The 22 Murders of Madison May

by Max Barry

  The guy watched all this without expression, his body twisted around in the driver’s seat. His hand with the knife rested on the dash, far out of her reach. And she had no idea who he was: He was literally a random stranger who wanted to kill for no reason, which Maddie had reminded herself only shortly before was not a thing that really happened, because people had motivations. Although, it occurred to her, maybe she had that slightly wrong. Even in movies, it wasn’t that the psycho had no motivation; it was that the victims didn’t understand it. They trespassed by accident, or unlocked a cellar they shouldn’t have, or broke some mystic rule of which they were unaware. And maybe that wasn’t unlike real life. Maybe everyone died like this, flabbergasted and outraged, thinking: It doesn’t make sense.

  She yanked at the door. The handle moved freely but the door did not open. She scrabbled for a lock and the guy watched her do it.

  “Guck,” Zar said, a terrible, wet sound.

  “So let me get this straight,” the guy said. “You finally ditch Trent and the first thing you do is stick your tongue down the throat of some rando.”

  Somehow, he knew about Trent.

  Maddie, we have to meet, the man on the phone had said. You’re in danger.

  He was right, she realized suddenly. The man with the beard (Hugo?) had been trying to protect her.

  “You know, sometimes I wonder why I bother,” the guy said. “I’m honestly like, maybe I should give up.” He leaned forward, his eyes catching a gleam of light. “But then I remember the first time I saw you. What you’re supposed to be like. And I won’t let you ruin that. I won’t let you disrespect her.”

  “Let me out of the car.” She didn’t sound so assertive this time. She was trying, but Zar was bleeding, her body slumping. And the door handles didn’t work.

  “You disgust me,” he said. “You genuinely make me sick.”

  He was preparing to kill her. She could see it in the tension of the muscles around his neck. His eyes were full of anticipation, but the rest of his face had turned flat and hard and calculating. A sickly yellow glow seemed to spread across his skin.

  The glow was headlights. A car was approaching.

  She didn’t dare turn. But she saw his eyes shift. The hand holding the knife moved lower, hovering between the front seats like the fang of a snake. He would let the car pass, she saw. If she moved, he would stab her, but his plan was to kill her after it had gone. Which meant she had to attack him. No matter how poor her odds, it was her only choice. But the blade was twelve inches from her gut and every part of her screamed to keep it that way, please, for just one more second, and one more second after that, please, don’t do anything that might anger him.

  The car drew closer. She was going to let it pass, she realized. She was going to do nothing until it was too late. She truly was a coward, too afraid to go back for Liam, and too afraid to save herself.

  The headlights shifted. A high note yodeled in the approaching car’s engine. The guy glanced away. In the side mirror, she saw the vehicle turning. As its lights swung away, no longer blinding her, she saw that it was a light blue sedan.

  “Shit—” said the guy, and the car plowed into theirs.

  9

  Gavin had a beard. He sat across the dining table from Felicity, munching toast and reading his phone like it was nothing. Like there wasn’t an animal squatting on his face.

  He glanced at her. “What?”

  She could hardly see his lips. They were invisible. “Mmm?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Well.

  About that.

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. He went back to his toast and phone.

  You look fifty, Felicity thought. You look like my father. “How long have you had the beard?”

  He looked toward the ceiling. He had to think about it. It had been that long. Whomever she’d been before this morning, it was someone who would tolerate a beard on Gavin for so long that he had to think about it.

  “A year?” he guessed. “Why? You don’t like it anymore?”

  Anymore. She shrugged noncommittally.

  He jutted out his chin. “I think it makes me look distinguished.”

  “Mmm,” she said. Distinguished in the sense of being exceptionally terrible.

  He stood, clearing his plate. “Did you go for a run this morning?” She looked at him blankly. “You were up early.”

  “I just couldn’t sleep.”

  She had returned to the bedroom. It had been too dark to see Gavin—she hadn’t noticed the monstrosity on his face—but she’d felt beneath the sheets until she located the egg. Sometime during the night, it had slipped down so that she was lying against it. She had picked it up with her pillow, not wanting to touch it, carried it to the kitchen, and put it in the freezer.

  He dumped his plate and coffee mug into the sink. Crash, bang. It seemed careless to her. Almost ostentatious. She was being unfair. She was angry and upset because she was somewhere new and hadn’t meant it. And if it was true, what Ken Creighton, the professor at Columbia, had told her, she’d come spinning out of the sky in her tornado house and squashed flat another Felicity. Somewhere behind her, in a place she could never visit, Cooking Gavin was waking and wondering where she was. “I have to run. Do you mind feeding Percival?”

  The apartment contained one cat and one cat bowl. She had established this already. She had verified that she had a working staff login for the Daily News, as well as a phone and a driver’s license, sporting a photo of her staring out from beneath awful bangs. She was reminded of a kids’ book, The Enchanted Wood, where English schoolchildren visited fantastical realms like the Land of Topsy-Turvy, where people walked on their hands, or the Land of Birthdays, where it was parties all year round. Here was one: the Land of Unfortunate Hair Choices.

