The Good Killer Read online

  “An old boyfriend.”

  “Did she tell you his name?”

  “No. It didn’t seem like something she wanted to talk about. I think she only mentioned him to explain why she didn’t want anyone to take pictures of her, in case they ended up online. She was afraid he would see them.”

  “Right.”

  “But her current boyfriend would know, wouldn’t he?” Kate says. “The guy she lives with. Sean.”

  Garza smiles. She’s been out of touch, he thinks. She doesn’t know about the shootings in Houston.

  “I’ll ask him when I see him,” Garza says.

  He talks to the other women as the morning shades into the afternoon. By two o’clock he’s no closer to figuring out what happened here. He doesn’t know where to look for Molly or Sean. He calls in to his lieutenant, who listens to his report and tells him he should get on a plane and come home.

  Garza ends the call and walks to his car. The drive back to the airport in Bozeman is fifty miles. He’s halfway through it when his phone rings. His lieutenant, calling him back.

  “This is loopy,” the man says. “This whole damn thing.”

  “What?” says Garza.

  “You sent some of Sean Tennant’s tools to the lab, so they could lift prints.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they got a hit. Tennant grew up in Detroit. He served in the army, in Iraq.”

  “Must be where he learned to shoot.”

  “And his real name isn’t Tennant. It’s Garrety.”

  Garza feels a rush run through him. The road is straight and flat ahead of him and he’s moving fast. He glances at the speedometer, sees the needle well past eighty. He eases back a little.

  “There’s one other thing,” his lieutenant says.

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a warrant out for Garrety in Michigan, from six years ago. It’s worth looking into, I think. So maybe you don’t come home yet. Maybe you take a detour instead.”

  16

  Nick Ensen

  Jimmy has the TV on again. It’s getting on Nick’s nerves.

  The hotel room is a grim place: gray walls and brown carpet. The pillows are thin, and the sheets are stiff. It’s not even a chain; it’s something called the Blackfoot Inn. Named after the town—Blackfoot, Idaho.

  There are two things in the drawer of Nick’s bedside table. He looked. A Gideon Bible and a brochure for the Potato Museum.

  Jimmy’s sitting on the other bed, flipping through the cable news channels. They’re all reporting on Molly Winter’s disappearance from Long Meadow Ranch. They’ve made the connection between Molly and Sean, but they don’t quite know what to say about this development. They’ve all hit on the same words to express their bewilderment: it’s a “bizarre twist” in the Houston shooting story.

  Nick lies back on his bed. The pillowcase is scratchy on his neck.

  “My face hurts,” he says.

  “Take some more Tylenol,” says Jimmy.

  The Tylenol is useless, but there’s no point in saying it. He’s said it before.

  Nick casts around for something else.

  “I can’t smell anything.”

  Jimmy chuckles. “You’re not missing out. All I can smell is smoke.”

  “I thought this was a nonsmoking room.”

  “I guess somebody broke the rules.”

  Nick closes his eyes, tries to fall asleep. Minutes crawl by. He rolls sideways and sits up. Pain shoots through his abdomen. He winces, and the wincing hurts. He gets up and stalks off to the bathroom.

  One yellow bulb in there, over the sink. Nick stands beneath it and looks in the mirror. His nose is a purple lump. His eyes are black and puffy. But at least he can open them now.

  It’s been twenty-four hours since Molly bashed his face with a tree branch.

  When he caught up with Jimmy in the woods, his eyes were starting to swell shut. Jimmy had to take his arm to get him back to the car. A long walk in the dark. Nick thought it would never end.

  He remembers getting a little hysterical in the car.

  “Jesus, Jimmy,” he said. “I’m bleeding. You gotta take me somewhere.”

  “Calm down,” Jimmy said.

  “I can’t see. I can’t see a goddamn thing.”

  “All right.”

  Hard to tell how fast Jimmy was driving, but Nick could feel every bend in the road in his gut. He thought he would throw up.

  “I can’t see. Do you get that? You gotta take me to a hospital.”

