Dear Killer (14 page)

I almost said “Kit” before I realized that wasn’t my name right now.

“Diana,” I murmured to her, and I think that was exactly when she realized something was terribly wrong.

I reached out and locked the door with elegant fingers.

“What are you doing?” she demanded whisperingly.

“Locking the door.”

“Why?”

I just smiled.

I could see it now. The sharp edge of the counter would do it. I would take her head in my hands and drag it downward with brute force—she was smaller than me, and weaker, that wouldn’t be hard—slamming it against the fake stone edge. It would kill her in one blow—

Monster.

The word flashed unbidden through my head. I was done thinking it even before I realized I had begun. I froze. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“What do you want?” she demanded timidly.

I opened my mouth to tell her the truth. I wanted to kill her and keep my place in the world. I wanted to crush her skull against the countertop.

But I couldn’t say a word. Not for a few moments, before I cleared my throat and recovered myself.

“I’m going to kill you,” I said, trying to make her understand. Why was I saying that? I always played with stories, never told the truth to my victims. Michael was the first one I had told the truth to before the end, and I had been sure about his death. I had held him in the palm of my hand. I didn’t hold her at all. The truth was dangerous. Why was I telling her this?

She gaped back at me like a fish, fear lighting in her eyes.

“What?” she gasped.

“I’m the Perfect Killer, and you’re going to die.” It was too late to take back what I had already said. I might as well run with it. I was just beginning to feel like Diana. This was fine. I was fine.

“Why?” she pleaded.

Why?

No one ever asked why. That was new. Why? Because someone wanted her dead, obviously. She knew me. She knew my modus operandi. I killed on cue.

“Your ex wants you dead because you left him,” I said.

“I thought so,” she murmured. “But
why
? Not him, you. Why, just why would you do this—you’re so young, why . . .”

She begged with her eyes, sought to understood. There was something more than fear there. Sadness. She understood that she was going to be killed, and she just wanted to know why.

Did they all look like this before the end?

Usually when I became Diana, I ceased to see my victims as people and saw them simply as animals. As cattle. Somehow, something about her or about me as I was wasn’t allowing me to see Cherry that way. I saw her as human. And it unsettled me. Spooked me. And so I had to wonder. Did they all look like her, have the same look in their eyes as she, and did I just not see it each time?

Monster Monster Monster

The thought echoed through my head, and I reeled.

What was I?

I tried to remind myself of what I believed, moral nihilism, but suddenly all I could remember was the list of names, the slide show of faces of the people I had killed. Young, old, fat, thin, blond, black-haired, brunette, green-eyed, blue-eyed, brown-eyed . . .

Monster Monster Monster Monster Monster

What
was
I?

Who was I to kill so freely, even on others’ wishes, who was I to kill Michael, who was I to kill this woman, who was I to make her feel so afraid?

Blood painted my hands, left me breathless. How was there so much blood?

I fell to my knees, my eyes wide, my entire body shaking even though the air was warm.

Who was I?

Who was I?

Monster Monster Monster Monster Monster Monster Monster

Cherry knelt and stared me in the eyes. Unable to look away, I stared back. The fear was gone now, replaced by confusion, and amazingly enough—

Compassion.

I couldn’t move a muscle. Slowly, Cherry placed a hand on my shoulder.

“You won’t kill me.”

It was the truth.

Her red hair floated around her face like blood, and she caressed my cheek gently.

“You poor, poor thing,” she whispered to me. “What kind of life have you led?”

My mouth was dry. I wet it and choked out a few rasping words.

“You shouldn’t feel sorry for me.”

“But I do.”

“I’ve killed people.”

“That’s why I feel sorry for you.”

I gazed back at her, stunned. No one felt sorry for murderers. That was . . . that was wrong. And yet the pity in her eyes was genuine. That was morally nihilistic. Not exactly, but in a way it was. Or maybe it was just a judgment that some things, like pity, were more important than morals.

