The Ax

13

The New York State Thruway is an expensive toll road. It goes north from New York City to Albany, then turns west toward Buffalo. In that western part, it runs along just to the south of the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal. Just to the north of river and canal is a state road, Route 5, which is smaller and curvier, but doesn't cost anything. I am on Route 5.

I was never in Vietnam. Until I shot Herbert Everly, I'd never seen a human being dead because of violence. It irritates me that Dynes, old EBD, has to put right there, in his resume, that he was in Vietnam. So what? Is the world supposed to owe him a living, a quarter of a century later? Is this special pleading?

I was stationed in Germany, in the Army, after I got out of boot camp. We were in a communications platoon in a small base east of Munich, on top of a tall pine-covered hill. A foothill of the Alps, I suppose it must have been. We didn't have much to do except keep our radio equipment in working order, just in case the Russians ever attacked, which most of us believed wasn't going to happen. So my eighteen months in the Army in Germany was spent mostly in a beer haze, down in Mootown, which some of us called Munich, I have no idea why.

Mootown. And while the guys in Vietnam called the kilometer a click — "We're ten clicks from the border" — we in Germany were still calling them Ks — "We're ten Ks from that nice gasthaus" — though the Vietnamese influence was getting to us, and Ks were becoming clicks in Europe as well. Nobody wanted to be in Vietnam, but everybody wanted to be thought of as having been in Vietnam.

Like this son of a bitch, EBD. Twenty-five years later, and he's still playing that violin.

On a midmorning Thursday in May, there isn't that much traffic on Route 5, and I'm making pretty good time. Not quite as good as the big trucks I can see from time to time across the river on the thruway, but good enough. The little towns along the way — Fort Johnson, Fonda, Palatine Bridge — slow me some, but not for long. And the scenery is beautiful, the river winding through the hills, gleaming in spring sun. It's a nice day.

Mostly it's just river, there to my left, but some of it is clearly manmade, or man altered, and that would be remnants of the old Erie Canal. New York State is bigger than most people realize, being a good three hundred miles across from Albany to Buffalo, and in the early days of our country this body of water to my left was the main access to the interior of the nation. Back before there was much by way of roads.

In those days, the big ships from Europe could come into New York Harbor, and steam up the Hudson as far as Albany, and off-load there. Then the riverboats and barges would take over, carrying goods and people on the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal over to Buffalo, where they could enter Lake Erie, and then travel across the Great Lakes all the way to Chicago or Michigan, and even take rivers southward and wind up on the Mississippi.

Some years ago, I was watching some special on TV, and the announcer described something as being a "transitional technology." It was the railroads I think he was talking about. Something. And the idea seemed to be, a transitional technology was the cumbersome old way people used to do things before they got to the easy sensible way they do things now. And the further idea was, look how much time and effort and expense was put into something that was just a temporary stopgap; railroad bridges, canals.

But everything is a transitional technology, that's what I'm beginning to figure out. Maybe that's what makes it impossible sometimes. Two hundred years ago, people knew for certain they would die in the same world they were born into, and it had always been that way. But not any more. The world doesn't just change these days, it upheaves, constantly. We're like fleas living on a Dr. Jekyll who's always in the middle of becoming Mr. Hyde.

I can't change the circumstances of the world I live in. This is the hand I've been dealt, and there's nothing I can do about it. All I can hope to do is play that hand better than anybody else. Whatever it takes.

At Utica, I take Route 8 north. It goes all the way to Watertown and the Canadian border, but I don't. I stop at Lichgate.

A factory town on the Black River. Prosperity, and the factory, left this town a long time ago; more transitional technology. Who knows what used to be manufactured in that great brick pile of a building that molders now beside the river. The river itself is narrow but deep, and very black, and is crossed by a dozen small bridges, all of them at least sixty years old.

Bits of the ground floor of the old factory have been kept more or less alive, converted to shops — antique, coffee, card — and a county museum. People making believe they're at work, now that there is no work.

My road atlas doesn't include a town map of Lichgate. It's after one when I get to town, so first I have lunch in the Red Brick Cafe, tucked into a corner of the old factory building, and then I buy a map of the area in the card shop down the block.