  “I should be done by about two.” He was wearing white pants and a light green polo. He was going golfing, she realized. It was Saturday, and he golfed.

  “Okay,” she said.

  His head tilted. “What happened to your wrist?”

  She looked. The skin was an angry pink. “I fell.” His face showed no recognition. Her tumble from the subway platform hadn’t happened here, she guessed. This Gavin had never taken her to NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital. They hadn’t been burgled; she hadn’t told him that she remembered having a second cat. She would have to figure out a lot of this kind of stuff. She added, “On the stairs.”

  “Looks nasty.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, which was kind of true; it was the least of her concerns.

  He nodded. “See you tonight.”

  “Wait,” she said, unable to help herself. “What do you want to do about dinner?”

  He paused by the open door. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want to cook something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  His expression suggested that this was the most ridiculous thing he’d heard in a while. “Can we just get takeout?”

  She nodded. “Of course.” She felt a twinge of something—grief?—even though he was back like he’d been before: an alien in the kitchen. She had only lost Cooking Gavin, whom she’d hardly known.

  “I’ve got to go,” Gavin said. “Love you.”

  “Love you,” she said. The door clicked.

  * * *

  —

  She began to build a catalog of what had changed, but it became tedious and infuriating. One of her plants was gone. The bowls were on the top shelf, where Gavin kept putting them before she’d driven it into his head that they were awkward for her to reach. She kept catching sight of things that weren’t quite right: books with the wrong covers, a frame with the wrong picture, a gym card that shouldn’t exist at all. She felt as if she were wearing glasses that weren�
�t her own.

  She’d escaped the man who’d assaulted her in the street outside her apartment. He was back in the world she’d departed, along with Cooking Gavin. He could travel, she assumed. He would come after her. But she had some time. She just had to decide what to do with it.

  She sat on the sofa and began to research Hugo Garrelly. For the first time, she read details of his crime—alleged crime, she guessed, since he had denied it. The judge called it an act of unforgivable callousness and unmitigated evil. Hugo’s wife, thirty-five, raven-haired and pretty, had been seven months pregnant. The police had found Hugo with her body. He had stabbed her a dozen times. He denied guilt, which was a factor in his sentence: the lack of remorse. He was given life in prison.

  Except you don’t stay there, she thought. Everywhere I go, you’re out.

  She’d seen him coming out of the registered address of the Soft Horizon Juice Company. He might go there often. It was probably their clubhouse. She had more information this time, though; she knew Hugo was after Clay. And Clay was after Maddie. So she didn’t need to hang around Hell’s Kitchen hoping to stumble into him.

  She typed: Madison May.

  The first result was a black-and-white headshot against a studio background. Attractive, but it didn’t do Maddie justice; there was no smile, none of the blinding authenticity of the real estate agent pic. Felicity tapped until she found herself looking at Tagline Artists Group, which offered actors and models at reasonable rates for a range of events. She found the phone number and dialed, but the office was closed. It was Saturday, she was reminded.

  She scrolled through her contacts until she reached Levi Waskiewicz. She wasn’t sure whether he would have the same number, would be employed at the News, or would even exist at all, but he answered on the third ring. In the background, she could hear the TV: some kind of sports. “Hi,” she said. “Are you busy?”

  “Nah. I’m just watching the French Open. Barty versus Degtiariva.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t know what that was.

  “Tennis,” Levi said.

  “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can we meet?”

  “When? Now?”

  “Yes.”

  He yawned mightily. “What’s it about?”

  She hadn’t figured out how to answer that. “I can’t say.”

  He was silent. Then the TV sounds vanished. “Well, you got my attention. Three Loaves in fifteen minutes?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Not a problem. Degtiariva’s dying anyway.”

  * * *

  —

  She secured a small table by the window. Levi arrived in a checked collared shirt under a black jacket that looked as if it had spent time rolled up in the trunk of his car. He looked craggy and weathered, but none of that was new. She explained that she was trying to locate a man named Hugo Garrelly, who was supposed to be locked up in Sing Sing, but, she suspected, was not, and Levi went outside to make some calls without asking her what it was about. Eventually he returned and dropped into his seat. “Your info is good. Garrelly’s escaped from Sing Sing. The guy I spoke to was pissed as hell that I knew. It only just happened.” He eyed her. “So how did you know?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Mmm,” Levi said. “Well, the way it went down is last night Garrelly was arrested in Carmel Hamlet by local law enforcement. They book him, run his prints, and what comes back is that he’s a registered guest of Sing Sing Correctional Facility. So they phone up Sing Sing and say, ‘Pardon me, fellas, are you missing a felon?’ And Sing Sing—this is the good part—says no. The cops say, ‘Are you sure?’ And Sing Sing is totally sure they have everyone accounted for, so would you bumbling country cops please fuck off. Twenty minutes later, they call Carmel back and now they’re sweating bullets because they’ve actually gone and looked, and what do you know, they’re missing Hugo Garrelly. Who, as I guess you’re aware, is doing life for murder. Not the kind of guy Sing Sing wants to lose. So they tell Carmel to lock down and nobody move until they can get a truck there. But now Carmel is pissed at being talked down to, so as far as they’re concerned, Garrelly goes nowhere until they’re finished with him. That’s where we are right now. With an epic law enforcement shitstorm building up around Carmel lockup.”

