He took a bite of the banana and walked to the bathroom. It would be a few days before anyone noticed her missing. Probably around four days, six hours and forty-six minutes. He calculated the day and time he expected the first knock at the door, and wrote his guess in eyeliner on the bathroom mirror so he would be reminded of his success … or failure. He dropped the pencil in the sink—
And awoke.
He turned to the clock. Five oh five. Thirty-five minutes before the alarm. Too late to go back to sleep. He might as well get up and make coffee.
In the kitchen he scooped grounds into the espresso machine, blinking sleep from his eyes. A pillow of steam escaped with a raspy whisper.
What a strange dream. Or memory. Not that it mattered.
They had shielded his eyes when they removed him from the apartment, though any idiot would know he had already seen it. By then his mother’s body had been a nest of ants on the damp, putrid sofa; even the bodily fluids had stopped leaking onto the untreated floor, though he had been surprised by how long that part had taken. Three days, four hours, six minutes.
The car ride to the hospital had taken twenty-four minutes. When they arrived, men in white coats tore the watch from his hand and forced him onto a bed. He had fought violently until a sharp prick in his buttocks made him slip away into nothingness.
Three days, twelve hours and thirty-two minutes later, he escaped from his room and fled down the maze of hallways. When the trailing footsteps got too near, he ducked into a room in a dark back corner. The woman in the bed had reached for him, zombie-like. He’d watched, fascinated.
From the chair, a man’s voice, not like his, but like his all the same. “That was a hug.”
He did not respond, just watched the man with the buzz cut.
“My wife loves to hug. She likes to do a lot of things that never made sense to me. Her face was an open book that I couldn’t read. I understand now, though.”
He and the man stared at each other, playing a silent game of wits.
“You don’t get it either,” the man said simply. “We’re not like other people.”
He looked at the man’s shoes. They were the shiniest things he had ever seen.
“You’ll learn,” the man told him.
The orderlies discovered him asleep in the chair next to the woman and took him back to his room. Twenty-six hours and five minutes later the man appeared at his bedside.
“My wife’s dying,” the man said.
They listened to the beeping of the heart monitor.
“Your mom’s already dead.” The man pulled a chair to the side of his bed. “You’re on your way to foster care. I hear it’s a pretty awful place.”
Beep … Beep … Beep …
“So what did they do to you when you got here? Strip your clothes? Take your things?”
Beep … Beep … Beep …
The man nodded. “You don’t feel a thing, do you?”
Beep … Beep … Beep …
“I understand. It works wonderfully in the military, being numb enough to shoot the enemy in the face or leave your comrade behind. But you need to use it differently out here.”
“How?” His own voice sounded foreign after so many days spent in silence, avoiding the questions of the hospital staff.
“You’ll learn,” the man said again. “People like us always can.”
The man sat in the chair for one minute and twenty-two seconds before he spoke again. “Would you like to hear a story to pass the time? It was my wife’s favorite.” The man opened the small brown book in his lap without waiting for a reply.
“The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand:
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:”
He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was free and walking along the beach, or even just along the sidewalk. Anywhere but this place where he had no choice but to bend to the will of those larger and stronger.
“‘Oh oysters come and walk with us!’
The Walrus did beseech.
‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along a briny beach:’”
Maybe one day he would see sand, ocean, waves.
“‘It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said
To play them such a trick.’”
The oysters were idiots to follow the walrus in the first place, he had thought. They deserved what they got.
Three days, twelve hours and thirty-two minutes after his hospital admission he had run into Linda Harwick’s hospital room. Six days, four hours and eight minutes later, he went home in the custody of Rupert Harwick. That period was the most vital nine days, sixteen hours and forty minutes of his life.
A final belch of steam poured from the espresso maker. Dominic grabbed a cup from the cupboard, poured a steaming mug and finished it with a squeeze of lemon.
His footsteps were nearly soundless on the stairs. The upstairs rugs swallowed the tap of his slippers. In the bedroom, Hannah lay sprawled out on her stomach, the sheets pulled up to the middle of her back, her arms in disarray.
Like a common drunk, he thought. He noted the way her hair lay on her back in disordered waves, rising and falling as she drew breath.
He thought of Linda Harwick, her stiff form, the casket, the guilt-ridden mourners. Unlike his own mother, whose death had been of no consequence to anyone, Linda had apparently been useful to many, including her husband.
Marrying Hannah could work. That might be more useful in the future.
But not nearly as much fun as watching her bleed.
He sipped his espresso and peered through the skylight where the gray was just beginning to show through the freezing winter clouds. It would be so easy, so—
She rolled onto her back and wrinkled her nose. Her arm rested across her breasts now, the outline of her rib cage visible beneath the thin silk sheet. Her cheeks flushed pink, the warm color a beacon of vitality.
She is lovely, he thought. Like an antique vase, or a really nice leather briefcase. He wondered if she would keep that warm, elegant quality, or if it would fade immediately as she expired, her diminishing color turning her just as bland as anyone else. He guessed the latter. Time would tell. Maybe.
