On Saturday Mo drove him to the airport.
“You two’re going to have fun together?”
“You bet,” Pete said. He sounded cheerful because he was cheerful. “We’re gonna have a fine time.”
On the day of the murder, while his wife and her lover were sipping wine in a room at the Mountain View Lodge, Roy had lunch with a business associate. The man, who wished to remain anonymous, reported that Roy was in unusually good spirits. It seemed his depression had lifted and he was happy once more.
Fine, fine, fine…
Mo kissed him and then hugged him hard. He didn’t kiss her back, though he did give her a hug, reminding himself that he had to be a good actor.
“You’re looking forward to going aren’t you?” she asked.
“I sure am,” he answered. This was true.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” he responded. This was not true. He hated her. He hoped the plane left on time. He didn’t want to wait here with her any longer than he had to.
The flight attendant, a pretty blonde woman, kept stopping at his seat. This wasn’t unusual for Pete. Women liked him. He’d heard a million times that he was cute, he was handsome, he was charming. Women were always leaning close and telling him that. Touching his arm, squeezing his shoulder. But today he answered her questions with a a simple yes or no. and kept reading Triangle. Reading the passages he’d underlined. Memorizing them.
Learning about fingerprints, about interviewing witnesses, about footprints and trace evidence. There was a lot he didn’t understand but he did figure out how smart the cops were and that he’d have to be very careful if he was going to kill Doug and get away with it.
“We’re about to land,” the flight attendant said. “Could you put your seat belt on, please?” She smiled at him.
He clicked the belt on and went back to his book.
Hank Gibson’s body had fallen one hundred and twelve feet. He’d landed on his right side and of the more than two hundred bones in the human body, he’d broken seventy-seven of them. His ribs had pierced all his major internal organs and his skull was flattened on one side.
“Welcome to Baltimore, where the local time in twelve twenty-five,” the flight attendant said. “Please remain in your seat with the seat belt fastned until the plane has come to a complete stop and the pilot has turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. Thank you.”
The medical examiner estimated that Hank was traveling 80 mph when he struck the ground and that death was virtually instantaneous.
Welcome to Baltimore…
……………………………….
Doug met him at the airport. Shook his hand.
“How you doing?” Doug asked.
“Okay.”
This was so weird. Spending the weekend with a man that Mo knew so well and that Pete hardly knew at all.
Going hiking with somebody he hardly knew at all.
Going to kill somebody he hardly knew at all…
He walked along beside Doug.
“I need a beer and some crabs,” Doug said as they got into his car. “You hungry?”
“Sure am.”
They stopped at the waterfront and went into an old dive. The place stunk. It smelled like the cleanser Mo used on the floor when Randolf, their Labrador retriever puppy, made a mess on the carpet.
Doug whistled at the waitress before they’d even sat down. “Hey, honey, think you can handle two real men?” He gave her the sort of grin he’d seen Doug give Mo a couple of times. Pete looked away, a little embarrassed but plenty disgusted.
When they started to eat, Doug calmed down, though that was probably the beers more than the food. Like Mo got after her third glass of Gallo in the evenings.
Pete wasn’t saying much. Doug tried to be cheerful. He talked and talked but it was just garbage. Pete didn’t pay any attention.
“Maybe I’ll give my girlfriend a call,” Doug said suddenly. “See if she wants to join us.”
“You have a girlfriend? What’s her name?”
“Uhm. Cathy,” he said.
The waitress’s name tag said, Hi, I’m Cathleen.
“That’d be fun,” Pete said.
“She might be going out of town this weekend.” He avoided Pete’s eyes. “But I’ll call her later.”
Pete’s only smart when it comes to computers and sports. He’s stupid about everything else…
Finally Doug looked at his watch and said, “So what do you feel like doing now?”
Pete pretended to think for a minute and asked, “Anyplace we can go hiking around here?”
“Hiking?”
“Like any mountain trails?”
Doug finished his beer, shook his head. “Naw, nothing like that I know of.”
Pete felt rage again – his hands were shaking, the blood roaring in his ears – but he covered it up pretty well and tried to think. Now, what was he going to do? He’d counted on Doug agreeing to whatever he wanted. He’d counted on a nice high cliff.
Hank was traveling 80 mph when he struck the ground….
But then Doug continued. “But if you want to be outside, one thing we could do maybe is go hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Nothing good’s in season now,” Doug said. “But there’s always rabbits and squirrels.”
