A month after the incident, Amos Wilson drove two hours from his rural home to a Barnes & Noble in Manchester, the state’s largest city. He parked his old Ford F-150 pickup truck and walked to the front entrance, John Deere cap pulled down low on his head. Everything around him was concrete and asphalt and roadways and traffic lights, and the steady roar of cars and trucks, and jets coming in overhead to land at the Manchester airport. He had to be here, but he didn’t like being here.
Inside, the store was bright and well lit, and the sheer number of books stretching out before him overwhelmed him. Never in his life had he seen so many books. Yet he ignored all the books and wandered until he found what he was looking for, a shelf that offered detailed city maps. He picked up one titled Boston and Vicinity. It was thick and folded out nearly as wide as he could stretch his arms. He went out to the front counter, waited patiently until his turn came up.
The clerk was a pretty young girl about twenty or so, with tattoos of flowers on her neck and a pierced ring through her left nostril, wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans. He passed the map over. “Ma’am, I’d like to purchase this map, but I want to make sure it’s a good one.”
She smiled but looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”
Amos prodded the map with a finger that had black dirt encrusted under the fingernail. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t speak clearly. You think this map has what it says? Every single street?”
“I’m sure it does,” she said. “Of course, if you want to be really sure, you should just check out Google Street View. You can even see what the buildings look like.”
Amos took out his wallet. “I suppose you’re right, but I don’t own a computer. Wouldn’t even know how to use one. But I sure know how to look at maps.”
A month earlier, Amos Wilson had stopped at the Leah Hardware store to pick up some washers to fix a leaking faucet. Jimmy Stark, the store’s owner, greeted Amos as he made his way to the cluttered checkout.
Jimmy wore blue-jean overalls with the front bib pocket stuffed with pencils, pens, and a folding ruler. He had big ears and a big nose, black-rimmed glasses, and thick black hair parted to one side. He weighed nearly three hundred pounds and sat on a stool, and he knew where everything in the store was located down to the half-inch, which is why he was still thriving in the age of Lowe’s and Home Depot superstores.
He squinted as Amos put the washers down. “Faucet problems?”
“Yep.”
“At the lake house?”
“The same.”
Jimmy shook his head as he rung up the purchase. “I don’t know why you stick with Jennifer.”
“She’s my wife.”
“That’ll be a dollar nine cents. Amos, please, she kicked you out.”
He shrugged, having heard these same words about a dozen times before. “She said she wanted to take a break.”
“It’s been a year.”
“She might change her mind.”
“No, because she doesn’t like to think she’s wrong. Like she made a mistake when she agreed to marry you. Amos, you’re a good man, but you’re gullible.”
“Jimmy . . .”
With his thick fingers, Jimmy deftly put the purchase in a small paper sack. “You were the star high school quarterback, good with your hands, your dad was rich and ailing . . . and she thought when he passed on she’d be the richest gal in the county. Poor dear, she had no idea he was gonna leave his entire estate to charity.”
“Not the whole thing. We get an annuity.”
“Yeah, but not enough for Jennifer to live above her means. Course, now that she’s in the lake house and you’re in your dad’s hunting cabin, I’d say she’s got what she wants.”
“Maybe.”
“But she sure is lucky, still having you as a husband. Any other man would have filed divorce papers, would have gotten half that annuity back.”
Amos picked up the bag. “Guess I’m not any other man.”
Outside in the small parking lot, Amos went to one of the very few pay phones still operating in Leah. He dialed the lake-house number and Jennifer answered on the second ring.
“It’s Amos,” he said. “I’ve got the washers, I’ll be over there in twenty minutes.”
“You’ll have to come back later,” she said. “I’m having lunch with Marie and the girls. Won’t be back for a couple of hours.”
“I could do it while you’re away.”
“No offense, Amos, I don’t want you at the house when I’m not there.”
The phone receiver was cool in his hand. “My name’s still on the deed. Still my house.”
“Legally, I’m sure, but let’s not make a fuss, all right? I’ll see you at two p.m. Don’t be early.”
She hung up the phone.
Amos drove away from the lake where he had grown up, going to where he was currently hanging his hat. It was a simple one-story cottage deep in the woods, shingled roof, rough wooden sides. It was a place where Dad had taken him years back, when he had turned twelve. This was where he sipped his first beer, first stayed up past midnight, and shot his first white-tailed deer. One of Dad’s cousins had presented him with a sharp knife that he had used to gut his first kill, and, years later, he still always carried that knife.
He got out of the truck, ambled over to the camp. Overhead was a mix of maples and birches. The place got its hot water and heat from propane tanks, but it was still Christly cold in the winter. Not to mention that the dirt road became a sloppy mess every mud season.
