height of the summer season. He tailed Corbin and his beautiful, dark-haired girlfriend for the week. Corbin was tan and muscled. He ran on the beach every morning. And he seemed genuinely happy in the presence of the townie he’d picked up. Henry learned her name. Rachael Chess. She had long, dark hair like Claire Brennan had, and she was always smiling in the presence of Corbin, or draping an arm around his shoulders, or wrapping her legs around him when they were in the ocean together. Wrapping those legs around him every night, as well, Henry imagined. And never suspecting that her golden god had once pounded a woman’s head into the ground till she was unconscious. Henry’s rage almost made him want to just take Corbin out, sneak into his bedroom some night and slit his throat, stare him in the eyes as he bled out. But, no, that was too good for Corbin. He decided to have some fun first.
Rachael Chess had an active Facebook account, and when Henry learned that she was returning to New Essex over Columbus Day weekend, he flew back. Corbin was not around—surprising, but it made things easier. He managed to meet Rachael at a beachside bar called the Rusty Scupper. Not surprisingly, she was an uppity bitch who refused his offer to buy her a drink. He left the bar to wait in his car. She left at closing time. Some guy kept trying to kiss her in the parking lot, and she kept pushing him away until he stalked off, driving away in a pickup truck that needed a new muffler. She walked toward the beach. Henry removed his backpack from the trunk of his rental car. It contained the new filleting knife he’d bought at Walmart the day before, sharp enough not just to kill her, but to carve her body in a way that would leave no doubt in Corbin’s mind as to who had killed his girlfriend.
A year later, more out of boredom than anything else, Henry moved to Boston, opening a walk-up office in Newtonville and renting a furnished apartment downtown. There was a coffee shop across the street from where Corbin worked, and sometimes Henry would wait for Corbin to appear, almost always at six thirty in the morning. Usually, he would go to the nearby gym after work; sometimes home. But he never met anyone, certainly not a woman. By now, he knew the consequences. He knew what had happened to Rachael Chess.
Henry wondered what Corbin thought of him now. Was it pure hatred and fear, or was there some admiration, as well? Was there jealousy? Regret?
When Corbin was at work, Henry would sometimes break into his apartment building, picking the lock at the rear entrance and going through the basement and up a back stairwell that led to Corbin’s massive apartment. He didn’t do it too often; he was scared of being spotted coming through the back entrance, although he never saw anyone in the basement at all. It contained storage space and not much else. Sometimes there was a cat down there that would follow Henry up the dark, narrow stairwell, meowing plaintively. He wondered if it was Corbin’s, but doubted it, since there was nothing in Corbin’s apartment—no litter box, no food bowl—that would indicate he had a cat. Sometimes Henry imagined how easy it would be to snap the cat’s neck, then spread its guts all over Corbin’s Oriental carpets. He didn’t do it, though. He wasn’t ready for him to know how close he was, and he enjoyed his time in Corbin’s apartment far too much.
It was a Thursday afternoon when he discovered that Corbin was hiding a girlfriend. He’d been lounging on the sofa, drinking some of Corbin’s Belvedere vodka, when there was a knock on the door. Henry moved quickly and silently to the door, pressing his eye against the peephole. There was a blonde who looked somewhat familiar. He heard a key in the lock and fled toward the master bedroom, just entering the hallway as the door swung open. He didn’t panic; he’d had so much experience spending time with Kaylee in her house without her knowing he was there. He ducked into the kitchen and hid in the nook on the far side of the refrigerator, listening for any noise. Henry didn’t hear a thing till the front door opened and shut again. He slowly emerged back into the hallway, then back into the