Every Deadly Kiss

by Steven James

  When he said that, she thought of what Julianne had told her about how so many women fantasize about being powerless in the arms of a powerful man.

  No matter how independent you are, intimacy requires you to be dependent also. And that’s okay. And with Pat, that would be more than okay.

  Love is the greatest liability because it leaves you with a weakness.

  No. It is your greatest asset, because it gives you a reason to be strong.

  Don’t think about those things, Sharyn. This isn’t about you and him. It’s about stopping Dylan before he kills again.

  “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll have another agent or officer go with me to the app developer,” she told Pat. “Maybe Ted.”

  “Detective Schwartz?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Sounds good.”

  ++++

  Sharyn invited me over to her car to give me the Glock that she’d picked up earlier from the armory.

  As she opened the hatch, the angle of the sunlight glancing across her necklace shifted and the sapphires in it gleamed.

  Oh.

  Blue jewelry.

  Of course.

  That must have been where the idea for the tongue twister that I’d told Christie when I was at the hospital came from—seeing Sharyn’s earrings and necklace earlier this morning. The subconscious is acutely observant. The image of the blue jewelry must have gotten lodged somewhere in the back of my mind.

  Still, I felt a pang of guilt that I’d shared with Christie a tongue twister inspired by something Sharyn was wearing.

  ++++

  Sharyn noticed Pat noticing her, and self-consciously brushed a hand across her cheek. “What is it? Is there something wrong? Something on my face?”

  “No. Everything’s . . . Sorry. I was just . . . You kept the earrings and the necklace.”

  “Oh.” She reached up to remove the left earring. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll take them off.”

  He touched her arm to stop her. “No, it’s okay. It’s just . . . I’d say most of the time when people break up with each other, they get rid of the remnants of the relationship. Makes it easier to forget. To move on.”

  She’d never thought of them as remnants of their relationship.

  But maybe that’s what they were.

  Maybe she didn’t want to move on. Maybe she was clinging to something she should have let go of a long time ago.

  You shouldn’t have worn them! Why did you wear them today?

  He must have been able to read the look on her face, because he said, “Sharyn, I didn’t mean to . . . Never mind. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

  ++++

  And when I said, “It’s fine,” I realized again, as I had earlier with Christie, that when people say “fine,” it’s most often a lie.

  When others ask us how we’re doing and we say “fine,” or when they ask us what’s wrong and we say, “nothing,” we’re rarely telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Saying “fine” and “nothing” are socially acceptable ways of hiding what’s really going on in our lives.

  I debated whether or not to tell Sharyn that I was seeing someone but decided it probably wasn’t the best time to get into all that. We could talk about it later—would talk about it later. I definitely needed to clear the air at some point.

  “I won’t wear them,” Sharyn told me. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

  “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  A somewhat tepid, African-American man approached us and Sharyn told me softly that it was Lieutenant Sproul.

  After a curt introduction, he asked me for the rundown and I filled him in on the bomb shelter, the fire, and the search for the homeless man, and the BOLO for Dylan Neeson. However, I left out anything that would lead him to know Sharyn’s true identity.

  I explained my observations about the locations of the sites being in different precincts. “By all accounts, the killer is familiar with the precinct map,” I told him.

  “Can you tell where he’s going to strike next?”

  “No. But I don’t believe in random crime distribution. There’s a pattern beneath all of this.”

  “And what pattern is that?”

  “I’m still working that out.” I summarized the possible Bluebeard connection, then Sharyn told him about the Hook’dup app, and he listened in silence until she was done.

  He looked at the high school thoughtfully. “It sounds like to find Dylan, the first step is identifying the reasons the victims are showing up at those locations, and then trying to predict where the next crime will most likely occur.”

  Earlier, Sharyn had indicated to me that Sproul wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he seemed pretty dialed in at the moment. He echoed what she’d said about me getting changed, then went to speak with the team about the evidence recovery efforts in the tunnel.

  As I filled out the paperwork Sharyn had brought along for permission to use the Glock, she assured me that she would touch base tonight and let me know what she found out from the app developer.

  “I’ll be waiting for your call,” I told her.

  “One other thing.” Her voice was hushed. “Dylan was obsessed with the movie and my Academy Award nomination. That might explain him putting the photo on that painting. You’ve seen it, right? Sanctuary? You know about the ending?”

  “Actually, no, I never did.”

  She looked at me curiously. “You never watched it? Even when we were dating?”

  “No. When we were together, I just wanted to get to know you for who you were—I mean, who you are—and not who you were when you were ten: the person right in front of me, not the person you pretended to be in front of the cameras when you were a kid.”

  Sharyn looked stunned, as if no one had ever told her that before. This woman who could’ve ruled the world with her beauty seemed touched in a deeper way than I would’ve ever imagined by the simple fact that I’d wanted to get to know her for who she truly was regardless of her fame or her past.

