She’d been inordinately pretty, his daughter, and Jack had imagined the way that men dining at Salt Bistro would’ve noticed her. And he worried about her leaving the restaurant late at night and walking to her car. But the things we worry about are not the things that eventually happen. The drunk driver who hit her crossed four lanes of traffic, missing other cars, then ramming Grace’s GTI so hard that it went through a guardrail, flipped over twice, and landed upside down in the parking lot of a strip mall. She had been less than a minute from her own apartment complex.
Watching Alison at the steak house Jack had wondered if, like his own daughter, she loved working there. Somehow, he doubted it. She was nearing forty, he knew, but still sexy enough to get away with the cropped top and tight leather skirt. She caught him looking at her and smiled brightly at him. Maybe he should get to know her more intimately, if that was possible. I’m thinking of killing this woman, he’d thought, so getting to know her first would be the right thing to do, both logistically, but also maybe morally. He realized, of course, that he had no intentions of getting to know his other victims, but they weren’t right in front of him, in smiling distance.
He’d returned several times to the steak house, eventually asking her to join him for a glass of wine. And then he’d suggested the idea of her becoming his mistress. It had been easy, and except for her prettiness, and her job at a restaurant, there had been nothing else that reminded Jack of his daughter. She was just a random human being alone in the world like we all are. Not particularly good, and not particularly bad. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he did want to kill her. She was a small piece of machinery in an incredibly complex system, and he needed to make an adjustment. He was restoring karma to the universe.
He carefully aimed the barrel of the rifle at the back of her skull and pulled the trigger.
ONE
1
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 3:45 P.M.
Instead of flying from St. George’s Airport in Bermuda to Portland, Maine, as he’d planned, Jack Radebaugh had changed his ticket and was now descending in a half-filled Airbus A320 toward Bradley International Airport. He knew it was a potentially disastrous mistake, especially when he was so near to the end, but suddenly he didn’t care. He had decided to return to West Hartford for one hour, two at the most, then head to Maine. At least this way, he’d be able to take his own car.
Jack’s mind these days was like a slideshow he had no control over. Images and thoughts and fixations ran rampant, but he’d learned to live with it, to control it for the most part. It also helped knowing that soon he’d be snuffing out those thoughts like blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.
A taxi took him from the airport to West Hartford. He moved rapidly through his house, changing his clothes so that he was wearing something more appropriate for the cold, blustery weather. He pulled a few items from his travel bag that had come with him from Bermuda, and went downstairs to the basement, where he added a few more items that would help him deal with his next-door neighbor. That was the real reason he had come back to West Hartford. Since having dinner over a month ago with his lovely neighbor Margaret and her smug, son-of-a-bitch husband Eric, he’d kept thinking about them, kept fantasizing about what he wanted to do to Eric. Maybe it was simply that Margaret, with her long hair and slender neck, and her timid wit, reminded him of his sister. Or maybe it was that she was simply a good person, and Eric wasn’t. And maybe since he was now so close to completing his life’s work, he thought that he might as well do one last favor for Margaret. Did he even know her last name? He couldn’t remember ever hearing it. He did, however, remember talking with her about her part-time job at the library. “I work evenings Monday through Wednesday,” she’d said, “and then all day on Saturday. Just about the worst schedule.” Maybe he’d remembered her schedule because he’d been planning this all along.
After locking up his childhood home for the final time, Jack crossed to his neighbor’s house, and rang the doorbell. What would he do if Margaret answered the door? He supposed that he would simply let her know that he was going away for a while and he’d come to say goodbye. And then he’d be off. It would look strange, but what did that matter in the big scheme of things?
As it was, Eric answered the door. He was dressed in loose shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. His skin glistened with sweat, like he’d been working out, but he was also holding a can of beer.
“Sorry to bother you, Eric, but is Margaret home?”