Dear Killer (16 page)

“I’m sorry, may I ask who this is?”

“Oh, sorry, this is Jaime.”

“Who?”

“His sister,” I said, as if that should be obvious.

“Oh, I, eh, didn’t know he had a sister.”

“Well, he does,” I replied shortly. “Look, can you do me a favor? I’m in town next week from Tuesday until Friday, and I’d love to have lunch with Henry—just pencil me in somewhere, okay? My schedule is pretty free, so whatever works for him. We haven’t talked in a while.”

“I—ah, I didn’t know he had a sister,” she said again, pathetically.

I laughed as if I were talking to a small child.

“He
does
. Obviously. We’re not particularly close, but we are siblings.”

There was an uncertain silence from the end of the hall. She was beginning to believe me.

“Look”—I sighed—“I’m seriously his sister. You can check with . . . oh, what were their names . . . John, or Katie. I met them at a party a few years ago. They know me.”

“John Reese?” she said slowly. I had been assuming that there was someone in this office with a name as common as John, but I still breathed a sigh of relief.

“I suppose so. I never got his last name.”

“Tall . . . brown hair?”

“That’s the guy.”

“Ah . . . ehm . . . hold on a moment.”

She put the phone on hold and rose from the desk, and I smiled wickedly.

And just as I expected, she walked away from her desk, down the hallway toward the cubicles, past me without so much as glancing in my direction, looking for John Reese.

I put the stolen phone back in my pocket. I would dispose of it once I found a way. The screen glowed for a moment and went dark. Once I was sure she was gone—she would be searching for John for a few minutes, judging by the size of the office and the number of people in it—I walked out into the hallway. I snuck quietly up it, to Henry’s door. I took a moment to glance into the two offices bordering his. There was no one there. The other higher-ups, with their private, windowed offices, were apparently taking the opportunity to come in late. Convenient, convenient. Of course there would always be a way to dispose of him quietly, but being alone and being able to dispose of him loudly left so many other options open.

It occurred to me that this was another detail that I hadn’t considered beforehand—what if Henry Morrison hadn’t come in this early? What if I had come and he simply hadn’t been here? The thought made me feel cold.

But it was all right, I thought—I didn’t need to worry about could-have-beens. He was here, unlike his neighbors. My luck hadn’t forsaken me yet.

After a long, thoughtful moment, I opened the door and slipped inside.

I had a strange flashback to the moment I’d walked into Cherry’s dressing room; it wasn’t an altogether pleasant flashback. I shook my head, banishing it; it didn’t matter, not now—this was different.

And there he was, Henry Morrison, standing by the window.

He looked out over London with the air of a tired king, as if he owned it all. He had one hand in his pocket. The other held a cell phone to his ear. He was silent, listening to whatever the other person was saying. He didn’t notice me. So I stood still. I drew my gloved fingers across the door to find there wasn’t a lock, at least not one that locked from the inside. I would deal with that in a moment.

He didn’t know I was there. I stood like a ghost, arms crossed in front of my thighs, a faint smile touching my lips. I looked around the room, making sure there weren’t cameras—I didn’t think there were, since there hadn’t been any anywhere else in the building except for a few in the lobby, but it was always good to check. There weren’t any—I was right.

“We can’t have that,” Henry Morrison said in a slow voice. “No.”

He listened for a moment longer.

“Well, tell him he can’t have that.”

More listening.

“Just . . . do something.”

He hung up the phone, putting it wearily in his jacket pocket, and rubbed his eyes. He stared out at the wide city for a moment longer, resting there, taking a moment for himself, away from the world. I could understand that. For a moment I had the strangest sensation that we were very much alike.

His desk was antique, but there was a largish, silvery modern statue to his left, next to the window, a sort of graceful dancer-type thing. His furniture other than the desk was sleek and stylish; but he had a collection of worn leather-bound books on his bookshelf. The entire scene felt timeless.

Henry Morrison leaned against his desk, putting his hands in his pockets. As he leaned, the desk shook slightly—the pens in his glass cup rolled around the rim, his computer screen bobbled.

