The Killing Moon

by V. J. Chambers

  She glared at him. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “What? That was way longer than three seconds.” He reached across the table and brushed her hand with his. “I can’t help it. I’m excited to see you.”

  She pulled her hand away. “This isn’t a date, you know.”

  “Right,” he said. “Because you can’t be with anyone at all.” He closed his menu. “Is that actually just your way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’? Like, were you planning on breaking up with me anyway? You’ve barely spoken to me in six months, but last I checked, you never officially ended things either.”

  “Well, consider them officially ended, then.”

  He toyed with his silverware. “You’re, um, really not good with letting people down easy, are you?”

  And because she’d dated him, shared his bed, and eaten breakfast with him before lots of times, she could tell there was actual hurt in his voice. “Sorry.”

  The waitress came over to their table and took their order. Hollis didn’t even bother to flirt with her. Dana really had upset him.

  Once the waitress was gone, Dana said, “Look, it’s not like we were really a serious couple, anyway. I mean, there were all kinds of issues.”

  “There was one issue,” he said. “And it was your issue, not mine. I wasn’t worried about catching the lupine virus. It was only you. As for being serious...” He shrugged. “Seriousness is not my strong suit.”

  Dana wished she still had the menu to fiddle with, but the waitress had taken them. “I guess I should have called you or something. Explained things.”

  “I wanted to be there for you,” said Hollis. “I don’t know why you shut me out.”

  “You wanted to write about me,” she said. “You wanted an inside scoop.”

  “Well, maybe,” he said. “But I wanted to be there for you more.”

  She wanted to strangle him.

  He grinned at her, dimples popping out again. “Hey, it’s the past. You’re single, right? I’d say I still have a chance.”

  She focused on the table. “No.”

  “Which brings me back to my first question. Why can’t you be with anyone?”

  She cocked her head. “You asking that question as my ex-boyfriend or as the reporter who’s writing about my being captured by Cole Randall?”

  “I can’t be both?” He laughed. “You’re asking if it’s on the record, right? And the answer is no. We’re not having an interview. We’re having breakfast. I won’t print what you say.”

  She leaned back in the booth. “I’m fucked in the head. He really screwed me up.”

  The smile faded from his face. “Like how?”

  She shook her head. How was she going to give Hollis this interview? She knew he claimed he wasn’t interviewing her now, and maybe her exact words would never get printed, but Hollis never forgot anything he heard. And there were some things she simply couldn’t make public. How did she make sure he got the message to back off without giving too much away? “It’s PTSD, Hollis. Google it.”

  “Post traumatic stress disorder does not keep people from being in relationships,” said Hollis.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said.

  “Fine,” he said. “Then how about going on the record and giving me a quote on Beverly Martin. Why are you here?”

  Jesus Christ, he was giving her a headache. “I can’t talk about that.”

  “Why not? Maybe I could help. I got some theories. Show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” His boyish grin was back on his face.

  Despite herself, she smiled back. It was really hard to be mad at Hollis. He was too adorable, like some giant puppy that kept making messes on the carpet but you could never quite get angry with. “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “You think she did it on purpose?” he asked.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “It would make sense. She knows how to stop it, so she must have done it on purpose. On the other hand, it wouldn’t make any sense at all. She knows all about the SF. She knows what will happen to her if she does it. And she’s got quite a bit to lose. A family. A house. Seems weird to me.”

  She made a noncommittal noise.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re not going to give me anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “I heard your partner say you were going to interview her twins. Her husband won’t even let me in the front door. How ‘bout you let me tag along?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Then let me interview you about Cole Randall tonight. You still going to be in town?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We might go back to Pennsylvania today. I guess it depends on what we find out.”

  “Call me?”

  “Okay.”

  “I knew I’d eventually get you to agree to something if I asked enough questions.” Dimples again.

  Dana sighed.

  * * *

  “Are you guys werewolves?” asked Maggie, one of Beverly Martin’s twins.

  “Our dad said that everyone in the Sullivan Foundation is one,” said Madeleine. She looked exactly like her sister. Dana was only keeping them straight because they hadn’t moved from the couch where she’d been introduced to them. Both girls sat up straight, enthusiasm all over their faces.

  “Yes,” said Avery. “That is true. Everyone who works for the SF is a werewolf, so we are.”

  “Cool!” said Maggie. “Our mom is a werewolf. She says she hopes that we will be too.”

  “She does?” said Dana. That was a little odd. She didn’t really know anyone who actually liked being a werewolf. Well, except Cole, that is.

  Maggie nodded. “Yup.”

  “I don’t know, though,” said Madeleine. “I think it could be a little bit scary.”

  “No, it won’t,” said Maggie, turning to her twin, “because I’ll be with you, and we’ll be doing it together. That will make it cool.”

  “Maybe,” said Madeleine.

  “We’re actually here to talk to you about your mom, if that’s okay,” said Avery.

  The girls shrugged.

  “Is she a good mom?” asked Dana.

  “I guess so,” said Madeleine.

  “She used to be,” said Maggie. “Then she was gone all the time. Our dad says she was running from her responsibilities.”

  “When did she start doing that?” asked Avery.

