The Killing Circle

“The clipping you sent to me.”

Angela cocks her head. “I didn’t send you anything.”

“Someone did. In the mail. Unsigned.”

“That’s how I first found out about it too.”

I can’t help wanting to know more on this point—if she didn’t send the clipping, then who did?—but diverting her any further might shut her down completely. Already she’s looking at her watch, wondering how much longer she has.

“Okay, so you followed up,” I say.

“Because I thought it was Evelyn, but wasn’t sure. And then, in one of the reports, it mentioned that the only distinguishing feature on the female victim’s body was a tattoo. A raven tattoo.”

“On the back of her wrist. I remember.”

“I know I should have come forward. Evelyn probably has family who are still looking for her. They must think she’s disappeared.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“At first, I think I saw it as a chance to just, I don’t know, lose myself. Be erased. Start over. You know what I mean?”

“It’s not too late. You could tell the police now. Straighten it all out.”

“I can’t do that.”

“It’s not like you did anything wrong.”

“That’s not why.”

“I don’t understand. Someone dies—an acquaintance of yours dies with your name on her toe tag, and you’re letting the people who care about her live with the lie that she might still be out there? That Evelyn might be alive? I’m not taking any moral high ground here—you know I can’t. But what you’re doing is hurting others who’ve got nothing to do with you.”

Angela takes off her sunglasses. Pupils darting from one peripheral to the other. Her voice had almost managed to disguise her panic. Now it’s her eyes that give her away.

“After the accident, I took on different names,” she says. “Changed where I lived, how I looked, my job. It was like I’d disappeared. And I needed to disappear.”

“Why?”

“Because I was being hunted.”

The waiter, who has been watching us from the opposite side of the patio for the past few minutes, drifts over to ask if he can bring us coffee or dessert.

“Just the cheque,” Angela says, abruptly pulling open her purse.

“Please. This is on me,” I say, waving her off, and the enormous understatement of the gesture, under the circumstances, brings a contrite laugh from my throat. But Angela is too agitated to join me in it.

“Listen, Patrick. I don’t think I can see you again. So I better say what I came to say.”

She blinks her eyes against the sun that is now cast equally on both of us. For a second I wonder if she has forgotten, now that she’s come to it, what the point she wanted to deliver actually was. But this isn’t what causes her to pause. She is only searching for the simplest way to put it.

“Be careful.”

“Of what?”

“He was only watching before. But now…now it’s different.”

The waiter delivers the bill. Stands there long enough that I have to dig a credit card out of my wallet and drop it on the tray before he reluctantly moves away. In the meantime, Angela has gotten to her feet.

“Wait. Just wait a second. Who’s ’he’?”

“Do you really think you’re the only one?”

“What are you saying?”

“The Sandman,” she says, and disappears behind her sunglasses once more. “He’s come back.”

19

The next morning I refuse to let my thoughts return to my lunch with Angela other than to remind myself that she has no apparent plans to sue me. This is a good thing. As for the other stuff—I do my best not to go there.

What’s needed are rituals. New habits Sam and I can set about repeating so that they will blaze a trail to follow over the days to come. Starting with food. Instead of the improvised meals we have been surviving on— willy-nilly take-out, tins of corner-store glop, Fruit Loops—I set out with Sam to lay in proper stock.

We drive down to the supermarket by the harbour, where the warehouses and piers are being turned into nightclubs and condominiums. This is where we shop, or used to shop. It’s been a while.

Yet here it all is, the pyramids of selected produce, the microwavable entrees, the aisles of sustenance for those who needn’t look at price tags. Sam and I drop items in our basket as they glide by. The outrageous bounty of North American choice.

“This is why the rest of the world hates us,” I tell Sam. He looks up at me and nods, as though he were having precisely the same thought.

Later, down in the Crypt, our purchases stocked away, I sit at my desk and realize that I have no work to do. No freelance assignment, no novel-inprogress, no review deadline. There’s still an hour to kill before lunch, and I click on the computer to indulge in a moment of virtual masturbation: I Google myself.

As always, the entry at the top of the list is my official website. The creation of my publisher’s marketing department, www.patrick.rush.com features a Comment section I sometimes visit. The correspondents generally represent one of two extremes: gushing fan or crap-taking critic. The latter favours the sort of spluttering, all- lowercase tirade that soils the screen for a few hours before the Webmaster gets around to striking it from the record. This morning, however, there’s something waiting there of an altogether more disturbing nature.

Not an incoherent screed, not a copyedit nitpick, not a demand for money back. Just a single word of accusation.

Thief.

The correspondent’s name is nowhere to be seen. There’s only his or her nom-de- blog: therealsandman.

It could be only coincidence—the specificity of the allegation, the timing of Angela’s belief that the Sandman has returned, the identity implied by the name—but I’m certain it’s someone who knows.

I immediately write back in reply. This requires the creation of a blog identity of my own: braindead29.

Why are you afraid to use your real name?

Reading the question over, I see how it’s too clear and benign for blogspeak. I make a go at translation.

why r assholes like u 2 afraid to use your reel name?????