by Jeff Gunhus
“Do we have the flowers for Mom?” Jason asked.
“No, not yet. There’s a place in Annapolis. We’ll pick them up there so they’ll be nice and fresh.”
Jason sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the wall of windows that framed a view of the Chesapeake Bay. “Do you miss her still?”
Arnie sat next to him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders and lied. “Yeah, I do. She was a good woman, your mother. She loved you so much.”
Jason smiled. Arnie knew his son didn’t remember anything about his mom. What memories he did have were from carefully selected photos that Arnie had put together in an album. He had burned most of the pictures of his wife. All the ones where she had a cigarette in one hand, a can of cheap beer in the other, eyes glazed over from whatever drug she was on that night. Gone were the pictures of her partying with random men she’d picked up at the bars. No, the pictures told a different story and it had nothing to do with the truth. And that was the point. The truth hurt, and he wouldn’t let anything hurt his boy.
“I miss her,” Jason said. “I wish she hadn’t died.”
“I miss her too,” Arnie lied. I wish I’d killed her earlier than I did, he added to himself. Not too early—she had, after all, given him Jason, but a day or two after childbirth would have been fine.
“All right then, First Mate Milhouse. Are we ready to embark on our adventure on the high seas?”
“Yes sir, Captain,” Jason said, bouncing off the bed. “Ready to go.”
“That’s a funny uniform there, sailor,” he said with a nod to Jason’s pajamas. “How about we go with something a little more conventional? Breakfast in five minutes and then we’ll get going.”
Arnie smiled as Jason turned and raced off to get changed.
A day on the water with Jason would be great. There was peace on the water that he didn’t get anywhere else and, after yesterday, peace was exactly what he needed. The threat he’d felt so strongly yesterday after the interview with the young FBI agent had been weakened by a night’s sleep. He started to suspect that yesterday’s stress had been an overreaction. He knew that a connection between Suzanne Greenville and him had always been a possibility, but he hadn’t anticipated involvement from the FBI.
But now it was here.
She took pictures of me when I was with her. They have a direct connection between the two of us.
He sat on the edge of his bed and drew in several deep breaths to slow down his thinking. Certainly the contact with the FBI was disturbing, but they thought of him only as one of many wealthy johns caught on film by a dead prostitute. Certainly that connection wasn’t strong enough to make him pick up everything and move.
Still, Arnie couldn’t shrug off the cold pit in his stomach. The FBI had his name in the file of a homicide victim. That happened once and he was just another unlucky guy caught on film by a whore writing a tell-all book. The next time his name turned up, even circumstantially, the computer would spit out his name and raise a red flag. The legitimacy that his money afforded him would give him some camouflage but not forever.
He was upset at his own complacency. The preparations he put in motion yesterday for Jason and him to disappear if they needed to were long overdue. Being connected to the Greenville woman wasn’t completely unexpected. In retrospect, he knew better than to hunt so close to home. Especially with someone he saw on more than one occasion.
He spent some time reflecting on why he had done it. Not the killing. The reason for that was obvious. But the risk profile was out of sync with his other conquests. He’d realized that the increased risk was exactly what had made it so much more exciting. Like a drug addict, he’d recently found himself needing a stronger fix. That was where all the serial killer copycat bullshit came from. It was why Suzanne Greenville had happened. And it worked. He’d never felt so alive.
But now the thought of running was taking that feeling away, replacing it with something totally unacceptable: a sense of weakness. Logically, it made complete sense to be ready to disappear, but he loathed how it made him feel. The slow-burning anxiety in his stomach. The paranoia that made him look over his shoulder every few minutes. It was a constant reminder that the old Arnie Milhouse, the cuckolded asshole who didn’t know how to stand up for himself, was still inside of him. Ready to slink back from his long exile. Sniveling. Whining. Ready to turn him back into the sorry excuse for a man he had once been.
The new Arnie Milhouse refused to let that happen, on this day of all days. He wouldn’t give in to the fear. Or to the voices shouting in his head to be cautious. To hell with that. Instead, he would double down and push harder. The photographer he’d met the night before suddenly came to mind. Amanda, no, Allison was her name. Smart, beautiful, and hard to get. Just the challenge he needed right now to shake off the weakness threatening to seep into his bones. She could have a role to play in his game with the FBI. A very fun role. And if not, he could easily think of other uses for her. It was exactly what he needed. A distraction to take his mind off things. Especially today.
Arnie dreaded the visit to the cemetery in Annapolis, the lies he would have to tell, the emotion he had to fake. As a rule, such things didn’t bother him, but with his son it was different. He was honest with him about everything else. Well, almost everything. He still hadn’t shared the one thing about his life that freed him from the miserable curse before the transformation. Before that night at the convenience store when the entire world suddenly made sense to him.
That was another lesson that would have to wait. But not forever. Someday Arnie would teach his son how to be a man. He would teach Jason the proprietary blend of domination and power that came with killing. Teach him how his existence before killing was like being an empty balloon, formless, pliable to anyone who chose to stretch and bend you.
