Page 32 of The Murder Inn

Driver pushed the button to answer the call and lifted the device to his ear, saying nothing.

“You want to know something crazy?” It was a woman’s voice. Driver’s brain started putting pieces together. Scenarios that were incredible but nevertheless apparently true.

“What?” he managed.

“I was aiming for your truck both times,” the voice said. “Seems like I’m a terrible shot. At long distance, anyway.”

Driver hugged the ground. Through the phone he heard a familiar sound: the slice and shunt of a rifle’s bolt-action. He heard a shot and thecrunchsound of his truck, parked just to the left of the kitchen window, collapsing as a tire was blown out.

“I’m getting better, though.”

“You stupid bitch,” Driver said. He heard surprise mingled with the anger on his breath. “You must be out of your goddamn mind. Do you haveany ideawho you’re messin’ with right now?”

“Norman Lucas Driver,” the woman said. “Asbestos removal specialist. Drug kingpin. Murderer.”

“You must be the Bulger wife.”

“No,” the woman said. “Not anymore. I’m on a bit of a journey of self-discovery right now, actually. I know how cliché that sounds, but it’s true.”

Driver crawled across the kitchen floor into the living room,hating who he was in this moment—unarmed, sweat-drenched, trembling uncontrollably as his body was flooded with fight-or-flight chemicals. He took a moment, a single second, to indulge in the pitifulness of it as he tucked his body behind the couch in the living room, where he could safely sneak a glance toward the end of the driveway. It was no use. She was parked in the moon shadow of a big oak tree, the license plate unreadable. Driver promised himself he would remember the feel of the humiliation burning through him, use it to fuel his revenge.

“People have been thrusting identities on me my whole life,” the woman said. “You know? When I was a teenager it was: get married, have kids, be that person. Daughter to wife to mother, whether you like it or not. Then all of a sudden, here you come with your own version of me: murder victim.”

“Lady, you got the wrong number,” Driver said. “You should have called a shrink. What you’re doing right now is ordering home delivery of the worst death imaginable.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Driver said. “I’m gonna get creative with you, bitch. Nobody gets to attack me in my own home. You just don’t do that.”

“I’m surprised.”

“By what?”

“By the sanctity you attach to the home,” the old woman said. “Georgette Winter-Lee was in her own home when you raped and suffocated her.”

Driver smiled in the darkness of his living room. The puzzle was complete.

“Old lady,” he said. “You’re picking a fight with the wrong person.”

“Young man,” she replied. “I could tell you the exact same thing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE NEXT MORNING, I was in the kitchen serving up one of my classically terrible breakfasts when Susan came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I know about Nick,” she said.

The watery scrambled eggs tumbled out of the pan into the big china bowl I’d set out, a lump or two hitting the counter. I glanced through both doors to the kitchen, but no one was in earshot.

“So you cracked,” I said. “You looked him up?”

“It was pretty clear to me yesterday that he’d told you something horrifying,” Susan sighed. “You both looked shell-shocked. I guess I didn’t like the idea of you having to take on this burden alone.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I’m not happy about it.” She shrugged. “I’ve broken an oathI made to the public, and a promise I made to myself. But there it is. I can’t go back now. This thing that he’s involved in, it’s spreading like a virus. And I’ve just willingly infected myself.”

“So what did you find out, exactly?” I asked.

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