Page 12 of Nine Lives

“He went to UVM, but I know that he knew an Art Kruse. Does your father have a lake house?”

“No, but his parents did. I’ve seen pictures. Up at Squam Lake in New Hampshire. I’m confused. What does your father and my father being friends have to do with the list?”

“I’m sorry. It is confusing. I’m an FBI agent but I also received a list in the mail, most likely the same list you received.”

“Okay. That’s why your name sounded a little bit familiar to me. So do you know what the list is about?”

“No idea. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. What we’d like to know is if there are any connections between the people who received a copy. Do you think there’s any way you can call your father and find out if he had a friend named Gary Winslow, and where they met?”

“I don’t even know how to reach him, honestly,” Arthur said. “And if I did know how to reach him, I just don’t think I’d be able to call.”

“I understand. If there’s a way for you to find out how I could get in touch with him, then maybe...?”

“Sure.”

Arthur drove back home in Richard’s Subaru, past the barren fields and rotting farmhouses of the valley. One portion of the hazy sky had taken on a dark swollen look, and he wondered if a storm was coming through. Because his name had been brought up, Arthur thought a little bit about his father, wondering what his life was like now. He occasionally got a report from his sister, Samantha, who did talk to their father, but rarely saw him. Art Kruse lived in an over-fifty-five condominium complex in West Palm Beach, Florida. Samantha said that he once claimed he had a girlfriend who lived in one of the other units, but she said it took him a little while to even come up with her name. With the possible exception of this girlfriend, it was clear to both Arthur and Samantha that their father was entirely alone. It bothered Samantha a little bit, but Arthur never thought about it.

Art had cut his son out of his life after finding out he was gay, but Arthur sometimes wondered if they would have had a relationship even if he’d never told him. His father was a hardcore Republican, a Fox News addict, priding himself on not being politically correct, which meant he got to say his racist, sexist, and homophobic remarks out loud and feel as though he was bucking a trend. When Arthur had come out to his father, two years after his parents’ divorce, Art had given him a crooked smile, then said, “You’ll probably tell me you’re getting married next. Just don’t expect me to come.” In many ways, it had made things easier, his father’s dismissal of him. When he and Richard actually did get married, Arthur mailed an invite to his father, fully expecting to hear back that he wasn’t coming. Instead, he got no response, not even a refusal, and Arthur wrote him off for good. Richard once asked him if he thought about his father, and whether their relationship might one day be saved, and Arthur had answered truthfully that he rarely, if ever, thought about him.

Back at the house he only had to wait for less than five minutes before a Lincoln Navigator pulled into his driveway, and two men, both dressed in gray suits, got out.

“Arthur Kruse?” one of the men asked, holding up a badge. He had a short white beard that extended only to his jawline. The pudgy skin under his jaw was pink and shaved.

Arthur showed them the letter and the envelope, both already deposited in his recycling bin. Wearing gloves, the second man, younger, clean-cut, very handsome, plucked both pieces of paper from among the catalogues and junk mail and frozen food boxes.

“What’s going on?” Arthur asked, wondering if these agents might divulge a little more information than Jessica Winslow had.

“Don’t know exactly, bud,” the man with the beard said, and Arthur recoiled a little at being called “bud.”

The younger agent, the one who looked a little like Jimmy Smits back when he was on NYPD Blue, was sliding the two pieces of the letter into separate plastic bags. “That’s all we needed from you, sir,” he said, and Arthur walked them to the door, conscious, as he always was with new people, of his limp.

He watched them drive away through the frosted glass of the front door window, then wandered back into the interior of the house. There was the sound of a very distant thunder crack, and he told himself he should get back to work. Instead, he sat down on one of the dining room T-back chairs, and wondered what the list was all about, and why the FBI had become interested. Was Agent Winslow keeping something from him? It seemed probable.

He rubbed at the depleted muscles of his left thigh. He’d always felt that his leg was at its worst when the weather was bad. Or maybe he was just imagining it? The windows were suddenly dark, and he waited to hear the sound of rain on the roof. He should head back to work, but he kept thinking about how much he wanted to tell Richard about the recent details of his life—the list he’d gotten in the mail, the phone call from the FBI, and, now, the two agents who came to take possession of the letter. He allowed himself the rare luxury of imagining the conversation, Richard wanting to know details—always wanting to know details—like what did the agents look like. He’d tell him about Jimmy Smits, and the man with the beard that had been shaved along his jawline. A George Lucas? Richard would say, laughing. Exactly, Arthur would say back. I hadn’t thought of that.

He allowed himself a few more minutes of this reverie, even letting Misty back into the picture, the way she’d lean up against one of their legs when they were talking, always looking for affection. He stopped thinking these thoughts when his throat began to ache. He needed to get back to work. It was raining now, but he didn’t much care as he walked at his usual slow pace back to his car.

5

Friday, September 16, 6:00 p.m.

By six o’clock on that Friday night, Jessica had managed to positively identify a total of four people who had all received the list, not including herself or Frank Hopkins. Ethan Dart and Arthur Kruse, maybe because their names were the most unusual, had come relatively easily. Jessica had gotten in touch with several women named Caroline Geddes, all baffled by the question of whether they’d gotten a mysterious list in the mail, before she hit the jackpot with a University of Michigan professor. As she had done with Ethan and Arthur, Jessica called the nearest bureau and had them send someone out to retrieve the letter and envelope. She’d also gotten a positive hit with a Matthew Beaumont, despite the commonness of that name, after only about four or five dead ends. For some reason, as soon as she heard his voice when he answered the phone, she knew that the Matthew Beaumont who was the vice president of a financial company in Boston was the one. Why was that? She’d reached him at his office phone just before he was set to leave, and he agreed to meet with an agent. She asked the usual questions—he told her that none of the names had meant anything to him—then asked him his age, partly because he sounded young to be a vice president.

“I’m thirty-nine,” he said.

“Oh, that’s my age,” Jessica said, before catching herself.

After hanging up she wondered what the ages of Ethan Dart and Caroline Geddes were. Arthur Kruse had told her he was forty-five. Ethan and Caroline sounded as though they were in their late thirties, early forties, as well. But what about Frank Hopkins. He’d been seventy-two.

She looked at the names for the hundredth time, trying to see if the ones she’d so far been unable to find gave her any other possible clues as to their age. Jay Coates could be any age, could easily be in his mid-thirties or in his seventies. Jay had been a popular name for a while. Jack Radebaugh sounded like the name of a slightly older man, but maybe she was just thinking that because the most famous Jack Radebaugh was a seventy-year-old business guru. But she’d talked with him already and he hadn’t received the letter.

The last person she couldn’t find was Alison Horne, and that was another name that could belong to someone of any age, but it was also such a common name that finding the right Alison Horne might prove to be very difficult.

Wanting to find out more about Frank Hopkins, she decided to call the Kennewick Police Department.

After identifying herself as an FBI agent, she asked to speak to whoever was in charge of the Frank Hopkins homicide.

“That’s gone to state, honey,” the receptionist said. “But Detective Hamilton’s still here. He was at the scene of the crime if that’s helpful to you.”

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