Killer (26 page)

“Merry Christmas, Jack.”

I whirl around and see David Doyle Harris standing in the doorway, holding Claire Boyle’s service revolver. I step back, falling over Sara’s hope chest and upending it and dropping the box cutter. I sprawl amid Sara’s clothes and jewelry and photographs as Dave closes the door behind him and picks up the box cutter and pockets it.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he says, holding Claire Boyle’s .38 on me. He is pale and disheveled, and I can tell from the tilt of his body that he is favoring his right leg. His thinning hair is dyed blonde and he wears a short, scruffy beard and new glasses with large, black, horn-rimmed frames. It takes me a moment to really believe it’s him. I slide down, as if hiding behind the hope chest will protect me.

“I’m as real as rain,” he says. “You told me you couldn’t find Sara’s face after she blew it off. You talked about that a lot. That information came in handy. It was an inspiration.” He waves the gun toward the door. “Come on now, let’s go. We’ve only got a couple hours before they print that poor headless fool with the Cadillac and figure out it’s not me.”

“You followed me here?” I say.
Talk to him…

“Just get up.”

I look at the banker’s boxes.

“Did I—? Did I put those boxes here?

“You really don’t remember?”

“No. Tell me,” I shout at him.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out, Jack.”

“Tell me.”

He laughs his low laugh. “All in due time, my friend. If you want to know more you’re going to have to come with me.” He raises the gun. “Let’s go. We’ve got a lot more to talk about. I’ve got more stories for you. Some things you’re really going to like. So move,” he waves Claire Boyle’s gun toward the door. “We’ve history to make.”

“Not until you tell me what happened,” I say.

“I’m not gonna fuck around with you, Doc,” he drawls.

“I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what happened.”

“No, turn that around: you’re not gonna know what happened
unless
you come with me,” he says.

“Come with you where?”

“A journey of self-discovery,” he says. “Now get up or I’ll shoot you dead right where you’re sitting. I let you dig yourself out of one grave but you won’t be digging out of the next one.”

“If you kill me you won’t have anyone—no one to tell your story,” I say.

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take. Now get up right now or your story ends here,” he says, and points Claire Boyle’s service revolver at my face.

A thought occurs to me.

Is it loaded?

“Move,”
he says, tightening his grip on the gun.

Think, think, remember…is it loaded?

He looks over the sights of Claire’s gun, pointing it at my face.

Check the safety…the safety is off…but WILL IT FIRE?

“One more second and my patience is out, Doc. You fucked me before but this is
it
.”

Please God…

“Alright, then. So long, Doc. Been real,” he says.

His fingernail whitens slightly as he squeezes the trigger—

And I lift the shotgun inside the hope chest and Sara’s 12 gauge Mossberg in matte black blows open the end of the wooden chest and a red hole explodes in the middle of Dave’s throat and he is dead before he slams against the cinderblock wall.

I watch Claire’s .38 bounce from his hand as his body flops down to the concrete floor and I sit very, very still and my eyes don’t leave him for a long, long time.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

“So,” Dr. Benjamin Abrams says to me.

I am sitting across from him, in a leather chair that tilts back. If I lean all the way back I can see the rooftops of the fancy buildings on the upper east side through the large window beside me.

“So,” I say back to him.

It has been four weeks since I killed the man known as David Doyle Harris. Yesterday I called Abrams to talk, but now I suddenly don’t feel like talking.

Abrams looks at the small cast on my arm.

“Your wrist healing up okay?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Abrams sits like a Buddha in a cardigan, watching me passively. We could spend all afternoon like this and I’m certain he would never seem ill at ease or impatient. I look over his shoulder, at the shelves behind him. The late afternoon sun slants into the room, bathing the pre-Columbian statuettes behind him in a lazy glow. We have gone through the pleasantries, talked briefly about the conclusion of things in Los Angeles, including my discovery of Sara’s letter from her doctor. And now the silence is piling up.

“I’m seeing Nicki tonight,” I say finally. “She’s not representing me anymore, now that the case is all settled.”