Amos took a wicker rocking chair on the creaking porch and settled in. It was a nice sunny day.
He remembered what Jennifer had said, just over a year ago.
I don’t know what I want, but right now I don’t want you. Amos, it’s time for you to go up to your dad’s place.
Are you sure?
Damn it, of course I’m sure. I’m unhappy and I don’t want you here.
But what about me? My . . . happiness?
She had snorted. It’s all about you, isn’t it?
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he had quietly packed up a duffel bag and driven up to this cabin, and here he remained.
Amos stayed on the porch until it was near two o’clock before leaving for the lake house.
When he walked in, Jennifer called out from the bedroom, “Damn it, Amos, I told you I wanted you to knock! I don’t want you surprising me like this.”
He said, “I didn’t think I was surprising you. You said come back at two o’clock. It’s two o’clock.”
“Oh,” came her voice again. “Looking for a fight, are we?”
What to say about that? He pretended not to hear her and went to the kitchen, the spare washers in one hand, his toolkit in the other. He drew out a length of paper towel and put it on the floor, so no grease or dirt from the toolkit would mark up the shiny tiles.
“Hey.”
He turned around. His wife was standing there in the living room, looking right at him, and his heart went thump-a-lump, just like it had a number of years back when she had said yes after he first asked her out. She had on tight black Spandex shorts, black rubber boat shoes, a black sports bra, and a white baseball cap that she had pulled her blond ponytail through. She was putting lip moisturizer on and smelled of sunscreen.
“I’m going out for a paddle, work off some of that lunch. Let’s go.”
He put the toolkit down, followed her outside to the small lawn that bordered the lakeshore and to the tiny boathouse. She opened the door and he walked in, past the lawn mower, some piled-up lawn furniture, and other odds and ends. The light-blue kayak hung from a web cradle, and he got on one end while she got on the other.
The two of them marched in silence down to the water’s edge. Once upon a time, before his dad passed on, she’d talk about who she lunched with, whose kid was acting up, whose hubby was coming home drunk every other night. The silence stayed firm all the way to the lake. He held the kayak steady while she clambered in, and then he passed over a plastic canteen of water, her paddle, and a life preserver that was on the grass. Jennifer was an excellent swimmer, but the law was the law: there had to be a PFD aboard.
He stood back. “How long will you be gone?”
“As long as I want.”
“Oh.”
She adjusted her sunglasses and he paused, took a breath. “Jennifer?”
“What?” she said, staring out at the open lake, still fiddling with the sunglass cord.
“Do you think I’m gullible?”
A smile slowly spread across her face and then was just as quickly erased. She turned, and he couldn’t see her eyes because of the sunglasses. “Of course not . . .”
“Oh.”
She pushed off and said, “Oh, if you could. Check the refrigerator. I think I’m low on one-percent milk. Will you take care of that before you leave?”
“Sure.”
He watched her paddle out to the channel leading to the main lake. Williams Lake was shaped like a pair of spectacles, two wide bodies of water separated by the channel. The only place to put in your speedboat or canoe or Jet Ski was on the north body of water, which had lots of small islands and barely concealed boulders. Most boaters preferred the south end of the lake, which was deeper and relatively empty, so they could raise hell and tow water-skiers. Which meant that there was always a steady stream of boats and such traveling through the channel.
Another memory came to him.
I can’t live like this. We don’t have enough money.
Yes we do, hon. The annuity pays all of our bills and I can pick up extra money doing handyman work and—
Do you think I married you because I wanted a handyman? Do you? I want more, and you can’t provide it, Amos. You just can’t.
But . . . I love you, Jennifer. I’ll take care of you.
No, she had said. If you really love me, you’d fight your dad’s will, get the money that belongs to us. That’s what you would do if you really loved me.
Amos watched her paddle for another minute or two and then headed back to the lake house.
About two yards later there was the sudden roar of engines and the slamming sound of something being shattered.
Amos started running to shore even before he knew what was going on. There were two Jet Skis going around in circles, throwing up waves and water spouts from the exhausts. Each Jet Ski had one driver—a young guy with a PFD and wearing sunglasses—and one Jet Ski was bright red and the other was dark blue with yellow lightning bolts along the side.
One driver shouted to the other—he had a long nose and was on the Jet Ski with the lightning bolts—and then the two of them sped back down the channel, heading to the north end of Williams Lake, where the put-in was located.
They moved fast, ignoring the NO WAKE buoys, engines roaring.
Jennifer’s kayak floated in the channel, overturned, split in half.
He got to the lake’s edge before remembering his heavy Timberland boots. He stood on one foot while trying to get the boot off the other. Waves slapped and crisscrossed over the channel. Other residents were coming to the end of their docks. Amos worked and worked at the boots, and called out “Jennifer!”