  “All right.”

  “You gotta take me now.”

  Jimmy’s voice sounded bland and distant. “I’m taking you.”

  Nick couldn’t count the time. It might have been twenty minutes. Not long enough to get to Bozeman. But Jimmy was slowing down. Nick felt the car turn, and it sounded like they were rolling over gravel.

  Jimmy cut the engine and came around and opened the passenger door. Nick reached out and Jimmy’s hand caught him and pulled him up.

  “This way,” Jimmy said.

  It felt wrong. Stones under his feet, not pavement. No sound of other cars. No people. If they were at a hospital, there would be other people. There would be activity.

  Nick felt a fear that almost made his knees buckle. He broke out in sweat.

  His voice sounded like a child’s. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

  He couldn’t open his eyes. He didn’t know where they were going or what Jimmy might do. His fear filled things in: any second now, Jimmy would grab his hair and pull his head back. Draw a knife across his throat. Leave his body by the side of the road.

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” he said, freezing in place. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  Jimmy tried to pull him along. “Come on, kid. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be good. I won’t complain anymore.”

  Jimmy’s grip tightened on his arm and they were moving again.

  “I’m trying to help you. Come on.”

  They came to a set of steps and went up, and Jimmy knocked on a door. Time passed, and Jimmy knocked again, pounded this time. Nick heard the door rattle in the frame.

  More pounding and a voice behind the door said, “Yes, yes. Hold on.” An old man’s voice. Nick heard a bolt turn. The door opened.

  Now the voice was close and clear.

  “Lord in his heaven. What happened to you?”

  “We ran into some trouble,” Jimmy said.

  “So I see. But it’s not my kind of trouble. There’s an urgent care in Livingston, twelve miles down the road. They’re open twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re open twenty-four hours,” Jimmy countered. “It says so on your sign.”

  “Look closer. It says twenty-four-hour emergency service. That’s meant for farmers who call me in the middle of the night when their cows go into labor. Otherwise I open at nine in the morning and close at six.”

  “Well, we’re here now,” Jimmy said. “And this is an emergency.”

  Nick frowned. “Wait. Did he say ‘farmers’?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Did he say ‘cows’?”

  In the bathroom at the Blackfoot Inn, Nick leans close to the mirror, turns his head, and studies the stitches that run along his cheek. Courtesy of Richard Weatherby, doctor of veterinary medicine. The black thread stands out starkly in the yellow light.

  He has no idea what Weatherby looked like, but he remembers the heat of the old man’s breath on his skin. The bite of the needle. The tug of the thread.

  Nick lifts his T-shirt and bares his stomach. He’s got a bruise as big as a peach, just to the left of his navel. And more stitches, a line of them, shorter than the line on his face. He wonders if this is the end or if there’s more sewing in his future. If he stays with Jimmy, how much more damage will there be?

  Jimmy Harper

  The kid comes out of the bathroom and lies down again, sulking.

  Like he’s been doing all day.
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  Jimmy has tried ignoring the problem. He’s tried feeding it too, but Nick seems to have no appetite. The pizza and wings Jimmy ordered for dinner remain mostly untouched.

  If this goes on, the kid will be useless.

  Jimmy is the oldest of five children, and he has two of his own, so he’s accustomed to dealing with childish behavior. When he was young, his father handled the discipline, and it generally went in two stages. If you acted up, you got yelled at, and if the yelling didn’t work, you got hit.

  Jimmy’s ex-wife doesn’t believe in hitting, so when it comes to their kids he tries to do things her way. Everything is a discussion. You talk about the kids’ feelings, explain to them why things have to be a certain way. If that doesn’t solve the problem, you put them in time-out.

  One thing Jimmy knows: he isn’t going to talk to Nick about his feelings. But yelling isn’t likely to do any good either, and he needs to do something.

  He switches off the television and swings around so he’s facing Nick’s bed.

  “Sit up,” he says.

  Nick doesn’t move.

