—
The blue neon sign in the front window of Village Tap blinks through the storm, like a signal from a lighthouse, telling me I’m close to home.
There is no Hotel Royale in this world, so I check into the sad Days Inn across from my local bar.
Two nights is all I can afford, and it brings my cash reserves down to $120 and change.
The business center is a tiny room down the hallway on the first floor, with a borderline-obsolete desktop, fax machine, and printer.
Online, I confirm three pieces of information.
Jason Dessen is a professor in the Lakemont physics department.
Ryan Holder just won the Pavia award for his research contributions in the field of neuroscience.
Daniela Vargas-Dessen isn’t a renowned Chicago artist, and she doesn’t run a graphic-design business. Her charmingly amateurish website displays several pieces of her best work and advertises her services as an art instructor.
As I trudge up the stairwell to my third-floor room, I finally begin to let myself believe.
This is my world.
—
I sit by the window of my hotel room, staring down at the blinking neon sign of Village Tap.
I am not a violent person.
I’ve never hit a man.
Never even tried to.
But if I want my family back, there’s simply no way around it.
I have to do a terrible thing.
Have to do what Jason2 did to me, only without the conscience-protecting option of simply putting him back into the box. Even though I have one ampoule left, I wouldn’t repeat his mistake.
He should’ve killed me when he had the chance.
I feel the physicist side of my brain creeping in, trying to take over the controls.
I’m a scientist, after all. A process-minded thinker.
So I think of this like a lab experiment.
There’s a result I want to achieve.
What are the steps it will take for me to arrive at that result?
First, define the desired result.
Kill the Jason Dessen who’s living in my home and put him in a place where no one will ever find him again.
What tools do I need to accomplish that?
A car.
A gun.
Some method of restraining him.
A shovel.
A safe place to dispose of his body.
I hate these thoughts.
Yes, he took my wife, my son, my life, but the idea of the preparation and the violence is so ugly.
There’s a forest preserve an hour south of Chicago. Kankakee River State Park. I’ve been there several times with Charlie and Daniela, usually in the fall when the leaves are turning and we’re antsy for wilderness and solitude and a day out of the city.
I could drive Jason2 there at night, or make him drive, just like he did to me.
Lead him down one of the trails I know on the north side of the river.
I will have been there a day or two prior, so his grave will already be dug in some quiet, secluded place. I’ll have researched how deep to make it so animals can’t smell the rot. Make him think he’s going to dig his own grave, so he thinks he has more time to figure out an escape or to convince me not to do this. Then, when we’re within twenty feet of the hole, I’ll drop the shovel and say that it’s time to start digging.
As he bends down to pick it up, I’ll do the thing I can’t imagine.
I will fire a bullet into the back of his head.
Then I’ll drag him over to the hole and roll him into it and cover him up with dirt.
The good news is that no one will be looking for him.
I’ll slide back into his life the same way he slid into mine.
Maybe years down the road, I’ll tell Daniela the truth.
Maybe I’ll never tell her.
—
The sporting-goods store is three blocks away and still an hour shy of closing. I used to come in here once a year to buy cleats and balls when Charlie was into soccer during middle school.
Even then, the gun counter always held a fascination for me.
A mystique.
I could never imagine what would drive someone to want to own one.
I’ve only fired a gun two or three times in my life, while I was in high school in Iowa. Even then, shooting at rusted oil drums on my best friend’s farm, I didn’t experience the same thrill as the other kids. It scared me too much. As I would stand facing the target, aiming the heavy pistol, I couldn’t escape the thought that I was holding death.
The store is called Field and Glove, and I’m one of three customers at this late hour.
Wandering past racks of windbreakers and a wall of running shoes, I make my way toward the counter at the back of the store.
Shotguns and rifles hang on the wall over boxes of ammunition.
Handguns gleam under glass at the counter.
Black ones.
Chrome ones.
Ones with cylinders.
Ones without.
Ones that look like they should only be carried by vigilante cops in 1970s action movies.