Dear Killer (23 page)

I begin to wonder what happens now—is it all over, will I be caught, can I be allowed to continue, can I even remain free, let alone continue killing, where will I go from here, where can I run from this lonely place—but I can’t think about it. Thoughts in general escape me. I walk down the street in a haze.

I wonder uncertainly if this night is my last gasp of freedom. I feel as if it is the end of something. But no, I remember, Alex, Alex, useful Alex, he will keep me safe, won’t he, because he believes in me. . . .

The streetlamps, pedestrians, and cars pass me, but I don’t really see them. I can’t form a real coherent thought until I board the train back to Chelsea, taking a seat near the window.

The train, now, is full of the odd ones, the ones who travel through the city near midnight. The stragglers, the drunken youths, the old men, the lonely people going home alone on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, whatever it is now. There is an old man across the aisle from me with hands covered in wrinkles like valleys. I watch those hands absently. I wonder what they mean.

And then everything shatters into emotion and comprehension.

It feels suddenly as if I have been punched in the chest. I can’t breathe. All the air is gone from my lungs and I am choking, doubled over, gasping for life. I touch my knees with my forehead. The man with wrinkled hands stands in alarm, takes a few steps toward me, asks me a question I don’t register for a few seconds.

“Are you all right?”

It takes me a few more seconds to find the breath to answer. The train is still sitting at the station, hissing like an angry cat. The doors have been open for a long time, I think—but maybe they haven’t, really. Time seems to be passing slowly, and everything feels stretched out.

“I’m fine,” I reply weakly, even though I’m not. I continue gasping, and the man, uncertain as to what he should be doing, sits down again. Three rows in front of me, a drunk couple is paying no attention to my plight.

Eventually, I calm myself. I force myself to breathe normally. I sit up again and lean back against the seat.

Maggie is dead.

I don’t know if minutes have passed, or seconds, or a fraction of a second. It feels like years.

I killed her.

“Happy Christmas,” the old man says pathetically.

Maggie is never coming back. I’ll never speak to her again.

Four weeks ago we ate ice cream by the Thames.

I told her she was loved.

“Happy Christmas to you,” I reply.

The doors finally slide shut and the train moves on.

I think about London. Down here, in the underground, things are dark, but I can imagine the world above. I can imagine the Christmas lights and lights from house windows and streetlights and lights from faraway planes and helicopters. Everything is light, is brilliance. Everything except for me. I am free, allowed to walk the streets of my city, by the Thames, across my Waterloo Bridge, if I want—but it isn’t enough.

I killed Maggie Bauer.

Did she deserve to die?

Chapter 23

W
hen I walk through the door of the polished white town house, my mother is waiting.

She isn’t just standing, though; she waits in motion, in frenzied action. There are six suitcases in the front hallway; two of them are packed and closed, and the rest are open. She moves in and out of the kitchen and living room, carrying dishes and trinkets—vases, coffee-table books, quirky coffee mugs—and shoves them all into the bags anywhere they fit. She is wearing a sagging pink bathrobe over jeans and a white blouse, and no shoes. Her pale hair is crazed.

Her eyes are red, but she isn’t crying any longer. She is steely, determined. She barely glances at me as I enter.

“We’re lucky your father isn’t here tonight. It makes things much simpler. I’ve packed your bag. Help me pack the rest.”

“What?” I reply numbly. “Why?”

She pauses to look at me in disbelief.

“We’re running,” she says, with an implied
of course
.

“Why?”

“You know why. It’s because you went too far, Kit. Got too cocky.”

“I—”

“You killed Maggie Bauer. I should have stopped you from going out tonight, I should have stopped you hunting her a long time ago, but I didn’t. It was a stupid thing for me to do. Stupid, stupid. I don’t know why I didn’t—I was just far too passive. So you killed her, and we’re not safe any longer. Living in a house of cards, didn’t I tell you, living in a house of cards . . .”

Strangely, faced with danger and dire excitement, she looks more alive and beautiful than she has looked for years. Or perhaps it isn’t so strange after all.

“Yes, but Alex—”

“Alex isn’t a miracle worker. He can’t keep you safe. Not now. You’re obviously right in the center of these murders. Anyone can see it. Except him, apparently. Idiot.”

She begins to run up the steep stairs, taking them two at a time, and I remember that her safety and freedom are on the line just as much as mine are. I run to the bottom of the stairs, fling myself halfway over the banister.

“We don’t have to run. Alex
will
keep us safe, he will, can’t you see?! He’s the one who let me out of the police station, Mom. He’s looking out for me,” I yell up at her. She just laughs.

“Stop thinking like a child,” she yells back. “You can’t always be safe. Sometimes, you just have to admit defeat.”