  “Please,” Jimmy says.

  It’s a big production with a fair amount of sighing, but Nick sits up and plants his feet on the floor.

  Jimmy takes a long look at the kid’s face.

  “It’s getting better,” he says.

  Nick makes a noncommittal noise through closed lips.

  “It is,” Jimmy says. “And once we’re back home, I’ll make sure it gets taken care of properly. I give you my word.”

  No reply. Nick looks down at the floor.

  “Hey,” Jimmy says. “When I give you my word, that’s solid. It’s serious. Do you hear me?”

  Nick nods, but he doesn’t mean it. He lifts his head and looks around the room, at the door, the TV, the heavy curtains on the window, the painting of a sailboat on the wall. He’s got something to say, and he’s working his way up to it.

  Eventually he gets there. “I don’t know why we’re doing this,” he says.

  It’s a fair question, Jimmy thinks. And in a sense, the answer’s simple.

  Because I didn’t break Sean Garrety’s neck when I had the chance.

  But he knows he’ll need to explain it better than that.

  “It goes back a long way,” Jimmy says. “Sean used to live with my family. He was my brother Cole’s best friend, and we took him in because he had nowhere else to go. My mother and father were generous people. Then my father died. From a heart attack, from smoking and drinking all his life. I was twenty-eight years old and Cole was seventeen. Our three sisters were in between us.

  “I had to step up. I’d been helping my father run his business, and now it was mine. My sisters were either married or away at college, but I had to look after them too. And Cole, who was still in high school. And Sean.

  “The thing about Sean is, he was reckless. I’m not saying there was malice in him, but he didn’t care about himself or about other people. He drank too much, and he drove too fast, and he hung around with deadbeats. And Cole was devoted to him, so Cole followed his lead.

  “After they graduated, I hired them to work for me at the auto shop. Cole liked the work. But Sean, I don’t know, maybe he thought it was beneath him. He quit after a couple of weeks. Ended up working at a home-improvement store instead.

  “Next I heard, he wanted to go to college. I didn’t think he had the temperament for it, but I helped him anyway. He got into Wayne State. Whether he went to any classes, I couldn’t tell you. I think he was more interested in living in a dorm and partying. Cole met up with him every weekend, the two of them getting drunk and trying to get laid.

  “Sean failed his classes and dropped out, and I stopped caring about what happened to him. I ignored him, until one night my mother came to me and told me Cole had enlisted in the army.

  “It wasn’t his idea, of course. Sean enlisted first. I imagine he thought it would be a big adventure. Now they were both going. In five weeks they would have to report to basic training.

  “I tried to convince Cole he was being an idiot. I told him I’d get him a lawyer. We could say he was drunk when he signed up. Or something. If we couldn’t get him out of it, I would have sent him to Canada. But he wouldn’t listen to me.

  “One night I went to see Sean. He was living in this dumpy apartment with peeling paint on the ceilings and scarred linoleum on the floors. I made him the same offer I’d made Cole. I’d hire a lawyer and get him out of it.

  “‘I don’t want to get out of it,’ he said.

  “‘How much are they paying you?’ I asked him.

  “‘It’s not about money,’ he said.

  “‘But there’s a signing bonus. Right?’ I said. ‘How much? Five thousand? Ten? Whatever it is, I’ll match it.’

  “‘I’m not doing it for the signing bonus,’ he said.

  “I was already angry, and he was making it worse. ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘You’re not really this dumb, are you? There’s no reason to do it, if not for the money. Do you think it’s gonna be like a movie?’

  “‘No,’ he said.

  “‘You do,’ I said. ‘Look, I don’t care what happens to you. But I can’t have Cole going with you.’

  “‘I never asked him to,’ Sean said.

  “‘You didn’t have to,’ I said. ‘You know how he is. You need to stop him. This is not a game.’

  “‘I can’t stop him,’ Sean said.”

  Jimmy pauses. He takes a deep breath that’s tinged with stale cigarette smoke.