He glanced at her pale throat, incandescent in the dimness.
Too easy, he thought. When the time came, if the time came, he would draw it out. He would watch her recoil and thrash and writhe. And he would relish every moment. It wasn’t as if he’d miss her.
Saturday, December 5th
Snowflakes pelted the skylights and blocked out the sun, like the room was wrapped in a protective blanket.
Dominic was already awake and typing on his laptop, his eyes jumping in concentration. From across the room I took in the curves of his toned body in flannel pants and a white T-shirt. That tiny curl of dark hair that sometimes snuck to his forehead. Delicious.
He looked up.
I smiled. ‘‘Morning.”
“Good morning,” he said. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No.” I rolled onto my side toward him. “Though I wouldn’t mind if you had.”
He set the computer aside, a touch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “I have meetings all day, and then this evening there’s that new-hire welcome I told you about last week.”
“But it’s Saturday.”
He chuckled, climbed into the bed next to me and leaned close to my ear. “Let’s say I wake you up appropriately, then come back home and put you to bed even more nicely?”
I snuggled against him. “Anything you say, sir.”
His fingers sank into me and I forgot everything else.
I was still in bed when he emerged from the closet dressed in gray pin-stripes and a tailored blue shirt that set off his eyes.
“Hurry back.”
He pinched my nipple. “You know I will.” Then he was gone.
I stretched my still-throbbing muscles and headed to the weight ro
om, nude.
My workout clothes hung from the hook on the wall, where they belonged. I tugged them on, climbed on the treadmill and appraised my face in the mirror. I looked different, and it wasn’t just the hair.
I smiled. My reflection smiled back. Then I turned up the speed, pushing myself harder than usual, testing my limits.
I can do it. I had dealt with trauma and grief, with a crazy father and a crazy boyfriend and a psycho killer colleague. I could deal with running just a little faster.
An hour and a half later I was showered, exhausted and satisfied. I toasted a couple of English muffins and made a beeline for the library. I had a feeling eating in there would be frowned upon, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Such a rebel.
I laughed aloud.
I set the plate on the end table and walked to the shelf to grab my book, still tucked into the same place it always had been so Dominic wouldn’t know I was reading it. Every time I opened my mouth to tell him, my face got hot and I changed the subject. Maybe I was embarrassed for reading a little kid’s book when he was reading about economics. Or maybe it was because every time I touched the leather cover, I had a fit of nostalgia, as if I was rediscovering some missed thing from my childhood.
Maybe it is something I missed. While everyone else was reading stuff like this, I was—
I pushed the thought away. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I was here now.
The couch beckoned, soft and warm. Even the frozen chess game seemed comforting, a piece of memory steeped in love that I could almost share by being nearby.
The worn book cover was satiny under my fingertips. I took a bite of my muffin and flipped to the page where I’d left off, wondering what Alice would do next.
The department was still riding the wave of praise for catching Robert Fredricks. Graves spent his time strutting around and grinning like a fool for the cameras, but the continuous press conferences were starting to give Petrosky a headache. He assumed that things would die down once the trial began.
Or maybe not. There was plenty of sensational evidence, more than enough to create a media circus. The search warrant had unearthed the photos plus two sets of leather restraints and a bloody scalpel found underneath the kitchen sink behind some cleaning supplies. DNA tests had confirmed the blood belonged to Antoinette and Timothy Michaels, Fredericks’s final victims. The case would be open and shut. Everyone was expecting a conviction, even the court-appointed attorney who’d reluctantly agreed to represent him.
Petrosky closed his notepad and headed for the front of the building where yet another question-and-answer press conference would be held. Graves had given him the opportunity to address the public this time. Maybe because Morrison had told the chief that they, not Graves, had found the lead on Fredricks. Or maybe Graves didn’t want to risk stonewalling them and causing a scene when Petrosky hit him in the mouth. Either way, it was about time he got a little respect, even if he’d have preferred a mention in the paper instead of having to give a speech. Maybe that’s why that fucker had offered him the speech.
Petrosky pushed the glass doors leading to the outdoor pavilion and the steady buzz of the journalists swelled in his ears. But there was another noise … flashbulbs? No. Footsteps.
Petrosky turned and raised an eyebrow as he watched Morrison dash toward him up the hallway, red-faced and panting.
“Petrosky! Wait!”
“Come on, dude! Looks like someone needs to hit the gym.”
Morrison grabbed the door handle. “We need to talk.”
Petrosky glanced at the throng of reporters. “You earned it, Petrosky,” Graves had said. It might have been bullshit, but it felt damn good.
“Right now?” Petrosky asked.
“Yeah, now.” Morrison released the door handle. “There’s not going to be any trial.”