“He’s in charge of the investigation, and he really believes that I’m innocent. They don’t have any evidence. Everything is just coincidence. They can’t arrest me.”

“He may be in charge, but he’s not the only one working on the case, and he’s only an honorary leader. He hasn’t got any real authority, especially not lately. When push comes to shove, he can’t help.” She runs back down the stairs with a thick photo album in her hands and slips slightly on the last stair. I reach out my arms to catch her, but she doesn’t need my help. She rebalances herself on her own.

“But he
can
, Mom. He
can
. Despite everything, people listen to him—he’s just like that. They’ll follow him.”

My mom tosses the photo album into a nearby bag and grips my shoulder tightly.

“But you can’t be sure,” she hisses. “We can’t stay here any longer, because we can’t be sure of anything anymore.”

She begins to zip up the bags. I still stand limply by the stairs, watching her work.

“Where will we go?”

“A car is coming to pick us up in ten minutes. We’ll take a ferry to France—the train doesn’t run on Christmas—and from there we’ll go to—I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. We just can’t stay here. We’ve really got to hurry, Kit—the boat leaves in two hours, and it’ll take us at least an hour and a half to get to Dover. And there isn’t another one for hours. Hours is too long. If we miss the boat, they’ll realize we’re gone and come for us.”

“What about Dad?”

“What about him? He probably won’t realize we’ve gone,” she replies bitterly.

I hesitate.

I suddenly imagine him coming home to an empty house, opening the door, walking upstairs, going to his room, only hours later realizing that my mom and I are gone—only days later realizing that we are never returning. An anticlimactic end. Quiet, laced with silent loneliness.

I feel sorry for him. And it’s odd to me that regretful sympathy is the emotion I leave him with, given all the anger I’ve felt toward him over the years. Or perhaps not so odd, once I start to think about it. After all, my anger always stemmed from the fact that I loved him, and the fact that he never seemed to love me the same way.

Before, when I talked to him on the phone, I felt as if I were saying something larger than the word good-bye. And now I realize what it was that I was truly saying—because I think I knew the truth, in some part of me, even then. I knew that I wouldn’t see him again, not really. I might see him again as the Perfect Killer. But I would never see him again as simple Kit Ward, the girl he could have known and loved, his only daughter.

That afternoon on the phone, I didn’t just say “good-bye.” I said, “Good-bye forever.” I said, “I wish you well.” I said, “I love you, despite everything, underneath it all.”

“I don’t want to go,” I whimper to my mom. She whirls and looks up at me with scorn.

“Well, I don’t want to go either. It’s your fault we have to go. You’re unstable, Kit, always have been. And you’ve never been a very good secret keeper.”

Her words hurt me, and her scorn melts slowly into pity.

“I never should have begun this,” she murmurs restlessly, and goes back to zipping up one of the bags, which is so full it looks as if it is about to explode. “Go upstairs and grab anything from your room that you want. There’s a little room left in your bag. And get the letters. We’ll burn them—they’re dangerous.”

For a moment I stare at her, trying to find a way out, but there is nothing. So I turn around and run up the stairs, past the beautiful photographs in their cold frames. Up to my scarlet-and-cream bedroom, where I tear open the dressers and the cabinets, looking for things I want to take with me. My mother has already packed up everything that was on top of my dressers and tables. I stuff the letters from the false bottom of the drawer into a backpack along with my box of too-small latex gloves, grab my makeup from the bathroom and a pair of shoes that my mother didn’t take from the closet. And then I stand in the middle of the room and look around and realize that there is nothing more that I want.

My room is impersonal, empty. I have no reminders or memories. No souvenirs or ticket stubs. It is all utility.

For a moment, this makes me sad.

Downstairs, I know, my mom is moving around, grabbing objects and stuffing them into suitcases, banging through the house, but I am on the top floor and hear none of that. The air is silent. I breathe in the heavy scent of potpourri.

And then I turn and leave the room. I descend the stairs with an even rhythm, one foot after the other after the other like a drumbeat marching through my mind.

When I reach the bottom of the staircase, my mom is waiting impatiently with a box of matches. She grabs my things out of my arms, takes the letters out of my halfway-unzipped backpack, and shoves them into my hands with the matches.

“Put down your stuff, take the letters into the kitchen, and burn them,” she says sharply. “Quickly. We haven’t got forever.”

I hesitate anyway. Her eyes narrow. She shoves me toward the kitchen door, and I stumble. “Quickly!” she snarls.

I scramble into the kitchen. I lose sight of her, but from the hallway I hear the sounds of the things I brought down from upstairs being frantically packed away. I lose track of what it is that I’m supposed to be doing for a half second; when I remember, I dash toward the cabinet.

