The fifty minutes Dan spent staring at his notebook in Barnaby’s were unproductive. By the time he left to catch the 8:52 train, he’d only come up with two story ideas that felt even halfway viable:
celeb chef murdered–Vargas loves his gnocchi?
artist impaled on his own sculpture—OR artist is the perp?—performance artist—murder IS the performance?
Neither was likely to work. The former didn’t go anywhere plotwise, and Marty would inevitably shoot down the latter on the grounds that it was too highbrow. He’d probably accuse Dan of sniffing his own farts, which had become Marty’s go-to put-down ever since their falling out.
That, and calling Dan “Princeton boy.” Which was particularly galling, seeing as how they’d first met when Marty lived down the hall from him freshman year, and the whole sequence of events that led to Dan writing for Bullet Town: NYC began when they reconnected at their twenty-fifth reunion.
Fucking Marty . . .
I’ve got to give him something better than this.
As Dan hurried toward the Upper Lincolnwood station, he tried to quiet the whine of creative anxiety in his head with the thought that he could spend the forty-minute trip into Manhattan playing “Victim or Perpetrator?” It was an idea-generating exercise in which he imagined his fellow commuters as characters on BT: NYC, and over the years, it had been good for a surprisingly large number of ideas. In season three alone, the show had killed off almost a dozen riders of the Lincolnwood–Bergen line, most of them dispatched by their co-passengers.
Dan trotted up Forest Street and crossed the tracks to the inbound platform just as Pete Blackwell arrived from the other direction, coming downhill on foot from his family’s mansion on Mountain Avenue.
“Hey!” Dan greeted him with a grin as their paths converged on the platform. “You’re getting a late start.” In Lincolnwood’s commuter taxonomy, Pete was a 7:18, not an 8:52.
Pete rolled his big brown eyes in the direction of his genetically blessed hairline. “Tess’s shower backed up, so I had the rare pleasure of spending my morning snaking her drain.” It was very on-brand for Pete Blackwell to do his own plumbing. The only non-asshole hedge fund founder Dan had ever met, he had a net worth rumored to be in the ten figures, a face and build that belonged on a modeling runway, and a home listed on the National Register of Historic Places—yet he somehow managed to convey such an unassuming charm that nobody in Lincolnwood resented him, at least not out loud.
The whole Blackwell family was like that. Tess, the oldest of their three daughters, was Chloe’s age, and Jen had shared class mom duties more than once with Meg Blackwell, who actually had clocked time on a modeling runway before getting her master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins and cofounding a charity that distributed antimalarial mosquito nets in Africa.
“The absolute worst thing about the Blackwells,” Jen had once declared upon returning home from an evening spent assembling gift baskets for the elementary school faculty in Meg’s massive-yet-somehow-still-cozy living room, “is that there’s no worst thing about the Blackwells.”
Although Tess Blackwell’s angelic mane of thick, honey-blond hair apparently had its drawbacks, at least as far as their National Register of Historic Plumbing was concerned.
“Pulled a lot of hair out?” Dan asked with a sympathetic grimace.
“So much hair. I could’ve made a coat from it. By the way—thanks for the birthday invite! We’re looking forward to it.”
“You’re coming? That’s great! It’s just a small thing this time—it’s not like fifty-one’s a milestone.” When he turned fifty, Dan had thrown himself a cocktail party, and it was so much fun that he’d decided to do it again this year.
“After fifty, they’re all milestones, my friend.” The train was pulling in, and Pete had to raise his voice to be heard above the screech of the brakes.
“I guess so,” Dan conceded as they headed for the nearest door. “It’s mostly just an excuse to get people together. No gifts this time! Although I do love my pen.”
“We will get you absolutely nothing, I promise,” Pete said, patting him on the back as they stepped up into the train. Dan doubted that was true. Meg Blackwell was the kind of person who showed up to a no-gifts party not just with a gift, but an impeccably chosen one in a price range that walked the narrow line between thoughtful and extravagant.
As he settled into a rear-facing window seat and Pete continued past him down the aisle to a seat of his own, Dan savored the aftertaste of their exchange. One of the many dividends of his new career was that he’d become interesting to people like Pete and Meg Blackwell. Four years ago, Dan couldn’t have imagined them actually attending a party at his house—they would’ve instantly RSVP’d with regrets, citing some ironclad yet unverifiable excuse. But lately, when they ran into each other at school curriculum nights, Pete actively sought out Dan to make small talk. Coming from a man so rich he didn’t fly commercial and so handsome he could’ve played bass for Duran Duran, the attention was gratifying on a level that—as minor and silly as it might seem—felt like a validation of Dan’s existence.
He retrieved his Moleskine from his messenger bag, propped them both on his lap, reinserted his AirPods, dialed up Let It Bleed for atmosphere, uncapped his Meg-Blackwell-gifted Waterman pen, and raised his head to look around for a suitable “Victim or Perpetrator?” candidate.
A retired couple sharing the New York Times.
Husband murders wife? Vice versa?
Done to death. No pun intended.
The train pulled out of the station. As “Gimme Shelter” conjured the apocalypse in his ears, Dan moved on to the next candidate—a stylish business-casual gay millennial in a purple baseball cap.
Advertising exec murders . . . ?
No. Too upscale.
Mom with eight-year-old in Hogwarts hat.
Mom kills kid? Ugh, no. Way too dark.
Kid kills mom? He’s an evil genius?
Could be cool.
But then Vargas would have to kill the kid.
So, no.
Dan looked around. There were no other good candidates. He’d have to wait for more passengers to come on at the next stop.
He took his glasses off, pulled the bottom of his T-shirt out from under his V-neck sweater, and used it to wipe the lenses clean. Then he put them back on and returned to the ideas he’d written down back at Barnaby’s, hoping to add more depth to them.