No answer.
Boots off, he stripped off his blue jeans, knowing the lake water would make them sopping wet and heavy in seconds, slow him down. He wasn’t much of a swimmer and hated going into the lake when it was cold, but he didn’t hesitate. He thrashed his way in, started swimming, wearing his T-shirt, underwear, white tube socks, and nothing else.
“Jennifer!”
In his peripheral vision he saw motorboats and even two canoes coming his way. His neighbors, his friends, his townspeople.
“Jennifer!”
He reached one end of the kayak. It was smashed through, the fiberglass end as sharp as a saw. Her paddle was floating by, and her life jacket, and her water bottle. He breathed hard, swam over to the other floating part of the kayak.
She was there, tangled up in her seat, her face barely out of water.
“Jennifer!”
Her eyes fluttered open. Her face was gray. Her hat was gone. Her blond hair was floating behind her like an opened Chinese fan.
“Amos . . .”
“Don’t you worry, I’ll get you out.”
“Amos . . . I’m so cold . . . do something, will you?”
She closed her eyes. He managed to get her free, and he treaded water as he looked and looked at what had happened to her.
“Hey!” came a voice from the near canoeist. “Me and the missus, we called 911. Can we help?”
Amos took a breath, kept treading water, tried to speak plainly without choking up. “Her arm,” he said. “Can you help me find her arm?”
Three days later he was at the lake house, going through his closet in the master bedroom—the smallest one, of course, since Jennifer had wanted the bigger one—and he took out a black two-piece suit, which he had only worn three times before: for his Uncle John, for Mom, and for Dad.
The funeral took place at the Congregational church, just past the town common, and a couple of friends of Jennifer set up a get-together at the American Legion Hall afterward. There was an open bar and a glass bowl with a mix of ginger ale and Hawaiian Punch, and some chicken salad and tuna salad finger sandwiches. Amos was an only child, so there wasn’t much in the way of relations to talk to him, which was fine. He had a Sam Adams beer and stayed away from the sandwiches.
He hated finger sandwiches.
Amos was halfway through his second beer when Chief Bobby Makem came up to him.
“Wish I had better news, Amos, but I don’t,” Makem said. He was a slim fellow, with bright red hair, about five years older than Amos, married with two kids. His wife, Erin, was working the punch bowl. He had on his dark-blue police chief uniform with two stars on each side of his collar.
“I understand.”
“Them fellows were from away, we’re sure, but nobody remembers them much from when they put their Jet Skis in at the town beach. You know how the place gets so crowded with sunbathers and swimmers and people dropping off boats, it’s like that Times Square place each New Year’s.”
“Yeah,” Amos said.
“All we know is that they’re from Massachusetts. We talked to stores up and down Route 16 near here, see if anybody remembers seeing them stopping by to pick up gas or beer, but nope, nothing.”
“Sounds pretty thorough.”
Chief Makem sighed, gave him a gentle slap on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry none, we’ll keep working this case. You can count on it.”
Amos said, “I’m not going to worry about that.”
At some point the air inside got stifling, so he went outside. By the rear dumpsters a few guys were hanging around, smoking, and there was Jimmy Stark from the hardware store, Bob Junson from Junson’s Funeral Parlor, Trent Gage—who was in Amos’s class all through twelve years of school—and a bunch of others. They nodded respectfully to him as he came over, and he said to Bob, “That was a right fine service you did, Bob. I appreciate it.”
Bob had the brown eyes and saggy jowls of a bloodhound, and his black suit was finely cut. “Just so sorry I had to do it, Amos. She was too young to be taken away so quickly.”
At that everybody nodded and murmured some words, and after a few minutes they went back to talking about the weather, the Red Sox, and those damn tourists. When Amos decided to step back in and thank the ladies for the spread they had put on in Jennifer’s memory, Trent Gage spoke up. Trent owned a card and gift shop that was rumored to be selling a lot of nontobacco cigarettes under the table, which wasn’t Amos’s concern.
“Amos, you always hate to speak ill of the dead, but . . . well, I wish you the best in your new life.”
Amos turned back. “What do you mean by that?”
Trent grinned at the other guys like he was looking for support. “You know . . . you’re a fine fellow, Amos, but you’re gullible. Jennifer just took advantage of you, always did.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “She was my wife.”
Trent kept on smiling. “Maybe so, but c’mon . . . she could be a bitch on wheels most times. Now that she’s gone . . . well, you got a new life.”
Amos strolled over and punched hard, breaking Trent Gage’s nose. His right hand stung and was suddenly numb. Trent fell flat on the ground, and when he stopped moaning, Amos leaned over. “Thanks for the kind wishes.”
