Dear Killer (22 page)

I found a red armchair and sat down. I watched the people around me. They laughed, talked, moved.

A scream rang out.

I leaned back in the chair.

She was found.

Oh God I can still feel it

The crushing, crunching, slicing, bleeding, death beneath my hands

Oh God, the hypnotism of it

The utter hypnotism, the merciless slaughter

The sickness and flattening weight of what I can do and what I have done—

Oh God I can taste it in my mouth, the thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of the kill, like a lion and a gazelle—

Oh God

The joy of it, the horrible joy, because I’ve fallen so far and I’ve let myself enjoy it, but I’m not supposed to enjoy it, I’m supposed to admire it from a distance, like a piece of art on a bookshelf but I can’t

Because

Oh God

The paradise of death, that
crushing slicing burning
sensation

That beautiful sensation

I’m lost and I don’t mind because I am so alive

Because I am a murderer

And I, Diana, enjoy the memory.

Chapter 22

W
e are all told from the very beginning that we are important. From the moment we can first understand words and perhaps even before then, we are continuously reassured that we have a place in things, that we have a part to play. The human race as a whole is a hopeful species. Of course there are exceptions. Some forgotten children, ones who slip through the cracks. And not everyone is told that they will be important in the same way. Not everyone will be a doctor, or a lawyer. Some people grow up believing that their importance is to love someone fully. Some people grow up believing that their importance is to be loved fully. Perhaps the reason my mailbox was always secret was that the people who visited it came to believe that keeping the secret was a piece of their importance. Maybe I was always given murders because they all thought that contributing to my legend was their importance. But we are all taught, in general, in some way, that someday our worth will be revealed. Someday we will be justified. Someday we will be free.

But the cold truth is that not everyone is meant to be important.

As we grow older, more and more people slip through the cracks, lose that hopefulness. In a way, losing hope and losing importance are the same thing. It is that youthful vibrance, that eternal longing and believing, that makes youth so important—if you grow old and lose that without finding another way to be important, you will slip away, fall into insignificance, like one sheet of paper. You may be useful, but you will never stand out from the crowd. You cannot look at a piece of paper and say, “I remember you.” You never can.

I have had the privilege of being important. Or at least I have believed myself important. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Being able to tell when something is your imagination and being able to tell when something is truth. There is a fine line between them sometimes, a line you have to tread carefully, because there are monsters on either side. I have believed myself important. I have believed I had a greater place in things. I have held lives in my hands. But I still feel lost. Because I cannot know for
sure
that I was important. Perhaps in a hundred or a hundred and fifty years, if they still remember my name, I might be sure that I was important—but I plan to be long gone by then, so I will never know.

Perhaps it was all false justification. Perhaps I was simply fooling myself. Perhaps I was never anything more. Perhaps the people I killed had no meaning, and everything was for nothing. Perhaps I repeated the same things to myself over and over again until I convinced myself that they were true. Maybe I was never a higher power and murder was never the answer to the disconnectedness of the people, and maybe I was the one who was disconnected. Maybe I just needed an excuse to make things right, and my mom offered up such a tantalizing one and I just ate it up because I needed to.

But people still remember and even fear Jack the Ripper, don’t they? More than a hundred years later, they still remember his name. Maybe they’ll remember mine. The Perfect Killer. It really is a good name, I think. It has a ring to it.

But was it
worth
anything?

That’s the hopelessness of it. The openness of it. The part of it I can never understand.

I am afraid of ambiguity and certainty and permanence and impermanence.

And so is everybody else.

Sometimes I imagine we’re all like paper stars, folded up and gathered together, each of us convinced that we are glittering and celestial, each of us bent into a shape so we believe we’re something we’re not. If you gather up a thousand paper stars, you get a wish, they say. We’re like that. Each of us is convinced we’re special, but we are only worth anything when taken together.

I truly want to believe I’m special, and sometimes I can. But other times I feel like one of a thousand paper stars, careening through life, tumbling through reality, one in a thousand, one in ten thousand, just like the rest, like one sheet of paper, forgotten, insignificant.

I sit in a police station—not the Chelsea station with the dog statue outside the door, but a station nearer to Maggie’s murder. It is night. I’m in a waiting room. I’m on a plush green sofa with a few old pillows, waiting my turn. I was brought here three hours ago and told to stay; and so I stay.

