CHAPTER ELEVEN

Balint arrived early for the monthly heart-transplant summit the following Monday. He’d spent the previous afternoon glued to the radio in his study, but if the police had found Warren Sugarman’s corpse, they weren’t yet publicizing the discovery. Amanda hadn’t intruded upon him—but she’d clearly suspected something amiss, because each time he’d visited the kitchen to replenish his coffee, she’d had her cell phone pressed to her ear. Presumably she’d been dialing her lover—now her former lover—and, needless to say, Sugarman hadn’t answered her calls. By breakfast that morning, Balint’s wife had appeared blatantly anxious, but he pretended not to notice. Similarly he feigned surprise when Sugarman didn’t appear to chair the transplant meeting.

The summit would serve no purpose without a surgeon present who could agree to list the prospective organ recipients under his name. Balint nibbled on his croissant and skimmed his New York Times, waiting for a man he knew would never arrive. In fact, this would be the last early morning conference he’d have to attend for quite some time, he expected, because he’d recently learned that Chester Pastarnack—Sugarman’s only potential short-term replacement—had accepted a position as a paid consultant to a venture capital firm and relocated to Arizona.

“I got a ride home from Warren on Friday,” reported one of the anesthesiologists. “I even said to him, see you bright and early on Monday. He didn’t mention a word about not being here.”

The senior nursing coordinator gathered together her files. It was already 7:20. “Let’s hope he’s all right.” When she stood up, that somehow granted permission for the other attendees to disperse.

Balint accompanied the German consult-liaison psychiatrist into the corridor. “I have served on this committee twenty-six years,” said the headshrinker. “Under Chester Pastarnack and before that under Allan Drevitz and before Drevitz under Rachel Glendening. Not once did any of them stand us up.”

“Something must have happened,” said Balint—trying to sound just as he might have on any other occasion. “This is so unlike Warren.”

The psychiatrist snorted. “Dr. Glendening chaired this meeting once when she was nine months pregnant. The woman was practically in labor. You don’t surmise Dr. Sugarman is giving birth to a child, do you?”

Balint wasn’t sure whether the question was rhetorical.

“I doubt it,” he said.

“In that case,” answered the shrink, “I am highly disappointed.”

The word ‘disappointed’ from her lips suggested something closer to outrage.

LAURENDALE COUNTY’S Sheriff Ralph Spitford, announced the murder in a hastily arranged press conference shortly after noon. The sheriff was a broad-shouldered African American officer who wore his sunglasses perched on his forehead. His cousin was Reverend Spotty Spitford, the perennial left-wing presidential candidate. Unlike Chief Putnam or Detective Mazzotta, Spitford looked like a cop. He answered reporters’ questions in short, declarative sentences, as though pained to part with each syllable. Balint caught the tail end of the announcement during a quick foray into the cafeteria for a sandwich. In pairs and small groups, physicians and nurses stood transfixed around the television screens. Intermittently Balint heard Sugarman’s name and that of the Emerald Choker rising above the murmurs of alarm. A female surgery resident hurried past him toward the women’s restroom, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Balint strolled back to his office suite, his hands in his pockets. He resisted the overwhelming urge to whistle a cheerful tune.

News of Sugarman’s murder ricocheted swiftly through the hospital. Shortly before four o’clock, the vice president for external affairs sent out an e-mail message confirming the death and recapping the victim’s “illustrious” career. Balint wrote back on a whim, suggesting the creation of a memorial fund for Sugarman’s son. By the end of the workday, to his considerable amusement, he found himself in charge of a drive to raise college tuition for Davey Sugarman. Waiting at the elevator bay, Balint kept thinking to himself: I’m not going to run into Warren Sugarman. Never again. Although he’d been looking forward to this moment for many months, even he found himself genuinely surprised at how much pleasure he derived from knowing that he’d never again share another elevator car or endure another promenade across the parking garage in the company of his wife’s lover. On his way out of the building, Balint noticed that the hospital’s national and state flags had been lowered to half-mast.