A couple of weeks passed and Amos didn’t feel right moving back into the lake house. So he stayed at the hunting camp and did a job for Paul Sytek, who needed some fine oak logs cut into four-foot lengths. He spent three weeks up there, working hard, hard enough so he could sleep well during the night. Every other day he called Chief Makem, and every other day he got the same answer. Nothing new to report.
After the third week had passed, the chief had one more thing to add.
“Amos . . . in an investigation when someone gets killed, the first forty-eight hours are the most important.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.”
“We’ve gone way beyond those forty-eight hours. I don’t want to sugarcoat it none.”
“I know, Chief.”
“So unless we get a break in the case, a new witness, somebody confessing, I don’t know how much we can do. And even if we do make some progress, I’m not sure what the operator could be charged with. Manslaughter, possibly, and leaving the scene of an accident, but even then, a crafty lawyer, he could say, Prove it, prove the owner of that Jet Ski was the guy driving that day.”
Amos kept his mouth shut. He could hear the chief breathing on the other end.
“So,” the chief said. “That’s how it is.”
“Appreciate the heads-up,” Amos said, and he hung up the phone.
The next day he went to the town hall, where sweet Pam Grissom, the town clerk, fussed over him and gave him copies of tax records and survey maps for free. Amos gave her his deep thanks and went to the lake house. There were some dead floral arrangements in the screened-in porch from Jennifer’s school friends and the local beauty parlor.
Amos sat at the end of the dock. A beautiful day. Up a ways, some kids were screeching with joy as they jumped in the water. A man in a high-powered trout-fishing boat rumbled by, gave Amos a wave, and he waved back. A pontoon boat also slowly motored through, and a couple of bikinied cuties out front gave him a shout and a wave, and Amos blushed and lowered his head.
He studied the survey map and noted the names of everyone who lived on property abutting this channel and the north end of the lake. Lots of names. That was okay. He double-checked the list and then triple-checked the list, and then he was done.
Amos went into the lake house one last time, and took the dead floral arrangements and tossed them into the woods.
Over the next two weeks Amos patiently worked down the list of names, making sure to talk to someone from each house. At every door, porch, or dock, he would introduce himself and say, I’m hoping you might be able to help me. I’m trying to get some information on the two Jet Skis that run down my wife and killed her. Do you remember seeing them that day?
He got a lot of sympathetic noes, a few lunches, a couple of beers, and a dinner offer from a sweet blond divorcée who lived on Powder Mill Road—she said, You’re such a good man, Amos—but nothing helpful. Abe Goshen, who was on his kayak that day, said he remembered seeing two fellas roar back to the beach and get their Jet Skis on a trailer attached to a big black Chevy pickup truck with Massachusetts plates, and that was that.
He also kept up working on Paul Sytek’s property, cutting up lengths of aged oak, and Paul was patient when Amos didn’t put in too many hours, since Paul knew what Amos was up to. Paul said he was getting along in years and couldn’t move much, but he was right happy with what Amos was doing.
On the fifteenth day of knocking on doors, Ralph Moran answered at the Cooper place, a nice fella who had retired here to do photo work of the mountains, foliage, loons, moose, and other nature stuff. The Cooper place was a simple cottage that had big wide windows up front, and Amos guessed that’s why the photographer had purchased it. Ralph had a thick beard and wavy brown hair, and he said, “Well, yeah, I remember those two fellas.”
“Where was they?”
Ralph crossed his arms. “Not on the lake.”
“Excuse me?”
Ralph motioned with his head. “They was at Pat’s Convenience Grocer, the day of . . . when it happened. They was gassing up their Jet Skis, buying beer, goofing around, making a damn nuisance of themselves.”
“I see. Was Pat working that day?”
“Oh, yeah, he was.”
“Did you tell Chief Makem about this?”
“No, but Pat, I ran into him a couple of days later, and he said it had all been taken care of.”
“I see.” Amos extended his hand, which Ralph shook. “I’m in your debt, Ralph. Tell you what, this winter I can plow out your driveway for free.”
Ralph blushed. “Ah, hell, Amos, you don’t have to do that.”
“Sure I do.” And Amos left.
That evening he parked across from Pat’s Convenience Grocer on Route 16. It had four gas pumps with a metal roof over the pumps, and the place sold beer, wine, soda, and lots of other stuff. It was a good place for tourists to hit before getting to the lake.
Amos checked his watch. It was near eight p.m., right when Pat Towler closed up. He got out and walked across the road, through the empty parking lot, and right into the store. The door jingled-jangled with bells on top, and Pat was behind the counter, surrounded by racks of cigarettes and state lottery tickets. Newspaper racks were to the right, carrying the weekly Leah News and newspapers from away, like the New York Times. There were shelves with narrow aisles, carrying canned goods and paper towels and such, and coolers on the far walls held beer and sodas.