  “That wasn’t true,” he says to Nick. “Sean could have stopped him. And I could have stopped the whole thing. Sean and I were alone in his apartment, and I hadn’t told anyone I was going to see him. I could have killed him without too much trouble. Snapped his neck. I could have disposed of the body. People would have thought he ran off. Cole never would have gone into the army on his own. The problem would have been solved.

  “But I did nothing. I let Cole go to basic training. They both went. And later on, they went to Iraq.”

  Jimmy rubs his palm over his chin. There’s a stillness in the room. The only sound is outside: an eighteen-wheeler idling in the parking lot.

  Nick is watching him. Working up his courage again. He has another question.

  “What happened?” he says. “Did your brother die over there?”

  Jimmy bows his head and shakes it slowly side to side.

  “No,” he says. “Not over there.”

  17

  BEFORE

  Sean Garrety

  Sean’s tour of duty in Iraq lasted fifteen months, but out of all that time, what stuck with him was a few hours on a night in September. The night his platoon went to search a house in a slum neighborhood in Baghdad called Kamaliyah.

  The owner of the house was Munir Zaman, a college professor who was having an affair with one of his former students. Zaman lived with his wife and four children in Sadr City. The Kamaliyah house was where he kept his mistress.

  Sean saw a picture of her at the briefing before the mission. She had brown eyes and clear skin. A round face framed by a scarf that covered her hair.

  A pretty girl. Munir Zaman’s secret.

  But not his only one. According to an informant, Zaman had welcomed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 because he hated Saddam Hussein, but as the war dragged on he had become disillusioned. Now, the informant said, he had thrown in his lot with the Jaish al-Mahdi—the Shia insurgency—and he was allowing them to store weapons in his house in Kamaliyah.

  The informant was a cabdriver who sold marijuana on the side, but he had provided good leads before. So at midnight Sean and Cole and twenty other soldiers from their platoon rolled out of the main gate of their base in a convoy of five heavily armored Humvees. They were joined by the captain in charge of their company, a farm boy from Indiana named Dalton Webber.

  They drove north and east, crawling along at twelve miles an hour with their headlights dark, using night-
vision gear to scan the road ahead. Looking for signs of roadside bombs.

  Captain Webber brought the convoy to a halt a block away from Zaman’s house, and they approached it on foot. The temperature stood at 96 degrees, down from a high of 108. They passed a series of squalid houses with patchy roofs and torn-off siding. The lawns were nothing but dirt.

  “Aizdihar,” Cole said.

  Sean remembered the word from the mission briefing. It was the name of the street. In Arabic it meant “prosperity.”

  They came to a section of chain-link fence with a bicycle resting against it. Zaman’s house was the second one past the fence.

  Sean and Cole took the lead, with Captain Webber and the others behind them. As they walked to the door, Cole went right and Sean went left. Cole tested the knob, shook his head, and stepped back. Sean moved in with the battering ram and swung it at a spot just above the lock.

  It should have sent the door crashing inward. But the door was cheap. Hollow. The ram punched a hole through the wood.

  “Shit,” Sean said.

  He wrestled it back out and tried again, aiming below the lock. This time the door swung in and slammed against a wall.

  Too much noise, Sean thought.

  Ten soldiers entered the house: five moving through the first floor, five charging up a narrow staircase to the second. The rest set up a perimeter outside. Sean was the last one up the stairs. He moved along a cramped hallway that ran from the back of the house to the front, the floorboards creaking under his feet.

  “Bathroom back here,” someone shouted. “It’s clear.”

  “Got something,” said another voice in a different room. Sean stepped in and found a sergeant named Ross standing by a stack of wooden crates. Ross lifted the lid from one of them and inside were artillery shells. A dozen. Each one could be used to make an IED.

  Sean reached for the lid of another crate, but before he could remove it he heard a scream from down the hall.

  He ran toward the sound, came to a bedroom at the front of the house. The source of the scream was Zaman’s mistress. Sean recognized her, even through the green tinge of night-vision goggles.