Patrick Quinlan - The Hit

‘He seems to lack empathy for other living things, human or animal. He tortured stray cats as a child. He conducted experiments on them, like some kind of grammar school Josef Mengele. As an adult, he’s believed to be a serial rapist, and his M.O. is most likely blitz attacks with blunt objects on defenseless victims, like old women or women who are asleep. In fact, it’s likely that at one time or another he’s killed a woman or women in the initial attack and then had sex with the corpse. Of course, by now he may have graduated to more sophisticated methods.’

‘If they know all this about him,’ Gant said, ‘why is he still on the street?’

Monty shrugged. ‘You’re the ex-cop war hero. Go and arrest him if you want. But I suggest you hire him for the job. He can do whatever science you need, and he has the moral flexibility you described. Keep him close while the operation is ongoing. Afterwards, I think you should dispose of him. He’s not the kind of person you want out there knowing your secrets.’

Monty smiled then, his white teeth gleaming. ‘And, as I’m sure you realize, the world will probably be a little better off without him.’

In the end, Gant took half of Monty’s advice. He hired Foerster. Afterward, he paid him handsomely and sent him on his way. Why had he done that? For one, Foerster seemed a lot more stable in person than Monty made him out to be. He was a jerk, of course, almost unbearably obnoxious at times. But he was no drooling psycho. He worked long hours without complaint, living on take-out food and very little sleep, and when it came to the science he knew exactly what he was doing. There was trial and error, sure – he had never grown anthrax before, weaponized or not – but he mastered the intricacies of it in short order.

There was something creepy about Foerster, but the operation was a huge success, and he was part of that success. It might have been bad judgment, it might even have been short-sighted selfishness, but Gant figured that if he ever needed a microbiologist again, Foerster was his man, so it was better to keep him alive. And it was even more than that. Gant recognized something in Foerster. In a sense, they had some things in common, were almost kindred spirits.

They both kept secrets.

‘You can’t keep hiding out here forever.’

It was her mother talking. That morning, Katie had evacuated to her mother’s tidy house in Beaufort, about an hour away by car. Now, in the late afternoon, she was still there. She had no immediate plans of leaving.

She’d eaten lunch with her Mom, and as the sun waned they were enjoying a few Margaritas on her Mom’s back patio. It was pleasant enough, sitting at the table and putting a buzz on. The patio looked out on her Mom’s backyard and garden. They were more modest, certainly, than Katie’s, but still pretty nice. It had rained a lot down here this summer and even now, in November, the whole backyard – the trees, the bushes, the hanging vines – were as dense and lush as a rainforest. It seemed to Katie like a magical place out of a fairy tale. And the strong drinks didn’t hurt either. They put a filter between Katie and her Mom’s more annoying commentary.

It was good to be there in one important sense – Tyler had arrived home and found her gone. In fact, he had called about an hour ago, wondering where she was and what he ought to thaw out for dinner. Of course, he knew exactly where she was – both their cars were outfitted with GPS units mounted inside the dashboard, which he could monitor from his laptop computer. It was very convenient. If the cars were ever stolen, he could find them again with just a few clicks. And if Katie ever used her car to run away from home, he could find her again the same way.

Tyler also knew what he ought to make himself for dinner. He was a big boy and had lived on his own for many years before they met. He had called her to send a message. Although their conversation was brief, and polite, he was in effect telling her: I’m home now and you should be, too.

But she wasn’t home and she wasn’t coming home. Not tonight. See, two could play at this game of being absent without leave. He thought he could come and go as he pleased and she was supposed to stay home and play wifey, but she was done with that. It was over. Certainly, she would make it look good for public consumption – for instance, she was organizing their annual Halloween party as she always did – but privately, she would make him feel how she felt.

Katie’s mother went on. ‘I mean, it seems like every few days you’re sleeping over here, and I doubt it’s for my benefit. If you’re having these sorts of problems, maybe you should go into counseling together.’

She looked at her mother, really soaking her in. She was a woman in her late fifties. She was careful about sun exposure. She drank eight glasses of pure spring water a day. She followed a mainly vegetarian diet, though she wasn’t a fanatic about it. At Katie’s insistence, she had taken up yoga about ten years ago, and had retained some of her youthful flexibility and strength. Her eyes were bright and alert, even after a few drinks. About the only obvious clue to her age were the crow’s feet around her eyes, and the wrinkles on her forehead and neck – she refused to consider plastic surgery, though many women she knew had already gone for it two or three times.

Still, Katie’s father had died five years earlier and his death had taken its toll. Her Mom she wasn’t as vigorous as before – wasn’t quite the queen of the ball she had once been. She had diminished without him, and had become thinner and more fragile. She was still passionate about gardening, and about her charity work. She still lived life and gave herself to it. If anything about her had outwardly changed, it was that she no longer traveled the way she and Katie’s father had loved to do together. But that was par for the course now anyway – few people were traveling like they once had. Even so, her mother was getting older, and it was happening right in front of Katie’s eyes. She could almost picture her mother in another ten years, and she didn’t like what she saw.

‘Mom, would Dad have ever gone to marital counseling?’

‘Well, we never needed counseling, as far as I know.’

‘That’s not really my point. My point is, would he have gone?’

Her mother gave a gentle shake of her head. ‘I don’t think certain men of your father’s generation would go in for that kind of thing. Many did, but some men were holdovers from an earlier time. They weren’t very touchy-feely. They held their pain inside and didn’t talk much about it.’

Katie took a sip of her Margarita. It was fruity and delicious. She was about to score one on her mother and took the time to savor it. ‘Exactly my point. Tyler is a man from Dad’s generation, and I’d say he qualifies as a holdover from an earlier time. Like maybe the Great Depression.’

Her mother made a pained expression. ‘I’m not the one who told you to marry a man your father’s age.’

‘Nobody told me to do it. He’s the man I fell in love with.’

‘Well, for God’s sake, Katie. A younger man, a more modern man, would be better able to deal emotionally with the problem you’ve had. A younger man would be more open about it, would be more willing to talk about it, and then maybe the two of you could move on from being stuck in this place.’

‘Mom…’

Her mother held up a thin hand. To Katie, this was the first indication that her Mom had crossed the line from tipsy to drunk. ‘No, I’m going to say it. Tyler wanted to have children, his own children. He wanted to have them with you. But you can’t have children, and what’s worse, you can’t have them because of your own flagrant behavior. OK, you were young, but that doesn’t change the facts. You ruined your body by sleeping around.’