(I know it would be easier simply to ask directions to Nether Street, but what's the chance I would be remembered, as the stranger who asked the way to Nether Street just before the murder on Nether Street? Very strong chance, I should think. The idea of seeing myself on TV in an artist's rendition from eyewitness accounts is not appealing.)

From the name, I would have guessed Nether Street would run along beside the river, that being the lowest part of town, but on the map I see it's a street that borders the southern city line eastward over to the river. When I drive over there, I see that the hill the town is built on slopes down to the south, this way, and Nether Street got its name because it runs along the base of that hill.

This area is neither suburban nor rural, but an actual town, and this a residential area, old and substantial, the houses mostly a hundred years old, built back when the factory was still turning out whatever it was. They are wide two-story houses on small plots, made mostly of native stone, with generous porches and steep A roofs because of the very snowy winters.

When these houses were built, the managers would have lived here, middle management from the factory, although I don't think they called it middle management back then. But that's who they would have been, along with the shop owners and the dentists. A solid comfortable life in a stable neighborhood. None of those people would have believed for a second that the world they lived in was transitional.

264 is like its neighbors, wide and solid and stone. There are no mailboxes out by the roadside here, but mail slots in front doors or small iron mailboxes hung beside the door. The mailman will walk. And the roadside isn't a roadside, but a curb.

There's a sidewalk as well, and when I first drive down the block a father is using that sidewalk to teach his scared but game daughter how to ride a two-wheeler. I see them, and I think, Don't let that be EBD. But in the resume he described himself as having "three nearly-grown children."

Most of these houses have garages that were added decades after the houses were built, and most of them are free-standing, beside or behind the house and not attached to it, though here and there, because of those rough winters, people have built enclosed passageways to connect house with garage.

264 has a detached garage, an old-fashioned one with two large doors that open outward, though right now they're closed. It's on the right side of the house, and just behind it, with a blacktop driveway that's crumbling here and there, overdue for a touchup. In the driveway is an orange Toyota Camry, a few years old. No one is visible anywhere around the house.

Three blocks farther on, closer to the river, Nether Street crosses a main north-south road, and there's a gas station. I stop there, fill the tank, and use the pay phone to call EBD.

A male voice answers, on the third ring: "Hello?"

Trying to sound very cheerful and friendly, I say, "Hi, Everett?"

"Yes, hello," he says.

"This is Chuck," I say. "By golly, Everett, I didn't think I'd ever track you down."

"I'm sorry," he says. "Who?"

"Chuck," I say. "Everett? This is Everett Jackson."

"No, I'm sorry," he says. "You've got the wrong number."

"Oh, damn," I say. "I'm sorry, I beg your pardon."

"That's all right. Good luck," he says.

I hang up, and go back to the Voyager.

There's no trouble parking in this neighborhood. Parked cars take up about half the curb space on the westbound side, facing away from the river, as I am now. There's no parking at all on the other side, where EBD's house is, the street not being that wide. It would have been laid out before there were cars.

The horse: a transitional technology.

I park almost a block away from 264, in front of a house with a For Sale sign on the lawn and no curtains in the windows. Today I'm not trying to pretend I'm a potential buyer, I simply don't want a housewife peering out at me from behind her blinds, wondering who that is, just sitting there in his car in front of her house.

EBD is home. Sooner or later he'll come out. The Luger is under the raincoat on the passenger seat. If he drives off in the Camry, I'll pull up beside him at a red light and shoot him from the car. If he comes out to mow his lawn, I'll walk across the street and shoot him there. One way or another, when he comes out, I'll shoot him.

On the drive, all the long time coming up, I never thought about EBD or what I had to do here. I just thought about historical forces and all that stuff. But now, seated in the Voyager, watching the front of that house, all I think about is EBD. Quick and clean, and get it over with. Get the bad taste of the Ricks experience out of my mouth. Make this one simple, like Everly.

Quarter to four. The father and daughter and bicycle have long gone. The mailman has walked down the block, pushing his three-wheeled cart with the long handle. Clouds have come in from the west, and it's getting cool inside the Voyager.

I am patient. I am a leopard in the shadow of a boulder. I can stay here, without moving, until the night comes. And then, when it's dark, if he still hasn't emerged from his house, I will go in after him.

