by Nolon King
“I don’t know. You haven’t let me finish it.”
“I’m sure you have an idea.”
“What am I supposed to do, Adam? Take it to the police?”
“Yes, Selena. Take it to the police.”
“Why? You’ve never wanted me to do that before.”
“It’s never been so close to home.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” She laughed. “If I thought there was any danger, or that the police could do anything with any of these letters, then I would pass them forward. But we both know I’d only be wasting their time.”
“Why don’t you give them to Detective Sharpe?”
“Reading these letters isn’t part of his job.”
“It is if this has something to do with the murders.”
“Do you think that any of these letters have anything to do with the murders, beyond—”
“Let’s just drop it.”
“I don’t want to just drop it. You’re obviously bothered and I want to know why.”
Adam looked at her like she was crazy. “You know why.”
“No. I’ve always gotten letters, and I’ve always read them out loud. You’ve never reacted like this before. Not even close. Sometimes they’ve even turned you on. It’s reasonable for me to want to understand the difference. If I’m doing something wrong, don’t you want me to know what that is so I don’t do it again?”
“You know what it is because it’s the same conversation every goddamned time. We’re all happy for you, really we are, but we’re also all a little sick of The Selena Show.”
“Thank you for telling me that, Adam.” She started pacing. “So … what? Are you and the boys having little pow-wows behind my back? Should I brace myself for an intervention?”
“No. But I can tell that what the boys want most is to be your sons, not your audience.”
The moment settled. Selena was already feeling sorry. She took a breath and stopped pacing, then she half-smiled at Adam and walked over to take his hands.
“I really am sorry. I’m not trying to be negligent with you guys, or make this all about me. I’m just listening to Sam, and he says that it’s time to capitalize on all of this. Everything is happening fast, and while I can’t exactly stop the murders, or control what’s going down in Almond Park, I can control how it affects our family. This isn’t just about striking while the iron is hot. It’s glowing red right now, and Sam doesn’t think we’re going to have to wait on the pilot, because within the next couple of days we’re going to hear that they’ve ordered at least a half-season up front.”
“I get all that. But I’m not talking about any one specific thing that you’re doing …” Adam drew a breath. “I just mean that you’re making this — all of this — all about you.”
That was fair. But Selena couldn’t exactly argue that point.
Because she knew what he didn’t.
This was all about her. And she had proof, or at least so much as such a thing was possible in a situation like this.
Something tightened in her gut. A very specific sort of hunger. She needed to see it for herself yet again.
“I’m really sorry,” she said, squeezing his hands tighter. “I promise to try harder.”
They stood in her office, holding hands. He obviously wanted to believe her, but the anger in his eyes still intensified.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Thanks.”
His fingers tightened around hers, and he leaned closer, like he was thinking of kissing her.
Absolutely not. She was not rewarding his pissy, jealous behavior with sex. “I’ve got more work to do. Sam needs—”
Adam dropped her hands like Selena was an open flame.
“Of course. Whatever Sam needs. We know what's most important.”
She let him stomp out, and stayed in her office long enough after he left to make it seem like she was finishing something up, but each one of the eleven minutes spent behind the closed door felt close to an hour of waiting.
When she did leave her office, she didn’t see Adam anywhere downstairs. Their bedroom was mercifully empty, so she went straight to her closet.
She dug through everything again, but they were still there, just like they were the last time she’d checked.
The red scarf, the green scarf, and most chillingly, the bright blue one with the yellow bees.
Selena couldn’t believe she’d missed it after the first two scarves, though she had an excuse, seeing as how they were both solid colors and rather generic. But the third had been practically blinking in neon.
After that third scarf was discovered, and Selena realized just what she was seeing and what that might mean, she couldn’t wait to get to her closet, not quite knowing if she was nervous or excited or terrified or all of the above.
But all of her scarves were there, so the killer hadn’t been in her house so much as paying close attention.
To her.
Selena loved wearing scarves and had quite the supply. She never would have started it herself, but it began one night in her junior year of college while club-hopping with her roommate, Julie.
She and Julie were working the club with their usual goal — to have the time of their lives without spending a dime. It usually worked. When Selena and Julie put their minds to it, they could party hard for the cost of half a cab. This night, they met an Englishman visiting the States for three weeks. He’d worn the most hideous scarf that Selena had ever seen. It was almost ugly enough to be beautiful, like a bulldog. The Englishman defended it to no end, saying it was the very scarf that Doctor Who wore in the original series.
Julie giggled like a minx as she left the club with Doctor Who, then came back to their apartment Sunday afternoon, wearing the scarf but missing her bra. Julie gave the scarf to Selena.
It’s magical. You should wear it when you want to get fucked all night like I did.
Julie still sent two scarves every year, one on her birthday and another on Christmas. She hadn’t missed even one over the years. So yes, Selena had a lot of scarves. But that one with the bees was too distinctive to ignore.
