Nine Lives(64)

“Blood under the bridge,” Alison said.

“Huh?”

“It was something my father used to say. ‘That’s all just blood under the bridge.’”

“Well, he was right. That’s all it is, now.”

“That name is so familiar to me,” Alison said, her eyes off to the side.

“What, my name?”

“Yes, the last name. No, the whole name. Jack Radebaugh.”

“I did write a book once. And it was published under that name.”

“What kind of book?”

“A business book. It did very well, but—”

“No, that probably wasn’t it.” She sat down on the closest chair, upholstered in a blue fabric with tiny white anchors.

He watched her, wondering if she was going to remember where she’d seen the name Radebaugh, wondering if she even remembered the list she’d received, but after taking a sip of her wine, she smiled and said, “It’s Halloween.”

“I know. Do you like my outfit?”

“What are you?”

“A man in the winter of my years.”

She jutted out her lower lip. “Autumn, maybe, but not winter. God, I’m exhausted. Should we go to bed?”

“Yes, let’s go to bed.”





3





TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1:10 A.M.


Jack Radebaugh—known by Alison Horne, and a few other people, as Jonathan Grant, the name he’d been given at birth—walked carefully down the creaky hall to the bedroom that used to be his father’s, so many years ago now. He stepped into the narrow closet that smelled of cedar and dust and reached up to where the .22 rifle was held in place by two nails. He pulled the rifle down, checked to make sure that it was loaded, then walked back to the bedroom. Alison was asleep on her side, a hand tucked up under her cheek. He stood over her, a little concerned that even at point-blank range, the bullet might hurt her before it killed her. He’d heard of bullets ricocheting off skulls, but that was certainly rare. He doubted it would happen if he aimed the gun correctly.

Maybe I should have drugged her drink just to make sure she didn’t suddenly wake up, he thought, the way he’d drugged Caroline Geddes and Ethan Dart. But he told himself not to worry about it. He’d gotten to know Alison Horne, and one thing he knew about her was that she was a deep sleeper. He braced himself, the barrel of the gun two inches from Alison. He didn’t love her—he wasn’t sure he truly loved anyone, at least no one currently alive on the planet—but he did like Alison quite a bit.

He thought back to a year ago, when he’d first walked into that awful steak house she was hostessing at, just to get a look at her. At that point he had fully planned everything but was still not entirely sure he was going to go through with it. He’d already written the list of nine names—nine potential victims, unaware that they’d been marked for death. The private investigator he’d hired to provide biographical information had handed him extensive files on all of them. In a way, going to see Alison Horne in the flesh had been a way for him to test himself, to see how he felt about playing the role of God. He sat at the bar in his best suit and watched her at her hostess stand, trying to imagine what it would feel like to end her life. He thought of Grace, his only child, who would be around Alison’s age right now if she hadn’t been hit by a drunk driver the year after she’d graduated from college. She’d been driving home after working the dinner shift at a swank French restaurant. She hadn’t needed to be a waitress, especially since she’d landed an entry-level job at the Ithaca newspaper she’d interned at her senior year at Cornell, and, besides, if she’d needed extra money Jack would have been happy to give it to her. But she’d always been independent, and she loved being a waitress, ever since she’d gotten her first job at a catering company in New Jersey her junior year of high school. And he remembered her telling him that she made more in one night of waitressing than she made for the whole week at the paper.

She’d been inordinately pretty, his daughter, and Jack had imagined the way that men dining at Salt Bistro would’ve noticed her. And he worried about her leaving the restaurant late at night and walking to her car. But the things we worry about are not the things that eventually happen. The drunk driver who hit her crossed four lanes of traffic, missing other cars, then ramming Grace’s GTI so hard that it went through a guardrail, flipped over twice, and landed upside down in the parking lot of a strip mall. She had been less than a minute from her own apartment complex.

Watching Alison at the steak house Jack had wondered if, like his own daughter, she loved working there. Somehow, he doubted it. She was nearing forty, he knew, but still sexy enough to get away with the cropped top and tight leather skirt. She caught him looking at her and smiled brightly at him. Maybe he should get to know her more intimately, if that was possible. I’m thinking of killing this woman, he’d thought, so getting to know her first would be the right thing to do, both logistically, but also maybe morally. He realized, of course, that he had no intentions of getting to know his other victims, but they weren’t right in front of him, in smiling distance.

He’d returned several times to the steak house, eventually asking her to join him for a glass of wine. And then he’d suggested the idea of her becoming his mistress. It had been easy, and except for her prettiness, and her job at a restaurant, there had been nothing else that reminded Jack of his daughter. She was just a random human being alone in the world like we all are. Not particularly good, and not particularly bad. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he did want to kill her. She was a small piece of machinery in an incredibly complex system, and he needed to make an adjustment. He was restoring karma to the universe.