That is, I will circle the house on foot, I will look in the windows, I will find him and shoot him. I won't actually go indoors unless it's absolutely necessary, and even then with extreme caution. I have no desire to meet the wife, or the three almost-grown children.

I'll adapt myself to circumstance, but I am determined…

Movement, at 264. The door is opening, obscured by the shadow of the wide porch roof. A man comes out, pauses to call to someone inside, pulls the door shut, comes down off the porch. He stops there, on the slate walk that makes a part in his lawn, and looks up. Will it rain? He adjusts his windbreaker collar, pulls his cloth cap down more firmly on his head. He continues to the street, turns, and walks this way.

It's my man, EBD. The right age, coming from the right house. He's walking toward me, on the far side of the street. I can pick up the Luger, hold it against my leg, walk across the street, ask directions. He will turn aside, pointing, head raised. I will shoot him in the near eye.

My left hand is on the door handle, my right reaches under the raincoat for the Luger. Half a block away, EBD pauses and waves at a house. He stops. He speaks.

I frown and peer, and now I can see a couple seated on the porch there. I'd never noticed them before. Have they been there all along? This light is difficult, with the sun gone.

I can't do it, not in front of witnesses. My left hand leaves the handle, my right comes empty out from under the raincoat.

Across the way, EBD touches his cap and walks on. He walks past me, on the other side of the street, no parked cars over there to block my vision. He's a tall man, gaunt, with rounded shoulders. His head is thrust forward and down, so that when he walks he looks at the sidewalk directly in front of himself. His hands are in his windbreaker pockets.

Those people on the porch; a couple, I think. Still there. When I start my car, they'll notice me. I have to wait here as long as possible, I have to try to minimize any connection between the passing of EBD and this car driving away.

I see EBD in my outside mirror, walking steadily away. He's more than a block off by now, and still moving steadily on. I can risk losing sight of him for a minute or two.

I start the Voyager. Without looking at the people on the porch, I drive forward, away from EBD. I drive briskly but not crazily down to the corner, where I turn right. I drive rapidly down that block and turn right again, and then a third right, which brings me back to Nether Street.

Only a few major streets go through here, north to south; the rest, including the street I'm now on, end at Nether. I stop at the Stop sign there, then make the left turn onto Nether, and EBD is perfectly plain, still walking along, out ahead.

Where I got the gasoline and made the phone call, up ahead on the right, is the intersection with Route 8, my road up. Diagonally across Route 8 from the gas station there is a diner. I can park in its lot, and trail EBD from there. How far can he be going, on foot?

I drive slowly by him, and he simply walks methodically along, a man with a destination but in no real hurry to get there. I continue on.

The diner, called SnowBird, faces Route 8, with its blacktop parking lot in front of it and spreading around to its left side, away from Nether Street. There's a traffic light at the intersection, and it's red against me when I arrive. I stop and wait.

In my mirror, EBD walks diagonally across Nether Street behind me, and keeps coming.

The light turns green. I turn left onto Route 8 and then right into the diner's parking area. I drive on around to the side, and take a space near the front corner, where I can watch the intersection. The parking area's almost empty.

I switch off the ignition, and look up, as again the light turns red for Route 8, and EBD comes walking across the road. He almost looks as though he's coming to me.

No. He's coming to the diner. He crosses the parking lot, goes up the three brick steps to the entrance, goes into the glass-enclosed vestibule — the severe winters up here have surely caused that to be built there — and I can see him as he pushes open the inner door and goes inside.

All right, this is easy. He's here for a late lunch or a mid-afternoon snack. When he's finished, I'll see him as he comes out to the vestibule. I'll have time to start the engine, lower the window, pick up the Luger. As he comes down those brick steps, I'll drive by and stop in front of him. I'll call his name, and when he looks at me, I will shoot him.

There are exits from the parking lot both onto Nether Street and Route 8. Depending which way the traffic light is green, after I shoot EBD I'll take one or the other of those exits, and head straight down Route 8. No witness will have any idea what was going on.

I'll be home for the eleven o'clock news.

