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FIFTY-ONE

MY FIRST THOUGHT?

I may be dying.

Just don’t let it be tonight.

“There’s no reason to be alarmed,” he says.

I remember Rob Jacobson once quoting me the late Joe Champi, about how anybody can get to anybody. Now Rob Jacobson’s son has gotten to me.

The room is dark enough that he’s just a shape standing next to the bed. I like it dark in here. Jimmy dog-sat for Rip, slept here when Dr. Ben and I decided last month to spend a night in the city, and called it the “cave of doom.”

“I just want to talk,” he says.

For the second time tonight I’m trying to get my breathing under control.

“Call and make an appointment,” I manage. “I’ll make sure to fit you in.”

I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him know how scared I really am.

I can’t see Eric Jacobson very well but can still hear Rip’s low growl from outside the bedroom door.

“Could you please let my dog in here? He’s worried about me, and too old to attack you, even if he wants to.”

“The dog’s fine,” Eric Jacobson says, “even if he did promise to keep quiet after I gave him the treats I brought with me.”

“You mean after you got in through one of my locked doors and managed to disable my alarm.”

“Alarms were always easy.” He chuckles. “Gazillion dollar–homes out here and alarms installed by amateurs.”

No need to tell him that Jimmy installed mine and that he is anything except an amateur.

“I’ll be sure to ask the alarm company to have my next bill adjusted.”

I’ve seen pictures of Eric, so even in the darkness I feel as if I have a visual. A younger version of his father. But you could always see a lot of Claire Jacobson in him, too.

“It must be pretty important if you choose this way to take a meeting with me.”

I slowly sit up, so my back is against the headboard now.

“Careful,” he says. “I’ve heard what a tough guy you think you are.”

“Somebody told me once that tough is the one with the gun.”

“You never know. Smart people do dumb things. My father thinks he’s smarter than everybody and look at the dumpster fire he’s made of his life.”

You’re the one not as smart as you think you are.

“Now that you’re here,” I say, “I might as well mention that your old partner, Dave Wolk, and his girlfriend tried to kill my partner tonight.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. He always was a dumb-ass. Why do you think Dave the Dude was the only one of us who ever got caught?”

He’s so sure of himself. A smug bastard like his father.

“Let me ask you something, junior,” I say, unable to help myself. “Do you think I’m going to let you get away with this?”

His voice is suddenly so loud it’s like my window just shattered.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Sorry.”

His voice grows softer. “Trust me on something, Jane. You don’t want to make me mad.”

There’s a glass of water I always keep by my bed. But no way to get to it. And he’s still the one with the gun.

“Why are you here?”

“You need to quit this case.”

“Be cause ?” I say, dragging the word out.

“Because you can’t let him get away with murder twice, that’s why. He hurt more people after he killed the Carsons. And if you get him off again, he’s never going to stop.” I hear him take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “He needs to pay.”

I try to see the outline of my Glock in his hand but can’t.

“You really believe he’s a killer?”

The voice is soft again.

“Maybe it runs in the family,” he says. “Maybe something for you to consider.”

Before I can answer, he continues. “But maybe you’re just one more person looking the other way on this freak because the money just keeps flowing in?”

He reaches over and puts his hand on my cheek and I recoil.

“Unless he’s not the only freak in the family,” he says. “Something else to consider.”

I think about all the things that have happened to me and to Jimmy and all around us since I first agreed to take on his father as a client.

How did I get here?

“Don’t touch me,” I say.

“Or what?”

He silently moves to the foot of the bed, a tall shadow now facing me directly, towering over me.

I can hear Rip’s low growl again from the other side of my bedroom door. Some watchdog he turned out to be.

“There’s no way you could have known he killed the Carsons when you took his case,” Eric Jacobson continues. “But now you have no excuse.”

“How can you be so sure about all this?”

“Because if he can kill his own father, he can do anything.”

His voice barely above a whisper now in the dark room.

This kid in his own dark place talking about his own father.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Eric Jacobson says. “You walk away and I’ll do the same thing. And you won’t hear from me ever again. Or my boys.”

“How come Morelli’s not with you tonight?”

“I told him I could handle this. And, counselor? Trust me on something. You’d much rather deal with me than him.”

There’s so much more I want to ask him. But I sense that I’m running out of time.

“It’s that important for you to see your father go down?”

“He’s a predator,” Eric Jacobson says. “A violent sexual predator, no matter how much he wants to be the coolest guy at the cocktail party. He wanted my girlfriends. He wanted mothers and their daughters. He wanted somebody’s wife, if only because she was somebody else’s wife.” A pause. “Why do you think I’m the way I am?”

“He may be the prick you say he is. But that doesn’t mean he did it.”

“He told me he did, you stupid cow!”

Somehow I’ve touched a nerve.

Another nerve.

“Told you what?”

He’s whispering again. “Everything. Like he wanted somebody to know. Like he was bragging.”

We hear the sirens then, and junior now knows what I’ve known all along, that he isn’t nearly as good with alarms as he thought he was, or as smart. Because Jimmy Cunniff is no amateur.

Somehow the sirens don’t seem to rattle him very much.

“I forgot what a rush all of this was,” he says.

Then he gets next to my ear. I can feel his breath as he adds, “I’ll be in touch.”

He walks over to the window closest to him and opens it. Before he climbs through and out, he says, “One thing I inherited from my father? We both think we can get away with anything.”

Then he’s gone.

I get out of bed and open the top drawer to my nightstand.

The Glock is still there.