Chapter 13
How embarrassing. I talked up my emergency preparedness plans, but I should have been more humble about them, because I am not prepared.
However, I am prepared to be prepared. I am prepared with the knowledge of which stores with hardware sections will be open at this hour of the night. I am prepared by living in the city that never sleeps, so we have to be ready for someone to want to do a project at any time.
If you think about it, the night I took Lily was a dress rehearsal. One more point for me in terms of preparedness.
No one will think less of you, my mother says, as I’m standing in the aisle with rows of accelerants in their cans.
“I know you won’t. It’s reassuring. Have I told you that before?”
“Can I help you?” A salesman with a red vest pokes his head into the aisle. “Sir.”
“So reassuring,” I say, louder. “No, thanks. I’ll be ready to check out in a minute, though.”
I check out.
At least, I think I check out. I don’t remember it, but that doesn’t mean I’m cracking up. It means I’m tired.
But more than that, I am focused.
The world distorts as I’m loading the accelerants and other assorted items for my errand. It pushes toward me, then away, like one of those parachute things they had in elementary school. I watch it until it levels out, then keep driving to Cobble Hill.
Before the sun rises, the world is going to be better.
For Lily. And the baby. Sunrise is the deadline, because I don’t want them spending another day in a world like this one. Lily and my baby. Our baby. They haven’t done anything wrong. They deserve so much more than this. Be the fire you wish to see in the world, and so forth. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying.
I was right. The Brooklyn Bridge is the slowest part, but it’s not very slow. No wrecks or visible emergencies. Is this more proof of the existence of God? Could be. His gentle hand is patting my ass all the way across the bridge, ushering me to a new future.
Uh, my head. He’s patting my head. Fatherly.
It feels spiritual as fuck to drive into Lily’s grandfather’s neighborhood. It was fall the first time I saw her, with rustling leaves on the ground and a whisper of cold in the air.
I park in the same parking lot I stole her out of. Criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Or they usually do. You can usually find a criminal at the scene. I think that’s the adage.
Well, here I am.
Hope no hot guys are waiting to mug me in this parking lot, Lily says in my memory. I dare you to?—
“You dare me, huh? Dare accepted.”
This dare is different. More accelerant and lighters. Less future wife.
Summer leaves rustle overhead as I make my way to her grandfather’s house.
All the lights are off. The neighborhood is tucked in snug for the night. It’s the last night it’ll be like this. Tomorrow, there will only be ashes where this house stood. Lily’s grandfather will be reduced to ashes, too.
My stomach hurts, thinking of killing him. I’m going to stab him, obviously. I’m not a monster. I won’t make him burn alive like my parents did.
Or…
Maybe I should make him burn alive.
Does this feel good to you? my mom asks.
“You’re always asking me that.” I leave my accelerant and other stuff behind the tree in the front yard and approach the house. The security system is a joke. I have it down in less than two minutes, and then I go back for the things to support me in my effort to burn this motherfucker down. “It’s a nice way to make decisions.”
Does it?
“No, but…” I need to start the fire near the kitchen. That will make it seem more normal, although not for long, if anybody bothers to look closely. I don’t really care if they do, but it seems wrong to abandon all my criminal knowledge. I’m not a sloppy criminal. Just a brazen one. “And I appreciate it. I really do. But…” The can of accelerant is unwieldy, but it’ll get better as it empties out. “Nothing feels good. Nothing, Mom. It all feels bad. My entire life feels bad.”
Not Lily.
“No, not Lily. But everything else is like a stab wound, you know? And Lily’s an angel, but underneath, I’m still—I’m still—” I move around the perimeter of the house, accelerant-ing the place to metaphorical death. “I’m still like this. If I’m going to be a criminal, and if it’s going to hurt this much, I might as well earn it.”
You don’t have to do this, Jamie.
“I missed Walsh. I can’t walk away with nothing.”
You have so much.
“I know. I’m a bastard.”
That is not what I said.
“Sorry.”
Don’t be sorry. Just go home. Lily needs you.
“She’ll have me. And she’ll be safe. She’ll be so happy.”
Will you?
“I’ll be happy. But I’ll also have a stab wound. I’ll still be a crime scene. You know what I’m saying?”
Oh, Jamie.
