Nicky complained to her mother, but that got her nowhere. “He’s taking an interest,” her mom said.
The previous summer, hanging out at Virginia Beach, Nicky became fast friends with a girl from Brooklyn who was on vacation with her family. Nicky even got to know the parents in the week that they were there. Super laid-back. The dad was an artist, the mother a music producer. Artsy types. Nicky hit it off with them.
“If you ever come to New York …”
So Nicky went to New York. Got in touch with her friend from Brooklyn. Bunked in with them for a week.
Then two.
The parents finally went, “Uh, you moving in?”
Her friend pleaded her case. There was trouble at home. Could Nicky stay a little longer? The parents said okay. And then, when it looked as though their patience was wearing thin, one of their daughter’s friends told Nicky she knew of a rich guy in Manhattan who was looking for some help and maybe she should go check him out?
And now, here she was.
At school, Nicky found it difficult paying attention. How did you focus on algebra and chemistry when one of the richest men in the country was pissed off with you because you weren’t crazy about giving hand jobs to UN officials, B-list actors, and museum board members? If only her teachers knew what was troubling her, the things she had on her mind. What an idiot she was, confiding in one of the other girls that she was coming around to the conclusion that Pritkin was kind of a sicko, that the things that went on in this fancy New York brownstone were very, very wrong. Against the law, even.
“What law?” asked her friend, who wanted everyone to call her Winona, like the actress, even though her real name was Barb.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Nicky said. “Pervert laws.”
Nicky said it would be creepy enough, the stuff Jeremy asked them to do. But when he pushed them to do it with his friends, these other important people, didn’t that kind of cross a line?
Winona was not convinced. “He treats us good,” she said. “You think you’d get this kind of money working at Arby’s? Anytime I need some cash, he gives it to me. And look at the people we get to meet! You know that director? Who was here last week? He told me I could be an actress. That I had what he called the look. He’s going to keep me in mind, case anything comes up that I might be good for.”
“He’s feeding you a line of bullshit.”
“I don’t think so. Look at me.” Winona tipped her head back, turned her face to the light. “Come on, check me out.”
“Maybe.”
“And the thing is, Mr. Pritkin is very special. He’s not like regular people, so the regular rules don’t apply to him.”
Nicky had heard all this before, and not only from Winona. Jeremy enjoyed talking about how he had been born with a superior genetic makeup. Just as some people could develop genetic diseases, there were others who could develop superior genetic characteristics. People like Michelangelo or Einstein or Gershwin or Lincoln. Gifted people.
Jeremy believed himself to be one of them, and allowances had to be made for particularly gifted people. The standard rules were not applicable.
“What makes him so special?” Nicky asked.
“Uh, look around?” Winona said. “This house? The people he knows? The things he’s done for them? You think an ordinary person could do all that?” Winona shook her head disapprovingly. “You better not be thinking of telling on Mr. Pritkin. That’d be really stupid. If you don’t like it here, leave. No one’s forcing you to stay. But don’t mess it up for the rest of us.”
After Jeremy had his little sit-down with Nicky, reminding her of her place in the power structure, she knew it was Winona who’d ratted her out.
Now Winona would be in his good books. Nicky needed to get back in there, too. What else was she going to do? She would tell him she’d made a mistake, that she was grateful for the lifestyle he’d given her.
Not that she really was sorry. But sometimes, there was shit you had to do to get by. This was one of those times. She knew that what Jeremy had said was true. She was a nothing. He had rich and powerful friends. If she ever decided to speak out, no one would believe her. Or if they did, they wouldn’t care.
Nicky had a plan. She would sneak up to his office—one time, when he’d had her accompany him up there, she had spotted the four-digit code he entered to unlock the door—and wait for him inside the Winnebago. Surprise him. Wear her highest heels. Jeremy had a thing about high heels, insisting all the women who worked in the house wear them. Like it was a Playboy club, said one of the kitchen staff, with Hugh Hefner in charge.
Nicky had no idea who Hugh Hefner was.
But she did know one interesting tidbit. Jeremy’s professed reason for installing the Winnebago, that he had taken family trips in one as a boy, was only partly true. The real reason was, he’d lost his virginity in one when he was fifteen. The RV was a way of commemorating that blessed event.
Jeremy was in the residence today. He wasn’t jetting off to Europe or Asia or Africa. Sooner or later, he’d be coming up to the third floor. It was where he spent much of his day. So, without being seen by any of the staff, she got up to the third floor and got into the RV.
Twenty minutes later, he showed up.
She was peeking out the window, and while she was relieved at first to see him, his expression gave her pause. His face looked like thunder.
Oh-oh.
Jeremy went straight to his desk and picked up the phone. In case he looked her way, she dropped down below the window. But she could still hear his side of the conversation.
“I’ve been trying to get you all day. This is serious.”
A pause.
“Don’t tell me to calm down. This is a whole new ball game. Twenty years ago no one could have predicted this. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I can’t see but one way to contain it.”
Another pause.