“Well - ”
“I’ve got a couple of guns we can use.”
Pete debated for only a moment and then said, “Okay. Let’s go hunting.”
…………………………………….
“You shoot much?” Doug asked him.
“Some.”
In fact, Pete was a good shot. His father had taught him how to load and clean guns and how to handle them. (“Never point it at anything unless you’re prepared to shoot it.”)
But Pete didn’t want Doug to know he knew anything about guns so he let the man show him how to load the little twenty-two and how to pull the slide to cock it and where the safety was.
I’m a much better actor than Mo.
They were in Doug’s house, which was pretty nice. It was in the woods and it was a big place, full of stone walls and glass. The furniture wasn’t like the cheap things Mo and Pete had. It was mostly antiques.
Which depressed Pete even more, made him angrier, because he knew that Mo liked money and she liked people who had money even if they were idiots, like Doug. When Pete looked at Doug’s beautiful house he knew that if Mo ever saw it then she’d want Doug even more. Then he wondered if she had seen it. Pete had gone to Wisconsin a few months ago, to see his father and cousins. Maybe Mo had come down here to spend the night with Doug.
“So,” Doug said. “Ready?”
“Where’re we going?” Pete asked.
“There’s a good field about a mile from here. It’s not posted. Anything we can hit, we can take.”
“Sounds good to me,” Pete said.
They got into the car and Doug pulled onto the road.
“Better put that seat belt on,” Doug warned. “I drive like a crazy man.”
…………………………………….
Pete was looking around the big, empty field.
Not a soul.
“What?” Doug asked, and Pete realized that the man was staring at him.
“I said it’s pretty quiet.”
And deserted. No witnesses. Like the ones who screwed up Roy’s plans in Triangle.
“Nobody knows about this place. I found it by my little old lonesome.” Doug said this real proud, as if he’d discovered a cure for cancer. “Lessee.” He lifted his rifle and squeezed off a round.
Crack…
He missed a can sitting about thirty feet away.
“Little rusty,” he said. “But, hey, aren’t we having fun?”
“Sure are,” Pete answered.
Doug fired again, three times, and hit the can on the last shot. It leapt into the sir. “There we go!”
Doug reloaded and they started through the tall grass and brush.
They walked for five minutes.
“There,” Doug said. “Can you hit that rock over there?”
He was pointing at a white rock about twenty feet from them. Pete thought he could have hit it but he missed on purpose. He emptied the clip.
“Not bad,” Doug said. “Came close the last few shots.” Pete knew he was being sarcastic.
Pete reloaded and they continued through the grass.
“So,” Doug said. “How’s she doing?”
“Fine. She’s fine.”
Whenever Mo was upset and Pete’d ask her how she was she’d say, “Fine. I’m fine.”
Which didn’t mean fine at all. It meant, I don’t feel like telling you anything. I’m keeping secrets from you.
I don’t love you anymore.
They stepped over a few fallen logs and started down a hill. The grass was mixed with blue flowers and daisies. Mo liked to garden and was always driving up to the nursery to buy plants. Sometimes she’d come back without any and Pete began to wonder if, on those trips, she was really seeing Doug instead. He got angry again. Hands sweaty, teeth grinding together.
“She get her car fixed?” Doug asked. “She was saying that there was something wrong with the transmission.”
How’d he know that? The car broke down only four days ago. Had Doug been there and Pete didn’t know it?
Doug glanced at Pete and repeated the question.
Pete blinked. “Oh, her car? Yeah, it’s okay. She took it in and they fixed it.”
But then he felt better because that meant they hadn’t talked yesterday or otherwise she would have told him about getting the car fixed.
On the other hand, maybe Doug was lying to him now. Making it look as if she hadn’t told him about the car when they really had talked.
Pete looked at Doug’s pudgy face and couldn’t decide whether to believe him or not. He looked sort of innocent but Pete had learned that people who seemed innocent were sometimes the most guilty. Roy, the husband in Triangle, had been a church choir director. From the smiling picture in the book, you’d never guess he’d kill somebody.
Thinking about the book, thinking about the murder.
Pete was scanning the field. Yes, there… about fifty feet away. A fence. Five feet high. It would work just fine.
Fine…
As fine as Mo.
Who wanted Doug more than she wanted Pete.
“What’re you looking for?” Doug asked.
“Something to shoot.”