Abrams nods. “Okay,” he says.

“She’s making me dinner,” I say. “I’m supposed to be at her place an hour after we’re done.”

“Sounds nice,” he says.

I rub my hand through my hair. Why is this so goddamned hard?

“I like her,” I say.

“Good,” Abrams says. I search his eyes for something more, but he is opaque.

“Don’t you think the impassive Freudian thing can be taken too far?” I say.

Abrams chuckles. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” he says.

The light has moved imperceptibly up the shelves behind Abrams as the sun sets, illuminating a row of books. I can’t make out the titles.

“I want to see her. I’ve thought a lot about her, about being with her. And I want that,” I say. “To be honest, I don’t really know why I wanted to see you.”

“Did you make the date with her before you called me?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Would you rather talk at some other time?”

“No.”

“So why is it important that we talk before you see her?” Abrams asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “There have been times when we were together and I wanted her so badly…I’m not sure why I’m hesitating now.”

“What’s changed since those times?” Abrams says.

I shake my head. “It was different. More spontaneous, I guess.”

“Did you feel like she wanted the same thing, when you were with her before?”

“I think so,” I say. “But it wasn’t right—for her. She was my lawyer and she had…doubts about me.”

“What kind of doubts?”

“She was angry with me for being reckless…for confronting the guy in Jersey City, and then running from the police.”

“So you knew, at least unconsciously, that she wouldn’t respond in kind.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And how does she feel now?”

“I think maybe she wants the same thing now. I hope she does.”

“So now that it’s a real possibility—the two of you being together—you’re hesitating.”

“Yeah.”

“Any thoughts as to why that might be?” Abrams asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I’m not as ready as I thought. Maybe that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Well, the timing of your visit seems pretty significant to me,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“In that you felt the need to talk to me before seeing her.”

I look out the window as last moments of sunlight skim the tops of only the tallest buildings.

“Maybe I want permission,” I say.

“That’s not my job.”

“Okay,” I say. “Maybe I’m afraid.”

“Ah,” Abrams says. “Now you’re talking. What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You stood up to two men with guns pointed at you and now you’re afraid of dinner?”

“You got it,” I say.

“So, what is it about dinner with Nicki?” Abrams says. “What are you afraid of?”

“Somebody getting hurt.”

“Somebody?”

“Me or her.”

“You told me before that you haven’t been with anyone since Sara’s death,” Abrams says.

“That’s right.”

“So,” he says.

“So…maybe I feel responsible for Sara. Maybe I did something wrong, or maybe I should have done something and didn’t do it. Why the fuck does someone do that? She didn’t even leave a fucking note,” I say. “She found out she was sick and she just…checked out. So it’s just guilt, I guess.”

Abrams the Buddha just looks at me.

“I’m tired of feeling guilty,” I say. “Will you please fucking say something, Doc?”

“I’m not sure guilt is the big deal here,” Abrams says. “You told me before that you don’t like being bullied and you don’t like being afraid. Who’s making you afraid? Who’s bullying you now?”

I lean back. Look out at the rooftops again.

“She is,” I say, finally. “Sara. I’m afraid to be with someone because of what she did.”

Far away, below us, I hear a doorman whistle for a cab.

“I guess I’m really mad at her,” I say.

Abrams raises an eyebrow.

CHAPTER FIFTY

An hour later I knock on Nicki’s door. She opens it and gives me a brief kiss on the cheek. I have a bottle of Chateau Montelena for her and a bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling cider for me. She puts them on her kitchen counter while I close the door. She opens the wine and I open my Martinelli’s and we fill two wine glasses and then clink them together and drink. Then she puts her glass down and darts around her kitchen, steaming Littleneck clams and boiling linguini and sautéing spinach and opening the oven door every ten seconds to check on the lyonnaise potatoes she’s making for the first time.

When dinner is ready we carry it out to her small balcony and eat, surrounded by the lights of the city and bathed in the warm glow from the candle she has placed in the center of the table. She is radiant in the light. I eat hungrily and it’s good. She talks about her day and I talk about mine, including my visit with Abrams. Nicki listens to me talk about my session with Abrams and says nothing.

