The Girl Next Door (35 page)

“Ow,” I said.

“It’s going to hurt a lot worse when I blow off both your kneecaps. And that’s only a start. You see that trailer we just passed?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s open. And it’s abandoned. I checked it out earlier today. After I do your kneecaps, I’ll take you in there, and we can have a real good time all night long. I left some rope in there to tie you up with, and I have a hunting knife strapped to my calf. I’ll carve off a piece of you at a time until there’s nothing left. Or we can get it over with quickly. Now what’s it going to be?”

I thought about dying a messy death in that railroad trailer and about all the blood I’d leave behind. McNabb didn’t have any cleaning products with him. If someone ever did enter that trailer, they’d be sure to notice that it looked like a calf had been slaughtered there, and maybe let the police know about it. Then again, it still fell into the category of Things That Don’t Matter When You’re Already Dead.

“No one will believe a guy like me committed suicide,” I said. “I’m too happy-go-lucky.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t know about that. You just lost your job. Your girlfriend dumped you. You’re probably going to lose your house. That sounds to me like a guy who’s pretty down on his luck.”

“The detective investigating Nancy’s death is Owen Smiley, a friend of mine. We play on the softball team. He knows me too well. He’ll never believe I killed myself.”

“Oh, he’ll believe it.”

“How you figure?”

“Because,” McNabb said, pressing the barrel of the gun against my head. “You’re going to write a suicide note. In your note, you’re going to say you’ve lost everything that matters to you and decided to end it. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You’re going to admit to killing Nancy Marino.”

*   *   *

The condensation on the inside of the car had grown thick enough that small beads of sweat were rolling down the windows. My palms were still pressed against the roof of the car, and my shoulders were starting to ache from keeping them there.

“That’s absurd,” I said. “Why would I kill Nancy Marino? I didn’t even know her.”

“Yes you did. You live in the same town. You met her at the diner and fell in love with her. You finally summoned the nerve to ask her out. She rejected your advances. You’re a love-struck loser. If you couldn’t have her, no one could have her. Why else would you have written an obituary about her? It was your guilt coming out.”

“That’s … that’s, like, the worst episode of
Law & Order
I’ve ever heard. That doesn’t even sound like me. Besides, everyone knows I drive this crappy old car—not a pimp-daddy Cadillac Escalade. How would I have gotten my hands on a ride like that?”

McNabb eased the gun back so it was no longer directly touching my scalp, but kept it aimed at the same spot.

“Maybe you rented it, maybe you stole it,” he said. “I’m not trying to get you found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This thing isn’t ever going to trial—you’ll be dead. I’m just throwing people off the trail. Don’t you get it yet? People are easily distracted. You give them a story that makes sense, that fills in just enough blanks, and they accept it and move on. Look at how well it worked on you. I told you one lie about Jackman that seemed plausible, and you just ran with it.”

“Not everyone is as dumb as me.”

“No, most people are much, much dumber. And a whole lot less persistent. You just kept coming at me, kept digging. So what did I do? I distracted you some more, with that e-mail from Jackman.”

“Was that real, by the way?”

“Sure was,” McNabb said, and turned his gun toward my right knee. “But, of course, you were nice enough to let your overly active imagination run wild with it. Then somehow you thought that diner owner was involved. That was great. I didn’t even have to do anything to get you spinning on that one. That was fun.”

He chuckled, then abruptly stopped.

“Now, you’ve got five seconds to decide. You want to die quick or slow? Suicide or torture?”

Some choice. Then again, I wasn’t exactly enamored of dying in that little trailer in the middle of a swamp, alone and in agony, tormented by this horrid man. He’d toss my mutilated carcass into that retention pond where my softer parts would get gnawed on by various critters. I’m not saying I needed to leave behind a corpse worthy of the V. I. Lenin treatment. But if this was the end, it would at least be nice for my parents to have something to bury.

“Okay. Suicide it is,” I said. “How are we doing this—this note thing? You got a pen and paper for me?”

“Nope, you’re going to draft an e-mail on that shiny new iPhone of yours. I want to be able to edit this thing, and I can’t do that if you handwrite.”

