The Dead Student (23 page)

“And his death,” the old psychiatrist started, “what can you tell me about his dea—?”

“He committed suicide, or, at least that’s what the police believe,” Moth interrupted, speaking too fast.

“Yes. I know. In Miami. I read about it.”

“Why did you—?”

“Someone told me to read his obituary.”

“I’m sorry. Someone told you? Who?”

Jeremy hesitated. In a situation that seemed already beyond bizarre, this call from a dead psychiatrist’s nephew seemed to fit right in place.

“I don’t exactly know,” he said slowly.

Moth felt like the phone in his hands was red hot.

“My uncle …” he started, words picking up momentum, “I think he wasn’t a suicide. I think he was killed.”

“Killed?”

“Murdered.”

“But the paper said …”

“The paper was wrong.”

“How do you know that?”

“I knew my uncle.”

Moth said this with so much conviction that it defied doubt.

“And the police think …”

“They also say suicide. Everyone says suicide. That’s the official word. I say faked.”

Another pause.

“Yes,” Jeremy Hogan said, choosing his words cautiously. He was drawing connections in his head.
Suicide
made little sense.
Murder
made complete sense. “That would make things significantly clearer. I believe you are correct.”

Moth fumbled, trying to think of what to say next. It was as if questions were choking him like hands around his throat. He needed to ask, but couldn’t spit out words. Many voices had suggested he was on the proper track, but none had carried any proof or authority. This voice seemed different. It had weight.

“Perhaps we should speak in person,” Jeremy Hogan added. His voice had changed, suddenly pensive, soft, and almost regretful. “I do not know what your uncle and I shared, but something linked us together. Can you come up here? You will have to hurry, because I’m expecting to be murdered soon, too.”

She barely said a word to her mother, but took the time to rub some dogs’ ears and affectionately scratch some dog throats. Then Andy Candy went to her room, found a small suitcase, and threw clean underwear and a few toiletries into it. She had no idea how long she would be gone. She found jeans and sweaters and a warm coat. It wasn’t like packing for school, or packing for a vacation. She had no idea what packing for a conversation about killing required.

“You’re going someplace—”

“Yes. With Moth. Shouldn’t be long.”

“Andy, are you sure—”

She interrupted for the second time. “Yes.” She knew she should say much more, but every aspect of her sudden trip north suggested much wider, more difficult talks, which she was unwilling to have. So she adopted a laconic, curt, angry-teenager tone that she hadn’t used in years and that didn’t invite her mother in. For a moment she wondered which was the real Andy Candy.
Who are you?
—the most common question for people her age. Answers, however, are tricky. Happy. Sad. Possessed. She added up all the rapid changes she had gone through in the past weeks. The Andy Candy who was outgoing, quick to laugh, friendly, and eager to join in all sorts of activities had been closeted away. The new Andy Candy was bitterly quiet and absolutely unwilling to share details.

“Well, at least tell me where you’re going,” her mother said, exasperated.

“New Jersey.”

Hesitation. “New Jersey? Why …”

“We’re going to see a psychiatrist.” This was a statement of fact that was wrapped in a lie, she thought.

Another hesitation. “Why would you go all that way to see a psychiatrist?” her mother asked.
Plenty of psychiatrists in Miami.
Doubt was riveted to her voice.

“Because he’s the only person left who can help us,” Andy replied.

Her mother did not ask, nor did Andy volunteer an answer to the obvious question:
Help with what?

19

A Fourth Conversation, Very Brief

The key to all his killings was deceptively simple: no recognizable signature.

Ed Warner’s death had been a clever puzzle to plan. Finding a way to be seated across from him in conversation had been the clear choice, but still required cautious design. It mimicked a typical therapeutic session. The only difference had been that the handshake at the end had been replaced by a close-range gunshot—an idea he’d stolen from the forty-year-old movie
Three Days of the Condor
. Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Max von Sydow. He suspected that no modern cop, not even one who liked slightly dated adventure flicks, had seen it. But Jeremy Hogan presented different problems.

I told him far too much.

He’s not stupid. But he will be unsure what the next step he can take might be.

Act before he can act.

Winchester Model 70, 30.06 caliber. Weight 8 lbs.

Five rounds 180-grain ammunition.

Leupold 12X scope.

Effective range: 1,000 yards.

But he knew that would be a military-trained sniper making an extraordinary kill shot, compensating for wind, atmosphere, humidity, and the flattening trajectory of the bullet over the terrain.

Exceptional range: 200 to 400 yards.

That would be a highly skilled and experienced big-game hunter. A shot to boast about.

Typical range: 25-50 yards.

This would be a weekend-warrior type, falsely persuaded about his hunting prowess, fantasizing he was some new-day Davy Crockett descendant, armed to the gills with expensive equipment that got used maybe a couple of times a year and spent the rest of its time locked in a closet.

The doctor was the last death on his agenda. He was unsure whether he’d done enough to make it ring true. He feared coming so far over so many years, only to fall emotionally short.
That’s the biggest danger,
he told himself.
Not arrest, trial, conviction, sentencing, and being shunted off to prison to await a date with an executioner. Far worse would be failure after coming so far.

“That’s a strange thought for a killer,” he said out loud, as he rolled this notion over in his mind.

The only answer lay in the last act.

He returned to the busy task of preparing. Duffel bag. Camouflage clothing, including a carefully constructed ghillie suit that he thought rivaled those he’d seen professional soldiers create. Heavy boots with a distinctive waffle tread, a complete size too small—he’d cut extra space in the toes. Backpack with emergency headlamp, entrenching tool, water bottle, and PowerBar. All these items had been transported from his trailer in Western Massachusetts—where they didn’t attract attention the same way they would in New York City.

