“Joe’s in Norway,” Rey said, leaning against the banister.
“So, we can—”
“Hey, what are you girls gasbagging about?” Connor asked sheepishly, his head poked around the doorframe. “Cake cutting soon. It’s shaped like a one and everything.” His weak smile was meant to placate. Rey’s stomach hurt. Connor deserved a less angry partner. A partner who didn’t constantly keep him at arm’s length. He needed a partner who was there, not in jail.
“Girl stuff. I’ll be there in a minute,” Rey said.
Connor disappeared again.
“Whatcha think?” Jiji’s eyes were alive with anticipation.
“I think you’re right that Joe deserves it. I think there are other men who also deserve it. I think I could ball up all my rage and kill the fucker and every other one of these pricks. I also think that I can’t risk going to jail. I have Ethan. If they ever traced it back to me ...”
Jiji squinted as if thinking. “What if it could never come back to you?”
“You know the only way that would happen is if they pegged it on someone else. Or even better, someone else confessed and the case could never be reopened without a shit ton of new evidence.”
“Right,” Jiji said, nodding.
“Right what?”
“Then we use a scapegoat.”
“We? You keep saying we. And who? What sucker do we pin it on?”
Jiji took a swig of her drink, then wiped her lips. “Me.”
Rey screwed up her face and scoffed. “You? What on God’s green Earth are you going on about? No more champagne for you.” She took the bottle from Jiji and started for the kitchen door.
Jiji grabbed Rey’s arm, her gaze hard but brimming with tears. “Me,” she said again.
Rey backed up to the banister and began talking in whispers. “Georgina Lucy Thompson, what are you talking about?”
“Look,” Jiji said. “You ‘av everyfing—a home, a husband, a kid. You av a chance to be happy. What do I av? I live alongside you. I’ve followed ya everywhere my whole life. That’s when some dickhead boyfriend isn’t taking out a drunk or drug-fueled bender on me ribs.” She pulled up her shirt to reveal a fresh set of bruises dappled across her midsection.
Rey gingerly touched the wound.
Jiji winced and yanked down the material again.
“Me parents killed themselves rather than stick around for me coz I’m an embarrassment. Fing is, they were probably right. I’m gonna end up in a ditch, dead. Another domestic no one will give a fuck about. I got nothing, Rey.”
“Hey, you’ll find someone and have kids, too. I did.”
“I’m not you. How many times I gotta tell ya?” Jiji’s face burned red with frustration. “And kids? I can’t have ‘em. The last abortion, it fucked with me uterus.”
“Wait, what abortion? What are you talking about? You didn’t tell me.”
“Tell you what, Rey? You’ve had your own shit to deal wiv. You couldn’t do anything. That was my sixf one. I’m done. I’m a mess. There are no more bones to break. No more men. No babies. I got nuffin.” Jiji’s voice quivered with decades of pent-up pain.
“You have me.” Rey touched her friend’s arm.
Jiji offered a sad smile. “No. I don’t.”
Rey studied her friend’s eyes, and for the first time saw what she’d missed for so long. Given how Rey prided herself on reading people, she could only assume she’d blocked the obvious from her mind and heart. She hadn’t wanted to see Jiji’s unwavering loyalty and copycat dress sense as anything more than stupidity.
Certainly not ... love.
Worse, for more than twenty years, Rey had focused on her own pain and dismissed Jiji’s as weakness. The bruises, the broken bones and black eyes were accounted for by Jiji’s lesser intelligence, a poor choice in men, and general sluttiness. It was all wrong. All of it. Rey was part of the problem. The acceptance of it. The diminishing of Jiji, her own mother and all women like her. And now to be told Jiji had not only had multiple abortions—probably from unwanted sex—but now couldn’t have kids was too much to bear.
I’m a monster, Rey thought. Truly dead inside. And what do monsters do?
Something inside Rey clicked.
“Jiji, I ...” Rey started.
“Shush,” Jiji said, wiping at a tear. “Let me do this. One fing I can do right. For someone I love wiv all my heart. For Ethan and the kids I’ll never have. My life is goin’ nowhere. Never was. Let me make it mean something.”