Four-fifty. He's been in there almost an hour. Does he have a girlfriend in there? How much longer do I have to wait? How long can you spend in a diner, in the middle of the afternoon? He wasn't carrying a newspaper, but I suppose he could have a paperback book in a pocket of his windbreaker. Maybe his wife is doing the housecleaning, and he's agreed to stay away from home for a few hours.

I have to find out what's going on. I make sure the Luger is completely concealed by the raincoat, and then I get out of the Voyager to find that the day has become raw, with a sharp wind rushing down Nether Street from the west. I lock the car, and walk into the diner, and he isn't there.

I have a mad instant of dislocation, something out of a melodrama. He's snuck out a back entrance and into a waiting car and he's off…

Doing what? An assignation with that girlfriend I'd given him earlier? Is he robbing banks while waiting for a new job to come through? (I'd thought of that.)

Is he after me?

All of which is ridiculous. He's undoubtedly in the restroom, and I see the sign for it down to the left, so I go to the right, find a place at the counter, take the menu out of the metal rack that sticks up there.

There's only five people in the place, three solitaries drinking coffee along the counter, and an elderly couple having dinner in a booth. I think, when he comes out of the bathroom, why not just shoot him here? Who would be able to identify me, in the shock and suddenness of it? I'll have to go back to the Voyager, get the Luger, wear the raincoat — it's chilly enough for that, anyway — and then come back and wait till he comes out of the men's room, and do it right then.

No. Wait. Wait until he's seated again, wherever he's sitting, that would be best.

He comes out of the swing door behind the counter. He's wearing a green apron and he's carrying a plate of fish and chips, which he places in front of a customer down to my left.

He works here.

I'm so stunned I'm still sitting there when he comes over to me. "Afternoon," he says. He has a pleasant smile. He looks like a nice guy, with an honest glance and an easygoing manner.

Middle management, and he's working the counter in a diner. It won't pay his mortgage on that house three blocks from here. I'm sure it helps, the way Marjorie's days at Dr. Carney's office help, but not enough. And it isn't the same thing as your own real life back.

I'm still stunned. I don't know what to do, what to think, what to say, where to look. He keeps smiling at me: "Know what you want?"

"Not yet," I say. I'm stammering. "Give me a minute."

"Sure," he says, and goes on down the counter to ask somebody else if he'd like a refill. The answer's yes, and he reaches for the glass coffee pot.

Don't get to know them. That's what I told myself when I started this. Before I started this. Don't get to know them, it'll be that much harder to do what you have to do. It will be impossible to do what you have to do.

He's a counterman in a diner. That's all he is. I don't know him, I don't have to know him, I'm not going to know him.

He's back. "Decided?"

"I'll, uh, I'll have the BLT. And french fries."

He grins. "Comes with fries," he says. "We're top drawer here. Comes with fries and cole slaw, little slice of pickle. Okay?"

"Sounds good," I say.

"And coffee?"

"Yes. Forgot that. Right. Coffee."

He goes away to the kitchen, and I struggle to control myself. He hasn't noticed anything yet, or at least nothing he can't put down to highway daze, the result of somebody traveling alone for hours in a car.

But what am I going to do now? How long does he work here? Am I going to have to sit in the Voyager in that parking lot for eight hours? Six hours? Twelve hours?

He comes out through the swing door, goes to get a cup and saucer and spoon and the glass coffee pot, brings them all over to me, pours me a cup of coffee. "Milk and sugar on the counter there."

"Thanks."

He puts the pot back on its electric burner while I add milk to my coffee. Then he comes back, leans against the work counter behind him, folds his arms, gives me a friendly smile, says, "Passing through?"

I hate having to look at him, talk to him, but what else can I do? "Yeah," I say. "Pretty much." And then, because I'm beginning to realize this isn't going to be as quick as I'd hoped, I say, "Is there a motel anywhere around here?"

"None of the chains," he says. "Not close, anyway."

"I don't need a chain. I don't much like chains."

"Neither do I," he says. "You have that feeling, there's no human touch to it."

By God, I don't want a human touch between us, but what can I do? "That's right," I say, just hoping to cut the conversation short.

