Chapter 18

The first convention that Ethan went to—the first convention when the purpose was to tail Alan Peralta—was some sort of math conference in downtown Atlanta. On his first day there, he checked into a nearby hotel as Brad Anderson, and, wearing a purple turtleneck tucked into some very loose jeans, Ethan visited Peralta's booth. He'd only do it once, he told himself, get close enough to Peralta and maybe even speak to him. The booth was crowded, Peralta making money hand over fist, apparently, and Ethan lingered awhile, long enough to notice that Peralta, whether intentionally or not, focused on his female customers much more than his male ones. Nothing unusual in that, of course, but Ethan thought there was something a little pervy about the way Peralta's eyes raked over the poorly dressed female teachers. Peralta appeared to be on the prowl.

It turned out he was right about Peralta's appetites, although Ethan hadn't been sure about that until midway through the conference. Ethan shadowed Peralta from afar throughout the three days in Atlanta. It was easy to do, the convention center teeming with people who didn't know one another. The trade hall closed each night at six, and Ethan would take up position on one of the faux-leather couches in the lobby near the entrance. He pretended to read the conference program and kept an eye out for Peralta. The first night he didn't spot him, but on the next Peralta got a table by himself in the lobby bar and Ethan watched as Peralta approached a lone woman carrying a conference tote bag and drinking a margarita by herself. They spoke for about twenty minutes, then the women was swallowed up by a group of her colleagues sweeping through. Peralta faded back.

On the last night of the conference, Peralta, having changed from his cheap suit into jeans and a winter jacket, slipped through the lobby and exited into the mild February evening. Ethan followed him to a strip club that was about a twenty-five-minute walk away, hesitated for a while outside, but then decided to go in and see what was happening. It was quiet inside, and even though Ethan was using his fake ID and was in one of his semi-disguises as a fashionably challenged middle school math teacher, he still hated the scrutiny one received in strip clubs. Not from the strippers, of course, who just looked out from their poles and saw blurry men in either expensive suits or cheap ones, but from the bouncers who were paid to get a good look at the lone men who entered the establishment.

Ethan went straight to the empty bar, sat at one of the swivel stools, and ordered a fifteen-dollar Heineken, then turned and watched the action. The stage was an elevated platform that jutted out into the center of the bar; there were seats around it, and he expected to see Peralta in one of them, but he wasn't there. There were just two other lone men and then a couple, the female half the most vocal audience member, yelling encouragement and waving dollar bills at the stripper, currently a top-heavy woman with very little natural rhythm. It took a minute before Ethan spotted Peralta at a table against the back wall, talking with one of the roving strippers, probably negotiating a closed-door lap dance. But the stripper took off, and Peralta leaned back into the shadows, sipping what looked like a Coke.

"Hey, handsome." It was the same stripper who had just been propositioning Peralta. She was young and thin, with dyed-red hair and caked-on makeup that made it hard to imagine what she really looked like.

"You probably call all the guys handsome," Ethan said.

"I do, but you actually are. Handsome."

"Aw, thanks. What's your name?"

"Debbi."

"Debbi, I'm just here to drink a beer and watch the dancers, for now. When are you up?"

"I just danced, two girls ago, so I won't be back up there for at least an hour. But I could give you a private dance."

Ethan considered asking her what she knew about the guy she was just talking to, but it wasn't worth the risk. Besides, what would she possibly know except that he'd passed on a lap dance, just as he was about to. "No, thanks, Debbi," he said.

"Well, if you change your mind..." She strutted off, looking around the half-empty bar before making her way backstage.

Ethan began to consider options. It did occur to him that this might be the end of the sexual adventures for Alan Peralta. He'd struck out at convincing a lonely math teacher to come hang with him, so for his last night of freedom from Martha Ratliff he was enjoying the meager delights of the Rockstar Strip Club. If that was the case, then Ethan could wait for Peralta to get his eyeful and maybe a private dance or two, and leave, and then later on he could swan back at closing time and hope one of the strippers decided to walk home alone. Still, he hated that plan, mostly because he was a visible customer at the Rockstar right now, and on a slow night, to boot. He finished the Heineken and left.

Directly across the street from the strip club were two bars side by side. One of them was windowless and promised cheap pitchers and pool tables. The other bar was more of a dining establishment. It was called Mac's Chicken and boasted a large window with seats that faced the street. Ethan went inside, was told he could sit anywhere, and grabbed one of the window seats. He could see the entrance to the Rockstar. A waitress showed up, far prettier than any of the strippers he'd seen across the street, and he ordered a local IPA plus a grilled chicken salad. Just as he was finishing up his meal, he spotted Peralta leaving the strip club, standing for a moment on the sidewalk as if deciding which way to go. It gave Ethan time to flag his waitress and quickly pay his bill in cash. When he emerged out onto the street, he still had an eye on Peralta, although he'd headed farther uptown and was turning at a corner. Ethan followed him.

After about a twenty-minute walk, it was clear to Ethan that Peralta was looking for something he hadn't been able to find at the Rockstar. The neighborhoods were getting seedier—more abandoned storefronts, more pawnshops and cash-checking establishments, more busted streetlamps—and Peralta was slowing his pace, either out of fear or because he was searching for someplace specific. They were on the outskirts of a park when a small woman approached from the other direction and began to talk with Peralta. Ethan was near a bus stop and leaned against the opening of the shelter there, keeping an eye on both of them. After about thirty seconds of conversation they went together into the dark park through a stone arch. Ethan considered following them, but he knew exactly what they were doing, so he decided to stay put. He'd actually gotten a decent look at the street prostitute. She wore a tiny skirt and high heels, no surprise there, but was wearing a winter puffer jacket on top, probably just because she was cold from being on the street all night. And she was small, almost child-sized, but with a lot of dark hair that was either some kind of wig or had been sprayed into a helmet. He'd even gotten a look at her face, enough to see that she had glittery makeup on her cheeks.

