Dear Killer (24 page)

Chapter 24

T
he next thing I comprehend is the park.

Alex and I stand underneath a large oak tree in a place where the snow never touches the ground; the tree catches the snowflakes in its arms before they fall all the way down. The night is unfathomably deep. We are in a park I don’t recognize on a street I’ve never seen, in a place where houses sleep soundly, peacefully expecting presents in the morning.

We are about five feet from each other, and both of us look up toward the cloudy sky between the bare branches of the oak. There is a small wooden bench to my right, his left, but neither of us moves to sit. Five feet off, a ragged snowman stands like a sentinel.

I am the first one to speak.

“It’s good to see you. I know—I know we just saw each other, but it’s good to see you again,” I say, though I don’t think that’s a normal thing to be saying in this situation, whatever this situation is. He shuffles his feet absently for a second before replying.

“Good to see you too,” he replies hesitantly, sadly.

“This has been a god-awful Christmas, really, hasn’t it?” I say softly.

Alex looks so tired, and it’s my fault.

Watching him, I almost want to cry. He looks like a wounded soldier, a part of a war too big for him. I want to walk toward him, take his hands, hold them tight. I want to soothe him without words. I want to turn my head upward, meet his eyes, press my forehead against his, and then—

No.

It can never be like that.

That’s not how this story will end, no matter how much I wish it might. This story will finish with a finale that’s not so fairy-tale.

“Yeah, god-awful,” he mutters. There is too much space between us.

“Not one we’ll forget anytime soon, I suppose.”

He laughs wryly, and the sound surprises me.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

“Everything just seems sort of far away, doesn’t it?” I murmur.

“Yes.”

Alex stares at the ground, and I stare at him. And then for a moment his eyes flicker upward and meet mine, and my breath catches in my throat. The world around us vanishes. Hazel eyes stare into brown, brown into hazel. I can see nothing of his thoughts, and I wonder if he sees anything of mine. The air is sick with nervous silence. For a moment, it’s as if time stands still just for the two of us.

Then he looks away again.

“It’s terrible. It’s all terrible. This whole business,” I manage to say eventually.

“Yes, I can say with certainty that this has been the worst night of my entire life,” he replies. He isn’t bitter. He’s just sad.

“Oh, surely you must have had some night sometime that was worse.”

“No . . . this is it.”

I laugh again, even though there still isn’t anything funny.

“It’ll get better. Things always get better. I’ll help make things better.”

He doesn’t reply. I think he knows that I don’t really believe what I’m saying.

If I can’t have my fairy tale, it’d be nice if things could just stay like this, I think. I like things this way. And for an instant, I truly believe it can happen. And in his eyes, I can see the same emotion echoed. A hatred of change, a need for consistency and security.

And then I remember I don’t have any time. I remember the boat that I must catch in an hour and forty-five minutes, waiting at the dock with heat steaming against the windows, bright against the lapping darkness of the ocean.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” I ask.

He doesn’t reply for a moment. He kicks a small pile of icy snow that makes a crunching noise as it sprays over the pavement. He looks as if he doesn’t want to speak. I don’t know why.

I think about how this silent peace in the air around us is only an illusion.

“I just kept thinking,” Alex says softly, like he regrets it, beautiful, ancient, tired, eyes swirling with thought. I am silent, and he continues. “I just kept thinking about the house after the party.”

Oh, so it’s this again.

He’s so earnest, so eager to do the right thing. Even now, in such a dark hour, he’s still trying hopefully to solve whatever mystery he has imagined for himself, because he feels somehow that it is important. So this is why he wants me here—he wants to talk it out, he wants my advice and input. I am his confidante, his unbiased always friend. It only makes sense. My confusion clears.

“What about it?” I ask.

“I think I realized it, Kit. I realized what was wrong.”

“And what’s that?” I reply. I smile at him. He looks at me.

He doesn’t smile back.

A pause.

