But what else was this I was writing? I was going to kill myself? But I wasn't. I had built up my other identity too carefully. The note was a cover-up.
It was finished. I left it on the desk and hurried out of the house. The skinny man next door was standing on his lawn looking at the door as I came out.
"What was that in there, Orville?" he asked. "I thought I heard a shot."
"Shot?" I said. "Oh. I remember. Thelma was turning to another station and had the volume too loud."
I went to my car and slipped in behind the wheel. He was still studying the house uneasily. In a few more minutes he would knock to make sure she was all right. Then he would call the police.
But by that time Orville Snyder would be no more.
I knew the plan now. The river had less than fifty miles to go to the ocean. More than one person had committed suicide by leaping from a bridge, without their body ever being found. Once one of the bodies had washed ashore five hundred miles down the coast.
I was going to stop on a bridge and leave my coat, with the gun in it, and with my wallet in it, to serve as proof that I had jumped.
But it wasn't I. It was Fred Martin. I was fighting to destroy the illusion of his surface thoughts being mine, of my being Fred Martin.
It was no use. The most I could accomplish was a conscious realization of the fact.