Myron Salt caught up with him at the snack stand in the lobby, where Balint was buying a chocolate cruller for the drive home.

“You heard about Sugarman?” asked Salt.

“It’s awful. I’m practically shaking.”

He paid for his donut and waited while the neurologist ordered a latte.

“The Emerald Choker,” said Salt. “You read about these things. You don’t really believe they could happen to someone you know.”

“It’s uncanny.”

“I played squash with him on Saturday morning,” said Salt. “Or rather, I played squash against him. You know how Warren was about winning . . .”

“Losing certainly wasn’t his style.”

He registered that Salt was speaking of Sugarman in the past tense—and he dug his teeth into his lower lip to fight off an involuntary smile.

“And now I’m thinking, we were playing squash and he had only hours to live. And then I’m thinking, what if that lunatic had followed me home instead of Warren? What if I’d been the one who got wrapped up in ribbon?”

“You think you were followed?”

“I don’t have a clue. I’m just saying . . .”

The squash game came as a surprise to Balint. It meant Sugarman must have returned from his racquet club only a short time before Balint rang his doorbell—that he had lucked out to find his rival at home. For all he knew, the entire Institutional Review Board proposal of the previous weekend might have been an outright lie to conceal plans with Amanda, plans foiled when Balint insisted upon leaving the girls in her care. Gloria might merely have been a last-minute stand-in. What a relief, he reflected, that this weekend Sugarman had substituted a sporting match for a stymied tryst rather than another romance.

“It still hasn’t sunk in,” said Balint—striving to strike the right chord. “Warren—of all people! It goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished.”

“How so?” asked Salt.

Balint hadn’t anticipated having to explain himself. “All I’m saying is that Warren was one of the kindest, most generous, upstanding human beings I’ve ever met—and it’s hard to see how, in a fair world, he’d be the one to get murdered.”

Myron Salt laughed, but with a glance around them, as though Balint had told an off-color joke. “Warren? Upstanding? Now that’s some radical historical revisionism if ever I heard it. Warren was a philandering prick and a selfish bastard. And he was also my best friend since second grade, so I should know.”

“You certainly don’t mince words,” said Balint.

“I cared about him too much when he was alive to lie about him now that he’s dead.”

Their conversation paused while they passed through the revolving doors into a wintry mix of snow and slush. Myron Salt opened his umbrella.

“How are you doing?” he asked Balint. “I figured if there were any residual effects from your boxing match, I’d have heard from you by now.”

“I’m back to baseline—at least as far as I can tell. I suppose I could have major deficits without realizing it.”

“You might not realize it,” answered Salt. “But your wife would. Half the calls I get these days are from concerned spouses. Only last week, a woman whose husband I’d treated phoned me and said, ‘He’s more or less back to normal—except he’s been going to work wearing only one shoe and sock.’ ” The neurologist laughed again. “Isn’t that classic? Only one shoe and sock. I guess it’s all a matter of your perspective on normal.

“Anyway,” said Salt, “I’m glad to see you’re wearing shoes on both feet.”

He wished Balint a safe trip home and set out into the darkness.

BALINT HAD expected to find Amanda on the verge of a breakdown. To his surprise, his wife greeted him as though nothing were amiss. She was camped out at the kitchen table, surrounded by balls of crumpled paper, navigating Jessie through her math homework. “Dinner’s running late,” she apologized. “Phoebe left her backpack at school and I had to drive her there to pick it up.” How well she’s taking this, thought Balint—or, more accurately, what a great show she’s putting on. But then it struck him that she didn’t know. Why should she? What was devastating news bound to spread rapidly through the hospital might not seem nearly as significant at the public library, where most likely nobody other than Amanda had ever heard of Warren Sugarman. Before today, at least. As he listened to his wife explain how to convert fractions into decimals, he grew increasingly convinced that she wasn’t faking.

