The single item I hesitated over the longest was a photo album. Pictures of parents. Then young love followed by wedding pictures. Next me, swollen with the life growing inside of me, my face foreign to me now. Unfamiliar. A beatific smile. A healthy glow. I didn’t recognize that woman at all.
Then baby pictures. First day of school. Visit to Santa. First steps. First bike ride. All those firsts. All of the light on that sweet face.
All of the light.
I left the photo album on the antique table in the foyer. And then I drove away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE WERE HIGHWAYS. And there were roadside rest areas. There were sights to see that I mostly didn’t see.
Sometimes I would sleep. More often at rest times, I would lie awake, willing my body to relax. The shift into slumber mostly never came.
I didn’t feel as though I was searching. But I didn’t feel I was hiding, either.
I could have taken my own life, then. I could have done it easily. But even that seemed like too much bother and maybe, too, the rest I thought that end would give me was better than I deserved. But this limbo, this ghostly drifting, this was what suited me now. This was what I was for.
I might have floated, anchorless, like this, endlessly, but it seemed that, just at a pivotal moment, when all hope had drained away, they contacted me again.
Enough time and activity had passed that I had forgotten about my hour in the park. Whatever had happened was inexplicable, but it was in the past. I had the feeling of a near miss. Like I’d been close to something that had slipped away.
I don’t remember where I was when the text came, but that part doesn’t matter. I recognized the number, though. Still, I was unprepared.
Download a Tor browser. Then visit aligatormail.onion. Login as newfish, password 12345678. More instructions at that time.
I had no idea what any of this meant. It seemed like a foreign language. I didn’t even know what a Tor browser might be. But I’ve never been slow, and moss doesn’t grow on me.
And so, even though I really had no idea what I was getting into, or entirely what I was agreeing to, I texted back:
OK.
Upon Googling, I found that the Tor browser was my “gateway to the Deep Web,” which proved to be an unregulated Internet space that was available to me via means of which I was not at that time quite clear. Downloading the browser was easy and free. And aligatormail.onion was also easily accessed. By the time I typed in the password they’d fed me, I was nervous, though I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know what was waiting, really. And, yet, part of me knew very well.
From: Nevermind
Subject: First Assignment
You passed the first tests. We’ll see if you pass this one. Odds are against you (nothing personal) but we like the cut of your jib.
Location: 41.9028168 -87.624505
Subject name: Alistair Pattison
Method: Your choosing
Expediency: At your discretion, under 30 days please
Payment: Via Bitcoin. Please establish Bitcoin account and leave details via this e-mail address.
Please alert via text when the job is complete. Payment will be made in full at that time.
And that was it. It wasn’t nearly enough information; though, in some ways, it was way too much.
We like the cut of your jib.
I googled that, as well. The language was redolent of someone of a certain class. The cut of your jib. I pondered that until I couldn’t anymore. East Coast, prep schools and Ivy League. Then I focused on the rest of what was said. Maybe the jib pondering had helped me avoid the more pressing issues right in front of me.
It didn’t take much googling for me to realize that Alistair Pattison was the scion of a successful contracting firm in a city a two-hour flight from where I’d lived with my Pebble Tec pool. Pattison was a father. A grandfather. He’d been a husband, but was now a widower—small mercies. And someone wanted him dead. A spouse, a lover, a child, a competitor. It was not my job to think about that part. I knew that before I even really began.
I searched a bit further, wanting to know more about him, thinking it would help with my mission. There was a fair amount of information floating around. News stories and items from the society pages, a few of court documents, an op-ed page in the newspaper with a lot of unpleasant comments. From all of that I got the idea that, whatever else was true, Alistair Pattison was a nasty piece of work who had, in his fairly long life, pissed off a lot of people.
He was old now and feeble, but old injuries can die hard and, from what I could see, any number of people might want him dead.
The difficult thing for me was going to be how I did it. Though the address that had been sent to me was a luxury condominium on the lake, I discovered Pattison was now in a nursing home. I was imagining that even the fairly tame “woof!” the Bersa made when silenced might attract attention in the hospital setting. I needed something else.
With a bit more research, I determined I would use ricin to kill him. It sounded super easy to make, so I ordered castor beans on eBay and had them delivered to a UPS store near the hotel I reserved at the same time.
I booked my flight. And, after only a small struggle, set up a Bitcoin account, only half sure I got it right. And there was an