“Look, so far, it doesn’t appear that many of them have done it. But more might. And the more people who do, the more likely this will all lead back to me. That can’t happen. You can’t afford to let it happen, either.”
Pause.
“Shut up. Stop blathering. There’s no point rehashing what was done. It happened. We have to deal with things as they are now. Things are already under way.”
Pause.
“No. Money can solve a lot of problems. But not this time. Too many variables. Tentacles reaching out in too many directions. That’s why I’m going at this another way.”
Pause.
“I don’t think you really want to know.”
Pause.
“I suppose the only upside is, I’ve formed no attachments. If I had, this might have been more difficult. But based on the latest reports, there aren’t exactly any standouts. Not a great loss.”
And then he said something else, prompting a chill that ran the length of Nicky’s spine.
I did not hear that. Forget you heard that.
Jeremy was finishing up his conversation. A couple more grunts, an “uh-huh,” and then, finally, “Fine.”
At which point he put the phone back onto its cradle.
“Sweet Jesus,” he muttered to himself.
Nicky raised her head high enough to peek out the window again. Jeremy didn’t look any happier now than he did when he’d walked in. Her plan to put things right would have to be postponed to some later date.
She ducked her head back down, figured she would hide here until he left for another part of the house. Nicky sat down on the floor, resting her back against the cabinet door under the sink. Her movement set off the tiniest, almost imperceptible squeak from the springs in the recreational vehicle’s undercarriage.
“Who is it?” Jeremy called out.
Shit, Nicky thought.
Should she step out, reveal herself? Shout “Surprise!” and see if she could bring a smile to his face, pretend she hadn’t heard a thing? Or hold her breath, not move, make him think there wa
s no one there?
But again, he called out, “If there’s someone in there, you better come out. Now.”
There was a small bed at the back end of the vehicle, with horizontal cabinetry doors underneath it instead of open space. Not exactly a place to hide there.
Nicky heard a drawer in Jeremy’s desk slide open. Some rustling.
She peeked through the window. He was tossing items from the drawer onto the top of the desk. A notepad, some scraps of paper, a set of keys with a silver W attached to them, some pens.
Finally, he found what he was looking for.
A gun.
“Last chance,” he said. “I’ve every right to shoot an intruder, and I will do it.”
If he entered the Winnebago, he might shoot before he realized it was her.
“It’s me!” she cried. “It’s Nicky!”
“Nicky?”
She got to her feet and opened the door. There were already tears coming down her cheeks. “I wanted to surprise you. Make things right.”
Jeremy stared, dumbfounded. At least, Nicky thought, the gun was pointed at the floor.
“Christ, you’re lucky I didn’t load this. I could have shot you.” For a moment, he had looked relieved. But now his face was awash with worry.
“You were listening.”
Nicky shook her head. “No. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t hear anything.”
“How could you not?”
She tried to think of something to say, some lie that would be convincing, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
“Oh, Nicky,” Jeremy said sadly. “Oh dear, dear Nicky.”
Seventeen
Lewiston, ME
Before there was Todd Cox, there was Jason Hamlin.
They had decided to do him first.
Kendra Collins, again posing as a police detective, and Rhys Mills, who was also carrying a very authentic-looking police badge, knew that Jason went for a jog very early in the morning. Most young men his age, particularly those attending college, liked to sleep in, but Jason was different. He was a sports-oriented individual. Not so much football. That had never been his game. Jason was more a winter sports kind of guy. Skiing, snowboarding. And attending school up in Maine afforded plenty of opportunities through the winter months for him to engage in his favorite activities.
But before the snow fell, Jason liked to stay in shape with jogging. He set his iPhone to wake him at six, although he usually woke up on his own minutes before that and turned the alarm off so as not to bother any of his housemates. He would slip on some shorts, a T-shirt, and a pair of Nikes, and then leave the old house a few blocks from the campus and do a four-mile route that took him through the town.
This was usually a time when he could clear his head. Breathe in that cool, crisp morning air through his nose, feel it filling his lungs. Slip the buds into his ears and listen to Garth Brooks. (Jason wasn’t a big country-western fan, but there was something about this Brooks guy that spoke to him.) On this morning, however, Jason was unable to appreciate the freshness of the dawn or Garth singing “The Night I Called the Old Man Out,” which always had a place in Jason’s heart, reminding him of the shouting matches he’d had with his own old man, or, more accurately, the old man who’d raised him. And that was because he could not stop thinking about what had happened the night before, when he was with Jenny, this girl he’d been seeing pretty seriously for the better part of two weeks.
She was from Kingston, Ontario, on the other side of the border. She’d picked Bates College because her mother had gone there, and her grandfather had gone there, so it was kind of a family tradition. She’d actually have been glad to go to Queen’s, in her hometown, and saved her family a fortune, but hey, you couldn’t fight tradition.