After a twelve-hour workday, Balint’s stomach gnawed with hunger. He realized that his wife wasn’t to blame for their late dinner, but the delay irritated him nonetheless. When he failed to find a satisfactory snack in the refrigerator that might tide him over until the meal, a cruel impulse got the best of him. “What a crazy day at the hospital,” he said. “I imagine you heard the news about Sugarman.”

Amanda looked up, concerned. “What news?”

Balint sorted though the day’s mail—forcing himself to appear indifferent.

“What news?” she demanded again. “Did something happen to Warren?”

“You really don’t know?”

“Oh my God. Is he hurt?”

He looked up from the mail—wearing an expression of polite concern.

“Not hurt . . . Dead,” he said. “Murdered.”

A subtle change swept across Amanda’s face: her eyebrows slanted closer together and the muscles around her mouth tightened. To Balint, attuned to these subtle nuances, it was as though he were watching as the final vestiges of youthful beauty drained from his wife’s features. She set down her calculator. Jessie recognized her mother’s distress and dropped her pencil.

“I don’t believe you,” said Amanda.

Balint continued to sort through the mail. “Why would I make that up?”

“You know exactly why . . . To torment me. To throw things in my face. If this is your idea of a joke, Jeremy, it’s not the slightest bit amusing. It’s sick.”

“Do I sound like I’m joking?”

Amanda’s eyes were fixed on him. “Jessie, please go watch TV.”

“Are you mad, Mommy?”

“No, darling, I’m not mad. But Daddy and I need to talk. About adult things.”

Their daughter didn’t protest further. A moment later, they were alone. Amanda held her arms to chest as though to protect herself from attack.

“Did you do something to Warren?” she demanded.

“Me? Nothing. It was the Emerald Choker.”

A puzzled look sparked in his wife’s eyes, and color surged into her cheeks. “You are fucking with me. You bastard!”

Balint feared she might throw something at him—something more lethal than a high-heeled shoe. “If you don’t believe me, turn on the news . . .”

Amanda rose in silence and crossed the room to the vintage black-and-white television that perched on the countertop. They’d inherited it from her father when he passed away—rabbit ears and all. She turned on the device and flipped through the channels to the six o’clock news. On the screen, a grizzled crime reporter in a trench coat broadcast from Meadow Court; while he spoke, the camera cut to footage of a body bag being removed from Sugarman’s home.

“It can’t be . . .” gasped Amanda.

“Satisfied?” asked Balint. “I don’t blame you for not believing me. When you get right down to it, what are the odds that someone we know would be murdered by a serial killer? It’s going to be a challenge for the transplant program . . .”

Amanda switched off the television.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

His wife shook her head. Her face had turned a ghastly shade of ash. She didn’t cry. She didn’t move. She merely stood with her back leaning against the counter, paralyzed with grief, staring blankly out at the room. If she’d exploded with rage or collapsed into tears, Balint might have savored his payback. But his mind didn’t know how to process Amanda’s catatonic agony, an emotion utterly alien to him, and the longer she remained mute and motionless, the less pleasure he could find in his success. That brief interval—before his wife regained control of her senses and inquired after Sugarman’s funeral—was the only time when Balint entertained the notion that he’d actually done something wrong.

