Last to Know (25 page)

He’d noticed Len lurking around; somehow he always seemed to be where Rose was, up on the hill, or moored in a small boat on the opposite shore, unmoving. Of course Len made like he was fishing but Diz knew the lake well, knew there were no fish to be found where the man was because the water was too shallow and the sun glinted off it, sending the fish diving for darker, deeper waters. A serious fisherman would be at the far end of the lake where the hills sloped steeply and trees dipped branches into the steely water, chilled by a rippling underground stream, which probably also fed the various wells dotted around the hills, most of them now contaminated and long disused or dried up.

Today, though, Len was not even pretending to fish. He simply sat, allowing his old boat to drift, all fifteen feet of worn fiberglass, and certainly not the glamorous and expensive old wooden craft Diz longed for and might put on his Christmas list. If, that is, the Osbornes had Christmas this year. The way things were going the family might not even be together by then. Anyhow, Len was allowing his boat to drift with the current that took him past the burned wreckage of the old Havnel property when suddenly, to Diz’s surprise, he began sculling toward the shore, sliding the small boat into the shade of an overhanging tree where Diz could no longer see him.

Diz sat for an hour or more, watching, waiting, until he heard his mother calling his name and the clang of the old brass handbell that announced supper. He would have stayed longer, anxious to see what Len was up to, but he could smell burgers on the grill and his mom made the best. Served on a seeded roll, slathered with a dollop of her homemade mayo, ketchup, lettuce, tomato, and a slice of dill pickle, it resembled the one in the Burger King TV ad with the sexy girl, though Diz bet Rose’s tasted better.

He sped down to the kitchen. “Smells great,” he said, concentrating on the first juicy bite. If the great chefs of the world combined to provide any eleven-year-old with a meal, in Diz’s opinion they would never equal this.

“I don’t know whether I like your Bolognese more, though,” he said, just to tease Rose, but for once she was unresponsive.

He waited a few minutes then added, “Mom, why does that mountain man keep rowing around the lake near us? I mean, like, I see him over at the Havnel place but sometimes he’s right here.”

Rose was pouring a glass of red wine. She looked up, alarmed. “Who are you talking about?”

“Len Doutzer. He keeps rowing too close to our house. I mean, he’s trying to look like he’s fishing but there’s no good fish to be caught right here. Dad took me where the fish are.”

Rose was concerned. These days she did not like to hear of anyone lurking around the place. Still it was probably nothing. She took a sip of the wine then went and got a bowl of small green olives from the sideboard. “They have pits,” she warned, popping one into her mouth.

Diz said, “You should get the other kind, the black ones.”

“I like these more. So, how do you know Len?”

Diz shrugged. “I’ve seen him around in the store or coming out of Red Sails, or Tweedies coffee shop. Anyhow I remember thinking he looked like a mountain man, kind of grizzly long iron-gray hair, scruffy, like he lived in a cave or somethin’.”

“Some
thing
,” Rose corrected his speech and Diz groaned.

“Not the point.” He finished off his burger in one gigantic bite, making Rose groan about his manners. “Look, Mom,” he said, still chewing, “I have to protect you. I’m all you’ve got so I’m keeping my eye out.”

“As usual,” Rose said. “And anyhow, Len is the local character. He’s lived here as long as anyone can remember, up the hill across the lake. He carves benches and tables for people like us, with houses here. I’ve never heard he caused any trouble.”

Diz took in what his mother said but his gut feeling was telling him otherwise. Later in the afternoon, he was lying on his bed, playing a video game and feeling pretty lonesome without his dad and the rest of the family.

The house seemed to have settled into silence. It wasn’t the kind of silence Diz had noticed before; this was a deeper kind of quiet, where, he thought, recalling some old poem from his younger days, “never a mouse stirred.” It was so quiet Diz’s scalp crawled and he wished the mice
would
stir. Then the barn owl that lived a half mile downstream hooty-tooted mournfully and life returned to normal.

Diz went to look out the window. Clouds had slung in, darkening the sky, and the lake slid like gray silk under the breeze. He heard the ripple of oars and quickly climbed out onto his branch to take a look.