He waited.

After ten minutes, maybe less, Peralta emerged from the park the way he had entered it. He was walking much faster than he had before, heading back south toward downtown, and keeping his head down. Ethan moved farther back into the bus-stop shelter as Peralta passed by, although it didn't matter. Peralta didn't glance his way.

Ethan stayed where he was, and after about five minutes the prostitute emerged from the park and back out onto the street. A car pulled up and she went and talked to the driver, but then the car pulled away again, and she was alone. This was too easy, Ethan thought, and made his way to her.

"You're in a good mood," Rebecca said.

"Am I? I thought I was always in a good mood." Ethan was a little annoyed by the comment. He'd always hated when people pointed out his moods to him.

Rebecca, wearing a dark gray tunic over jeans, and, with her hair up, was sawing through her chicken piccata, taking little bites. Chicken piccata was the only dish she cooked, and she made it a lot.

"You are always in a good mood, but tonight you're in a better mood. You had a good trip?"

Ethan had returned from Atlanta in the late afternoon, having driven through half the night and most of the day. He called Rebecca when he was about an hour away, just before switching cars at his secret house an hour away in Tohickon, and told her he was coming home. He didn't think Rebecca had affairs while he was gone, but if she did, then the last thing he wanted was to actually catch her at it. Their marriage was good as it was, and he had no reason to add any messiness to their trouble-free lives.

"My trip was fine. The problem is that every owner of every junk store can now just go online and look up what everything in their store is worth. It's a lot harder to find gems."

"Still fun to look, though, right?"

"Always. And I did buy some paintings—they look like Chagall rip-offs done back in the 1970s—and if I change the frames and call it folk art, some Philadelphian will definitely overpay for them."

"See what I mean?" Rebecca said, leaning above her plate to take a minuscule bite. "Good mood."

Ethan squeezed his left hand into a fist under the table but nodded at his wife.

After dinner that night, Ethan went up to his office on the top floor of the brownstone. He got the lighting just right and put on his ambient mix. First he unwrapped the three small paintings that he'd actually bought at an antique store just outside of Greensboro on his drive back to Philadelphia. They were crude approximations of Chagall's style, probably done by an amateur painter half a century ago, but as he'd said to Rebecca, sometimes changing the frame was all it took to persuade a nouveau riche local to overpay for them. He stared at the three small canvases for a while—they were growing on him. Floating horses and lurid suns.

After rewrapping the paintings, he poured himself a scotch and sat at his computer, immediately finding the article he'd been looking for, the one that let an uninterested public know that a prostitute named Kelli Baldwin had been found dead in Piedmont Park, bludgeoned to death. The article listed her age as twenty-nine. He got up and went to his built-in bookcase, pulled out his hardcover of The Stories of John Cheever, modified into a hiding place, and opened it up. Inside was the handwritten list of the people he'd killed, the list he'd begun so many years ago. He added Kelli Baldwin's name to it, including the date and place of her murder, then cast his eye over the names, noticing how his handwriting had changed over the years. Sliding the book back into its place on the shelf, he wondered if he was being too careless. There was a good safe in his office, protected by a combination that only he knew, but safes could be cracked. Besides, the list was his secret, but it wasn't going to be his secret forever. One day the whole world would know just how many people he'd killed in his lifetime. Either he'd eventually get caught—not the worst thing in the world if he was very old when it happened—or he would die and the list would be found.

Sometimes he worried that his hidey-hole, his first-edition Cheever collection, was actually too good a hiding place. What if he died and no one ever bothered to look at his books? He'd thought of this before and told himself that he'd eventually make a copy of his list and add it to his safe as well. It was very important that one day he be given credit for the sheer audacity of what he'd done. Legacies were all people left behind.

He poured a little more scotch into his glass. Yes, he was in a good mood that night. Not only had things gone well in Atlanta, but now he had a project for the discernible future. Why had he never thought of doing this before—shadow someone who travels for a living and kill people they come into contact with? It met his criteria perfectly—no contact with the victims, except for killing them, and making it look like someone else was responsible. In this case, making it look like the work of a serial killer. Of course, it helped that Peralta was halfway to being a serial killer anyway. It was very clear that he hunted women on his trips, just to fuck, of course, but he was still hunting. Ethan wondered if he ever succeeded at scoring with one of the other conventioneers on his trips, or if he always resorted to prostitutes. It would be easier if he always went to prostitutes—easier for Ethan, anyway—but it would be far less interesting. He hoped that occasionally Peralta would strike up a classic extramarital romance and that Ethan would get to kill someone who mattered a little more to the world.

Against his better judgment, Ethan allowed himself to project a little, to revel in the future instead of the past. He could already imagine it. How many women would he get to kill before Peralta got busted for the crimes he hadn't committed? For all Ethan knew, the game might be over. Maybe Peralta's DNA was on file for some reason (unlikely but possible) and he'd be picked up for the prostitute's death in Atlanta. Ethan doubted it, though. He thought he'd be able to get away with this game for a while until some police detective figured out that Peralta had just happened to be at the scene of a string of nationwide crimes. There'd probably be a Dateline episode about it.

He told himself to calm down, and not fantasize about the future. That was what normal people did. Small people. Still, if it actually worked out, nothing made him happier than thinking about mousy Martha Ratliff, the horror she would feel when it was revealed that her husband was actually a prolific serial killer. That was who he was doing this for, really. For Martha, the love-cursed. For Martha, the one who got away.