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Dartmouth, June 9
5:05 p.m.
Seth felt nauseous as he sat behind the wheel of his rental car. Every nerve in his body seemed to be electrified by the adrenaline rush. He couldn’t stop shaking.
He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, visualizing the face of Blake Kaufman. The man was another pustulant boil on humanity. He deserved to die in some horrible and bloody way.
Nothing but a wooden door stood between Seth and certain justice. Yet he was powerless without a weapon. His greatest fear was falling short and dying at Kaufman’s feet, one kill away from getting the man he wanted most—Lee Higgins.
Seth inhaled deeply through his nostrils when he detected a bouquet of familiar fragrances in the car’s interior. Clean and floral and spicy with powdery undertones. It smelled like Flower, the perfume Camille had worn all the time.
Seth smiled and leaned his head back against the seat, basking in the fond smell of her. Wishing he could hold the warmth of her body next to his again.
“You just need time,” people had told him. “Give time time. It heals all wounds.”
Seth realized that wasn’t true. Time had done nothing for him. The guilt and anguish still squeezed his heart as if it all had happened yesterday. In the months since Camille’s death, Seth missed her more, not less. He wished every day he could change places with her so the world could continue to experience her smile, laughter, and elegance.
Fingertips, cold and feather-like, brushed across Seth’s right cheek, and someone whispered his name into his ear, so close he could feel the breath. All at once, his eyes snapped open and his hands came up swatting.
At nothing.
Heart pounding, he peered into the backseat, around the windows of the car. Nobody was there. He put a damp palm to his cheek, the sensation of the fingertips still lingering there.
“Jesus.” He shook his head, swallowed. “Jesus Christ.”
He met his eyes in the rearview mirror, and they looked confused, scared. Sweat glistened on his face. He took off his ball cap and dropped it to the passenger seat, wiped a hand over the coarse stubble of his scalp.
He needed his medication before he lost it completely, while his brain still had the ability to navigate him home through the logjam of suppertime traffic.
Around him, he saw the neighborhood was getting busier with cars and pedestrians. The longer he sat here, the greater his risk of attracting a second glance from someone in the surrounding buildings. If he hadn’t already.
In his paranoia, Seth imagined a hand picking up a phone, a finger poking 9-1-1. He’d return tomorrow night in a different rental car, find a better vantage point, wait for Kaufman to come outside. Maybe Seth would get a chance to take him by surprise in the rear parking lot. Shoot him dead with the shotgun and leave the body where it fell. Escape before anyone saw him.
But Seth wanted more than that. He wanted Kaufman to see him right before he died. He wanted to see that shock, that final understanding register in his eyes.
Yeah, you’re right. It’s me, motherfucker.
Seth clenched his jaw. Heat, blood, and anger pulsed through his body. He shifted his gaze to the sideview mirror beside him. For a full minute he stared at the front door of Kaufman’s apartment building. No one entered. No one exited. The female cop was still in there, looking for information, correlating stories, sniffing for the scent of a suspect.
A scent of him.
Seth wondered how close she was to connecting the dots. He didn’t think she had recognized him, but some cops—the experienced ones—had good poker faces. You never knew what they were thinking or feeling.
Suddenly, she emerged from the building. She paused on the front stoop, wrist bent up toward her face. Seth watched her open a notebook and scribble inside it. Then she walked to a black Impala parked at the curb and hopped inside.
When she turned the car around in the street and began coming in his direction, Seth sank as low as possible in the seat. He listened to the car drive past with a steady climb in its throttle, then the sound faded away and was gone.
Seth peeked over top of the dash and saw the Impala stopped for a red light down the street. Its left turn signal flashed. Another car came out of the parking lot and pulled up behind.
Seth straightened himself in the seat, drew the seat belt across his chest, and slipped on his sunglasses.
The red light turned green, and the Impala sped off. As Seth watched it go, he remembered bending over Camille’s body and caressing her cheek. He could smell her perfume and her blood, could feel the warmth still present in her limp body. The eyes that had held so much love for him stared up at him, wide and empty.
A cry welled in his throat as the horrible reality walloped him in the gut. His wife was gone, never to come back again.
Hands tight on the steering wheel, Seth said without speaking, I’m going to kill them, Camille. I’m going to carve those fuckers up. They won’t have the things they denied us. Our happiness. Our lives together.
It’s my right.
Not the cops’.
Not the courts’.
Mine.