Bea Havnel was rowing, expertly as always, toward the island. Diz couldn’t quite make it out, he wasn’t sure, but he thought someone was there, waiting for her. He got down from the branch and walked as quietly as he could through the trees toward the lake.

Though he watched for over an hour, he did not see her row back again. He was telling himself he must have been wrong about her, he’d been so tired he’d missed her return, when he heard a noise. He turned to look, just as Bea swung the oar at his head.

49

Diz played right into my hands. I’d noticed him, creeping along the shore road, binoculars focused on me, watching as always. I saw my opportunity and I took it. The single blow felled him and I got him into my small lightweight boat that I liked especially because of its ability to cut soundlessly through the water, sleek as a water moccasin only without the deadly fangs. I, of course, had those.

How to do it though? That was the question and as I pulled to the shore and sat in my little craft, I pondered the answer. I was a sincere believer in the old saying “curiosity killed the cat”; after all, remember Jemima? I’d wondered exactly how long it would take an eleven-year-old spy to try to find out exactly what I was up to.

I know the meaning of the word “compulsion” only too well; there have been times when I have had to resist it, others when unfortunately I succumbed. I say “unfortunate” because those times—two in fact—turned out to be dangerous for me. The first was in Florida where Lacey—I could never call her “Mom” though in fact she was my mother—botched up a drug deal. She got greedy, took the goods and did not pay, which, being a drug deal meant immediate death. Of course we went on the run, changing identities, or looks, and I took care of the would-be “exterminator” in my own way, not because I wanted to save Lacey from the consequences of her actions, but because at the time I was only thirteen, she was all I had and I needed her.

The second mistake was killing Jemima. I knew she had seen me with Wally, that she suspected the drug situation, knew she was friends with the famous, or perhaps “notorious” is a better word, member of the police, Detective Jordan, who by the way, if he were not so smart and full of himself, I might easily have seduced. Even I can recognize “danger” when it stands in front of me in jeans and a leather jacket, concern in his grave blue eyes as he looks at poor little me in my oversized hospital robe, saved from death only hours before. What man could resist? I gave him a small flirt, just to ensure he was on my side, but nothing more. I needed Harry Jordan, just as I needed Rose.

Rose is my ultimate target. You can have no idea how long, from my so-called “home” across Evening Lake, I have watched that family coming and going. Several months at least. Of course my first target was Lacey. I needed to get my hands on that cartel money before the cartel took it back, which they would since even I knew Lacey was cheating on them. She was a big-enough dealer to count, money-wise, and I must admit, clever at it. Lacey had found her métier, you might say, after years of scrambling and poverty and selling anything she could, including herself, though never, I repeat never, me.

Do not give Lacey credit for this. It was I who took the stand against it. I always had a sense of my own worth, and an idea of how to go about realizing that, and it wasn’t just some cheap hustle in Las Vegas along with all the other harlots feeling lucky if they got five hundred for an hour giving some fat creep head and letting him have his ugly way. Not for me. I was much more into the Harry Jordan mode. In fact if a creep like that had so much as touched me I might have killed him. Instead, I killed my mother. I considered it a much better deal.

And now I was rich, or would be when the insurance paid up on the burned house (accidental, of course) and on my mother’s life policy, which was much trickier due to the knife in the eye. I should have resisted that impulse but the bitch was running, hair aflame, polyester dress stuck like hot molten lead on her body, screaming my name, and that I had done it. I had to silence her. Immediately.

Don’t you love that word “immediately”? It stops you right in your tracks. “Stop your wife from doing this, immediately,” the sour mistress says to her married lover. “Stop doing that immediately,” the exhausted mother tells her child. “Stop immediately or I’ll shoot.” That’s what Jordan and the other detective yelled at me when I was running from Jemima’s body. It was a pity they caught up so quickly, I had so little time to admire my handiwork, to gloat over the blood sliding silkily from the thin line I had carved on Jemima’s throat. Such a lovely red, like no other, really. Of course it’s not as pretty when it begins to congeal and gets that rusty look, the color of old plush cinema seats. Same texture too.

