He made a mental note to call the saleslady and politely decline the purchase of the apartment-no, he thought, prison cell.
He wondered how much time he truly had. He’d been asking himself this question every day-no, every second-for more than two weeks, since he’d received an anonymous phone call one night around ten, shortly before his usual bedtime:
“Doctor Hogan?”
“Yes. Who is calling?” He had not recognized the caller ID on the phone and figured it was some cause or political fund-raiser and he was prepared to instantly hang up before they even got their noxious pitch started. Afterward, he wished he had.
“Whose fault is it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Whose fault is it?”
“What do you mean by ‘fault’?”
“Tell me, Doctor: Whose fault is it?”
“Who is this please?”
“I’ll answer for you, Doctor Hogan: It’s your fault. But you were not alone. The blame is shared. Bills have been paid. You might examine recent obits in the Miami Herald.”
“I’m sorry, I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” He was about to angrily hang up on the caller, but instead he heard:
“The next obit will be yours. We will speak again.”
Then the line went dead.
It was the tone, he thought later, the ice-calm words next obit that told him the caller was a killer. Or-at the least-fancied himself to be. Raspy, deep voice, probably, he imagined, concealed by some electronic device. No other evidence. No other indication. No other detail he could point to. From a forensic, scientific point of view, this was a stupid, utterly unsupported seat-of-the-pants conclusion.
But in his years as a forensic psychiatrist, he’d sat across from many killers, both men and women.
So, upon later reflection, he was certain.
His first response was to be defensively dismissive, which he knew was a kind of foolish self-protective urge: Well, what the hell was that all about? Who knows? Time for bed.
His second response was curiosity: He picked up his phone and hit the “call back” feature. He wanted to speak with the person who’d called him: Maybe I should tell him that I have no idea what he’s talking about but I’m willing to talk about it. Someone is at fault? For doing exactly what? Anyway, we’re all at fault for something. That’s what life is. He did not stop to think that the caller probably wasn’t interested in a philosophical conversation. A disembodied electronic voice instantly told him that the number was no longer in service.
He’d hung up the phone, and spoken out loud: “Well, I should call the police.” They will just think me a cranky, confused old fool, which might be what I am. Jeremy Hogan did know one thing: All his training and all his experience told him that there was only one purpose behind making a call like that. It was to create runaway uncertainty. “Well, whoever you are, you’ve managed that,” he said out loud.
His third response was to be scared. Bed suddenly seemed inappropriate. He knew sleep was impossible. He could feel light-headedness, almost a dizzy spell as he stared at the telephone receiver. So he went unsteadily across the room and sat in front of his computer. He breathed in sharply. Even with his stiff-fingered, arthritic clumsiness on keyboards, it had not taken him long to find a small entry in the obituary section of the Miami Herald website with the headline: Prominent Psychiatrist Takes Life; Services Set.
It was the only obit entry that Jeremy thought could be even remotely connected to him-and that was only by shared profession.
The name was unfamiliar. His initial reaction had been, Who’s that? But this was rapidly followed by: Some former student? A onetime resident? Intern? Third-year medical school? He did some age-math in his head. If the name on the web page was one of his, it had to be from thirty years earlier. He felt a surge of despair-those faces who’d attended his lectures, even those who’d sat in his smaller seminars so eagerly, were pretty much all lost to him now; even the good ones who had gone on to importance and success were hidden deep in his memory.
I don’t get it, he thought. Another shrink a thousand miles away kills himself and that has something to do with me?
8
Moth did more than a hundred sit-ups on the floor of his apartment, followed by a hundred push-ups. At least he hoped it was a hundred. He lost count in the rapid-fire up and down. He was half-naked-boxer briefs and running shoes but nothing else. He could feel the muscles in his arms twitching, about to give way. When he thought he could not coax one more push-up from his arms, he lay flat on the floor, breathing hard, his cheek pushed against the cool polished hardwood. Then he gathered himself, stood, and ran in place until sweat began to crowd his vision and sting his eyes. He listened to ’80s hard rock on his iPod-Twisted Sister, Molly Hatchet, and Iggy Pop. The music had an odd ferocity to it that matched his mood. Uncompromising power chords and relentless cliché-driven vocals crashed through his doubts. He believed he needed to be as determined as that sound.
As he lifted his knees, trying to gain speed without leaving his position, sneakered feet making slapping noises, he kept an eye on his cell phone, because Andy Candy was supposed to pick him up mid-morning so they could go to the first of the three meetings he’d scheduled for that day.
These were not meetings like the one he’d attended at Redeemer One the night before. These were interviews. Job interviews, he thought, except the job I want is hunting down a murderer and killing him.
Moth stopped. He bent over gasping, grabbed his boxers, and sucked in some stale apartment air. He felt dizzy and shaky, tasted sweat on his upper lip, and was unsure whether this was the alcohol being worked out of his body or the pressing need for revenge.
Moth felt weak, unmanned. He was completely uncertain whether if some well-coiffed, long-legged South Beach supermodel in a black string bikini were to walk into his apartment with an enticing look in her eyes and a welcoming gesture as she undid her bra strap, he could perform. He almost laughed out loud at his potential impotence. Drink can make you into an ancient old man. Limp. Weak. Didn’t Shakespeare write that? Then he replaced the South Beach supermodel in his mind’s eye with Andy Candy.
A rapid-fire series of memories crowded his imagination: First kiss. First touch of her breast. First caress of her thigh. He remembered moving his hand toward her sex for the first time. It had been outdoors, on a pool patio, and they were jammed together, entwined on an uncomfortable plastic lounge chair that dug into their backs but seemed at that moment like a featherbed. He was fifteen. She was thirteen. In the distance there was music playing-not rap or rock, but a surprising, gentle string quartet. Every millimeter his fingers traveled, he’d expected her to stop him. Each millimeter that she didn’t had made his heart pound faster. Damp silk panties. Elastic band. What he had wanted then was to be fast, matching his desire, but his touch was light and patient. A contradiction of demands and emotions.