She had something. Her right hand was clenched into a fist. But there was something in it.
“Do you have a name?” he said as he pulled her fingers. Still hoping to get the killer to tell him that bit of information. He believed Tuyen, believed what she had said about the name giving him power. He needed all the power he could get.
“That’s not important,” said the killer.
Evan felt a pang of irritation that his minor ploy hadn’t worked, but only a pang. He was working on getting Tuyen’s hand opened. Even in death it was closed so tightly he feared he might have to break her fingers to get at whatever she held. And he knew he would do that if necessary.
“What is important,” continued the killer, the smile apparent in his voice, “is the look on your wife’s face when she died.”
Evan stopped moving. The world seemed to hold still for a timeless moment. “Is this a joke to you?” he whispered.
The killer laughed, and this time the smile was gone from his voice. He sounded angry. More than angry, he sounded wrathful. “Jokes aren’t funny when you know how they end, Evan.” He was silent a second, then said, “And I do know how this ends,” in a voice so low Evan could barely hear it.
Something cracked. Evan realized he had just broken Tuyen’s index finger. It jagged out crookedly, as though she was unsure which direction to point. But beneath it he saw a paper. He worked his fingers around it. Pulled.
It came free.
Evan looked at it.
“Are you sure you know how this ends?” he said.
The killer paused. Sounding unsure for the first time, he said, “One hour.”
“Why wait?” asked Evan.
A second of silence. Then the killer said, “I agree.”
And Evan spun around, because the words hadn’t come from his phone.
It came from inside the room.
It came from right behind him.
Fight
Evan’s face was a mask. Shock, terror, confusion. Feelings familiar and distant, emotions that seemed as though he should know them well, but at the same time could never become comfortable to him.
He realized he must look the way he had looked when he saw Val.
Shock as his world crumbled.
Terror as he wondered how he could have missed what was happening.
Confusion as he asked himself what would happen now.
It all shot through in his mind as he spun, turning from Tuyen’s body to the man behind him, the killer who held a knife that still dripped with Tuyen’s blood.
The killer slashed out, the knife catching what little light there was in this dark section of the store and glinting like a dark star in a darker night. Evan threw himself to the side, moving quickly enough to avoid being gutted. But only barely.
The guy was fast.
Evan rolled, hearing the air whistle around the return slice as the man reversed his slash and tried again. Another miss, but this one was so close that Evan felt cool air on his cheek as he ducked under the blade.
He had his gun in his hand, and he used it. Pulling the trigger before he had completed his roll.
Boom. Boom-BOOM-BOOM.
Each shot was louder in the confines of the back room, each report playing off the one that had gone before, multiplying and becoming more than the sum of its parts. The sound itself was painful.
No way to miss. Not at this range.
The killer shrank back, the hand with the bloody knife up against one ear, bellowing in rage and pain.
Then the scream turned to a laugh as he looked down. The dark coat billowed around him. There was only the darkness of the threads he wore, the black of the air that surrounded them both. There was no blood.
He looked at Evan, a tight grin on his face. For the first time he seemed in control of himself, the madness momentarily fled from his features. That scared Evan more than everything else. Because it meant that whatever was happening, it was something an insane man could understand.
And Evan was trapped here with him. Confined in a world of madness.
The killer’s smile gaped, becoming Cheshire-wide, so large it allowed Evan to see every one of the man’s teeth. He thought they were stained red as the knife. He wondered if he had feasted on Tuyen’s blood. On Listings’.
“You can’t kill me,” said the man.
He lunged at Evan. Silver flashed before Evan had a chance to react, and Evan screamed as the knife opened a slash on belly.
He clutched himself. Realized that he was still holding something in his hand. Not the gun. Something else.
He looked down.
The killer pulled back his knife. No slashes this time. He was going to stab Evan. Just slam the knife into his stomach or chest, then do it again and again and again until his blood stopped flowing. Just like Geist, and Tuyen, and Listings. And –
(just like Val)
– and then he would have won.
He would win.
The knife hovered in space for an instant. A spring, coiled and about to release.
The killer smiled.
The knife thrust forward.
Evan screamed.
Known
“I know your name!”
The knife stopped. It halted as thoroughly and completely as if it had impacted a wall, an invisible force field between Evan and the killer.
The other man stared at him, and for the first time there was neither madness nor that strangely fatalistic calm in his eyes. Now he was the one who was confused.
“What?” he said.
Evan held up the paper that he had wrestled from Tuyen’s dead hand. It was his business card. Given to her so short a time ago – and yet it seemed so long. More than a lifetime, a million lifetimes. On one side it was just his name and contact information. The boring, basic card the department issued to all detectives.
On the other, a single word. It was smeared, jittery. Traced in the girl’s own blood, her own finger for a stylus. She must have written it as she died, written that word and hidden it in death, hidden it in hope.
Just a single word.
A name.
Evan read it again.
Then looked at the killer.
“Hi, Adrian,” he said.