I realized strangely that she was one of those magical creatures who weren’t quite human. One of the people you meet sometimes who have something supernatural in their blood. She didn’t quite think like anyone else. She was extraordinary. Like something shining, something incredible.

And I could have killed her without even realizing it.

“You regret it, don’t you?”

Yes yes yes yes yes

“Yes,” I gasped. “Oh God, I regret it, I regret it. . . .”

And suddenly I was crying and I didn’t know what to do and I was being held in the arms of one of my victims and I was lost and floating and I was like a little child afraid of the monster under her stairs but the monster was me and I didn’t know what to do anymore—

Cherry, after a minute, let me go, stood, and picked her dark jacket up off the back of the chair. After a moment of thought, she took off her shoes as well and handed them to me along with the jacket.

“You haven’t done anything tonight, but it’s better safe than sorry. Change so you won’t be recognized by the cameras,” she said.

“You’re helping me go?” I managed to ask through my tears.

Cherry nodded. “And I won’t tell anyone I met you, either.”

I saw in her eyes that she wasn’t the kind of person who would lie.

“Why are you helping me?”

She smiled. “I don’t believe you’re a bad person.”

“I’m a
serial killer
.”

She looked at me darkly.

“I know.”

“Will you turn me in if I kill again?”

Cherry shook her head. “No.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think these things out too much. I go on instinct. Leave now. Stop crying, and get out of here before I change my mind.”

I stood perched on the edge of Waterloo Bridge.

In the distance I could see it all lit up in the night—the London Eye, Big Ben, all the iconic pieces of London. Usually I liked all that. It was pretty and gave everything a sense of place. But not now. Now it didn’t hold any charm for me.

I stood perched on the edge of Waterloo Bridge and stared at the black waters of the Thames.

What would it be like if I jumped? Plunged beneath the dark water, let it close coldly over me, sank into the blackness below? I was already leaning halfway over the railing. It would be so easy. No one would miss me. Maggie was clueless, my mother just cared about her own safety. Alex didn’t really know me. My dad didn’t care much about anything. The death of the Perfect Killer would be welcomed by many. If I jumped, maybe everything would be better. Maybe even for me.

The letter, still tucked inside my dress, felt like it was stinging my skin.

With a gasp, I dug it out and crumpled it into a ball within my fist. Angrily, crying out, I threw it down at the water and watched it float away. It bobbed below the surface for a moment, then floated wetly back up, hovering heavily on the surface. That horrific thing just floated on away down the Thames like it was a brochure, or something harmless like that. It just floated away like it was innocent.

Thoughtfully, I lifted one knee up and rested it on the top of the railing. The metal reverberated beneath me.

Maybe I
would
jump. It wouldn’t cause any trouble, and it might fix something. Make something better.

I put my weight on that knee and lifted my other foot off the ground. I hovered there for a moment and stared down at the water, black and deep and waiting.

No, no, no, I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t.

A large part of me wanted to, badly, but I couldn’t make myself do it. That much was obvious. I couldn’t lean over and fall, though it was so physically easy and I wanted to—I just couldn’t.

I stepped back down and crumpled to the ground. I pressed my back to the railing and tucked my knees to my chest and cried into them, wailing with a sound like a train as it shrieked into the station. People passing ignored me, stepped by me as if I weren’t there. No one took a minute of their time to so much as notice me. And I just sat there and cried, falling apart, burning down inside like a broken house, for God knows how long, until suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I started. And then I turned—and unexpectedly met my mother’s eyes.

I didn’t understand why she was there. And I didn’t really care. I was happy to see her. She was my mother. I needed her, and she was there.

She wasn’t angry, as I had grown accustomed to seeing her. The look in her eyes was disturbingly similar to the look in Cherry’s. Pitying. But I got the strange feeling that unlike Cherry, she understood exactly every inch of why I was sad. She wrapped a long arm around my neck. Kneeling next to me in a white pantsuit, she pulled me close to her chest.

