Hit Man

forty-seven. It’s circled, you can’t miss it.”
    It was in the classifieds, under “Situations Wanted,” circled in red Magic Marker. Odd Jobs Wanted, he read. Removals a specialty. Write to Toxic Waste, PO Box 1149, Yonkers NY.
    He said, “Toxic Waste?”
    “That may have been a mistake,” she acknowledged. “I thought it sounded good, cold and lethal and up to here with attitude. I got a couple of letters from people with chemicals to dump and swamps to drain, wanted someone to help them do an end run around the environmentalists. Plus I managed to get myself on some damn mailing list where I get invitations to subscribe to waste-management newsletters.”
    “But that’s not all you got.”
    “It’s not, because I also got half a dozen letters so far from people who knew what kind of removals I had in mind. I was wondering what kind of idiot would answer a blind ad like that, and they were about what you would expect. I burned five of them.”
    “And the sixth?”
    “Was neatly typed,” she said, “on printed letterhead, if you please. And written in English, God help us. But here, read it yourself.”
    “ ‘Cressida Wallace, 411 Fairview Avenue, Muscatine, Iowa 52761. Dear Sir or—’ ”
    “Not out loud, Keller.”
    Dear Sir or Madam, he read to himself. I can only hope the removal service you provide is of the sort I require. If so, I am in urgent need of your services. My name is Cressida Wallace and I am a forty-one-year-old author and illustrator of books for children. I have been divorced for fifteen years and have no children.
    While my life was never dramatically exciting, I have always found fulfillment in my work and quiet satisfaction in my personal life. Then, four years ago, a complete stranger began to transform my life into a living hell.
    Without going into detail, I will simply state that I have become the innocent target of a stalker. Why this man singled me out is quite unfathomable to me. I am neither a talk show host nor a teenage tennis champion. While presentable, I am by no means a raving beauty. I had never met him, nor had I done anything to arouse his interest or his ill will. Yet he will not leave me alone.
    He parks his car across the street and watches my house through binoculars. He follows me when I leave the house. He calls me at all hours. I have long since stopped answering the phone, but this does not stop him from leaving horribly obscene and threatening messages on my answering machine.
    I was living in Missouri when this began, in a suburb of St. Louis. I have moved four times, and each time he has managed to find me. I cannot tell you how many times I have changed my telephone number. He always manages to find out my new unlisted number. I don’t know how. Perhaps he has a confederate at the telephone company. . . .
    He read the letter on through to the end. There had been a perceptible escalation in the harassment, she reported. He had begun telling her he would kill her, and had taken to describing the manner in which he intended to take her life. He had on several occasions broken into her house in her absence. He had stolen some undergarments from the clothes hamper, slashed a painting, and used her lipstick to write an obscene message on the wall. He had performed various acts of minor vandalism on her car. After one invasion of her home she’d bought a dog; a week later she’d returned home to find the dog missing. Not long afterward there was another message on her answering machine. No human speech, just a lot of barking and yipping and canine whimpering, ending with what she took to be a gunshot.
    “Jesus,” Keller said.
    “The dog, right? I figured that would get to you.”
    The police inform me there is nothing they can do, she continued. In two different states I obtained orders of protection, but what good does that do? He violates them at will and with apparent impunity. The police are powerless to act until he commits a crime. He has committed several, but has never left sufficient evidence for them to proceed. The messages on my answering machine do not constitute evidence because he uses some sort of instrument to distort his voice before leaving a message. Sometimes he changes his voice to that of a woman. The first time he did this I picked up the phone and said hello when I heard a female voice, sure that it was not him, and the next thing I knew his awful voice was sounding in my ear, accusing me of horrible acts and