she thought. He will have a nice life performing in front of a classroom-but only if he lives through this. “Except-what does failing mean for us?” This question chilled the room.
“In a way, the same thing that it did for them,” Moth replied, trying to force a smile. “What they faced was a loss. Maybe humiliation. Freedom. Gallows. Firing squad. Prison. I don’t know. High stakes. That’s what we know.”
“Doesn’t seem all that different for us,” Andy replied. “Hit-and-run. Fake suicide. Hunting accident.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“What do you suppose he will invent for us?”
Moth didn’t answer. His mind reeled with possibilities, none of them good.
Another pause. The practical Andy Candy started to emerge: “Shouldn’t Miss Terry be here?”
“Yes.”
Susan Terry remained in her car, parked outside Moth’s apartment. She was on the twin edges of rage and despair, unsure about both.
What she craved-more than anything else-was to descend into more drug use and instantly forget everything that had happened to her in the past few days. After that morning’s phone call from the lawyer she had immediately fueled herself with the last dregs of coke she had left, wondering only once why she hadn’t flushed it down the toilet in the wake of her suspension and her trip at Timothy’s side to Redeemer One. She took a deep breath. I don’t care what I promised those assholes, she aggressively lied to herself. The siren song of cocaine seemed to pledge a lotuslike forgetfulness: You won’t have to worry about your job or your career. You won’t have to worry about some killer. Every promise you made to everyone everywhere can be ignored and forgotten. Every pain you feel can be erased.
In her satchel by her side was her semiautomatic. Did you turn me in, Timothy? Why did you want to ruin my life?
That this made absolutely no sense didn’t diminish her fury. Susan Terry was balanced between the organized and rational state prosecutor who accumulated facts and evidence and the bad girl and drugged-up near criminal she had descended into. She had little idea which side of her was going to win out. But in that second, anger nearly overcame her, and she seized the satchel, exited the car, and rapidly made her way to the apartment.
When she knocked, Moth foolishly opened the door without first looking through the peephole.
Susan instantly thrust the automatic into his face. The hammer was cocked and a round was chambered, and the words “You little motherfucker…” stood for a greeting. Moth staggered back in shock, but Susan pushed after him, so that even with his frantic retreat the gun barrel still lurked inches from his eyes.
He choked out, “Wait, what, please,” but couldn’t come up with another word. He was confused, panicked-not that he hadn’t expected someone to kill him, but this was the wrong person entirely. He thought of trying to find his own weapon and fighting back, but it was unloaded, on a bureau top, useless.
“I want the truth,” Susan said coldly. “No more fucking around.”
Andy Candy gave out a little half-shout of surprise and froze in position on the bed. She had more or less the same frightened thought: This is wrong. Susan isn’t the killer, is she?
“Truth?” Moth asked. His voice was suddenly dry, and the word groaned like metal bending under immense pressure. He tried to raise his hands, partially in surrender, partially to deflect the shot he was certain was coming. He felt fear punching him in the stomach, choking his throat.
“Why did you drop the dime on me?”
Drop the dime sounded incomprehensible in a moment where her finger toyed with a trigger.
Moth continued to reel back, but stopped when his rear butted up against his desk. “What?” he coughed out. He looked at Susan Terry-hair disheveled, eyes wide, edgy tone to everything she said, hand quivering, frantic, in pain, strung out-and he realized that whatever resistance she had to pulling the trigger and killing him hung in some balance between rational and drugged. The apologetic, I want to be sober woman who had accompanied him to Redeemer One had been replaced by a stranger. And then, he realized, the Susan with wild eyes and a gun wasn’t a stranger at all. It was just that the same person could actually be two people. He knew this was just as true for himself.