“I don’t know about that,” I said. “He does seem to have disappeared, which makes me think that maybe he is living under an assumed name. Did you ever talk about that?”

  “You mean other than him saying that thing about killing a friend and taking over his life?”

  “Yeah. Like, did he ever mention what name he would use as a pseudonym? Did he ever make a joke about that?”

  She spun the pen in her hand while she thought. I looked down at her still-open sketchbook and saw that she had been drawing quick sketches of owls. “Not really. Nothing jumps to mind.”

  “Why did you sign the yearbook as the unnamed narrator?”

  “Yeah, I was wondering that myself. Just being pretentious, I guess. I was a fan of Rebecca when I was in high school, the book Rebecca, and the narrator didn’t have a name. So maybe it was that. I’m sorry I’m not being more helpful. I’ve always been curious about what happened with Ethan. It was a brief and platonic relationship, but it left a mark.”

  “Was it platonic for a reason?” I said. “I mean, did you ever wonder if the relationship would turn romantic?”

  She looked at the dregs of her coffee and said, “I remember thinking it was strange he wasn’t trying to get into my pants, only because he was a teenage boy, but he told me once that if he slept with me then he’d have to kill me. Like I mentioned already, it was the type of thing he was always saying. Also, I wasn’t calling myself a lesbian back then, exactly, but the writing was on the wall. I never really thought of him that way.”

  I finished my tea, thinking about what other questions I had. Even though Alice didn’t know where Ethan was, she still might help in coming up with what name he might have picked for an alias. “You said you both liked that movie The Talented Mr. Ripley. Did he have any other favorite films or books that you remember?”

  “Strangely, I kind of remember he had lowbrow tastes. His favorite film was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Like, by far.”

  “What about books?”

  Alice thought. “Sorry, I can’t remember ever talking about books.”

  “Celebrities he loved? Historical figures? If he’s changed his name, then maybe he changed it to something that has meaning for him.”

  Alice was shaking her head. “Sorry. All I remember was that he liked Ferris Bueller and he liked talking about himself.”

  I stood, thanking her and putting my coat back on, then I realized what it was that was strange about her appearance.

  “Hey,” I said. “You don’t have any tattoos.”

  She smiled up at me. “That you can see.”

  “Right,” I said. “That I can see.”

  “Actually, you’re right. I have zero tattoos.”

  “That’s strange, probably, for a tattoo artist. Don’t you think?”

  “Probably,” she said. “I’m not against tattoos, obviously. I think I just have commitment issues.”

  When I got back to Shepaug, I went onto my computer and looked up Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a film I had never seen despite knowing a fair amount about it. I could picture scenes, Ferris at a parade in a city, and some teacher droning out the names of his students. Even knowing just that much, it seemed to me to be an odd choice as Ethan Saltz’s favorite film of all time. The Talented Mr. Ripley made more sense, but I stayed on the Ferris Bueller page. Because I had nothing much better to do, I opened my notebook and wrote down all the character names from Ferris Bueller, then systematically I searched for all the names, adding words like “artist” or “forger” or “scam.” It was a long shot at best, but one thing I’d learned definitively about Ethan from Henry’s conversation with the brother was that he’d been fascinated by art, and particularly the commerce of it. It wasn’t an enormous stretch to think that those enthusiasms would have lasted into adulthood.

  Nothing really jumped out at me online. There were no Sloane Peterson galleries involved in forgery scandals, no notorious art world figures named Cameron Frye. I went back to the IMDb page and read the trivia associated with the film. One of the tidbits was that the Charlie Sheen character—apparently a druggy in the police station who flirts with Ferris’s sister, Jeanie—was given a name in the shooting script, although it isn’t mentioned in the film. That name was Garth Volbeck.

