The killer’s home had a small porch with four steps. In front of it was a little garden area, enclosed by a white thigh-height picket fence. The fence was merely decorative, not really designed to keep people out. But it created a small, concealed space. Moth vaulted the fence. A small cone of weak light marked the porch, but stopped at the top step. Ferns and large fronds filled the tiny garden. Moth dropped to his knees and shoved himself into the bushes, curling into the fetal position. He tugged his beaten baseball cap down over his head and pulled up his neck buff so his face was obscured. He held the gun in his right hand, hidden beneath his body. In his left, outstretched haphazardly, was the bottle of Scotch. The bottle of vodka he tossed a few feet away, onto the small brick walkway leading to the stairs.
Moth thought: Well, not many people have done more auditions for appearing to be a passed-out drunk than I have.
Then he waited. Heart racing in his chest, a pounding in his temples, his breathing shallow, sweat gathering on his forehead, the night heat weighing down upon him like a huge white-hot stone. He closed his eyes; he imagined he’d soon be blinded by anxiety anyway. His hearing, however, was sharpened, more acute than it had ever been before.
Footsteps. Closing.
He inhaled sharply. Held it.
Heard: “God damn it. Fucking drunks.”
Knew-through experience: First he will kick me.
The gathering that night at Redeemer One seemed distracted, impatient. Susan Terry shifted in her seat as one after the other regular attendees rose, proclaimed their days of sobriety, spoke about their latest struggles. She heard the usual successes and failures, hopes mingled with sadness. It was a typical night, she thought, except for the undercurrent of unease. More than once she caught the others staring quizzically in her direction, anticipating the moment when it would be her turn to share.
Sandy, the corporate lawyer, was finishing up. She was telling a variation on her usual theme: whether her teenage children could learn to trust her again. Trust was a euphemism, Susan understood, for love.
The woman’s story seemed to fade away, losing color and heft, and finally she stalled. Susan saw her glance first at the philosophy professor, then at Fred the engineer, meeting eyes with just about everyone in the room before landing on her.
“Enough of my usual bullshit,” Sandy said briskly. “I think we need to hear from Susan.” There was a brief murmur of assent.
“Susan?” said the assistant priest running the gathering.
Susan rose up, a little unsteadily. She had prepared all sorts of explanations and excuses, even considered mingling some fiction into her latest story-all designed to follow Moth’s admonition to be memorable this night. She had not formed the word alibi in her head-although as an expert in criminal law, she knew that was precisely what she was hoping to create. But as she looked out, she suddenly realized how silly everything she had planned to say would sound.
Still, she was obligated to begin. “Hello, my name is Susan and I’m an addict. I have a couple of days sober now, but I don’t know if this time counts, because of the painkillers the doctors prescribed for me…” She gestured toward her broken arm.
“You shouldn’t take anything. If it hurts, suck it up and tough it out,” Fred the engineer said, cutting in with an unfamiliar harshness.
Susan was unsure how to continue. As she started to stumble for words, the philosophy professor stifled her with a furious swipe of his hand, as he might have in restoring order to an unruly classroom.
“Where,” he asked sharply, “is Moth?”
Andy Candy broke into a sprint.
Whatever was happening in front of the house on darkened Angela Street, she knew she had to be there. Her imagination filled to overflow-the killer they hunted was probably armed, the killer they hunted was far more clever than they, the killer they hunted was practiced, astute, experienced, unlikely to be taken by surprise by a couple of amateurs at the game of murder. She pictured Moth bloody, shot-no, stabbed-no, ripped somehow limb from limb, breathing his last. He was a history student, for Christ’s sake-what did Moth know about killing? She-at the least-had watched her father the vet put dozens of animals to sleep-the nice way of saying to death. And she had been at his side when all the life support hoses, wires, and attachments had been shut down.
That wasn’t alclass="underline" She had, just a short time ago, lain beneath a bright clinic light, head back, eyes half-closed, barely hearing the nurses and the physician as life was taken out of her. It suddenly dawned on Andy Candy that she was the one who knew what to do. She nearly panicked, thinking: I should have been in charge. I should have planned this. She knew she had to get there, as fast as possible, to help guide Moth before he got killed.
“Moth is…” Susan Terry hesitated. She looked around the room. She swallowed hard, and said, “Moth is on his own. He wants to confront the man he believes killed his uncle.”
She remained standing. But the people in the room exploded around her. She was inundated with cries, some as indistinct as the simple “What the hell!” or as scathing as “You let him do what?”
When the initial flurry of responses seemed to slow, Susan tried to respond: “He didn’t give me much choice. I wanted him to go to the authorities, help create a prosecutable case against the man. But he was headstrong and determined, and he cut me out of the decision…”
This last bit seemed decidedly weak.
“ ‘Determined’?” Fred the engineer asked. His voice was cold and unforgiving.
“Haven’t you learned anything about addiction by coming to these meetings?” This from Sandy.
Susan looked confused.
“We all depend on honesty and each other. It’s not the only way to defeat addiction, but it’s an important way. And you abandoned Moth? Let him go off on his own? Why didn’t you just hand him a bottle or maybe pour out a couple of lines? It would kill him just the same,” Sandy said in a voice filled with contempt.
“The whole point of coming here is for all of us to help each other avoid risks,” Fred said sharply. “And you’ve let Moth-one of us, for crying out loud!-go off all alone? What were you thinking?”
Susan was about to say something about Andy Candy. But she believed that Moth’s need to avenge his uncle’s death was solely his. Her voice wavered as she spoke. “Timothy is right. Successfully prosecuting this man-this killer-would be well-nigh impossible. There. That’s my professional opinion. And pursuing this man… well, it’s kept Timothy sober. It’s…”
She stopped there. What she was saying was either incredibly true or incredibly false. She no longer knew.
The philosophy professor jumped in.
“What do you think is happening with Moth right now?” he demanded.
“Right now?” She was suddenly aware that she was sweating. She felt like a high-intensity light was shining in her eyes and blinding her. She whispered her reply:
“He’s facing a killer.”
The room exploded again.
The first was a little toe nudge.
Don’t move. Just groan a bit. Wait for it.
The second was a sharper kick.
“Get up, damn it. Get the hell off my property.”
Another fake groan. Finger on the trigger. Two choices: He will kick a third time or else he will bend down and shake you. Either way, be ready.
“Come on, let’s go…”
Hand on my shoulder. A hard tug.
Moth rocked over suddenly, changing from crumpled sidewalk drunk to determined assassin. His left hand dropped the empty bottle of Scotch and shot up to grab the front of the killer’s shirt, pulling him off-balance and dragging him down to one knee. The man grunted in surprise, but Moth’s right hand shot out, with the pistol extended, thrusting it up under the killer’s chin. “Don’t move,” he said quietly. Despite his calm voice, his tongue was thickening and fear was racing through his core.