“I’m not saying I love her in a surface-level way. It’s way deeper than that. But it still hurts.” It hurts a lot. Even now. “It really hurts to love somebody like this. It’s worse than loving Gabriel and Mason and Remy and waiting—waiting for something to happen to them. It’s even worse. If loving her hurts this much, then I have to try something different.”
You don’t.
“We can talk about this later.”
Go home.
“I will.”
Jamie.
“I’m done being a coward, Mom. I’ve had my principles and my standards for crimes, but I’m not going to be a coward about this.”
If you stop, you won’t be a coward. You’ll be my son.
“Won’t I be your son anyway?”
Yes.
“See?”
Jamie.
“Yeah?”
I get out my knife to rip some rags in two and slice my finger open.
“Ah, fuck.”
There’s a decent amount of blood, but not too much, in the scheme of things. I stick my finger in my mouth and do my best to suck it off. Then I wrap it in the hem of my shirt and squeeze.
I’m here with you.
“Not really.” I let out a sigh that tastes like accelerant. Did I get it in my mouth? “You’re in my head. Because I’m going crazy.”
You’re not going crazy. You just need to rest. You don’t have to keep looking for what you need. You already have it.
“Not all of it.”
I have a lighter in my hand.
“I never found proof that Walsh is the one who killed you.” I click the lighter a few times, watching the flame rise, then gutter. “You think it could be in the judge’s house? This is the one place I’ve never looked.”
Jamie.
“I’m gonna look.”
Instead of starting the fire, I slip Lily’s house key into the kitchen door.
It opens.
The house smells good. It smells homey and comfortable, like a nice place for a little girl to grow up. I can almost feel Lily in the silence. The scent of her is barely here anymore, because she lives with me now, but—yeah. There it is. She must’ve had breakfasts and lunches and dinners in this kitchen and dumped out her bucket of candy on Halloween and blown out candles on her birthday, all right here.
It’s almost a shame it all has to die in a fiery conflagration.
I’m sure there’s stuff upstairs, but in my methodical, criminal way, I circle the ground floor first. Oh, look! A ground floor office. I’m blessed.
The bookshelves mostly hold books. The desk drawers are organized, not overcrowded. There’s one locked drawer, and the key is inside a mug by the desk calendar under a few pens and a six-inch ruler.
The key opens the lock.
There are folders inside.
TAX RETURNS, divided by decade.
HOME REPAIRS
INSURANCE CLAIMS
The last one, at the very back, is labeled FREELANCE CONTRACTORS.
I pull it out and open it up.
There are contracts inside. Contractors. Ha.
And there he is.
Malcolm Walsh. Ten times over, there’s Malcolm Walsh.
The last paper in the stack is a copy of a copy of a contract between an entity called New York Strategic Enterprises and none other than Malcolm Walsh.
Well, well, well.
New York Strategic Enterprises was one of Bettencourt’s companies. It’s all coming together.
INSURANCE RECOVERY, the line item reads.
I swallow a laugh before it can get out. Insurance recovery. This is my parents. Bettencourt paid Malcolm Walsh five days before they were murdered. Five days before my life ended.
Methodically, responsibly, I lay out all the documents and photograph them. For evidence. Then I put the folder back in the drawer it came out of. I shut the drawer. Lock it up. I’m not a sloppy criminal.
Time to move on.
It feels less satisfying than I thought it would to have the proof, but I don’t have long to dwell on it, because when I exit the office, I come face to face with the judge.
He stands in a patch of yellow light from a streetlamp in old-man pajamas with buttons up the front, his arms crossed over his stomach, silent and ghostly.
“You’re a piece of shit, you know that? You didn’t have to ruin our lives. Our parents were already dead.”
Beaufort Hayes doesn’t ask me who I am. He already knows. He’s sent people after me more than once, and the old bastard has probably seen photos from the wedding in major media outlets.
“I had nothing to do with your parents, son.”
I make a disgusted noise. “Fuck off.”
“I didn’t know who they were.”
“Oh? So you just keep Bettencourt’s old contracts lying around to jack off too?”
He wrinkles his nose as if I’m the offensive one. “That was a warning about how far Malcolm Walsh is willing to go. The man doesn’t have any scruples. He follows the orders of the highest bidder, and he was willing to kill me if I didn’t…come along quietly. I kept that document as a reminder of the risks.”