  I entered “Garth Volbeck” and “artist” into my search engine and the first item that came up was a listing from the Charnock Gallery in Philadelphia. Two abstract paintings for sale by an artist named Gareth Vollbeck. I felt something in my chest as I clicked on the link. It brought me to the Charnock Gallery website, a very minimal site, but in a way that made me think the gallery didn’t need the website as opposed to its being a gallery that couldn’t afford a good site. Besides a few pages that showed available art pieces, there was just the landing page, which provided the name of the gallery and its address. There were no hours, since viewings were only available by appointment. And there was no photograph of the gallery owner, Robert Charnock.

  I searched under that name and didn’t find any photographs cropping up on other parts of the web except for one group photograph from a fundraiser in Philadelphia. The man who was identified as Robert Charnock was looking away from the camera. He had short dark hair and wide shoulders. I wasn’t sure, but it could possibly be Ethan Saltz.

  I did searches for the artist named Gareth Vollbeck, and hardly anything came up, the only mentions being ones associated with the Charnock Gallery. The whole thing seemed off. Actually, it didn’t seem off. It felt as though I’d possibly found Ethan Saltz. I called Henry, and he picked up right away. I told him what I’d found out, and he said he’d start to investigate right away. I could tell from his voice that he was as excited by the possibility as I was.

  It was afternoon and the weather was still good, and I decided to go for a thinking walk. When I was a young kid I used to call them daydreaming walks, knowing that if I went into the woods and began to wander, pretty soon my mind would wander, too, and I’d enter strange daytime fantasies, usually a scenario in which I could speak to animals and they’d tell me all their secrets. I’d given up on that particular childhood dream, but I did know that I did my best thinking on walks, so I found my mother and told her I was walking into town and asked if she needed anything. She said we needed more of the granola that they sold at the Carrot Seed.

  From Monk’s House you could reach Shepaug Center either through the woods or along Woodbury Road. The trail through Brigham Woods was faster, but I decided to set out along the road, make myself more visible rather than less. There were daffodils and tulips blooming in the front gardens of the houses on Woodbury Road, along with the occasional patch of wild crocuses. A few trees were beginning to show leaves in that soft green color that only happens in springtime.

  In town I went straight to the Carrot Seed, our local organic grocery store, for the granola, picking up a hot tea as well that I didn’t really need. I sat on the bench outside of the store, and it was there that I realized I hadn’t brought my phone with me. I rarely did when I was out walking, but this time it meant that if Henry wanted to reach me, he couldn’t right away. Just having that thought made me feel strange, like I was now uncomfortably part of the modern world. I sipped at my tea, alone with my thoughts, but not for long. Since I had grown up in Shepaug, coming into the town center meant that I would meet someone I knew and have to talk to them, and I suffered through two of those interactions that afternoon. The first was with my old math teacher, Mrs. Corrigan, who told me, for the second time, how the Shepaug regional school system was possibly going to have to merge with the Washington School system. “No one’s having kids anymore,” she said, and I thought I saw her eyes cast down in sadness in the direction of my empty womb. I also talked briefly with one of my mother’s friends, Ginny Adams, who had just picked up the new Louise Penny book at Stone’s Throw. Over the past year Ginny had begun to stoop, her body curling inward like an overcooked shrimp. She stopped by my bench and we caught up, her head cocked toward me in a way that reminded me of a turtle, and as Ginny talked, her voice now cracked with age, I had a vivid childhood memory of seeing her emerge naked out of our pool at one of the numerous parties at Monk’s House, my father there to greet her with a towel and a drink.

  After finishing my tea I began the walk home, leaving town along River Street, and passing the commons. I was aware that my thinking walk had not produced any significant thinking, but it had produced something else. A prickly sense of unease. I didn’t believe that people knew when they were being watched any more than I believed in love curses, but it was what I was feeling at that moment, a palpable disquiet, a surety that there were eyes on me. When I reached Woodbury Road, clouds had moved into the sky and it was suddenly cold. I walked faster, staying to the left as I’d been taught. Two cars passed me going in the opposite direction, then the road was quiet for a while. I heard a car approaching from behind and squeezed up along the narrow shoulder that separated the road from an old stone wall and the dense woods. I must have heard something in the car’s engine, because I knew it was slowing down, and I turned just as a shiny white sedan pulled dangerously close to me, its driver’s-side window rolled down.

