And then the old man drew a broken breath and died. Just like that.
As Jacob reflected on it later, sitting slouched on his living room sofa, he couldn’t help but wonder how you could be alive one minute, so utterly there, and then be gone the next. It had to be a joke. Some sick cosmic prank to keep God amused.
He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. It was getting late and he was thinking about Megan again. It seemed these days, all thoughts led back to Megan.
He stood up, suddenly itching for movement, and found himself at the bookshelf by the TV. He reached for a photo taken on the coast of Maine two summers before. Megan stood on the rocks by the shoreline, a weathered lighthouse rising up in the distance behind her. She held her arms outstretched and struck a pose for the camera, trying to ruin the picture with a goofy grin and a scrunched up nose.
It was classic Megan. So free-spirited and full of life. It was such a perfect picture, such a perfect day. Who would’ve guessed she’d be dead within a year?
A tear rolled down his cheek and splashed onto the frame, triggering a memory of that rainy March morning at the funeral parlor, the cloying scent of lilies and eucalyptus invading his nostrils as he stood beside Megan’s casket while friends, family, and strangers patted his clay-cold hands and assured him that it would get easier as time wore on.
She’d been dead fifteen months now, but it seemed an eternity. Sometimes it was hard to remember that he was happy once, that laughter had filled this house. All he had now was the faint echo of her memory, a teasing reminder of her absence like the lingering scent of perfume on her clothes.
Footfalls shook the porch. The bell rang—a ding without a dong. It hadn’t worked properly since he first installed it, which wasn’t a surprise considering Megan had long ago declared him to be more handicap than handyman. She loved ribbing him about it, and it soon became part of the secret lexicon of their marriage. Every time it voiced its lonely ding, she would arch an eyebrow in that way of hers and ask, What’s wrong with your dong?
Jacob opened the door to find his brother standing on the worn welcome mat with his fists thrust into his pockets. At six foot four, Ray stood five inches taller than Jacob, although both had the same liquid brown eyes, same wavy brown hair, and the same pale skin with a spattering of freckles around the bridge of the nose.
“I thought you were playing cards tonight,” Jacob said.
Ray shrugged. “I was. But you sounded upset. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“What are big brothers for?”
Jacob held open the door. “You used to give a mean wedgie.”
Ray grinned. “Remember that time in the mall? When I lifted you off the ground and ripped the underwear out of your pants, showed all your friends you were wearing Mighty Mouse Underoos?” He chuckled. “You bawled like a little girl.”
“I thought you were here to cheer me up.” He walked into the kitchen. “You want some coffee? I just brewed decaf.”
“Sure.” Ray sipped from the mug Jacob offered and winced. “You put Drano in here or what?”
“It’s my secret ingredient.”
Ray cleared his throat. “So tell me again what happened at the restaurant. Some old guy started spouting gibberish and then keeled over dead at your feet?”
Jacob nodded, recalling the look of desperation in the old man’s eyes. “It was weird, you know? I was just sitting there, waiting for a client, and in walks Father Time.”
“Sounds to me like the guy was nuts.”
“I don’t know, it just got to me—watching him die. I don’t see the point.”
“What point?”
“In dying.”
“Everyone dies, Jacob.”
“But it seems like such a waste. We’re born, we grow old, we die. How can you live with that constantly hanging over your head?”
“Are you listening to yourself? Christ, Jacob. I know you loved her, but you’ve got to move on.”
Jacob felt his face flush. “Do you think I can just flick a switch and forget I ever knew her? What if Michelle died—would you be able to just move on?”
“I don’t know what I’d do, Jacob, but you’ve got to face facts. You’re thirty-two years old. Megan’s dead. You’ve got to stop acting as though you are too.”
Jacob sighed. “A part of me died with her, Ray. Something inside me shriveled up and turned to dust. And now… now I just feel empty.” He shook his head. “Maybe I need more time.”
“Why? So you can continue to lose yourself in your work, come home and sit here all alone, cut off from the rest of the world? You can’t live in the past, Jacob. The past is a graveyard, nothing but ghosts and shadows.”
“You don’t understand, Ray. You’ve got your life together, you’ve got Michelle and the kids, all of you healthy.”
“Yeah, but any one of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow, get killed just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Death’s everywhere, Jacob. Always lurking around the corner, waiting for its chance. But you don’t see me moping around the house, feeling sorry for myself, getting depressed over things I can’t change. It’s not worth it. What you need to do is get out of the house, meet new people. Find yourself a hot little blond. The world’s not over, Jacob. Not if you don’t want it to be.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’ll only get harder if you keep shutting everybody out.”
Jacob stared out the window. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Course I am.” Ray clapped him on the back. “When have I ever been wrong?”
“You want a list?”
“Don’t get wise, little brother. You’re not too old for a wedgie. By the way, you owe me forty bucks.”
“For what?”
“You bet against the Sox.”
“That wasn’t a serious bet.”
Ray folded his arms. “You welching on me?”
“What are we, eleven?” He dug his wallet out of his pocket, and what he found inside prickled his skin with gooseflesh.
Ray furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong?”
“This license. This... it isn’t mine.”
“Let me see.” Ray snatched it out of Jacob’s hand and tilted it into the light. The man in the picture was thirty years old, clean cut, with spiky blond hair and ice-blue eyes. “Charles J. Riggs III. Thirteen North Broadway, South Boston.” He glanced at Jacob. “Where’d you get this?”
“I don’t...” But then he remembered—the old man at Victoria’s. After the ambulance had pulled away, no flashers, no sirens (he was pronounced dead at the scene), Jacob went back inside, forced down half a turkey club, and paid the bill when his client didn’t show. He’d assumed the license on the table was his, figured it had fallen out of his wallet when he pulled out his credit card. And so he’d picked it up without a glance and slid it into his wallet behind a dog-eared business card.