  “Why did Carmel arrest him in the first place?”

  He nodded. “Good question. You should write crime. Because Mr. Garrelly, in his few hours of freedom, went back to his old tricks. By which I mean he stabbed the shit out of five people. Three are dead. People are going to get fired for this. Like, out of a cannon.”

  “He stabbed them? Are you sure?”

  “That’s what my source says.”

  “Who are the victims?”

  Levi shook his head. “They’re not releasing names. All young, though. Three male, two female.”

  “The survivors?”

  “One male, one female.”

  Had Hugo stabbed five people? She didn’t know him well enough to rule it out. But it was possible the police had it wrong: that the perpetrator was Clay, and Hugo had been trying to stop him. Hugo would be their first suspect, because he was an escaped felon with a violent record. Clay was nobody.

  Two survivors. One male, one female. One could be Maddie. The other could be Clay.

  Levi sipped at his coffee.

  She said, “Do you want to come with me to Carmel?”

  “Oh, boy,” he said. “I was hoping you were going to say that.”

  * * *

  —

  Levi’s car was a faded red Volvo P1800S, a two-door relic from the seventies that was all curves, with bug-eyed headlights and a smiling grille. “Excuse the mess,” he said, sweeping fast-food wrappers to the floor. He turned the key. The engine buzzed like an angry lawnmower. “I don’t know why I have this fucking thing. It sits in a garage five days a week.”

  “It’s nice.” She had been wondering whether Levi was still divorced—divorced here, that was—but after seeing the car, she didn’t need to.

  He guided them out of the city. As they were passing Eastchester, his phone rang. The screen said: boo. Levi tapped. “Hey. I’m on speaker.”

  There was a pause. “Oh, hi, Levi,” said Annalise from Ad Sales. “I was just calling about the . . . work files.”

  “I’m with Felicity Staples,” Levi said. “From the newsroom.”

  “Hi,” Felicity said.

  “Oh, hi, Felicity.”

  Levi said, “Can we discuss later, or is it urgent?”

  “It’s not urgent. But . . . I was hoping to get it resolved sometime this afternoon. If that suits you.”

  Jesus Christ, Felicity thought.

  “I don’t think I’m going to get back to the city this afternoon. Can we take a rain check?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Let me see how we go in Carmel. I might be able to wrap things up early.”

  “I hope you can. Let me know.”

  “Will do,” Levi said, and clicked off the call.

  There was a short silence.

  Levi cleared his throat. “Annalise is checking on some ad rates for me. She’s—”

  “I know you’re sleeping together,” Felicity said, to end this.

  Levi looked shocked. “What?”

  “I mean, if I didn’t before, I do now.”

  “Because of the phone call?”

  “Yes. That excruciating call.”

  Levi snickered. “Well, then, I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

  “Me, too.”

  “It’s a little sensitive,” Levi said. “Because she’s, uh . . .”

  “Married?”

  He nodded. “That’s it. She doesn’t want to be. But it’s difficult. I know how it can be.” He glanced at her. �
��We should all get a drink sometime. She has such a great sense of humor. You’d love her.”

  Once Felicity had been in line behind Annalise at the deli and they got something wrong with her order and Annalise sighed like it was the most inconvenient thing in the world. Then, when the deli woman tried to apologize, Annalise cut her off and said, “Don’t explain, just fix it.”

  “Sure,” Felicity said.

  “Or not,” Levi said. He laughed. “It’s fine. Annalise is kind of a bitch. But I’m okay with that. That’s what I learned from the divorce. You begin a marriage with such high ideals, thinking everything should be perfect. When it’s not, you throw your toys out of the crib. But then you’re living in an empty apartment with kids who don’t call. It was better with the toys, Felicity. Remember that.”

  “Wow,” she said. This was more insight into Levi’s personal life than she’d expected.

  “Anyway,” he said, changing lanes, “do I have to worry about my job? Are you making a move into crime writing?”

  “I’m just trying to figure something out.”

  “It’s addictive, you know. None of us who do this are in it for the money.”

  She’d heard him say that once before, in a different place. “Will Carmel let us see Garrelly, do you think?”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not, is what they’ll tell us. But we’ll see. I can be almost charming, when I want to be.”

  She smiled.

  “So can you,” Levi said.

  * * *

  —

  Her phone rang as they were emerging from forest on a thin road that curved across the surface of a wide reservoir. Gavin. He’d finished golfing, she presumed. She didn’t pick up, and a minute later, listened to the voicemail.

  “Hey. Look, I finished early because I thought . . .” There was a silence. “Are you okay? I’m not sure you’re okay. I’m home and I don’t know where you are. Call me.”