Now her heart was pounding.
Because she’d just noticed that the Doctor Who scarf — which had been hanging on a hook in her closet, so that she could see it whenever she opened the door, a reminder of those happy days and the friend she’d shared them with — was gone.
And after seven minutes of searching, each one more frantic than the last, Selena was certain. The Doctor Who scarf wasn’t in her closet.
She thought hard.
Had she moved it, displaced it somehow while obsessing over the other three?
She hadn’t, she was sure of it. Someone had taken it.
Someone was trying to get her attention.
She’d had that thought before, but this time it felt like a plane falling from the sky to land on her psyche.
Adam.
What if for all of these years, she had been wrong? What if he didn’t have a simple, bloody fetish? What if he was a serial killer and her lack of attention had pushed him into the arms of his inner monster?
The hair on her arms was standing and her shoulders were pinched in knots. Her entire body felt stiff and heavy.
She had to talk to Adam.
So Selena closed her closet and went downstairs.
But he wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen or his office or anywhere else in the house.
Adam was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Selena couldn’t sleep.
How could she? There was a murderer out there planting scarves at the scene of his crimes, and the three so far just happened to match scarves in her closet?
And now her favorite was missing, along with a husband who knew that scarf’s story?
A husband who’d stormed out of the house in a near-rage?
He hadn’t answered his phone. He wanted her to wonder. To worry that she’d unleashed something terrible on the world.
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Maybe he wanted her to figure out that he’d finally made the leap to murderer.
She called again. No answer.
She dropped the phone on her nightstand with a thunk and turned over, blinking hard and hugging the pillow close.
To make it worse, tonight was game night for Levi and his friends. Usually it was hooting and cheering and the too-realistic cacophony of sudden violence as they hunted aliens or conquered monster bosses. But tonight, the faint moaning told her they were watching porn on the biggest screen possible, thinking they’d turned the volume down far enough that she wouldn’t hear.
Teenage boys. Jesus.
She should say something. But right now, she couldn’t stand to face her son. Not when she might have pushed his father over the edge of a very tall cliff.
So instead, she tossed and turned and worried and waited.
Another hour passed. It was inching toward midnight and Adam still wasn’t home. Levi and his friends should be quieting down, but they weren’t.
She turned around and buried her face in the pillow. Selena had worn all three scarves in public, and even though she only found one of the three on Google Images, that didn’t mean there weren’t more out there or that a picture of her in the bee scarf, which she wore while speaking at CrimeCon, wouldn’t appear at any minute on Facebook, along with the headlines to follow. The kind that would make Sam want to kill her.
Serial Killer Expert Duped By Her Own Husband. Or worse, Serial Killer Expert Covers For Husband’s Murder Spree.
Something like a machine gun mating with a laser tore through the house. The boys were back to their video games. She threw off the covers, swung her feet onto the hardwood floor, and marched toward the door. When she yanked it open—
Dane stood there, one foot on the top stair and the other in the hallway, frozen. Holding a bag of chips in one hand and a bowl of pretzels in the other.
“Mrs. Nash,” he breathed.
“Selena.” She felt a rush of warmth and wondered again where her husband might be, but not because she wished he’d come home right then. “What are you doing?”
He looked down at his hands, moving his eyes from the chips to the pretzels. “Snack run.”
Another machine gun laser blast.
“It’s way too loud, right?” Dane gave Selena an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, it is.” She glanced at his snacks. “You guys shouldn’t be eating that crap this late. Why don’t you come with me to the kitchen where I can’t hear the world ending upstairs. I’ll make you a plate, and you can tell the guys to keep it down for the rest of the night. Okay?”
Dane smiled. He took the final step into the hallway, then another three steps back as he gestured toward the stairs. “After you.”
Selena could feel him behind her as he descended. Not quite like someone’s breath on her neck, but close.
The way he had paused on the stairs, it was almost as if he was waiting for her.
But he couldn’t have been. How could he have had any idea that she would even be leaving her room?
Her foot hit the floor at the bottom of the stairs and then he was there, right beside her, the two of them keeping pace on their way to the kitchen, striding in an uncomfortable, overheated silence.
Selena got a fresh loaf of bread and started to slice it. Then the meat and the mayo and cheese. She sliced tomatoes and cut the lettuce while he watched her, both of them breathing heavily enough to hear but neither speaking.
The tension made Selena want to scream. But if she broke it, what would come falling out? She needed to guide them back to a safer place. A place where she was the mother-figure and he was the boy in need of some TLC.
She put the last finished sandwich on a plate with the others and slid it over to Dane. “Is everything okay? You seem … upset, or something.”
He gave her what looked like a hard-won smile. “Thanks for asking. I’m good.”
“You don’t sound good.”