When we’re finished we clear the table on the balcony and bring the dishes inside and move close around each other in her small kitchen, cleaning up. When the kitchen is spotless we settle down on her sofa. She is wearing a bright Pucci summer dress that clings around her waist and hips. Her legs are bare and tanned and she slips off her turquoise slingback sandals and curls her legs under herself in a way that I find astonishingly intimate and sexual. We talk about the weather, then we talk about politics and her family. And then we’re quiet for a while.

“So can you forgive her?” she asks, after half a minute of silence.

“Yeah,” I say. “As soon as I realized how angry I was I knew I had to let go of it. So I let go of it.”

“You make it sound easy,” she says.

“I can be pretty disciplined when I know what I have to do,” I say.

“Have you forgiven yourself?”
“Pretty much,” I say. “That may take a little longer, but I’m making progress.”

She brushes her fingers across the back of my hand and looks at me. I touch her thigh, just below her hemline, and then I lean forward and kiss her. She is very still and she opens her mouth slightly. After a long moment she takes my face in her soft hands and takes her lips from mine.

“Sure this is a good idea?” she says, her mouth so close to mine I can feel every word.

“No, but I’m sure that I want it,” I say.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea,” she says.

“Well,” I say. “You have to start somewhere.”

I slide my fingers down a little, following the curve of her leg beneath her knee, making lazy little circles over the back of her silky calf.

“And since the charges are dropped, you’re no longer representing me,” I say.

“There are still a couple of loose ends,” she says. “Paperwork isn’t done on the grand theft deal with Maryland yet. There are a few more billable hours.” The corners of her mouth turn up in a slight, sly smile. On any other woman that smile would seem like a practiced, coquettish look, deliberately chosen from a repertoire of flirting. But on Nicki it’s genuine and spontaneous and maddeningly attractive.

“You’re fired,” I say. She laughs, cocking her head to the side, then tucking an errant lock behind her ear.

“You’ve been alone for a long time,” she says.

“Yes.”

She puts her hand on mine against her thigh and looks at me. I slide my hand further up her bare thigh and the talking stops and I kiss her again and we do that for a long time.

Later we make our way to her bedroom and I slip her summer dress off as I kiss her and shed my clothes and then we are naked in her bed and I can’t get enough of her. We make a fine mess of her bed and we do all the things that teenaged lovers and lonely people do when they finally connect with someone, and it goes on for hours.

Finally we lie next to each other and recover ourselves.

“Been a long time for me,” I say.

“Me, too,” Nicki says.

“Tell me about that,” I say.

She bites her lip and her eyes move back and forth they way they do when she is thinking deeply about something.

“I think I compare men to Michael. Actually, I compare them to the memory of him, which isn’t fair, I know. It’s hard to know where the difference lies between the memory of something real and the fantasy of how you’d like to remember it. And it’s impossible for anyone to compete with a fantasy. But I’m working on it,” she says, and moves closer to me and brushes her lips across my neck. “This is nice,” she says.

“I agree,” I say, and we lie there quietly, skin against skin, all up and down both of our bodies. She is warm and smooth and soft.

“I’m selling the cabin,” I say.

“Good,” she says. “You need a fresh start. Where will you move?”

“I was thinking of moving to the city,” I say. “Near here.”

“Yeah?” she says.

“Where else can I get steamed clams like that?” I say.

“Could you write here?” she says. “Away from your isolation?”

“I was thinking I could work for you,” I say. “You said you need a new investigator.”

She smiles. A sardonic half-smile that I haven’t seen from her yet. I find it indescribably arousing.

“I think we make a pretty good team,” I say. “What do you think? You and me going around, solving crimes?”

“Don’t you have a job?” she says. “I seem to remember you’ve done pretty well for yourself writing books.”

“Sure, but I can do both,” I say. “I’ll write books during the day and at night I’ll fight crime with you.”