“I don’t think people staring at a loaded pistol tend to lie,” Moth replied.
“Ah, you’re wrong about that, Timothy. That’s precisely when people do lie. Enthusiastically. Flagrantly. Pleading and begging. Lies and lies and lies. But, leaving that aside, why would you believe the truth would help you?” The killer continued to speak in a bemused voice. He pushed forward slightly, so he was perched on the edge of the chair. It unsettled Moth immensely, increased his anxiety. He could feel sweat gathering on the back of his neck. He tried to impose a chill into his replies, to hide his shakiness.
“I’m the one asking the questions,” Moth said stiffly. He moved the pistol barrel slightly to underscore his point. He thought for a moment that he sounded like he was caught up in some John Ford Western from the ’40s. “Smile when you say that, pardner…”
The two were seated a few feet apart. The only light in the room was from a single lamp on a table that left most of the room in shadows. Moth thought every word spoken increased the darkness. A paddle fan rotated lazily above them, stirring air that seemed preternaturally calm.
Student #5 stared hard at him. He kept his eyes lifted beyond the angle of the gun barrel, almost as if he could ignore it and make it disappear. “All right,” he said. “I didn’t kill your uncle.”
“Stop the crap, I know-”
“What do you know, Timothy?” Student #5 said, turning abruptly harsh, emphasizing every syllable of Moth’s name: Tim-O-See. “You don’t know anything. But let me make this simple, maybe even simple enough for a history student to understand. Or simple enough for a drunk to understand: I didn’t kill your uncle.”
Moth thought he might be dizzy. The room seemed to spin, but he said, “You might consider this: That explanation is the only thing between you and dying.”
Once again, Moth surprised himself with the determination in his voice. He had no idea where it came from, and it seemed a little like it was someone else speaking. It was all entirely false.
“Your uncle killed himself,” Student #5 said.
Susan Terry looked at the group of alcoholics and addicts surrounding her, standing shoulder to shoulder, some with linked hands, in what to any outside observer would have appeared to be a prayer. But she knew it had nothing to do with asking the Almighty for help. She understood that she was being asked to examine her route forward. She could join or she could walk away, but failing to make a decision was not an option. It was as if she could see two entirely different lives mapped out in front of her. Both were deeply flawed. Both were dangerous. Both were filled with compromise and pain. Indulge her weakness. Try to find her strength. As simple as that. As complex as that.
She inhaled sharply.
Choose now! she screamed to herself.
Moth sputtered his reply: “That’s crazy.”
“Do I act like a crazy person?” Student #5 asked.
“No. But I know you killed-”
Student #5 shrugged, a motion that interrupted Moth. “I was there. Perhaps I even pulled the trigger. But your uncle killed himself.”
Student #5 hid a smile. Every bit of confusion and doubt he could sow was a point scored in the psychological game. He was reminded of a scene in a movie-an Oscar-winning film from long before Timothy Warner was born. In The French Connection, the actor Gene Hackman played a police detective named Popeye Doyle. He would demand of suspects, “Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?” It was a wonderful, nonsensical, utterly incomprehensible question. It rendered the people being interrogated speechless with astonished doubt as they tried to sort through their confusion to an answer, never having been in Poughkeepsie, New York, and having no idea what was meant by picking one’s feet.
Student #5 was using a variation on the same theme.
“You killed the others, too,” Moth objected.
“No. They, too, killed themselves.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It depends on your perspective. You would agree that actions have consequences?”
“Yes.”
Student #5 lifted his hands in a dismissive gesture. “What they did to me in the past defined their futures. They killed me. Or killed who I was and what I was meant to be. Same thing as outright murder. In doing that, they effectively wrote their own death warrants. Same thing as killing themselves, no?”
The logic of revenge and murder twisted in Moth’s head. He could see that argument. He wanted to disagree, but could not.
“So, Timothy, your uncle Ed merely paid the price for an obligation he’d owed for years. No more, no less. As a psychiatrist, he understood that completely in his last moments.”
Moth felt pummeled. The killer’s rationale was spoken with such undebatable precision that he was at a loss for a reply. He felt weak and suddenly even more afraid, about not only what he’d done, but what he was going to do. He teetered on a familiar brink of doubt, one that usually resulted in a trip to a bar and enough alcohol to make him forget why he was doing what he was doing. He knew he had to change the direction of the conversation. If you want to kill him, he thought, best to create something different.
His mind was racing through possible replies just as Andy Candy walked into the back of the room. She had a single sheet of paper in her hand.
“Kill him,” she said shakily. “Kill him now.”
51
Don’t think. Take aim. Pull the trigger.
He didn’t act.
Whatever her sudden reasons were for saying what she had, he knew she was right. He should fire the gun, grab Andy Candy by the hand, and flee. Never look back.
Moth immediately regretted not instantly doing what Andy told him to. A part of him understood that he needed to act impulsively in order to kill. That moment had come and gone, and he was wildly unsure whether he could re-create it. Am I a killer? he demanded of himself. Well, not too long ago I was doing a fine job of killing myself. Of course, that’s not the same thing. Is it? Wrapped in conflicted thoughts, Moth caught a quiver in the man’s languid, easygoing facade. For a moment, the killer across from him had been scared. That’s something, he told himself. But what that something was he didn’t know.
Andy Candy stepped farther into the room. She moved slowly, as if reluctant to get too close. Her voice was stretched thin. “Kill him now,” she repeated, but this time softly, as if she was fading beneath the man’s stare.
Moth quietly asked, “Andy, what is it?”
She seemed to be staggering. She lurched next to Moth and thrust a single sheet of paper in front of him.
It was a printout of a page taken from the “Prosecutor’s Directory” at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. Major Crimes. Susan Terry, Chief Assistant. A nice, full-color photograph, not unlike a high school yearbook picture, accompanied by her bio and a list of some of her more prominent cases. It was the sort of page that exists on almost every such website. There was little special about it other than one obvious detaiclass="underline" It was in the possession of a killer.
“It’s Susan,” Andy said shakily. Then she added, accurately: “But it’s also us.”
Moth understood its implications. Something that was speculation had changed into a reality. He looked over at the killer. “Jesus,” he said. “You’ve already started.”
Before replying, Student #5 took a second to assess the situation. The Nephew hesitates. The Girlfriend is disintegrating. He clings to doubt. She is scared. Stay calm. Your moment will arrive. When he spoke, his voice had dropped some of the toying pretense. Now it was ice cold, and each word was as sharp as a weapon.