Student #5 paused and picked up a hand-drawn map of the interior of
Jeremy Hogan’s house, along with an hour-by-hour schedule of the doctor’s daily routine. He wondered:
Does he know he goes to the bathroom at the same time every morning? Does he realize he sits in the same chair in the living room to read or watch the few television shows he likes? British comedy-dramas on PBS, naturally. He also sits in the same position at his desk, and in the same place at the dining room table when he eats his microwaved dinner. Does he see that? Does he have any idea how regular his routines are? If he did, he might be able to save his life. But he doesn’t.

Each routine was a possible killing moment. Student #5 had considered each moment from this perspective.

Gutting knife. Disposable cell phone. He double-checked the weather report, examined the GPS track he’d established, and for the third time went over the time the sun set in the West and calculated how many meager minutes of light he would have between death and total darkness.

Like any good hunter,
he thought.

He used an old deer-jacking, out-of-season trick: a small salt lick placed a week earlier in a tiny forest clearing. He was deep in a wooded area, a little over a mile from Jeremy Hogan’s home through rough but manageable territory. Though it was early in the afternoon, damp cold seeped into his clothing, but he knew that once he started moving he would warm rapidly. He remained motionless, downwind from the salt lick, concealed by camouflage, rifle snugged up against his cheek, barrel resting on deadfall to steady his shot. From time to time he would fiddle with the adjustment screws on his scope, making sure the image was clear and the crosshairs were perfectly aligned.

He was lucky this day. Only ninety minutes had passed when he caught the first movement through the thick branches.

Shifting his weight ever so slightly, he readied himself.

Solitary doe.

He smiled.
Perfect
.

The deer moved cautiously into the open space, lifting its head to pluck
scent or sound from its world, alert to potential threats, but unaware that Student #5 was drawing a bead.

Death memories distracted him and he forced himself to concentrate on the deer moving tentatively toward the salt lick.

“I want to help you,” Ed Warner had said.

“You missed your chance. I needed help when we were young. Not now.”

“No,” the psychiatrist had persisted, voice a little unsteady with tension, “it’s never too late.”

“Tell me, Ed,” Student #5 had persisted, “how will you explain this? What will it do to your practice when the world knows that you couldn’t even prevent an old friend from killing himself right at your feet?”

A wonderful lie he’d designed.

He had stood up then, his gun placed up against his temple, pre-suicide. It was persuasive theater. Student #5 knew that Ed Warner would read all the body language, hear the hoarse tension in his voice, and the picture he would create in his mind was that his onetime classmate meant to kill himself in front of him right at that moment, just as he’d promised. Shakespearean drama. Or maybe Tennessee Williams. Student #5 had moved around the side of the desk, closing in on his target. He had rehearsed the necessary movements a thousand times: finger on trigger, bent over slightly; then, suddenly, before Warner could recognize what was truly happening, shove the gun directly against the psychiatrist’s temple.

Head shot.

Squeeze.

And fire.

He fixed the crosshairs on the deer’s chest. He imagined he could see it rising and falling with each hesitant breath. It was wary. Afraid. It had every right to be so.

Heart shot.

Squeeze.

And fire.

The deer’s carcass was still warm, and a small trickle of blood dripped down his jacket.
Sixty pounds,
he thought.
Hard. Not impossible. You trained for this moment.

Before slinging the body over his shoulders, Student #5 had used a small folding entrenching tool to cover up the remains of the salt lick. Then, following a trail through the woods that he’d trudged several practice times carrying a heavy backpack to simulate a dead deer, he set out for Jeremy Hogan’s house. Light was just beginning to shallow up and flatten out, but he believed he had enough left. It would be close, but manageable.

Killing was like that, he reminded himself. It was never exactly as precise as one hoped for nor as sloppy as one feared.

His slung rifle bounced uncomfortably against his backside as he maneuvered through thickets and deadfall. He wished he could’ve brought a machete to clear some of the tangled bushes away, but he didn’t want to leave an obvious path through the woods that some crime scene expert might identify. He knew he was leaving tracks, but the mis-sized boots—cramped and painful as they might be—created imprints that seemed haphazard and erratic. This was important.

The sky above was sullen gray, thick with clouds and the threat of cold rain. This was good. Rain would help cover any signs of his presence.

A thorn tugged at his pants leg.

He was breathing hard. Exertion. Weight. Excitement. Anticipation. He told himself to slow down, be careful. He was getting closer.

When Student #5 spotted the location he’d selected, he forced himself to hesitate with every step. No abrupt, attention-seizing motion.

Stealthily, he moved to the very tree line.

He kept his eyes on Jeremy Hogan’s home, perhaps forty yards of ill-kept lawn from the edge of the forest.

He’s there. He’s inside. He’s waiting, but he doesn’t know how close he is.

Student #5 lowered the deer carcass from his shoulders just at the last tree before civilization and grass took over.

The body thumped against the soft ground.

He made sure that the carcass appeared as it did when he’d first shot it.
A collapsed-in-death deer. Not a carefully arranged deer.

Crablike, crouched to lower his profile, he backed away from the deer shape, carefully maintaining his sight line, letting the scrub brush and foliage hide him. Perhaps twenty yards back into the forest he stopped at an old oak tree. Right at his shoulder height there was a notch where a branch had broken off. It formed the perfect shooting position.

The forest in front of him created a tunnel-like window straight to the house. No stray limbs that might deflect his shot ever so slightly and throw it off. The dead deer on the ground was directly in the path his bullet would travel.

He lifted the rifle and eyed down the scope.

He hesitated, inwardly asked himself:

What will the cops see?