Jason hailed from Baltimore, and he’d been wrestling with whether to find a job here in Lewiston for the summer, and hang on to his off-campus accommodation, or head home. Jenny planned to go back to Canada once school ended. So Jason had been thinking, if he wanted to visit her through the summer, was it better to be in Lewiston or Baltimore? He’d checked Google Maps and saw that either way it was an eight- to nine-hour drive. How could you visit someone for the weekend when it took two whole days just to get there and back?
But that was not what he was thinking about as he went for his run this morning.
What was on his mind was something Jenny’s friend Denise had said the night before when a bunch of them had gone across the bridge into Auburn to have a few drinks at Gritty’s. Clearly, Denise wasn’t aware that Jason and Jenny had been a thing in the last month, that Jenny had even slept over at Jason’s three times, because if she’d been aware of that, she probably wouldn’t have asked Jenny if she’d slept with Carson yet.
It wasn’t like she’d shouted the question. She’d asked it when she was sitting to Jenny’s left, and Jason was sitting on Jenny’s right, but Denise had asked it loudly enough that Jason heard it loud and clear.
Carson? Who the fuck was Carson?
So the second they were outside Gritty’s, heading home, he’d asked her. She’d shrugged it off. Denise was kidding around, she said. Or confused. She’d known a guy named Carson once, but that was a long time ago.
But Jenny hadn’t been able to look him in the eye.
Jason got this very sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. When he got back to his place—a century-old house about four blocks from the campus that he shared with three other guys—he went online to see if he could track down this Carson dude.
He’d had no luck, but as he ran down Main Street, heading for the footpaths that ran along the banks of the Androscoggin River, he promised himself he’d do more research when he got back.
Maybe if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his love life, and if Garth hadn’t been crooning in his ears, he would have noticed the black four-door sedan that had been riding along about fifty feet behind him.
The car suddenly sped up, then pulled over to the curb ahead of Jason, brakes squealing. The car hadn’t finished rebounding from the sudden stop when the passenger door opened and Rhys leapt out, flashing a badge in the palm of his hand just long enough for it to register with Jason.
“Jason Hamlin?” Rhys said.
Jason stopped, yanked the buds out of his ears, and said, panting, “What?”
“Are you Jason Hamlin?” he asked again.
He chose to nod instead of speak, still catching his breath. He saw a woman getting out now from behind the wheel. She flashed her badge, too, as she came around the back of the car.
“Is this Mr. Hamlin?” Kendra asked her partner.
“Yeah,” he said.
Now less winded, Jason said, “What’s this about?”
Kendra said, “This is Detective Mills and I’m Detective Collins. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you, Mr. Hamlin.”
“What?”
“Am I correct that Margaret and Charles Hamlin, of Baltimore, are your parents?”
That sick feeling he’d had in his stomach the night before was nothing compared to what he felt now.
In the distance, they could hear sirens.
“Yes?” he said weakly, glancing for a half a second over his shoulder, where the sirens were coming from.
“We were asked to track you down. If you come with us we can give you a ride back to your residence.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
Rhys said, “We’re guessing you’re going to want to go back there.”
“Just tell me,” he said.
“There was a car accident,” Rhys said. “We don’t have all the details.”
Kendra walked over to the car and opened the back door. An invitation. Jason, his legs rubbery, got into the back of the car. Kendra closed it, went around, and got back in behind the wheel. Rhys went around to the driver’s side but opened the back door, taking a seat next to a visibly distraught Jason. He closed the door.
They sat there for several seconds, the car not moving. Jason
was not so overwhelmed by the distressing news that he failed to notice they weren’t going anywhere.
“Um, what are we waiting for?”
As Kendra shifted around in her seat, Rhys pressed himself up against his door and quickly put his arm over his own face. Kendra raised her hand above the seatback. In it was a small tube, not much bigger than a lipstick, with a button on top. She aimed it at Jason’s face and pressed the button with her index finger.
A misty spray enveloped Jason’s face.
“The fu—”
But then he started to cough and gag. His eyes began to sting, and he closed them. That was when Rhys jabbed the needle into his neck.
A fire truck went racing up the street in the opposite direction.
Kendra glanced in the rearview mirror.
“I can see the smoke,” she said.
Jason drifted into unconsciousness almost immediately, slumping in the seat. Rhys adjusted the man’s body to move his head below the windows, then powered his window down to bring in some fresh air.
Kendra put the car in Drive and slowly pulled away from the curb. She’d already consulted her map app to find the quickest way out of town. They’d set up a disposal site about ten miles out of Lewiston.
She glanced in her mirror one more time, not to check on the smoke or whether Jason was dead yet, but to look at Rhys. He had his head half out the window, face to the wind, like a dog enjoying all the scents the world had to offer.
The house Jason shared with his friends burned to the ground. Some sort of gas leak, followed by an explosion. Jason’s three friends survived, although one spent two weeks in the hospital with serious burns to his arms and upper torso.
Jason usually jogged in the morning, but the fact that he was missing had led authorities to speculate he could have been in the home when it exploded, and that the subsequent inferno had incinerated him. They were still looking through the ashes for any trace of him, however, and until they did find something, his whereabouts was treated as an open question.
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