London glittered in the cold morning sunlight. It shone radiantly, glass windows and water and metal sparking in the sun, like a jewel, like a thousand jewels. There were clouds, but they were high up and far away on the horizon. The sky was a dusty blue. A perfect day. Henry sighed.

And I sighed too, and I let myself fall, and I took a deep breath in, and I snapped, and I was Diana again.

Everything was
fresh
.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I said.

Henry turned, startled. He saw me and looked confused, but he didn’t say a word.

He had an ancient feeling to him, seen from the front, even though he couldn’t have been older than forty-five. He had deep-green eyes and was wearing a trim gray suit that made him look like he had been plucked out of a catalog. He sort of seemed . . . fake. Like he wasn’t a real person.

“It is,” he said. He was quiet, caught off guard, but I could see the sharpness that had intimidated his secretary lurking behind his eyes. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

I looked at the ground, smiled, and moved toward him like a cat.

“Just a girl,” I said coyly. “And you’re Henry Morrison.”

“Yes, I am. Why are you in my office? Why did Louisa let you in?”

“Louisa, is that the secretary?”

“Of course,” he snapped. Oh, there it was, the anger that had scared poor Louisa. I chuckled.

“Louisa’s a silly girl. You should fire her.”

I paused, leaning over the desk toward him pensively. How should I do it? The corner of the desk, suffocation by the pillow on the armchair in the corner of the office, slamming his head against the wall? No, none of those seemed right.

And suddenly, with a flash of inspiration, I found it. It was perfect. Drama and darkness and sickening brutality, and so simple.

There was a small chair next to me. I took it and calmly wedged it beneath the doorknob, so at least there was some sort of lock on the door.

“What are you doing? Who are you?” Henry demanded, but he didn’t do anything to stop me.

I turned back toward him, pulled at my gloves to make sure they weren’t coming off. I wasn’t quite ready. I walked to the desk and drew my hands across the edge of it thoughtfully. He was silent now. I don’t know why. He had suddenly forgotten words. He just stared at me, waiting perhaps. He knew something was coming, but he didn’t know what.

I took a few steps around the edge of the desk, grabbed the top of his shiny modern sculpture, and tipped it, with as much force as I could muster, toward the window.

It hit just right. The statue was heavier than I had expected, and more effective. As it slammed against the glass, I stumbled away from it, momentarily unsteady in my high heels. Instantaneously, cracks appeared—sharp, webbing wildly in every direction, deep, making the glass fragile. The window made a weak creaking noise but held, just barely, just for the moment. The statue leaned against it heavily, glimmering, threatening.

Henry Morrison looked at the statue, mouth open, face reddening. Something lit up in his eyes. I don’t know whether he realized exactly what I was going to do, but either way, something caught fire in his eyes the same way something had lit up in Dr. Marcell’s eyes once, and he suddenly came out of almost indifference and looked angrily at me as if I were a bug, or an itch, or some other small irritation.

But I wasn’t.

I was so much more.

Before he had a chance to react with words, I walked rapidly to where he stood.

Grinning, I grabbed his tie and pulled him down toward me. I had it all in hand now, I saw the end. I didn’t have to be careful any longer. He was mine. This would be a clean murder, just like the rest. There wouldn’t even be any blood. Not here, at least.

Still, I should be quick, just to make sure I wasn’t interrupted.

He gasped, and he was angry, and he was surprised. He was about to say something else, presumably quite loudly. I put a finger to his lips. I smiled, and whispered, as convincingly as I could, “Shhh . . . .”

And Henry Morrison fell silent.

We stared into each other’s eyes, the man and the murderer.

“You are mine,” I hissed. “I am Diana, and you are mine.”

I stepped away from him, letting go of his tie. I leaned up against the desk, judged my distance, and without another word, with the desk as leverage, kicked him toward the plate-glass window. The window, weakened to its limit from the cracks made by the statue, resisted for a small moment, and then splintered and burst wide open.

Twenty-nine stories is a long way to fall.

