If he could go through with it.
He kept telling himself he would, but how could any man with his background, his moral code, be absolutely sure until the moment came? Decide to take a life, be convinced it was morally justified, even crave the relief it would bring... conceptual abstracts, like one of the buildings he designed in its embryonic stage. An edifice of the mind. Drawings, blueprints didn’t make a building a reality; steel, stone, wood, brick, physical labor created the actual structure. Same principle here. Rakubian’s death and his family’s safety could not become a reality until the trigger was squeezed, a bullet tore through flesh, bone, brain tissue.
An image came into his mind: Rakubian sprawled on the terra-cotta floor of his foyer. Blackened hole in his face, blood, twitching limbs, eyes glazed and sightless. Another image: himself standing on the porch, smoking gun in hand, the knowledge of his responsibility swelling and distorting his features until they were no longer recognizable.
Another image: the buck, thirty-five years ago.
His child self inside the bright red hunting jacket, the hiking boots pinching his toes, the rifle cold-hot in his hands, his eyes staring down at the bloody spasming body of the deer and watching it die. Pop’s arm tight around his shoulders, the stillness of the woods and the lingering after-echoes of the shot and the animal’s last gurgling, dying breaths. And Pop saying, “Good clean lung shot, son, I’m proud of you,” Pop saying, “Just take it easy, the first kill is always the hardest,” Pop saying, “Be a man, now, wipe the puke off your mouth and get hold of yourself,” Pop saying, “It’s your buck, Jack, you killed it and by God you’re going to gut and dress it.”
Eleven years old. First kill. Only kill. Went hunting twice more with the old man, froze up and couldn’t fire at the only other deer that came his way, Pop saying disgustedly that time, “Buck fever, after you already lost your cherry. I’m ashamed of you, boy.” And Pop red-faced and angry the second year, when he learned his son had left camp with an unloaded rifle; stomping around in the chill mountain air and shouting, “This is the last time you come out with me, the goddamn last time. You haven’t got the guts for a man’s sport.”
Wrong, Pop. It wasn’t a matter of courage at all. An outdoorsman, the old man, all rough edges and surface feelings and lack of imagination. He’d mistaken sensitivity, empathy for cowardice. His son had guts, all right; a man knows if he does or doesn’t, proves it to himself in a hundred different ways as he matures, and Jack Hollis refusing to shoot another deer — or to hook a fish in Tomales Bay, or to play contact sports, or to do any of the other things Bud Hollis considered manly — had nothing to do with the stuff he was made of. Neither was being able or unable to kill a hated enemy a test of his courage. Of his humanity, yes. Of the essence of him, yes. But not of his manhood.
Come on, Rakubian, he thought.
Damn you, come on!
Growing edgier by the minute, and nothing to he done about it. Normally he was a patient man, but an hour of sitting like this in the cold car had frayed him raw inside. The longer the wait went on, the harder it would be to use the .22. No denying that. He could call it off, go home, return tomorrow night, but it would be twice as hard to nerve himself to it a second time. Stick it out another twenty or thirty minutes, at least. He could stand that much more.
Maybe, he thought then, he ought to do this a little differently. Go over there right now, hide in the shadows near the attached garage where he could empty his bladder. When Rakubian drove in, drift inside behind the car and use the gun in there. The garage walls were thick and would muffle the shot, even with the door open. Another factor: It would be too dark in the garage for anyone happening by to see in from the street. On the porch, he’d be in clear view because Rakubian would almost certainly put on the outside light before opening the door...
No. Bad idea. Suppose it was another hour or more before Rakubian showed? With the blowing fog, the night was bitter cold; waiting outside, even bundled in his overcoat, he would numb and cramp before long. He didn’t have his gloves and he couldn’t fire the .22 with stiffened fingers. Nor was there any guarantee he’d be able to enter the garage without Rakubian seeing him and taking some kind of counteraction. Or that he’d be able to get close enough, or see clearly enough, to put him down with a single shot.
The original plan was still the best. Stay put, wait it out here. Wait five minutes after Rakubian got home, then walk over, ring the bell, shoot him as soon as he opened up. A quick glance to make sure he was dead, then walk, not run, to the car and drive away.
Chances were no one would hear the shot; a .22 Woodsman makes a pop not much louder than a released champagne cork. And with any luck no one would see him, notice or be able to identify the car’s make or color. He would be suspected, of course, because of that stupid outburst in Rakubian’s office, but Gabe Mannix would alibi him for tonight if necessary — all he’d have to do was ask. Two other things in his favor: a man like Rakubian, a ruthless personal-injury attorney, must have plenty of other enemies. And the Woodsman had been Pop’s, an old target pistol he’d never bothered to register.
He might just get away with it, at least in this life. If he didn’t, well, it might not matter much in the long run. Even if a good criminal attorney pled extenuating circumstances, got a murder charge reduced to manslaughter, he still had the goddamn cancer to contend with. Maybe he’d get lucky and beat the odds there, too... and maybe he wouldn’t. No point in worrying about it now. The important thing, the only important thing, was to keep his family safe.
Hollis ran a hand over his face, felt and heard the heel of his palm scrape on patchy beard stubble. Poor job of shaving this morning. Too keyed up, his hand not quite steady. Missed a few spots, nicked himself in three or four places. Cassie had noticed the bad shave and the edginess both, commented on them. After twenty-six years of marriage they were sensitive to each other’s moods. The look on her face when he’d told her he would be home late, he had an important meeting with a prospective client. Her afternoon call to the office, the questions, the unease in her voice. If he hadn’t cut her off short, she might have tried to bring it out into the open. He hated lying to her, but it was better than an open confrontation. Nothing she could say would have changed his mind anyway.
Headlights appeared at the intersection two blocks down, threw a wash of diffused yellow-white against the fog as the car turned upstreet toward him. He slid lower beneath the wheel, as he had the other times headlights approached, his hand closing around the hard rubber handle of the .22. The beams speared closer, moving slowly, making a blinding oblong of the mist-streaked windshield. And flicked past, the car’s tires hissing on the pavement. Not Rakubian. The car kept on going and vanished around the curve behind him.
The pound of his heart seemed drum-loud. He willed himself to relax, working his shoulder muscles as he sat up. The side window was lowered enough so that he could look over the top of the glass; he put it down the rest of the way to clear off condensation, took deep drafts of the chill night air. The wind, moist and salt-flavored, made his skin tingle clammily. He rolled the window partway up again, held his watch close to his eyes.
11:05.
What if Rakubian stayed out all night? He’d been alone six weeks now... another woman? No. Not the way he felt about Angela. His appetites, sexual and otherwise, were too obsessively centered on her.
Long business meeting or dinner? Some kind of social function? Where the hell was he?
Hollis’s saliva glands seemed to have dried up; swallowing had become painful. His breathing was off, the pressure in his bladder acute, and now his lower back and hips ached. One of the symptoms that prostate cancer is spreading: nagging pain in the back, hips, or pelvis. Symptom of stress, too, he told himself. Don’t start imagining things.