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Dartmouth, June 9
4:05 p.m.
Seth had a name: Blake Kaufman. But he had no idea what the man he wanted to kill even looked like. Worst of all, he was gambling on the word of a scumbag and criminal, a poster boy for everything rancid in the world. Todd Dory could’ve pulled any old name and address out of his head and have Seth go on a wild-goose chase.
The address brought him to a brick low-rise on Primrose Street in Dartmouth. Just up from the main artery of Victoria Road, the low-income neighborhood of small homes and apartment buildings had a reputation of being a hardscrabble place riddled with crime and violence. A shooting here, a stabbing there, and soon an area develops an ugly stain hard to rub out.
Seth’s first impression of the area was of modesty. The street was clean and tree lined, with buildings spaced nicely apart. Not all crammed together like in Halifax. There were no dilapidated structures. No broken windows. No graffiti. No abandoned lots. No punks milling around. Maybe when night fell it became a Frankenstein, all terror and danger, but in the daylight it looked like any other quiet neighborhood.
Seth rolled down the street in his rental car—a blue Hyundai Accent. It was the most average vehicle Avis had to choose from. He hadn’t wanted anything too upscale. Riding around in a BMW or Cadillac might attract too many eyes, leave too many imprints on the memory.
Through his sunglasses, he looked over the building as he drove slowly past. It was a drab, three-story square with a black awning over the entry and a stoop built from treated lumber. His gaze rose up the bank of windows in the front, and he had a mental image of the apartments inside resembling hotel suites. Of tenants who left their doors open all day, smelling up the complex with cigarettes or cooking. Of kids running up and down the hallways, their feet like thunder. Of TVs too loud.
The building didn’t seem to have any security features. No intercom box. No cameras. Just walk right in. Seth wished each apartment had its own outside entrance, like Dory’s. Going inside jeopardized being seen by tenants.
Eight vertical mailboxes, in two rows of four, were mounted next to a solid front door painted the color of sandstone. The building had a twin next door. A paved lane ran between the two of them and emptied into a rear parking lot. At its edge lay a patch of green lawn that ended about fifteen yards away at a tangle of trees and shrubs.
Seth drove up the street a short distance before he made a U-turn and came back down the other side. He passed the building and pulled over to the curb near the end of the block. To his right, a one-story house was set back from the road and fronted by a long, well-manicured lawn and white picket fence. The large maple tree out by the sidewalk had a civic address sign fastened to it.
Across the road was a tiny house with a large backyard. Beside it, on the corner of Primrose and Robert Burns Court, squatted a rectangular three-decker, twice the size of the one this Kaufman supposedly lived in.
As Seth moved his eyes over the structure, he shook his head. Windows. So many damn windows.
He adjusted the mirror on the driver’s door so he had a clear view of the apartment building over his left shoulder. Then he curled his fingers over the wheel and sat there for a time, watching the place. No one went in or came out. Only a few cars drove past. With the window cracked, he could hear the traffic all the way down on Victoria Road, the jerky growl of motors, the deep thump of someone’s car stereo.
Seth checked his watch: 4:20.
He picked his weathered Red Sox cap off the passenger seat and put it on, tugged the bill down his forehead. Then he reached up and tilted the rearview mirror toward him. For a moment, he stared at the thick scar on the left side of his face. It swept from his temple, disappeared under the dark lens of the sunglasses, and reemerged on his cheek, where it ended at the edge of his nose.
Absently, he touched a finger to its smooth ridge. He could still feel the lick of fire as the blade sliced through his flesh. All at once, he had a flash of himself lying in the hallway outside his bedroom door, blood seeping from holes and gashes throughout his body. Todd Dory’s face hovered over him, eclipsing the ceiling light above him.
Seth stared up at Dory’s weird milky-white eyes. In the periphery of his vision, he caught the glimpse of another face about a foot off the floor, and his hand was touching it. When he hooked his eyes toward it, he felt a scream bubble through the phlegm in his throat. The face was something straight out of a horror movie. Sunken. Desiccated. Flaps of discolored skin hung off the bone and muscle. It had no eyes, just dark, empty holes, and the black lips were contorted into a grim rictus, baring a set of misshapen teeth.
“C’mon,” someone yelled. “Let’s go.”
Clenching his jaw, Seth shook the image from his mind. Through the windshield, he saw an elderly man approaching up the edge of the street on a red mobility scooter. He wore an olive flight jacket, and his white hair was cut tight to his skull. Bulging bags of groceries were piled into the front basket. He didn’t notice Seth. His eyes seemed focused on the road ahead as he drove by.
Seth waited until he was gone before he opened the door and stepped out. He cut across the street and continued up the sidewalk toward the apartment building. He kept his head down, hoping to preserve his anonymity. If Blake Kaufman was the man’s real name and he really lived at this address, then he’d recognize Seth long before Seth would even know who he was. And that put him at a lethal disadvantage.