“Hey, Amos, good to see you,” Pat said. “Hope you’re hangin’ in there okay.”
Pat was about Amos’s age but plump and balding, always wearing black slacks and blue shirts with his store name stitched in white over the left breast pocket.
Amos went up to the counter. “Hey, Pat, I was wonderin’ if I could have a moment.”
“Sure, as long as it don’t get me past closing time too much. What’s up?”
“I was wonderin’ if Chief Makem talked to you about his investigation.”
Pat nodded. “Yep. Him and a state police detective. Told ’em I didn’t know anything that could help them. Sorry.”
Amos said, “Thanks for giving me a moment.” He turned and said, “Hey, do you have any of those mini Hershey’s bars, the ones with almonds? Boy, they sure make a good late-night snack.”
Pat went around the counter. “I think we might have some—”
Amos went behind Pat and kicked hard, knocking his legs out from underneath him. Pat fell hard on his back, going “Oomph!” and Amos moved quickly, closing the deadbolt on the door, flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and then reaching over the counter to slap at the nearest light switches. Most of the lights in the store shut off. Pat was rolled over on his side, trying to get up, and Amos kicked him hard in the ribs. Pat yelped and Amos sat down on his chest, making Pat gasp.
“Now I’ll make this quick, Pat, ’cause you’ve always been nice to me and sent me a fine card after Jennifer got killed,” Amos said, looking down at the man’s red face. “So tell me about those two fellas from away who bought gas the day they run down my wife.”
Pat squirmed and started to deny stuff, and Amos gave him two healthy slaps to the face. “Now that’s not going to work, Pat, so tell me what you know. Now.”
Pat was snuffling snot through his nose. “They was a couple of wild bucks, they was. I think they was already drunk. I had to put one of them in his place for goofing around the tittie magazines out back.”
“So why didn’t you tell this to the chief?”
More blubbering. “One of the bucks drove up the next day. Said to me it was all an accident, told me his lawyer said something about me having a verbal confidentiality agreement with him. I didn’t know much about that ’cept he offered me a thousand bucks to keep my mouth shut. C’mon, Amos . . . it was an accident . . . and this has been a lousy summer . . . I can use the money . . .”
Amos said, “Those bucks paid with a credit card?”
Pat tried to nod with his head flat against the tile floor.
“Then you and me, we’re getting up, and you’re giving me that buck’s name and address.”
A few minutes later, sniffling, his face red, Pat passed over the man’s name and address on the back of a used lottery ticket. “You gotta see it from my point of view, Amos. That guy from away scared me.”
Amos took the ticket from Pat’s trembling hand. “No offense, Pat, you should be more scared of me.”
So two hours later on the day he purchased the map, Amos was in a city called Chelsea, northeast of Boston. He was parked illegally on Napoli Street, next to a fire hydrant, because it was the only open space. He was breathing hard and his legs were quivering. Never in his life had he been in traffic like this, not ever. He had heard stories about the madness of Massachusetts drivers and the odd way their roads were set up, but the reality was much worse. The other drivers raced ten or twenty miles above the speed limit, saw yellow lights as an invitation to speed through intersections, and YIELD was obviously meant for the other guy. The road signs made no sense—how could a highway be both I-95 South and Route 128 West?—and as he got deeper into Chelsea, lots of the intersections had no signs whatsoever.
But finally he was on the street where Tony Conrad lived, Tony Conrad who had paid for gas for his truck and his Jet Skis. How could anybody live like this? The homes were all two-story and were set on lots so tiny it looked like he could stand in the front yard, stretch both arms, and touch his neighbors’ fences. Oh, yeah, fences . . . for nearly every house on this street had a chain-link fence, no garage—what did they do when it snowed?—and almost every house had a barred front door and barred windows.
Imagine that, living in fear of your neighbors.
A red car quickly drove by, low-slung, with bass speakers in the rear thumping so hard it made his windshield quiver. He waited until the car turned the corner and then shifted his truck into drive.
Time to get to work.
He found a parking spot at a nightclub two blocks away. He walked briskly along the cracked and bumpy sidewalks, glancing left and right, left and right, all the way back to Tony Conrad’s house. He felt alone, out of place, and underneath his barn coat he had his knife in a leather scabbard, and at his back his 9mm Sig Sauer P229 pistol. Carrying this pistol in Massachusetts was highly illegal.
Amos didn’t care.
From most of the houses came a flickering blue glow from the television sets or loud music, all mixing in with the constant roar of traffic. Maybe all this noise and tight quarters explained why Massachusetts drivers acted so recklessly, either on a road or on a lake, racing fast on their Jet Skis and leaving the scene of an accident.
Maybe.
