The Killer in Me

by Margot Harrison

  And if I don’t come back—if he makes me disappear like the others—my mom will be alone. Without answers.

  The Thief is on the cabin porch with his friend, each palming a Corona. They’re worn-out from building a new tool shed, so the Thief listens to the first spring peepers and plans his trip home.

  Trixie has a birthday in a week: that’s his deadline. As an excuse for doubling back on I-90, he’ll tell Eliana he hit the model-making supply store in Syracuse. The reason he’s driving all the way up to Schenectady is a blank spot in the middle of his thoughts, but it’s a blankness filled with anticipation.

  “Schen-ec-tady,” he sings to himself while his friend is getting two more beers. A meaty name, hard to pronounce and spell. He’ll have no problems with that when this is over. He’ll make the place his own.

  On Thursday evening, I stand at the pay phone again, wind from the river whipping the hair that escapes from under my baseball cap. The brim’s pulled low to hide my face from cameras—a trick he uses—and my clothes are baggy and dark.

  It’s almost night, but every car that pulls in makes my eyes dart, looking for someone who might notice me. I hold the receiver with gloves and don’t let it touch my face.

  “Schenectady Police Department; do you have an emergency?”

  “Not yet,” I whisper.

  “How may I direct your call?”

  They’ll know where I’m calling from. But if I bought a burner at the mini-mart, they’d probably be able to trace it here anyway.

  “I’d like to report a possible prowler at five-four-one-eight Maywood Street,” I say, lowering my voice into a husky drone. “My grandparents live there—Ruth and Gary Gustafsson. They tell me they’ve seen a suspicious guy checking out their house—a stranger—but they don’t want to report it. They think it’s nothing. I’m worried that—”

  The operator cuts me off, sounding bored. “You want to file a report, ma’am?”

  “No! I’m out of town. I was just wondering if somebody could drive around the block and, you know, make sure they’re okay. Especially at night.”

  “How many times has this individual been seen in the vicinity of the house, ma’am?”

  “Once.” Technically true. “But he was crouched in their backyard looking into their window.”

  “And this was when?”

  I’m not a TV detective who can order round-the-clock protection. The cops have plenty to do, even in Schenectady. I lie: “Two days ago.”

  “We could send an officer to the house, ma’am. But we need to hear from your grandparents first.”

  “I already told you. They don’t want to report it.”

  “Do your grandparents have a live-in caregiver who could make the report?”

  “No! They’re not that old.”

  The operator’s voice gets gentler, her words coming more slowly. She talks about security systems and neighborhood watches and asking neighbors to keep an eye on elderly people.

  I just say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” hang up, and get the hell out of there.

  I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to my mom brush her teeth.

  He could still change his mind. Decide it’s not worth the trouble. It’s relatively daring, this mission he’s set himself, grabbing people from a well-populated street. The Gustafssons could wake up while he’s breaking in and call the cops. Or, if they’re like half the people around here, they could have a Glock on the nightstand and blow his head off. This time next week, the Thief could be history.

  Would I still be afraid to sleep then?

  Ten minutes before midnight. Ten minutes before Friday. My eyes close.

  I’m at a rest stop, watching cars stream past on the interstate like a moving necklace of light. Spring is in the air: freshly turned earth, pungent cedar chips. When I drove this way from New Mexico it was much colder, and you couldn’t smell a thing.

  Stop. This is not me. This is the Thief, his thoughts in my head. I’m not him.

  He likes to move from desert spring to northeastern spring, from one climate to another. He likes to move.

  God, how he loves this part of the night. Stretching his legs, pouring coffee that’s been sitting on the warmer for hours, no one in the world to check on him. He loves his Eliana, but spend every night with her? She knows enough to give him his space.

  The only store open in the rest stop is full of crap plastered with Yankees and Baseball Hall of Fame logos. The other customers look tired and doughy, faces like moons.

  Not him—he’s lean. Traveling light.