THE NEXT few days were the most critical for Balint’s scheme. Up until now, he’d had no connection to his victims; as long as he wasn’t spotted entering or exiting their homes, and didn’t leave incriminating evidence at the crime scenes, the authorities had no way of tracing their deaths to his doorstep. In contrast, he’d been deeply enmeshed in Sugarman’s life. Even a superficial investigation of his rival’s personal affairs would have uncovered multiple motives for Balint to kill him. Yet for all of his apprehension, the police and the public never considered the slaying as anything other than a random act of violence perpetrated by a lunatic. The media reported every minute detail of the crime, and hailed the glories of Sugarman’s medical career, but no mention was made of his pending divorce or his multiple mistresses or the dead dog he’d discovered seven months earlier in his rose bushes.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing, Sheriff Spitford established a command center inside a mobile trailer opposite Sugarman’s house. His deputies knocked on every door within a square-mile radius in search of witnesses. Meanwhile across the New York City Metropolitan Area, what had previously been a matter of passing concern increasingly gave way to general panic. The networks ran stories about extended families that had temporarily moved in together so elderly parents or unmarried siblings wouldn’t find themselves alone with the Choker. The authorities compounded this anxiety with mass e-mail messages and text alerts offering “safety tips” to protect oneself from attack. Neighborhood patrols, like the one proposed by Henry Serspinsky, sprang up in housing projects and sleepy exurbs. All of these efforts occurred against a background of wild speculation by various self-proclaimed experts on unsolved crimes. Using various algorithms, these experts predicted the precise locations of the next murders—which they claimed would occur in sites as varied as suburban Albany and on the steps of the Chrysler Building. Nobody ever seemed to question that another slaying would ultimately occur, that the culprit might not simply rest on his laurels and retire. One British website even offered pari-mutuel betting on the location of the next killing and the demographics of future victims.

In the absence of clear progress in apprehending the killer, the media focused on supposed tensions among the various investigators. Days passed before Sheriff Spitford was invited to join Chief Putnam’s task force, fueling further rumors of disagreement over strategy. Putnam and Mazzotta apparently wanted to devote resources to finding the “missing” body of the hypothetical victim who’d been tagged with four ribbons. Spitford doubted the existence of a fifth fatality. He’d been quoted as saying, during a closed-door meeting, “I won’t be dragged on a wild goose chase, when there probably isn’t any goose. That extra ribbon was a twisted joke. You can bet your Sherlock Holmes hats that the perpetrator is laughing his ass off at us right now.” But Putnam and Mazzotta weren’t convinced; they didn’t believe sociopaths were capable of pranks. Isabel Crosby from Trenton Today claimed that Spitford and the founders of the task force were no longer on speaking terms, although all parties vehemently denied this charge. Crosby also broke the news that State Senate Majority Leader Veronica Sanchez-McCord was receiving electroshock therapy for depression at an out-of-state clinic.

In keeping with Jewish tradition, Warren Sugarman’s burial occurred on the first day following the discovery of his body. The previous evening, Balint’s home telephone had rung shortly after eleven o’clock, while Amanda was in the girls’ bedroom, comforting Phoebe over a nightmare. He let the answering machine pick up. Only when he heard Bruce Sanditz’s stentorian voice on the tape did he race into the kitchen for the receiver. Never before, as far as he could recall, had his boss called him at home—certainly not in the middle of the night. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I’m here.”

“Glad I caught you awake,” replied Dr. Sanditz. “You have a minute?”

“For you, an hour,” agreed Balint. “What’s going on?”

Through the plaster, he heard Amanda reading another bedtime story to Phoebe.

“My sense is that you and Warren Sugarman were good friends, right?”

Balint felt his stomach roiling. “You could say that,” he conceded.

“Good. Because I need another eulogy for tomorrow’s memorial,” said the chairman. “I agreed to coordinate this damn thing for Jeanine’s sake—they were practically engaged, just so you know—but I’m having a doozy of a time lining up speakers. So far, all I have is Myron Salt from neurology. Can I count on you for a brief speech? It doesn’t have to run more than five to ten minutes.”

“Are you sure?” asked Balint. “What about a surgeon?”

“I tried. They all said no. I’d never say this in front of Jeanine, but that fellow had more enemies than I ever would have guessed. So can you help me out?”

