The Dead Student (25 page)

“We’re going to need this. And that, too.” He pointed at the legal pad with the doctor’s hand-scrawled notes. Andy Candy had dropped it to the floor in the entranceway.

“Wouldn’t the police …” she started, and then she understood what Moth was saying. She picked it up and handed it to him. She did not recognize the step she took for the immense danger that it represented, although she was vaguely aware that the two of them were stepping over lines and crossing boundaries that no rational person would.

“All right,” Moth said, tucking the legal pad under his arm. “Now, make the call.”

She dialed. “What do I say?”

“Tell them there’s been a death. Gunshot.”

She twitched, tension in every movement. “And when they get here, what do we say then?”

Good sense would have dictated that they instantly turn over all they knew, which wasn’t much, and all they imagined, which was a great deal, to the police, who were properly equipped to deal with homicide. In the same instant, both decided not to. The words
It’s up to us
flooded both of them. The idea of trying to turn over trust to some cop seemed not only stupid, but dangerous. So many deaths were jumbled in their minds that the ability to see matters rationally evaporated. Moth felt iron inside. All he could imagine was revenge.

He said coldly: “An accident?”

If everything around her was a merry-go-round of death and crazy, clinging to something that seemed to make sense when it actually didn’t was all Andy Candy could muster.

“All right,” Andy said. “An accident or something, or maybe we just don’t know.” This seemed awkward to both of them, but for different reasons. Moth found himself thinking,
This is my fight.
Andy Candy thought,
Whatever it is you’ve started, you have to
finish.
Both failed to see these beliefs for the naïve romantic foolishness that they were.

“Just tell them what we heard and saw and that’s it,” Moth said. He paused. He felt like a pretentious theater director giving an actor her instructions. “Andy … Don’t act calm.”

She looked down at the doctor’s body. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.
What a strange request,
she thought. But that was the extent of her ability to process anything happening around her.

“That’s easy,” she said. There was so much hysteria circling around her, reaching out and seizing some to parcel onto a phone call to a police dispatcher seemed simple.

But just hearing her own voice seemed to help her regain some control
over her racing emotions. She had the odd thought,
So that’s what it’s like to see someone murdered.

She punched the numbers on her phone, all the time thinking she was caught up in some strange out-of-body experience. Moth pushed past her, walking out the front door to the rental car. Then the clipped dispatcher’s voice came on the line, and she heard herself giving an address, although it seemed like it was someone else, someone reliable and unfazed, summoning the police.

“When you ran outside, did you see anyone or anything?”

Moth had hesitated before shaking his head. He asked himself the same question and realized “Nothing” was the only answer. Or maybe, “Nothing out of the ordinary.” Except that a 180-grain deer slug had exploded in the doctor’s head seconds earlier. That wasn’t ordinary. But Moth realized that nothing in his life any longer was ordinary. He hoped Andy Candy recognized the same.

“No. I’m sorry. Nothing.”

The detective wrote down every word Moth uttered.

There were other questions for both of them. Routine questions, like, “What flights were you on?” and “Did the doctor say anything before being shot?” There were photos taken and crime scene technicians called, just as there had been when his uncle was killed. There was some commotion when a detective walking the bullet path came across the murdered deer and someone said “Hunting accident,” which didn’t seem totally convincing—though Moth and Andy Candy heard it repeated several times. There was a lot of “How do I get in touch with you?” exchanges of e-mail and cell phone numbers. Neither Moth nor Andy Candy could tell exactly what the policemen thought about the psychiatrist’s death, even when they asked the obvious question:

“Do you know of anyone who wanted to kill the doctor?”

And both replied:

“No.”

They didn’t have to agree beforehand about this lie. It just came naturally.

21

The scream bothered him immensely.

It was out of place and unexpected.

Little in any of his killings had gone wrong. Then—as he replayed the scream in his memory—it transformed systematically into a concern. And concern quickly changed into a completely new consideration that went beyond simple curiosity, into something akin to worry, which was a feeling utterly alien to him. And this worry deepened with each passing moment. It made him feel decidedly strange, almost light-headed, his pulse accelerating, and his skin tingling, as if he was getting a small electric shock. These were all new sensations in the process of murder, and he didn’t like any of them.

There should have been silence.

Silence and death. That was how I’d planned it.

Maybe some rustling sounds from tree branches as I retreated. That’s all.

Who screamed?

Who was in that house?

No one was supposed to be there.

Cleaning lady?
No.
Neighbor?
No.
Cable repairman?
No.

I should have gone back.

Student #5 canceled his next-day flight to Key West, where he’d intended to vacation, leisurely drinking a Cuba libre at the bar at Louie’s Backyard restaurant as he’d plotted out the remaining, nonlethal phase of his life. He had lately been indulging in pleasant fantasies—perhaps finding a job in the therapeutic community to take advantage of all his long-dormant psychological expertise. Maybe he’d work in a halfway home for former patients, or answer phones at a suicide prevention line. He didn’t need to make money. He needed to fill his remaining life with the deep satisfactions he’d expected when he’d first gone to medical school so many years earlier.

He’d even considered reconnecting with what relatives he had left—scattered cousins who believed him dead. He liked to envision the shock and surprise as news traveled around the family:
He’s alive!
He would be like one of those Japanese soldiers discovered on abandoned Pacific Ocean islands, still thinking the war was being fought thirty, forty years later, unable to bring themselves to surrender, being greeted as heroes with parades and medals when they returned in confusion to their strange and modern homeland. Possibilities had seemed endless. He could regain his name, his identity, and more critically, his potential—and no one would ever know how he’d achieved this.