The killer’s face went through a quick series of expressions: confusion, surprise, hatred.
Fear.
Evan waited for that last one. For the fear. And when he saw it, that was when he shot the sonofabitch.
Memories
The killer – Adrian – looked down again. This time the black of his coat was stained by a darker black of spreading blood. A wellspring of life – or whatever thing he clung to once life had passed – that was pulsing out of him, petering out of him.
Evan watched as the man lurched, one foot going in front of him for balance. He stumbled into a display, knocking over a pile of jars that held God-only-knew-what. Then he sat down hard, his back against a pile of metal shelves. He was breathing fast, his stomach going in and out. Evan could see his breath at his throat as well: a sign of respiratory distress. He’d probably punctured a lung with his shot. A painful, messy way to go as you drowned on your own blood.
He thought of Geist.
Of Tuyen.
Of Listings.
He smiled.
He realized he was still in a half-crouch from when he had rolled away from Adrian’s attacks.
Adrian. It was hard to think of him like that. Not as a faceless killer, a monster of the dark. He was someone – or had been, once. Before he became a ghost, a demon come to destroy Evan’s life.
Evan felt his legs grow sticky; realized he was still bleeding from the long cut at the base of his stomach. He put a hand against his shirt, shoving the torn fabric against his flesh in a makeshift pressure bandage. The cut hurt, it bled a lot, but it wasn’t too deep. And even if it had been a mortal cut, Evan would have stood here and done what he had to do.
Adrian watched him. Wheezing.
Then
the wheezing stopped.
Evan looked at the man sharply. Certain the killer must have – what? Died? Gone to the light?
Whatever it he expected, the man wasn’t doing it.
He was smiling.
Then… laughing.
The laugh was weak, but heartfelt. The giggle of someone who has seen something truly funny. The tinkling chuckle of a man who, alone in the theater, just caught the joke on the screen. The sound infuriated Evan.
“Stop it,” he said. “Stop laughing.”
Adrian just laughed harder. Blood came up in a frothy wad, choking him. He laughed through it.
“Stop laughing!” But Adrian paid him no heed. Evan wondered if the killer would somehow find a way to win, to destroy him even in death.
Evan’s shoulders slumped. He felt the last bit of energy go out of him.
He had nothing left.
The other man had won.
“Why?” Evan whispered.
And where screaming had failed, a whisper stopped the other man’s bubbling laughter. Tears fell from his eyes, mixing with the blood on his chin. They dripped from his jaw and disappeared into the darkness. He stared at Evan in disbelief, as though incapable of comprehending the question. Then he shrugged. The motion seemed to take most of his energy and he sagged further, dropping a few inches closer to the ground.
“You took what I loved, so I took what you loved,” said Adrian. “You killed Val, so I killed everyone else.”
Evan’s mouth opened.
He fell back. Fell back from Adrian, and then…
… from Val. From her so-sweetly-smiling face as she continues having sex with the man on top of her.
He falls into the hall. Hits his head.
Everything goes black, everything is blank. Like a slate wiped clean, everything once there now gone. The work of his life unraveled and seared away in an instant.
He gets back up. Forces his way into the room. The man has fled. The man –
(Adrian; I never saw his face, but that’s who he is)
– is gone and Evan is alone with his wife, the once-love of his life. The sliding glass door to the backyard is open and the birds chirp happily because none of them know what’s happening here. Or, knowing, don’t care.
“You had to find out sooner or later,” says Val. Then she pulls the sheets up and hides herself from him. Secrets her body from his eyes. “Close the door on the way out.”
Evan leaves. Not for long, and not to close the door.
He comes back a moment later, and now he sees Val’s composure, her complete lack of care.
Hard to stay composed when you’re staring at a knife.
Even so, Evan doesn’t think she really understands what’s happening. Or perhaps she understands, but can’t really believe. Can’t believe that something like this would happen to her. To someone else, yes. But not her.
The disbelief protects her. Keeps her brave. Keeps her from screaming.
It stays in her eyes, it shields her. Until the first cut across her throat.
Not too deep. Evan doesn’t want her to die. Not yet. He just wants her to feel what it’s like to be unable to draw your next breath. To feel what it’s like to know everything is about to change.
She claws at the wound. It tears under her fingers, and what was a thin slash becomes a ragged gash. It becomes a second mouth, open wide beneath the mouth that still cannot scream, cannot breathe.
The second mouth seems to be smiling.
At the sight of the twice-smile Evan loses it. Completely.
He jumps atop his wife. Just like the man she was screwing. And like that man, he pushes inside her. Only not pleasing flesh, but well-honed steel. Cut after cut, pushing into her chest and stomach, chest and stomach. The knife is –
(the same one Adrian used on Geist and Tuyen; on Listings)
– slippery in his hand, but he doesn’t stop. Not until Val has disappeared under a sheet of blood. Not until her breasts and stomach are so much meat. Not until she’s been stabbed –
(the same way Adrian stabbed the others)
– twenty-three times. He counts. He doesn’t know why he counts, or why that seems like the right number, but it does. And he doesn’t stop until he reaches it. At one point he thinks he hears something, something like a sob from outside. But he doesn’t stop. Just keeps pressing the knife down, knife down, knife down. Then looking down…
… at Adrian, who still stared at him, waiting.