I snort so loud it hurts. “Bullshit. Did you think your granddaughter was a risk, too? Is that why you tried to kill her? Sorry—have her killed?”
Beauford ages ten years in the blink of an eye. “I didn’t. That was Walsh. I was blackmailed. And now someone’s hired him out from under me.”
“Bummer. Guess you’ll have to do the job yourself, then.”
“What job?”
“You’ll have to kill me yourself. How do you think you’ll do it?”
Beaufort’s eyes dart to the side, and I move. It doesn’t feel like moving. It feels like floating. The knife comes into my hand like I’m a born murderer, not a created crime scene, and then my hand’s in the front of his old-man pajamas and the tip of the knife is at the side of his neck.
Jamie.
“Actually, I think it’s my turn.” The whites of Beaufort’s eyes are huge. “You’re never going to get to meet your first great-grandchild.”
“What?” he whispers.
“Oh, right—you probably didn’t know. Lily’s pregnant. And the baby’s mine. But I fucking hate you, so I think I’ll kill you now, and you can die regretting everything you ever did. Should have chosen better friends, I guess.”
“Please—” he starts.
“Gross. Don’t bother. And when I push the knife in, don’t scream. I’m really tired, and it would hurt my ears.”
“Mr. Hill?—”
“I meant shut up.”
I start to push the knife in. Beaufort takes a strangled breath. Skin has more resistance than you’d think. Than I thought, anyway. Blood beads near the blade and drips down his neck.
“One,” I say. “Two?—”
The kitchen door slams open. “Jameson.”
I can’t help rolling my eyes. “Seriously, Gabriel? All you had to do was wait, like, two more minutes.”
My brothers barrel into the room. They’re weird streaks of motion. I’m really tired. I recall that I should shove the knife through the judge’s throat and tighten my grip on the handle, but my brothers get there first. Mason hauls the judge away from me, and Gabriel throws an arm around my chest.
“Nope. No. How about no?” Gabriel sings. “Let me have it. Drop it, Jameson.”
“Drop what?”
He squeezes my wrist. The knife falls out of my hand. Gabriel lets go of me, and then his hand is at my belt. He takes the sheath, then puts it somewhere I can’t see.
There’s blood on the judge’s neck.
I bend forward in time to avoid throwing up on my shoes.
Then Gabriel’s arm is around me, and he’s taking me out of the house. He props me against the tree—nice, sturdy trunk—and then his face is close to mine. My eyes are all blurry.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“No.”
Maybe I throw up again. Maybe not.
“It’s okay.” Gabriel has his hands on my face. “We’re here now. We’ll take care of it. Okay?”
“He said he got blackmailed.”
Gabriel shakes his head. “Maybe he did. I don’t know. We’ll find out.”
“I was killing him.”
“You’re not anymore.”
“Okay.”
Mason brings the judge out. “You’re fucked,” he says as they come down the porch steps. “Well and truly fucked. Jameson’s research?—”
“What?” I say. “What research?”
Somehow, Mason and the judge are already here.
“The research you did at work. I wasn’t spying on your computer. Don’t look at me like that. Kirk was shutting it down one afternoon and thought—it doesn’t matter. I looked into all your paperwork. Made a few calls. Found out the judge here is the most corrupt motherfucker in the state of New York.” Mason looks scoldingly at Beaufort. “I am so disappointed in you.”
“Just kill me,” Beaufort says.
Mason barks a laugh. “No. This is going to be more fun.”
I turn to look at Gabriel, but he’s not there.
Where did he go?
He jogs around the corner of the house and waves to me, something on fire in his hand.
“Don’t,” the judge says, pointlessly, feebly.
“It’s not as if you have anything important in there,” Mason says in a mock-soothing tone. “You won’t have to watch your granddaughter burn to death. You’ll just have to watch your house burn down. That’s not so bad, is it?”
The flames are higher in the back, by the kitchen. Smoke is already beginning to rise against the night sky. A wave of what feels like pure acid washes over me, followed by horror, followed by?—
I throw up again.
Mason rubs my back until I straighten up. “We’re going home after this. It’s okay.” Blue and red lights flash against the house. “Whoops. Guess you won’t get to watch it burn down, Judge Hayes. Better luck next time.”