  The girls looked at each other, and then shrugged again.

  “I didn’t care,” said Madeleine, “because before, when she was around a lot, she just yelled at us and made us clean our rooms and stuff. When she was gone, we could make as many messes as we wanted.”

  Maggie nodded. “That’s true. All dad would do was get mad at mom, because it’s her job to make us clean up.”

  Dana struggled not to smile at that. It was interesting to hear the world of adults filtered through children’s perspective.

  “If we become werewolves,” said Madeleine. “Will we have to go to the Sullivan Foundation?”

  “Yes,” said Dana. “You’ll need to be trained so that you can control yourself, so you don’t have to shift.”

  “Our mom didn’t want us to go there,” said Maggie.

  “She didn’t?” said Avery. “Why not?”

  “She just said it was a bad place, and that it would teach us bad stuff,” said Madeleine. “But our dad says that’s not true. He says you’re the good guys.” She shrugged. “I think he’s probably right. I don’t believe anything Mom said anymore. I saw on TV that she went crazy and killed people.”

  Maggie glared at her sister. “That’s not nice. Mom probably had a good reason.”

  “Did your mother ever tell you what she was going to do?” Dana asked. “Did she give you a reason for doing what she did?”

  Both of the twins shook their heads.

  “Dad says she wanted away from us,” said Madeleine. “He says
she was trying to escape.”

  “That’s not true!” Maggie’s voice had risen several decibels.

  Dana wanted to calm them down. “It’s okay, girls. You don’t have to—”

  “What’s going on in here?” A woman appeared in the doorway to the living room. She’d introduced herself as Yvonne earlier. She was Beverly’s best friend, and she was watching the girls while Karl went to work. He had thought that they might not quite be ready to go back to school.

  Avery stood up. “I think we might actually be done in here, ma’am.” He looked at Dana for confirmation.

  Dana wasn’t sure. But it didn’t seem like they were getting anything definite from either of the twins. They only knew what their parents had told them, the way kids often did. “Yeah, I don’t think we have any other questions for them.”

  Yvonne came into the room. She looked at both of the girls. “They didn’t upset you too much?”

  Maggie had her arms crossed over her chest, but Madeleine seemed fine. She jumped up off the couch, picking up a remote control. “Can we watch TV now?”

  Yvonne sighed. “Okay.” She turned to Avery and Dana. “I’ll walk the two of you out.”

  “Actually,” said Dana, “would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”

  Yvonne froze. “All right, I guess so.” She gestured. “We can go in the kitchen if the girls are watching TV in here.”

  Yvonne was apparently in the middle of cleaning up the kitchen. The dishwasher sat open, half-loaded. The sink had dirty dishes stacked inside. But the kitchen island was spotless, as if it had just been wiped down. She sat down on a stool on one side and motioned for them to sit opposite her. “I don’t understand. There isn’t any question that Beverly did this, is there? I thought you folks could smell it or something.”

  “We can,” said Dana. “But this case is different than usual. We don’t often have wolves that return to killing after they’ve learned how to keep from shifting.”

  “Return to killing?” said Yvonne. “But Beverly never killed before.”

  “I think we knew that,” said Avery. “She was bitten but sequestered before her first full moon, right? Dana’s the same way.”

  “I should have put it differently,” said Dana.

  “Well, all right,” said Yvonne. “But that still doesn’t make any sense. She did it, didn’t she? What does it matter if she knew how to control herself?”

  “Well, it implies that she did it on purpose,” said Avery. “At the Sullivan Foundation, we help werewolves. We don’t generally punish them. In the rare cases they need to be punished, we have to be absolutely sure that they deserve it.”

  “It’s only that it doesn’t quite make sense,” said Dana. “Why would she do it? She didn’t seem to have a vendetta against anyone she killed, did she? They were random victims in a grocery store.”

  Yvonne nodded. “It’s suspicious because she had no motive?”

  “Not only that, she would have known that she’d be taken away from her family. She seems to have a lot to lose and not much to gain by doing it. We want to make sense of it, that’s all.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Yvonne. “I sure can’t figure it out. I’ve been friends with Beverly since we were freshmen in high school. We both went to Webster High just a few miles from here. This is completely unlike her.”

  “Did she enjoy being a werewolf?” asked Avery. “The girls said that she hoped they’d be infected.”

  Yvonne sighed. “Oh, that stuff only started about seven months ago. She started to get distant, to pull away from everyone. She began to say that no one understood her, because we weren’t wolves like she was. She said that she hoped her daughters were, so that they wouldn’t be hopeless cases like the rest of us.”

  “Really,” said Dana. That was odd.

  “Karl was worried. He talked to me about it, because he hoped I could get to the bottom of what was going on. But she wasn’t interested in talking to me either. I didn’t get it, because I wasn’t a wolf.” She shook her head. “She’d never been that way before. Even right after she got the virus, she and I were close. She only wanted to pretend it had never happened back then. I have no idea why she wanted to embrace that part of herself all of the sudden.”

  “You’re saying there was a change in behavior before the incident, then?” said Avery.

