Nine Lives(66)

Eric was frozen, his eyes on the revolver, his jaw moving as though he were chewing on something. “Um,” he said, at last.

“I’m going to kill you, Eric, and it doesn’t matter whether I know your last name or not, but I was curious.”

Eric moved his eyes from the revolver to Jack’s face. “Why?” he said.

“Why am I going to kill you, or why do I want to know your last name? I’m going to kill you because you’re a bully and a coward and I don’t like you. You also happen to be married to someone that I do like. So killing you will make her life better, and it will probably make a whole lot of other people’s lives better as well. I’m also killing you because I’ve gotten good at killing people, so I thought I’d use this new skill I’ve acquired late in life. I can tell by the expression on your face that you’re confused, so I’ll make it simple: You are going to die because I want you to die.”

“Look, Jack. If this has to do with Margaret … if you’re in love with her, or something, we can work this out. I mean, Jesus …”

Jack had been briefly tempted to extend the conversation, to tell this man the full story of what he’d been planning over the past two years of his life. And what he’d achieved. The thought of it was tempting, like some supervillain in a James Bond film monologuing away about his plan, but Eric would not have really listened. He was already trying to figure out how to save his own life, his body probably coursing with adrenaline. So Jack shot him in the chest, dead center, and watched as he slumped back onto the pristine white couch, a perplexed and pained expression on his face.

After standing up and looking out the front bay windows to see if anyone had been walking by on the street and heard the gunshot, Jack crouched over Eric’s body and pressed two fingers to his neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. On the table next to Eric’s can of beer was his cell phone. It was locked but that didn’t matter. You could always call 911 on a locked phone. He put the phone into his front pocket, then put the gun into his travel bag, and exited the house, stopping briefly to look at a pile of unopened mail on a waist-high table in the foyer. The first envelope was addressed to Margaret Hutchinson, and the one below it to Eric Miles. He wondered if Margaret had kept her maiden name. It would make it easier for her if she had, not having to change her driver’s license and her bank accounts.

When he was a mile from his neighborhood in West Hartford, and stopped at a red light, Jack called 911, gave them the address of Margaret Hutchinson and Eric Miles, and said that a man had been shot there. The least he could do was to spare Margaret the sight of her dead husband when she returned home from her library shift. He threw Eric’s phone out the window of his car as he merged onto Interstate 84, heading north.

It was just a regular Tuesday in November for most of the world. He thought of his wife, wondering what she’d be doing right now. Drinking chardonnay and watching one of the early evening shows she liked. Either Jeopardy! or the PBS NewsHour. They’d come to her, wouldn’t they, after they figured out what he’d done? Interview her, maybe even try to find out if she had assisted him in anyway. At the very least they’d ask her why he’d done it. He thought that maybe she’d mention the glioblastoma and how his personality had changed after the diagnosis and treatment. She’d mentioned it enough to him, convinced that something had altered in him. He thought she was probably right. He had changed a little after that particular ordeal. He’d realized not just his own insignificance, but the insignificance of everyone else in the world. And, yes, that had been around the time he’d begun to fantasize about killing the children of the Pirate Society, about setting the world to rights.

And he wondered if his wife would mention their only daughter, and how she’d died the year she’d graduated from college. He’d changed then, too, but that was to be expected. It was the second time he’d learned that the world would happily rid itself of its young and beautiful inhabitants. There was no order, only chaos. He’d created the list to bring back order, but his wife would never make that connection, and he doubted that anyone else would either.

It was late by the time he pulled the car into the half-empty parking lot of the Windward Resort. He stepped out into the cold, briny air, and was flooded with the weight of sadness that always accompanied the smell of the seashore.

The young woman at the reception desk took his information and smiled at him with an empty look that made Jack feel pretty certain she hadn’t been told to be on the lookout for anyone checking in under the name Jonathan Grant. He asked if she had a tide table, and she dug around in her desk drawer, finally finding one.

“Are you going fishing, Mr. Grant?” she said.

“No. Just going to the beach.”

“It’s nice this time of year. Empty.” She was looking directly at him, but he clocked her eyes darting to the side of his head. Normally he combed his hair in such a way as to cover up the raised white scar from his brain surgery three years ago, but he’d forgotten to do it before entering the hotel.

He took the stairs to the second floor, and went down the dingy hallway to his room. As a child at this resort he’d been dazzled by the luxury, or maybe it was just the freedom that at such a young age he’d been given the run of the place, with its cavernous dining room, and darkly lit lounge, and endless hallways. Now it just seemed worn-out and sad. The hallways smelled of canned soup and disinfectant.