He unfolds his arms, points away to my right, lifting his head. I look at his near eye. I wish I had the Luger with me now, wish I could get this over with now. "About a mile and a quarter south," he says, "on Route 8, there's a place called Dawson's. I've never stayed there myself, of course, you know, I'm local, but I'm told it isn't bad."

"Dawson's," I say. "Thanks."

I look away, but I can feel him considering me, thinking me over. He says, "You looking for a job?"

Surprised, I look back at him, and he's so naturally sympathetic that I tell him the truth: "Yes, I am. How'd you know?"

"I've been there," he says, and shrugs. "Still am, really. I can see it in a fella."

"Isn't easy," I say.

"Not around here, anyway," he says. "I'm sorry to have to tell you that, but there just isn't much of anything happening around here." He gestures at his own territory, his side of the counter. "I was lucky to get this."

This is an opportunity to get my question answered. I say, "You work a full shift?"

"Almost," he says. "Eight hours a day, four days a week. Four to midnight."

Eight hours. Four to midnight. He'll be coming out at midnight. In the dark, I won't see his face, he could be just anybody. In the dark, I'll shoot him. "Well, it's something, anyway," I say, referring to the job.

He grins, but shakes his head. "Not my regular line of work," he says. "I was twenty-five years in the paper business."

Being ignorant, I say, "Newspaper?"

"No no," he says, amused, shaking his head. "Paper manufacturing."

"Oh."

"I was a salesman, and then a manager," he says. "Years in a white shirt and necktie. And then one day, I got the boot."

"It happens," I say, and there's a ding from the kitchen. "It happened to me, too," I find myself saying, though I shouldn't prolong this conversation, I really shouldn't do it.

"That'll be yours," he says, meaning the ding from the kitchen, and he goes away, and I take the minute of respite to tell myself I can't relax into this thing, I can't let us be just a couple of regular guys talking over the news of the world together. I've got to keep that distance, for my own sanity I've got to keep that distance. For my future. For everything.

And aside from all the other considerations, I've already lied to him, pretended I didn't know anything about the paper industry, because I didn't want him thinking about the coincidence of me being here, a guy with the same work history as his. But that means I can't let the conversation go on. What am I going to do, invent some whole new life story, in a whole new industry?

He comes back, with my BLT and all the extras on a thick white oval china plate, and puts it down in front of me. "Refill on that?"

My coffee cup's half full. "Not yet," I say. "Thanks."

"Any time."

He goes away to deal with other customers, and I gnaw at my BLT. I'm not hungry, partly because I just ate four hours ago, but mostly because of the situation. I want to be out of here, on my way home. But I need this to be over, and then I'm out of here, and on my way home.

He's back, taking that stance again, arms folded, back against the work counter. "What line were you in?" he asks.

I panic for just a second, but then I say, "Office supplies," because I do remember something about that industry, from my first years as a salesman for Green Valley Paper & Pulp. "Memo pads, order sheets, accountancy forms, things like that. I was middle management, ran the production line." Then I force a chuckle, and say, "For all I know, we bought from you folk."

"Not from us," he says. "We did specialized papers, industrial uses." Another grin, another headshake. "Very boring, for anybody outside the business."

"You probably miss it," I say, because I know he does, and I can't help saying it.

"I do," he agrees, but then shrugs. "It's a crime," he says, "what's happening these days."

"The layoffs, you mean?"

"The downsizing, the reductions in staff. All those rotten euphemisms they use."

"They told me," I say, "my job wasn't going forward."

"That's a good one," he agrees.

"Made me feel better," I say. I'm holding the sandwich, one triangular quarter of the sandwich, but I'm not eating.

"You know, I've been thinking about it," he says. "I haven't had much to do, the last couple years, except think about it, and I think this society's gone nuts."

"The whole society?" I shrug and say, "I thought it was just the bosses."

"To let the bosses do it," he says. "You know, there's been societies, like primitive peoples in Asia and like that, they expose newborn babies on hillsides to kill them, so they won't have to feed them and take care of them. And there's been societies, like the early Eskimos, that put their real old folk out on icebergs to float away and die, because they couldn't take care of them any more. But this is the first society ever that takes its most productive people, at their prime, at the peak of their powers, and throws them away. I call that crazy."

"I think you're right," I say.

