Crimes by Moonlight

She went on anyway. “Tishy and I always went to the store together. She loved to pick out things for di

Neal shifted again but didn’t say anything.

“So this Tuesday, we got in to drive to the store. She climbed into her seat and buckled up. I heard the buckle click. I heard it! But she must have pushed it and let it go. We drove down Elk Road. There’s a stop sign going the other way. A driver-a young woman with three fraternity buddies in her car-ran the sign and broadsided us. Tisha was thrown sideways into the left rear door. She died. I only had a bump on my forehead.”

Sandy had not cried until she told how little she had been injured.

“The seat belt was defective,” Neal said.

“No. She hadn’t latched it. I heard a click, but I didn’t check. I didn’t check!”

SANDY left. Neal had said he needed to be alone. He had tried to comfort her, but all the while, he was thinking, You made a careless mistake. I didn’t make a mistake.

I didn’t make a mistake. I made a decision to be cowardly. What I didn’t tell Sandy was-I could have run down the street and found a store open and called 911. But I was afraid they’d follow me. So I ducked into an alley and hid behind a bunch of trash cans until I heard them leave.

Until I heard them leave. Oh, God. Berko was dying by then. He was surely beyond help by the time I found an open liquor store and called the cops.

I am slime.

A new message appeared. It was from Earl Think. It said, You killed me.

Quickly, Neal grabbed up his iPhone and took a picture of the monitor screen. He looked at the phone screen. Nothing.

But it had been there. Really, it had. It wasn’t his imagination or the effect of a guilty conscience.

Except-what difference did it make? He was guilty whether the messages were real or the product of his self-loathing. He had done something terribly wrong and cowardly, and he had killed his friend.

And he realized he could never tell Sandy the whole truth, that he had not only run away into the alley and hidden behind those trash cans. He had waited. He could have run down the street and found a phone, but he ran and hid and waited until he heard the muggers leave. It had taken another three or four minutes for them to finish stomping Berko. If he hadn’t wanted to hide so fast, if he hadn’t been afraid they’d follow him, if he had run down the street, Berko might have lived.

Neal was crying now. He was a coward and a worthless human being.

He went into the kitchen and rummaged in a bottom cabinet until he found the vodka, which he practically never drank. Carrying the bottle by the neck, he went into the bathroom and found aspirin. Then he returned to the computer and sat in his swivel chair and took a long drink from the bottle. He started to choke, but he kept calm. After a couple of minutes, he chewed two of the aspirin, then decided to wash them down with more vodka. He waited several minutes to make sure he wasn’t going to choke again. Then he repeated the process.

In the flash of a fading brain, Neal realized, anagrams! The thing was playing with him. Coma hooy = yahoo.com. Earl think = earth-link. L. Amoco = aol.com. But it all didn’t matter.

SANDY had reached her home troubled. Neal had been devastated, whatever was happening. When she had left, his eyes were wide and his cheeks looked hollow. He was having some sort of stress-induced hallucinations.

She gave herself a couple of minutes, to see whether her nerves would quiet down. Maybe she was overreacting.

But half an hour later, she was only more worried.

All right. She picked up the phone. He hadn’t said not to call, after all.

But there was no answer. She let it ring a dozen times. Well, no answer didn’t necessarily mean he was in trouble. He quite often didn’t answer the phone if he was entering orders for work. And he sometimes turned off the phone if he was going to bed. He’d had a stressful evening, that was for sure. Maybe he figured a good night’s sleep would straighten him out.

AT Neal’s apartment, he heard the phone very distantly. He made no attempt to answer it. In fact, he couldn’t quite remember where he had left it, and it sounded fu

SANDY knew she wasn’t going to relax until she was certain Neal was all right. She picked up her keys to drive back to his place, then hesitated. Maybe that was going too far too fast. He could be working, and he might be a

She went to her desk and opened her e-mail.

Hmm, there was a message for her. She’d just take a minute to check it.

She opened the e-mail. The message said,

Hi, Mommy.

In Memory of the Sibylline by Lou Kemp

The many men so beautiful

And they all dead did lie!

And a million million slimy things

Liv’d on-and so did I.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner-Coleridge

Like a shower of fairy dust on fire, the embers from Townsend’s pipe blew across the railing and into the night, lost long before they fell into the waves.

He cupped his pipe to protect the remaining embers and to keep his hands warm. It seemed like only hours ago when the Christia

A pregnant moon hung low over the sea. The waves reflected moonlight on iridescent crests that rolled by the Christia

Although he did not hear footsteps, Townsend became aware of another presence at the rail. Townsend looked closer and saw that it was an older academic he’d met as he boarded the ship. A deep and pervading sadness seemed to weigh upon the man’s shoulders.

“Good evening, Mr. Perideaux,” Townsend said.

“A beautiful night, no?” Perideaux’s cigarette flickered in the darkness, revealing a faint sheen of perspiration decorating his brow.

Although his words seemed calm enough, it appeared that Perideaux needed to be reassured in some ma

“Yes, a beautiful night,” Townsend agreed.

Perideaux made no response. The man’s attention seemed transfixed some distance off the port bow as his gaze swept the sea from side to side, as if searching for something.

Under their feet, the Christia