“Not today?” I ask.
“You need to go shooting deer today?”
“No,” I tell him.
“Then tomorrow will be fine then, won’t it.”
He puts my purchases into a plastic supermarket bag. I thank him and leave.
I get back to my car just as a traffic cop is about to give me a ticket. He’s a guy in his thirties who looks like he’s spent twenty of those years either lifting heavy weights or doing hard time. He looks up at me and before I can say anything, he says “Looks like you’ve had a tough day.”
“Yeah.”
“How about I don’t make it any tougher for you? Next time put enough coins in the meter, okay?”
I almost feel like hugging him, and it restores some of my faith in the city.
I drive out to the airport and pull into medium-term parking, where Jo’s car can stay for the next few days, or where the police will eventually find it after I’m dead. The walls of the rental agency I choose are painted bright orange with blue racing stripes around the middle. The windows and glass sliding doors are covered in stickers and decals. I step inside and an assistant high on caffeine goes through the paperwork with me as I rent a late-model Holden, similar to the one I saw outside the bank. I figure driving around in my own car is a pretty dumb thing to do since Cyris knows it so well.
I show the guy my driver’s license and he looks at me and then at the photo. I shrug. “Car accident,” I tell him.
“Car had fists, did it?”
“Something like that.”
“You should take out the insurance,” he says.
So I take out the insurance. I sign the credit-card form and the guy tells me to keep the pen. I add the car key to my others.
The Holden is a much nicer drive than my Honda and Jo’s Mazda, but it doesn’t make the situation seem any better. Just more comfortable. I throw my free pen in the glove box where it sits next to a map and a box of tissues and an instruction booklet. Back home I charge the cell phone. I change the outgoing message on my answering machine so it includes my new cell number.
I’m about to make something to eat when suddenly I realize I don’t want to touch any of the food that’s in my house since both Cyris and Landry have been in here. Problem is I’m starving. I get back into my car and drive a few minutes to some local shops and spend a few minutes buying some food. I’m driving back home when the answer to one of my questions hits me. I’ve been wondering why Cyris didn’t take his two victims into the middle of nowhere. It’s because he wanted them found. He didn’t want them found at home, but he didn’t want them to be missing forever. He wanted them found side by side in a pasture by a common highway. He would have left the stolen van there with blood in it. Maybe he’d have left other stuff on the sidewalk, like some sliced up clothes. The cops would have searched the area. This way the motivation for the abductions and murders looks obvious-it looks like a sick bastard doing what he enjoys most. Cyris wanted them found.
But not at home.
Why?
Jo would be able to figure it out.
I get home. I carry the sandwich I bought through to the table and sit down. It’s chicken and cranberry and should taste great, but it doesn’t. I eat it simply because I need the fuel. There is something to all of this, something to the fact Cyris didn’t want them found at home. Why? Didn’t he want their husbands to come home and. .
Suddenly I realize what didn’t fit well with the newspaper article I read yesterday! I stand up quickly and almost choke on my sandwich. The newspaper said Kathy’s body was found by her neighbor, but Kathy had told me her cheating husband Frank would be home before the morning to get fresh clothes. She seemed sure of it. If he did come home, why wouldn’t he have called the police?
I drag this chain of questions around the dining room as I pace it. Is it reasonable to think her husband came home expecting to find her missing, and not dead? Just because he was due home and never called the police? It’s possible, but it’s equally possible he never made it home, that he stayed where he was and cheated some more on Kathy.
Okay, so there are a few possibilities, but with nothing else to work with, I try to make these possibilities fit around the answer I want. And it’s not difficult. There was no forced entry. Cyris wants money. He even yelled out For the money. Kathy was supposed to be missing, not dead. I think he knew his wife was going to die that night. I think he came home prepared to call the police that she was missing, and when he found her sliced up in the master bedroom he didn’t know what to do. So he ran.
I think back to what I told Landry about Cyris putting himself into a role to kill the two women. The police come along, they find the hammer and stake, and they think madman. They don’t think cheating husband. They think psychopath. They don’t think messy divorce.
At six thirty I dress in my new fatigue gear. What I see in the mirror scares me. I slip the cell into one of the many pockets, the binoculars and KA-BAR and Swiss Army knife into others. The sun is low, its casual slide into the night almost complete. It’s now just a bright, blurry orange blob. Dressed like I’m about to go to war, and feeling it too, I walk to my car, pull down the sun visor and head toward the battlefield.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The sun sinks and my anguish rises.
I stop at a supermarket and ignore the looks. A person dressed in fatigues is a common enough sight. People who have been beaten up are also common enough. It’s not often the two are combined. Normally the guy in the fatigues has given the beating. Stopping at the supermarket has never been so weird. It’s as if I’ve evolved beyond walking up and down aisles looking for pastas and cereals and bread. This kind of mundane day-to-day living is behind me. This isn’t where people go when death is all around them. I grab chips, doughnuts, a packet of cheese slices, and two drinks. I roll out a hundred-dollar note and the looks on the faces around me change. The girl working the checkout takes a small step back. She’s thinking I just mugged somebody. Or killed them.
I pull past Kathy’s house at six fifty in my shiny, rented Holden and park six houses further down. There are no police cars. No police tape. Life has moved on. Death hasn’t, though. I can feel it waiting in the street watching me. The Mercedes I saw parked outside one of the neighboring houses is still parked in the same place. Maybe it’s broken down. The street is pretty quiet. I start waiting.
I flick through the newspaper I bought with my snacks. The murders are still front-page news. No mention of Landry. I figure it’s too soon. The cops will be concerned. I’m sure Landry kept any information about me to himself. Had to, so he could execute me without fear of being caught. At least that’s something in my favor, I guess. I try to think if anything connects me to Landry’s death. My fingerprints are all over the cabin, which will match those at Kathy’s and Luciana’s houses. What else is there? Oh shit. There’s the piece of paper he showed me with my name and phone number surrounded by rubbed pencil. If Landry’s body is found the note will be discovered. But maybe it’s gotten so battered by the river it’s now useless. Or maybe it wasn’t in those clothes, but in the pocket of his jacket or pants, which Jo is now wearing. If she’s even wearing anything.
My stomach tightens at that thought. The harder I try not to imagine her naked and pinned beneath Cyris, the more visual it becomes. I start sweating. I look for a distraction. I read the rest of the newspaper. I start on the crossword puzzle and can only manage to solve a third of it. The day goes from being light to dim to dark. The streetlights come on. An hour into my wait a dark Mercedes pulls into a driveway six houses ahead of me. Into Kathy’s house. I put the binoculars to my eyes and manage only a glimpse of the car before it rolls out of sight. I start the car and move up to pull in behind the silver Mercedes. Does everybody on this street own one? I kill the engine. Wait patiently.