He peered at the license over Ray’s broad shoulders. “He’s got the same eyes as the old man in the restaurant.”
“Maybe it’s his son.”
“Grandson, maybe; the guy looked older than Methuselah.”
“I wonder if they were able to ID the body. This happen in the city?”
Jacob nodded. “Post Office Square.”
Ray tapped his thumbnail against the license. “If you want, I can bring this to the precinct with me tomorrow, help locate his next of kin.”
But Jacob didn’t answer.
“Jacob?”
“Yeah?”
“You alright?”
“Yeah, I was just… I don’t know. I watched him die, Ray. I watched the light wink out of his eyes.”
“He was an old man.”
“I know.” He set down his coffee. “I think I need to get out of the house for a while, go for a walk or something.”
Ray lifted an eyebrow. “You kicking me out?”
“I want to clear my head, think about what you sai
d.”
Ray studied him a moment, liquid brown eyes filled with concern, and Jacob wondered, not for the first time, how much worse things would be if he didn’t have his big brother to lean on.
Ray nodded slowly. “I’ll walk you out.”
The screen door banged shut behind them, wrested from Jacob’s grasp by a gust of wind. The sun hung low in the sky like the last bloody ember of a dying fire. From the street came the clattering roll of a kicked can, followed by the excited cries of children scattering to find a hiding spot.
Ray climbed into his truck—a black Ford Explorer he bought after his promotion to detective sergeant earlier that year. He twirled the keys in his hand. “You gonna be all right?”
Jacob nodded. “Don’t worry.”
“All right, but watch out for those roving gangs of rich kids.”
“I’ll be extra careful.”
Ray loved to rib him about living in Stonefield. It was a haven for young professionals, a quaint suburb with ornate Victorian homes, expensive cars, and manicured lawns. It seemed everyone there was a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker. Jacob, who was none of these, had always thought it would be the perfect place to start a family.
He and Megan had been trying for a year before she died. He used to love the way the ritual began. Megan would come into the living room and tap him on the shoulder. Wanna make some babies?
He would scoop her into his arms, carry her upstairs, and drop her onto the bed. Then he’d pretend like he’d thrown out his back and point to her belly. Sure you don’t already have one in there?
“See you later,” Ray said.
“Huh? Oh.” Jacob lifted a hand. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Forty bucks,” Ray said, and pulled away from the curb.
Jacob stared after the Explorer, watching as it crested the hill at the end of his street and disappeared.
Move on.
What kind of advice was that? Ray meant well but, God, he had such a habit of oversimplifying. How could he possibly replace Megan? And why was everyone always pressuring him to forget her?
He walked to the end of the street and turned the corner, glancing up as he approached Stonefield center. Light glowed in the windows of the boutiques on Main Street, their awnings illuminated by the old-fashioned gas lamps that lined the streets. A granite obelisk commemorating the Revolutionary War loomed over the landscaped rotary ahead where Main, Summer, and Central streets intersected.
The Stonefield police station sat at the junction of Central and Main. It was a monster of a building—a concrete beast guarded by stone lions. It was set back from the road, the rear of the structure dissolving into the shadows that draped Kennedy Park and Whitecap Lake. Had it been midday, the lake would’ve been teeming with windsurfers skipping across the rough amber swells. But the water was dark now, the lake silent.
Crickets chirruped in the gathering twilight, the sound of Jacob’s footfalls eliciting a momentary hush from the grass near his feet. He gazed at the sky through the canopy of trees and could see the first stars piercing the velvety darkness like pinpricks.
The scuff of a shoe snapped him to attention. He glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of a stocky kid in his early twenties closing the gap between them. It was difficult to tell in the failing light, but it seemed as though the kid was staring right at him.
Stop being so paranoid. He’s probably just in a hurry.
But the seed of anxiousness that had taken root in his brain and flowered these last fifteen months begged to differ. Something about the kid unnerved him, and the need to dart across the street and seek refuge in the bright lights of the boutiques gripped him with a maddening sense of urgency.
He could hear the kid’s feet grinding sand against the pavement, could hear the whisper of fabric as the kid’s legs scissored in what he imagined to be a jog. He held his breath and waited for the kid to pass.
A hand clamped onto his shoulder and spun him around. “Gimme your wallet.” The kid’s grip was like iron, their faces so close they might’ve been lovers. The kid’s broad features were almost mongoloid in appearance. He had a chalk-white complexion and the thin purple lips of a corpse.
For a moment, Jacob was certain he’d seen the kid before… but where? And then he spotted a man climbing into a car across the street.
The kid followed Jacob’s gaze. “You scream, you die.”
Jacob noticed a butterfly knife clutched in the kid’s hand. Mugged! He was being mugged.
“You deaf or something?” The blade whisked before his eyes.
Jacob thrust his wallet into the kid’s hands. “Take it.”
The door to the police station creaked open. A middle-aged man in police blues lit a cigarette and froze on the steps, his gaze angled in their direction. “Hey!” the cop yelled.
The kid’s jaw dropped open. He shoved Jacob to the ground and fled into the street.
The cop pitched his cigarette and raced down the stairs.
A black Lincoln swerved around the corner and screeched to a halt. The kid dove into the backseat and the car peeled away from the curb, leaving a cloud of burnt rubber pluming out behind it.
Jacob rolled onto his side and caught a glimpse of the first two numbers of the license plate before a tinted panel of glass slid over it and everything faded to black.
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The Art of Dying: A Ray Hanley Crime Thriller Page 29