Nine Lives, page 12
That evening, after Valerie, his wife, had fallen asleep on the couch watching a home-decorating show, Fischer went down to his office in the finished basement. He booted up the computer he used for assignments and got a little bit of further information on Jessica Winslow, including a photograph of her on her LinkedIn page. He thought it was funny how quickly he came up with a picture of her, but he’d known many law enforcement officers and the one thing they all had in common was that they felt invincible. Looking at the photograph, he recognized, in a clinical way, that she was quite beautiful, not too physically dissimilar to his own wife. Same skin tone, high cheekbones, light brown eyes. It didn’t particularly make him feel anything except for possibly a little bit of interest. He wondered if she’d served in the military as both he and his wife had. She had that look. And he wondered if she had a family, kids maybe. He wondered these things in the same way he’d wonder about someone whose obituary he was reading. He was looking at a dead woman. She was dead the moment he’d accepted the assignment, and because of that fact, the safety, economic and otherwise, of his own family was improved. That was how it worked, how it had always worked.
Fischer found another photograph of Jessica, this one from a small-town newspaper in which she was named high school athlete of the year as a soccer player. She stood alone on a playing field, wearing a maroon uniform, her foot on a soccer ball. Looking at the photograph, memorizing her features, he thought some more about that equation between her death and his family’s safety, part of the ritual he went through every time he accepted an assignment. It wasn’t hard to understand. Resources on this planet were limited, even if humans weren’t always aware of that. And the world was a cruel and unforgiving place, another fact that Americans didn’t always recognize. It was them or you, because there wasn’t enough to go around, which meant, which had always meant, that your family needed protection. Money wasn’t the only thing that served as protection in this world, but it was the most important thing. Fischer was sure of that.
He knew what he did wasn’t moral, but what he’d been tasked to do in Afghanistan hadn’t been moral either. It was simply the way the world worked.
He sent a text to Steve, letting him know that he wouldn’t be around to help out at his garage for the next few days, and got an immediate text back, saying it wasn’t a problem. Then Fischer retrieved the key hidden behind his fuse box and went to open up his gun locker.
7
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 10:46 P.M.
After catching Boyhood with his friend Meghan, Ethan had gone to a bar that she liked in North Austin. They’d talked about the movie, which she’d loved and Ethan had tolerated. Well, more than tolerated, he guessed. It’s just that the whole thing reminded him of his own childhood, and had left him feeling depressed and irritated. Meghan was drinking tequila, and he was drinking the three-dollar draft beer, and it was making him sleepy. When Meghan ran into a couple of friends she knew, he begged off and went home, even though it was early.
Caroline had texted him that afternoon that she was having dinner with colleagues, and he’d been strangely jealous. He’d told himself to not send her another text until the following day, but he couldn’t help himself, and after getting into his bed with John Berryman’s The Dream Songs, Ethan’s heavily annotated version, he shot her a quick text, asking her if she was home yet. Five minutes later, she texted back. Just got here. You?
Same, he wrote. Then, before he lost his nerve, he quickly wrote, Can I call you? They had never talked on the phone.
After about thirty very long seconds, she wrote back, Are you sure we’re ready for that step? Then sent an emoji, a laughing face, something she’d never done.
It’s clearly thrown you because you’ve resorted to an emoji
Ha ha, she wrote back. Then, Sure, call me.
Ethan sat up in bed, propping pillows behind him, and made the call. “Hi there,” she said, her voice a little deeper than he imagined it.
“Hey. Thanks for letting me call.” He wondered what she thought of his voice, which presently sounded somewhat stupid in his own head.
“Are you about to tell me something serious? I’m suddenly worried.”
“No, no. I just figured we’d been texting so much, and I wanted to hear your voice. Is that strange?”
“Everything is strange right now,” Caroline said. “Don’t you think?”
“You mean because of the police protection? I barely even notice it now. Sometimes I don’t even see it.”
