John Verdon - Think of a Number

“This is David.”

“Oh, you sounded… odd. This is Laura. From the hospital. You wanted me to call… if anything happened,” she added with enough of a pause to suggest a hope that his desire for the call might have deeper roots than the reason he’d given.

“That’s right. Thank you for remembering.”

“My pleasure.”

“Did something happen?”

“Mr. Dermott passed away.”

“Excuse me? Could you say that again?”

“Gregory Dermott, the man you wanted to know about-he died ten minutes ago.”

“Cause of death?”

“Nothing official yet, but the MRI they did on admission showed a skull fracture with a massive hemorrhage.”

“Right. I guess it’s not a surprise, with that kind of damage.” It seemed to him that he was feeling something, but the feeling was far away and had no label.

“No, not with that kind of damage.”

The feeling was faint but disturbing, like a small cry in a loud wind.

“No. Well, thank you, Laura. It was good of you to call.”

“Sure. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“You better get some sleep.”

“Yeah. Good night. And thanks again.”

First he switched off the phone, then he switched off the headlights of the car and sank back against the seat, too drained to move. In the sudden absence of the headlights, everything around him was impenetrably dark.

Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, the absolute blackness of the sky and the woods shifted to a deep gray and the snow-covered pasture to a softer gray. Out where he imagined he could just discern the eastern ridge, where the sun would rise in another hour, there seemed to be a faint aura. The snow had stopped falling. The house beside the car was massive, cold, and still.

He tried to see what had happened in the simplest terms. The child in the bedroom with his lonely mother and demented drunk of a father… the screams and the blood and the helplessness… the terrible lifelong physical and mental damage… the homicidal delusions of revenge and redemption. So the little Spinks boy grew into the Dermott madman who murdered at least five men and was on the verge of murdering twenty more. Gregory Spinks whose father had cut his mother’s throat. Gregory Dermott who had his skull fatally smashed in the house where it all began.

Gurney gazed out at the barely visible outline of the hills, knowing there was a second story to consider, a story he needed to understand better-the story of his own life, the father who’d ignored him, the grown son he in turn had ignored, the obsessive career that had brought him so much praise and so little peace, the little boy who’d died when he wasn’t looking, and Madeleine who seemed to understand it all. Madeleine, the light he’d almost lost. The light he’d endangered.

He was too tired now to move even a finger, too far toward sleep to feel a thing, and into his mind came a merciful emptiness. For a while-he wasn’t sure how long-it was as though he didn’t exist, as though everything in him had been reduced to a dimensionless point of consciousness, a pinprick of awareness and nothing more.

He came to suddenly, opening his eyes just as the burning rim of the sun began to glare through the bare trees atop the ridge. He watched the radiant fingernail of light slowly swell into a great white arc. Then he became aware of another presence.

Madeleine, in her bright orange parka-the same one she’d worn the day he’d followed her to the overlook-was standing by the side window of the car looking at him. He wondered how long she’d been there. Tiny ice crystals glimmered on the fleecy edge of her hood. He lowered the window.

At first she said nothing, but in her face he saw-saw, sensed, felt, he didn’t know by what route her emotion reached him-an amalgam of acceptance and love. Acceptance, love, and a deep relief that once again he’d come home alive.

She asked with a touching matter-of-factness whether he’d like some breakfast.

With the vitality of a leaping flame, her orange parka captured the rising sun. He got out of the car and put his arms around her, holding her as though she were life itself.

My thanks to my superb editor, Rick Horgan, who was a constant source of good ideas, whose inspired and inspiring guidance made everything so much better, who came up with the perfect title, and who had the courage in today’s difficult publishing environment to take a chance on the first novel of an unpublished writer; to Lucy Carson and Paul Cirone for their advocacy, enthusiasm, and efficiency; to Bernard Whalen for his advice and encouragement early on; to Josh Kendall for a thoughtful critique and a wonderful suggestion; and finally to Molly Friedrich, simply the best and brightest agent in the world.

John Verdon has held several executive positions with Manhattan advertising firms, but like his protagonist, he recently relocated with his wife to rural upstate New York. Think of a Number is his first novel.