Balint agreed. What choice did he have? Unfortunately public speaking had never been one of his strong suits, and he stayed up another four hours churning out a draft of his remarks. Yet as he jotted down platitudes of praise, he cursed Sugarman’s memory. The bastard was having one last laugh, even from beyond the grave. When Balint arrived at Sewell Auditorium for the ten o’clock tribute, accompanied by Amanda, his eyes were bloodshot from exhaustion. According to the photocopied program, a graveside service in Elizabeth Lakes would follow the memorial.

The turnout amazed Balint. For a man who’d so recently run short on eulogists, Sugarman attracted more than his fair share of mourners—or, at least, of the idly curious. Balint recognized many of his colleagues in the crowd, including Andy Price from hematology, Sid Crandall from endocrinology, and even Dr. Liao, the visiting Taiwanese pulmonologist who’d subbed for him at the free clinic. There were also faces he hadn’t seen in years: Allan Drevitz, the retired surgeon who’d directed the transplant program before Pastarnack; a social work coordinator with an artificial voice box who’d retired when Balint was still an intern. And there were countless mourners he didn’t recognize at all—including a disproportionate number of attractive young females. At the urging of Dr. Sanditz, Balint and Amanda settled into the second row. Myron Salt and his most recent wife—his much younger wife—sat to their right. In the front row, on the opposite aisle, Rabbi Steinhoff conferred with Gloria Sugarman/Picardo. The late surgeon’s son squirmed in his nearby seat and tugged at his necktie. Immediately in front of Balint, the chairman’s daughter wept softly into her mother’s shoulder.

“I had no idea Sugarman had so many friends,” he said to Amanda.

His wife looked at him as though she hardly recognized him. “There are lots of things you don’t know. As hard as that is for you to imagine.” Amanda didn’t sound angry, merely depleted. She’d hardly spoken to him since she’d learned of her lover’s death. Balint considered reaching for her hand—but he feared that she might pull away. He didn’t want to risk forcing their reconciliation prematurely.

At precisely five minutes after ten, Steinhoff stepped to the lectern and welcomed the mourners. On this occasion, the young rabbi did not appear to be in any hurry; his cellular phone was nowhere to be seen. He offered a prayer—in both English and Hebrew—and then yielded the floor to Bruce Sanditz. As though the microphone were a hot potato, the chairman quickly handed it over to Myron Salt. Only then did Balint examine the program more carefully. He had not merely been billed as the final speaker, it turned out; he was described as Sugarman’s “lifelong friend.” Listening to Myron Salt tell stories of his boyhood antics with the dead man growing up in Bergen County—how they’d trapped a songbird and placed it inside their third grade teacher’s desk drawer, and how Salt had slept on Sugarman’s couch after each of his divorces—Balint’s own prepared remarks about the deceased man’s “collegial spirit” and surgical skills felt woefully inadequate. He wished he’d had Delilah beside him for moral support, rather than Amanda’s cool civility.

“And our final tribute of the morning,” announced Dr. Sanditz after Salt returned to his seat, “is Warren’s closest friend both from college and from medical school, the chief of our own division of cardiology, Dr. Jeremy Balint.”

Balint stepped up to the podium. The stage lights nearly blinded him for an instant, but soon his eyes adjusted. In front of him, only inches from his feet, Jeanine Sanditz sniffled into a tissue. A few yards to his left, Gloria bore a stoic grimace. Amanda’s face remained an inscrutable blank. All at once, the cardiologist was struck by how much human suffering Warren Sugarman had caused. If he’d had any doubts about wiping out his rival, as his eyes panned across each of these betrayed, grieving women, Balint felt himself thoroughly and unequivocally vindicated. That was what he truly wanted to talk about: Vindication. Justice. With each passing second, the silence in the auditorium grew heavier. He removed his prepared remarks from his breast pocket and glanced over them; then he set them aside.