“I see it, because I never go anywhere new. They park in the same place across the street from me.”
“You went somewhere new tonight.”
“That’s true, I did. And I wanted to tell everyone about it at the dinner party, but I didn’t. Do you tell people?”
“Nope. I mean, that’s not entirely true. I told my friend Hannah, but it was late at night and I’m not sure she even believed me. Charlie told me to keep it to myself, though.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
“Oh, sorry. The police officer in charge of my protection.”
“You call him by his first name?”
“I do. He’s become my bud. What do you call your police officer?”
“Officer Hanley. She’s nice but she’s very serious, and I can’t imagine calling her by her first name.”
“That’s probably for the best. Someone named Officer Hanley sounds like someone who will keep you alive. Someone named Charlie is the guy bleeding out next to you after you’ve both been shot.”
“But you’ll be dying next to your new best bud,” Caroline said. “It’ll be romantic.”
“Yes, you’re right. If I’ve gotta go, I want Charlie by my side.” Ethan had slid down along his bed and had relaxed. Talking to Caroline was going well.
“Are you scared?” she said.
“Of dying?”
“Well, not just dying, but dying soon. Dying because we’re on the list.”
“I am scared, I guess. I was very scared when they first told me they were going to put me under police protection, but now I’ve almost gotten used to it. Also, I google the names from the list every day looking for reports of death, and I haven’t seen anyone’s name come up since Matthew Beaumont.”
“So you didn’t see Arthur Kruse?”
“What?” Ethan pushed himself up a little onto his pile of pillows.
“I saw it today. There was a memorial held for an Arthur Kruse in Massachusetts. Nothing about how he died.”
“How’d I miss that?”
“I think it’s brand-new. I saw it this afternoon.”
“So that’s three.”
“Yep, that’s three,” Caroline said. “Three that we know about, anyway. I thought that was why you wanted to call me.”
“No, I just … I just wanted to actually talk to you for once, instead of texting.”
“I’m glad you did. It’s nice to hear your voice.”
“Jesus. Did the article say when he died?”
“No. Nothing. It was just a short notice about his memorial service, and how he’d been an oncology nurse. You should ask Charlie about it. Maybe he has some information.”
“Charlie and I don’t talk about work together. We’re more music buddies. And beer buddies. He talks a lot about craft breweries. I really am going to die with Charlie by my side, aren’t I?”
“It sounds like it.”
They both laughed a little, then were quiet for a moment.
“Awkward pause,” Ethan said.
“It wasn’t awkward. We were both thinking. Conversations should have more pauses, not less, I think.”
“Very profound, professor.”
“Thank you.”
“So how about you, are you afraid of dying?” Ethan said.
“I’m nervous, for sure. But the thing is, I’ve always been nervous, about everything. I get nervous about every class I teach, and I get nervous when it’s my turn to give my order at the coffee shop, and I get nervous for my weekly call to my mother, even though all we talk about is television and what she made for dinner the night before. But now I have something real to be nervous about. My name is on a list of people who seem to be dying, and it feels okay to be nervous. It’s like my emotions match reality and suddenly I feel better. Does any of this make any sense?”
“I think so,” Ethan said. “Why worry about your coffee order when you can worry about getting murdered?”
“I guess that’s pretty much it.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to belittle the whole thing.”
“No, you didn’t,” Caroline said, but Ethan could tell that his tone had lessened the conversation somehow. “Being slated for death puts things in perspective, I guess.”
“Even though we’re always slated for death.”
“Exactly.”
There was another slight pause, and Ethan forced himself to not comment on it. Instead, he said, “I know I’ve asked you this already, but do you have any new theories about what our connection is? Why we’re all on this list together?”
“Nothing new. I think it’s random, that somehow we were randomly selected.”
“My newest theory is that the list is a smokescreen,” Ethan said. “Like maybe someone wanted to kill Frank Hopkins, the first one murdered. So they make a list of eight random people plus Frank, send the list out, then kill Frank, and the police are so worried about the list that they miss the obvious suspect sitting right in front of them.”
