Killer Move

“I don’t remember that,” he says.

“You don’t remember anything you don’t want to.”

“Maybe I did say it.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

She walks toward him, her left leg dragging behind. She walks past on his right-hand side, over the edge, but she does not fall. She is still at the same level when she disappears out of sight.

He sits in the chair, his hands gripping the arms. A quantity of urine he would not have believed he still possessed has leaked out into his pants. He knows that he cannot just have seen her, but . . . is she going to return?

She does not.

But he doesn’t sleep again, either.

Back in the here and now, he gives up on finding a smart reply and instead asks the question in his head.

“What did you do to Hazel?”

Hunter looks a little sour. This doesn’t seem like gamesmanship. He evidently does not want to talk about it. So Hazel is probably dead. Warner can remember what she was like twenty-some years ago, when he first met her. The wife of one of the big wheels of the local set he was sliding his way into. A good-looking older woman. Someone who he more than once thought had been looking at him in a certain way, though probably not—she and her husband had been very tight. That whole group had been, long before he joined, and you don’t mess with that kind of bond for the sake of random couplings.

“I remember Wilkins,” Hunter says. “He seemed like an okay guy. Was he really a part of it?”

“A part of what?”

“You know.”

The man in the chair summons his strength. “I do. But I think that you still don’t get it.”

“You care to enlighten me?”

“Nope.”

“I guessed not. So I’m going to leave you to it for another while. I got work to do now. Cleanup. And that’s your fault. Another dumb game you played, right?”

The man in the chair looks at him.

“Yeah,” Hunter said. “She talked.”

As Hunter levers himself up from the wall and prepares to go, the man in the chair feels panic.

“I have friends, you asshole. Other friends, not the old folks’ club here. Friends without limits. I pay my dues to them. They owe me. They’ll bury you and set fire to your grave.”

“Been there,” Hunter says. “Being buried is no big thing. Pour as much earth as you want over people, they have a way of climbing back out.”

“And so what if they do? You’ll always be trash. And I’ll always be who I am.”

“That’s true, my friend, and it must be a source of great comfort to you right now.”

Hunter walks over and looks down at the man in the chair, and Warner is confused and disconcerted to see something in his eyes that looks like compassion.

“You’re old school. But even people like that learn new tricks once in a while.”

He picks the water bottle off Warner’s lap, twists the cap. He takes a drink from it and the man in the chair thinks yes, of course—that was only ever going to be about another way of taunting me. But Hunter holds the bottle down at about the level of Warner’s mouth.

Fearing—knowing—that this is just going to be a trick, but too desperate to resist, Warner leans his head forward hungrily. Hunter holds the bottle to his lips, gently tilts it. A slow, steady stream of water courses into his mouth. He can feel it as it travels down his esophagus and finally into his stomach. Hunter keeps the bottle in position, gradually changing the angle to keep the water coming, until it is completely empty.

Then he scrunches it up and puts it in his pocket. He heads over to the portion of the ledge where he climbed up the day before.

“You have a good night, David.”

Fighting a feeling of nausea, Warner looks round at him. “She gave you someone else, didn’t she.”

Hunter smiles. “I’ll be back.”

He sits down on the edge and is about to drop over it, but then stops, as if struck by a thought. “One thing, though,” he adds. “Driving down Longboat, I saw something. Don’t know what it’s about, but you might. Seems like the cops are taking an interest in your house. Saw four or five cars. Plus a CSI wagon or two. Seems like a lot of hardware for some guy who’s gone missing, no matter how rich he is.”

He winks, and then he’s gone.

The water has made a difference. His thoughts have clarified. Warner knows the effect is temporary, and for some reason the image that comes into his mind is that of a faithful dog, locked into a house with its old, dead owner, lapping at the body’s blood, biting a hole, snuffling and chewing at what’s inside. Great, in the short term. A meat bonanza. But when it’s gone, it’s gone.

He feels okay. His thoughts are more able to restrict themselves to the positive, to the golden hours and days. His thoughts are like strong hands, lifting moments up in front of his mind. He can hold them there, turn them, look at the past from every angle. In the past this would have been associated with pinpricks of guilt and doubt. But now? There’s no need, no space, and no time. He can be who he is and has always been.

He stares straight ahead, eyes open. After a time they start to smart, and collude with the oncoming twilight to make the edges of the room shade away.

When the women arrive, he knows they are only in his imagination. He’s still not sure about Katy, but he knows that the figures that start to appear now around the periphery of his vision are nothing more than the product of his memory. He remembers then that he did come up with an idea something like the fantasy index Katy’s ghost told him about. He knows that’s what his mind is serving up, except that the figures that are coming to share this space are not those who were attracted to him. He had a very different role in their lives, and there are many of them. He’d never realized quite how many.

He’s not afraid.

But he’s not a fool, either.

When he’s ready, he holds the ends of both arms of the chair with his hands. He anchors down with the balls of his feet. He closes his eyes and pushes, raising the front legs just a little.

Then he throws his back against the chair, hard.

The chair rocks, once, twice, and then tips slowly backward over the edge.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I didn’t go far. After I’d made it onto the main road without being confronted by a cop car, I calmed down a little. I knew what I was doing was not smart, but also that it wasn’t a CNN-worthy Bronco debacle either. How was I to have known that the cops were on their way? Well, okay, because Karren had told me—but they didn’t know that (yet). And they should have called ahead, right? You can’t just assume people are sitting around with nothing better to do. I had business to attend to. I had a client to meet, a dentist’s appointment, a brand-building encounter group and astrology “fragfest” up in Bradenton. I had to do . . . whatever the fuck.

So I wasn’t home. So sue me.

I drove into downtown Sarasota and developed an idea on the way. It was a small idea, but it was the only one I could find, and some form of positive and direct action seemed like a good plan right now (and a great excuse for not being at home, too).

I parked on Felton Street and walked the extra block to the offices of Not Just a Beach. I could see through the big glass doors that someone was still behind the desk, but when I tried to open the door, it was locked. The girl looked up from her computer and shook her head with the god-given authority of receptionists everywhere.