Dark Zone

48

Many people say they would like to die in their sleep, but wasn’t that a bit of unexamined foolishness? To die in one’s sleep meant to have no chance to set one’s affairs straight — to have no chance, really, to rage against the coming of the darkness, to hold out, to gasp a few breaths, to resolve to be brave one final time: to meet the ultimate fate with courage, the only real asset one took into old age.

To die in one’s sleep meant to slip into the next life as a passive victim, and Denis LaFoote had never been in his whole life a passive victim. Something deep inside him rebelled at the whisper of death. He found himself struggling as if under deep water and pushed himself toward the surface. He was dreaming and then he was not dreaming — strong hands pushed against him, weighty arms that belonged to a man of flesh and blood, not some nightmare summoned from the dark places of his past. LaFoote pushed upward, calling on the muscles of his once-athletic shoulders and arms to help. The seventy-one-year-old man pushed and shoved toward the light above. He could feel himself choking, but he did not give in; he wasn’t tempted by the sweet warmth he began to feel around his eyes, the lull of more sleep.

“Non!” he shouted. “Non.”

He did not give up, to the bitter end.

Patrick Donohue sat at the edge of the bed after it was over. It had been some time since he had chosen to kill a man so personally, and he needed a moment to adjust.

Not to get over it, simply to adjust.

The old man had proven stronger than he would have guessed, but there were many benefits to having killed him with no weapon other than the pillow. For one, it was possible that a country coroner might completely miss the fact that his death was a homicide. The struggle had dimmed that possibility, as he’d had to push down heavily on the man’s arms and chest with his body, which would leave telltale marks. But the chance had been worth taking.

Given that the coroner was likely to see the obvious, Donohue decided to supply a motive. He went to the old man’s dresser, looking for his wallet. There were only thirty euros in the wallet; he took them. Then he rifled through the drawers quickly, finding nothing of any worth. In the living room, there was a strongbox with old franc notes — a considerable sum, well over two hundred thousand, which would translate roughly into forty thousand euros if taken to a bank. Donohue scattered a few around to make it clear that he had stolen them, then stuffed the rest in his pockets.

He made his exit from the house carefully. There was a policeman or some sort of official watching from a car up the block, who could only be avoided by using the windows at the back of the house. He’d seen the man arrive shortly after LaFoote, which added interest though not particular trouble to the job.

A half hour later, just outside of Paris, he called one of the numbers Mussa had given for reporting on the job.

“Done,” he said.