“It is only fitting that our beloved friend and colleague, Warren Sugarman, was murdered by the Emerald Choker,” he declared, “because it reminds us that it requires an enormous evil to eradicate as powerful a force for good as was Warren.” His voice rose as his confidence grew. “I used to joke with Warren that if he had been born Catholic, they’d have made him a saint. His response was always the same: he warned me not to let his secret out of the bag. Because Warren’s modesty and deep humility kept him from publicizing his most generous deeds. For instance, many of you remember Warren’s ‘vacation’ in Peru last year. But how many of you know that Warren secretly donated all of the proceeds from his industry-sponsored lectures to free clinics in Lima . . . ?”

None of them knew about donations to the free clinics, of course, because they’d never taken place. Nor had the nights in medical school when Sugarman allowed homeless former patients to crash on the couch in his dormitory room. For nearly half an hour, Balint rattled off his rival’s unheralded good deeds—his life-saving bone-marrow donations, the hours he volunteered recording medical journals for blind physicians, the many occasions when together they skipped their Columbia classes and served meals at a South Bronx soup kitchen. “The world’s indigent and downtrodden had had no greater ally,” avowed Balint, “than the late Warren Sugarman.” His portrait of the murder victim was complete nonsense, but nobody was in any position to object.

“At the time of his death,” Balint concluded, “Warren had just told me that he planned on donating one of his kidneys to a complete stranger. What do I need with an extra kidney? he asked. And while, as we all know, Warren never had an opportunity to give that kidney away while here with us on earth, I’d like to believe he’s already had himself listed as an organ donor in heaven.” By the end of his eulogy, Balint had been so moved by his own words that he found himself wiping tears from his eyes.

Gloria thanked him for his kind remarks. Jeanine Sanditz assured him that he’d captured perfectly “the essence” of the Warren she’d known and loved. Etan Steinhoff patted him on the back and reminded him that he’d make a fine rabbi. Balint also received handshakes and hugs from dozens of strangers.

The interment itself was a far more intimate affair. Only a handful of friends followed the hearse to the cemetery. A bitter chill had dropped the temperature below freezing. Steinhoff said the mourners’ kaddish and the shema, then read the twenty-third Psalm. Balint took his turn shoveling soil onto the casket. By two o’clock, the body rested underground and they were headed back to Laurendale.

Amanda didn’t utter one word on their drive home. He feared that she alone might have seen through his lavish praise of Sugarman—that his wife might even have interpreted his remarks as mockery. But time, Balint knew, was on his side. His rival no longer had a dog in the fight. Now that he’d eliminated the competition, Balint was ready to start rebuilding his marriage.

AMANDA HAD taken a bereavement day at the library, but Balint was still planning to see patients in the late afternoon. He pulled up in front of their home and waited for his wife to exit the car. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Dropping you off. I have a four o’clock patient.”

She didn’t respond at first. After a pause, she said, “Would you please come inside? I’d like to have a conversation with you.”

“Can it wait until tonight?”

“No,” replied Amanda. “It cannot wait until tonight.”

So Balint shut off the engine and followed her into the house. He sensed she was displeased with his eulogy, but he didn’t see why their discussion couldn’t be postponed until after supper. Amanda keyed off the burglar alarm and hung her coat in the closet; then she climbed the stairs to their bedroom and slumped down on the bedspread. He stood opposite her, leaning against his exercise bike. Neither of them had turned on the overhead fixture, so a cloak of pale winter sunlight draped over the room.

He decided to preempt her. “If you’re upset about something I said at the memorial, I want you to know that I did the best I could on short notice.”

Amanda shrugged. “I’d like you to do something for me. Something important.”

“Sure. Anything—if it’s that important.”

“It is important.” Her eyes focused on her hands; Balint could hardly hear her voice. “I’d like you to move out.”

That hadn’t been what he’d anticipated. He willed himself to remain calm—as he did on the rare occasions when a patient suffered a cardiac arrest in his office. “You’re upset. And maybe you have a right to be upset. But is this really what you want? Jesus, Amanda. Nine years is a long time. Once you’ve had a chance to think things over, you may see them differently.”