He strolled by 10 Napoli Street, saw a black Chevrolet pickup truck in the narrow driveway, backed in so its front bumper was facing out. He caught a glimpse of a Red Sox game from a television inside the house. He reached the end of the block, took a deep breath, and then walked back.
It was on the walk back that he saw the covered shape in the rear yard, near a toolshed.
He went up through the little front lawn, ducked around the side, and was in the tiny backyard. There was a tall wooden fence at the rear, the toolshed, and the tarpaulin-covered shape. He spotted wheels underneath the shape. A trailer. Amos went to the rear of the shape, tugged up the tarpaulin.
Two Jet Skis.
He took out a small flashlight, switched it on. The first Jet Ski was red, and as he pulled the tarpaulin further, he found the second one, dark blue with yellow lightning bolts. He knelt and examined them closely. The red Jet Ski looked fine. The dark blue one with lightning bolts had a series of scrapes and gouges along one side, and there were smears of light-blue paint.
The same color as Jennifer’s kayak.
His chest was cold and very tight.
He put the tarpaulin back and stood up.
A man’s voice called out to him. “Hey!”
Amos put his hands in his coat pockets, mouth dry, knowing how exposed he was, and started walking quickly out of the backyard.
A spotlight on the side of the house flashed on, illuminating him and everything about with a stark light. A side door slammed, footsteps echoed on the wooden steps.
“Hey!”
Men came out of the house, quickly blocking him. He looked behind him. The tall wooden fence and other chain-link fences. No escape.
There were five men, three women, bustling around, staring at him. A man with a prominent nose and short black hair strolled right up. In the glare of the spotlight, Amos instantly recognized him: the operator of the blue Jet Ski who had run down and killed Jennifer.
“Hey, what are you doing here, hunh?”
Amos looked at the men backing him up, thought through all the options, shrugged, and said, “Sorry, I was taking a leak.”
Another man said, “Christ, Tony, did you just hear that?”
“Yeah,” the man with the nose said. “I sure did.”
Tony Conrad, then. Right before him.
Tony stepped closer. Amos could smell beer and garlic on his breath. “Who the hell are you to piss in my backyard?”
“Nobody,” Amos said. “I just had to go.”
“Why my backyard, then?”
“It was dark,” Amos said. “I have a shy bladder.”
A nearby girl laughed. Tony poked Amos’s chest. “That’s so much crap. Who sent you? Hunh? The DeMint brothers? They send you here?”
“I don’t know anybody named DeMint,” Amos said, knowing he was strong and well armed, knowing it wouldn’t work here and now. “I’m from New Hampshire.”
One of the men laughed, and Tony laughed this time as well. “Stupid clodhopper. What are you doing in Chelsea anyway?”
“I got lost.”
“I guess the hell you did,” Tony said, backing away. “Sam, Paul, Gus . . . show this out-of-towner what happens to someone who pisses in my backyard.”
Amos took a deep breath, clenched his jaw, and made sure to fall to the ground and moan loudly when the first punch was thrown.
A long time later he was in his truck, lights off, engine running, the heater gently blowing air over him, letting the pain flow through him. When the guys started whaling on him, Amos had made sure to cross his legs to protect his private parts and to cover the sides of his head with his arms, shielding his ears and eyes. He yelped a lot, even when it didn’t sting so much, so they thought they was hurting him something awful. At some point they got bored or tired, and they went back into the house, laughing.
Now he rested, waiting. When the pain had drifted away some, he gingerly checked everything out, determined nothing was broken, nothing was bleeding much. Just some bruises and scrapes.
All right, then. The warm heater air felt good.
Eventually he turned everything off and slept in the front seat, best he could.
Next morning when he went back to Napoli Street, a couple of folks had left to go to work, leaving a few empty spots. He parked his truck behind a Volvo that hid him pretty well. Earlier he had gotten a takeout breakfast from a nearby McDonald’s and he waited. And waited.
Funny, it was almost like hunting deer, hunting a human. You had to know its territory, its turf, and its habits, and you had to get into a zone, where you were looking and waiting and listening for that flash of white among the tree trunks, the snap of a branch, the rustle of something moving slowly through leaves.
Amos sipped his coffee. Course, it was easier to hunt a human. They didn’t possess the same sense of smell and sight a deer had, where the slightest motion or noise would make a deer lift its white tail and fly quickly through the woods. And a human was so big and lumbering and slow, well, in some ways it t’weren’t fair, not that Amos minded.
Tony got out of his house, turned, and briefly talked to a robe-wrapped woman by the door, then went to his truck, got in, and drove off.
Amos started his own truck and started following him.
