The Dead Student (16 page)

“Up at the registers,” he said, “they have a list of the state and local social service agencies that can help you. They have counselors. They’re really capable. See one. Talk to them. It will help, I promise.”

She nodded. “It’s been, I don’t know exactly …”

“But I do,” he said. “Stress. Depression. Anger. Sadness. Confusion. Fear. And those are just for starters. Don’t try to handle it alone.”

When they reached the register, Suzy proudly handed over her dollar bill and carefully counted her two quarters in change. Student #5 reached behind the counter and took a printed sheet of paper from a box. It listed all the numbers for help and names of therapists willing to do pro bono work. He handed it to the mother.

“Make a call,” he said. “You’ll feel better when you do.”

You always feel better when you directly address the root causes of your problems,
he told himself.

At the front door, he waved as mother and daughter walked toward a bus stop.

They are the people I was once upon a time destined to help,
he thought.
Until all that was taken away from me.

He glanced around to make sure no one was near enough to overhear him, then he whispered out loud, eyes boring in on the disappearing pink sweater: “Bye-bye, Suzy. I hope you never come this close to a killer again.”

12

I looked like a foolish and scared old man, but that was the only choice I had.

When the phone line went dead in the middle of the night, Jeremy Hogan had assumed the man who wanted to kill him
was
right outside his house, and so, acting with all the crazed organization of a person who awakens to the word
Fire!
he’d rushed downstairs to his living room and pulled a single armchair over against a back wall to create a flimsy barricade. He had huddled behind the chair, eyeing every entrance to the room, mostly concealed from a large picture window that he’d instantly assumed would let a killer stare into his home and watch his every motion.

He’d seized a cast-iron poker from the fireplace and braced himself, ready to spring out and assault the murderer he was absolutely certain was coming through the front door at any second. He’d listened intently for a sound—a window breaking, a door lock being sprung. Footsteps. Labored, murderous, Hollywood horror film heavy breathing—anything that might tell him he was about to come face-to-face with the mysterious man who wanted him dead. In his erratic thinking, he’d believed that the killer would know how to bypass the cheap alarm system on the house and that
a deadly confrontation was not only inevitable but seconds away. He’d figured he could get in a few swings with the fire poker before dying.

Go down fighting,
he repeated like a mantra.

He’d stayed, terrified, frozen in position, until morning light crept in through the window and he’d realized that he was still alive and alone.

His hand was cramped. He looked down at his fingers, clutching the poker handle. They were frozen, and it was difficult to pry them loose.

The poker clattered to the floor, falling from his grip. The noise startled him, and he bent down quickly and retrieved it. He carried it with him, like some hussar with a dueling sword.

“What makes you think I’m not outside right now?”

Jeremy replayed the killer’s words. He wondered how carefully they were chosen.

How much of an expert at terror is he?

Jeremy had never experienced this sort of sudden panic before. Images of disaster flooded him: a fireman hearing the sound of ceilings collapsing; a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a piece of debris on an empty, gray, stormy sea; a bush pilot clutching the yoke as the engines behind him cough and fail.

It all left a bitter, dry sense in his mouth as he asked himself:
Did you just survive something? Or did you merely get a taste of what’s to come?

The words he formed in his head seemed to him as if he were speaking them out loud, hoarse, voice cracking, tortured.

More likely the taste,
he acknowledged.

As sunlight flooded the old farmhouse, Jeremy found he was still quivering, hands shaking, muscles taut. He wanted to crouch behind every chair or couch, hide in every closet or beneath every bed. He felt like a child awakening from a nightmare, a little unsure that the sleep terrors had truly fled.

He moved gingerly across the room, an old man’s measured gait. He clung to the side of the picture window, moving a curtain back so he could peer out.

Nothing. A typical sunny morning.

He maneuvered quietly into the kitchen and stared through the windows above the sink, back across the flagstone patio where his wife would paint, over the small lawn, toward undeveloped conservation land. Each stand of trees, each clump of shrubs tangled together could conceal a killer. Everything that was once familiar and now seemed dangerous
.

He asked himself:
How can you tell if someone is watching you?

Jeremy did not know the answer to that question—beyond the clammy, raw, heart-racing sensation he felt inside—and he realized he’d better come up with one, and soon. He went to the stove and made himself a cup of coffee, hoping it might settle his stretched nerves.

After a moment, he lurched unsteadily back to his office, clutching his steaming cup in one hand and the fireplace poker in the other. He plopped down behind his desk, and grabbed all his papers and research and started scribbling notes, trying to recall details, wondering why they were so elusive. He was exhausted and felt oddly filthy, as if he’d been working in his garden. He knew he was pale. He knew he was sweaty. He ran a hand through tousled hair, rubbed his eyes like a child awakening from a nap.

Did you hear enough to answer another question?

He felt his backbone go rigid.

What question is that, Doctor?

The dialogue in his head echoed.

Are you about to die, or are you going to get another call?

Jeremy Hogan stayed seated. He was not aware how long he remained in place, pondering this. It was as if the open-endedness of his situation, the uncertainty of what he was caught up in was alien, foreign to him. It was like standing on a street corner in some unknown country, hearing a language he couldn’t understand, clutching a map he couldn’t read. He felt now that he was lost. He pictured the same panicked fireman that had come to his mind earlier—only this time it was his own face he saw hugging the ground, choking down breaths of air, surrounded by explosions and bursts of flames.
No way out.
What’s the solution?

Give up.

Or:

Don’t give up.

He asked himself whether he could find a way to stay alive, or even if he wanted to.

I’m old. I’m alone. I’ve had a good run. Done some pretty interesting things, gone to a few unusual places, accomplished much. Had some love in my life. Had some truly fascinating moments. It’s been—on balance—pretty damn good.

