Nine Lives, page 21
As it was, Eric answered the door. He was dressed in loose shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. His skin glistened with sweat, like he’d been working out, but he was also holding a can of beer.
“Sorry to bother you, Eric, but is Margaret home?”
Eric blinked several times and Jack surmised that Eric was trying to remember his name. Then, apparently remembering, he quickly said, “Sorry, Jack, she’s at work, at the library.”
“Oh, never mind,” Jack said. “I just had a question for her, but …” He paused, then said, “Maybe you can answer it for me. Do you mind if I come in for a few minutes?”
Eric hesitated, and Jack waited, not changing his expression or his position on the front stoop, not offering up an apology, and Eric finally said, “Come on in, man. Can I get you a beer?”
Stepping into the foyer Jack said, “No, thank you. As I said, five minutes of your time is all I need.”
Eric led Jack to the living room and indicated a chair. Jack sat, rearranging his jacket so that he had access to the right-hand pocket. After putting his can of beer on the coffee table between them, Eric sat too, an odd expression on his face. It took Jack a moment to figure out what the expression meant, but then he had it. It was that Eric didn’t know how to feel about his neighbor yet. Was Jack a washed-up old man, or was he still someone influential, a best-selling author, a man who still had connections? Eric was trying to categorize him, so that he could know how to act with him.
“I’ll come right to the point, Eric,” Jack said. “I don’t want to waste your time, and I don’t know when Margaret will be coming back.”
“Not for a while,” Eric said.
“So here is the question I was going to ask her, but I will ask you instead. How is it that a decent, kind person like Margaret ended up with a fucking asshole like you?”
An awkward, slowly forming grin creased Eric’s face, as he tried to absorb the question. “Are you serious?” he said, at last.
“Am I serious? Yes. I want to know. I mean, my guess is that she reminds you of your mother, who was probably bullied by your father, and vice versa maybe, or else I don’t see why she puts up with your shit.”
A deep flush of color was rising from Eric’s neck up toward his face. “Hey, Jack,” he said. “I thought you might have some sort of pathetic crush on my wife, and now I know for sure. Why don’t you get the fuck out of my house, before I throw you out myself.”
Jack smiled. He reached into the pocket of his goose-down parka and pulled out his Taurus .44 magnum revolver, the same gun he’d used to kill Matthew Beaumont what felt like years ago in a suburban town outside of Boston. He pointed the barrel of the gun at Eric’s chest.
“What’s your last name, Eric? I don’t think I know it.”
Eric was frozen, his eyes on the revolver, his jaw moving as though he were chewing on something. “Um,” he said, at last.
“I’m going to kill you, Eric, and it doesn’t matter whether I know your last name or not, but I was curious.”
Eric moved his eyes from the revolver to Jack’s face. “Why?” he said.
“Why am I going to kill you, or why do I want to know your last name? I’m going to kill you because you’re a bully and a coward and I don’t like you. You also happen to be married to someone that I do like. So killing you will make her life better, and it will probably make a whole lot of other people’s lives better as well. I’m also killing you because I’ve gotten good at killing people, so I thought I’d use this new skill I’ve acquired late in life. I can tell by the expression on your face that you’re confused, so I’ll make it simple: You are going to die because I want you to die.”
“Look, Jack. If this has to do with Margaret … if you’re in love with her, or something, we can work this out. I mean, Jesus …”
Jack had been briefly tempted to extend the conversation, to tell this man the full story of what he’d been planning over the past two years of his life. And what he’d achieved. The thought of it was tempting, like some supervillain in a James Bond film monologuing away about his plan, but Eric would not have really listened. He was already trying to figure out how to save his own life, his body probably coursing with adrenaline. So Jack shot him in the chest, dead center, and watched as he slumped back onto the pristine white couch, a perplexed and pained expression on his face.
After standing up and looking out the front bay windows to see if anyone had been walking by on the street and heard the gunshot, Jack crouched over Eric’s body and pressed two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. On the table next to Eric’s can of beer was his cell phone. It was locked but that didn’t matter. You could always call 911 on a locked phone. He put the phone into his front pocket, then put the gun into his travel bag, and exited the house, stopping briefly to look at a pile of unopened mail on a waist-high table in the foyer. The first envelope was addressed to Margaret Hutchinson, and the one below it to Eric Miles. He wondered if Margaret had kept her maiden name. It would make it easier for her if she had, not having to change her driver’s license and her bank accounts.
When he was a mile from his neighborhood in West Hartford, and stopped at a red light, Jack called 911, gave them the address of Margaret Hutchinson and Eric Miles, and said that a man had been shot there. The least he could do was to spare Margaret the sight of her dead husband when she returned home from her library shift. He threw Eric’s phone out the window of his car as he merged onto Interstate 84, heading north.
