Last to Know: A Novel
Elizabeth Adler
PROLOGUE
This will not be the first time I have killed, though I am not one of those roaming, spur-of-the-moment serial killers. I am discreet, careful, choosy in fact, about whom I want to kill, and why.
I am not an evil person; on the contrary I believe I am, if not good, then certainly kind. I am kind to animals unless they aggravate me, pleasant with babies because they are not worth the bother of aggravation, and I know how to use charm well enough to fool most people.
“Murder?” you might be asking. Am I talking casually, seriously, about murder? That is not the way I would put it. There is a reason I choose who should depart this life and it is always a logical one. Now I have picked out the next.
Rose Osborne is not dead yet, but she is going to die. And soon. Later, I will tell you exactly why.
How can I not be evil, talking so easily about killing someone? Believe me, I am as normal as you who are judging me.
You will never know me, never meet me. Not for me the long, fantasy sexual bites of the vampire. If you want blood then the femoral artery at the junction of the thigh and the crotch cuts easily while at the same time giving access to the most intriguing and secret parts of the anatomy.
The knife is my favorite method. I have used it more than once, though sometimes other, more fitting methods work better, as you will see later.
So, be aware I am among you. I am the one who always helps out at the animal shelter, at the scenes of disaster, with the old people … that’s how “normal” I am. And why you, like Rose, will always be the last to know.
1
EVENING LAKE, Massachusetts, 3 A.M.
Harry Jordan’s wooden vacation house was certainly the smallest, as well as one of the oldest, on Evening Lake, a resort where nothing bad, like murder, ever happened, but which in recent years had become a little too smart for Harry’s style: too cocktail-partyish; too many lonely blond wives with hungry eyes; too many miniature dogs peeking out of Range Rover windows. Mind you Harry’s own car, a classic ’69 souped-up E-type, British racing green with tan leather seats, was certainly a head-turner, but then Harry owned that car because he loved it with a passion, not for show. And the dog usually to be seen gazing from its windows was a large silver-gray malamute-mix that looked remarkably like a wolf, but with astonishingly pale blue eyes.
The dog’s name was Squeeze and it went everywhere with Harry. Which, since Harry was a homicide detective on the Boston squad, meant that Squeeze had seen a cross section of hard life on the streets as well as the plusher environment of Harry’s own Beacon Hill apartment. Not only did Squeeze know that the best place to eat in town was Ruby’s Diner near the precinct, he also knew the locations of the best bars. Squeeze had it pretty good and so, Harry had thought, did he, until last week when the woman he was going to marry left him and went to Paris instead. Which was the reason he was here at Evening Lake. Alone. But for the dog.
Squeeze was Harry’s alarm clock. At five thirty every morning, even on Harry’s infrequent days off, it waited, eyes fixed on the flickering green digital display of the clock, zapping it with a fast paw at the first ring. Usually all that happened was that Harry would roll over onto his back. After another couple of minutes the dog would leap onto the bed and lay its massive head on Harry’s chest, staring fixedly at him. Another couple of minutes and Harry would groan under the dog’s weight, open his eyes and stare straight into the dog’s. It would not move and Harry had no option but to get up. That was their morning routine. The difference now was that it was not yet morning.
It was 3 A.M., the darkest hour of the night. And they were on vacation at the lake. So what, Harry wondered, was up with Squeeze anyway. He always left the door leading to the porch open so the dog could push in and out as needed. Something must be wrong.
He sat up and looked at the dog, standing by the door, taut as a hot-wired spring, staring intently back at him. Knowing he had no choice he got out of bed and went in search of his pants.
At forty Harry looked pretty good, six-two, muscular despite a lack of serious exercise and his erratic diet of junk food eaten on the run. There were a few furrows on his brow now and his dark hair was beginning to recede a bit at the temples and somehow never looked as though it had been combed, and maybe it hadn’t if he was in a hurry, which he mostly was; his level gray eyes under bushy brows seemed to notice everything about you in one sweeping glance and he never seemed to have time for a decent shave, so sometimes he had a rough beard. Stubble became him. At least that’s what women thought. They found him attractive. His colleagues did not agree. They called him “the Prof” because of his Harvard Law degree, earned the hard and, for Harry, bitterly boring way. He’d given it up years ago and become a rookie in the police department instead. The reason he’d used was that he didn’t want to waste his time getting criminals off on legal technicalities for large fees; he would rather be out on the streets catching them.
Harry had worked his way up from patrol cars to senior detective. And he was good at what he did.
What very few of his colleagues knew about Harry—because to him it was not important, and besides it was nobody’s business—was that at the age of thirty he’d inherited a trust fund set up by his grandfather that made him rich. At least, rich enough to buy the brownstone on Boston’s Beacon Hill, which he’d converted into apartments. He rented out the three top floors but kept the apartment on the garden floor for himself. He redid this to his own specifications, walled in the garden, and later bought himself a pup. The malamute.