  Yvonne nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess if you wanted to make sense of it, maybe she did it because she liked being a werewolf so much that she just wanted to let it out. Hell, if I know.”

  * * *

  “But it’s not concrete,” said Dana, from the driver’s seat.

  “It’s enough for King,” said Avery. He’d just gotten off the phone with Ursula back in headquarters. The two were driving back to the hotel. “She thinks that it makes sense that Beverly might have snapped. Like Yvonne said. She liked being a werewolf.”

  “And that’s enough to lock her up?”

  “According to King, it is,” said Avery.

  Dana sighed. “Well, I guess that’s it then. She wants us back tonight, I suppose. I can handle the checkout from our rooms.” She wasn’t going to be able to talk to Hollis tonight after all. She was a little bit relieved.

  “Actually, she said it makes the most sense for us to stay one more night,” said Avery. “She says we should try to talk to Arnold Phelp’s sister tomorrow. If we drive back to headquarters tonight, and then get up tomorrow and drive all the way out there, that’s way more traveling than just swinging by to see her on our way back. And the sister’s busy today, so tomorrow’s better.”

  “So, another night in the hotel, then,” said Dana. “Sorry. I know you hate hotels.”

  “I’ll manage. I’m just glad we got this squared away.”

  Dana didn’t say anything.

  “You’re annoyed because what Randall said didn’t pan out, aren’t you? There was no evidence that she was somehow forced into what she did.”

  “Annoyed isn’t exactly the word,” said Dana. “But I have to admit I’m confused. I really thought he was trying to tell me that something had happened to make both of them go nuts at the same time.”

  “He was yanking your chain, Gray.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “That’ll teach me to trust anything a serial killer says.”

  “You wanted to trust him.”

  She bit her lip. “Not exactly.” She sighed. “I wanted to see him again. I wanted to have a reason to see him again. How fucked up is that?”

  Avery considered. “Pretty fucked up. But you know it’s fucked up. And I meant what I said. I’m here for you. Between the two of us, you’ll get through this.”

  She gave him a grateful smile. She had to admit it was good to have Avery on her side again. And it was good to have someone she could talk to about it besides Chantal.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Well, he tried to kill me, but then he decided he couldn’t, so he chained me up in his basement until he could make a decision. He tried to kill me again one more time, but he couldn’t do that either. Eventually, I got away. There’s not much to the story.” Dana perched on a chair in Hollis’ hotel room.

  He was sitting on the bed, leaning up against the headboard, his recorder in his hand. “That’s the story everyone knows. It answers all the basic whos, whats, and wheres. But it doesn’t answer any of the whys.”

  “I don’t know the whys,” said Dana. Maybe she could get this over with pretty quickly. Then she wouldn’t have to deal with Hollis anymore. She still found him charming, even attractive, but she didn’t want her life entangled with his again. Too complicated.

  “See, that’s where you’re holding out on everyone. I had to do a ton of digging to find this, because you were both minors, and the news stories didn’t print your names. But you and Cole Randall are the teen survivors of the Brockway Massacre. I can’t believe you never told me that.”

  Dana sighed. “Is it important?”

  “Is it a big
secret?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. I’ve known him a long time. I was in his apartment because I thought he was likely a victim of the serial killer. Cole and I fit the killer’s profile.”

  “The profile, right,” said Hollis. “He only killed werewolves.”

  “Rehabilitated werewolves,” said Dana. “Ones who’d never killed. Ones who were bitten and then taken into custody by the SF before they’d shifted for the first time.” She paused.

  That was funny. Beverly Martin fit that profile.

  “And there were always two of them,” he said.

  Well, Beverly didn’t fit exactly. She wasn’t part of a survival pair. “Yes,” she said. “They were always two people who survived together. Like Cole and I had. I thought we fit the profile. I didn’t realize that we were the model of the profile. He was killing people who were like the two of us.”

  Hollis set down the recorder. “So, in his mind, it was like he was killing you over and over again.”

  She nodded. “Working up to the real thing. But when he actually got me, he... choked.”

  “That’s really intriguing, Dana. Why couldn’t he kill you?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” she said.

  “What do you think he’ll say?”

  “I don’t know if he’ll even talk to you,” she said.

  “I think he might,” said Hollis.

  “There have been other reporters who’ve tried. He’s turned them down.”

  “Yeah, but I’m your ex-boyfriend,” said Hollis. “And it doesn’t take a genius to see that you’re important to him.”

  He was probably right. Jesus. What would Cole say to this man? Would he tell him everything? Dana felt a little nervous. “You know, he might make things up. I hope that you wouldn’t take his word over mine.”

  Hollis leaned forward. “Make things up, or tell me the actual truth? What are you hiding, Dana?”

  “Nothing,” she said. Fuck Hollis. Why did he have to dig so deeply into everything?

  He settled back. “Okay, fine. Let’s start at the beginning. Did you know Cole Randall in high school before the massacre?”

  “I knew him by sight. We barely ever spoke,” she said. “We traveled in different circles.”

  “So, why do you think he saved you? I read the articles, and he was the one who knew about the door in the locker room. He brought you with him. His sister was inside too, but he chose to save you. Why do you think he did that?”