It was just a regular Tuesday in November for most of the world. He thought of his wife, wondering what she’d be doing right now. Drinking chardonnay and watching one of the early evening shows she liked. Either Jeopardy! or the PBS NewsHour. They’d come to her, wouldn’t they, after they figured out what he’d done? Interview her, maybe even try to find out if she had assisted him in anyway. At the very least they’d ask her why he’d done it. He thought that maybe she’d mention the glioblastoma and how his personality had changed after the diagnosis and treatment. She’d mentioned it enough to him, convinced that something had altered in him. He thought she was probably right. He had changed a little after that particular ordeal. He’d realized not just his own insignificance, but the insignificance of everyone else in the world. And, yes, that had been around the time he’d begun to fantasize about killing the children of the Pirate Society, about setting the world to rights.
And he wondered if his wife would mention their only daughter, and how she’d died the year she’d graduated from college. He’d changed then, too, but that was to be expected. It was the second time he’d learned that the world would happily rid itself of its young and beautiful inhabitants. There was no order, only chaos. He’d created the list to bring back order, but his wife would never make that connection, and he doubted that anyone else would either.
It was late by the time he pulled the car into the half-empty parking lot of the Windward Resort. He stepped out into the cold, briny air, and was flooded with the weight of sadness that always accompanied the smell of the seashore.
The young woman at the reception desk took his information and smiled at him with an empty look that made Jack feel pretty certain she hadn’t been told to be on the lookout for anyone checking in under the name Jonathan Grant. He asked if she had a tide table, and she dug around in her desk drawer, finally finding one.
“Are you going fishing, Mr. Grant?” she said.
“No. Just going to the beach.”
“It’s nice this time of year. Empty.” She was looking directly at him, but he clocked her eyes darting to the side of his head. Normally he combed his hair in such a way as to cover up the raised white scar from his brain surgery three years ago, but he’d forgotten to do it before entering the hotel.
He took the stairs to the second floor, and went down the dingy hallway to his room. As a child at this resort he’d been dazzled by the luxury, or maybe it was just the freedom that at such a young age he’d been given the run of the place, with its cavernous dining room, and darkly lit lounge, and endless hallways. Now it just seemed worn-out and sad. The hallways smelled of canned soup and disinfectant.
In his room, where the smell was worse, he studied the tide table, confirming that low tide was going to be at 1:49 a.m., and high tide was at 7:53 a.m. It was perfect. It didn’t give him a lot of time to do what he’d come here to do, but it was enough. He cracked the seal on a bottle of Macallan 25 and poured some into the water glass he’d taken from the bathroom. Then he sat at the desk and wrote his letter.
At just past midnight he poured the remainder of the scotch into a sterling silver flask he’d had since college and left the resort, going out the back entrance that led to the rear parking lot. The cold wind was still whistling over the empty asphalt. Jonathan wore waterproof boots and flannel-lined jeans, plus a thick fisherman’s sweater under his parka. He’d always hated the cold, and despite what he planned to do, was nervous about the temperature outside. He dug the woolen cap out of his pocket and put it on his head, then walked purposefully across Micmac Avenue and down toward the stone jetty.
The night was clear, the sky peppered with stars, and with a three-quarters moon. He had no trouble making his way across the dark beach, despite the damp wind that tugged at his parka. When he got to the jetty, he risked using his flashlight briefly to locate what he believed was the place where his sister had been left to die over fifty years ago. He’d scouted the spot earlier, back when he’d waited out here for Frank Hopkins. He couldn’t be one hundred percent positive that it was the exact location, but it was close enough, a crevice in the base of the stone wall just large enough for an adult to squeeze into. He studied it now, a tidal pool reflecting the moon, something scuttling away as he pressed his boot into the damp sand.
He dug the pills out of the front pocket of his jeans and washed them down with the rest of the scotch. Then he lowered himself to his knees and wriggled his way under the seaweed-blanketed rocks, finding a position that wasn’t exactly comfortable, but that wasn’t painful. It was actually okay nestled in the blackness of the rocks, even as the icy water began to rush in, then out again, occasionally splashing up against his face. He could taste the saltwater on his lips. There was a roaring in his ears, the water filling every available cavity around him. Something, maybe a crab, touched the back of his neck. He closed his eyes and thought of Faye. He was very tired, actually. There was something almost soothing about the sound of the water shushing into the cave, then shushing out again. Shushing in. Shushing out.
He thought he’d be colder, but he wasn’t. Maybe it was because he was out of the wind. Or maybe it was the pills and the scotch starting to kick in. It was cheating, of course, to have ensured that he would be unconscious as the tide rose. Faye hadn’t had that luxury. But he wasn’t a perfect man. He never had been.
NONE
1
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 5:13 P.M.
Sam Hamilton settled onto a stool at the bar at the Windward Lounge and ordered a Shipyard IPA.
“Oh, hey, Sam,” Shelly said, looking up at him as she poured his beer. “Nice to see a familiar face. It’s tourist season in December this year.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“The lookie-loos are out in force.”
“What do you tell them?”
“Depends on my mood. Usually I tell them the truth—that I never saw him the night he was here. But just for the fun of it I did tell a couple of folks that he was in here buying drinks for the whole bar. I mean, you think he might’ve done that, considering he was going to walk down to the jetty and drown himself.”
“It would’ve been generous.”