“Let’s go home,” she murmured in my ear, like a mother is supposed to murmur.

I wrapped my arms tightly around her and held her like she was about to disappear.

Chapter 15

W
e sat in the kitchen across from each other at the table. We were both drinking tea. Earl Grey, milk, two sugars, just like we liked it. Silence.

“The person you went to kill . . . will you be caught?”

I shook my head. She sighed with relief.

More silence.

“You got too close,” she said eventually.

“What do you mean?”

“You got too close. You let your murders affect you.”

I curled up in my chair, as if that could make me dis-appear. I listened to the sounds of the room. There was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. There was the gentle hum of the refrigerator. There was the faint yapping of the dog two blocks away, the one that never shut up, especially during nighttime. I couldn’t see much; everything was shadowed. There weren’t any lights on save for the tiny chandelier over the table, which lit up my mom and me and not much else.

“Oh.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” my mom said with a sigh. “Don’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You got lost.”

“Yes.”

“You forgot why we kill.”

I sighed and whispered, “I’m not sure I even knew why I killed in the first place.”

She took a sip of her tea and set it down on the table.

“Kit.” She leaned over the table toward me. “There’s no one on this earth like us. We’re unique. We work according to our own individual morals. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said after a moment of hesitation.

“Tell me, then. Explain to me. In plain words. Why do you kill? Or . . . well, how did you justify it to yourself before?”

She looked at me curiously. She waited.

“You know why. You were the one who explained it to me,” I reminded her. I had done it for her.

“I told you what I could tell you. The rest you were supposed to figure out on your own. I want to see if you’ve figured it out. Because if you haven’t, I think that might explain something.”

I looked at her tiredly. I couldn’t bring myself to truly care about what she was saying.

“I want to sleep,” I told her, closing my eyes halfway. She grabbed my wrist. Her skin was cold. It kept me awake.

“Why do you kill?”

“I kill . . . I kill because it doesn’t matter. There’s no good, no bad. There’s just . . . opinion. That’s what you told me, wasn’t it?”

She leaned back.

“Yes, that’s what I told you.”

“Was I supposed to figure something out besides that?” I snapped bitterly. “Did you just leave me with some sort of sick mystery I had to solve?”

She sighed again.

“Murder is a strange sort of self-discovery, I’ve learned. At least it was for me. There’s a halfway secret I haven’t told you, yes. But there’s a reason I wanted you to figure it out for yourself. I couldn’t just tell you; you wouldn’t understand, at least not at first. I had to figure it out for myself. I thought you would discover it too, like I did, on your own . . . but I suppose not. Maybe because you were comfortable with the way you thought about things, more comfortable than I ever was. Maybe that was enough for you, for a while.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I guess I’m rambling.”

“Just say whatever you want to say.”

“You really didn’t justify your killing any other way?”

“All I know is what you told me.”

The sentence started out angry, but by the time I made my way to the end of it, my voice had faded into near silence. I didn’t have enough energy to be angry. Tired, so tired.

“There’s more than moral nihilism. Just that isn’t enough.”

In her voice I heard certainty and determination, things I hadn’t seen in her for a while. Something in her had lit up, just for this moment. But even through that sudden flame I could see that she was tired.

“I guess so,” I said noncommittally.

She took a deep breath in and clenched my wrist in both of her hands.

“Kit, you’re a higher power.”

Finally I was listening entirely.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I protested quietly.

“That something more is what you need to understand. I couldn’t have told you earlier. You wouldn’t have understood then. It’s what I discovered, and it’s what I’d hoped you’d discover, but I suppose you didn’t.” She looked at me with pity, incredible pity. I didn’t understand.

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“Think about it, Kit.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

She touched my cheek, and a memory of Cherry touching my cheek returned to me.

I was a monster. What was she trying to say?

I curled up further into myself and cried silently into the teacup I held clutched to my chest.

