Kathryn, Kathryn, Kathryn.
Dead, dead, dead.
I’m down to a little less than $200. I’ll have to get a job soon, some damn menial job, but not until after I deliver Kathryn’s surprise package to her in Indiana. First things first. Conserve my cash, meanwhile. I won’t steal if I do run out, that’s one thing I won’t do. I’m not a thief. Nobody will ever be able to accuse Donald Michael Latimer of being a common thief.
$3500 gone just like that. But what choice did I have? I needed wheels when they let me out of that hellhole prison, I needed all the tools and components for the bombs, destructive devices, boobytraps, I needed a roof over my head in the Bay Area and this place up here. Necessary expenses, all part of the Plan. $3500 for a hunk of secondhand Detroit crap that keeps overheating, inferior tools and goods instead of the quality material I had to work with in the Army, a drafty shack on the coast that ought to be blown up instead of rented out. Even this cabin is pisspoor compared to the luxury accommodations Kathryn and I shared in the old days. Gone, all gone, the good times and the easy life. And all because of her, what she started with her hot pants and her lying, vindictive ways.
A wonder I had any money left after my lawyer and Kathryn and her shyster and all the creditors got done slicing up my assets. $3500 was what they left me, and they’d have got that, too, if I hadn’t hidden the cash in the private safe-deposit box while I was out on bail. On top of the world one day, successful business, financial security, nice home, good clothes, a Porsche to drive, what I thought was a rock-solid marriage, and then she brought it all crashing down around my ears. Bitch! Screwing that lousy big-eared pharmacist and then when I caught her, telling me it was my fault because she was starved for love and affection. Siccing the cops on me, filing the assault charge after I smacked her, then walking out on me and straight into Lover Boy’s scrawny arms. I had a right to do what I did to them. I had a right to do a hell of a lot more.
Ah, but not according to the law. Not according to Cotter and Turnbull and Dixon and the California penal code. They picked up where Kathryn left off, persecuted me and took away my freedom, the only thing I had left. Well, now they’re the ones who’ve lost everything. Justice, by God. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and the bastards sowed the seeds of their own destruction, the lot of them.
Maybe I’ll make a few others pay, too, when I’m done with Kathryn and I’ve saved up enough money. Come back to the Bay Area and send a package to that lawyer of hers, what was his name? Benedict? Snotty, self-righteous prick. Benedict fucking Arnold. And that fat cop who arrested me after the device blew the ass end off Lover Boy’s house, the one who treated me like dirt. And my old banker buddy Art Whittington who wouldn’t give me a loan, not even a small one, so I could pry myself out of debt. Made that son of a bitch thousands in mutual fund investments, and a cold shoulder was the thanks I got. They deserve a payback, too. So do all the others, business associates and fair-weather friends, everybody who deserted me before and after the trial, left me to endure five years of torment alone. Make little presents for each of them, boom boom boom boom boom!
Kathryn first, though.
Kathryn next.
Might as well start assembling her present while I’m waiting for Dixon to show up and claim his. I’ve done enough savoring, the way you savor sleeping with a woman for the first time. Now I’m ready for the preparations, the foreplay to the Big B. I have all the components except for the last one, and I can get that from any butcher shop on the way to Lawler Bluffs, IN. I brought everything in from the car Friday night, after dark, when I was sure nobody was around. Tool kit and the carton from the supermarket Dumpster in Half Moon Bay and the bag of bubble wrap and the micros witch and the black powder. And the jar of marbles, of course. It’s sitting right here on the table in front of me as I write. Glass marbles, different kinds, different colors, all very pretty, like eyes winking at me in the light from the desk lamp.
Those marbles were an inspiration. All the thought I gave to what to put in Kathryn’s surprise, something just for her — never mind the pharmacist and their brat, they’re incidental.
Couldn’t make up my mind, and then as soon as I saw the marbles in the toy store window I knew they were perfect, I knew exactly what else to get, too.
She took everything from me, she got all the marbles. Okay, then, I’ll give her two hundred more than she bargained for, two hundred cheap glass marbles that’ll fly apart in a million fragments from the force of the blast and rip her rotten flesh to shreds.
Second thing you give an unfaithful bitch for her final send-off? Why, a bagful of rancid bones, naturally. Soup bones that’ll splinter and gouge and tear the same as the marbles.
So long, Kathryn. Rest in pieces.
Too bad I can’t tell her beforehand what she’ll be getting. Too bad she’ll never know. Always accusing me of not having a sense of humor. Well, this proves different, doesn’t it? Proves I’ve got a terrific sense of humor.
She’ll get a bang out of her present, all right.
And then I’ll have the last laugh.
I just reread the previous page, the line about rest in pieces and the lines about her getting a bang out of her present and me having the last laugh. They started me chuckling, then roaring until my belly hurt. Now I’ve got the hiccups. I think I’d better
Somebody’s at the door.
Knock knock. Knock knock.
Who the hell can that be at this hour?
7
When Chuck showed up in the morning-or the middle of the night, depending on your point of view-the sky was still dark except for a faint phosphorescence on the eastern horizon and I was working on my second cup of coffee and just starting to come alive. Ungodly hour to be up. Two mornings in a row now I’d been out of bed before daylight, and that was at least one too many. Tomorrow I’d sleep until nine in deference to my old bones.
“All set?” he asked eagerly. “Man, I can’t wait to get going.”
“Me, either,” I lied. “Just let me finish my coffee.”
“I’ve got a Thermosful. From the pot Mom made last night.”
I tried not to grimace. Marian’s coffee was strong enough fresh-brewed. By now, last night’s batch ought to be as chewy as black tar.
“We’ll take our boat, okay?” Chuck said.
“Boat? I thought we were heading into the woods.”
“We are. But you have to take a boat to get to where you can hike to Chuck’s Hole.”
“Chuck’s Hole, huh?”
“Yeah. I found it, so I named it after myself.”
“Good for you. How much of a hike is it?”
“Not much. Come on, we want to get there before sunup.”
I asked him what kind of flies I ought to take, bowing to his expertise. He looked through my case, pointed out half a dozen that I transferred into the plastic pocket case. Then I gathered my rod and creel and followed him out and over to the Dixon property.
He did the piloting, angling their skiff out across the lake to the northwest. I sat on the prow seat and slugged black-tar coffee from his Thermos. Terrible stuff, but it did ward off the pre-dawn chill and get the rest of my juices flowing. By the time we reached one of the narrow inlets on the far shore I was more or less alert, even starting to feel a little of the boy’s enthusiasm.
Once we entered the inlet he shut off the outboard, lifted it out of the water to protect the propeller from snags, then used an oar to pole us along. The way ahead seemed impassable, a black wall of tree branches and undergrowth. But after we struggled through the first tangle, me keeping my head down at Chuck’s direction, we were onto a quick stream that appeared to be several yards wide and deep enough so that the skiffs bottom didn’t scrape its rocky bed. Chuck poled us upstream for a hundred yards or so, through a series of twists and turns. It was dark in there, even with the sky beginning to take on dawn light visible in patches through the overhead branches — so dark it was like drifting in a wilderness maze at midnight. The air was moist, cold, heavy with the smells of fresh and stagnant water, growing and rotting vegetation. Frogs stopped their croaking as we passed, commenced again behind us. My face and neck became a feeding ground for a kamikaze legion of mosquitoes; the more I squashed, the more showed up in buzzing, diving assaults.