Everything is silent. Outside the waiting room window, I can see the offices and hear the sound of the news on the television. Someone from somewhere has committed suicide, jumping off a bridge into the Thames. The police officers move through wordlessly. Some are in uniforms, some are in plainclothes, and all of them look halfway asleep.

Everything has faded now, the passion and the grief and everything else besides. I’m not Diana any longer. I’m Kit, and I’m alone. And so tired.

I’m still dressed up for the party, dressed up with nowhere to go. It’s too hot in here. I’ve stripped off my jacket and my scarf, but I’m wearing long sleeves so I’m still hot. My hair is sweaty and pasted to the back of my neck. I’m bored. I watch the police officers moving back and forth, back and forth like ants. My eyes move rhythmically, and I try to keep myself from falling asleep.

I look for Alex. I don’t see him now, but I know he’s here. He’s already visited the crime scene and come back. I saw him passing in front of the window a while ago, but he didn’t see me when I waved to him. He had a harrowed look on his face. Naturally. I keep looking for him, because I have nothing better to do.

I hear the heating switch on. I breathe deeply as warm air floats through the air vent to my left.

I wait for my turn to be talked to.

Eventually the door creaks open. I smile pleasantly, but not too pleasantly. I smile like I’m scared, or sad. Alex walks in, scattered and unfocused, and there is no electricity in the air now—just dead silence. Across from me are two armchairs. Wordlessly, staring at the floor, Alex takes a seat in one of them. He rubs his eyes. The door falls shut behind him.

“God, Kit, you really have a knack for showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he says after a minute. He looks me in the eyes and sighs.

“Sorry,” I say.

“It’s not my problem, it’s yours,” he tells me. “A bunch of people think you’re guilty now.
I
know it’s ridiculous, but they don’t. Even your philosophy teacher—what’s her name—”

“Dr. Marcell,” I offer.

“Even she’s saying you’re guilty. And a lot of people are starting to believe it. Even though you’re—you. A teenage girl.”

I don’t say a word.

“Kit, are you listening?” he asks.

I nod. “Sorry.”

He looks at me and realizes I might actually be suffering. He puts a hand on my forearm; the touch makes me shudder.

“Kit, are you okay?” he asks softly.

I shake my head. “No.”

“She was your friend, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel?”

“Numb,” I say blandly. “Just numb.”

“Do you want something to drink, eat, anything?”

“No.”

“You should have something.”

“I don’t want anything.”

A series of faces flashes before my eyes. Mom, Cherry, Alex, Michael’s mother, Dr. Marcell, even Louisa, the stupid secretary. The ones who are left.

There is a silence.

“Please keep talking. I don’t like the quiet,” I say.

Alex shrugs. “What about?”

“Anything.”

He studies my face.

“You try so hard, Alex,” I say distractedly.

Alex nods.

“I’m numb,” I hear myself say. “I’m numb, I’m numb.”

“Are you okay?” he asks again.

“No,” I repeat. I need to fill the space with words. I talk quickly, barely recognizing what is coming out of my mouth as my own voice.

“They think I’m guilty?” I ask suddenly, even though we’re talking about something else now. Uncomfortably, he nods.

“Some of them are really convinced.”

“Will I go to jail?”

He shakes his head, but I see hesitation in the movement.

“They don’t have any real evidence on you. They just have a bunch of circumstantial evidence right now, nothing else. You’ll be fine.”

I wonder absently what it would be like to be someone else. Anyone else.

“How’s my mom?”

Alex shrugs. “She’s having a hard time of it. She’s worried about you.”

“How so?”

“Oh, you know . . . crying a lot. Went over there earlier, just to make sure she was fine. She let me in but wouldn’t talk to me. Just . . . sat in her bedroom and cried. She kept talking about cards, or something. Wasn’t making much sense.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say vaguely.

“Are you apologizing to your mother?” Alex asks uncertainly.

“It doesn’t matter,” I reply.

Another pause.

“Was she nice?” Alex asks, taking his hand off my knee.

“Who, my mom?”

“No . . . Maggie.”

I nod. “Very nice.”

“I hate watching nice people die.”

I laugh loudly and bitterly. The sound startles him.

“But that’s your job, isn’t it?”