And thought: Witnesses. That’s what I’m looking for.
“Let’s go that way,” Pete said and walked toward the fence.
Doug shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
Pete studied it as they approached. Wood posts about eight feet apart, five strands of rusting wire.
Not too easy to climb over but it wasn’t barbed wire like some of the fences they’d passed. Besides, Pete didn’t want it too easy to climb. He’d been thinking. He had a plan.
Roy had thought about the murder for weeks. It had obsessed his every waking moment. He’d drawn charts and diagrams and planned every detail down to the nth degree. In his mind, at least, it was the perfect crime….
Pete now asked, “So what’s your girlfriend do?”
“Uhm, my girlfriend? She works in Baltimore.”
“Oh. Doing what?”
“In an office. Big company.”
“Oh.”
They got closer to the fence. Pete asked, “You’re divorced? Mo was saying you’re divorced.”
“Right. Betty and I split up two years ago.”
“You still see her?”
“Who? Betty? Naw. We went our separate ways.”
“You have any kids?”
“Nope.”
Of course not. When you had kids you had to think about somebody else. You couldn’t think about yourself all the time.
Like Doug did.
Like Mo.
Pete was looking around again. For squirrels, for rabbits, for witnesses.
Then Doug stopped and he looked around too. Pete wondered why but then Doug took a bottle of beer from his knapsack and drank the whole bottle down and tossed it on the ground. “You want something to drink?” Doug asked.
“No,” Pete answered. It was good that Doug’d be slightly drunk when they found him. They’d check his blood. They did that. That’s how they knew Hank’d been drinking when they got what was left of the body (80 mph, after all) to the Colorado Springs hospital – they checked the alcohol in the blood.
The fence was only twenty feet away.
“Oh, hey,” Pete said. “Over there. Look.”
He pointed to the grass on the other side of the fence.
“What?” Dpug asked.
“I saw a couple of rabbits.”
“You did? Where?”
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
“Okay. Let’s do it,” Doug said.
They walked to the fence. Suddenly Doug reached out and took Pete’s rifle. “I’ll hold it while you climb over. Safer that way.”
Jesus… Pete froze with terror. He realized now that Doug was going to do exactly what Pete had in mind. He’d been planning on holding Doug’s gun for him. And then when Doug was at the top of the fence he was going to shoot him. Making it look like Doug had tried to carry his gun as he climbed the fence but he’d dropped it and it went off.
Roy bet on the old law enforcement rule that what looks like an accident probably is an accident…
Pete didn’t move. He thought he saw something odd in Doug’s eyes, something mean and sarcastic. It reminded him of Mo’s expression. Pete took one look at those eyes and he could see how much Doug hated him and how much he loved Mo.
“You want me to go first?” Pete asked. Not moving, wondering if he should just run.
“Sure,” Doug said. “You go first. Then I’ll hand the guns over to you.” His eyes said, You’re not afraid of climbing over the fence are you? You’re not afraid to turn your back on me, are you?
Then Doug was looking around too.
Looking for witnesses, just like Pete had been.
“Go on,” Doug encouraged.
Pete – his hands shaking now from fear – started to climb. Thinking: This is it. He’s going to shoot me. Last month I left the motel too early! Doug and Mo had kept talking and planned out how he was going to ask me down here and pretend to be all nice then he’d shoot me.
Remembering it was Doug who’d suggested hunting.
But if I run, Pete thought, he’ll chase me down and shoot me. Even if he shoots me in the back he’ll just claim it’s an accident.
Roy’s lawyer argued to the jury that, yes, the men had met on the path and struggled, nut that Hank had fallen accidentally. He urged the jury to find that, at worst, Roy was guilty of negligent homicide….
He put his foot on the first rung of wire. Started up.
Second rung of wire…
Pete’s heart was beating a million times a minute. He had to pause to wipe his palms.
He thought he heard a whisper, as if Doug were talking to himself.
He swung his leg over the top wire.
Then he heard the sound of a gun cocking.
And Doug said in a hoarse whisper, “You’re dead.”
Pete gasped.
Crack!
The short, snappy sound of the twenty-two filled the field.
Pete choked a cry and looked around, nearly falling off the fence.
“Damn,” Doug muttered. He was aiming away from the fence. Nodding toward a tree line. “Squirrel. Missed him by two inches.”
“Squirrel,” Pete repeated manically. “And you missed him.”