  “Pat, that was very thoughtful of you. Really. Maybe you should watch it—at least the end. The scene in the church. That’s the one that’s most famous, the one that got me the Academy Award nomination. I’m wondering if it might relate to this case.”

  “I’ll take a look.”

  I figured that I could stream the movie and watch it tonight at the motel—at least the ending, if I didn’t have time to watch the whole film. Maybe I didn’t even need to wait. I could play it while I changed and wrote up the report of what’d happened here at the school.

  She took off to meet up with Schwartz and pay Inntoit2U Designs a visit, and I contacted the CSI team to confirm that they knew about the possibility of fingerprints on the drawstrings.

  Before leaving for the motel, I went to see if the headless doll was still in the bedroom where Jamika’s body had been left, but found that it was gone. I sent an officer to check the other sites for the corresponding clues that related to what had been on the shrine, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. Dylan—if that’s who was behind this—had shown he was good at cleaning up after himself.

  ++++

  Canyon had been trying to sleep, but he was just too distracted by everything that was going on to really get any rest.

  Now, he was lying in his hospital bed checking his text messages when someone knocked lightly on his door.

  The nurses didn’t always knock—which was completely rude—but the doctors did, so he thought it was probably one of them coming back to check on him.

  He looked up as the person opened the door and stepped into the room.

  “What . . . What are you doing here?” Canyon stammered.

  The figure closed the door softly. “I wanted to see how you’re doin
g.”

  “Yeah, no. I’m good. All good.”

  Canyon had entered that lady FBI agent’s number into his phone, and now scrolled to his contacts to speed-dial her, but the visitor was quick and stopped him before he could call her.

  “No, no. There’s no need for that.”

  Canyon tried to pull free to punch the button beside the bed to call a nurse, but the person’s grip was too tight.

  “Let me go,” he exclaimed.

  “I’m afraid that’s no longer an option.”

  With one rough hand, the visitor stopped Canyon’s scream.

  Then stopped his breath once and for all.

  It wasn’t bloody, wasn’t messy, and it didn’t take long.

  The person stood back and took a photo when it was over, then walked back into the hall and passed the nurses’ station as if nothing had happened.

  And because of who that person was, the nurse sitting there only looked up briefly from her work, gave a tiny smile, and then went back to her typing.

  Scarlett Farrow–III

  The Bedroom

  Cheating.

  That’s the word he used.

  The man that Millie’s mom was seeing, the one who scared Scarlett in real life, started to think that Tracy was cheating on him and he decided to kill the guy at work.

  And it was something that Scarlett didn’t really get at all. Why would someone just cheating at anything make you want to kill them? Sure, cheating was bad, but so were lots of other things.

  So, in any case, Harris went over to kill him. It was a scene she wasn’t supposed to see, but she was off-set and was sneaking around a little bit and watched it all. It looked so real.

  Mostly they tried to keep her from seeing the scary parts of the movie, but she was a kid, and kids always find a way to see stuff grown-ups don’t want them to see.

  It’s fake blood, she told herself. But it didn’t look fake at all. And it gave her nightmares for years.

  Harris stabbed the man over and over and over and blood kept spurting up and splatting onto everything and Scarlett just kept reminding herself that it was all fake, that none of it, none of it, none of it was real.

  Then, not long after that, they shot the scene when Harris comes to attack Millie’s mom.

  Scarlett was upstairs in her bedroom and saw him walking toward the house in the moonlight.

  As he came closer, he zipped up his jacket to cover up the blood.

  She clung to her stuffed bunny, Snowball, the one Millie’s dad had given Millie for her birthday the night before he died trying to save her from drowning. But he didn’t die. He didn’t drown. No one drowned.

  Don’t forget this is just a movie, Scarlett. Don’t ever forget!

  When she saw Harris, she felt a shiver, a real shiver, and called to Tracy and ran to the top of the stairs.

  But Tracy was busy in the kitchen and didn’t hear her.

  It was just like they’d rehearsed it.

  All like they’d rehearsed.

  The real world began merging with the pretend one in a way that was too, too confusing.

  When the doorbell rang, Millie cried out for her mom not to open the door. She even started down the steps to make sure she could hear her, but it was too late.

  Her mom swung it open and greeted Harris.

  “Mom!” Millie shouted, trying not to sound too scared so it wouldn’t make Harris realize that she knew what was going on. “Come here, okay?”

  “Just a minute, dear,” Tracy said, and then let Harris into the living room and told him, “I’ll be right back.”

  Millie called for her again, and went down a few more steps, but then stopped when she heard Harris threaten her mom.

  The shouts got louder.

  “What happened to Cole?” Her mom’s voice was desperate. “Is that blood on your hand? Millie!”

  Tracy ran toward the stairs to protect her daughter, but Harris was right behind her and just as she got to the foot of the stairs and yelled for Millie to run! Harris appeared, clenched a handful of her mom’s hair, smashed her head against the wall, threw her to the floor, and then dragged her out of sight.