Another smile, but this one came easier. “Really, I’m fine. Just the usual bullshit.”
“Stanford?”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “In part.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
Dane shook his head. “I’ll take these upstairs and turn it down. Sorry we woke you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping anyway.” Seconds of silence and fathoms of depth. “But I’m glad I got out of bed.”
“Me too,” he said.
More silence.
Selena tried to read his face, but she was a tourist without a map in whatever this was.
Watching her watch him, he asked, “What are you thinking?”
“That you seem disappointed.”
“What would I be disappointed about?”
“You tell me?”
He sighed. He shrugged. He shifted. “I’ve just been thinking a lot.”
A note of excitement, vibrating too long like an electric chord. “About what?”
“About the killings … of course.”
“What about the killings?”
“Do you agree with the police? Do you think that Kari’s dad did it?”
Selena had to look away.
“You do, don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that.” She swallowed, then forced herself to look back.
“You didn’t have to. Maybe you’re the one who is disappointed.”
Another note. The music was getting sweeter.
“What would I be disappointed about?”
“Mr. Nash doesn’t seem too crazy about your new career. Maybe all of this stuff makes you feel alive, but it’s making him feel left out.”
“Maybe you’ve been talking too much to Levi.”
“Maybe Levi didn’t tell me anything.”
More silence. And then Selena surprised herself with a laugh, and said something she shouldn’t. “You’re right, in a way. He should know better, but right now he doesn’t seem to realize—”
Her voice fell into a whisper. Considering what she was saying, anything louder seemed an atrocity. And she shouldn’t be saying it to Dane. Selena could never admit this to Adam. Especially not if he was the killer and he was doing this to get her attention, to compete with her budding career. She absolutely could not do anything to make him think she wanted him to act on his violent desires.
But she had no one to talk to. No one who understood why she loved what she did.
At least Dane tried to get it.
“I love the puzzle part of this, piecing everything together and getting inside the killer’s mind, but this time is different. Because it’s right here in town, and it’s directly affecting my career. Repeat this to Levi and I might just have to tie a scarf around your neck, but I practically want to write this guy a thank you letter.”
“I would never—”
The front door slammed. Selena’s heart pounded harder.
Adam’s footsteps echoed through the silent house, a counterpoint to distant, muffled echo of the game room racket.
Then he appeared in the kitchen doorway. He looked from Selena to Dane, lip curling as if he could smell the intimacy between them.
There was nothing to do but go on the offensive, so Selena said, “Where have you been?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Adam sat in his Porsche 356 outside The Inside Scoop, watching the woman in the blood-red lipstick, imagining all of the dark and delicious things he’d love to do to her.
He could see her through the window, but she couldn’t see him. Soon she would. And like the last several times, she would brighten the second she saw him. He would wait for her back to be turned away from the door, then he would enter, jingling the bell above it as he did. She would turn around, see him, and smile.
But for now, he watched. He liked the face that she made when she was working hard to scoop the ice cream, though it was always better up close. He liked watching her sweep, and he liked watching her unguarded expression w
hen she checked her phone.
Most of all, he loved this shift best. When she was alone, waiting for him without even knowing what she was doing.
The last customer left the Scoop empty, except for the smell of ice cream and her.
He got out, locked the Porsche, crossed the street, waited a beat for the woman to turn around, then entered, jingling the bell as the door closed behind him.
She looked up, met his eyes, and smiled. “You always come in right when I turn around!”
“That’s funny,” he said.
He felt better. Instantly cooler, and not just because of the air conditioning’s kiss.
“The usual?” she asked.
Adam surveyed the many flavors, licking his lips as though the ice cream enticed him.
“You know I always like to look first.”
“Right,” she smiled, “That’s your usual.”
Adam’s gaze settled on a simple coffee-colored cream with what sounded like a complex name, and not especially good. He wanted to hear what she said about it anyway. “How about that one? Is that good?”
“The Vietnamese Coffee with Frosted Almonds and Peanut Butter Curry? It’s excellent. But different for sure. It’s made with creamy peanut butter. The crunch comes from the candied almonds and the hot curry.”
“Will I like it?”
She laughed. Her lipstick was faded, it didn’t look quite as bloody as usual, but even so, the crimson blush on her mouth was still there. “Probably not. You usually like things a little simpler. But I think it’s delicious.”
“How about that one?” Adam pointed to one that was a Grinch shade of green.
“That’s our pineapple cilantro sorbet.”
Adam made a face. “I can read what it’s called, I’m just wondering if anyone meant to put those flavors together.”
Another laugh. “It’s actually really good. The pineapple is sour and sweet, and the cilantro is grassy.”
“Grassy, that’s just what I want from my ice cream.”
“It tastes like summer,” she said without missing a beat.
And now Adam wanted to taste her.
“What do you recommend? I want to be surprised, but not too surprised if you know what I mean.”