“I’m not upset, Jeremy. I have every right to be upset, but I’m not. And I have thought things through. Now if you care about me the slightest bit—or even if you don’t—I’m asking you to pack your things and move out.”

A shiver ran up Balint’s spine. His eyes darted around the bedroom—the room they’d shared for nearly a decade. On the carpet in front of the bookcase lay his wife’s valise, still halfpacked from their trip to Disney World. An unfinished latchhook rug rested on her nightstand. It seemed impossible that at the very moment he’d finally removed the chief obstacle to their happiness, his wife suddenly wanted out.

“May I ask why?” he asked.

Amanda nodded. “If what you said today at Warren’s service wasn’t true—and I doubt it was—then you’re a total asshole and I’m ashamed to be married to you. But if for some reason it were true—if Warren really did lead this double life as a saint and a bone-marrow donor, then that reminded me that I’m married to the wrong person. I don’t love you, Jeremy. It’s that simple.”

“You mean you’re not in love with me. That happens. After seven, eight, nine years, marriages change.”

“You’re not listening to me, Jeremy. I’m not in love with you. That’s true. But it’s not what I’m saying. I don’t love you. Period. The sad part is that I haven’t loved you for a very long time . . . If not for Warren, I’d have left you ages ago.”

“Warren?”

“Don’t pretend, okay? I’m tired of pretending. You know I was having an affair with Warren and I know you’re screwing some nursing student—and the only reason I didn’t say something sooner was that Warren preferred it this way. On account of Gloria, before they split up, and then for his son . . .” Amanda rose from the bed. “So now you see why I think that it’s best for you to move out.”

“Why should I move out?” demanded Balint. He felt his anger mounting; he cupped his fist in his palm. “You were fucking Warren Sugarman so I should move out. That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.”

“Okay, I’ll move out,” Amanda replied without emotion. “I’ll move out and you drive Phoebe to her violin lessons and buy Jessie’s favorite brand of ice pops and call the water company next month to turn the sprinklers back on for the summer. Do you have any fucking idea what it’s like to run a house, Jeremy? Do you know how to prepare the estimated taxes for the accountant? Or how often the flue should be swept out so the fireplace doesn’t explode? My God, I bet you don’t even know the names of your daughters’ teachers!”

“Mrs. Duncrest and Miss Grossman.”

“That was last year,” Amanda corrected him. “I don’t think you have the slightest clue how to do what I do every day. Not a fucking clue. But if you want to try, goddammit, be my guest.”

Balint realized that his entire future depended on what he said next, but he could no longer conceive of a path forward—at least, not one in which he persuaded Amanda to change her mind. Her offer hung in the air like poison. Balint’s body felt as frigid as ice.

“I don’t want to try,” he murmured.

“What?”

“I said, I don’t want to try.”

Amanda retrieved her purse from the bed. “I’m going to pick your daughters up from school and I’m going to take them to Animal Palace for dinner. Please don’t be here when I get back.”

Again she’d caught him off guard. “You can’t really expect me to move out right now?” he asked. “Where am I supposed to go?”

His wife walked to the door. “Where do you go when you’re claiming you’re at dinner talks and continuing education conferences?” she asked. “You’re a smart guy, Jeremy—and you have a gift for deception. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Amanda disappeared into the corridor, leaving him alone in the shadow-filled room. “What about the girls?” he called after her. “What are you going to tell them?” But she was already gone.

For the longest minute of his life, Balint stared at the spot where she’d been standing. Then he adjusted to his new situation and started packing clothes and toiletries into his suitcases. What other option remained? He’d have to rent a room at the Hager Heights Motor Inn until he could find an apartment. And once he was settled into his new lodgings, he’d have to murder again. Two more times. What a waste, he thought. What a nuisance. But it was far too late to alter his course, so he would still have to sacrifice two more lives for the sake of a marriage that could no longer be salvaged.