“Okay, e-mail. Mind if I take my arms down now?”

“Go ahead.”

My shoulders felt instant relief. Sort of like when you stop hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.

“I’m going to grab my iPhone now,” I said.

“No, let me give it to you.”

McNabb kept the gun trained on me and bent slightly to grab the phone, taking his eyes off me for a split second. Maybe this is the point where a real tough guy—like an ex-military cop or something—would exploit the one small moment of his opponent’s weakness to execute some kind of quick, devastating backhanded karate chop that severs the spinal cord between C-4 and C-5. Alas, that’s not something they teach newspaper reporters.

He hastily tossed the phone in my lap, then, before I knew what was happening, he hit the unlock button, exited the car, and reentered in the backseat. Again, the tough guy would have been alert enough to turn the situation around. But by the time I even knew what he was doing, he was behind me, with the gun still firm in his right hand.

“Hit the lock button,” he said, and I did as I was told. “Now, start writing. I’m watching everything you do, so don’t try anything.”

“Okay. To whom am I addressing this farewell missive?”

“Send it to that Lunky fellow, if you’re really that fond of him. And you better make it good. You’re a writer. I expect to see some real inner torment being expressed.”

I inhaled and let the breath out slowly. Compose Your Own Suicide Note. It had to be the worst creative writing assignment ever, even worse than Compose Your Own Obit.

I turned on that tiny little iPhone keyboard, opened up a new message, addressed it to Lunky, and began typing.

Dear Kevin,

It is most unfortunate that I find myself writing these words. As you know, being a reporter was everything to me. And now that I no longer have that, I find life isn’t worth living anymore.

Please tell Tina not to blame herself for what happened. She begged me to marry her many times, and perhaps if I had said yes, none of this would have happened.

But the fact is, I couldn’t marry Tina when I was in love with someone else. Her name was Nancy Marino. I never let on to anyone about my true love, but my heart burned for her every day. She wouldn’t have me, and I honored that choice. But

I put down the iPhone for a second and said, “Wait, what was that line you wanted me to use?”

“Something like, ‘If I can’t have you, no one could,’” McNabb said.

“Right, right, of course,” I said, then continued:

if I couldn’t have her, no one could. I can’t wait to join her where the angels soar.

And now it is time for me to go to a place that is deeply meaningful to me. Where Philip Roth began is where I will end. The man who gave the world
Sabbath’s Theater
will help set the stage for my final act.

Sincerely,

Carter

P.S. Please find my cat Deadline a good home, perhaps a farm in the country where he can continue to lead his active lifestyle.

I reviewed my effort, deciding that fertilizing day at the organic farm couldn’t have stunk worse. But, of course, that was the point. If nothing else, I hoped the fans of my writing would recognize I would never allow my last words to be so painfully trite. But even if they didn’t pick up on all the clichés, the purely comical line about Tina, or the nonsense about Nancy, the part about Deadline would throw it over the top. Deadline’s slothfulness is that legendary.

“You should be a little more direct about the Nancy thing,” said McNabb, who had been hovering over my shoulder the whole time. “You need to come out and say ‘I killed her.’”

“Nah, come on, think about it: the love-struck loser on
Law & Order
is never that straightforward,” I said. “If I really was that loony, I’d probably be too nuts to even realize what I had done.”

He grunted and continued to study my note, breathing hot exhaust in my ear—which wasn’t quite as painful as torture but had to be at least as annoying.

“What’s this Philip Roth thing?” he asked.

“It’s where you’re going to kill me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re going to kill me—excuse me, I’m going to commit suicide—outside the house where Philip Roth grew up. That’s why I wrote ‘Where Philip Roth started is where I will end.’ It’s a bit obscure, I know. But it’ll make sense when that’s where my body is found. Everyone who knows me knows I’m the biggest Roth fan there is. You want this to be believable? There’s got to be a Roth connection.”

“Roth, huh?” he said, and I could tell he was rolling it around in his head.

“You can scroll through my sent messages if you don’t believe me. Earlier today I was trying to convince Lunky that
Portnoy’s Complaint
was Roth’s greatest work.”