“Hey.” Connor appeared gingerly carrying Ethan in his arms. “Cake time, let’s go, Mummy.”
“Coming,” Rey said, though her gaze was fixed on Jiji.
“No arguments,” Jiji said. “Deal?”
Rey turned her gaze to a confused-looking Connor and her son who babbled away with a toothy grin. She couldn’t ruin them like Joe had ruined her family. Whatever was wrong with him, made him so angry and frustrated that he took it out on women and children, she had it, too. If Rey didn’t release herself from the same anger, the same demons, she’d do it to her husband and son. That she knew for sure. Maybe killing Joe was the only way. Maybe killing other abusive fuckers and saving other wives and kids was important, too. Maybe she owed it to Jiji after all the years spent by her side. Maybe Rey had always been a killer.
“Deal,” Rey said, finally. “But, together. It won’t work if I don’t do the important one. We’ll talk about it later.”
Jiji nodded once, and then broke out her best smile, sniffing away her tears.
“What deal?” Connor asked as they walked to the living room table full of presents and cake.
“Girl stuff,” Rey said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Oslo, Norway, three days ago
“How did you get in here?” the man said, his steel-gray eyes wide.
“Door was unlocked,” Rey said, her one-piece suit rustling loudly as she took a step forward.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
“What? Don’t recognize me, Joe?” Rey slid back the hood, revealing her chemo-induced bald head and sunken eyes. “Or is it Henrik now? Not that bright, are you? Using your middle name and just spelling it a bit differently. You never did apply your brain.”
He faltered for a second, a glimmer of recognition rippling across his cold features. “Reyna?”
Rey slow clapped the wooden Kubb piece against her free hand. “Wasn’t that hard, was it? You haven’t changed, I see.”
He hadn’t. Rey hadn’t seen him in nearly two decades and while he had aged, there was no mistaking her father. Joe Blackburn’s distinctive thick eyebrows still hung over those cold eyes. His goatee-covered mouth was still full of jagged yellowed teeth from a lifetime of smoking and avoiding the dentist. Much like his own father at that age, he’d grown skinny and frail—yet carried an aura of danger, of malice.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Rey cocked her head and waved the Kubb piece at him. “I’m here to kill you. What does it look like?”
“What? Why?”
For a long while, Rey had been concerned she might not be able to go through with actually killing him. She and Jiji had shared the other murders, and for Rey, they had been practice runs. Easy, in a way, as she had no connection to them other than disdain for their existence. But childhood fears lingered, and despite all her anger, all her rage, she had doubted her ability to follow through with Joe’s murder. Seeing him here, even as an old man, flashbacks of his looming presence, his strength to choke the life from her, and his ability to make her mom cower in fear of a beating or rape, stabbed at her mind.
But then he asked why?
At that moment, all apprehension about murdering him evaporated.
“What do you mean, why?” Rey spat. “Are you fucking kidding me? After what you did to Mum? To me? To Damien and Riley?”
He stammered and wavered on the spot a little. “But ... that was so long ago.”
Rey
’s heart thumped so hard she thought it might explode. “So long ago? What the fuck is wrong with you? Look at me, you piece of shit! Does it look like what you did left a lasting impression? Do I look stable to you?” She took another step forward, her fingers squeezing the Kubb piece.
“You’re the serial killer?” he said, glancing at the wooden block in her grip and backing away. “Why?”
“Why? Because fucksticks like you get away with it. You fuck up women and kids and move on. Live your life with big-titted strippers who you treat like princesses. Leave us with all the hurt and pain.” Rey nodded to the photo on the sideboard. “I tried to tell that dumb bitch you married, but she didn’t listen.”
“That was twenty years ago. Your mum remarried. You did well at school. And I’m different now.”
Did he really not understand what he’d done? Was it all really just in the past for him? Was there no guilt at all? “That was half my life. Look at me!” Rey screamed.
He scanned her gaunt features and hairless scalp.
“Look at what you made me. Look at who I am. And Mum? She’s dead. Breast cancer. Not that you’d give a fuck.”
“I didn’t know,” he stammered.
