Slowly coming back to himself, he wiped the gun, put it in the guy’s hand, took a passport and wallet from his jacket pocket, and walked back to the car, cleaning himself up as best he could when he got there. Chances were no one would find the body for months, and even if it was days there’d be enough question marks to let it go as a probable suicide, a minor news story at most, easily ignored, no one at the inn ever guessing it might in some way have been connected with them.
Still conscious of how he’d look when he arrived back at the Copley, JJ stopped at a roadside diner, washed his hands and face in the rest room, drank an iced fruit tea. When he went back out to the car he picked up the briefcase, which he’d forgotten until then, lying on the floor in front of the passenger seat. He opened it, looked at the components snugly packed there, and smiled, strangely sentimental about the last time he’d used a rifle.
The remainder of the drive took no time at all, JJ getting back to the inn before nine. He stood for a minute when he got out of the car, a fresh-smelling stillness in the cool air, the porch and other lights behind him, a couple of smaller lights blinking in and out of visibility in the village, the top of the church steeple ghostly visible too against the dark blue sky.
JJ was lost again for a second, the whole world beautiful that night. He let it wash over him, snapping out of it only as a car turned up the drive toward the inn. He walked toward the porch but the driver of the car jumped out like he was in a hurry and reached the door at the same time.
“Hey,” he said to JJ. It was a kid with a mess of black hair, quality slacker’s clothes, a look that reminded JJ a little of Dylan McGill, a fresher, cleaner-cut version, or maybe just younger. JJ gave him a hello in response, and the kid stood back to let him walk through the door first.
Inside, a member of staff came into the lobby, a woman he didn’t recognize but who still said, “Good evening, Mr. Hoffman. Did you have a pleasant trip?” He responded as quickly as he could and started up the stairs. She moved on to the kid then. “Hi, Freddie. I’ll call Jem for you.”
“No, I’ll ... .” the kid started hesitantly, his tone polite.
“Oh, here she is now.” A girl appeared in jeans and a sweater, socks but no shoes, immediately, effortlessly attractive. She smiled at the woman who disappeared back toward the dining room.
She was so clearly Susan Bostridge’s daughter, beautiful like her but with long mousy hair, as much like her mother as the son was like his father. There seemed something else though, maybe just because she was young, fifteen, sixteen perhaps, an extra quality that made it difficult for him to take his eyes off her as he climbed the stairs. He almost wanted to stop, to go back and introduce himself, to find out exactly who she was, what she was like.
As if aware of his gaze she suddenly looked up and for a moment met it with her own eyes, a brief, puzzled, searching look, a piercing intensity, almost as if she knew him from somewhere, recognized him, her pretty face lost in looking at him. He smiled, a meaningless friendly smile, and turned away, conscious suddenly of where he’d come from, feeling bloodied as if the signs of that last killing were all over him. He continued the rest of the flight without looking back, though he wanted to, and still with a hypersensitive awareness of her presence.
“Hey,” he heard her say, and the kid responded with the same before her soft voice was there again, barely breaking cover. “So, you wanna come in?”
When JJ got to his room he put the briefcase and his own rucksack in the bottom of the closet, took his boots off, and fell onto the bed, lying there looking up at the ceiling, his chest still tight and sore from the impact of the seat belt when he’d braked. As on the first night it felt and sounded like there was no one else in the building.
There were other people though, the girl and her boyfriend among them. He couldn’t help but think of her, Jem, a girl who had to be about the same age as the one Bostridge had been with. That thought distracted him temporarily, how sick it made Bostridge, but he almost understood him too.
He felt snagged by the girl he’d just seen, a girl who was too young for him to be interested in, but snagged all the same, an immediate subliminal attraction like static in the blood, more than just the pull of youth and fresh beauty. Maybe she’d sensed it too in that moment she’d looked at him, knowing that she belonged with her boyfriend but sensing it all the same, two of those paths that should have crossed in a different time and place.
But then perhaps he was fooling himself, a beautiful teenage girl probably seeing him as just another guest at the inn. And it struck him that perhaps the way he felt now was the way it had been for Bostridge two years before, drawn despite himself, the Russian girl probably not even needing to approach him, just sitting in the bar nearby until Bostridge had lost himself in the possibilities and persuaded himself to talk to her.