What if celebrity chef is a perp instead of a victim? And they poison someone?
Who would they poison? A presidential candidate? Too big.
Mayoral candidate? Running on a platform of . . . food labeling? Calorie counts?
Nobody gives a shit about food labeling.
The train pulled into the Lincoln Avenue station. Dan took out his phone and checked the time.
8:59 a.m.
A few dozen people boarded the train. On Dan’s earphones, “Love in Vain” gave way to “Country Honk.” It was a poor fit with his search for evil in the hearts of New Jersey commuters, so he swapped it out for the doom-laden chords of the first Black Sabbath album.
A mousy, Slavic-looking librarian type wearing John Lennon specs and a puffy maroon three-quarter-length coat sat down next to him.
Librarian murders author?
No. Too close to Misery.
Librarian gets murdered?
By who?
A guy who read a book about murdering a librarian.
This one was worth writing down.
Creepy patron murders librarian—
reenacts murder in crime novel he checked out
Dan glanced to his right. Mousy Librarian had taken out her phone and was playing some kind of Candy Crush knockoff.
Doesn’t read during commute.
Not a librarian.
Receptionist?
OR . . . maybe an incompetent librarian?
Who plays Candy Crush instead of reading books?
Librarian doesn’t read books—creepy patron offended
The details might be wrong, but there was meat on this bone. Dan studied his seatmate out of the corner of his eye. She was laser-focused on her screen, mouth hanging open as her eyes followed the game in random, darting zigzags.
Sweet—simple-minded—no friends—lonely
He looked around for minor characters to populate the story. Two rows away, in a front-facing seat on the south side of the train, was a heavyset Asian twentysomething wearing Bose headphones and staring into his laptop.
Vargas gets list of guys who checked out same book
Nerdy programmer fits serial killer profile
BUT turns out to be innocent
This was good. Dan drew five vertical slashes in his notebook to represent the act breaks, then pondered how to label them.
CO: poisoning? / V finds book / nerd dead end? / ? / trial / V kills w/sequel plot?
9:08 a.m. The train pulled into Newark Broad Street.
Twenty people exited the car. Forty more replaced them. Mousy Librarian was forced to scoot over so close to Dan that their jackets touched, in order to make room for a bearded hipster with a Captain America shield backpack and a button on the chest pocket of his fatigue jacket that read STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONIST.
Dan sat up a little straighter and—leaving some empty space under his act-break schematic for the librarian murder idea—added a new line in all caps:
MURDER AT COMIC CON
Brilliant.
Cinematic setting, tons of fun. Skewed a little young for the BT: NYC audience, but that was fine, as long as the tone condescended to Comic Con in a way that let the audience feel superior.
cosplay knight kills w/real sword
(Ninja? Reaper w/scythe? Thor w/hammer?)
montage: Vargas interrogates cosplay superheroes
one offers to help investigate (I’m a superhero!)
Dan looked up from the page. “Victim or Perpetrator?” had delivered for him once again. It was such good stuff that he had to resist the urge to play air drums along with the Sabbath song chugging in his ears.
Thank God for New Jersey Transit.
He caught his reflection in the window, experienced his usual reaction—when the hell did I turn into a doughy middle-aged guy?—but was so pleased with his creative breakthrough that he managed, for the moment at least, to accept his physical decline with compassion rather than beating himself up for not eating salads at lunch or waking up early to exercise.
Beyond his reflection, the Newark skyline passed out of view as the train entered the no-man’s-land west of Jersey City. Dan let his mind wander as he watched fenced-in industrial equipment lots give way to an expanse of tall weeds, then open water bisected by the beginning of the seventy-five-foot-high viaduct that carried the New Jersey Turnpike over the Hackensack River toward Manhattan.
Dan turned his head to admire the massive, slender structure.
That’s a big viaduct. . . . Maybe somebody gets thrown off it in the cold opening? Then Vargas could partner up with a Jersey cop who—
The music in his AirPods stopped.
In the same instant, the lights on the train car winked out.
The background whirr of the circulation fans faded away, and the steady rumble of track seams passing underneath stretched and slowed. The scenery out the window gradually stopped moving across Dan’s field of view.
It was suddenly, disconcertingly quiet.
“Ugh!” Mousy Librarian huffed. Dan glanced at her. She was jabbing at her phone’s newly dead screen in frustration.
“What the hell?” a woman exclaimed from somewhere behind him.
Dan pulled out his iPhone to check the time and turn his music back on.
The screen was black. When Dan tapped it, nothing happened.
The eerie silence in the car began to fill up with mutters, grunts, and whispers of confusion and complaint. Dan kept tapping his screen.
Still nothing.
Oh, come on!
As he held down the side power button to restart his phone, he looked across the aisle at Nerdy Asian Programmer, who was glowering at his laptop while he tapped its unresponsive keyboard.
Someone in the back of the car called out, “Does anybody’s phone work?”
The answer seemed to be no.
Dan kept pressing down his power button, but the glowing white apple refused to reappear.
“What the heck is going on?” someone exclaimed.
Dan scowled. This better not be serious. I’ve got to get to work.
As he craned his neck, surveying the other frustrated passengers, a distant whine reached his ears from somewhere to the southeast.
In the space of a few seconds, it climbed in volume and pitch until it sounded like the shriek of a Nazi dive bomber in some World War II documentary.
Then a woman at the front end of the car screamed in terror.
“OHMYGO—!”
Other voices joined hers, but their cries were smothered in the roar of an explosion so thunderous that Dan felt it vibrate in his chest cavity.
The two-hundred-plus people in the car uttered a collective gasp of shock.
Then everybody began to move at once.