But he would teach his son that he didn’t have to accept the emptiness. That there was a way to change the world and to change yourself in it. A way to be filled with confidence and passion until you felt ready to burst from your own skin. Yes, Arnie would teach his son to kill, but not yet. Not today. Today was a time for honoring the dishonest memory of Jason’s drugged-out, child-abusing slut of a mother. The truth of life would wait for another day.
The Chesapeake lived up to her reputation as one of the finest boating waters in the world. The morning clouds broke halfway through the trip, and the water transformed into an endless blanket of gold sequins, each small wave reflecting its own personal fire from the sun. The double hull of the forty-five-foot catamaran sliced through the calm waters with only a slight aft-to-stern swell belying the incoming tide. Arnie stood behind the wheel in the center of the craft, a stainless steel thermos of coffee in his hand. They had started the journey under power from the twin Mercury engines, but a soft breeze out of the south had made for an easy sail across the Bay.
“How are we doing, bubba?” Arnie called out.
Jason was on his favorite lookout point, the taut elastic net stretched between the two hulls in the bow of the boat. He liked to hang suspended directly off the water, wind in his face, pretending that there was no boat at all and that he was by himself, flying just feet above the surface like the gulls that followed them on either side of the boat. He looked over his shoulder.
“What’s that?”
“I said, how are you doing?” Arnie shouted over the wind.
Jason gave him a thumbs-up and a wide grin.
Arnie slugged back the last of his coffee and checked his bearings. Navigating the Bay in clear weather was simple. At night or in rain it was a little trickier. When he first started to boat, Arnie had been caught unexpectedly out in a storm. That time in a smaller vessel, by himself and with a lot less experience. By the time the Coast Guard rescue patrol pulled him aboard and towed his waterlogged craft into harbor, he had a new appreciation for good old Mother Nature. And an impatience for the next storm
. Since then, he’d gone out based on the promise of bad weather, in love with the fury and the danger that a storm could bring. As a result, Arnie had become a decent sailor in a short amount of time. This too would be instrumental in his disappearance, if it came to that. He pushed the idea back angrily and tried to clear his mind of thoughts of running and hiding. Instead, he focused on the girl from the night before and plotted how things might go between them.
They lowered the sail and came into Annapolis under motor. He steered south of City Dock and came up Spa Creek. After waiting fifteen minutes for the next raising of the Eastport drawbridge, they motored through and docked at their slip at Olde Towne Marina.
After some quick hellos to some of the live-aboards whom they had gotten to know over the years, Arnie and Jason secured the boat and headed into town. First to the florist, where Jason was allowed to choose whatever flower arrangement he wanted. And then a fifteen-minute walk to the cemetery, where Jason was allowed to remember his mother in any way he wanted.
Arnie kept quiet as they laid the flowers on the grave, hating the woman even as his son softly told the person he’d never known that he loved her. Arnie was glad to see Jason didn’t cry. For a few years, Jason had cried pitifully when they came with flowers. Now it seemed the boy was maturing and, while still missing a mother, was probably starting to realize that he really didn’t know this particular woman buried in the ground at his feet. Arnie wondered if there wouldn’t be a year that July 17 came and went without either of them mentioning it. If they had to run, that year might come sooner than he thought.
CHAPTER 13
Allison rubbed the side of her head and once again assured the police officer that she was all right. The cop, the only person who had been able to finally calm her down, wasn’t buying her story, but she really didn’t give a shit. At least her hands had stopped bleeding. Her head still ached like the kid who had kicked her had been jogging in steel-toed boots instead of sneakers. Right in the temple, right where it hurt.
Craig Gerty.
Still an instructor at the academy.
What were the chances?
“So you sure you’re all right, ma’am?” the police officer asked her for the fifth time.
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” she said. Her stomach still churned from the overload of adrenaline and bile. She felt queasy but didn’t think she was going to lose it. A small victory given the situation. “Really, I should be more careful.”
The cop raised an eyebrow as if to ask, And the screaming? You really haven’t explained that horrific screaming display you put on, you know?
“I’d feel better if you got yourself checked out. Make sure everything is all right.”
“Everything’s five-by-five,” Allison said, throwing a little law enforcement lingo in there to lighten the mood. “I told you, I was in that bad accident on the bridge last night. Seeing blood kind of freaks me out to begin with, so you can imagine . . .” She let the words drift away, as if that explained the freak-out display she had put on earlier. And now. Even now, twenty minutes after the cop had calmed her down and walked her away from the gawking runners, her hands still trembled.
Craig fucking Gerty.
And I lay there on the ground. Screaming my head off.
“OK, then. If you’re all right.”
“I’m fine. But I could use a ride home.”
“I have to stay here for the next half hour, but you’re welcome to wait.”
“That’d be great,” Allison said. “I’ll even promise not to bleed on anything. Mind if I wait in the car?”
The cop mumbled that it would be fine and, red-faced, scraped the empty fast-food wrappers off the passenger seat.