“Except two more people have died,” Caroline said.
“Maybe it’s random. I mean, if you think about it, any list of nine people is a list of nine people who are going to die.”
“But not a list of nine people who will be murdered.”
“Right.”
“That plot you described is the plot of an Agatha Christie novel, but I can’t remember which one,” Caroline said.
“It’s from The A. B. C. Murders, one of the Poirot books.”
“That’s right. Are you a mystery fan?”
“When I was a kid, I was,” Ethan said. “I read all the Agatha Christie books, and all the Fletch books, and Father Brown, and stuff like that. Then I discovered Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac and I stopped reading mysteries.”
“I read all the Agatha Christies as a kid too. But then I discovered Jane Austen.”
“Well, at least we have Agatha Christie in common.”
“We have a lot of things in common. We both like poetry. We have a similar sense of humor. What else?”
“We’re on a death list?”
“Yes, we’re on a death list,” Caroline said.
Another small silence, and Ethan forced himself to not fill it. Caroline said, “I should go to sleep, I think.”
“Okay. I’m glad we talked on the phone. This was nice.”
“It was. It was nice. Now we have something else in common.”
“We both agree that talking on the phone is nice.”
“It’s very old-fashioned of us.”
“Yeah, the kids today don’t really talk on the phone.”
“They don’t.”
“Can I call you again?” Ethan said.
“Anytime.”
8
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1:03 P.M.
Fischer, driving north along Route 1, reached the outskirts of Rockland, Maine, and turned his Equinox around in the parking lot of a fish shack. He was about to start driving south when he decided that he should put some food into his stomach, even though he wasn’t particularly hungry, and call Brandon back to see if he’d gotten any more information on where Jessica Winslow might be hiding out. Brandon was another one of Fischer’s colleagues whom he knew only as a voice on the phone and an undoubtedly fake first name, but ever since he’d started working as a gun for hire, Brandon was the man to call for information about his quarry. Fischer thought of Brandon as the reference librarian of his particular profession.
He’d never been in Maine before, so Fischer, to mark the occasion, ordered a lobster roll, even though it was twenty dollars. He was asked if he wanted mayonnaise or butter, and because of his hesitation, the young pretty girl said, “How about both?” and he agreed.
It was cool outside, the sky threatening rain, but Fischer sat at one of the picnic tables. There was a single bar on his cell phone. He called Brandon.
“If she’s on the run,” Brandon said, “there’s no one in that part of Maine that I can find who has any connection with her.”
“What about Maine in general?”
“One of her friends lives in Portland, Maine.”
“What kind of friend?”
“Don’t know exactly. It’s just someone she friended on her defunct Facebook account. A Jay Anderson. He’s a barista. It’s all I’ve got.”
“Okay, thanks.”
After eating his lobster roll—better with the melted butter was his amateur opinion—Fischer looked at his map app. It was clear that Jessica Winslow knew she was being targeted and had gone on the run. Whoever wanted her dead had someone tail her, and at some point, along Route 1, they lost her. It had probably been a single tail, so it wasn’t surprising that they’d let her get ahead of them, especially being on a major road. But then they would have sped up, tried to catch up with her, and if they hadn’t spotted her again, she had probably veered from Route 1. She could have gone inland, of course, but Fischer thought it made more sense that she would have turned onto the St. George Peninsula. It was where he would start to look. It wasn’t exactly a small peninsula, comprised of three villages, but it had only one major road. Fischer decided to focus on the cottages and houses closest to the shore and look for her car. Jessica Winslow was upper-middle class. If she were looking for a place to hide out, she’d borrow one of her friend’s summer places. It made the most sense.