He cascaded down along with a million shards of glass, hurtling, careening, glimmering in the cold morning sunlight that lit London so beautifully. If he screamed, the sound vanished as he fell away. He was a falling stone. There was no hope of survival. The wind blew through the space where the window had once been. Before he even hit the ground, I took the letter in my hand and extended it through the empty space. And then I let it go.

The letter floated away, down toward the street, toward Henry, like a white butterfly.

“Mr. Morrison!?” Louisa cried from outside the door, returning already from looking for John Reese. She had heard the sound of shattering glass through the wall, no doubt. “Mr. Morrison, what’s going on? Henry!”

Shit.

I hadn’t really thought this through all the way.

Now how in God’s name was I going to get back to the elevator without being spotted by her? No, no, I had to calm down, I was Diana, I could outwit some stupid little secretary, I was fine. The walls were thick, neither of the people in the neighboring offices was here yet, and we were far away from the majority of the office workers, so at least I had a little time until other people arrived.

“Henry! Henry Morrison!”

She was trying to get through the door now, and realizing that she couldn’t. The chair rattled. It wouldn’t hold forever. I had to hide, and I had to hide
now
. There was an armoire near the broken window. It was small, but it would have to work. I made a beeline for it and just barely managed to crunch myself in between his coat and a low shelf before Louisa came through the door, the chair skittering aside.

I couldn’t close the door entirely, because it wasn’t made to be closed from the inside. There was a small crack that I could see out of. I saw a thin sliver of Louisa; she stood in the doorway, looking stunned, horrified, and altogether unsure what to do, her mouth gaping open like a fish.

“Mr. Morrison?” she murmured, as if that would help, wandering absently toward the window, dropping out of my very narrow field of vision. Her feet crunched on shards of glass. She sounded muted, as if part of her were floating away. There was a moment of silence, and then, suddenly, she gasped and fell to her knees near the statue, which had miraculously managed not to fall out the window. I was sure she must have cut herself, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Henry!” she yelped. “Oh my God, oh my God.” Her breaths became coarse and shallow and desperate.

It was too small inside the armoire. I could already feel my legs and back cramping painfully; I winced. As quietly as I could, I tried to stretch out, pushing my head up against the shelf above me. It wasn’t enough—I had to get out. I wasn’t claustrophobic. It was purely a physical concern. If I stayed in here, I wouldn’t be able to move like I needed to when I needed to.

I moved my head up a bit farther and realized the shelf above my head was removable, and moreover, empty.

Convenient.

I could hear Louisa muttering faintly to herself. Again, Maggie occurred to me, and again, I was overwhelmed with annoyance. I pushed the useless, hotheaded emotion away; I could be annoyed later, but now I had to work.

I felt cautiously along the shelf, trying not to make noise. For a moment I paused, disconcerted, unsure whether I should really cause collateral damage, since it went against my normal way. But I had to get out, after all. I carefully eased the shelf down into my lap, and there it sat for a short moment while I stopped breathing so I could pinpoint Louisa’s exact location through sound.

When I listened, I could hear the sounds of screaming from the road below. Piercing, terrified, perfect. Beautiful. And Louisa, judging by the sound of her sharp breaths, was about five feet from the window and kneeling.

I gripped my hands around the long shelf, inhaled, and leaped out from the armoire.

She didn’t even have time to turn, or scream, before I was swinging the shelf like a baseball bat, and it collided solidly with the back of her head. She exhaled quietly, squeaking like a mouse. She fell to the floor with a soft thud, face turned sideways, glass cutting into her cheek in long gashes.

She wasn’t dead, and wouldn’t die from the blow, though she might be unconscious for a while, and she might even have scars from the glass. It wasn’t that easy to kill someone. The hardest part about killing someone is actually killing them, as strange as that sounds. Human bodies are resilient, and they do not want to die. She’d be a bit fuzzy when she woke up, and she might lose a few memories, which could be very good for me, depending on whether she had connected Henry’s mysterious sister with the person who had kicked Henry out the window. But she would wake.

She lay flat over the floor. I dropped the shelf next to her and felt momentarily apologetic.

“Sorry,” I said.

For a moment I looked out at London again, London, gleaming in the sunlight, London, sparkling.