“You’ve never been here.”
“But I know where it is.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bring the note.”
17
Jimmy and I sat in my little living room and sipped on crummy instant coffee and didn’t quite look at one another. He was ashamed and I was ashamed for him.
I was looking at the blackmail note. It was lying on the glass coffee table and I was bent over it, reading what I had already read many times since he brought it over, perhaps expecting to find some code there, and then crack it, but I didn’t have any success.
Like the previous note, it had been written with a black marker. But this time the letters were smaller. It read:
TONIGHT. MIDNIGHT. SIEGEL HOUSE. COME IN THE BACK WAY. BRING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS OR WE MAIL COPIES OF THE DVD TO EVERYONE. COME ALONE. DON’T FUCK WITH US. WE MEAN BUSINESS.
Jimmy sniffed at the air. “What is that smell?”
“Dead rat,” I said.
“That must be me,” Jimmy said, “because I’m starting to feel like that’s what I am. A dead rat.”
“Perhaps,” I said, tapping the note. “But now we know we’re dealing with more than one.”
“That’s what we usually means,” Jimmy said. “I’m going to tell you something, bro. I haven’t got ten thousand. I mean, it’s in the bank, but I can’t get it. It’s under both our names, me and Trixie. I could go up there and pull it out, but Trixie would know pretty damn soon. She does, I might as well have just let them show the video. Hell, hire out a movie theater and serve popcorn, then lay my balls on a chopping block and give Trixie an axe and draw a line on my nuts with a marker.”
“Something about this whole thing doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?” Jimmy asked. “It adds up to about ten thousand dollars. That’s what it adds up to. And they are trying to show they know the connection by having me meet them where Caroline disappeared. Oh, it adds up all right.”
“Whoever took Caroline probably murdered her,” I said. “That adds up. But why now? This DVD is months old. Why has it taken so long for them to want money?”
“Everyone wants money. Now or later.”
“Thing is, though, they’ve gotten away with the crime and no one has a lead, so why surface now? What’s the gain?”
“Again, the money. You said it yourself. It’s perfect. They got away with the crime, and now I look good for it, and on top of that, they can pick up some cash. Sounds reasonable to me.”
“But still, why wait so long?”
“Could have been in prison for some other crime. Or the loony house. Who knows? Thing is, they got the DVD somehow, and they want the money.”
“So there’s no money?”
Jimmy shook his head. “I thought about selling some things. I’ve got stuff I could get rid of. Motorcycles, a couple of old cars, things like that. But I couldn’t manage to sell it before midnight.”
“That would probably just be the beginning anyway. It’s never enough money, and you can’t be certain you’ll get all the copies of the DVD back.”
“Yep,” Jimmy said. “That’s what I been thinking.”
“The police are starting to sound like the better deal, Jimmy. It would be rough for you, but it would be the right thing to do.”
“These blackmailing assholes. They shouldn’t be able to do that, kill people. And they shouldn’t be able to ruin my life, even if I did make a mistake. They ought to be stopped. And there’s a way.”
I looked at him. There was a sudden gnawing in my stomach that wasn’t hunger. “What way is that?”
“You know.”
“No. I don’t know. You got something, let’s hear it.”
“If something happened to them—”
“Wait a minute, brother mine. That don’t work for me. No, sir. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”
“You’ve killed before.”
“In the service of our country. And by accident when I was trying to serve our country.”
“Accident?”
“I’d rather not go into it. Let me just say you get a little trigger-happy. Something moves when you’re expecting something to move, or even when you aren’t, you tend to shoot before asking questions. Good guy, bad guy. The results are still the same. Someone gets handed their ass.”
“I hear you, Cason. I’m not saying this lightly. I actually gave it some thought.”
“Sounds like it.”
“The law, they catch a killer, what are they gonna do?”
“Try them.”
“That’s right. And if they find them guilty, what they’re gonna do is put a needle up their arm, after costing the taxpayers a lot of money to house and feed and clothe them until they do.”
“You’re worried about the legal system wasting money, suddenly? Some guy on death row is taking food out of your mouth?”
“I’m just saying. That’s the way it would work. Hell, they might even get off. Get some slick lawyer and they might not get put to death. Might even pull an O.J., get turned loose, or just end up in prison.”
“What you’re worried about is Trixie and everyone else knowing you were riding Caroline like a bicycle, so don’t come off all pious.”
“I admit it. But it wouldn’t be any loss if these killers bit the big one.”
I looked at him. He looked earnest and eager.
“I asked you the other day if you had anything to do with Caroline missing, and I didn’t like asking it, but it was just a technical question. I was sure I knew the answer, and the answer was no. That was what you said.”
“And it’s true.”
“But now you’re talking about killing the blackmailers easy as if you were talking about making an omelet.”
“It’s not the same kind of thing, and you know it.”
“Close enough for government work,” I said. “And I’ve done government work. Here are some problems. That’s vigilantism. It’s against the law. We get caught, we go to jail. Maybe we get the needle. Maybe we don’t have the smart lawyer who can get us off. And here’s another thing. You’ve never killed anyone.”
“I’ve killed deer. I’ve killed moose, and even a bear. I go hunting all the time, all over the country. Mounted them myself. Their heads are on my wall at the house.”
“They weren’t human. And they couldn’t fight back. At least you didn’t give them a chance to fight back. Hunting doesn’t impress me. Maybe you ought to give the little forest animals a rest. A killer, he, she, it, them, they may fight back in a way you don’t expect. And I have killed humans. It isn’t the pleasant and wonderful thing you think it is. Even if you think the ones you killed deserve it. It comes back on you. Blowback. I think about the people I killed every day. And that was for my country. That’s what I was paid to do. That’s what I was asked to do. And worse yet, I was good at it.”
“Isn’t this for a purpose? Doing these jerks?”
“To not embarrass you? To make sure you keep your marriage and your job? Stay respectable? Hard for me to get worked up enough to think killing for that is a good idea. The answer is no.”
“I was just thinking out loud.”
“Too loud.”