A pause in which the world stands breathlessly still. The snow makes no noise, and no cars disturb the stillness of the air. Alex is motionless, and I don’t breathe. He stares at me now, and there are so many things in his eyes I can’t grasp.

He takes a step toward me.

“Ice blue,” he says, as if he expects some sort of monumental reaction.

He doesn’t get one. I say nothing, though I realize immediately what he’s talking about.

I don’t move, but beneath my skin I am suddenly chaotic.

I hadn’t expected this sort of thing from him. I should have.

But no, this is okay. This is nothing. This is something I can talk my way out of. This is Alex who I’m dealing with, after all. My Alex.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” he continues softly.

My expression reveals nothing.

“I don’t have any clue.”

It’s a lie, of course.

“Blue. Ice blue. Blue wrapping paper, a box that fits a dress inside. Blue.”

“I don’t understand—”

He interrupts me in a voice frenzied with dismay and urgency.

“Your present for Maggie, Kit, it wasn’t at the party. You described what it looked like, you said it was wrapped in ice-blue wrapping paper, and there wasn’t a present of that description anywhere at the party, not on the table with the rest of the guests’ presents or under the tree with the presents from Maggie’s family. It was nowhere. It just wasn’t there.”

He breathes heavily, and the world soaks in silence. His words make me feel as if I’ve just been punched in the chest.

“I forgot it at home, Alex,” I say softly, reassuringly. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? What’s wrong?”

And for a moment he almost believes me. He almost believes that he is just like the rest, grasping at stupid straws. He
wants
to believe me, so badly. He studies my eyes, tries to find the honesty there. His gaze makes me uncomfortable.

And then he takes a step away and darkly whispers, “No.”

I feel a deep irrational sense of betrayal.

Betrayal followed by fear.

“You don’t forget things, Kit,” he says. “No. You didn’t forget. That’s not like you. There was a reason you didn’t bring it. And I’m afraid I know what it is.”

He pauses and for a moment looks like he is breaking. The snowflakes brush the ground and disappear. Sudden painful cold permeates my heart.

He shudders and takes a deep, frenetic breath. His words blur together in a slurring half panic.

“You didn’t bring the gift because there was no point, and you never do anything that doesn’t have a point. You didn’t bring it because you knew she’d never get the chance to open it. It was unnecessary baggage.”

And he’s right, and there is no doubt in his eyes at all. He is made of steel.

I can’t breathe.

No. This can’t happen.

No.

He knows me far too well. He’s finally put two and two together.

I am whirled into memory—

Once upon a time, worlds ago, I sat on the floor of the training room with my mother, slicked with sweat, content. Once upon a time I was a little girl. Once upon a time, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, my mother hugged me and held me close, and I listened to the sound of her heartbeat. She told me she loved me. Later that evening she made me lemonade, and we had a picnic on the living room floor.

Once upon a time I loved wholeheartedly. Once upon a time I was more than a ghost, more than a wayward spirit. Once upon a time I was whole.

Once upon a time on a Tuesday afternoon, I lived.

But now the air is empty, and I think that moment occurred to me because it’s simply just as far from the present moment as a moment can be. It’s so, so far away from this desolate desert of a park, cold and empty under the orange-glowing streetlights—it exists in a seeming parallel universe where I never began any of this, in a universe where I live free.

The game has finished. It’s all done.

Alex stares at me with something indescribable burning in his eyes.

I explode with emotion from the inside out.

I should have just stayed at home with my mother—I should have come up with a story about how tired I was, and I should have sent him away at any cost—I should have just run away with her when I had the chance—I never expected this. Not from him. Not from my Alex; I somehow imagined that we could go on forever in peace. But now the moment is here, and I should have gone with my mother, I should have just taken the ferry away from this place, so far away, because he won’t keep me safe any longer, and I am running out of time, the boat will leave without us—he looks at me pleadingly—

“God, I’m right, aren’t I?” he breathes.

My heart beats double time.

“No,” I reply, but he doesn’t believe me.

