The Dead Student (35 page)

“Go through it again,” Susan said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

“What he said was: Had I ever spoken with a killer before? Of course not. Scared the hell out of me.” Andy Candy tried to minimize the frantic tone in her voice. She wanted to seem in control when she felt anything but. “Still scares the hell out of me. Susan, what do we do?”

Moth had said nothing up to this point. He’d hidden his surprise when Susan told him to meet her outside.

Moth finally spoke, filling his voice with no-nonsense demands: “Look,
Susan, we need protection. Like round-the-clock bodyguards. We need the cops to take over. We need to open a real investigation and find this guy before he …” Moth stopped there, because he did not want to start suggesting what this anonymous killer might be capable of.

Susan nodded, but said, “I don’t know if I can help.”

There was a momentary silence.

“What the fuck?” Andy Candy blurted.

Susan looked at the two young people.
Tell the truth? Find a convenient lie?
She swallowed hard.
Timothy will know,
she thought.
Can’t fool another addict.
“I’ve been suspended. All I’m supposed to do is—”

Moth interrupted her. “Get straight.”

“That’s right.”

“I fucking knew it,” Moth said, turning his head away so that Andy wouldn’t see the frustration there.

“But you could call someone, right?” Andy said. “Someone else who could help us.”

This simple request didn’t compute with Susan.
Call her boss and say what exactly? “I’m sorry I’m suspended but there’s this killer or maybe not because it’s a case I already cleared. So I fucked up more than once. Like fucked up squared.”

Or maybe I should call some homicide detective who will think hearing from a suspended prosecutor with a cocaine habit and a pressing need for a big-time favor is precisely the last thing in this world he wants on his plate and who will kiss me off so fast I won’t even feel it happening. Like a razor cut,
Susan thought.
I’m radioactive.
“No,” she said slowly. “I think the only thing is to handle this ourselves. At least until I can …” She stopped.
Can what?
She knew this was a singularly stupid approach. She did not see an alternative.

“Then what,” Moth said abruptly, “is our next move?” He hesitated, then added, “And it should be some move that keeps us all alive.” He racked his brain trying to envision one.

“Right,” Susan said. She did not add,
“And what move might that be?”

Andy felt her imagination crowded:
Doctor Hogan wasn’t safe. Uncle Ed wasn’t safe. None of the others were safe.

“
We should do what he has done,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Moth asked. ‘We can’t toss away who we are, like he did.”

Andy Candy turned to him. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. She reached out and grabbed his hand, the same gesture someone might make to lead another into an embrace.

She wanted to form her words cautiously, but they came out in a rush. “What we know is that someone thirty years ago went to medical school, fell into a psychotic episode, got kicked out, was hospitalized, got out, allegedly died in Manhattan’s East River a suicide, except he didn’t, and then he devoted the remaining years right up to this moment arranging deaths that didn’t exactly look like murders. Five people are dead. So, this killer had to become
somebody
. There’s a trail there, and we have to find it. Then we can protect ourselves. Look, there’s a mistake. Gotta be. Somewhere. I mean, no crime is perfect and no criminal is always a genius. Right, Susan?”

Susan nodded, although she thought even that small reassuring gesture was a lie.

Moth thought Andy’s plan to find the killer’s trail would be nearly impossible to accomplish.

He also realized that it was exactly what they needed to do.

Two blocks away, Student #5 was thinking very much along the same lines, only from a different perspective.
Create a trail they can follow, and bring them to your doorstep. Flypaper—hangs seductively from the ceiling, the perfect place for flies to land. Except it kills them.

32

By the end of the day, Student #5 had grown increasingly weary, overheated, and a little bored with following The Nephew, The Girlfriend, and The Prosecutor around. The afternoon sky was cloudless, so the tropical sun beat down constantly and he didn’t think the three of them were doing much of any relevance. They spent a good deal of time inside Moth’s apartment. There was a trip to an office supply store and another to a pharmacy. Late in the day, Andy Candy had gone out and returned with two bags of groceries. Takeout. It was all totally predictable.

But he told himself that it was necessary to be like the hound in a hunt, relentless once the fox’s scent was picked up. So when the three
targets
—that was how he was beginning to think of them—arrived at Redeemer One in time for the evening meeting, he tucked his car in shadows well away from where he knew The Girlfriend would park.

He waited until the last addict or drunk hurried through the front doors, checked on The Girlfriend, who was scrunched down in her seat as if she was hiding, then exited his car. He rapidly crossed the night, cutting through the darkness like a hot knife through bread crust—
following a path of curiosity that he didn’t realize mimicked one Andy Candy had taken.

Student #5 ignored the somber religiosity of the church, made a small waving gesture toward the Christ figure at the head of the pews—just a cynical acknowledgment of
Look who’s here
and
you can’t stop me
—and proceeded toward the back, where the meeting was already getting started.

As Andy Candy had, he hesitated just outside, peering in, trying to memorize faces.

He turned suddenly when he heard footsteps behind him.

It was the engineer. A little late, hurrying.

The engineer stopped. He smiled at Student #5.

“It’s open to anyone with a problem,” he said. “Want to come in?”

Student #5 smiled.
Perform like an addict.
“I think I’d just like to hang here and listen,” he said.

“We can help you,” the engineer continued. “That first step is the hardest. We all know that.”

“Thanks,” Student #5 said. “Let me think about it. You go ahead.”

“Well, okay. But you want help, it’s inside that door,” the engineer said. Lively, hopeful. Optimistic. Welcoming.

“I know,” replied Student #5.