He shrugs. “Well, sometimes mean people die, and that’s not as bad.”

I realize that I’m close to tears.

“I’m numb,” I say again, quivering.

“Oh, Kit,” he murmurs.

I’m numb.

I’m numb and I’m afraid.

I’m numb.

For a moment he looks distracted.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing. I just keep thinking about that party, just keep running through it again and again. That image, the Christmas tree and the presents underneath it and the lights and the buffet and the empty cups on tables, all just deserted when the police evacuated the crime scene—I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because it was just such a horrific place for a murder. And the fact that the murderer was probably a guest, or at least was posing as one—terrible. All those people, her family and everything, gathered together to watch her die.”

“Alex, do
you
think I’m guilty?”

He shakes his head. “Of course not. You’re just a kid, and that girl was your friend. You could never kill her. I’ll make sure everyone else understands that too. There’s no way on earth you could be a murderer. Holding you here is just stupid. They’re holding you only because they don’t have any decent leads.”

He whispers the word “murderer” as if it is a curse.

“So what happens now?”

He sighs and leans down to put his head in his hands.

“I don’t know, Kit, I really don’t know.”

I look around the room at the pale walls, at the long green sofa; the whole place feels empty. This room could be anywhere, and I feel like I’m in limbo, floating.

“I just can’t stop thinking about it,” Alex breathes.

“I don’t like it here,” I say lamely, like a child.

Alex sighs again, more heavily this time. He looks angry, but not at me. He’s angry at the rest of the world, at the people who can’t see the same good that he sees in me. I feel the sudden urge to reach out and touch him, to share strength with him, but I don’t—halfway because I don’t want to cross that boundary now, and halfway because I have no strength left to share.

“I know. I’m sorry.” Alex shakes his head.

“How much longer do I have to stay? I’m tired. I want to go home,” I whine.

I know I sound like a child, but I can’t bring myself to care.

Slowly, like he’s melting, Alex stands and looks down at me. “Wait here,” he tells me, as if I have any other choice. He walks to the door and opens it with a long creak, looking out into the area outside, at the tired police officers passing back and forth. Then he shuts it and turns around, pressing his back against the wall.

“They haven’t charged you with anything, and they don’t have enough evidence to actually hold you, you know,” Alex says quietly, guiltily. “Technically speaking, you can go. They
want
you to stay until they figure out what to do with you, of course . . . but you can just leave here, if you like. They’ll probably call you back eventually for questioning. But you can go for now.”

I stare up at him dully. “I’m guessing they didn’t want you to actually tell me that.”

He shakes his head and laughs drily. “No.”

For a moment I say nothing. I listen to the muted sounds of footsteps and the television, and I focus on breathing.

“Thank you,” I say eventually.

It takes all my energy to stand. When I manage it, I feel wavering and weak. Somehow I make my way to the door, and there I pause to look up at Alex, who is staring at the ceiling.

“Thank you,” I breathe again, and he nods
you’re welcome
. His eyes tell me that he is thinking intently about something else, and also that he is sad about something or other. He looks confused, but I don’t think that confusion has anything to do with his belief in my innocence.

I am too tired to wonder about his thoughts, though perhaps I should.

On the way out of the police station, I remain in the shadows. I hunch my back and make myself small, digging my hands into my coat pockets even though my hands aren’t cold. No one sees me. I am a chameleon, and as always, my luck keeps me safe.

I pause on the curb outside the building. It is snowing slightly, a light cold snow, floating down from the sky like ash. I reach out my hand to catch snowflakes on my fingertips, and they melt as they touch my skin. I look up to see if the stars are visible, but they aren’t. They are hidden behind flat clouds and the glowing miasma of London’s light pollution.

And then I look up into the windows of the police station to see if I can find Alex in one of them—and yes, there he is, three stories up, silhouetted in a window, pacing back and forth, staring at his feet. Poor Alex. I’ve twisted him around so much. I’ve played with his mind and his emotions, poor, poor Alex. I should never have spoken to him; the moment I first saw him, I should have run. I could have saved him so much pain. Now look at him. A perfect puppet. A plaything. An accessory to my will, letting me free from the police station, useful at last.

He’s unusually anxious tonight, but I suppose it only makes sense. The snow falls. My breath forms clouds in the air in front of my face.