Nine Lives, page 8
Except for teaching a spin class at the gym from eleven to noon, Jay had a free day ahead of him. He did some push-ups, made himself a smoothie, then watched some porn without allowing himself to masturbate, not even touching himself. It was painful, but kind of invigorating at the same time. When he got bored with that, he checked his phone and saw that he had a voice mail message from a number he didn’t recognize. It had been left the day before, and he assumed it was a sales call, but decided to listen to it just in case it had something to do with a job. Turned out to not be a sales call, but a Jessica Winslow from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wanting him to call her back as soon as possible. His stomach twisted with a feeling of rage and fear. Jesus, was it that email he’d sent last night to that slut on Craigslist? That couldn’t be it. She probably heard that stuff all the time, and besides, there was no way his account could be traced back to him. Also, he just realized, he’d gotten the phone call from the FBI yesterday afternoon and he’d sent the message on Craigslist last night. He relaxed a little. Still, that wasn’t the first message of that kind he’d sent from his account. Maybe he should delete it, just in case, scrub his laptop.
He listened to the message again, trying to read her tone of voice. He couldn’t tell a thing. It was probably nothing, hopefully nothing. Either way, he decided he didn’t want to call her back. No matter what she had to say, it wasn’t something he wanted to hear. He erased the message.
5
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2:05 P.M.
Caroline had risen late, then spent the morning grading papers, tweaking her lecture on George Eliot, and even spent half an hour memorizing a Weldon Kees poem. She made herself a grilled cheese sandwich for a late lunch, heating up some of the homemade tomato soup she’d put together at the beginning of the week. She brought the food out to her front porch, considered pouring herself a glass of wine, then decided not to.
It was warm, and slightly overcast, clouds stretched like gauze across the sky, or like a patient etherized upon the table. Estrella was on the porch with her, watching a cardinal through the screen. Fable was still outside; she’d seen him earlier stalking through the high grass of her neighbor’s wild lawn.
She’d brought her phone with her outside and looked back over the email thread with that strange guy from Texas. It had been such an odd encounter that she couldn’t shake it out of her mind. She supposed that for her students—for her contemporaries, probably, as well—having a long, flirty digital conversation was a regular occurrence, but it was new to her, and now she was consumed with thoughts of a man she’d never met. No, that wasn’t true. They had met, last night, even if it wasn’t in person. In some ways it was the most significant conversation she’d had in years, so much more interesting than her occasional flirtations with self-satisfied academics at conferences. She flipped from her emails to her internet browser and looked at the few pictures of Ethan Dart that she’d found. On a whim, she searched for videos and found one on YouTube of him alone with a guitar on a stage, singing a song called “Just Because.” It was from an event called Austin Showcase from a couple of years earlier. Ethan wore black jeans and a De La Soul T-shirt and he perched on a wooden stool while he played and sang. Caroline had limited knowledge of music, in general. She knew what she liked but didn’t necessarily seek out new acts or go to shows. Most of what she listened to were CDs she’d owned since college—girl folksingers, and string quartets, and some Icelandic ambient stuff she’d inherited after her split with Alec. But she was relieved that she liked Ethan’s song, the chorus repeating the line “Just because my boot was tapping didn’t mean I liked the song,” and she found herself unpacking that line for all its possible meanings.
As she was dipping the remainder of her sandwich into her soup, she noticed the police cruiser slowly turning into the driveway. A few random thoughts slipped through her mind: Are my parents dead? Has my cat been found on the side of the road? Have they come to question me about Ethan Dart? And that last thought made her realize they were probably there to follow up on the strange list. Two uniformed officers, one male, one female, one wide-hipped, one pigeon-toed, stepped from the cruiser and made their way to the porch.
6
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1:18 P.M.
An Austin patrol officer, just one, came to Ethan’s apartment at roughly the same time as Caroline let the Ann Arbor police onto her porch. Officer Resendez knocked on Ethan’s door while he was asleep. He’d already been up for a cup of coffee and three over-easy eggs, but he’d been so exhausted that he’d climbed back into bed and was still napping. The three sharp raps from Officer Resendez got incorporated into Ethan’s dream, one in which he’d had to return to college in Lubbock to take one last exam in order to graduate. The raps, in his dream, were made by a large black vulture outside of one of the exam room’s windows, pecking at a plane of glass. By the time Ethan had hoisted himself from the futon on his floor, and made his way to the door, peering through the eyehole to see a clean-shaven cop, the dream was gone.
“Hey,” Ethan said to the policeman after opening the door about six inches.
“Are you Ethan Dart?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and coughed to clear his phlegmy throat. Was he about to get arrested?
“Do you mind coming with me to the station? You’re being put under temporary protective custody. There’s a federal agent on his or her way to the station who can explain it to you.”
“Seriously? What’s going on?”
“Honestly, I have no idea, man. But I’d find some comfortable clothes to put on. You don’t know how long you’ll be in them.”
7
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 3:10 P.M.