"I think about it all the time," he says. "But what do you do about it? Beats me."

"Go crazy, too, I guess," I say.

He gives me a broad grin at that. "You show me how," he says, "and I'll do it."

We chuckle together, and he goes off to run up the elderly couple's check on the cash register.

While he's gone, I force myself to eat most of the food and drink the rest of the coffee. I can't have more of this conversation, I just can't.

When I see him coming back down the counter, headed toward me, I make that squiggle in the air that means I want my check, so he about-turns, goes to where he keeps the book, and adds it up.

He has a couple more things to say, just chatting, but I barely answer him. Let him think I'm suddenly in a hurry. I pay the check, and I leave him too big a tip, even though it's stupid to do that, I mean, really stupid any way you look at it.

When I'm going out the first door, he calls, "See you around." I smile, and wave.

At least he didn't offer to put me up.

"Good Vibrations" is playing; the old Beach Boys song. "Good Vibrations," and I'm floating in a glass boat on a luminous yellow-green sea, it looks like dish detergent, it's terribly sad, I'm very sad all the time, and then I'm awake and I'm in Dawson's Motel, and the radio came on at 11:30 p.m., just the way I programmed it. I get up and switch off the radio and go into the bathroom, to pee and brush my teeth and wash my face and prepare to kill EBD.

Dawson's Motel is a pleasant old-fashioned place with knotty pine walls and ruffled amber shades on the lamps and a dark wood floor that squeaks as I move around. The closet has a green paisley curtain instead of a door, and many metal hangers on the pipe rod inside. The plumbing fixtures are old-fashioned and make a lot of noise.

There was a rack of skiing brochures in the office, when I went in there this afternoon, but at this time of year they don't do much business. The old man in the office was pleased at the sight of a customer, and even more pleased at the sight of cash. "I don't much like those credit cards," he told me, "but I suppose they're here to stay."

Cash: a transitional technology.

I realize I'm hearing rain on the motel roof. When I come out of the bathroom I go over to open the door, and it's a steady rainfall out there, without much wind, coming mostly straight down, washing road dirt into patterns on the Voyager.

I shut the door, and get dressed, but I don't pack, because I expect to come back here after I do it. 11:47 say the red numbers on the clock-radio. I put on my raincoat and the cloth cap that's very much like EBD's. I take the Luger out of my overnight bag and put it in the pocket of the raincoat.

The motel door is old-fashioned enough that I have to lock it with the key when I go outside. Fortunately, there's a roof overhang here, so I don't get wet while I'm doing it. I've left the lights on in the room, and the glow against the window curtains gives it a warm and homey look. I'll be glad to get back here.

There are only two other vehicles parked along the front of the motel, both facing in toward the rooms where their owners sleep. One is a pickup with Pennsylvania plates; I'm guessing he's a blue-collar guy, a carpenter or something like that, looking for construction work. I don't know why I think that; I guess it's just comforting to make up a story about the people around you. Invent a tribe.

The other vehicle is a big van that's been converted to a small camper. The license plate is Florida, and I'm guessing this is a retired couple. No more shocks to the system for them; winter in Florida, drive north when Florida weather turns muggy and miserable. Not bad.

But not for me, not yet, not even if I could afford it. Which I cannot. God knows if I'll ever be able to afford that kind of retirement life.

I drive north, back toward Lichgate. There's no traffic at all, and very few lights to be seen. The rain is steady and pretty heavy, once you're out driving in it. It slows me down, but it's still only five minutes to twelve when I get to the traffic light at Nether Street. It turns red just before I get there, of course.

The gas station on my left is closed, but the diner ahead to my right is open. And crossing the street in front of me, on the far side of the intersection, shoulders hunched against the rain, inadequately dressed in his windbreaker and cloth cap, is EBD!

Damn! Damn it to hell, he's leaving early! I'm on time, dammit!

It was going to be so easy. I would switch off my headlights as I drove into the parking lot. I would wait near the entrance, I would see him come out into the vestibule, I would drive forward, and as he came down the brick steps I would reach the Luger out the window and shoot him. And that's it.