As the engineer walked past him, he slunk back a little into a nearby shadow.
I truly know,
he thought.
Yes, that first step is the hardest. In killing.
Delightful irony in that.

He decided he didn’t need to hear or see anything else. Quietly, he retraced his steps back through the church.

By the time Student #5 returned to his car he was churning with ideas. In the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel leave a trail of bread crumbs through the forest because they want to be able to find their way home. But the trail disappears when the birds that follow after them devour every crumb.
That’s the kind of trail I need to create: one that is obvious enough for them to see but vanishes.

He looked around, as if he could see past the nighttime, the trees and
bushes, streets, buildings, people—the entirety of the city.
Cannot act here,
he told himself.
This is where they are known. This is where they have whatever strength they have left. Relatives. Friends. Cops. Hell, the people in that meeting. All these elements create resources.

So where don’t they have resources?

In my worlds. But, which one?

He recognized this would probably mean he would have to give up one of his carefully constructed lives, and this troubled him.

New York City was out of the question, even with the delicious day-to-day anonymity the city provided.
Killing there is a big mistake.
Inviting some really sophisticated detective—a Vinnie Italian Last Name or a Patrick O’Something—into a truly unique crime scene, with all the forensic sophistication available to that police force, was a poor idea at best.
The cops in New York know what they are doing. Seen a lot. Done a lot. Not much fazes them. They’re determined, experienced, and damn hard to fool.
And he loved the city.
Noise. Energy. Confidence. Success. That’s what New York offers. Can’t give that up.

The trouble was, he loved his other homes as well. He’d just had his kitchen in Key West expensively remodeled and new ecologically conscious solar panels placed on the roof. When this was all over he wanted to take a vacation there.

That left the bears and the ramshackle trailer.

As much as he liked living there, Charlemont was a good place for a killing, with its local cops adept only at solving teenage drinking and reckless driving cases and low-rent burglaries where someone’s snowmobile gets stolen. By the time they got professional investigators in from the Massachusetts State Police, he could be long gone.

He felt some regret about having to make a choice, which seemed unduly unfair to him, so he shifted the blame onto The Nephew, The Prosecutor, and The Girlfriend. It would help him to learn to hate them, he realized.
Makes killing easier.
“You three have fucked me up,” he said bitterly. “But now I’m going to fuck you up.”

He looked over to where The Girlfriend had parked. He could just barely make out her profile from where he sat.

“Okay. Let’s toss out Crumb Number Two, thank you
Hansel and Gretel
.”

He picked up one of the many throwaway cell phones he’d acquired, dialed a number—thinking,
Not calling you this time. That was Crumb Number One, even if you didn’t realize it at the time. Interesting crumbs on the path.

“Hi,” he said briskly, in as friendly a tone as he could manage. “I’d like to schedule an appointment for tomorrow.”

As he spoke, he looked over toward The Girlfriend. A sudden burst of excitement exploded within him.
She’s getting out of the car!

Why is she doing that?

But he kept his voice as even, steady, and outgoing as possible as he finished up his phone conversation and watched Andy Candy walking toward him through the evening shadows.

Inside Redeemer One the meeting had rapidly devolved into arguments and cacophony.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Fred the engineer half-shouted, “you realize what sort of danger you’re in?”

“Or might be in,” someone corrected loudly. “You don’t know.”

“None of us knows, for Christ’s sake.”

“But God damn it, they need to take precautions.”

“Like what?”

The assistant priest who ran the meetings frowned. “Please,” he said, holding his hands wide in some sort of supplication, “try to remember where you are.”

He meant
church
and was probably uncomfortable with obscenities and the Savior’s name being bandied about, but this was immediately lost on the others.

Susan was still standing in front of her seat. Moth was next to her. She
had started the session by sharing the standard: “Hi. My Name is Susan, and I’m an addict. I have one day sober now … actually, barely twenty-four hours …”

The philosophy professor interrupted, which was frowned upon at these meetings but under the circumstances seemed appropriate. “So, when we called you the other night …”

Susan nodded, ashamed. “I was high. Or in the process. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is that there is a strong likelihood that Timothy here is correct about his uncle’s death …”

This statement gathered a murmur, but one that instantly tumbled into a deep, attentive silence as Susan had continued, “So, yes, there very may well be a serial killer out there.” She’d paused at that moment, thinking,
A pretty odd serial killer, by any stretch of the imagination. Not like any I’ve ever seen before.
As she spoke, she looked like an actress on a stage looking for the greatest portent in her words, as she added: “And I can’t do anything, not one damn thing, about it.”

That conclusion was what tripped the cacophony. In a room devoted to thoughtful sharing of troubles, expressed patiently, one at a time, everyone seemed to have something to say at once.

“That’s not right.”

“Of course you can.”

“Can’t you call the police?”

“That makes no sense whatsoever.”

“You can’t just stand around and let some killer kill again.”

“Why do you think there’s nothing you can do?”

This last question was the one she decided to answer. “Because I fell off the wagon and now I’ve been suspended. I’m not allowed to have any contact with anyone in law enforcement. Until I get straight.”

Another silence. Susan peered around. “Maybe someone here wants to make that call?”

More silence. It lasted seconds, during which Susan felt as if she were being dragged into darkness, as if the lights around her were slowly being dimmed. The philosophy professor finally spoke:

“You have no friend in a homicide office you can approach informally?”

She shook her head. “Right now, the only friends I have are here,” and she was unsure even about that.

The philosophy professor—sandy-haired, wearing old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses, tall and lanky but with the sort of look that seemed to indicate he would clumsily drop a basketball if one were handed to him—nodded his head, as if agreeing with a brilliant graduate student.