He finds the man on a Thursday.
Leon Grant. Thirty-one years old. Six arrests, two convictions — aggravated assault and possession with intent. The assault conviction resulted in twenty-two months served. He was out in seventeen on a behavioral assessment that Gideon has read twice and considers among the more optimistic documents he has ever encountered.
The third arrest was for a sexual assault charge that was dropped when the victim declined to testify. Gideon has read the original police report. He understands why she declined.
He has been following Grant for three weeks. Not following literally — he is careful about that — but mapping. Grant goes to the same bar every Thursday. A place on Frankford Avenue called The Rail, where the lighting is the color of an old bruise and the music is always three songs behind what anyone actually wants to hear.
Grant drinks Jameson. Two, sometimes three. He is reliable in his habits, which is the thing about men who are arrogant — they do not believe in the need for unpredictability.
Gideon orders a beer he does not drink. He sits four stools down and watches the room with the peripheral attention of a man who has done this before.
At nine-forty, Grant goes to the bathroom.
The compound goes into the glass in the two seconds it takes for the bartender to look the other way.
Gideon picks up his beer and moves to a table by the door. He takes a long pull of the beer — the first and last he will drink tonight — and he watches Grant come back from the bathroom and settle back onto his stool and pick up his glass.
He finishes the beer. He sets the glass on the table and stands and walks out into the cold.
He does not watch Grant die. That is not what this is.
He goes back at two in the morning, after the bar has closed and Grant has been found unresponsive and the ambulance has already come and gone. The paramedics would have noted no signs of trauma, no obvious cause. Sudden cardiac event, the report will say, in a man with a history of heavy drinking and a heart that was already not healthy.
The bar is dark and locked. Gideon stands on the sidewalk outside for a moment.
He had planned to leave. Instead, he stands there.
He is not sure how long. The cold gets into his coat and he lets it. He looks at the sign above the door — the bulb in the R has been out for three weeks, so it reads THE AIL. He thinks about Grant picking up the glass. The ordinary way his hand wrapped around it.
He thinks about the girl in the police report.
He walks back to his car.
When he gets in, he notices his hands are shaking. Just slightly. Just once. He grips the wheel and waits for it to stop, and it does stop, and he tells himself it is the cold.
He knows it is not the cold.
It does not happen again after that.
That is the thing about repetition. The body learns. The mind seals what it cannot afford to keep open.
He drives home. He does not take the long way.