He’d died with some of his birthday scotch left, the bottle still a quarter full. Jim had set it on the pillow next to him, as if he knew Kellaway would be by later and wanted to return it to him. He’d clothed himself in the jacket of his dress uniform, his Purple Heart pinned to his breast. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt, though, and the sheets were pulled up to just below the big slope of his belly.
When Kellaway reached across Jim’s body for the scotch, his sleeve brushed a sheet of ruled paper. He caught it, sat back, held it up to read it by the closet light. He was not at all surprised to see that the note was addressed to him.
Rand—
Hey, brother. If you’re the one who finds me—and I hope you are—I’m sorry about the mess. I just couldn’t hang in there anymore.
About three months ago, I dropped in on my doc for a routine checkup, and he didn’t like the sound of my chest. The X-ray spotted a shadow in my right lung. He said we should follow up. I said I’d think about it.
And I did think about it, and what I thought is: Fuck it. I can’t stand the smell of my own piss anymore, there’s nothing good on TV, and Mary’s gone. In a way she’s been gone for almost a year. She was still spending the days here, so she could look after me, but she’d take off at bedtime to visit a guy she met at work. She spends most nights with him, and when she comes home, I can smell it on her. I can smell she’s been fucking him. Couple of days ago, she made it official, told me it was time for her to move out.
No one ought to live this way. Sometimes I put the gun in my mouth and I’m surprised how good it feels. How much I like the taste. I’ve eaten Mary’s pussy a thousand times, and I’ll tell you what, I’d rather go down on a .44.
It’s like that joke for teasing vegetarians: If God didn’t want us to eat animals, he shouldn’t of made ’em so tasty. If Colt didn’t want us to eat a pistol, they shouldn’t of made gun oil so tasty.
I think it was what happened at the mall, finally made me brave enough to do this thing. When it mattered, you had the balls to stand up and put a bullet where you knew it could do some good. You were ready to die to stop something that needed stopping. And that’s how I feel, too, man. I can’t live like this anymore. It needs to stop, and I need to be brave enough to stop it. To put a bullet where it can do some good.
I couldn’t of done this if I had to figure out how to hang myself or if I had to cut my wrists and bleed out slow. I know I couldn’t. I’d lose my nerve at the last minute. My brain is my enemy. Thank God there’s a way to switch it off quick.
Oh, hey, if you want any of my weapons, they’re all yours. I know you’ll appreciate them and take care of them. Ha ha ha why don’t you test them out on Mary! You make it look like I killed her in a murder-suicide, and I’ll gay-marry you in heaven.
Not being gay at all when I say I love you, Rand. You were the only person who ever came to visit me. You were the only person who cared. We had some times, didn’t we?
Best,
Jim Hirst
Earlier, when Kellaway was outside, it had seemed to him that Jim was close, that his old friend was somehow, impossibly, walking alongside him. Now he felt Jim near him again. He wasn’t in the bed. That was just ruined meat and thickening, cooling blood. Kellaway thought he could see Jim at the edge of his vision, just outside the doorway, a big, dark shape lurking in the corridor.
Before, the idea of Jim walking alongside him had frightened him, but now it didn’t bother Kellaway at all. He was instead comforted by the notion.
“It’s all right, brother,” he said to Jim. “It’s all right now.”
He folded the note and put it in his pocket. He uncorked the scotch and had a swallow. It blazed inside him.
For the first time since the morning of the mall shooting, he felt calm, centered. He was sure, if their positions had been reversed, he would’ve shot himself years and years before, but he was glad Jim got there eventually.
He did not think it would be best to be the person who discovered the body. Let Mary find him. Or Jim’s sister. Or anyone. If the press connected him with yet another gunshot victim . . . well, what had Rickles told him? They’d make a meal out of him for sure.
But Kellaway was in no rush to leave. No one was coming by Jim Hirst’s house at nearly ten in the evening. No one was going to bother the two of them. It was good scotch, and Kellaway had slept on Jim’s couch before.
And besides: Before he left in the morning, he could step into the garage and have a look at Jim’s guns.
9:32 P.M.
She heard her cell phone ringing and kissed Dorothy on the nose, stepped out of her daughter’s dark bedroom and into the hall. She got it on the third ring, didn’t recognize the number.
“Lanternglass,” she said. “Possenti Digest. What’s up?”
“I don’t know!” called a merry voice with a faint Latin accent through the hiss of a signal bouncing off a satellite a third of the way around the world. “You called me. Lauren Acosta, sheriff’s department. Whoo!” That whoo! didn’t seem to be directed at her. Other people were whoo-ing in the background.
“Thanks for returning my call. You’re in Alaska?”
“Yeah! We’ve got whales breaching here! Whoo!” Off on the other end of the line, from up in the Arctic Circle, Lanternglass heard yells and scattered applause and a sound like someone playing ugly notes on a tuba.
“I hate to interrupt your vacation. Do you want to watch your whales and call me another time?”
“No, I can talk and still admire a thirty-ton sexy beast doing backflips.”
“What kind of whales?” asked Dorothy. She had crept to her bedroom door and stood holding the doorframe, staring into the hall, her eyes glittering at the bottom of dark hollows. She was wearing a red-and-white-striped nightcap that looked like it had been swiped from Waldo.
“None of your business,” Lanternglass said. “Get back in bed.”
“What did you say?” Acosta asked.
“Sorry. I was speaking to my daughter. She’s excited about your whales. What kind?”
“Humpbacks. A pod of eighteen.”
“Humpbacks,” Lanternglass repeated. “Now, scoot.”
“I have to pee,” Dorothy announced primly, and sashayed past her mother, down the hall, and into the bathroom. She clapped the door shut behind her.
“Lauren, I’m calling about Randall Kellaway. You’ve probably heard—”
“Oh, that guy.”
Lanternglass stiffened, felt a curious crawling sensation up her spine, as if someone had breathed on the nape of her neck.
“You know him? Did you serve papers on him?”
“Yeah, I delivered the restraining order. I had to collect up about half his arsenal. My partner, Paulie, got the rest out of his house. Guy owned a fully automatic Uzi. He drove around with it! You know what kind of person drives around with an Uzi in his car? The evil henchman in a James Bond movie. What’s up with Kellaway? I hope he didn’t shoot anyone.”
Lanternglass leaned against the wall. “Holy shit. You don’t know.”
“Know what? Oh, no,” Acosta said, all the pleasant hilarity draining from her voice. In the background someone blew that awful note on a tuba again. “Please tell me he didn’t kill his wife. Or his little boy.”