I could just wait and embrace this killer when he arrives.

“Hi. How yah doin’? Say, could you make this quick, ’cause I hate wasting time.”

After all, how much time would he actually be stealing? Five years? Ten? What sort of years? Lonely ones? Years where age steals more and more every passing day?

Why bother?

Jeremy listened to this conversation as if he were seated in an academic auditorium watching a debate on some esoteric subject.
The cons have it; you should just die. No, the pros have it; fight to stay alive.

He took an unsteady, deep breath. It almost made him dizzy.

But this is my home, and I’ll be damned if I’ll just let some stranger …

Jeremy stopped this thought midway.

He stared at the coffee cup and fireplace poker in front of him. He grabbed the cast-iron poker, spilling the coffee. Then Jeremy stood up and swung it violently in the air in front of him, slashing away at an unseen assailant.

He imagined the weight crashing into human flesh. Coming down hard on a skull. Breaking bones. Slashing skin.

Good,
he thought.
But not nearly good enough. You won’t be able to get that close.

If you do, then you are probably already murdered.

He knew he needed help making a choice, but wasn’t exactly sure how to ask for it.

Two other men were walking slowly in front of a glass countertop, qui
etly inspecting the rows of weapons in the case. He presumed everyone coming into the store knew more than he did. On the wall hung at least a hundred rifles and shotguns, each anchored by a steel cord. Each gun seemed more lethal than the last.

It was not a big store—the few aisles were crammed with hunting clothing, predominantly in varieties of camouflage or the electric-orange hue that was designed to prevent some other hunter from mistaking one for a deer. High-tech bows and arrows were on display, along with glassy-eyed, wall-mounted deer heads. Each of the heads sported impressive antler arrays but Jeremy knew nothing about the points on the antlers, the height of the shoulders. He did know enough to find something ironic in the idea that the more prominent a deer got in his own world, the more vulnerable it made him in another.

Jeremy almost laughed out loud. This was a psychiatrist’s observation.

Stifling this inner joke, Jeremy walked up to the counter. A single clerk was stacking boxes of ammunition as he helped one of the two other customers, who hefted a wicked-looking black pistol with obvious admiration. The clerk was a middle-aged man, buzz-cut and significantly overweight, with a “USMC” tattoo prominent on a forearm the size of a ham hock. He wore a shoulder harness with a semiautomatic pistol butt protruding and a gray T-shirt that had an old National Rifle Association cliché printed on it in fading red: “If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.”

“Help you with something?” the clerk asked not unpleasantly, looking up.

“Yes,” Jeremy answered. “I think I am in need of some proper home protection.”

“Everyone is in need of proper home protection these days,” the clerk said. “Got to keep you and yours safe. What did you have in mind?”

“I’m not at all sure …” Jeremy started.

“Well, you already have an alarm system on the house, right?”

Jeremy nodded.

“Good,” said the clerk. “Dog?”

“No.”

“How many folks in the house with you? I mean, kids, grandkids visit much? Wife? Does her book group meet at your place? Do you get lots of deliveries from FedEx? Just how much traffic at the front door is there?”

“I live alone. And no one visits any longer.”

“What sort of house? What sort of neighborhood? Where’s the closest police station?”

Jeremy felt as if he was being cross-examined. The two other shoppers, both now holding unloaded guns, stopped and listened in.

“I live out in the country. It’s pretty isolated. Old farmhouse near a wildlife preserve. No real neighbors to speak of, at least none within a couple of hundred yards and none that I’m real friendly with, so no one just drops by. And I’m set pretty far back from the road. Lots of trees and bushes—makes it all scenic. You can barely see my place from the roadway.”

“Whoa,” said the clerk, grinning. He half-turned toward the other two shoppers, who both nodded. “That’s not good. Not good at all.” He emphasized the last two words like a teacher might in a grade school classroom. “If the shit hit the fan—if you’ll pardon my language—you’re on your own, completely. Well, damn good thing you came in here today.”

The clerk seemed to assess Jeremy’s homestead as he would a potential battlefield. “Let’s talk about threats,” the clerk said. “What specifically do you think might happen?”

“Home invasion,” Jeremy said quickly. “I’m an old guy living alone. Pretty easy target, I’d think, for anyone.”

“Do you keep valuables or piles of cash in the house?”

“Not really.”

“Uh-huh.” The clerk nodded. “But, I’m guessing the place looks pretty nice. High- class. What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a doctor,” Jeremy said. “A psychiatrist.”

The clerk made a wry face. “Don’t get many shrinks in here. In fact, don’t think I’ve
ever
sold a gun to a shrink. Orthopedic guys, yeah. All the time. But not one of you. Is it true you can listen to some dude talk and tell what they’re really thinking?”

“No,” said Jeremy. “That would be mind-reading.”

“Hah!” The clerk laughed. “I bet you can. Anyway, you got a nice car?” This was posed as a question.

“It’s outside. BMW.”

“Well, that’s like posting a big old neon sign outside saying, ‘I’m a rich guy,’ ” chimed in one of the other shoppers, a younger man, long greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a Harley-Davidson leather jacket above jeans and a neck tattoo only partially obscured by the collar of his coat.

The clerk smiled.

“So, really what you’re saying to me, Doc, is that you live in a nice place, where you’re probably surrounded by a bunch of stockbrokers and housewives who do real estate on the side and you give off the look of someone who just might be an easy score.”

“Okay,” Jeremy said. “True enough. What do you think? A shotgun? A handgun?”

“I think both, Doc, but it’s your money. How much do you want to spend for peace of mind?”

Neck Tattoo leaned forward as if interested. The other shopper had turned away to examine other handguns.

“I think I should just listen to the professional,” Jeremy said. “Given my situation, and if cost isn’t a concern, what would you recommend?” The gun clerk smiled.