But now he's walking, he's well away from the diner, he's already across the intersection and walking down Nether Street away from me, hands in wind-breaker pockets, walking briskly because of the rain, moving along on the right side of the street past the parked cars, three blocks to walk to his house on the left.

And this damn light is still red in my face. It's going to change now; I can see the amber light come on, facing Nether Street. There's still no traffic anywhere, nobody to be seen, nobody at all out in this rain.

I switch off my headlights. Now I'm as black as the night, and when the green light switches on in front of me I turn left.

He's moving briskly. This is going to be a difficult shot, out to the right from the left side of the car, me at the steering wheel, past parked cars, at a man in the dark, walking in the rain. It would be horrible to miss, to alert him, to have him running, to have him escape and at once get on the phone to the local police. (EBD would remember the phone, wouldn't get rattled like Ricks, I can tell that much for sure about him.)

Up ahead, with only the briefest glance over his shoulder, EBD comes out from between parked cars and walks at an angle, crossing the street. And now I know what I must do.

I hit the accelerator hard. The Voyager leaps forward. EBD is a dark mass against the dark masses of the night, everything vaguely glittery from the rain, everything except his wet windbreaker and wet cloth cap. The Voyager leaps at him like a fox after a mole.

He senses me. He looks over his shoulder. It's too dark to see his face, but I can imagine his expression, and then he jumps, trying to launch himself all the way over to the left curb, and the Voyager smashes into him. But he was jumping, his weight was going upward, so his body doesn't go under the car, but pastes against it, right in front of me, almost hitting the windshield, draped there like a dead deer being brought home by a triumphant sportsman.

I slam on the brakes, and he slides down the front of the car. I see his hands clutching, scrabbling for some hold, but there is none. The car is still moving, though more slowly, and he goes under it, and I feel the heavy bumps as we drive over him.

Now I brake to a stop. Now I turn on the headlights, and switch into reverse gear, so the backup lights will come on, and I see him three times, in all three mirrors, the inside mirror, the one outside to my left, the one all the way over there outside to my right, I see him three times, and in all three mirrors he's moving.

Oh, God, no. He has to stop. We can't go on like this. He's rolling over, he's trying to rise.

I'm already in reverse. Now I accelerate, and I close my eyes, and I feel the thump and the thump, and I slam on the brakes and skid, and think no, please, I'm going to hit a parked car, but I don't.

I open my eyes. I look out front, and he's there in the glare of my headlights, in the rain, one arm moving on the pavement, fingers scratching on the pavement. His hat is gone. He's crumpled, mostly facedown, and his forehead is against the pavement, his head twitching in slow fits back and forth.

This has to stop now. I shift into Drive, I drive slowly forward, I aim at that head. Ba-thump, the front left tire, yes. Ba-thump, the rear left tire, yes.

I stop. I shift into reverse, and the backup lights come on. In three mirrors, he doesn't move.

I'm weeping when I get back to the motel, still weeping. I feel so weak I can barely steer, hardly press my foot against the accelerator and, at last, the brake.

The Luger is still in my pocket. It weighs me down on the right side, dragging down on me so that I stumble as I move from the Voyager to the door to my room. Then the Luger bangs against my hand, interfering with me, while I try to get into my pants pocket for the key, the key to the room.

At last. I have the key, I get it into the lock, I open the door. All of this is mostly by feel, because I'm sobbing, my eyes are full of tears, everything swims. I push the door open, and the room that was going to be warm and homey is underwater, afloat, cold and wet because of my tears. I pull the key out of the door, push the door closed, stagger across the room. I'm stripping off my clothes, just leaving them anywhere on the floor.

The sobs have been with me since I made the U-turn on Nether Street and drove carefully around the body in the middle of the pavement. The sobs hurt my throat, they constrict my chest. The tears sting my eyes. My nose is full, I can barely breathe. My arms and legs are heavy, they ache, as though I'd been pummeled for a long time with soft clubs.

A shower, won't that help? A shower always helps. Here in Dawson's Motel, the bathroom contains an old-fashioned clawfoot tub. Above it, sometime later, a shower nozzle was added to protrude from the wall, and a small ring to hang a shower curtain. When you step in there and turn on the water, if you move an inch in any direction you touch the cold wet shower curtain.

