Chapter 20

Charlie swerved his BMW in and out of traffic down Massachusetts Avenue. Wind and cold air blew in through the broken driver’s side window and whipped at his face. It was a stinging reminder of the unraveling of his life. He nearly ran a stoplight at the intersection of Mass Ave and Route 16, his concentration less on driving and more on what might have happened to Rudy Gomes.

Joe had been upset at Charlie’s departure. Charlie felt guilty about leaving him in such a rush. But how could he have made Joe understand why he had asked him to cook breakfast but wasn’t going to stay to eat it? It was a no-win situation. Charlie didn’t have the time or the answers.

“Turn right in two hundred feet,” InVision said.

Charlie waited for InVision’s navigation cues as a matter of habit, even though he could have driven the route unassisted. He pulled in front of Gomes’s house, in the exact spot where he had parked the night before. As Charlie exited the car, his feet crunched on shards of broken glass, which he assumed were remnants of his shattered window. The house was peaceful. The street was quiet. Charlie’s heart sank when he looked in the driveway and saw only one car parked. It was Gomes’s.

He walked up the wooden stairs to the front entrance and peered into the only window that was not obscured by a curtain. He couldn’t see anything inside. Knowing Rudy lived on the first floor, Charlie walked over to the left-most door of the two-family home and reached for the doorknob.

Then he froze. Pulling down the sleeve of his jacket, Charlie created a crude, makeshift glove, surprising himself. He was already assuming guilt for something that he wasn’t even sure had happened. It’s just a precaution.

The doorknob turned with ease, and the latch clicked open. Unlocked, Charlie thought. He slipped off his shoes.

“Rudy?” Charlie called. “Are you here?”

There was no response.

The apartment was dark and drab, similar in layout to an apartment he had lived in with his mother and father in Belmont. To his right was an archway leading into the living room. Peeking inside, Charlie saw no signs of Gomes. Only a brown leather chair, a ratty yellow sofa, and a forty-five-inch plasma T V. In front of him was a short hallway leading to the master bedroom. There was a door halfway down, which Charlie assumed opened to a bathroom. He stood outside the door and heard the rushing of water from what sounded like the shower.

Using his jacket sleeve to conceal his fingerprints again, Charlie slowly turned the bathroom doorknob. The moment the door opened a crack, steam spilled out into the hallway. Charlie stood in the doorway and waited for the steam to dissipate. As the air cleared, he could see hot water spewing from the silver showerhead above a leopard-patterned shower curtain, which was pulled closed around a claw-foot tub. Water vapor that had condensed on the tile floor soaked the bottom of Charlie’s feet. Since he’d left his shoes outside, only his socks shielded him from the dampness.

“Rudy?” Charlie called out. “Are you in here?”

Instinct told Charlie that the only surprise would be if Rudy responded. Inching forward, Charlie reached for the shower curtain, ignoring the precautions he had taken earlier about his fingerprints. Pulling the curtain toward the wall, Charlie let out a loud gasp as he staggered backward.

Rudy Gomes lay dead in a pool of water. The water from the showerhead cascaded downward and pelted Gomes, turning the clear liquid into crimson drops as it mixed with his brownish blood. Gomes’s throat had been cut. Fatty tissue and frayed ligaments exploded outward from the dark, crescent-shaped gash. Had it been any deeper, Gomes would have been decapitated. Charlie quickly pulled the shower curtain closed.

As the blood rushed from Charlie’s head, his stomach churned and roiled inside. Falling to his knees, Charlie slid across the damp floor and vomited into the toilet, his body shuddering and convulsing with each gag and expulsion. The shower curtain covered most of Gomes’s corpse, but from his kneeling position on the bathroom floor Charlie could still see his legs and those cobalt blue feet sticking out at the end of the tub. He spent the better part of a minute on his knees, listening to the dreadful sound of water as it fell on a dead man.

After regaining enough strength, Charlie stood and stared down at Gomes’s lifeless body. The gaping wound was no less repulsive than when he’d first laid eyes upon it.

Backing out of the bathroom, Charlie was again mindful to keep his hands from touching any objects or walls. It was bad enough that he had grabbed the shower curtain with his bare hands. He hoped that the steam would act as some sort of a masking agent. A sickening thought then occurred to him. What if I did kill him? Who knows what other evidence I might have left behind? The idea that evidence pointing to him could be anywhere in the house was no less terrifying than the body in the tub.

Putting the thought aside, Charlie left the apartment and walked toward his car. His hands were shaking as he put the key in the ignition. His stomach hadn’t yet settled.

He took his time leaving, the cliché of trying to behave inconspicuously not lost on him. He searched for signs that somebody might have witnessed him entering Gomes’s apartment. A front door ajar. A light or TV on in a living room. The street was thankfully deserted. Every window he looked at was either dark or had the shades drawn. There were no pedestrians in sight or cars coming down the narrow street.

As he settled in his car, terrifying thoughts took hold and would not let go.

“I killed him. I must have killed him. But I don’t remember anything. Oh, God, please help me. Please …” Charlie muttered the words as if in a trance. The mantra lasted minutes before he realized he had to drive away from there as fast as he could. Nobody had seen him come out of Gomes’s apartment. It wouldn’t help if someone saw him loitering in his car outside the home of a murder victim. He didn’t know where to go. He knew only that he had to distance himself from the crime scene.

“Pull it together, Giles,” Charlie muttered. “Whatever crazy thoughts you have, you better pull it together now.”

Charlie drove five miles down Route 2 and took the 95 North exit toward Burlington. There was a Barnes & Noble at the Burlington Mall. Without any protection from the driver’s side window, the car was frigid in the midmorning sun. He blasted the heat to help warm his hands. He pulled into the parking lot of Barnes & Noble and shut off the engine.

They’ll find the glass on the sidewalk, Charlie thought. I need to get this window fixed. I’ll pay cash. I can’t leave a trace that I had any work done.

He kept vacillating between covering his tracks for a murder he had no memory of committing and refusing to accept the possibility that he had.

If I did kill him, why wasn’t there any blood on my clothes? I woke up in the same clothes I went to sleep in. Did I wake up in the middle of the night, change, drive over to his house, kill him, and then drive home? If so, what did I do with the weapon?

None of it seemed possible to Charlie, but he could think of no other explanation. He had left the notes for Joe and himself. One down. Three to go.

Frozen with fear and anxiety, he felt lost, displaced, and without any idea of what to do next. It was inconceivable. The perfect, organized, meticulously planned Charlie Giles might be the most out-of-control beast imaginable.

The one gnawing need was the desire to know the truth. Even if it proved what he feared most, he had to know if it was even within the realm of scientific possibility.

Charlie picked up his cell phone. He scanned through his contacts. Then he dialed Rachel Evans. She answered on the fifth ring.