breathe in the same air that she does before darkness encases him. He has no plans to visit with the police. He knows that he’s still on their suspect list. They have made that plain in the past, harping on the coincidence of the car rental mileage, yet they have nothing more and have left him alone for several months now. He also knows, even if they may not be convinced, that he is innocent of any crime, save obsessive infatuation. He also knows that when he finds her he will dispatch the guilty party. In his minicooler in the backseat are two needles with enough insulin to inject his prey with convulsions, coma, and a certain heart attack. He will dispense justice if no one else will. He eats a quiet dinner at a small Italian restaurant in East Hampton and falls asleep early. His mind is clear and tomorrow he will begin to plan howbest to stalk his quarries.
In some way it reminds him of hunting. He first went out with his father when he was a few days past his tenth birthday. He never knew his mother, who had died after a fall when he was barely three. So it was his father and a succession of housekeepers who raised him. The housekeepers who came and went like the seasons and who could never satisfy his father’s standards in much the same way as he couldn’t. There were many times when he wished he could also have been fired and sent away, but that was never to be. He had to succeed just as his father had succeeded. It was an early fall day just like today except that then he was in the Berkshires, and this is the beach. He remembered his first kill. He chased a white-tailed rabbit into a tree hollow.
“Don’t waste time waitin’ for him to get out,” barked his father who had moved in behind him. “Shoot him right now.”
And he did. It was easy until he pulled the bloody pulp out of the tree and threw up right there, his breakfast and bile spilling out and over the dead white tail.
“Now skin him, and when you’re done with that, bring him back to the house, and we’ll have the cook make us a stew for supper.”
He did it all because he had to, but never hunted again and for all he knew maybe even became a doctor because of what had happened that day. But this was different. Whoever had taken Heidi had ruined his life and hers. The one who did it deserved to die, but a shotgun shell would be too quick. That’s why he’s brought the needles.
The needles each hold large doses of insulin. He had written the prescriptions himself. No problem there. He was still licensed as a doctor in New York state. More than once he pictures what will happen. He will force Posner or Welbrook to confess what happened to Heidi. Then he’ll jab the man with the needle. No alcohol cloth to clean the skin. No bother to even roll up a sleeve. Just a simple large dose of insulin. So large the man’s blood sugar will drop far below even common hypoglycemic conditions.
Posner or Welbrook will go into insulin shock. The skin will become cool and clammy. The skin color will pale. He might thrash about, but I’ll be there to restrain him if he does. The speech will start to slur and convulsions will soon follow. Then a coma followed by a stoppage of breathing or heart failure. Just enough time to make him suffer without it being torture.
If there were emergency medical personnel around, they might recognize the symptoms and force-feed him pure sugar or orange juice, but that won’t be an option. Everything will happen when we’re alone. Just the two of us.
Stern decides to follow Welbrook the morning after he arrives. He drives to the modern house in Amagansett and is pleased to see the man’s twenty-year-old shiny Mercedes parked in front. He lingers for a moment then drives on down to the end of the street and parks out of sight behind an empty construction dumpster. He turns off the engine and waits. After a moment he dials Welbrook’s home number from his cell phone. Welbrook’s voice picks up after two rings and Stern cuts off. The man is home. That’s all Stern needs to know.
The front passenger seat holds a pair of binoculars, a brown package with a cheese sandwich, an apple, two bottles of water, and a package of cigarettes. The insulin needles rest in a small cooler on the floor of the backseat. He’s prepared to wait, but after only an hour he sees Welbrook emerge wearing dark pants and a soft-looking tan jacket that looks like suede. The unique engine hum of a diesel signals Welbrook’s on the move as his car rolls gently down the block in the other direction. Stern follows him at some distance. At this time of year he can see Welbrook’s car with ease from thirty yards away.
Welbrook drives into East Hampton and parks near the Ralph Lauren store. The high season is over and Stern has no problem finding a parking spot some four spaces behind.