But I'm not moving. I stand in the flow of hot water, eyes closed, tears still streaming, throat and chest still in pain, but the hot water slowly does its work. It cleanses me, and it soothes me, and at last I turn off the water, push the too-close shower curtain aside, step out, and use all the thin towels to dry myself.

I've stopped weeping now. Now I'm merely exhausted. The bedside clock-radio says 12:47. Exactly one hour ago I left this room, to go kill Everett Dynes, and now I'm back, and I've done it. And I'm exhausted, I could sleep for a thousand years.

I get into bed, and switch off the light, and I don't sleep. I'm so weary I could start crying all over again, but I don't sleep. The scene on Nether Street, in the dark, in the rain, in the lights of my Voyager, keeps replaying in my head.

I try to remember the last time I cried, and I cannot; sometime when I was a child, I suppose. I'm not good at it, my throat and chest still ache, my head feels clogged.

I try not to move around in the bed, I try to do things that will help me get to sleep. I count to one hundred, then back to one. I try to bring up pleasant memories. I try to shut down entirely.

But I cannot sleep. And I keep seeing the event on Nether Street. And every time I turn my head, the clock-radio shows some later time, in red numbers, just there, to my right.

I must have been crazy, out of my mind. How could I have done these things? Herbert Everly. Edward Ricks, and his poor wife. And now Everett Dynes. He was like me, he should be my friend, my ally, we should work together against our common enemies. We shouldn't claw each other, down here in the pit, fight each other for scraps, while they laugh up above. Or, even worse; while they don't even bother to notice us, up above.

When the clock says 5:19, I come to my decision. It has to end now. I have to make a clean breast of everything, atone for what I've done, do no more.

I get out of bed. My exhaustion has left me, I'm awake and alert. I'm calm. I turn on the lights and look around for writing paper, but Dawson's Motel does not equip its rooms with stationery, and I've brought no paper with me.

Paper lines the dresser drawers, white lengths of paper, in the old-fashioned dark wood dresser. I take out the paper from the bottom drawer, and find it stiff, rather thick, smoother on one side than the other. A very simple level of manufacture, this paper. (I could cry all over again, just for a second, when I notice myself noticing that detail.)

The rougher side is better for writing on. I sit at the table, I smooth the paper in front of me, I pick up my pen, and I write:

My name is Burke Devore. I am 51 years old and I live at 62 Pennery Woods Rd., Fairbourne, CT. I have been unemployed for close to 2 years, through no fault of my own. Since my army service, I have at all times been employed, until now.

This period of unemployment has had a very bad effect on me, and has made me do things I would never have thought possible. Through placing a false ad in a trade journal, I got the resumes of many other people who are unemployed, as I am, in my field of expertise. I then determined to bill those people who I feared were better qualified than I was for one certain job. I wanted that job, I wanted to be employed again, and that desire made me do crazy things.

I wish to confess now to four murders. The first was two weeks ago, on Thursday, May 8th. My victim was a man named Herbert C. Everly. I shot him in front of his house on Churchwarden Lane, in Fall City, CT.

My second victim was Edward G. Ricks. I only meant to kill him, but his wife mistook me for an older man who'd been having an affair with her young daughter, and in the confusion I had to kill her, too. I shot both of them last Thursday at their home in Longholme, MA.

My final victim was last night, in Lichgate, NY. His name was Everett Dynes, and I deliberately ran him down with my automobile.

I am truly sorry for these crimes. I don't know how I could have done them. I feel so sorry for the families. I feel so sorry for the people I killed. I hate myself. I don't know how I can go on. This is my confession.

My last resumé.

When I finish it, I sign it, but I don't date it. There's no need.

I'm not sure yet what I'll do tomorrow. Either I'll shoot myself with that Luger in my raincoat pocket hanging from the pipe rod in the closet over there, or I'll drive back to Lichgate, find the police station, and show my confession to a policeman there.

I just don't think I can kill myself. I think I have to atone. I think I have to pay for my crimes. And I think I'm just not somebody who commits suicide. So I think I'll turn myself in to the police tomorrow morning.

I leave the confession on the table, turn off the lights, get back into bed. I feel very calm. I know I'll sleep now.