“What difference would it make if you did? What can you do to make it all right? If the breast cancer didn’t get her, one of her many suicide attempts would have. You raped and abused her. I saw it with my own eyes. Your video recording, you sick fuck. Is that how I was born? Is that how we were all born?” She took another step closer, raising the Kubb. “You’re going to die because you fucking deserve it. Because I can’t be angry anymore. I need you gone, rubbed out from existence as if you never were. For me. For Mum.”
Joe raised his hands. “This isn’t you, Rey.”
“Isn’t me? Don’t pretend you know me.”
“I followed you—online, I mean. Saw on your social media, how well you’re doing. The job. The family. I’m prou—”
Rage bubbled up from the deepest recesses of her heart, hot tears threatening to erupt and spill down her cheeks. “You don’t get to be proud. My achievements are mine alone. No one helped me. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through to get here? No friends. No family. I sacrificed everything to forget my life. Forget you. Forget pain. It didn’t have to be that way. I was a good kid. A sensitive kid. I could have been a good person. But you turned me into this. You made me a monster. I’ve hurt people. People I loved.”
He said nothing, but his features grew from alarmed to calm and collected. As if he felt Rey’s emotional outburst was his opening, the chink in her armor into which he could thrust a knife.
“And what?” he said.
Rey knew that look in his eyes. Now he’d change tactics. Resort to what he knew best—find a wound and gouge at it.
“Now you’re going to kill me? You won’t do that. You’re just like your mother. Useless. Disgusting. What poor fucker did you convince to marry you, huh? Some waste of space who couldn’t do any better?” He took a step toward her, his confidence growing. “You were always pathetic, even as a kid. Getting beaten up. Crying at the drop of a hat. Running to Mummy because you didn’t like a scary book. You’re nothing. A sad little girl who grew up letting losers fuck her and blaming everything on everyone else. How about you look in the mirror? Blame the ugly bald whore staring back at you.”
Rey’s soul was aflame, but her limbs were frozen. She knew these were the things he would throw at her, and she had been so sure she’d be ready to wipe them away like chalk from a board. Instead, she said nothing and could only watch as her frail, fifty-something-year-old father transformed into the lean, evil man of her childhood grabbed her by the throat and squeezed. All at once, she was a kid again, the tingle of wanting to piss herself overwhelming.
“Little bitch,” he said, pushing her backward, crashing into a small table.
Rey hacked and coughed, eyes bulging, his fingers closing around her carotid arteries. The world was already becoming dark, life leaving her body.
Then Ethan flashed into her mind. His little smile and tiny hands. Now five years old, he had a full set of pearly white teeth. Rey imagined what it would be like for him to be so scared that he would run away from her and smash his face into the floor, losing his incisor.
The rage she had was for Joe, not to be taken out on Ethan. The pressure of forty years of hurt had to finally be released here, now, in this moment. Joe had to die. Rey swung the Kubb piece in a massive and practiced arc.
The corner found its target, striking him above his right temple. She felt his skull cave and the Kubb piece penetrate his skull. Joe’s eyes widened and his hands went limp, arms dropping to his sides. He stumbled backward, a stream of blood ebbing freely from the wound and down his face, which was now etched in disbelief. Had he not thought she would do it? Had he not thought her strong enough? Maybe he’d just considered himself invincible.
He tottered backward a few steps, and then crashed to the floor—straight down, in a heap—until he rested against the bed, head lolled to the side. Light hacked through the window blinds, giving an intermittent spotlight on his still-warm corpse.
Joe Blackburn was dead.
The silence in the room sucked all feeling from her. She stood blinking for a while, waiting for an emotion to emerge. Happiness. Relief. Guilt. Anything.
Nothing came.
Another slow blink.
What now?
The plan. She needed to stick to the plan.
Rey tapped the wireless earbud. Heart’s “You Aint So Tough” began to blast through. Her mom’s song. The one she’d blare out super loud on the stereo they couldn’t afford while Joe was out. A song about a woman who’d been tricked into loving a man who ended up abusing her. In the end, when she called him out, he wasn’t so tough. A warm sense of satisfaction, ever so slight, crept over Rey. Her mom, at least, would be happy to know how he’d died. It was enough for now.