Without looking up at any of the windows, Seth climbed the front steps and quickly read over the nameplates on the mailboxes. Tremors rippled through his body when he reached the final box. Kaufman. Apartment number eight.
Seth inhaled a deep breath. Kaufman was here, possibly in the building right now. This close and Seth had no weapon. Not even a knife to plunge into the man’s heart the moment he opened his door.
Seth was no more than two feet from the entrance door, unlocked by the looks of it, and he couldn’t move his feet.
What if Dory had set up an enemy of his? Seth still had no way of knowing for sure. He knew the muscular build, the approximate height, just not the face. But how would Dory have known that? Somehow Seth had to see Blake Kaufman.
He went inside and cringed as the solid door closed behind him with a heavy sound that set off a cavern-like echo through the building. Nothing like alerting the neighbors.
He looked around. The place was cleaner and quieter than he’d imagined. To his right, a set of concrete stairs, covered in a black runner, rose to the first floor. Another set on his left descended to the basement, and he smelled laundry detergent or fabric softener drifting up the stairwell. Heard the fast ticking of a hard object tumbling inside a dryer.
Seth removed his sunglasses and hung them off the neck of his T-shirt, pulled the bill of his cap down even lower on his forehead. He grabbed hold of the railing and started up the stairs.
The hallway on the first floor had four doorways, two on each side. At the far end, another stairwell went up and down.
Seth checked the numbers on the doors, realizing each floor had two mirroring apartments. The units on this floor were numbered three and four. Eight had to be at the very top.
He took to the stairs again. Somewhere below him, he heard a phone ring in one of the apartments and someone scramble for it. The third ring cut off abruptly with a muffled, “Hello.”
Seth frowned. The paper-thin walls, combined with the close proximity of the neighbors, made it too risky. If Kaufman turned out to be the man he wanted, he’d have to get him outside somewhere. Alone.
He reached the top floor and found apartment eight on the right side of the hallway. Slowly, he walked past the door, keeping his head averted from the peephole. He listened for noises inside and could hear what sounded like a movie playing—gunshots, screams, and an animal’s deep growls intermingled with an evil and frantic soundscape.
Suddenly, he jerked his neck around at the sound of the entrance door downstairs slamming shut, footsteps thumping up the staircase. Then everything went quiet. Whoever it was must’ve lived on the first floor.
Breath held, Seth waited for the shut of an apartment door. Seconds passed. Nothing happened. Then the feet were on the stairs again, only at the back of the building this time, and coming up fast.
Seth hurried to the opposite end of the hallway and stopped. The footsteps were almost to the top now. He pulled out his cell phone from his front pocket and slid out the keyboard from the side of it, ready to pretend to be typing a text to whoever showed up.
Out of the corner of his right eye, he saw a woman enter the hallway. She paused briefly when she saw him, as if startled to find someone there. Seth tapped his thumbs on the keyboard, looking busy.
“Excuse me,” she said.
Seth swallowed, turned toward her, only slightly to keep her from seeing his scar. He saw the tan blazer and black slacks she wore. Saw the blonde curls hanging to her shoulders. Saw the black notebook in her hands. A door-to-door canvasser? Salesperson, maybe? No, wait. There was a gun on her hip. A badge clipped to the front of her duty belt. A cop. But not any cop. Only detectives wore clothing like that. Shit.
Fervently, Seth prayed she wouldn’t recognize him. Her department had pictures of him. He had looked a lot different then, another man in another life.
“Do you live here?” she asked.
Seth managed to shake his head and hook his thumb toward apartment number seven. Hoped to hell she wasn’t going there.
“Visiting,” he said.
Something flickered in the cop’s face, or maybe Seth imagined it. Maybe she knew he was bullshitting her. She seemed to scrutinize him further, eyes running up and down his body. Definitely cataloging details.
At last, she flashed a smile. “Okay, I gotcha.”
She walked over to Kaufman’s door and rapped her knuckles on the wood. Seth became utterly still. He watched with anticipation.
A rough voice on the other side of the door asked, “Who is it?”
“Police.” The cop held her credentials up to the peephole “I need to speak to Mr. Blake Kaufman. It’s very important.”
Seth licked his lips. He heard the scrape of a safety chain slide across a metal latch. Then the door opened to reveal a brawny young man with a diamond-shaped face and a chin curtain outlining his jawline. He wore a white tank top, khaki cargo shorts, and a black bandana cap.
“Fuck’s going on?” he said.
“Mr. Kaufman?” the cop asked.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t seem to notice Seth standing down the hallway, more focused on the disturbance at his door. His left arm bore a huge tattoo of a skull in a top hat with flaming eyes and a smoking cigar clamped between its teeth. But it was the tattoo on Kaufman’s neck that Seth found himself staring at: a black scorpion with large pincers and a tail arced over its head. Just like Todd Dory had.
There was no doubt now. This was the man.
Seth felt his pulse charging up, boiling the blood in his circulatory system. He moved his gaze to Kaufman’s face and blinked once, like a camera clicking, searing the image into his brain.
