Page 119 of Hard to Kill

For a change, Rob Jacobson is alone when I get there, complaining yet again about how bored he is. The two of us have coffee at his kitchen table.

“Brigid’s worried about you,” I tell him. “She told me the other night on the phone, you were talking about suicide.”

His reaction is to laugh, much too heartily.

“Why in the world would I do something like that?”

“Something to do with all the terrible things you’ve done in your life, she said.”

“Good old Brigid. She always did take everything I said to heart.”

I lean forward, one elbow on the table, chin in my hand, frowning at him. “You’re telling me you made it up about having suicidal thoughts?”

“I was feeling sorry for myself, and I guess I wanted her to feel sorry for me, too.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Rob, but you’re starting to give narcissism a bad name.”

“And yet, here we still are. Because you and your sister both care about me. Is that why you came over today, to check up on me?”

“It’s not,” I say, and then proceed to tell him about what happened in the Springs last night.

“You think my son might have had something to do with it?”

“I’ll ask him next time I run into him. Any thoughts where he might be, by the way?”

“You’re asking me?”

“The witness is instructed to answer the question.”

It shouldn’t be that difficult a question. He either does know where his son is, or he doesn’t. One or the other. But for some reason he takes too long to answer, as if reviewing his options, like somebody reading a dinner menu and trying to decide what to order.

“He actually called me about a week ago to say good-bye, now that I think of it.”

“Where’s he going?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Would your wife know?”

“After he may have tried to drown her in the pool where shetaught him to swim? Riiight. He probably asked her to book a flight for him.”

It’s still like talking to the head of a sitcom family from hell.

“Why would he and McKenzie be friends? Have you given any thought to that?”

“You’re full of questions today, aren’t you?”

“Humor me. I had a rough night.”

“Maybe because they both want me dead,” Rob Jacobson says. “Or at the very least want me locked up for the rest of my life so they say they finally beat me at something.”

“Any thoughts on why McKenzie and Eric would see me as a threat?”

“Speaking as a narcissist?” he says. “That sounds like more of a Jane thing.”

“On that note,” I say, and get up and out of my chair.

“Nice of you to stop by. Even when you’re giving me shit, it helps break up the monotony.”