Rey rubbed her sore neck before she set about getting to work.
There was much to do.
Oslo, Norway, that morning
Rey waited outside the back door to Leif’s apartment, shivering. Cold wet clothes clung to her skin, and her bones ached. A fine mist fell from the sky, enveloping everything. She stared at her reflection in the door glass—skinny and pallid. She knew she really shouldn’t be there, at this house. Not now. Not right at the end, but she couldn’t leave it. They had planned to not see each other again, but how could Rey not? Jiji was about to go to jail for her, for the murder of thirty men.
The door was yanked open. Jiji nearly crashed into Rey.
“Rey?” Jiji hissed, pulling the door shut behind her and scanning the horizon for witnesses. “What the fuck are ya doin’ here?”
“I ... I ...” Rey stammered, taking in Jiji’s blood-spattered chem suit, only her face uncovered. “I had to see you. To make sure. It’s your last chance, Jiji. To back out.”
“We’re a bit fucking past that, ain’t we?”
“Not necessarily, I just ... Jiji ...”
Jiji yanked Rey out of the cold and up against the door, shielding her from the drizzle. “What the hell happened to ya? Ya look like shit. And I don’t mean coz of ya mum’s spare chemo.”
“Yeah, I won’t be sorry to see the back of that shit,” Rey said. “I got hit by a car, had to spend a night in the hospital.”
“What?” Jiji searched Rey for injury. “Are ya okay?”
Rey rubbed her head. “Had to go to Plan B. The damn detective on our case was the drunk shit who hit me. I fled the hospital as soon as I could and had to abandon the hostel for a while. Couldn’t risk taking a new one. Been on the street for a couple of days.”
“Jesus, Rey. He hit ya when he was drunk? You want me to kill ‘im?”
Rey laughed, which broke into a shudder. “I thought about it, trust me. Even went to his place to do it myself.”
“Ya did what?”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t do it. He had a fucking h
eart attack. If he isn’t dead already, he might come for me, but everything points to you.”
“Yep, that’s why I just left my print on the bottle in there.” Jiji nodded back to the house, indicating her last victim. “I’ll put a hair strand on the kubb piece, too, just for good measure.”
“Leif,” Rey said, having almost forgotten where she was. “It went ... well?”
“Asshole’s dead if that’s whatcha mean?”
Rey nodded.
“And Joe?” Jiji asked. “How do ya feel?”
Rey studied her friend’s eyes, the hope within them shining out. Jiji needed Rey to be free of her demons, free of Joe—perhaps more than Rey needed it. Confessing that right now Rey felt nothing would be cruel. Jiji needed to believe she was going to prison for a good reason—for Rey and Ethan and Connor. So, Rey lied.
“Relieved. He’s gone. He’s finally gone. I feel lighter and I know my Ethan will be okay. I can be the mother I’m supposed to be.” Rey hoped that her lie was only temporary and that when all this was done, she would indeed feel exactly this way.
Jiji nodded, a sad but satisfied smile on her face. “See. So, no going back now. We got this.”
“Yeah.”
“And the akevitt bottle?”
“It had a trace in it,” Rey said, shuddering from the cold again. “They should have figured that out and tracked it to the liquor store, with footage of me, dressed like you buying it.”
“Good. And you burned the evidence otherwise?”
“I did, but ...”
“But?”
“I got attacked on the street. I killed two guys.”
“For fuck sake, Rey.” Jiji’s eyes widened. “Can that lead to you?”
“I don’t think so,” Rey shook her head. “The rain and snow will get rid of most of the evidence. I burned the rest. It’s just, my instinct was to crack the prick in the head like we do with these assholes.” She nodded at the door again.
Jiji clenched her jaw, thoughtful. “Doesn’t matter. They’ve got enough evidence to pin it all on me. The video footage from the liquor store, the print, the hair.” She scanned the environment again. Bad weather was on their side. No one about. “I have the Kubb piece here. I’ll dump it in a trash can a couple of miles away. Make it look like I tried to burn it. And this, too.” She pointed at her chem suit. “If they are any good at their job, they’ll find the gear. Connect the dots.”
A Time For Monsters Page 20