His eyes follow Welbrook into Ralph Lauren. From outside the front window he watches his quarry buy three shirts that are on sale at over one hundred dollars each and have them gift wrapped.
He trails the man into a few other stores, but these visits are brief. After wandering for another fifteen minutes, Welbrook heads back to where he parked his car and enters the Starbuck’s a few doors down. Stern watches him order a coffee, take a seat at a window table, and wait. Stern stands across the street in front of the movie theatre, leans against a parked car and periodically watches the image in the window sip from a cup. The wait isn’t long. A man closer to Stern’s age joins Welbrook, who stands to greet his guest.
The man has short cut dark hair and wears jeans with a sports jacket. They lean into each other as they meet and the convergence ends with a full kiss on the mouth right there in the nearly filled coffee shop. Welbrook hands the man the gift-wrapped package and they hug before sitting down.
The suddenness of it all momentarily paralyzes Stern. One of his two suspects has just openly announced he’s gay and thereby removed himself from serious consideration in less than two minutes. And all of this happens after Stern has spent months agonizing over whether the admittedly attractive-looking Welbrook has ever fucked Heidi and is still hiding her away somewhere out here in some deserted dune cottage. He smokes a cigarette and then another before he reenters his car and heads to the motel where he can regroup and plan his move with Posner.
He decides to shadow Posner with more caution. Welbrook’s unintentional revelation has increased the odds to infinite levels that Posner is the man he’s after. He intends to follow Posner to the extent necessary to determine his behavior patterns and then confront him. Yes. He will challenge Posner to tell him where Heidi is hidden. And when he finds her, that’s when he’ll kill Posner. And then it’ll just be Heidi and him. Just like before.
Posner seems less gregarious than Welbrook, as he seems to stick closer to home. Stern has chosen a spot for observation on the corner farthest from the house. His small blue rental car is barely visible from Posner’s home, but not without some effort. Stern sits as he had with Welbrook, with enough food and water for a long day of waiting. This is what much of police work must entail, he thinks. Waiting and then waiting some more.
He positions himself that first day before seven and waits until the rain comes. It starts slowly, but after a few hours the wind gusts and sheets of water convince him that only a madman would attempt to move around and so he goes back to his motel.
He sits there in the small tidy room for nearly a full day while the storm hurls its engorged fury at the hamlet, which at that time is anything but a resort. At one point the lights go out, but the motel has its own generator and power is restored without incident. There is nothing Stern can do but wait and he falls asleep fully clothed. The night does not bring the expected dream, and he wakes not only refreshed, but convinced that he now closer to the truth and to the point where he can both rescue Heidi and exact justice.
When the weather returns to normal, daylight greets him with a cloudless blue sky. Even here, a mile from the beach, the storm’s effects are obvious. Broken branches are strewn across the parking lot together with a miscellaneous assortment of rubbish, including broken lawn furniture, plastic garbage bags, and one red-soled flip- flop that lies perched atop a scattered pile of leaves. He walks to his car, brushes a small ragged branch off his windshield, and then walks to the office to see about the local roads. The news is not good. Trees and power lines are down everywhere. He is advised to stay close to the motel. In this regard he is lucky. A restaurant is open less than a hundred yards away so he won’t be forced to drive anywhere.
He is reluctant to accept the fact that he will need to wait but refines his plans to catch up with Posner the next morning. Later that day he calls Posner’s number to confirm his prey has not evacuated. It is a possibility. He knows Posner and his wife have an apartment in the city but he guesses that Posner spends much of his time out here. To be closer to Heidi, he thinks.
Posner answers on the fourth ring, just as Stern is about to give up. So he’s home. Good.
He hangs up without speaking.
He wakes early on Thursday and is so anxious to get to Posner’s house that he forgets breakfast. He doesn’t care, and is there just before eight. He parks down the block in the spot he’d chosen earlier in the week. It’s another clear day. The streets here have already been emptied of debris and almost all of the houses are vacant. He rolls the window down and hears a still angry surf behind him as it says a final goodbye to the storm. Otherwise
