Ninety-Four

NINETY-FOUR

I SLEEP LATER THAN normal. Jimmy is gone when I finally do get out of bed. He's left a note for me on the kitchen table saying that no bodies have been found off Montauk, but they're still searching. It'll be the Coast Guard calling off the search, when and if it comes to that.

Just not yet.

In the note he also tells me that one of the boats did pick up a blue Rangers cap bobbing in the waves near some of the wreckage from the Hinckley.

By midday, and after a solid morning of trial prep, no one has pointed a gun at me, or tried to abduct me, or threatened to blow me up. But when I make the short drive over to Rob Jacobson's rental house, I do have my Glock in my new leather crossbody bag, from Shinola, a gift from me to me a few days before.

For a change, Rob Jacobson is alone when I get there, complaining yet again about how bored he is. The two of us have coffee at his kitchen table.

"Brigid's worried about you," I tell him. "She told me the other night on the phone, you were talking about suicide."

His reaction is to laugh, much too heartily.

"Why in the world would I do something like that?"

"Something to do with all the terrible things you've done in your life, she said."

"Good old Brigid. She always did take everything I said to heart."

I lean forward, one elbow on the table, chin in my hand, frowning at him. "You're telling me you made it up about having suicidal thoughts?"

"I was feeling sorry for myself, and I guess I wanted her to feel sorry for me, too."

"Don't take this the wrong way, Rob, but you're starting to give narcissism a bad name."

"And yet, here we still are. Because you and your sister both care about me. Is that why you came over today, to check up on me?"

"It's not," I say, and then proceed to tell him about what happened in the Springs last night.

"You think my son might have had something to do with it?"

"I'll ask him next time I run into him. Any thoughts where he might be, by the way?"

"You're asking me?"

"The witness is instructed to answer the question."

It shouldn't be that difficult a question. He either does know where his son is, or he doesn't. One or the other. But for some reason he takes too long to answer, as if reviewing his options, like somebody reading a dinner menu and trying to decide what to order.

"He actually called me about a week ago to say good-bye, now that I think of it."

"Where's he going?"

"Don't know. Don't care."

"Would your wife know?"

"After he may have tried to drown her in the pool where she taught him to swim? Riiight. He probably asked her to book a flight for him."

It's still like talking to the head of a sitcom family from hell.

"Why would he and McKenzie be friends? Have you given any thought to that?"

"You're full of questions today, aren't you?"

"Humor me. I had a rough night."

"Maybe because they both want me dead," Rob Jacobson says. "Or at the very least want me locked up for the rest of my life so they say they finally beat me at something."

"Any thoughts on why McKenzie and Eric would see me as a threat?"

"Speaking as a narcissist?" he says. "That sounds like more of a Jane thing."

"On that note," I say, and get up and out of my chair.

"Nice of you to stop by. Even when you're giving me shit, it helps break up the monotony."

"Glad to help," I say. "Now I've got one last question before I go: Who really killed your father and that girl that day?"

I don't know what he was expecting from me in the moment. But clearly not that. He rapidly blinks his eyes as if trying to clear them of smoke, something he often does when he's about to lie to my face.

"What brought that up?"

"Humor me again."

"First tell me why we're talking about that again?"

"Because I have the growing sense that everything that's still happening around you and around me started happening that day."

"Problem is, my story has never changed. My father killed her, then killed himself. Took the coward's way out."

"What I keep wondering is if that's the real story."

He stops blinking and his eyes are locked on mine. "I thought I already explained that to you. It's the story that's kept me alive all these years."

"Maybe you're finally ready to elaborate?"

He smiles and slowly shakes his head from side to side, so slowly it's like he's underwater.

"Not if I want to stay alive," he says.

Then he tells me to go ahead and show myself out.