Jack Radebaugh heard the unusually loud thump of his mail being delivered through the slot in his front door and got up from the kitchen table to go take a look. There was a package from his wife in a manila envelope. She hadn’t written a return address, but he knew her writing better than he knew his own.
He went back to the kitchen table with the thick package and slit it open using a steak knife. Inside was a stack of mail addressed to him at his old address. On the top letter was a sticky note, on which Harriet had written: Change your address!
He flipped through his mail, half of which could’ve been thrown out unopened. There were lapsed subscription notices, pleas for political donations, offers for credit cards. There was also his royalty check from his publishing house, a Christmas card from his old friend Earnest that was either very early or very, very late, and a thin white envelope, that, like the package it arrived in, had no return address. He opened it, and read a list of names, his included. He slid it on top of the pile of mail he intended on throwing out, then changed his mind, and moved it to the pile of keepers.
Three days earlier he’d received a call from a female FBI agent asking him if he’d received a list in the mail with his name on it. He’d told her that he hadn’t, but now that he’d actually received such a list, he supposed that the thing to do would be to call her back. He wondered if he’d kept her number.
He got up and refilled his coffee mug, knowing he would take only a few sips, but liking the feel of the hot mug in his hands. Fall had arrived. Jack’s favorite season anywhere, but especially in West Hartford, where he’d grown up, and where he was now living again, having bought his childhood house. It was a three-bedroom Tudor in a neighborhood of brick Tudors, each with its own fairytale profile—the steep roof, the narrow windows—and each with its own tidy front yard.
The square kitchen of his newly reacquired home was toward the back, and from its side window he could see into the backyard of his neighbor’s property. That house had belonged to a family named Lambert when Jack was a boy. This was back in the early 1950s. There were three children in the Lambert family, all slightly older than Jack and his sister. There was a teenage girl, who still retained her English accent from the time before the Lamberts had emigrated to America. Two more girls, fraternal twins, liked to embroil Jack and his sister in strange games of imagination, usually involving the fairies that lived in their conjoined backyards. Jack remembered those games better than he remembered any of the Lamberts’ faces. He wondered what had happened to them. The parents would be dead now, of course, and those young girls would all be older than him. They’d most likely have children and grandchildren and successes and heartbreak. And the chances were that at least one of them was already dead.
Looking out at the Lamberts’ old house now, he watched as a very thin woman with long brown hair stepped into the back sunroom, holding her own mug of coffee and staring into her backyard. The sunroom had not been part of his neighbor’s house when he’d been a child. It was an addition, probably added in the 1970s or 1980s, a room almost entirely made of glass. He was calling it a sunroom even though he was pretty sure it went by another name that he couldn’t quite remember. Words had been escaping him lately. They were like cigarette smoke. He’d open his mouth and the word would billow away on the wind. He could see its shape as it dissipated but the word was gone.
Jack, coming out of this reverie, refocused on his neighbor’s house. The woman with the mug was now turned and looking directly at him, not with any animosity, but with curiosity, if anything. He raised a hand and she waved back, and then Jack stepped away from his kitchen window. There was a mirror in the front hall and Jack took a look at himself, making sure he had no food in his teeth, nothing crusty around his eyes, then he swept his fingers through his thick, mane of gray hair, and made his way to his back porch. If the woman was still in her solarium—that was it, a goddamn solarium!—then he’d say hello.
It was colder outside than he thought it would be, and Jack buttoned up his cardigan as he wandered across toward his neighbor. The woman was still there, and she stepped outside as well, just as he reached the threshold of her property.
“Thought I’d introduce myself,” Jack said.
“I’m Margaret,” she said, putting out her hand, and taking three quick, awkward steps to shake his.
“I’m Jack. I’m—”
“I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself, and I even put together half of a welcome basket, but then ended up eating the muffins, and I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I’m sorry I haven’t come over sooner.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I’ve only been here less than a month.”
“I know. I just don’t want you to think I’m not neighborly. I’ve got a pot of coffee on, if you want a cup.”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Once they were settled in the solarium/sunroom, Jack with another cup of coffee he didn’t want, Margaret said, “I heard a rumor you used to live here.”
“Oh, yeah? Who did you hear that from?”
“A fellow librarian, actually. At the branch just down the street where I work. She told me you used to live here, but before her time. She also said that you wrote a famous book.”
“She’s one for two. I did used to live here, but I hardly think my book was famous. Maybe it was for about a year and a half, right after it came out.”
“What kind of book was it?”
“It was called Say It Out Loud, Then Do It Out Loud. It was—it is—a business book about always announcing your plans before you do them. I know what you’re thinking—How do you write a whole book about that?—and I can barely remember how I did it. Wide margins, I guess. But it made me a lot of money once upon a time. And it turned me into a full-time consultant. I still occasionally do seminars all over the world.”
“It rings a bell. My father probably bought it.”
“Was your father a business man?”
“Yes. In the insurance business.”
“Then he may well have bought my book.”