Allison sank into the seat, her body suddenly stiff from the accident the night before, the eight-mile jog, and, now, the spill on the asphalt. Not to mention the psychological drain of the last few days.
She put on a brave face for the cop, but now with the doors closed and the world outside shut out, the emotions flowed freely over her.
It wasn’t the fearful panic that came back to her; it was the anger. A decade of anger. A decade of countless scenarios she had played out in her head of what she would do if she ever ran into Craig Gerty again. But the anger was directed at herself. Anger mixed equal parts with shame and disappointment.
She beat her fist into her leg, closed her eyes, and leaned back against the headrest.
Craig Gerty’s face loomed in front of her. She jerked up in the seat, looking through each of the windows to make sure she was alone, to convince herself that he had left for good. No one around except her new cop friend and the straggling end of the timed runners.
She had to get a hold of herself. She refused to let the piece of shit get inside her head again.
Allison didn’t know if Gerty had recognized her or not. The whole encounter was blurred to her, a TV show watched in fast forward, all the central elements clear but the details flying by too fast to see with any kind of precision. He hadn’t stuck around; that was for sure. But that didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t like Gerty had a record of giving a damn about people. Still, it might mean that he knew who she was. And that could make things complicated. What she was doing in Annapolis was too important to let that shitbird screw things up.
She leaned over to the driver’s side and depressed the door lock. The doors thunked comfortingly. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes again.
This time a face appeared, but it wasn’t Gerty.
It was Richard’s face. Full of concern for her. Full of compassion.
She was tempted to linger on the image, but she forced it away and replaced it with Arnie Milhouse. Serious. Handsome. Wealthy.
Arnie was why she had come all this way. He was the reason she was here after all these years of hard work, after so many setbacks and doubts. She wasn’t about to let anything get in her way.
“Go ahead and grab a table for us,” Arnie said, nodding toward McGarvey’s.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Jason rolled his eyes and trudged off to the restaurant. Arnie watched him and resisted the urge to chase him down, mess up his hair, and race him to the restaurant door. It would have been the easy thing to do, but Jason was old enough that he needed a little reality check. He needed to let go of this day a little. Besides, chances were that Allison wouldn’t even be at the inn, in which case there was no harm except a little emotional bruising, nothing a couple of crab cakes couldn’t fix.
He walked up the narrow, cobblestoned Duke of Gloucester Street toward State Circle, flanked on either side by wooden row houses. Except for the overhead power lines strung up in messy loops from the rooftops, Arnie imagined the view on the road hadn’t changed much in a hundred, maybe even two hundred years.
He turned right on the Circle and headed over to the Calvert House. He stopped and laughed out loud to himself. He was nervous. Not by much, but he couldn’t think of a time in years when meeting a woman had made him even the slightest bit nervous. But now, standing half a block from where a woman he had barely spoken to the night before might or might not be waiting for him, he felt the faint flutter of butterflies swirling around his stomach. It was such an unusual feeling that he stood on the sidewalk, trying to decide what it meant.
Why did this woman intrigue him? She was beautiful, but he had been with beautiful women before, the sort that always seemed to find themselves on the arms of wealthy men. Arnie decided it was because the contact had been so short. All the blank spots about her could still be filled in by his imagination, and in his mind he made her into something she very likely wasn’t. It was always the way. The women started off with all the promise of real beauty, but they all turned out to be whores after his money, after his attention, after something. He was smart enough not to use them for his killing rush, b
ut there hadn’t been one where he hadn’t had to fight down the urge. Recently, he wondered why he had bothered resisting the temptation.
This one was likely no different. The delight he felt at the forgotten sensation of being nervous withered away as he remembered a dark time when he used to live every minute of his day with this kind of nervous fear.
He didn’t like being reminded of his weakness.
In fact, he hated it.
That Arnie Milhouse was dead, dead as his wife, dead as that kid in the convenience store, dead as the dozens of people he’d used to feed his confidence and his power over the years. He would not allow that Arnie to return, no matter what he had to do to prevent it. The butterflies in his stomach dropped dead in midflight, suffocated by the hot rage suddenly burning inside of him.
A police cruiser pulled up alongside him and stopped in front of the Calvert House. The door popped open, and the object of his anger stepped from the car. Allison leaned back into the cruiser and Arnie overheard her say, “Thanks again, officer.”
The Annapolis PD officer leaned toward the passenger-side window. “You sure you’re all right?”
Allison pulled at her sweats. “Nothing a washing machine won’t fix. Again, thanks for the ride. I appreciate your help.” She shut the door before he could say anything else and waved good-bye through the closed window.
When she turned to walk up the stairs of the Calvert House, Arnie was there to greet her.
“Trouble with the cops, huh? What’d you do, jump the wrong fence or something?”
Allison flinched and did a double take. She caught herself, smiled, and brushed back her hair, even though it was an impossible mess. “Hi. You’re the guy from last night, right?”
“I’m that guy,” he said. “Arnie.”
“Right, sorry.” She put her hand to her face. “As you can see, I’m having a hell of a day.”
Arnie put on his best sympathetic look. “What happened?”