Fischer drove onto the peninsula. There was farmland on either side, interspersed with wooded areas, some of the leaves already changing colors. The farther he went, the foggier it got. When he first saw the ocean, all he could see was the dark rocks and white foam of the shore. Fog shrouded everything else, although it was clearing in certain places and Fischer could see a dark tree-spiked island not far from the shore. He wondered for a moment if Jessica Winslow had gone to an island—he’d seen signs advertising ferry services—and thought that if she had, it was going to be very hard to find her. Putting it out of his mind, Fischer focused on scanning driveways for white cars, then trying to confirm if they were Camrys. In Tenant Harbor he saw a white Camry parked in front of the general store, and for a moment Fischer thought he’d hit the jackpot, but the license number was wrong.
He took a few side streets, most of which were dead ends, paying the most attention to the properties that looked like summer homes. Several had no cars parked in front of them—the season was definitely over—and several had long driveways or were surrounded by thickets of pine trees. He ignored these houses. If he had to, he’d check them out later, but for right now, he was just hoping to get lucky. He drove all the way to Port Clyde, the furthest village on the peninsula, and took a road out to a pretty lighthouse with a visitor’s center. There was a white sedan in the parking lot that turned out to be a Corolla. Backtracking, he took another road that led him to the village center. A ferry was unloading passengers on a dock. He parked his car, put on his Toronto Raptors hat, and wandered through the town, looking at cars, but also looking at the harbor. The sky was still dark but there was a gap in the clouds where the late afternoon light was streaming through, illuminating a patch of the still water. Gulls wheeled overhead, and the air smelled sharply of the sea. Fischer had grown up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, in a family and a town that he’d been desperate to leave, entering the military the moment he’d been eligible. He never thought of himself as having particular feelings about the ocean one way or another, but the smell of it now, a different smell than the one in Florida despite its being the same ocean, somehow brought him back to his long, anxious childhood, his father sometimes employed but mostly not, his mother often absent, often drunk. Fischer had been the oldest of four kids and was more often than not the one who made dinner every night.
He hoped that he would find Jessica Winslow soon so that he could get back in his car and return home to Virginia and his own family.
He caught a young woman looking at him; she was coming off the ferry, wearing a backpack, and trailing a dog that was at least part pit bull on a leash. This woman had fair, freckled skin—not unlike Fischer’s—and pale red hair. He raised his brow to acknowledge her and that made her look away. It didn’t escape him that spotting Jessica Winslow here in Maine might be easier than spotting her car. Everyone he’d seen so far had been white—a woman of color like Jessica would be fairly easy to spot. As a white man with a Black wife, and with three children, Fischer thought about race fairly often. People pretended that in America everyone was equal, but all that meant was that the ones in charge were happy to screw you over regardless of what color your skin was.
Back in his car Fischer drove out of the village and began to wend his way off the peninsula, taking side roads whenever possible, keeping his eyes on the parked cars in driveways. When he got back onto Route 1 he decided to go check out Rockland. According to his GPS it looked like a decent-size town. The tail that had lost Jessica just south of here would have sped right through to see if she were still heading north. So it was definitely possible that Rockland was her destination. Fischer drove into the town, parking his car on a main thoroughfare, either side lined with brick storefronts.
It was starting to get dark and Fischer knew that he wasn’t going to find her today. Frankly, it would have been miraculous if he had. Still, he walked through the town, peering into storefronts, but really looking at the reflections of cars passing by, hunting for the color white. He passed a restaurant and read the outside menu, intrigued by the special of the night, which was sautéed cod cheeks. His wife was a great cook, but she wasn’t inventive. She liked chicken and steak and hamburgers. Not a big fan of fish, and definitely not a big fan of anything that reminded her too much of the animal she was eating. She loved pulled pork but wouldn’t touch ribs, and it often freaked her out when she even saw her husband eating something with a bone in it, say. So whenever Fischer was out on an assignment he liked to take advantage of trying some adventurous foods. The menu he was looking at had oysters on it, and it had been a while since he’d had one of those. Definitely better to eat without Valerie staring at him from across the table with a look of horror on her face.
