“And the numbers guy?”
“Ended up in a bad car crash two days later. Both him and his wife burned up.”
“His wife, too?” Ransom asked.
“Yeah, I guess because it looked more real, or something. So the cops wouldn’t think it was murder.”
Ransom Fells closed his eyes and exhaled long.
“That’s why I was so freaked out, sir, when I seen you. I didn’t know why at first, I just felt somebody stepped on my grave. ’Cause you look like him, you know.”
This had always irritated Ransom.
“And, hell, when you told me who you were, I thought maybe the law was after your dad, and you and him were going around taking out witnesses. Or he’d been caught and you were here to settle the score.”
Though his thoughts were reeling, Ransom actually smiled at this. He felt a curious need to reassure the poor old guy. “No, I just wanted to find out a little about him.”
“And, man, I sure told you more than you’d ever wanna know. I’m sorry.”
Ransom now wondered if the car crash in Pennsylvania had in fact been an accident. From the few times he’d driven with the man, Ransom knew his father was a good driver. Maybe back then, car crashes were a popular way for hit men to cover up their crimes.
Upshaw added, “Maybe he got out of the business, I don’t know. Probably did. He was a decent guy.”
“Decent?”
“Well, I mean, he never caused no trouble here. Tipped good. Never saw him drunk.” Upshaw shrugged. “Wish I could tell you more, sir.”
Ransom pushed off the stool and asked for a coffee to go. When the old man gave it to him and Ransom had doctored it with cream just right, he laid a couple of dollars on the bar but Upshaw handed him back the money. “Naw, don’t worry about it.”
As he walked to the door Ransom debated furiously. Yes, no?
Do it, don’t.
He turned. “Hey, Bud, did he ever mention me?”
Upshaw squinted, as if trying to wring out memories like water from the dishrag. “Family stuff, things about home, it wasn’t right to talk about them here. This was business. It was like it would disrespect the wives and kids to do that.”
“Sure.”
But when he got to the door, his hand on the knob, he heard the man call, “Hey, wait, sir. Wait. You know, one time, I remember, Stan did say something. Did you go to Thoreau High?”
“Yeah.” Ransom stared back at the man.
“Well, I heard him talking about this great play in the last few minutes of a Thoreau — Woodrow Wilson game, a sixty-yard touchdown. He was smiling. He said his kid did a great job. The best play he’d ever seen.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah.”
Ransom nodded and walked outside, dropping into the front seat of the car and firing it up.
Reflecting that what Stan actually would have said was, “the kid,” not “his kid.”
Ransom had never played football.
And now, four hours later, Ransom Fells was still sitting in the rental Toyota, on the meager hill that overlooked the lopsided softball field. He clutched his cool coffee and riffled through Upshaw’s stories again and again.
His father a killer…and possibly murdered himself.
Impossible.
And yet…
The old man’s account had seemed too specific to be made up and his troubled face had registered genuine fear that Ransom had come to kill him. Ransom lined Upshaw’s words up against the facts he remembered from his childhood:
How his father never talked about his job or introduced the family to fellow workers. How Ransom and his brother were never invited to his company. How Stan didn’t want Ransom to get into fights — which might draw the police. How he rarely took the family out in public — for fear of jeopardizing them? How he regularly went hunting solo but never came back with a trophy (and what game had he really been after?). How his quiet, retiring manner was similar to, say, a sniper in Iraq that Ransom knew, who’d never boast about his kills and who was a craftsman who treated taking lives as simply another job.
One big question remained, however: What was Ransom’s reaction to the news? He simply couldn’t tell. He was too confused.
It was then that he remembered Annie had called. He listened to her message, in which she’d suggested, no commitment, if he wanted to get together that night she’d enjoy it.
He now called her back.
“Hey,” she said, recognizing the number.
“Hey to you, too.”
“How’s your day been?”
If you only knew…
“Good. Productive.”
“I’m bored,” Annie said breathily.
“Well, have dinner with me. I’ll cure you.”
“I’m quite familiar with your course of treatment, Doctor. Can you fit me in at seven?”
She really had one of the sexiest voices he’d ever heard.
“The appointment’s been scheduled,” he said playfully.
He disconnected and, as he stared again at the field, an electric jolt coursed through him. Ransom Fells actually smiled.
Of all the weird ironies, learning the shocking truth about his father had suddenly put his own concerns in perspective. The edginess, the tension, the guilt he’d felt when connecting with someone like Annie vanished completely.
The sentimental journey, which he’d avoided for so many years, had paid off in a way he could never have expected.
More than he would ever have expected.
Ransom fired up the car and returned to Chesterton. He finished up his business with John Hardwick then hurried to Annie’s.
On the way he made up a phrase that was worthy of his ex.
Absentee reconciliation.
Ransom liked that. The phrase had two meanings when it came to his father: He’d reconciled with someone who was emotionally absent, even when they were living in the same house, and now who was absent physically.
An exhilarating sense of freedom coursed through him.
He parked and made his way to Annie’s front door, rang the bell and heard the thump thump thump of steps as she approached. He noticed that she didn’t play any games — like slowing down, or making him wait.
Then the door was opening and she pulled him inside fast, smiling and kissing him hard on the lips.
Ransom swung the door shut with his foot and held her tightly. He cradled her neck, stroking her hair teasingly.
She whispered, “Don’t you want to examine me before dinner, Doctor?”
Ransom smiled. Silently, he slipped the Smith & Wesson revolver from his pocket and touched her temple with the blunt muzzle. He slipped the index fingertip into his ear — the .38 special rounds were loud as hell.
“What’s—?” she asked.
He pulled the trigger.
Still, the gunshot was stunning and numbed his hearing. It pitched Annie’s head sideways so fast he wondered if the impact had also broken her neck.
She thudded to the floor like a sack of ice melt.
The house was at least fifty yards from the nearest neighbors but gunshots are quite distinctive and he knew he didn’t have much time. Pulling on latex gloves, he dropped to his knees and wiped her lips hard with a tissue to lift any DNA he might have left from the kiss. Then, with a new tissue, he wiped his own prints from the gun and nestled it in her still-quivering hand, which he then dusted with the gunshot residue from this particular lot of cartridges. He then planted around her house a half-dozen items he’d lifted from John Hardwick’s house, after he’d killed the man and his wife a half hour before: dirty socks and underwear, a toothbrush, condoms, a coffee mug. (On Hardwick’s corpse he’d also planted some hairs he’d lifted from Annie’s brush that morning in her bathroom and more condoms, the same brand.)