“Kit, listen to me. Try to understand.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re a higher power, Kit. I was a higher power too, back when I killed. People need us, Kit. People need us.”

“People don’t
need
murderers.”

“Yes, they do. They need murderers like they need police officers, or like they need bankers. They need us, even though they don’t really know it. It’s a crazy world out there. A violent, crazy world. Don’t you understand?”

The remote for the kitchen TV was on the end of the table. Quickly, she reached over and grabbed it. In the same motion, she clicked the power button and the screen flared to life.

Someone had bombed something in Sweden. It didn’t have anything to do with me. But there it was, pasted up on the television screen, larger than life. A reporter in front of a pile of rubble, talking quickly. I didn’t listen to what she was saying. The volume was too low to decipher much of anything, anyway.

Death. Destruction. Didn’t she understand that I didn’t want to look at any of that right now?

I looked away, staring at the table. My mom grabbed my cheek sharply and jerked my face back toward the television.

“Look,” she demanded.

“I don’t want to.”

“Look.”

I looked. I looked as images flashed past. Rescue teams in the wreckage, looking for survivors. Nervous spectators. Back to the fast-talking reporter. There was something so horribly surreal about it. It looked almost like it was fake, created and filmed for the entertainment of the morbid masses, but of course it wasn’t. Of course it was real.

“Do you understand yet?”

“I don’t.”

“But you have to.”

“
I don’t understand
,” I said emphatically. I didn’t. I didn’t know what she was trying to say.

“Look at them, Kit. Look at the people.”

I obeyed. I watched the people.

They stood near and inside the wreckage, and they watched things unfold. They all had the same expression, all of them. Tense, expectant, scared. What were they expecting? Nothing more was about to happen. It was already done. They held on to each other. They tugged on the jacket sleeves of those around them. They buried their faces in one another’s shoulders. And all of them, all of them watched the rubble. They took strength from one another. They were so afraid.

I understood.

“Oh,” I said.

Oh.

It was so simple.

Why hadn’t I seen it before?

I was needed.

I was a higher power.

The people needed me.

Without me, they would be lost.

Oh.

Oh.

“Do you understand now?” my mom asked quietly. I nodded.

“Oh, yes,” I breathed. “Oh, it’s so simple. They need me. They need me so much.”

There was no sound for a moment except for the excited beating of my own heart.

“Explain it to me,” my mom said, testing me. I laughed breathily, and then louder, and then I settled into a slow, relieved chuckle. Tension melted away from me. I set my teacup down on the table and wiped my tears. Oh, it was so simple. Why was I so afraid, so scared? It was so damn simple.

“I’m a higher power,” I said, “because the people need something to be afraid of. They need a monster under their stairs.”

She smiled. I went on.

“The world is full of chaos. And it’s that chaos that joins people together. Scared people are more cohesive than people who aren’t scared. It’s so clear—right there, in the way they hold on to each other. They
need
me. Because the people here in London start feeling so safe. And every once in a while they need a murder—just a tiny fragment of chaos—to remind them that they aren’t safe, to remind them that they need each other, to remind them that in the end it’s human relationships that matter. I make them better people. It’s about the moral nihilism too—and the justice of the individual—but it’s also so much
more
than that. This is my city. Murder is so much
more
than what I thought before.”

I spoke with fervor. It was all so clear.

My mom smiled.

“Good,” she said. “Exactly.”

The clock ticked, the refrigerator hummed, the dog in the distance yapped. And sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, I realized my place in things.

Alex looked at me thoughtfully as I scraped butter over a piece of bread. We were in the same café as before. This time, though, neither of us was saying a word.

I looked around, pointlessly moving my eyes over the bird-patterned wallpaper, the worn wicker, the plates with chipped edges. I occupied my time with observation. Alex was wearing glasses again, and they really did suit him. He was in street clothes again, too, and he had a scratch on the base of one smooth wrist. I wondered for a moment where it had come from; then I met his nebulous hazel eyes and smiled.