By now of course you understand that I love what I do. I live for what I do. And other people must die so that I can live. As I mentioned earlier, I am not a vampire, I simply am in love with the power of the kill. The ultimate control over another person. That moment when I know I have her, is it.

How many, you might be asking, have I killed. Not counting Lacey, I believe it must be five by now. A couple of schoolgirls who got on my nerves; a woman tending bar on a Florida beach who refused to serve me a mojito because I was underage; an older woman in some cheap hotel who tried to get into my bed. She never slept another night in a bed, or with another woman, after that. And the others I’ve mentioned.

A sordid life, you might say, but my own. All that will change now. Now that I am rich. And now I can take care of the lovely Rose, the woman who has it all, who is every man’s ideal, every child’s best mom in the world. She rejected me and I can’t allow that. Had she only taken me in as she’d said she would, had she only let me be part of her life, a member of her family, she might have saved herself. Not now. I am jealous of Rose and I’ve never been jealous of anyone.
I want to be Rose.

Of course I am not going to kill her yet, that’s way too risky right now. No, I’m going for the emotional jugular. Her child. Diz will disappear. “Into thin air,” they’ll say, puzzled. “Kidnapped,” they will add, afraid. All pedophiles in the area will be rounded up, all potential crazies locked up, all past child offenders brought in for questioning.

And I will be the one who brings Diz home. I will find Diz. I will rescue him, return him to his grateful family. To Rose, whose gratitude will be such she will forgive me the past and welcome me into her home. Where, let me tell you now, I will take over. Within months I will be in command. I will have all of them eating out of my gentle hand.

I will be Rose, and then when she is emotionally wrecked I’ll think about what to do with her.

*   *   *

I’ve been keeping my eye on Diz, I know his routine at Evening Lake well by now. He’s a curious kid, always with his binoculars, out on his tree at night looking for owls or maybe just spying on his family, who, God knows, had little to hide up to this point other than Wally’s descent into drugs. Pity the kid didn’t catch on to that earlier, I guess he knows nothing of drug culture other than what he sees on TV or his iPad games, which come to think of it is probably quite a lot. Not enough to see me coming though, and I suspect what he’s really looking at through those binoculars is me. Diz is suspicious and so am I, and I have to get him before he gets me.

It’s important Diz does not see me, he must not recognize me as the “abductor,” because later I am to be his “savior,” the one who will return him to his ever-grateful mother, all credit to me.

I know that a few hours after they realize he’s gone, the search will be on. We shall all join in, all those Evening Lake regulars who know the kid and the family. It will take a while, maybe a day, perhaps even two before I “find” him, and every clue will point to abduction by a stranger. There are plenty of them, hikers and such, rambling round our lake, our hills. In fact I’d better watch out for them, don’t want any of them seeing something they shouldn’t. Not that anyone comes this far. Almost no one other than Len Doutzer even knows this place exists, so hidden is it among old growth and matted brambles. No, I’m betting the first place the family, then the police, will search, will be the lake. The boy is always out there on his own. “Drowned kid in lake,” will be immediately what they will suspect. And you know what, if things go wrong, they might be correct.

With practice, though in fact it is also my nature, I have become silent as any cat, which enabled me to catch Diz from behind. I struck a blow to his head with the oar. He cried out, put up a hand, then crumpled to the ground. I stood for a second looking down at him: all he was was a bunch of old clothes, grubby old shorts, dusty sneakers, a Grateful Dead T-shirt that was too big and probably belonged to his older brother.

There was no time to be wasted. Despite being small, Diz was too heavy for me to carry and from the bushes I pulled the small hand cart, like the little red Radio Flyer only this was old and brown and full of splinters, must have been rescued from some charity garden sale years ago, until I came across it, and it was finally coming in useful. I strapped Diz onto it, knees under his chest, sort of in a fetal position. Then I stood and looked about me. This was my most vulnerable moment. Anyone taking a walk might come round that bend and see me. I had to move fast.