Instead of returning to his office, he walked to an office down the hall, tapped twice on the glass, and opened the door. Trooper Jayme Matson looked up from behind her desk. She was thirty-six years old, twelve years younger than DeMarco, a tall, thin woman whom some of the troopers secretly referred to as “Ichabod.” But DeMarco knew her resemblance to the Sleepy Hollow ectomorph had more to do with the uniform than with her own physiology. He knew that in a sleeveless summer dress and two-inch heels, with her strawberry-blond hair hanging loose to her jawline and not knotted into a bun, she could look as elegant as a gazelle. He also knew the reason for the melancholy smile with which she now, and always, regarded him.
“You still working on that master’s in psychology?” he asked as he stepped inside her office.
“Nine more credits,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
He pulled a chair up close to her desk and sat down. “Here’s a guy who’s got the world by the tail. Perfect family, great job…”
She was already nodding. “Fame, reputation, respect, the whole package.”
“By all appearances without a care in the world.”
“And yet he snaps.”
“Does he?” DeMarco said.
“It happens, Ry. It does happen. There’s never any way of knowing for sure what’s going on inside another person’s head.”
The way she smiled at him when she said this, the dolefulness of her look, made him avert his gaze for a few moments. He considered his hands.
“Okay, so let’s say he does,” DeMarco said. “He snaps. In a moment of, what, blind rage? He wipes out his family, one after another?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s the nature of the wounds to consider.”
“Right. Very methodical. Deliberate. All except little Davy’s.”
She waited while he thought it out.
“Okay,” DeMarco finally said. “The snap theory. What could make it happen?”
“Just about anything—finances, workload, an argument with his wife.”
“The money was rolling in hand over fist.”
“That can be its own kind of stress.”
DeMarco scowled, thinking it over.
“So maybe he thought he sold out,” Matson said. “He’s a serious writer, correct? You ever read him?”
DeMarco only cocked his head and looked at her. She had been in his house, had perused his bookshelves. In fact, when she had rolled over in his bed that time, had turned her back to him, it had been Huston’s latest novel that she’d picked up off the nightstand. Huston’s latest novel she had flung across the room.
As for the sell-out theory, DeMarco couldn’t buy it. He had watched the Good Morning America spot, then later, the interview with Charlie Rose. In both cases, Huston had been relaxed, confident, almost serene in his responses. “How is all this sitting with you?” Charlie Rose had asked. “Your sudden celebrity status and everything that comes with it?” Huston had said nothing for several seconds, had sat there looking down. Then a slow smile came to his lips. He had looked up at Rose and said, “This last book is the best I’ve ever written. I’m at the top of my game at last. I feel validated.”
And DeMarco, sitting alone in his darkened living room with a glass of warm Jack in hand, had believed every word of it. He had even raised his glass to the television screen. “Good for you, brother,” he had said aloud.
So no, fuck the sell-out theory. To Trooper Matson he said, “You know his father committed suicide.”
“That was how long ago?”
DeMarco thought it through, thought back to where he had been when he heard the news. Laraine had been pregnant then. He had come home at nearly midnight, a steamy night in August, a bar brawl between Reds and Pirates fans, and found her crying in bed. “That poor man,” she had told him.
“It’s what he wanted though,” DeMarco had answered. He had undressed quickly and climbed in beside her, needing, on that hot night, the warmth of her skin against his, the soothing contact of his hand on the swell of her belly. “I can understand that.”
“I mean his son,” she had told him. “His only child. Imagine how he must feel right now.”
“About four years ago,” DeMarco told Matson. “So that could be a factor?”
“His entire past is a factor, Ryan. Question is, what made him take it out on his family?”
“Okay,” DeMarco said. “So something set him off. And then what?”
“And then…?”
“I mean after the fog clears. After he realizes what he’s done. What happens then? Where is he psychologically?”
“Well,” she said, “if he’s not, in fact, a sociopath—and they can be very hard to spot, by the way.”
DeMarco said, “Let’s assume he’s exactly what he appears. He’s a good, decent man. So when the fog clears…?”
She thought for a moment. “He’ll be horrified. Even beyond that. In all likelihood, he would take his own life.”
“But he didn’t. He walked outside. And he kept walking, all the way up to Lake Wilhelm. Just over three miles from his house.”
“Then he detached. Disassociated.”
“He just blanked it out?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “But for all intents and purposes, yes. He suppresses the knowledge of what happened because it’s just too horrific to face.”
“So he goes walking out into the woods. And maybe he’s still walking. Doesn’t know who he is or where he’s going?”
“Everybody is different. I mean, there are certain patterns to human behavior, sure, but I’m no expert on this…”
“You’re the best I have at the moment.”
“Maybe he’s amnesic,” she said. “Maybe he’s not. Maybe it all seems unreal to him. Like a bad dream he can’t quite remember.”
“That’s sort of what I was afraid of,” DeMarco said.
“Because it makes his movements impossible to predict.”