It took less than an hour for Amos to make his move. At the first traffic light he stopped two car lengths behind Tony, took out a roll of duct tape from the glove compartment, tore off four three-foot lengths of tape, which he then placed on each arm and leg. Following Tony was easier than he imagined. Back in Leah it would be impossible to do this without being noticed in about five minutes or so, ’cause the roads were so empty. But here there were stop signs, traffic lights, traffic circles, and all the squabbling traffic to keep him hidden.
Tony stopped at a store to get a newspaper, another store for coffee, and then he met up with some guys in a parking lot in front of a closed-up supermarket. The four of them stood in a circle and there was a lot of talking and waving hands.
Then there was a round of handshakes, Tony got in his truck, and Amos followed him to a tiny town park, where he took one of two empty parking spaces and got out, again talking and waving his arms, except this time it was on a cell phone. Amos cautiously parked his truck next to Tony’s, left the engine running, and got out. Tony had his back to him. Amos walked up, tapped him on the shoulder. Tony turned around, and before there was a hint of recognition on his face, Amos punched him hard in the throat. Done well—while missing the chin and the upper ribs—you could drop a guy and leave him literally speechless for nearly a half hour.
Amos did it well. Tony fell back on the thin lawn, and Amos worked quickly, binding his legs and arms with the duct tape. Then he went back to his truck, worked the limp form of Tony into the passenger’s seat of his Ford, fastened the seat belt, and then got in himself.
He quietly backed out and joined the crowded morning traffic.
They were nearly in New Hampshire when Tony finally got his voice back, and they had been in the Granite State for about ten minutes when Tony stopped yelling, screaming, and cursing at Amos.
Tony took a deep, rattling breath. “You’re working for the DeMint brothers, aren’t you?”
“Like I told you last night, I don’t know anybody named DeMint.”
“Shit, yes . . . you’re the guy we tuned up last night, for pissing in my backyard.”
“Have to apologize for that,” Amos said, feeling relaxed, driving on back-country roads that were so familiar and friendly. “That was a lie. I wasn’t urinating on your property.”
“Then . . . what the hell were you doing?”
“Checking out your Jet Skis.”
“Why the hell were you checking out my Jet Skis?”
Amos glanced over at him. “Really? You need to ask that question? I’m from New Hampshire and I’m checking out your Jet Skis.”
Tony pondered that and then spoke carefully. “Are you a cop?”
“No,” Amos said. “I’m a husband.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Tony said, “Look, man, I’m sorry. All right? It was an accident. I panicked, I didn’t know what to do, I know it was bad, leaving the scene of an accident . . . but I was scared.”
Amos said, “I saw you speed away after you run down my wife. That didn’t look like you was panicking. And you coming by to give a thousand dollars to Pat Towler, to keep his mouth shut, well, that was on purpose, and you sure weren’t scared, were you?”
Tony tried to move in his seat, not able to do much with the seat belt and harness across him, the duct tape tight against his wrists and ankles.
“What . . . what are you going to do?”
Amos said, “You killed my wife. What do you think?”
They were about a half hour away from Leah when Tony said, “Can we reach an understanding? A . . . settlement?”
“What do you have in mind?” Amos asked.
“Some . . . compensation, for what I did. Money exchanged, you go your way, I go mine, and it’s settled.”
“Sounds interesting. How much money were you thinking?”
“You first.”
“Nope,” Amos said. “Not playing games with you. If you were serious about making an offer, you’d do that straightaway.”
“Maybe . . . maybe I’m concerned you might be insulted by whatever number I mentioned.”
“There’s a thought,” Amos said.
A while later Tony changed tactics. “When I was talking to that store owner, what’s-his-name, he told me a bit about your wife. No offense, really, mister, but he told me hardly anybody in your town liked her. That she was a real bitch, and that she was taking advantage of you, kicking you out of your lake house, making you live in a shack, run all sorts of errands.”
Amos kept quiet.
“So . . . really. Why all the fuss? Like I said . . . we can reach an agreement, right here and now. What do you say?”
Amos glanced down at the speedometer, was pleased to see he was traveling at exactly the posted speed limit—forty miles an hour—without losing control and speeding. That would be unwise, giving a state trooper an excuse to pull him over.
“I say this,” Amos said. “For all her faults . . . Jennifer was my wife. Under God and under the law. So no matter how she treated me or how many friends she had, she was still my wife. And . . . I can’t let what you did go unpunished. It ain’t right. I was her husband. Taking care of her and getting justice for her, that’s my responsibility. And I ain’t a man to walk away from my responsibilities.”
“You really believe that?” the man asked, his voice quiet.
“I do.” A quick glance to him. “And if you did too, well, you wouldn’t be in my truck right now, trussed up like a turkey.”
