Ben’s startled look, he said, “I’m gettin’ a Diet Coke.” Then he repeated his order to the bartender with petulant emphasis.
Ben ordered a Corona.
“You mad at me?” Anthem asked.
“No. But I do wish that you would, you know,
“Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle a pot. You know, you’re never going to find a boyfriend, you keep spending all your weekends with her.”
“Funny. She says the same thing about you.”
“I don’t want a damn boyfriend!”
“That’s not what I meant, genius.”
“Whatever. You
“I used to. I used to have to chase you all over town. Your mother would be calling me all night, half out of her mind.”
“Well, then you spent the weekend with my momma and not me, all right? Anyway, that’s not how it is anymore.”
“Guess not.” The bartender brought Ben’s beer. He took a slug. “Does it bother you that I’m—”
Anthem hissed and waved one hand at him dismissively, but in the same instant, he turned away from the sight of the froth collecting inside the bottle’s neck as if it were a picture of Nikki Delongpre.
“This isn’t some kind of setup?” he finally asked. “What do you—I don’t even know what you’d call it. An article? A
“Piece is good,” Ben said.
“You don’t think she’s going to try to make me look like crap?”
“No. I don’t. I think it’s a good thing.”
“For who?”
“For both of you.”
Anthem studied him for a while, decided that he was telling the truth and drained his entire Diet Coke in three uninterrupted swallows. Then he slammed the glass back down to the bar as if it were a shot of tequila. “Good!” he declared. “Then help me write the thing.”
“I can’t. Not today.”
“Benny,
“You’ve got nothing but time this weekend. You’re on call, which means you’re going to be staying home, gardening, downloading porn, and trying not to drink, until you have to go out on a ship.”
“You really think I can do this?” Anthem asked him.
Ben was disarmed by the hope in Anthem Landry’s reluctant smile, by the brightness in his eyes and the blend of childlike nervousness and exuberance Marissa’s offer had stirred in him so suddenly. For years now, sarcasm had been his most effective shield against Anthem’s physical beauty and frequent moments of raw, boyish charm. But this wasn’t the time. And so what if one unguarded smile from a handsome friend had him relieving himself later that night to a preposterous and vaguely incestuous fantasy? He was allowed one or two every now and then, as long as he kept it a fantasy. As long as it was only every now and then.
“I think you’re going to knock it out of the park, A-Team.”
Anthem picked up his empty glass, clinked it against the neck of Ben’s beer bottle, and tousled Ben’s hair with one massive hand so forcefully Ben was forced to bend over and shield himself. Then he barreled out of the bar and into the blinding sunlight outside, proving with each step that it was possible for a giant to move with a spring in his step.
18
From where he stood, just outside the window above her kitchen sink, Marshall Ferriot watched the woman inside drag a meat cleaver across her left wrist, and then her right, and wondered, just as he had with her boss, Danny Stevens, earlier that morning, if it would have consoled her to know how beautiful she looked in the final moments of her life.
As she cut herself, Janice Walker appeared in Marshall’s gaze as a shimmering, colorless apparition, trailing little starbursts of quantum material that shifted through the air around her like ghostly impressions of herself, impressions that effervesced so brightly in Marshall’s vision, they distracted him from the resulting arterial spray when Janice effortlessly dragged the knife’s blade across her throat. It was the same experience he had every time he willed himself to open to his subjects and felt the velvety rush of their souls moving into his.
As with all of them, he’d experienced a brief flash of her soul when he’d first hooked her. He’d seen a woman he knew to be her mother walking a young Janice by the hand through the Audubon Zoo, and the monkeys in their cages turned to stare at them with humanlike approval and warmth, the product of young Janice’s fanciful imagination. And then the vision passed, and it felt as if he were drinking her in as he forced her to shuffle toward the cutlery block so he could get to work.
It hadn’t been Marshall’s intention to re-create that long-ago fantasy of what he wanted to do to Nikki Delongpre after she’d betrayed him. But that’s exactly what he’d done, in all its bloody splendor, albeit from a slight distance and with a much older and less attractive subject. The little tableau was so appropriate to the day’s agenda, Marshall laughed gently as the woman slid down the blood-splattered wall with lifeless, unblinking eyes.
Effortless, easy. No need for chitchat, no need to go inside and risk contaminating the scene as he’d done with Danny Stevens. And it was a painless death he’d granted her, despite all the blood. As far as Janice’s consciousness was concerned, she’d been rinsing dishes one second, headed off to the afterlife the next. No need to inform her that her ticket had been punched because her boss of seven years suspected she might have had some suspicions about how much he’d stolen from the Ferriot trust.
Now she was crumpled against the blood-splattered wall just inside the back door, her Pepto-pink bathrobe spilling open over her bloodstained pajamas, her eyes glazed and lifeless, but her slack jaw still drawing slight breaths. With impossible, steady determination, she rolled over onto all fours, lifted a hand to her gushing throat and began painting letters across the nearest wall with a splattered finger: S O R R Y M A R S H A
Marshall felt the sharp tug deep in his chest that told him the woman’s death had arrived. He released her, and he was relieved when she didn’t spasm with sudden agony or grasp desperately for her gushing throat.
He didn’t want her to suffer. After all, what was she guilty of besides answering phones for a crook for several years? He’d had no choice but to position her alongside all the other pieces he’d left behind in a precise trail of blood and lies, pieces that included her missing boss and the evidence Marshall had left on his computer suggesting his wife had discovered evidence of his crime and that this discovery had resulted in her violent murder; pieces that included Allen Shire, dead by self-inflicted gunshot wound in the house on Chamberland Island, along with a suicide note nearby explaining how he’d conspired with Elizabeth and Danny Stevens to kill Marshall and milk the trust, and that when he and Elizabeth had quarreled over his share, he’d killed her in a fit of rage, only to be consumed by guilt.
Which body would be discovered first?
The curiosity made Marshall almost giddy. He’d done such a good job. The discovery of one body would immediately lead to the others, and then the world would be made aware of a murder plot that hadn’t actually been executed, by three individuals who had barely known one another. Yet the evidence would be undeniable, indisputable.
But there was one person out there who wouldn’t be convinced, of this Marshall was sure.
How long before she’d hear the story? Did she have some kind of news alert set for his name or the names of his family members? (He’d set up one for the names of everyone he’d killed over the past few weeks.) There was no telling. But Marshall was confident that by the end of the day at the latest, as the news media and cops shook their heads in bafflement over the extraordinary, impossible details of the diabolical plot that had cost Marshall his life, one woman would hear the story and be gripped by fear and certainty. She would know that yes,