I find a large metal bowl, slam it haphazardly down against the counter, and drop the letters inside. I try to light a match. My hands are shaking, and I break the first one. The second one lights, though, and I toss it into the bowl. It takes a moment for the match to begin its work.

And then the letters begin to burn.

It begins with the edges. They blacken and crumble inward, and flame licks away from them hot and orange-bright. The fire grows more quickly than I ever imagined it could. It is ravenous. In less than a minute, the letters become little more than ash.

For a moment, I am aware that my mother is standing in the kitchen doorway, watching, but then she turns away, as if she cannot bear to look.

I hear the loud crunching of car tires over thin ice on the street, just outside. It must be our car, come to sweep us away—a few minutes early, but oh well, it isn’t as if I have anything to say good-bye to in this house.

I stare into the bowl, stare at the black ash simmering with embers of hungry flame, at the tendrils of smoke drifting upward. This was my life, I realize. These letters were my center, my purpose. And now they’re gone. So quickly, so simply—just a spark, that was all it took. I can’t see anything other than the flame, can’t hear anything but the faint crackling of burning paper. This was my life, and now it’s gone.

Eventually I turn away from the bowl and leave the fire alone. It’ll just burn away by itself, anyway. I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I feel distant, detached.

So detached that I don’t notice Alex in the slightest until I step through the doorway into the hall and look toward the door.

Because there he is, plain as day, with his hands shoved into his pockets, tracking snow across the carpet, hair swept back from his face and slicked with melting snowflakes. The car outside must have been his.

His sudden appearance makes my heart beat quickly for reasons I cannot discern, or at least don’t want to admit to myself. I wonder why he’s here now, so soon after we spoke at the police station.

He looks at me quietly, and his dark eyes seem to be glowing from the inside out with some strange emotion that I can’t identify. My mother has shoved the bags into the hall closet so he can’t see them, and leans against the wall three feet to my left, probably staring at me as well. But I don’t see her. I see only Alex.

“Hello,” he says quietly.

“Hello,” I reply. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve come to talk to you.”

“Why? We’ve just talked,” I ask listlessly.

“I just . . . I’ve got something important to say.”

“What, have you come to confess your love to me or something?” I joke, and he laughs, but it’s a pitiful, joyless noise.

The clock on the wall strikes one. I feel my mother’s eyes on me, begging me to send him away. We need him to leave before the car arrives to pick us up and he starts asking questions as to why it’s here so late at night, tonight of all nights.

“It’s late,” I say. “I’m tired. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“I—” He pauses uncomfortably. He doesn’t know what to say. He really does want to talk to me right now. And I want to talk to him too. So badly. I want to say good-bye to him, even if he can’t know I’m leaving forever, even if I can’t so much as whisper the actual word “good-bye.”

My mother’s glare makes my skin prickle.

Headlights gleam from a distant street corner as a car arrives at a stop sign. This one absolutely
has
to be our car, my mother’s and mine. Who else would be driving around here at this time of night on Christmas? Alex needs to leave, and now. And I know my mother would rather that I didn’t go with him—but this is Alex, after all.

I don’t think he’ll go without me, anyway.

“All right,” I murmur, giving in. “Let’s go somewhere, let’s walk. I need to clear my head, anyway. There’s still a million things I can’t stop thinking about.”

He smiles slightly, not a happy smile, but a satisfied one.

“Really, can’t this wait until tomorrow? It’s one in the morning,” my mother chimes in uneasily, looking skittish. Alex is hesitant.

“I’m sorry about the time, Mrs. Ward,” he says, “but Kit and I have to talk.”

My mother opens her mouth to say something more, but I shake my head to stop her.

“It’s okay,” I say softly. “He’s my friend. Don’t worry so much.”

I know that my mother and I have to leave. I know that our car will pull up to the curb any minute now, ready to take us away, and I know we have to leave now if we are going to catch the ferry—but I can take a few minutes to talk with Alex for the very last time, surely I can have that much.

The car comes closer; we’ve got to leave now, or it’ll arrive at the house before I have a chance to lead him away.

My mother looks like she’s about to scream. I ignore her. She wants to pull me back and control me, but she can’t. She never could. I walk toward Alex, who I know means me no harm. His presence is comforting, warm, secure.

He has given me my freedom. He will keep me safe.

“Thank you,” he whispers, and I still can’t decipher the emotion in his eyes.

The next few minutes are a blank. I remember nothing. I assume Alex and I walk out the front door and along the street, looking for a place to talk, and I assume the car pulls up to the house just as I lead Alex around the corner so he doesn’t see it arrive, and I assume that after that, I just begin to follow his lead like a marionette—but I can’t remember a thing. Not the sound of my footsteps or the colors of the Christmas lights, not the silent houses or the dark shadows of ice-frosted trees, not even the numb trusting peace that overtakes me as Alex and I walk together in silence.