As they got closer to Leah, traveling the back roads, Tony tried again. “Mister . . . please. All right. I have to pay for what I did. I get that. So pull over to a police station, or make a phone call, and I’ll let myself get arrested. Hell, I’ll even confess. So what do you say, mister? Okay? You do that and we’ll let the cops and the courts get justice for your wife.”
“Her name was Jennifer.”
“All right, justice for Jennifer.”
Amos waited for about thirty seconds or so. “Well, that’s tempting. The problem is, though, that’s what you say now. But suppose the cops, you tell them something else? That I roughed you up and kidnapped you? Then I’d be the one in trouble, not you. And even if you did let yourself get arrested, well, I’m sure all it would take would be a smart lawyer fella working on your behalf, telling the jury that you panicked, it was an accident, not to mention, hey, there’s no proof you were riding the Jet Ski. Maybe you let a friend borrow it, you forgot his name, that sort of thing, gives the jurors that thing . . . yeah, reasonable doubt.”
“It was an accident!”
Amos turned again to his frightened passenger. “The channel ’tween the two lakes, it’s got a half-dozen orange-and-white buoys, all sayin’ the same thing. NO WAKE ZONE. If you had been following those signs, you would have missed my wife. She’d still be alive. No, it was no accident, and no, I’m not gonna turn you over to the police. It’s my job, my responsibility.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Maybe so, but it is right,” Amos said.
When they got into Leah, he skirted the downtown and drove up the country road that led to Paul Sytek’s place, and then he took the old logging road that headed to where he had been doing the logging and other work. The way was bumpy and rough, and soon enough he came to a clearing that he’d made with all the weeks of cutting and chopping. He parked his Ford next to a cleared area that had a nice rectangular hole dug.
Amos got out, opened the door to the other side, undid the belt, and hauled out Tony. He pushed him into the dirt hole and he fell on his face. He squirmed around like a worm and then got up, dirt smeared over his face. His lower lip was trembling. He was crying.
“Please . . . God, please . . . don’t do it . . .”
Amos took out his Sig Sauer. “It’s gotta be done.”
“Wait! Damn it, please wait!”
Amos waited.
The man sobbed. “Back in Chelsea . . . I gotta girlfriend . . . Monica . . . she’s pregnant . . . I’m gonna be a dad . . . please . . . I know what I deserve . . . but please . . . you’re a guy without a wife now . . . and I’m sorry, Jesus, I’m sorry . . . but will you do the same to Monica? Will you? And make my boy or my girl . . . grow up without a dad?”
Amos waited.
Another round of sobs, the man’s taped arms before him, his legs shaking, dirt smeared all over him from where he had fallen. “Please . . . I’m begging you . . . if there’s any mercy in you, mister . . . please . . . let me live . . . I don’t know how . . . but I swear to God I’ll make it right to you . . . I swear on my unborn kid’s life . . . Honest to Christ . . .”
Amos sighed.
Waited. Remembered what that cute divorcée had said, back during his search. You’re such a good man, Amos.
Lowered the Sig Sauer.
“You sorry for what you did?”
“Oh, Christ, yes, so goddamn sorry.”
“And you’ll make it up to me, no matter how long it takes? Or what it takes?”
Tony nodded his head up and down, up and down. “Yes, yes, yes, I promise. Honest to God. I’ll even go to the cops and confess, I promise . . . just don’t leave my unborn kid without a dad.”
Amos put his pistol in his coat pocket.
“You figure you can climb up out of there on your own?”
It took a bit of work but Tony managed to do that, climb out of the hole, panting and breathing, and he kept on whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” as Amos tore off the duct tape from his ankles and wrists.
And then Tony punched Amos hard in the gut.
Amos fell back, and Tony was on him, and in seconds Tony was standing, breathing hard, grinning, Amos’s Sig Sauer in his hand.
“Man oh man, am I going to have a story to tell when I get back home. Jesus!”
Amos slowly stood up, hands empty. Tony laughed. “Man, you’re one stupid piece of work, you really are. And to think I’d let some dimwit slut like Monica bear me a child . . . well, Christ, that was never going to happen. Man, but you fell for that story, didn’t you?”
Amos didn’t say a word. Tony’s eyes flashed in anger. “Your turn to beg, mister. Your turn to cry, to have snot running down your face. C’mon! Beg!”
Amos slowly shook his head. “Sorry to say, but I don’t think that’s gonna make much of a difference, now, will it?”
Tony took a step forward. “First smart thing you’ve said all day, asshole.” He raised the Sig Sauer. “You’re so damn gullible.”
He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Eyes widening, he worked the slide, pulled the trigger. Again, nothing happened. Amos reached into his coat pocket, held up a full magazine of rounds, and then put it away. Then he took out his deer knife, approached Tony.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the first person to say that,” Amos said.