“It was you,” Evan said. He shook his head. “Did you see?”
The man’s face was answer enough. The sheer despair. And Evan knew where the sob had come from. A half-naked man, clenching himself outside a glass door as he heard his lover butchered.
Evan felt himself grow hot again. He had made a mistake. He hadn’t meant to kill Val. It was just that smile. That damned smile. But that had been his fault. He should have suffered. Not everyone else.
He grabbed Adrian and shook the man. “Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you just report it? You could have put me away.”
The man laughed. Not the same laugh as before. This wasn’t the laugh of a madman leading someone down a river of insanity, the laugh of a man who has won some contest that only he understands. This was a laugh of wretchedness, despair.
Damnation.
“Why didn’t I do something?” he said. Then, incredulously, “Why didn’t I do something?” He spat bloody foam in Evan’s face. “I did.” Then he fell back again. “They swept it under the rug.”
Evan let go of Adrian’s coat. The man fell back against the shelving with a dull thud, a sound reminiscent of the noise that Listings had made when she flew over the side of the building; bounced off the fire escapes.
It barely registered.
Evan was hearing other things.
Remembering things that had been said, realizing what they really meant.
He remembered….
Geist kneeling next to Evan, face to face with someone who meant as much as a son to him. “I’ve covered for you, taught you, helped you. But I’ve never lied to you.” He paused, and Evan saw a flash of something dark and a little scary in his friend’s eyes. “If this is the guy, then we’ll catch him. Or kill him.”
He remembered….
Listings tossing a devil-may-care smile at him as she knelt and crossed herself. “A girl like me needs church: I’ve probably got more to repent about than most. Some of it has to do with you.”
The memories came faster. Faster.
He remembered….
Listings looking into the evidence boxes, the ones that held everything about his wife’s murder. So easy to access for the right cop. “I never saw a case move to the cold files so fast,” she said. Looking at him, almost as if waiting for him to say something. To confess?
He remembered….
The evidence room. Listings with a look of remorse as she said, “Geist and I tried. We tried our best to keep things moving the way you’d want –“
And he realized she never said she was trying to keep the case moving forward. She and Geist tried to stop it. And they succeeded.
He remembered….
Holding Listings’ dying form. Hearing her whisper, “Never told you I knew. Everything.” Then her penultimate words: “partners in crime.”
Adrian was laughing again. Laughing and crying and coughing all at once, like the universe of his existence had collapsed into the black hole of this moment. “No one listened,” he rasped. “But I listened. I heard what you did. And I did it to all of them. To everyone who helped you. Everyone you loved.”
Evan was pitched back to the bar. To the drunk that Adrian had killed.
What was his name? Ken.
“What about the drunk? Why’d you kill him?”
Adrian’s laugh bubbled under a sudden rush of blood. He wiped his lips with a weak hand. Smiling. “I wanted you to listen, Evan. To pay attention to me.”
“So you just killed a stranger?”
Adrian looked away dismissively. “He didn’t matter. None of them mattered. No one mattered after she was gone.”
He smiled as though lost in a memory of Val’s embrace. The smile made rivers of rage run through Evan’s veins. He didn’t grow hot, but cold. He wanted to wipe the smile off the smug bastard’s face. Forever.
“Adrian?” he said.
The man looked at him. Still smiling. And the smile just grew wider as Evan pointed his gun at his face.
Adrian laughed. The laugh jolted through blood, through pain. But it was genuinely amused. “You still don’t understand, do you? You still don’t –“
The sound of the gun silenced the man’s laugh, the report cut off his words. The bullet tore through his face and ripped the smile from his flesh.
Evan let out a breath.
“I understand all I want to.”
He turned and walked away.
Seen
Evan walked out of Mystix and down the street, hardly aware of what he was doing and completely unaware of what might come next.
What does a man do when his life has ended?
What does a man do when he has seen death come, and killed it?
He found himself in front of a doorway. It was familiar, but he almost didn’t recognize it. Everything that had happened to him kept going through his mind over and over, back and forth and back and forth in a never-ending spiral.
Val’s death at his hands. Listings’ murder.
The fact that Listings and Geist knew.
It was all so much. So much that even the neon sign next to the open door barely cued in his mind what he was looking at.
Open door.
Open door.
Neon sign.
He went in. Entered the door that was propped open to catch flies and drunks.
He sat at the bar and was soon nursing a drink. No one questioned him, no one even seemed to notice him. It wasn’t that kind of place. And that was good. He needed to be alone, but he couldn’t stand solitude right now. He needed to be among other people, even if he had no idea what he might say to them, or what he could ever do to really be a part of them again.
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