“Why?”
“Because you’re seeing Ashley. And I live with her.”
“We’re not exclusive, at least that’s what she tells me.”
“No, but I live with her, and if she finds out it’s going to make life around here very awkward.”
“I think I like you more than I like her.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“Trust me, things that matter to you don’t matter to anybody else. You haven’t learned that yet.”
He convinced Hannah to let him stay over. This was after he’d made them both a cheese omelet they ate at the Formica breakfast table in the kitchen. In Hannah’s bed—a mattress on the floor, actually—they’d fooled around a little till Hannah told him the Ambien was kicking in and she had to sleep. She curled away from him, and Ethan, his hand still pressed up against her hip, thought about his day, wondering if Hannah was on to something when she told him how the things that mattered to him didn’t matter to anybody else. It would explain a lot about his life.
Before finally falling asleep himself, he thought again about the list he’d gotten in the mail. He recited seven of the names to himself—he had a near photographic memory—but couldn’t remember the final one, probably because he’d barely looked at it. Then he recited the lyrics to the new song, decided they sucked donkey dick, and fell asleep.
4
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1:44 P.M.
The name that Ethan Dart couldn’t remember belonged to Jessica Winslow. On Thursday she received the list of names in an envelope that was addressed to Special Agent Winslow at the Albany field office of the FBI. There was a single Forever stamp in the right-hand corner of the envelope, and the postmark indicated the letter had come from New York City, mailed two days previously.
It was unusual for her to receive any mail at the office, particularly something so cryptic. Just a list of names. She instinctively held the letter at the very edges, then dropped it gingerly onto her desk. She called her immediate supervisor, Aaron Berlin, asking him to swing by her office.
“Do you know the other names?” he asked, five minutes later, peering at the letter from over Jessica’s shoulder.
Even though she’d read the names on the list several times, she reread them silently to herself one more time.
“Arthur Kruse is the only name that’s familiar to me, but only because my dad used to mention a friend of his named Art Kruse, or maybe I’m imagining it. I always assumed the last name was spelled Cruise, like Tom Cruise, though.”
“You never met him?”
“No, my dad just talked about him. Whenever anyone mentioned a lake house, or living on a lake, my dad would always say something like, ‘Back in college I spent a summer at Art Kruse’s lake house.’ We used to make fun of him for it, and that’s why I think I remember.”
“It’s an unusual name.”
“What, Kruse? Not really. Not if you’re German. I’ve already looked it up on Google and I found some Arthur Kruses but they were all German. Germans from Germany.”
“Hmm.”
Jessica swiveled in her chair to look up at Aaron. She’d never really seen him from that angle and noticed how much dark hair he had in his nostrils.
“What do you think?” she said.
He shrugged. “Get it analyzed if you want. Could be nothing. Could be some computer glitch somewhere spewing out junk mail.”
“Could be.”
After Aaron left, she put the envelope and the letter in separate plastic bags, then moved them to her out-box. She went back to studying the file on the William Brundy murder trial she’d been called to testify at the following week. She kept waiting to hear from the prosecution that it was going to be settled before heading to trial, but now it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. William Brundy was a patrol officer in Stark, New York, who had killed his ex-wife by staging a break-in at her split-level ranch. Blood evidence and crime scene photographs had been forwarded to their office and Jessica had been given the job of lead investigator. She didn’t particularly mind testifying at trials, but Brundy’s defense attorney was a dickwad named Elliot Skenderian who always somehow managed to get under Jessica’s skin. If she owned a dartboard, she’d put a picture of Skenderian’s face on it.
Before leaving the office at just after five o’clock, she took another look at the mysterious list of names and wrote them down using the Notes app on her smartphone. Maybe that night she’d catch up on The Good Wife while doing some more googling. If there was a connection between her and these people, she’d find it. The internet liked to give up its secrets.