Page 53 of A Talent for Murder

Before leaving, Henry said, “Chris, there’s no reason for you to believe everything I’m telling you, but you did the right thing this morning. Your boss is a bad man, and you should get away from him. Okay?”

“Am I in trouble?” Salah said.

“No, but you should get your résumé up to date.”

Back in the car, Henry set his GPS for Tohickon, Pennsylvania.

Chapter27

After Ethan had left, I used the bedpan, then reclined again on the cot, closed my eyes, and thought.

I’d gotten a good enough look at the chain that was keeping me secured. The cuff around my ankle was secured with a lock, and I wondered if Ethan kept the key to that lock on his person. If he did, it gave me a very slim possibility of escape. He wasn’t scared of me, not physically scared, anyway; I’d learned that by how close he’d gotten to me when we’d had our conversation. So, if I could somehow procure a weapon it was possible that I could disable him while still shackled, then get the key and unlock the cuff. But I didn’t have a weapon. And the chances were that the key was hanging somewhere in the house, out of reach.

I sat up and took a closer look at the cuff, wondering if there was any wiggle room that would allow me to somehow get my foot free. There wasn’t. I could saw my foot off, but I didn’t have a saw.

I lay back down, looking up at the water-damaged drop ceiling. I didn’t think there was any way out of the situation, not a physical way. My best bet was to try to stay alive as long as possible in the hope that Henry Kimball might figure out where I was. And the way to stay alive was to keep Ethan’s interest, keep him talking, keep him entertained. Once I’d made that decision, that my best hope was in delaying the inevitable, I relaxed a little and began to think of other things. I was worried about my parents, who would have reported me missing the night before. My mother would be panic-stricken, and my father would probably already be grieving. He’d told me once that every time I left the house he wondered if I’d return. It was because his own father had left his mother and him when he was young. He’d been a salesman, my grandfather, named Siegfried Kintner, and had left for a trip to the North of England and was never heard from again. “It explains everything about you,” I’d said to my father once, when I’d been a freshman at Mather College. “Nothing explains everything about someone, Lil,” he’d said.

I thought about my father and mother some more while waiting for Ethan to return. If these were my last hours on this earth, and they probably were, I wasn’t planning on wasting them in terror or regret. And I wasn’t in the worst possible position. I was alive and I’d found Ethan Saltz. That counted for something, at least temporarily.

Ethan returned at around noon, coming down the basement stairs, humming a tune I recognized as “Manic Monday” by the Bangles. He was carrying a paper bag with him, glanced in my direction, then set the bag on the bar. I was still lying on my back and he might have thought I was sleeping. I listened to him unwrap the bag and then I could smell food and I sat up.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“You brought lunch?”

“I have a meatball sub and an eggplant parm sub, and I have a ham and cheese.”

“They all sound good,” I said, “but if you’re asking, I’ll take the meatball.”

He unfolded one of those old television tables and brought it over and put it in front of where I was sitting. As before, he’d gotten close enough to me that I could have touched him if I’d wanted to. I still couldn’t imagine a scenario where I could harm him. He had about a hundred pounds on me, and there was nothing I could use for a weapon.

After setting up the table, he went and got the meatball sub and brought it over, putting a plastic bottle of Coke next to it. I resisted the urge to thank him and began to eat.

While I ate, Ethan sat quietly and watched me. It was unnerving, but I tried to ignore it. He’d changed his clothes since I’d last seen him, and he was dressed in soft tan corduroys, a checked shirt, and a blue blazer.

“Where are we?” I said, before taking my last bite of the sub.

“I told you already. A house I own under a different name.”

“No, what town?”

“We are in the lovely burg of Tohickon in the state of Pennsylvania. Did you ever think you’d die in such a place?”

I shrugged. “I always thought I’d die in Shepaug, Connecticut, so I guess I’m all right with Tohickon. Where do you plan on dying?”

“Anywhere but here, I suppose,” he said, laughing, looking a little confused, as though he were a child who hadn’t grasped the basic concept of mortality yet.

“Surrounded by loved ones?” I said.

“As you know, I don’t put too much weight on the concept of love.”

“Have you ever loved anyone? Did you love your mother?”

“You’re trying to needle me, which I understand. I didn’t particularly love my mother, but I didn’t hate her, either. She was just someone who gave birth to me. People think that connection—the maternal one—is so important, and yet it’s so random. We don’t get to pick who our parents are, any more than they get to pick their children. We’d all be better off going through this world without having high expectations for the people who share our blood. Don’t you agree?”

I genuinely thought about it, then said, “Having high expectations for anyone is a mistake, but I do think family is important. It is to me, I suppose. What else is there, in the end? Our work and our family.”

“The most important thing is legacy, leaving one’s mark on this world. Leaving something in one’s wake.”

---