  The girl who checks him out is slender, too. She’s maybe eighteen, tops, with a little heart-shaped face and sandy-blond hair in a ponytail, and he bets she lives on a farm, because this is farming country. The late shift is her way of getting out of morning milking.

  Her name tag says “Jaylynne,” and he starts chatting her up. He pretends he just came east for the first time and asks her dumb questions.

  Does it snow up here? Yup. Are blizzards worse than tornadoes? Uh, no. She starts out cautious, but then her eyes open wide into his and her smile sneaks out. The kid still has braces.

  He’s never taken a girl like this.

  Suddenly, his careful preparations for tomorrow night seem too careful. Boringly so.

  Two fat sheep vanish from the flock, whoop-de-fucking-do. Everybody will assume Mr. and Mrs. Unlucky got mixed up with the mob and whacked. The Thief will score major points, but only with himself, because no one will care enough to mount a major search effort.

  It’s different when you take a young, pretty girl. Posters go up everywhere. If they get wind that this disappearance is related to another one, the spray-tanned cable anchors go wild. Girls start locking their windows and doors at night, anticipating the rendezvous they don’t want to have with you. Nobody knows your face or name, but everybody knows there’s a wolf circling the flock. A thief in the night.

  It’s like being a supervillain. Satisfying to your ego. But, he has to admit, also cheesy as hell.

  Besides, getting famous increases the chances of getting caught. His soon-to-be stepdaughter cannot grow up knowing he did things to girls just like her.

  Still…

  He calls Jaylynne’s attention to the junky figurines of famous ballplayers lining the shelves, and she rolls her eyes and says, yeah, they’re made in China. The Thief tells her about his scale models and how much more detailed they are. Her eyes stay on him, like she’s glad just to talk to somebody new.

  He tells her he’s bringing a replica of a ’63 truck-stop interior to a buyer in Tulsa. Some girls edge away when he gets going on his models, their eyes broadcasting “Nerd alert,” but Jaylynne keeps listening.

  He asks, “Can you get away for two minutes? Wanna smoke?”

  Jaylynne calls another girl to cover the register, and out they go.

  The forest is right behind them, frogs peeping so the whole place sings, and it smells damn good. Not like the desert, with its layers of dry and dead under the prickle of sagebrush, but musty with moisture, a mixture of squirmy living things and rotting dead ones. With everything growing so fast, things must decompose fast, too.

  He could lay her down here—“dump” is the wrong word—and she’d be part of the spring woods forever. But he doesn’t know the terrain. There could be a farm right beyond the belt of trees, someone to find her. Someone to hear.

  Or he could load her in the Sequoia and take her to the place he found outside Schenectady—his country cabin. He could give her to that place, and let the old sheep in the ranch house live out their natural days.

  He’s never taken anybody more than fifteen or twenty miles from where he found them. Feels only fair to leave them where they’ll be at home.

  But he can break his own rules, can’t he? Isn’t not having rules the whole point?

  Jaylynne doesn’t want to smoke a whole cigarette, so they pass his back and forth, maybe four feet apart. “Hey,” he says. “Want
to see the truck-stop model? I think it’s the best work I’ve done. Almost don’t want to let it go.”

  She hesitates for an instant. “Okay.”

  Jaylynne seems to relax a little when she sees he’s got an SUV, not a van. The gate lifts, gentle as you please, and he stows his coffee on the Sequoia’s roof, sweeps the tarp away, and shines the flashlight on his model.

  Jaylynne is impressed, or pretends to be. “It looks just like a real little world.”

  She keeps her distance, maybe three feet from the bumper. Cautious girl. Not dumb.

  He points out the chrome around the barstools and the tiny posters on the walls, advertising brands that no longer exist. “Look at this one. That’s Doris Day, big star way back when. You look like her.”

  Jaylynne must want to think she looks like a movie star—who doesn’t? Just as he anticipated, she takes a step closer to peer in.

  Two steps. She bends to see better, and surely he’s out of her peripheral vision now.

  His eyes scan the parking lot. Empty. His eyelid twitches.

  Arm around her throat, hand on her mouth, a whisper in her ear. I don’t want to hurt you.