“That’s the one where that sick bastard whacks off with coleslaw or something like that?”

“Raw liver,” I corrected him, as if I were the most learned of Roth scholars.

McNabb breathed some more, mulling over whether to permit me my literary license. I took advantage of his indecision.

“You said you wanted this to be convincing, right? And you said you wanted it to distract people. Think about it: a frustrated writer commits suicide outside a famous writer’s childhood home? That’s nice, easy symbolism.”

“Okay,” he said. “Philip Roth’s house it is.”

I quickly hit the Send button on the message.

“Hey, I didn’t say to do that!” he said sharply.

“Sorry, I thought you—”

“You want to go in that trailer?” he shouted, grinding the gun into my head hard enough that it bent my neck forward and plowed my chin into my chest. “Is that what you want?”

“Just take it easy. Lunky goes home at six. Most of our reporters work ten to six. You know that. He won’t get this until tomorrow morning.”

“Never mind. Just give me the damn phone,” he barked.

I passed it back to McNabb, who promptly rolled down the window and tossed it outside. Even through my hazed windshield, I could see it sail over the weeds in the direction of the retention pond, where it would spend eternity stewing in toxicity.

“You won’t be needing that,” he said before I could offer comment. “Now let’s get moving.”

*   *   *

I reached forward with my arm and swiped a clean spot in my thoroughly fogged-over windshield, then started blasting the defroster so it would stay clear.

“How am I getting out of here?” I asked. “I’m not sure backing up is the best idea.”

“Drive down to the power transfer station and turn around,” he said. “Now, here are the rules: two hands on the steering wheel at all times, and keep them nice and high—ten o’clock and two o’clock. Nothing too crazy with the gas or the brake. If I don’t like what I see, I’m putting a slug in your kneecap, and I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later. So let’s not get cute.”

I eased the car back into Drive and began splashing my way forward. The road was waterlogged, and even at twenty miles per hour, we were tossing up spray like a powerboat under full throttle. The rain had slackened—it was now just a gentle drizzle—but the sky was still bruise blue, like it hadn’t yet released all its fury.

“You’re going to die tonight, Carter Ross,” he added. “You stick to the script, you die easy. You make it hard on me, I make it hard on you. That’s how it works.”

I didn’t know how this lunatic thought he’d get away with this. Except, of course, he had nearly pulled it off with Nancy.

“You know where you’re going?” he asked, when we made it back to the paved roadway.

“I told you, I’m a huge Roth fan,” I said.

Keeping my hands at the mandated position, observing all posted speed limits, and generally acting like I was taking my driver’s test all over again, I pointed us toward the turnpike—which was, as I suspected, trudging along well below the speed limit. The rain had all but stopped, though another line of storms was bearing down on us, putting on an impressive fireworks show in the distance.

Rolling along just above stall speed gave me time to start placing recent events in their proper order and to make sense of everything for the first time. As a newspaper reporter, I am trained to think in narratives. And narratives are best understood when you start at the beginning. So how had this started? Mrs. Alfaro said a man—who I now knew to be McNabb—began stalking Nancy on her paper route the Tuesday before she was killed. What event precipitated that? Peter Davidson of NLRB stopping by the diner on Monday.

But, of course, the diner probably hadn’t been his only stop that day. Davidson said he tried to investigate all aspects of an employee’s history. So the diner would have been a side stop, but if the complaint was primarily lodged against McNabb and the IFIW, that would have been Davidson’s main destination.

“It was the NLRB, wasn’t it?” I said. “The NLRB visited the State Street Grill on Monday. They came to you the same day, didn’t they?”

“Are we on the record, Mr.
Eagle-Examiner
reporter?” he taunted.

“Hell yes. The least thing you can do is grant a reporter his last interview.”

“Okay, I guess there’s no harm now,” he said. “On the record: yeah, that pencil-pushing prick from the NLRB came to my office on Monday, asking me questions about allegations made by Nancy Marino.”

“And what happened?”

“I stalled him. It was all crap anyway.”

We were picking up speed as traffic diverged into the enormous mixing bowl of roadways at Newark Liberty International Airport. I followed the signs for Route 78.