The Girl Next Door cr-3

by Brad Parks

  “Can I turn on the windshield wipers?”

  “Do it slow.”

  I eased my hand to the side of the steering wheel and turned the wipers on the highest setting.

  In the meantime, all the mistakes I had made were raining down on my head as well. Some of them were now so obvious. Example: McNabb told me Jackman made those threats against Nancy on Thursday night. But Mrs. Alfaro said the killer started stalking Nancy on Tuesday morning, two days earlier.

  “There never was any meeting at a bar with you and Jackman on Thursday night, was there?” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the rain. “There were never any threats.”

  “Nope,” he admitted, without changing the position of anything but his mouth.

  Of course there weren’t. That’s why McNabb would never tell me the name of the bar, why he was always so guarded about the whole thing-there was no bar. Jackman’s appointment book just said “IFIW.” It had been a negotiating session, nothing more.

  “I can’t believe I thought it was Jackman,” I said, mostly to myself. “Maybe I just wanted it to be Jackman.”

  That had been another massive mistake, of course. I had allowed my bias against Jackman to cloud my judgment, never stopping to think that merely being a jackass and a foppish, non-newspaper-reading hatchet man didn’t necessarily mean he was a murderer-even if he had once used a seven-iron in a way not endorsed by the United States Golf Association. Tina tried to tell me that. I hadn’t listened.

  Then there was Gus Papadopolous. I still had no idea what business he and Jackman had together, but it hardly mattered anymore. I mean, sure, Papadopolous went a little short-fused when he found out a reporter was in his office. But a lot of people didn’t like reporters hanging around. Heck, maybe he sensed I had the hots for his daughter, and had kicked into overprotective daddy mode.

  But there were more mistakes. I had badly misjudged McNabb, assuming that because he had one obvious agenda-positioning his union in its renegotiation with the paper-he didn’t have any other agendas that he kept hidden.

  McNabb said it himself, in a small bit of conversation that was now coming back to me: a powerful man facing the loss of his power will do just about anything to protect it. I thought he was talking about a different powerful man, but he was talking about himself.

  More than that, I had allowed myself to rely on his information too much, without stopping to scrutinize it that extra layer. I definitely subscribe to the “one great source” theory of reporting-that all it takes is that one person on the inside to illuminate a subject for you. Of course, you still have to make a good decision about who that one great source should be. And at risk of stating the obvious, I had chosen poorly.

  And shouldn’t I have known? McNabb was constantly asking me about what I had or hadn’t told the cops, always pumping me for information. I had dismissed it as an outcropping of his dirt-mongering personality, never thinking that I was keeping the murderer fully apprised of my investigation.

  There was also some bad luck and lousy timing involved. If I had gotten more immediate cooperation from Anne McCaffrey-or if Anne had put Jeanne in the know earlier-I would have discovered the sexual harassment sooner. I would have had time to read the complaint a little more carefully and come to some different conclusions, ones that would have led me away from Jackman.

  One example that was suddenly obvious: the complaint said Caesar touched Nancy under a table. When would Jackman ever have been sitting close enough to Nancy to do that? The only time he would have ever seen her was during a negotiating session-when he would have been on the opposite side of the table.

  For that matter, Caesar was asking her out on dates. There was no way the publisher of a major newspaper, locked in a tense negotiation with its largest union, would have done anything that outrageous with one of the union’s shop stewards.

  And there was Jim McNabb, calling one of his employees “candypants,” right in front of me all along. But I still couldn’t see it.

  Yep, I had screwed up every way but good. And because of it, it might be the last story I ever worked.

  * * *

  We bounced along the dirt road, splashing through flooded ruts and potholes, going no more than fifteen miles an hour. The lightning flashes were providing more illumination than my headlights. The wipers beat furiously but still couldn’t keep up with the torrent of water gushing down from the sky.

  On our left, we passed the loading warehouse and a parking lot, then a small trailer on our right. Then we were in no-man’s land. Beyond the waist-high weeds that lined the road, I had a railroad track to my right and some sort of retention pond to my left. It was a body of water that had probably been the recipient of enough heavy-metal-laced runoff and landfill leachate to make it glow in the dark.

  I briefly considered yanking the steering wheel to the left and taking us for a swim in that yucky stew-I could take my chances with the elevated cancer risk two decades from now. But we were moving too slowly. McNabb might be a little surprised, but he’d have ten chances to shoot me before the water closed over the car and forced him to bail out.

  No, the simple fact was, in the middle of the most densely populated metropolitan area in America, I had managed to find myself in a totally isolated spot with an armed killer. Yet another genius move on my part.

  “Okay, stop here,” he said.

  I pressed the brake until the car halted.

  “Put it in Park,” he instructed.

  I moved the shifter up from the Drive position.

  “Now put your hands on the ceiling, palms up.”

  I did as instructed. A thick lightning bolt lit the sky, followed quickly by an enormous thunderclap. I could briefly see a large power transfer station perhaps a hundred yards ahead, then the elevated road surface of the New Jersey Turnpike a few hundred yards beyond that. Traffic was probably crawling in a storm like this. I wondered if any of those drivers could see me, this strange little car parked along a railroad access way. But I doubted it. The visibility had been reduced to nothing. We might as well have been in an underground bunker.

  “Why don’t I just drive us down to the Pine Barrens,” I said. “I know a spot that’s got to be ten miles from anywhere. You dump me off there, and by the time I get out, you could be a hundred miles away in any direction.”

  “And live like some damn runaway the rest of my life? I don’t think so.”

  “Jim, you’re not going to get away with this,” I said.

  “Yes I am. You didn’t tell anyone about me. You told me so yourself.”

  “Someone else is going to figure out who ‘J.M.’ is. That complaint makes it pretty obvious.”

  “Yeah? If it was so obvious, how come you didn’t figure it out?”

  Because I’m a total moron, I wanted to say.

  “I didn’t, but Kevin Lungford will,” I said. “He’s a brilliant, Princeton-educated reporter, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with. He’s probably already put it together.”

  I put as much force behind it as I could, but McNabb wasn’t fooled.

  “Yeah, that’s why you call him Lunky, huh? Because he’s so smart?”

  Natch.

  The rain slacked off for a few seconds, then pounded on the roof with renewed intensity, like a thousand tiny percussionists all doing a drum roll at the same time. The windshield wipers thumped from side to side, with little effectiveness. Our breath had fogged over the inside of the windows.

  “Look, killing me is only going to make things worse for you. You could spin Nancy as manslaughter. They’d give you ten years, and you’d be out in five for good behavior. You kill me and it’s a double homicide. First degree. They’ll put you away for the rest of your life.”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, and I felt myself getting hopeful until he finished: “You’re going to commit suicide.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because, Carter Ross, at this point, you have one choic
e to make in what is left of your short, miserable little life. You can die quick and painless-and I’ll make it look like a suicide. Or you can die the slowest, most agonizing death you could possibly imagine.”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ll take the mystery prize behind door number three.”

  In one fast move, McNabb chunked me on the head with the butt of his gun. He didn’t have enough room in the car to get any momentum behind it, but it still wasn’t the most pleasant feeling in the world.

  “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 amp; 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 cliches, 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 amp; 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.”