  That’s all it will take. He’s got a good ten inches on her. She’ll kick, but not hard enough. She’ll decide it’s better to give him what he wants and hope things don’t end badly.

  “Ew. I don’t get why they teased their hair back then.”

  She straightens up, backing right into him. He slipped behind her while she was distracted.

  For an instant she doesn’t push the Thief away, and he doesn’t grab her. Something in him won’t move, just stands there smelling her hair. Guava shampoo.

  That instant is all it takes for a family of moon-faced travelers to emerge from the rest stop, loaded down with forty-ounce cold cups. They’re headed for the very row of cars where the Thief’s Sequoia stands, the mom grumbling at the kids to stop begging for candy.

  Abort.

  Jaylynne darts away from him, like a pinball from a flipper, and says, “Jeez, you scared me.”

  “Sorry.” He uses his aw, shucks smile. “Didn’t mean to crowd you.”

  The noisy family holds its course.

  He grabs the hot cup he left on the roof of the Sequoia and rattles his keys. “Hey, kiddo, thanks for the java. Back on the road for me.”

  Maybe he spooked Jaylynne, because she’s already retreating, her white arms flashing in the darkness. “Thanks for the smoke, mister. Drive safe!”

  “If I ever visit the Baseball Hall of Fame, I’ll stop by.”

  He watches Jaylynne go and thinks of how she’ll get those braces off, maybe go to college, have kids of her own, complain about her husband.

  She could’ve stayed in the spring woods forever.

  He shouldn’t be greedy. Shouldn’t be arrogant. This isn’t about glorifying or gratifying him as an individual. He serves death, the vacuum, the unknown.

  Always waiting. Always there.

  The birds start up at five thirty, warbling and trilling and practically yowling in the dark. I crouch on my rug with my head tucked under my arms, listening to the world wake.

  The sun is what I’ve been waiting for, but its warmth makes my skin feel old and creased every which way. My eyes ache from staring at darkness.

  Pictures are stuck behind my eyelids. Baseball figurines. Blond ponytail. She was about my age. A girl like me.

  My head aches from having him in it.

  We’ve always been close, but it feels like we’re getting closer. Like I am him. Is it because I’m tracking him, or is this just what happens? Will I wake up one day and have him still in my head? Will I go to school and look for a victim?

  Six thirty now, creamy sky between the spidery maple branches.

  Down the block, Kirby is waking up. Warren is waking up, too. Jaylynne from the rest stop is probably coming off her shift, trudging to bed and letting herself slide into unconsciousness, just like I am now.

  She’s not even thinking about the weirdo with the tiny truck stop in his car, I bet. Never knowing what she escaped. Never knowing what we shared.

  When the alarm chimes, I stay awake just long enough to tell my mom I have a cold and can’t make it to school today—please, just this once; I’ll get all the assignments; no, there aren’t any tests; jeez, please lay off me.

  She does.

  The next time I wake up, my eyelids weigh too much, my mouth tastes bitter, and the light is all wrong.

  Too red. Too bright.

  Words in my head. Baseball Hall of Fame.

  I rub my eyes and focus on my all-white cat, Sugarman, basking in the patch of sun on my mom’s college trunk. That means—

  My gaze flies from Sugarman to the clock. 3:10 in the afternoon.

  I was supposed to meet Warren at three for gun practice. He’s going to think I stood him up. I grab my phone to text him.

  I’ve got text alerts, but before I can read anything, that name squirms to the surface of my mind again. Where’s the Baseball Hall of Fame? A few clicks tell me: Cooperstown, New York, sixty-something miles from Schenectady.

  If the Thief was on I-90 near the Cooperstown exit last night, he’s in Schenectady today. Assuming his plan hasn’t changed, he’s there right now. Preparing.

  I let the phone thump on the bed. Splash water on my face, slap deodorant under my arms, wiggle into my jeans. Downstairs in the kitchen, I grab my mom’s extra set of car keys.