The place reeked with the noxious mix of urine and feces that hadn’t yet been cleaned from the floor. Directly above the small puddle hung remnants of white cloth, presumably the bed sheet that had been looped around ol’ Jimmy’s neck before they’d cut him down.
Petrosky took a breath through his mouth. Not good. “So where is it?”
Morrison grabbed a single sheet of paper from the now bare mattress and handed it to Petrosky.
Pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
Petrosky rubbed his temple. “What the fuck is it with this guy and the rhymes? Who does he think he is?”
“Shakespeare,” Morrison said.
Shakespeare. Not the final bloody verse from the poem he’d left at the crime scenes. An uneasy ache settled in Petrosky’s stomach. What the hell was this guy doing?
He passed the page back to Morrison. “So, Mr. Big Shot literature major, what the hell does it mean?”
Morrison furrowed his brows. “It’s about the death of an innocent.”
“Lots of innocent women died at his hands.” The tattered bed sheet mocked Petrosky from the ceiling, twisting in the draft from the heating vent. The murky light from the hallway stippled the cotton with glaring yellow eyeballs.
Morrison stared at the poem. “Yeah, they did. It could be a confession, I guess. A way to say, ‘Hey I killed a bunch of innocent people.’ But I don’t think he thought those women were innocent.”
If not the girls, then who? The kid? His killer had found the women repugnant; had to in order to tear them apart like that. And from what Petrosky had seen, the killer wasn’t sorry, either. There had been no tears to drown the wind. A tourniquet ringed his abdomen, squeezing bile into his throat.
It’s not a confession.
It’s a warning.
Saturday, December 5th
The hotel ballroom teemed with three hundred or so local engineers already under the umbrella of Harwick Technical Solutions. They milled around like sheep, jostling one another to get to the hors d’oeuvres. And the drinks. Dominic eyed them disapprovingly, but never long enough for them to notice.
A few came up to shake the hands of the other managers. The more daring employees approached him as well, and were rewarded for their temerity with a handshake and a broad smile that was convincing enough. They’d not recognize his disdain, not while they were half drunk and clambering for his approval. They were all broken, troubled, sick, each with something to prove. And the right level of disturbance paired with the right job ensured he would spend his days watching his bottom line climb ever higher, even as his workers cried themselves to sleep or fucked little kids or beat their wives or sliced through their own skin with razor blades. Some of them were even like … him.
And numbers never lied.
He listened to snippets of conversation as he walked to the bar.
“Did you hear about Jim? I met him at a quality control meeting last year—”
“Yeah, that was crazy. He looked totally normal in his picture—”
Dominic ordered a sparkling water and scanned the room.
Jim had seemed totally normal, but guys like that never changed. Dominic had counted on that when he sought the man out. If Jim had suddenly done a one-eighty, it would have been a statistical anomaly. Dominic had put his money on the math. And on the tracking chip he’d installed on Jim’s—Robert’s—car.
He took his drink.
“Did you hear that wasn’t even his real name?”
“I heard he changed it before he sent in his resume—”
The game had been fun while it had lasted. But there would always be time for another round as long as he examined the opportunities around him. Stayed one step ahead of the rest. His father had shown him that much—that, and how a dismally boring existence could be transformed the first time you held someone’s still pulsing organs in your hand.
As Dominic walked back to his table
, the sea of people parted for him. A man wearing a dark blue suit jacket and a hopeful expression sidled up to him. Dominic forced himself to look pleased.
Idiots. He shook the man’s hand. Fucking Oysters.
Something molten scorched my insides, the flick of a lighter before the flame. On the table next to me, the English muffin had long since grown cold. I reached for it blindly, registering the clatter of the plate on wood, but it seemed far away. The book sat open on my lap, the page invisible despite how hard I stared at it.
It isn’t possible.
The book closed in slow motion, as if my hand were disconnected from my body. Then the bookcase was before me, the book sliding into its place, though I didn’t remember getting up.
Books. So many books.
Anyone could have that book. It’s just a coincidence.
I took the plate to the sink, scrubbed it with shaking hands and turned to the dishwasher. The plate slipped and shattered against the marble floor.
The broom. The sweeping. Don’t think. I took slow, deliberate breaths into quivering lungs. My chest hurt.
This is ridiculous. Talk about an overreaction.
It’s okay. Just go read something else.
Yeah, something not connected to a series of violent killings.
Stop it, Hannah.
I dumped the glass shards in the trash. The kitchen was alive, pulsing in time to my heart. My legs wobbled and I grabbed the counter. I really was crazy.
I staggered into the living room over white marble that suddenly seemed cold and rude and indignant. It’s just a floor, Hannah. The nearly invisible seam up on the ceiling watched me, waiting to distract me with the hidden television.
I need to rest. Just rest.
I awoke to a high-pitched voice talking about a flood in Indonesia. The last thing I remembered, I had been watching some game show.
I pushed myself upright and brushed matted hair from my face.
Note to self: No sleeping on leather.
[Ash Park 01.0] Famished Page 27