“Two goddamn inches.”
Hands shaking, Pete continued over the fence and climbed to the ground.
“You okay?” Doug asked. “You look a little funny.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
Fine, fine, fine…
Doug handed Pete the guns and started over the fence. Pete debated. Then he put his rifle on the ground and gripped Doug’s gun tight. He walked to the fence so that he was right below Doug.
“Look,” Doug said as he got to the top. He was straddling it, his right leg on one side of the fence, his left on the other. “Over there.” He pointed nearby.
There was a big gray lop-eared rabbit on his haunches only twenty feet away.
“There you go!” Doug whispered. “You’ve got a great shot.”
Pete shouldered the gun. It was pointing at the ground, halfway between the rabbit and Doug.
“Go ahead. What’re you waiting for?”
Roy was convicted of premeditated murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison. Yet he came very close to committing the perfect murder. If not for a simple twist of fate he would have gotten away with it….
Pete looked at the rabbit, looked at Doug.
“Aren’t you going to shoot?”
Uhm, okay, he thought.
Pete raised the gun and pulled the trigger once.
Doug gasped, pressed at the tiny bullethole in his chest. “But… but… No!”
He fell backward off the fence and lay on a patch of dried mud, completely still. The rabbit bounded through the grass, panicked by the sound of the shot, and disappeared in a tangle of bushes that Pete recognized as blackberries. Mo had planted tons of them in the backyard.
………………………………………………
The plane descended from cruising altitude and slowly floated toward the airport.
Pete watched the billowy clouds and his fellow passengers, read the in=flight magazine and the “Sky Mall” catalog. He was bored. He didn’t have his book to read. Before he’d talked to the Maryland state troopers about Doug’s death he’d thrown Triangle into a trash bin.
One of the reasons the jury convicted Roy was that, upon examining his house, the police found several books about disposing of evidence. Roy had no satisfactory explanation for them….
The small plane glided out of the skies and landed at White Plains airport. Pete pulled his knapsack out from underneath the seat in front of him and climbed out of the plane. He walked down the ramp, beside the flight attendant, a tall black woman, talking with her about the flight.
Pete saw Mo at the gate. She looked numb. She wore sunglasses and Pete supposed she’d been crying. She was clutching a Kleenex in her fingers.
Her nails weren’t bright red anymore, he noticed.
They weren’t peach either.
They were just plain fingernail color.
The flight attendant came up to Mo. “You’re Mrs. Jill Anderson?”
Mo nodded.
The woman held up a sheet of paper. “Here. Could you sign this, please?”
Numbly, Mo took the pen the woman offered and signed the paper.
It was an unaccompanied-minor form, which adults had to sign to allow their children to get on planes by themselves. The parent picking up the child also had to sign it. After his parents were divorced Pete flew back and forth between his dad in Wisconsin and his mother, Mo, in White Plains so often he knew all about airlines’ procedures for kids who flew alone.
“I have to say,” she said to Mo, smiling down at Pete, “he’s the best behaved youngster I’ve ever had on one of my flights. How old are you, Pete?”
“I’m ten,” he answered. “But I’m going to be eleven next week.”
She squeezed his shoulder. Then looked at Mo. “I’m so sorry about what happened,” she said in a soft voice. “The trooper who put Pete on the plane told me your boyfriend was killed in a hunting accident.”
“No,” Mo said, struggling to say the words, “he wasn’t my boyfriend.”
Though Pete was thinking: Of course he was your boyfriend. Except you didn’t want the court to find that out because then Dad wouldn’t have to pay you alimony anymore. Which is why she and Doug had been working so hard to convince Pete that Doug was “just a friend.”
Can’t I have friends? Aren’t I allowed?
No, you’re not, Pete thought. You’re not going to get away with dumping your son the way you dumped Dad.
“Can we go home, Mo?” he asked, looking as sad as he could. “I feel real funny about what happened.”
“Sure, honey.”
“Mo?” the flight attendant asked.
Mo, staring out the window, said, “My name’s Jill. But when he was five Pete tried to write mother on my birthday card. He just wrote M-O and didn’t know how to spell the rest. It became my nickname.”
“What a sweet story,” the woman said and looked like she was going to cry. “Pete, you come back and fly with us real soon.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, what’re you going to do for your birthday?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Then he looked up at his mother. “I was thinking about maybe going hiking. In Colorado. Just the two of us.”
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