  No point in texting or calling Warren now. For this I need face-to-face.

  Lucky thing my mom walked to work today.

  Forget target practice. Forget stupid cowardly pay-phone calls. I’m going to Schenectady tonight, and if getting a gun means I have to bat my eyes at Warren Witter and tell him lies, so be it.

  By the time I park my mom’s Legacy in the school’s lot and jog around the playing field to the woods, it’s 3:42. In our usual meeting place, I find no Warren, just a grubby sophomore couple getting each other’s shirts off.

  I get back on the road and head for the Witter homestead, where I haven’t been in three years. My signal vanishes on the winding dirt road, and I take a wrong turn and practically drive up the mountain before the pin pops up on the map again. Six-inch-deep ruts rattle my transmission.

  Mud aside, it’s a perfect afternoon, the sky bright blue between the leafless trees. Warren can probably drive like a pro, not to mention shoot a gun. What if I asked him to come along to Schenectady?

  I’m still floating dangerously out of control, into that night place. Every time my mind drifts, I smell the cedar chips in that rest stop parking lot, hear those peepers, see those moon-faced tourists. I feel my hands itching to grab and hold tight. Pieces of the Thief’s life have become bitter tastes on my tongue, sand grains stuck under my fingernails.

  Warren will ground me. In the time it takes to drive all the way there, he’ll make me back into me. But that means getting him to come along in the first place, and he doesn’t do anything without asking why.

  The fabled Witter compound isn’t really that imposing. The cyclone fence stands about four feet tall, revealing the ordinary, dirty-white farmhouse on the other side.

  Deep baying fills the air as I pull up. Footfalls pound the dirt road, and now I’m looking at four enormous paws pressed against my windows, two on my side and two on the passenger’s. A shepherd mix and a pit bull mix, their barks starting and ending in long growls.

  Belle and Gaston, named by Warren when they were adorable puppies and he was six. I remember them, but they don’t seem to remember me.

  I punch Warren’s number, but the call fails. Should I make a run for it?

  The dogs grow hoarser, telling me they mean business. I’m ready to give up and pull out when a human voice makes its way through the racket.

  “Belle! Gaston! Down! Come, Belle! Leave it!”

  The voice is so deep I almost expect one of the scary big brothers, but no, it’s Warren.

  The muscle-bound monster
s romp around him, then submit to being led back inside the fence. Warren taps on my window.

  His face is lit up like he’s a kid peeking under the Christmas tree. I feel awful already about what I’m going to do.

  Why does he like me so much, anyway, after the way I bailed on him when we were kids?

  I power down the window, check the dashboard clock. 4:16. The drive to Schenectady takes three hours with good traffic.

  “Where the hell were you?” Warren asks, but he doesn’t sound angry. “I sent you, like, three texts….”

  “I’m so sorry, Warren. I didn’t mean to stand you up.”

  Warren nods too quickly. He’s gripping the cuffs of his army jacket, trying to play it cool; it’s not working.

  “You can get out,” he says. “I sent Belle and Big G back to their pen.”

  I open the door into a muddy ditch. “Were they auditioning for Cujo?”

  “They wouldn’t have hurt you.”

  “That’s good.” Maybe I should make my mom get a dog. He avoids houses with dogs. “I didn’t come to shoot your guns, Warren. Not this time.”

  The color of his cheeks keeps deepening. “Are you sure? Tierney and his friends might want to use the range tomorrow, so we should get on that.”

  “I’m actually going to ask you a favor,” I say, “and it’s a big one.”

  “No more pills, Nina.”

  “Bigger than that.”

  His brows are crescents over a straight mouth. Warren’s so readable, always has been. But even when he can’t read me back, I know he’s trying to decode me in his smart, skeptical way.

  “It’s going to sound crazy,” I say, “and you can’t tell your folks. My mom doesn’t know I’m here.”

  He blows a strand of brown hair straight up. “I can deal with them. Tell me what it is.”

  “You drive fast?”

  His face falls. “My truck doesn’t really go above sixty. It’s a piece of junk.”