“Right. That’s what I’m saying. You can’t take it with you, you might as well buy a few drinks for your fellow man. You staying for dinner tonight?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Sam said.
“Well, no rush. The special is striped bass and Thomas tells me it’s pretty good.”
Shelly went down the bar and poured two glasses of wine for a middle-aged couple. When she came back, Sam said, “Shelly, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s still a library here, right?”
“A library?”
“Yeah, like a help-yourself lending library.”
“Oh, right. Of course. On the third floor.”
He took a long pull of his beer, suddenly eager to go upstairs and look through the library. He’d just remembered it existed, a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all filled with donated books. It had been started way back when by Frank Hopkins’s father, Murray, the original owner of the Windward Resort—there was a faded handmade sign that called the library something like “Uncle Murray’s Book Nook.” He only knew about it because two or three years ago he used to spend an occasional night at the Windward with a divorced real estate agent from York. She refused to come to his apartment—for reasons he never understood—but she’d meet him at the hotel, stay for only an hour, and then leave him with a room for the night that he didn’t really need. He’d discovered Uncle Murray’s library, a collection that had been started when the Windward was more of a resort, back when families would come for a month, or a whole summer.
On the last night of Jack Radebaugh’s life, after he’d checked into room 207, it was clear that he’d written some sort of note or letter. There was a pen on the desk and a few sheets of blank paper. But they’d yet to find whatever it was that he had written. The current theory was that he brought it down with him to the jetty and it had washed out to sea with the tide. But Sam had given that theory a lot of thought and it hadn’t made sense to him. If he’d written some sort of letter—a confession, maybe—then why not just leave it in his hotel room. Unless, of course, like the killer in And Then There Were None, he felt the need to write a letter explaining why and how he did what he did, but then he hid it somehow. In the book the killer put the letter in a bottle and threw it into the sea. Had Jack Radebaugh done the same thing? Or had he hidden it some other way?
Sam, having reread the Christie novel twice in recent weeks, remembered that the killer was torn between wanting to leave behind a perfect mystery and also wanting the world to acknowledge his artistry. He thought about that constantly. He’d learned a lot about Jack Radebaugh since his body had been found wedged into the base of the jetty on Kennewick beach. All of his victims, with the exception of Frank Hopkins, had been children of previous guests at the Windward Resort, and although the dates hadn’t been entirely confirmed, the parents had all been guests when they’d been children themselves, back when Jack’s sister Faye had drowned. It was Daniel Horne, father of Alison Horne, who’d had the best memory of the drowning of Faye. He had told the investigating FBI detectives that there was a group of children who called themselves the Pirate Society and that both Jack and Faye had been part of it.
“Same again?” Shelly said, her hand on the beer pull.
“Not right now, but I’ll be back. I need to go check out the library. Is it unlocked?”
“Should be. What’s someone gonna steal? A book?”
The door to the library was unlocked, and Sam had to search the wall just inside the door for a light switch. The room flickered into being, a windowless space not much larger than a typical hotel room. A few vinyl club chairs were scattered around on the burgundy wall-to-wall carpeting. The room smelled of musty books and mustier carpet.
He decided to work clockwise, scanning the shelves. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for but was hoping he’d know it when he saw it. A book about drowning, maybe, or about pirates. It was a long shot, he knew, but maybe Jack Radebaugh did write that confession, but then decided to hide it somewhere it was unlikely to be found. The first section was hardcover fiction, indicated by a faded handwritten sign. The books were alphabetical by author, mostly fiction that had been popular about forty or fifty years ago. Lots of Michener and Leon Uris. A whole row of Catherine Cookson books. Here and there was something a little more modern. There were quite a few John Grishham novels, and a ton of Stephen King hardcovers.
He moved on from fiction into history, then biography. Then there was a large section of paperback novels, mostly thrillers and romances. In the Ross Macdonald section he spotted a paperback called The Drowning Pool and pulled it out to flip through the pages. Nothing there.
Then he thought of Agatha Christie. It took him a while, but he found a high-up shelf that contained about twelve of her books. And there it was: Ten Little Indians. He pulled the pocket-sized book off the shelf. It had a blue cover and showed a wooden statue of an Indian getting chopped in the neck with an ax. He shook the book out, then flipped through its pages. Nothing there as well.
The last section was kids’ books, at least on the lower shelves. Sam crouched and scanned the titles. Lots of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, plus even a few Bobbsey Twins. The picture books had such narrow spines that it was hard to read all the titles, and Sam found himself simply skimming through them. Many of the books were familiar to him from his own childhood, including an Enid Blyton book, Five on a Treasure Island, that transported him back to his grandmother’s house in Yorkshire, which had an enormous collection of Blyton. He pulled it out—wondering how it had ever ended up in Maine—and started to flip through it, getting caught up in the story before telling himself that he needed to keep looking through the shelves. For whatever reason Sam thought that his chances of finding the note, now that he hadn’t found it in the Christie book, were best here in the kids’ section. If Faye Grant’s drowning was the event that sparked the entire murder spree, then that had happened when her brother Jack was only twelve years old. Sam kept looking.
