“We need to talk now,” Virgil said. He lied a little: “I’ve got a description and make on your RV, and your license plate number. If we can’t get together and talk, I’ll have the highway patrol track you down.”
Simonian said, “Good luck with that. And don’t call us any more today; we’re busy.”
“Wait! What are you fishing for?” Virgil asked, trying to keep the conversation going.
“Marlin,” Simonian said. He hung up.
When Virgil tried to call back, he didn’t even get a ring. Something bad, he thought, may have happened to the Simonians’ cell phone.
–
King, in the meantime, had called Peck.
Peck was working at the barn, drying tiger meat. The smell was awful, nothing at all like barbeque, and now mixing with the funky stink of tiger poop. Katya was sitting in her cage, staring at him. Hayk Simonian’s femurs, tibias, fibulas, patellas, and a number of foot bones were scattered around the cage. The femurs had been cracked open, and Katya had scratched out all the marrow.
When King called, Peck listened to his complaints, then said, “I’ll meet you. Uh, I’m not at home right now, but I can meet you at the Cub supermarket parking lot off Radio Drive. You know where that is?”
King could find it, he said.
They met an hour later. When King got out of his car, Peck looked at him and said, “I don’t believe you didn’t tell them my name. Did you tell them my name?” He looked wildly around the parking lot, saw nobody approaching. “Is this a trap?”
King said, “If I’d told them the truth, they would have killed me. They’re here to kill whoever killed Hamlet, and there’s only one way they could have gotten my name-Hamlet must have given it to them. If he gave them my name, he must have given them yours. Anyway, I’m going to Chicago. Right now.”
“What’s in Chicago?”
“Not the Simonians,” King said.
–
Peck had been considering the situation since the moment that King called him. The conclusion was straightforward: King had to go.
The cops would believe, correctly, that the tiger thieves had to be the killer of Hamlet Simonian. King could tell the cops that there were only four people involved in the theft: the two Simonians, Peck, and himself. Hayk’s body would be found sooner or later, which meant the killer had to be either Peck or King. If King talked to the cops, he might convince them that he neither participated in the murders nor knew that they were coming. He might, in other words, roll over on Peck, make a deal for his testimony in return for a lighter prison sentence.
He might not even wait to be caught-he might talk himself into approaching the cops preemptively.
He had to go.
But at the moment, Peck asked, “You didn’t tell your girlfriend about this, did you? Gloria what’s-her-name?”
King had been thinking about that himself. “No, of course not. We need to hold this tight.”
“Okay. Thank God for little favors.”
“I gotta tell you, I’m a little nervous about this. I figured you’d killed him. Hamlet.”
“No! No! I didn’t kill him! I didn’t kill Hamlet! I’m not a fruitcake,” Peck shouted. He turned away, ran both hands through his hair. He was sweating like a steam pipe. He turned back to King. “I paid him off, I gave him ten thousand dollars and when the cops found his body, I asked Hayk what the fuck had happened. Hayk and I were processing the tiger that whole time; he knew I didn’t have anything to do with Hamlet’s death. Hayk said Hamlet had made a deal to buy a couple pounds of meth and run it back to Glendale. He could make five hundred percent on his money. He could turn ten thousand into fifty thousand. That’s how he got killed: he tried to hook up with some meth dealers and he wasn’t smart enough to pull it off. I didn’t kill him, Barry. I’m actually a goddamn doctor, you know. Do no harm and all that shit.”
King said, “I’m sorry, then. I didn’t really think you did it. I had to consider the possibility.”
Peck said, “Listen, Barry, if you run to Chicago, you’ll be skipping out on your job and the cops will know exactly who gave us the key to the tiger den. Then they’ll hang you for Hamlet’s murder, even though you didn’t do it and I didn’t do it. You’ve got to go back to work, pretend nothing happened.”
“How am I going to do that?” King asked. “The cops are gonna find out that the guys in the RV kidnapped me and beat me up. I should be talking to them right now, asking them why I got picked up. If I don’t go to them, they’ll know I was involved.”
“Ahhh… shit. Then maybe you ought to go to them… you could say… I dunno.” Peck looked around the parking lot; an elderly couple, pushing a shopping cart and pulling along two towheaded boys, paid no attention to them. He said, “Look. We’re processing the tigers out at a farm, not far from here. Five miles. Let’s go talk to Hayk, see what he thinks. He knows how to deal with cops. You can follow me out.”
–
King agreed, and as they left Cub supermarket and turned east on the interstate, Peck watched in the rearview mirror to make sure he didn’t change his mind.
As they drove to the farm, in addition to monitoring King, Peck considered his own psychological condition. Was he now a serial killer, or about to become one? You probably had to kill three, didn’t you, to be considered serial?
On the whole, he thought he was not a serial killer. Serial killers got off on the killing. In Peck’s case, he didn’t feel much at all. Killing didn’t get him sexually excited or emotionally wrought. Killing was simply a work-related task.
Would he be classified as a spree killer? Again, he thought not. Spree killers didn’t kill as work-related tasks. They went nuts and killed everybody they could see.
Peck had no political motives, wasn’t interested in politics, held no grudges, so he wasn’t that kind of psycho. No, he decided, he was clearly a sociopath whose life had been shoved into a difficult corner. Lots of people were sociopaths, some of them very successful in life.
–
Furthermore, killing people was actually a pain in the ass. Kill somebody, and there were all kinds of logistics to work out: how to keep your DNA off the victim, how to get rid of the body, what to do with the dead man’s car. The last matter was particularly perplexing. You could drive the car someplace and drop it off, though you’d have to be careful about DNA and fingerprints. But you wouldn’t want to drop it off near the murder scene, and if you didn’t, how did you get back to your own car? Walk? That seemed inefficient. Take a taxi? Then you had a witness. He was sure there were ways to do it, but he’d have to research it on the Internet.
–
When they turned into the farmyard, Peck pulled up to the barn, hopped out, and waved at King, who’d pulled up behind him. Peck walked straight to the barn door, and as he pushed it open, called, “Hayk? Hey, I’ve got Barry King here. We need to talk.”
Hayk didn’t answer, being dead, and now lying in a ditch fifteen miles away. The rifle was leaning against the wall next to the meat-cutting table, along with a box of cartridges. Peck picked it up, pulled the bolt, slipped a cartridge into the chamber, and walked back toward the door.
When King pulled it open and stood there in a halo of sunlight, Peck shot him in the chest. King fell heavily against the door and slid down it, closing the door in the process. When Peck tried to get out, he found the body was blocking the door, and because there was a small cavity in the earth outside the door, and King’s body was in it, he couldn’t immediately get the door open. He had to kick it, and then push it, and then kick it some more, growing increasingly panicky-the body was in plain sight if somebody drove past the farmhouse-until finally he could squeeze through the crack between the door and the doorjamb.
When he did get outside, he found that King was unconscious but not yet dead. Peck dragged King’s body out of the cavity, got the door fully open, and pulled him inside.