Chapter 98
S URVEILLANCE. WAITING. Twiddling our thumbs. It was just like the old days again, and it only half-sucked this time.
As Sampson and I sat less than a hundred yards from the house in Montauk, along the South Fork of Long Island, I was growing more and more enthused about the possibility of taking the Butcher down soon. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking that something wasn’t right.
Maybe I even knew what was wrong: This killer hadn’t been caught before. As far as I knew, no one had come close. So why did I think we could bring him down now?
Because I was the Dragon Slayer and had succeeded with other killers? Because I used to be the Dragon Slayer? Because in the end life was fair, and killers ought to be caught, especially the one who had murdered my wife? Well, hell no, life wasn’t fair. I’d known that from the moment Maria collapsed, then died in my arms.
“You don’t think he’s going to come back here?” Sampson asked. “Is that what you’re thinking about, sugar? You think he’s on the run again? Long gone?”
“No, that’s not it exactly. This isn’t about Sullivan coming here or not. I think maybe he will. I don’t know exactly what’s bothering me, John. I just feel
it’s like we’re being set up somehow.”
Sampson screwed up his face.
“Set up by who? Set up why?”
“Don’t know the answer, unfortunately. To either of those reasonable questions.”
It was a strange gut feeling at this point. Just a feeling, though. One of my famous feelings. Which were often right, but not always, not every time.
As the sun began to go down and it got colder, I watched a couple of insane surf casters down near the ocean. We could see the water from the woods. The fishermen were dressed in neoprene waders up to their chests, and they were probably going for stripers at this time of year. Their lure bags and gaffs were attached to their waists, and one of them had a crazy-looking miner’s lamp strapped on to his Red Sox ball cap. It was very windy, and the windier it got, the better the fishing ? or so I’ve been told.
I had the idea that Sampson and I were fishing too, always fishing for whatever cockamamie evil lurked deep beneath the surface. And as I watched the seemingly innocent activity down at the shoreline, one of the fishermen slipped under a wave and then scrambled to recover some of his dignity. That water had to be damn cold.
I hoped that didn’t happen to Sampson and me tonight.
We shouldn’t be here like this ? but we were.
And we were exposed, weren’t we?
And this killer was one of the best we had ever faced. Maybe the Butcher was the best.