It should have been like being young again.

Suddenly the new history that he’d thought was magically going to be delivered to him by freeing himself from his old history was threatened.

Rage instantly filled him.

Son of a bitch. Goddamn son of a bitch. A goddamn scream.

He had already spent some hours gathering all the elements of Jeremy Hogan’s murder together and disposing of them all: Computer hard drives and handwritten notes. Pictures, maps, schedules, routes. Weapons. Ammunition. Electronic voice-masking devices and throwaway cell phones. All the detailed information, personal history, and daily routines that he’d used preparing for and executing the psychiatrist’s death. He had
hoped that when he’d destroyed each link to the murder, he could finally start in on a new life.

God damn it to hell. Wasted time.

He told himself to be rational and begin investigating that scream, but this admonition made his breathing even tighter.

Late at night, in his New York apartment, Student #5 forced himself to once again turn to his computer. It took him a few minutes to install a brand-new hard drive, time he spent cursing wildly.

His first visit was to the website for the
Trenton Times,
the largest local paper in the nearest city. It carried only a single story:
Retired Doctor Killed in Apparent Hunting Accident.

He read the half-dozen paragraphs thinking,
That’s right, that’s exactly right—
but the story didn’t contain enough detail to diminish his nervousness. Indeed, the article quickly degenerated into a listing of Jeremy Hogan’s professional accomplishments beneath a single police lieutenant’s quotation: “There are indications that the doctor might have been a victim of an out-of-season hunting mishap.”

“Mishap,” he blurted out loud, on the edge of outrage. “Mishap?” He was staring at his computer screen and wanted to punch it. “No shit.”

Student #5 looked up and out his window. Manhattan night’s glow greeted him. He could hear traffic out on the streets, the usual combination of cars, trucks, horns sounding, and occasional sirens. Everything was just as it should be and yet, something seemed decidedly wrong. All the sounds that should have reassured him in their normalcy did no such thing.

Like any scientist reviewing data from his latest experiment, Student #5 went back over every aspect of the kill. Even more than some of his others, this one had seemed to be perfect—right down to the final bit of conversation, the hesitation before he’d caressed the trigger. He recalled the solid pressure against his shoulder and the small image he’d seen through the scope. He’d been 100 percent certain that Jeremy Hogan had experienced the absolutely necessary moment of fear and recognition and known at the very end he was about to die and who it was that was doing his killing—even if he didn’t remember the name. Just a heart-stopping
second or two for Hogan to flood with terrible and completely deserved memories, feel terror in his stomach, and realize he was lost despite every precaution he’d taken. And then, deliciously, as all these things flooded him, his brain exploded.

An ideal murder.

One to envy. One to savor.

Except for that scream.

Student #5 went over the sound in his head.

Female. High-pitched.
Was there a secondary sound?

Damn it, damn it, damn it. The plan had been so simple:

Dial.

Speak rehearsed lines.

Aim.

Shoot.

Quickly check for any leftover clues inadvertently left behind.

Retreat.

And he’d stuck precisely to it. Just as he should. Just as he had every other time.

Except, this time he should have waited.

He cursed, gripped the edges of his desk tightly, stood up abruptly, paced about, pounded one fist into an open palm, then dropped to the hardwood floor and started doing sit-ups. At fifty, sweat glistening on his forehead, he stopped.

Telling himself to remain calm and focused, Student #5 returned to the computer. He decided to try the website for the
Princeton Packet
, a twice-a-week suburban paper that covered the area. What he immediately saw were lots of stories about zoning board meetings, leash laws, recycling efforts, Little League baseball tryouts, and school projects. With a little mouse-click persistence he found:
Apparent Hunting Accident Claims Prominent Professor’s Life.

The story was similar to the prior one, but it had a few more details, including the dead deer and the phrase:
The doctor’s body was discovered by houseguests.

He thought:
No one ever visited the doctor. Not in years.

So who are they?

Student #5 barely slept. Most of the rest of the night he spent staring at the story on his computer, half-expecting other words to form on the screen.

10 a.m.

Use a throwaway phone. Stick to the story.

The line was ringing and he had scripted the most reasonable lies in his head.

“Hello.
Princeton Packet
. This is Connie Smith.”

“Ms. Smith, hello. I’m terribly sorry to bother you at your office. My name is Philip Hogan. I’m calling from California about the recent death of my cousin. Distant cousin, unfortunately, both in miles and relations. The whole thing has taken us all by surprise. Now we’re just trying to find out exactly what happened, and I can’t seem to get a straight answer from the local police. I mean, what sort of accident was this? I was hoping you might be able to fill me in on a few details.”

“The cops are usually pretty tight-lipped until they sign off on the whole thing,” the reporter replied.

“Your story said a hunting accident? My cousin wasn’t a hunter, at least, not that we knew of, so …” He let his voice trail off, endowing each word with a question mark.

“Well, yeah. I’m sorry to have to say this, but the ‘accident’ part is dicey. It appears a stray shot from some out-of-season idiot using a far-too-powerful rifle killed your relative instead of a deer. Or in addition to a deer. The cops are looking for the hunter—maybe he’s facing a manslaughter charge in addition to a pile of wildlife violations—but no success so far. That’s why they won’t cooperate.”

“I see. That sounds terrible. I never met my cousin, but he was a quite accomplished psychiatrist. And he was home when this happened?”

“Yes. Answering a phone, apparently. I mean, just bad luck, really, as best as I understand it. But you shouldn’t rely on what I’ve been told. Even
tually the police will issue a final statement, which is likely to be more accurate than the hearsay and rumor I’ve picked up on.”