Seventy-Seven

SEVENTY-SEVEN

DR. BEN DOES NOT stay the night. His choice, not mine, even though we've resumed sleeping together, sometimes at his place, sometimes at mine.

My choice on that, not his.

"You only live once," Dr. Ben says.

"My line, remember," I tell him.

He has an early flight to Los Angeles to visit his only sister and attend his nephew's graduation from the film school at USC. Even I know the School of Cinematic Arts is a very big deal.

If you live this far out on Long Island, an early flight can mean leaving for the airport as early as four in the morning.

When I kiss him good-bye, I thank him.

"For dinner?"

"For getting out of town for a few days so I don't have to worry about you."

"We've gone over this. You need to stop worrying about me."

"Right," I say. "It must be me who has the hole in her head."

When he's gone, I try to sleep and can't. So I grab the easel that I keep in the guest bedroom, one I set up when I'm working on a trial because sometimes I need to sketch out timelines and facts and even strategies on a great big grease board instead of on my trusty legal pad.

Like bigger print might produce bigger ideas.

The plan, anyway.

I set it up in the living room. Rip the dog, once he realizes all this activity doesn't mean treats for him, flops down next to the easel.

Of course he goes right to sleep.

I start writing down names, Rob Jacobson's at the top of the pyramid, up there next to Anthony Licata and Joe Champi. Then Rob's father and Carey Watson, the dead girl. Then I run through the entire repertory company, including the two murdered families, all the way down to Dave Wolk, the dead surfer dude. Elise Parsons and her daughter.

Once I have them all on the board, I start drawing connecting lines. Eventually I feel as if I'm looking at a homemade map of the New York City subway system.

Most of the lines run all the way up to Rob Jacobson. A lot of them run through his school friend—frenemy?—the guy he calls Eddie McKenzie.

I stare at the board a long time, until it almost starts to make me dizzy with possibilities, before grabbing a rag and wiping it clean.

I go into the kitchen and come back with a small glass of Jameson and replay Anthony Licata's call to Jimmy and me inside my head, and wonder what's changed, and why we are suddenly a bigger threat to him than ever. He wants me to stay out of his business the way Eric Jacobson wants me to stay out of his.

"If Licata wanted us dead," Jimmy said before I left the bar, "we'd be dead already."

"So why aren't we?"

"I'll be sure to ask him next time we chat."

I drain the whiskey and rinse the glass and take Rip out for one last walk, as disinterested as he seems in doing that. When we're back inside the house, I set Jimmy's fancy new alarm, lock the front and back doors, wash up for a second time, brush for a second time, leaving the kitchen light on, the way I always do. Rip takes his usual spot at the end of the bed. Force of habit makes me check the top drawer of the bedside table to make sure that the Glock is there, even knowing that it is.

I'm now ready for sleep, I tell myself.

It's after two in the morning when I hear the ping of the motion detector hooked up to the front of the house. Jimmy has rigged another one for the backyard. It makes a different sound.

They're like early-warning systems before a full-blown alarm is triggered, in case the motion is only a night creature scurrying across the property.

Rip has slept through the ping.

I have not.

I am instantly wide awake, my own inner alarms sounding, breath shallow. I take the Glock out of the drawer, slip out of bed, pad barefoot through the quiet house.

I don't pull back the drapes to look outside, not wanting new light to spill into the yard in case somebody wants to surprise me.

Or worse.

I want to surprise whoever it is.

Maybe Eric Jacobson is enough of a dumb-ass to come looking for a return engagement.

I hear movement then on the porch. Some kind of thud, like something being dropped.

No movement to the doorknob.

I don't shout out a warning. I just hold the Glock in my gun hand. I'm exactly like Jimmy in this moment, tired of letting the game come to me.

I know Jimmy has a key.

So does Ben.

Both know better than to show up unannounced in the middle of the night.

I hear a car engine from out front then, and the screech of tires as I reach for the doorknob and open the door with my left hand.

As I step onto the porch, I nearly trip over the body lying across my doormat.

I look down and see it's my ex-husband, Martin.