The fourth time there was a gun on the counter. My first thought was that it was the gun used to kill the kid and now the murder weapon was in my apartment. I had to get rid of it. But then, if it was the murder weapon, maybe I should hang on to it. I didn’t know what to do. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the kid. Maybe I was going to need the gun, maybe that was the message. Mobley (or Froehmer or whoever) had put it there for me to use real soon. I got it out of the apartment, but I didn’t get rid of it. I put it some place safe, but nowhere that could be tied to me.

The next day, the whole apartment was tossed, but not really. Every cabinet door and every dresser drawer, kitchen drawer, anything that could open, was open. Nothing appeared out of place, but they wanted me to know that they had looked, or could look. I knew what they were looking for. They could bring in a hundred guys and tear the place down to the studs; they could bring in a thousand bloodhounds and the best forensic teams and they’d never find a trace. What they were looking for had never been there. I’d locked the trophy in a safe I’d rented. There was so much distance between me and the thing that they’d never find it without my help. But I was tired of Froehmer or whoever it was he’d sent with their messages. I figured I’d send one of my own.

In the small hours of the morning, I got up from the couch and boxed up everything I wanted, my clothes and books, and Frank’s clothes and books and I went out to the street just out of cautious paranoia and looked to see if anyone was watching me, the way I would. The street was empty. So I loaded up the car with boxes and drove away. Let them come and go as they pleased. They wouldn’t find anything. Let them leave another message; there wouldn’t be anyone to get it. If they wanted to find me, they knew where I was, but they weren’t going to know where I lived. They could play their games with a ghost, but not with me.

I called Casey and told her that people had been harassing me. “Come stay with me,” she said, without any hesitation.

“That’s not what I was fishing for,” I told her.

“Stay anyway,” she said. “Stay for a night or for a week, a month, as long as you need.”

—