Margaret had put out a platter with a few slices of coffee cake on it, and Jack took one and had a bite. It was very good. She looked expectantly at him, and he told her how much he liked it, and she confirmed his guess that it was homemade. While she talked with him about baking, and how it was her true love, he studied her. She had small features, a slightly pointed chin, and the skin on her cheeks was darker than the rest of her face, as though she’d had bad acne as a teenager. She was skinny, and sat slightly hunched forward, the same bad posture that Jack saw on so many young people. Her best feature was her long brown hair. It had that lustrous look that comes from a healthy diet, or maybe just plain genetics.
“So is it true you used to live here, in this neighborhood, I mean, when you were a kid?” she said, pushing her hair back off her forehead, and sitting up a little straighter.
“I grew up here. Right next door, same house I just bought. My father, like yours, worked in insurance.”
“Wow. How long did you live here?”
“Until I went to college. Then my parents got divorced, and the house was sold. But except for vacation homes this was where I spent my childhood.”
“You must have happy memories,” she said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’ve bought the house and moved back into it. Unless you plan on burning it down or something, I just figured …”
“No, you’re right. It was mostly a happy childhood. And I love this neighborhood with all the brick houses.”
“It must have changed.”
“No, not at all. The city’s changed, but this street is pretty much exactly how I remember it. It was where I started my life, so I suppose it’s as good a place as any to finish it.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Margaret said, shifting forward, lowering her shoulders. “You don’t even look like you’re retired.”
“I’m semi-retired, I guess. But I don’t know … it feels, to me, that moving back here isn’t temporary. It’s final. I want to stop working completely, and my marriage is kaput. No, it’s okay. One of those separations that is definitely best for everyone involved. And all this was happening, and then I went online and saw that this house was for sale. It was kismet. And now I’m ready for the next part of my life. How did you end up here?”
Margaret told him how she’d gone to college in Hartford, and gotten married right afterward, and even though they’d dreamed of moving to New York City, her husband Eric was offered a job at a local finance company, and she’d gotten a library degree, and was now working part-time at the nearest branch. They’d bought the house just a few months earlier.
“So, you’re new here, too.”
“Relatively. We’d been renting a place just a few blocks away. It was an in-law apartment at my husband’s best friend’s house, so we know the area. But, yes, we are new to this street, and you are pretty much the first neighbor I’ve had over for coffee.”
“Well, I’m honored.”
“And I’d love to have you over for dinner sometime. Maybe even grill out before the evenings get too cold.”
“I’d like that,” Jack said, assuming she was just being polite. He was also assuming that her mentioning a second social event meant this one was over. He stood up. “I have some work to do this morning,” he said.
“Oh, okay.” She stood, as well, and Jack saw an expression—anxiety, maybe, or possibly fear—cross her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was keeping you …”
“Oh, no. Don’t worry about it. It was lovely meeting you, but I do have a few things to do this morning, and if I stay here any longer, I’ll eat all of that coffee cake.”
Back in his own kitchen, Jack stood a little back from the window and watched as his nervous neighbor tidied up the room he’d just departed. He doubted she would make good on her offer of an invite for dinner, which was just as well. He had suspicions he wouldn’t like her husband.
Jack turned back to the kitchen table and surveyed the two piles of mail he’d made. He remembered the FBI agent, and decided to go hunt down her phone number. He’d give her a call later that afternoon, or maybe he’d call her on Monday. Whatever it was, it could probably wait.
8
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 4:04 P.M.
Detective Sam Hamilton had worked with Mary Parkinson, the state police detective, on two other occasions: one case, a foiled bank robbery, that had been cleared up within hours; and another, a hit-and-run, that remained unsolved. He’d gotten along with her just fine, although she was hard to read, one of those tight-lipped, weather-beaten New Englanders who looked like she’d been born with wrinkles on her face, and only spoke when it was absolutely necessary. Still, when she did speak, she was friendly enough, and she’d never shown any reticence about working with a local detective.
He’d been wanting to call her all day, to see if she’d provide an update on the Frank Hopkins homicide, but he’d forced himself to wait, not wanting to bother her so soon in the midst of an investigation. But after spending all day at home hunting the internet for possible connections between the nine names on the list, and finding very little, Sam decided to place the call.
“Detective Parkinson here.”
“Mary, it’s Sam. From Kennewick.”
“Hi Sam. You must have something for me.”
“I wish. I don’t have anything. I was calling in the hopes that you’d update me.”
“On Frank Hopkins?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m off that case now, myself. Well, they told me I’m consulting, but it just went federal so there you have it.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Just happened about an hour ago.”
“Why? Do you know?”
“There was another homicide. In Massachusetts.”
“What do you mean?” Sam said.
“A Matthew Beaumont was killed this morning in Dartford, Massachusetts. Shot while he was out for his morning run. I’m sure you remember that he was one of the names on the list. Well, he’d gotten the same letter as Frank had, so now it’s some kind of serial killer crossing state lines. Or that’s what it looks like.”