  It all looked so real.

  So very, very real.

  And that’s when Scarlett began to think that it was, at least part of her did.

  Terrified, she ran back up the stairs, down the hall, and into her bedroom, where she opened the window and stared outside.

  It was a long way to the ground.

  The tree that her dad had built the tree house in was nearby, with branches reaching toward the window.

  Stretching, stretching. So, so close.

  Before they started filming the scene, the director had told her, “I want you to really make it look like Millie is thinking about jumping out the window or climbing down that tree.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You do a good job at acting scared. Keep it up.”

  “Okay.”

  Now, as she stood there looking out the window, she heard grunts and screams coming from the kitchen. Her mom crying out in pain.

  Millie’s mom. Not yours. It’s all pretend. It’s not real. None of this is. She’s not your real mom.

  But I wish she was. I want her to be!

  So Millie hugged Snowball close and leaned out the window, trying super hard to reach the closest branch.

  Then there was the heavy sound of a thud.

  A short hallway led from the house to the church, and now the lights in it went on and Millie could hear the footsteps of the man walking through it.

  The man who was dragging her mom.

  Then the lights in the church flicked on.

  Scarlett knew what was happening. They’d rehearsed everything.

  He would be ripping off the tape from the roll.

  Lots of tape.

  To keep her mom in the chair.

  Scarlett reached for that branch and found that she really did want to get it, but couldn’t.

  She kept Snowball, but tossed one of the dolls in her room out the window so that it fell by the base of the tree.

  It was something she just thought of, hadn’t planned, something that wasn’t in the script. But the director didn’t stop filming. Just kept the cameras rolling. It was just something that seemed honest to what Millie would do.

  Scarlett ran down the hall to her mom’s bedroom and hid there in the closet, whispering a prayer that Millie’s mom had taught her earlier in the movie: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

  She clenched her eyes and said it over and over. And she wasn’t just fake-praying. She was really trying to reach God with her words.

  “Millie.” Harris came stalking up the stairs calling her name. “Don’t be scared, Millie. It’s just me. Your mom is in the church. She needs you.”

  Even there in the closet, Scarlett knew what was happening in the hall. She had to know those things in order to play her part.

  They would do a close-up on the knife he was carrying.

  And of the blood on his hands.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Millie,” he said.

  Millie’s prayer became more and more rushed.

  She hugged Snowball.

  “If I should die—”

  Down the hallway.

  “Before I wake—”

  To her bedroom.

  He would be walking in there now, and he would see the open window, stare into the night, look for her, but not find her.

  “I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

  Later, when she watched the dailies, she saw him stare confused at the doll, maybe wondering if there was a change in the script. But then he just went with it and began down the stairs to go out into the night and f
ind her, but suddenly he stopped.

  “Clever girl,” he muttered to himself. “You don’t like dolls, do you?”

  He retraced his steps, searched her bedroom, and then went to her mom’s bedroom. “Millie? Are you in here?”

  And there she was, huddled in the closet, terrified, hugging Snowball, praying, praying, praying, “If I should die . . . If I should die . . .”

  No, it isn’t real.

  Yes, yes, it is!

  Harris came to the closet, opened the door, and smiled. “There you are, Millie. Come on.”

  But she shook her head.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “What’d you do to my mom?”

  “Come and see.”

  “Did you hurt her?”

  He held out his hand. “Come and see.”

  She didn’t want to go, she wanted to stay there, but he was holding that knife and blocking her only way out of the closet, and it made her think that if she didn’t go with him, she really wasn’t going to survive, wasn’t going to live at all.

  It’s the only way to save Mom.

  Millie’s mom. You mean Millie’s mom.

  This isn’t real. None of this is real. It’s all a game. Just a game of pretend.

  Harris took her hand and led her to the stairs.

  PART 4

  No, Her Cage

  Is Not Enough

  WEATHERS: Some people have claimed that your group carries out these attacks because you envy the West. How do you respond?

  BASHIR: We do not envy you. We pity you. We do not desire this democracy of yours. We decry it. We abhor it. Democracy is idolatry because it places man-made laws above God-given ones.

  WEATHERS: I would counter that there are more than a billion moderate Muslims worldwide who do not share your view.

  BASHIR: Do you still not understand that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim? The phrase is nonsensical, a contradiction in terms, just like the phrase “unborn-again Christian” would be.

  WEATHERS: I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

  BASHIR: To be a Muslim is to be surrendered to Allah, to submit to him. Submission is not something a person can do halfheartedly, or to a moderate degree. It’s not radical to submit to something wholeheartedly, it is the only way one can submit. And it’s not just Muslims who understand this, Miss Weathers. Even Søren Kierkegaard, from the Christian tradition, wrote, “In relationship to God one can not involve himself to a certain degree. God is precisely the contradiction to all that is ‘to a certain degree.’”