  Ethan Saltz, with surprising speed, swung open the door and stepped out, holding a pistol down near his waist. Something went over me, a wash of disbelief that it was all about to end, but then Ethan said, “I can shoot you right now or you can get into the trunk. Five seconds to decide.”

  “Trunk,” I said.

  He grasped my shoulder with his left hand and moved me around to the back of the vehicle. The trunk was already cracked open and he used his foot to open it all the way. I felt stupid being caught this way, but it also felt inevitable. Maybe I’d wanted it to happen.

  Part 3

  Even the Trees Know It

  Chapter 24

  It had taken him a few days to find Lily Kintner. She was living back at home with her parents in Shepaug, Connecticut. The mother, Sharon Henderson, was a sculptor, but not a very good one, Ethan thought, and her father was David Kintner, the English novelist, who, surprisingly, was still alive.

  The reason it had taken him so much time to find her was that Lily owned a house in Winslow, Massachusetts, home to Winslow College, the last place she seemed to have had employment. He’d traveled there first, wasting a day keeping an eye on the small shingled cottage by a pond, only to discover that it had apparently been rented out to an elderly couple with two whippets. Ethan was well aware that it was a dangerous thing to do, but he’d gone into the CVS located in the Winslow town center, bought a celebrity magazine, plus a padded envelope, and returned to the cottage pretending to be a deliveryman with a package for Lily Kintner. The old couple straightforwardly offered up the information that Lily Kintner had returned to Connecticut to look after her parents, while one of the whippets sniffed aggressively at Ethan’s crotch.

  He left Winslow and made his way to Shepaug, elated by this new pursuit. He knew it was dangerous—everything had been dangerous since the moment he stuck a knife into Martha Ratliff’s throat—but he also knew that he needed to get to Lily before she got to him. She’d know by now that Martha was dead, and she would certainly know who’d done it. Would she run directly to the police with the name of Ethan Saltz? A normal person would have. But he somehow didn’t think Lily was quite normal. He thought she might try to find him herself. And while he doubted she’d be able to do that—Ethan Saltz had well and truly disappeared off the face of the earth—he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

  When he got to Litchfield County he stopped first in a town called Washington, parking downtown to get a cup of coffee and to call his wife.

  She answered, as she always did, as though he’d just interrupted her while she was in the middle of a good book.

  “Darling,” Ethan said.

  “Oh, that’s a bad sign. Is this about the dinner party?”

  “I’m just giving you a possible heads-up that I might not make it. I’ve found this old coot in Maine who claims he owns an original Wyeth sketch, but he keeps putting off showing me. If it’s real, I’m thinking of killing him for it. How do you feel about that?”

  Rebecca was silent for a moment, but he could sense she was smiling. He’d obviously married her for her money and for the house in Philadelphia, but it didn’t hurt that she enjoyed his occasional morbid jokes. At last she said, “I was already dreading this party, and the only thing that was giving me hope was that you and I could laugh at its awfulness during our post-party debrief. How long will it take you to murder this man and steal his painting?”

  “My plan right now is that I’ll be back for the party, but I did want to give you a warning in advance that there is the smallest chance I’ll have to cancel. I really will try, but it’s an Andrew Wyeth.”

  “No, I understand.”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Sorting shoes, actually, and waiting for a call from Stephanie about the house in Great Barrington. Where are you right now?”

  “I’m staring at the Maine coast and thinking about how much you would hate it here.”

  After ending the call, Ethan took a stroll. He wandered through a small parking lot behind the town pharmacy, then picked out a car, not in the lot but parked behind a residential building that abutted the lot. It was some old model of Lincoln, backed into a tight spot. The car was white, but there was a fine film of grime and dust all over its exterior. It looked as though it hadn’t been driven in years. He crouched between the back of the car and the brick apartment building, took a screwdriver from his leather briefcase, and removed the license plate. He didn’t know how long he’d be in Shepaug and it wouldn’t hurt to have Connecticut plates.