And I am a rat trapped in a cage. I want to run, but I can’t.

No—there has to be a way out, there is always a way out—I close my eyes, trying to imagine that way into being. I live in desperation. I am halfway sleeping, halfway awake, caught in limbo, and I dream—

I am standing at a fork in the road. Around me is a vast desolate desert. There is a signpost, but the signs are blank, and as far as the eye can see, both roads look exactly the same.

Diana is beside me at the crossroads. Silently, she holds my hand, and I feel her heartbeat echoing mine. It is a Tuesday afternoon.

“Have we fallen?” I ask blankly, remembering our previous conversation. She laughs. It is a child’s question.

“We fell a long time ago,” she tells me.

“Oh.”

“Which way do you want to go?” she asks.

“What?”

“Which road do you want to take? It’s your decision. I can’t choose.”

“They look exactly the same,” I say helplessly.

“They do, don’t they? But they’re not, I swear.”

“Do I have to pick one?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why can’t you pick?”

“Because I’m not in charge. You are, when it comes down to it. I’m always you, but you’re not always me.”

“Which road do you want to take?”

“I’m not telling. You’ll figure it out for yourself soon enough, I think.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because you have to pick for yourself. Those are the rules. That’s the game.”

Diana looks into the distance, steely-eyed.

“I don’t want to play this game,” I say.

“No one ever does,” she replies.

“You’re the Perfect Killer, aren’t you?”

I can’t breathe.

My heart stops as Alex says those words, even though I knew they were coming, because him saying them is worse than anyone else saying them—so much worse, an exquisite and individual pain.

The last person on earth who believed me innocent is gone.

“No,” I whisper. “No, I’m not.”

“You
are
, though, aren’t you? All this time. You’re the Perfect Killer. It’s why you wanted to be friends with me to begin with. It’s why you could give me those little clues when we first met. It’s why you got so upset that I was going to take that teacup. You tricked me the next time, somehow, when we went out to lunch, because you knew I wanted a DNA sample, right? All this time. All this time I kept defending you, and all this time you never deserved it.”

This confrontation is so quintessentially Alex, I realize. He knows I’m a murderer, so he says it to my face. I don’t know what he wants; I don’t know what he hopes to gain. There are better ways to use this information than this. He could have brought a dozen men to arrest me on the spot—it would have been safer, smarter. There was probably justifiable legal cause for that somewhere, wasn’t there? But he hadn’t.

He looks at me helplessly.

He doesn’t know what he wants either.

Regret, perhaps? Confession in the form of heartbroken apology? Maybe, perhaps, he wants to see me as Kit for as long as he can. And the moment he puts handcuffs on my wrists, he knows I will forever become the Perfect Killer in his eyes.

“How can you
say
that? I’m innocent. I’m only a teenage girl. You know that,” I say. I hunch my shoulders over and put my hands in my pockets, trying to look small.

But even as I speak, Diana begins to simmer up within my chest.

“Kit,
don’t lie to me!
Just admit it, just say it—”

He’s on the verge of tears.

He
knows
.

All this time, everyone around him placed their suspicions on me, but he never believed it. But now that he has realized the truth on his own, realized it through his connection with me, he cannot be dissuaded.

I should have expected this. I should have known that I couldn’t be safe from him forever. I should have remembered that he was the enemy.

I understand now what I didn’t understand before. I understand that closeness cuts both ways. He has let me go from the police station and given me temporary freedom and a chance to run, but he has simultaneously become my downfall. Even if by some miracle we just go our separate ways here, simply, the moment he goes back to the station and looks at the case files, I am absolutely certain that he will be able to connect the Perfect Killer murders to me. He’s clever that way, and he knows me too well. There is no escaping him.

I consider running anyway. My breaths come quickly. My legs tense, and I even begin to turn away toward the street before Alex realizes what I am doing and hisses, “Don’t you
dare
run.”

I freeze. Even now, I trust him enough to do as he says.