It was Liz Madera.

“Before you leave, I want you to know the full measure of your victory,” she said. “I’m at the hospital again. Jack Douglas just died. He put a bullet in his brain about an hour ago.”

13

After Liz’s telephone call, Hook did not move from his motel bed. He thought of checking with the hospital or Rider’s office, but he knew the effort would change nothing. Liz had not lied. Her message was not some sick attempt at revenge. It was fact. He knew it in the dead weight of his limbs and in the chill void of his stomach. He knew it because he had seen it in Douglas’s eyes at the sheriff’s office, not the mask of the politician as he had thought but only the indifferent stare of the dead, the stare of the ultimately condemned.

When he finally got out of bed, almost two hours later, his hands were shaking so uncontrollably he could not shave or brush his teeth. He tried to drink a glass of water and immediately vomited it. In his frustration and rage he smashed the plastic cup down against the sink and it came apart like glass in his hand, cutting him deeply across the palm. Dripping blood, he stumbled back into the bedroom and dialed the desk clerk and told him to make up his bill, that he was checking out. Then he made a plane reservation and finally called long-distance to Illinois. Marian answered. Briefly, even curtly, he told her that his task on the coast was finished and that he would be arriving in St. Louis at three-twenty in the afternoon. When she began to ask questions, he cut her off, saying he did not have time to talk now, that he would explain everything later, after he arrived. Then he hung up.

After he had checked out of the motel, he took a cab to the sheriff’s office and found Rider sitting alone in his small third-floor office. The sergeant’s eyes were still heavy and bloodshot and there was a violet band across his forehead, as if he had been resting his head on his arms on the desktop. He glanced at Hook, then looked away and began to maul his face. “You know about Douglas,” he said.

“Liz Madera called me.”

“Made sure you got the good news, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Thoughtful of her.” Rider reached out and pushed a document across his desk toward Hook.

It was a handwritten note already interleaved between sheets of clear plastic. Hook did not trust his hands to pick it up, so he read it from where he stood. It was a broad, loose scrawl, barely legible:

If I knew way out
some other then maybe
not this
But none now is there
Sorry you all gave so much
for so
But I never asked
never

The note was unsigned.

As Hook read it, Rider had placed his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. Now he spoke and his voice was a hammer, his words nails Hook felt going into him one by one.