  It didn’t take him long to find the Kintner residence. It was set far back from the road, an old farmhouse with several outbuildings, and Ethan didn’t even slow down while he went by. Instead he parked in Shepaug’s tiny town center and considered his options. His plan right now was to kidnap Lily if he had a chance. If he could get a tranq dart into her, then throw her into the trunk of his car, he’d drive her to his house in Tohickon, where he had a room waiting. It wouldn’t be impossible, but the chances for something going wrong would be high. Still, if he could pull it off it would mean he’d get to talk with her, wipe all the smug off her face and let her know that she’d lost. Just thinking about the possibility made him almost hard. It would be nice to talk to someone about his achievements, even to someone not long for the world. It was vanity, he knew that, but if anyone deserved to be a little bit vain it was him.

  Two teenage girls walked past his car yakking at each other, not even seeing him sitting there, but he decided that if he was going to stay in the Shepaug center he shouldn’t just sit in his car attracting attention. He pulled the stiff mesh baseball hat he was wearing farther down on his head, stepped outside, and looked around for a store to browse in. There was a bookstore called Stone’s Throw, but people noticed browsers in bookstores. It was probably filled with lonely Shepaug women hoping to find some man flipping through the latest Margaret Atwood book so they could strike up a conversation. The best stores to browse in if you didn’t want to be noticed were drugstores. Everyone shopping in drugstores was in their own little bubble of solipsistic anxiety, just hoping to get out of there as soon as possible. No one wants to run into a neighbor while holding a tube of hemorrhoid cream.

  He’d walked two blocks when he spotted a woman with red hair entering what looked like a small grocery store. He’d only seen her for a brief second, but something coiled in his chest. The color of her hair was unmistakable.

  Back in his car, he did a U-turn and parked across the street from the Carrot Seed. If she was shopping she probably wouldn’t be longer than fifteen minutes, and she’d probably come out and get immediately back in her car. He’d follow her and, if he could, pass her on the road and force her to pull off to the side. His tranquilizer gun and a Taser lay on the seat next to him, covered by a folded sweatshirt. He went over good and bad outcomes in his mind. She might spot him right away when she came out of the grocery store. She wouldn’t really be able to do anything about it, but it would put her on guard. If she didn’t spot him and he was able to run her off the road, then another car might pass by. If that happened he’d put a gun in the face of the driver and see how long they hung around. But what if Lily was carrying her own weapon, a real handgun? Well, he had one of those as well, in his glove compartment, and if he couldn’t kidnap Lily, then he’d kill her and leave her body by the side of the road. He’d get out of Connecticut and ditch the car. There would be very little reason to connect Ethan Saltz to Lily Kintner, but absolutely no reason to connect Robert Charnock to Lily or even to Martha or Birkbeck College.

  While he was going over pros and cons, Lily—it actually was her—came out of the store. Instead of making her way to her car, she sat on a sidewalk bench. She didn’t have a grocery bag with her, just a takeaway coffee, the lid of which she pried off. Ethan slumped in his seat, angling his head so he could keep watch on her. She wore green pants and a raincoat. She sat there for a while, and at least two people came and talked with her. It occurred to him that maybe the smartest thing to do would be to leave the Shepaug center and go wait by the entrance to her driveway, blocking it. But he wanted to keep an eye on her for a while longer. It had been huge luck that he’d spotted her away from her house, and maybe there’d be more luck coming his way.

  Twenty minutes passed. Most of the passersby didn’t give Ethan a second look, but one old woman stared at him a little as she shuffled down the street using a cane. He stared back until she looked away. His mind, as it always did and always had, conjured up a sudden image. In this one he ripped the cane out of the woman’s gnarled hands and pushed its rubber tip down her throat, pinning her to the ground until she choked. The image spread through him like a shot of whiskey and he was calm again, thinking about Lily and how long she was going to sit on that fucking bench.

 

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