I had forgotten precisely why we were here, why I had invited Alex out for lunch. Had there been a reason? Did there have to be a reason? I felt somehow detached from him, from everything, like I was floating far above. But at the same time, his faraway presence was pleasant. He wasn’t comforting like he had been before, exactly, because I no longer needed comfort . . . but his presence was nice. I liked having him here.

Something unidentifiable in our relationship had changed, for whatever reason, I realized—perhaps it was my newfound sense of mature self-assuredness that made it that way. I no longer felt sporadically girlish and gawky around him, but rather felt more like an adult in his presence. It was as if something new was crackling through the air between us now, building, lighting us up, connecting us to each other irrevocably in a way neither of us quite understood yet.

Eventually someone had to say something. It was Alex who spoke first.

“It’s Tuesday. You didn’t go to school today.” It was a statement, but there was a question in it.

“No, I didn’t,” I agreed blithely, ignoring the question.

Another pause.

“Why?” he asked.

“I was sick early this morning. Passed quickly. Nothing major. Just no point in going to school if I was going to be there for only two hours.” I didn’t look him in the eyes. I stared past him, out the window at the street.

“You’re better now, though?”

“I invited you out for lunch, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” he said uneasily.

“You seem uncomfortable,” I said, not particularly trying to make him less uncomfortable. I was simply stating a fact.

He was so small.

“You’re in a weird mood,” he said cautiously. I smiled.

“Sorry. Had an unpleasant morning. I guess it’s carrying over.”

“I guess.”

“How’ve you been?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you since . . . that whole business at school.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess not. I’ve been fine. I should really ask you how you’ve been doing. You were shook up by it all pretty bad, weren’t you?”

I nodded solemnly. “It was crazy. But I’m fine. I guess . . . I didn’t like him. In the end, I know it sounds bad, but I’m not really heartbroken that he’s gone.”

“I understand. I’ve been investigating it a bit, just casually. Judging by what I’ve seen in the case file, that guy—Michael—didn’t seem like a great person.”

“He wasn’t.”

“Got nailed by the police for fighting three times in the past six years, did you know?” Alex confided. I laughed.

“Sounds like him.”

“Was he disruptive at school?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re investigating this murder more than just a bit, aren’t you?”

He shrugged sheepishly and leaned back in his chair, away from me. “Actually, I’m not. Not allowed to investigate it too much—it’s not assigned to me. Plus I’ve already got my hands full with the Perfect Killer. But I am curious. Just a bit. Casually. I’ll find my mind wandering to that murder whenever I have a free moment.”

“That’s a bit morbid to think about in your spare time, isn’t it?”

He chuckled.

“Do you really think it was the Perfect Killer?” I asked eagerly, tension behind my eyes. I hoped he didn’t. He was smart, smarter than a lot of people on the force. It was one of the things I liked about him. And if he thought Michael’s murder was the work of the Perfect Killer, he might find his way to me. I didn’t want that. Not now that I had realized my place in the world. I had so many things to do now.

“I don’t really know. It might be.”

“But doesn’t the Perfect Killer always leave, you know, letters?”

“Maybe he lost the letter. Or something. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know why I think it’s him. It’s a hunch. Probably a stupid hunch, but whatever.”

“It seems unlikely that the Perfect Killer would just lose something,” I mused quietly, making sure he could hear me, trying to make him doubt himself as much as I could without seeming suspicious.

“If only we knew where the letters were
coming
from.” He bit his lip.

I looked over the menu silently. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to play this game with him today.

“I’m getting a salad,” I told him. “How about you?”

I took a bath in dark water.

It was dark outside the thin white curtains, a night sky with no moon—it had been day outside when I began my bath, and so I hadn’t turned on the lights. Now there was no light left except for the faint glow that came from the hallway, beneath the door, spilling weakly over the woven bath mat. It wasn’t much. When I lifted my arm out of the water, I couldn’t make out the shapes of my fingernails.