Page 17 of Haven't Killed in Years
People are nostalgic for things from their childhood. It didn’t have to mean I was defective. Evil thoughts are not the same as evil actions, and bad children can be decent adults. That was the kind of thing I reminded myself of regularly, but it never stuck. Iwasdefective, and all I could do to manage it was maintain a crafted isolation. As soon as I got this severed-arms situation under control, I would go back to the disciplined life I had created.
I nodded off to the image of Mrs. Magnus taking a bite of an English muffin with thick peanut butter, swallowing too soon, a chunk getting lodged in her throat. She gags, trying to breathe, finding no oxygen. Her hands move to her throat.I’m choking, help me. She drops to the floor. She knows she’s done and at the last second, her hands fall from her neck.
A quiet scratching interrupted my slumber. At first I thought it was Mrs. Magnus’s feral-ass cat, but the sound was more like shoes shuffling than that thing’s nasty claws. The noise was right outside my door and I sat up in silence. The shuffling stopped and I held my breath. Then there were footsteps going down the stairs.Oh no you don’t, you fucker. I jumped from the couch and raced to the door.
The hallway was empty, but at the bottom of the stairs the outside door was wide open. Barefoot, I flew down to the first floor and into the street. It was deserted. The only sound was the wind—no footsteps, no one running into a trash can, no barking dogs or car alarms. I spun around slowly like I was being mirrored by a guy with a Steadicam, capturing my bewilderment for the big screen. The theatrics dissipated once all I could focus on was how cold my feet were.
I returned to the house, pulling the front door closed. It stuck on the runner and I unleashed my fury, stomping the rug flat andslamming the door shut. They really needed to rip that thing up. I had a stalker, after all.
At the top of the stairs I realized I was right; someone had been outside my door. Written in big bloody letters was the wordLIAR.
Of course, Iwaslying; everything about Gwen Tanner was a lie. Was there something I had done that day that was particularly triggering? A lie worse than any other?
I wiped my finger along the edge of theRand brought it to my nose. I sniffed it, then dabbed it on my lip. I swept my tongue over the substance. Corn syrup or something—not blood. I guess they’d run out of arms. I’d been waiting for their next move, but maybe they were waiting for mine. All it took was reuniting with Elyse Fucking Abbington to prompt another visit.
I brought over a sponge from the sink and scrubbed away the stupid message. I didn’t like cleaning and I really didn’t like being threatened. I could feel my blood pressure rising. My father always told me that we were not the type of people to mess with.
Ten
The cops found thesecond arm, the one I left in the mailbox, first. No one noticed it until it was mixed in with all the other mail from the area, so they didn’t even know which mailbox it had come from. Three days later, they made an ID. It belonged to Oswald Shields, a seventy-three-year-old former lawyer from Clinton, Massachusetts, but I already knew who Oswald Shields was. He had beenmylawyer—nineteen years ago.
Having your name changed and your identity hidden requires a lot of paperwork—and then a lot of burying of said paperwork. My memory of Oswald was spotty at best. I’d only met him once or twice and remembered that he had a gross cough that sounded very wet. He had sideburns, I think.
After my parents were arrested, I was shipped off almost immediately to a distant relative I’d never known existed. I should have been a witness in the trials, but I never told a soul that I knew what my parents were doing—that I had been a part of it all.
I was allowed to pack a bag. I remembered that part because I’dwanted to fill it with Legos, but I only got to bring one stuffed dog and had to fill the rest with clothes and underwear. The man who made me put all the Legos back, even the microcopter that was so small it wouldn’t have made a difference, was James—Detective James Calhoun, but I just called him James because I was nine and wasn’t beholden to formalities. He was the only other person in the world who knew me as both Marin Haggerty and Gwen Tanner.
Learning the arm belonged to Oswald Shields confirmed that the arms weren’t random props; the identities mattered. I didn’t need to wait to hear from a forensic specialist to assume the other arm belonged to James Calhoun.
- - - - -
Two days later, theyannounced the second arm, elevating the story from a freaky blip to a serial incident. James Calhoun’s identity was released the following day. Both men had still been alive when the arms were removed, and both were now missing. There was no mention of Abel Haggerty or how the men were connected. Even the dark bowels of the internet that had stumbled upon the story only suggested fantastical theories like mafia debts, sex cults, organ harvesting. In the real world, it was only a local story. One that most people would miss if they weren’t looking, but it was out there and my stalker would know that I knew.
- - - - -
Dominic and I hadbeen texting quite a bit since the party, and that Saturday I invited him to join me at a bar downtown—then I didn’t go.
I’d gotten enough clues about where he lived from texting with him about how walkable his neighborhood was, prompting him to tell me about the coffee shop at the end of his street. Thankfully, itwasn’t one of a million local Dunkin’ Donuts or I would still be out there looking for his place. I spotted his tour van parked in the driveway of a converted three-story house, like mine and most of the apartment options in Boston’s outskirts. I arrived an hour before we were supposed to meet for drinks and waited for him to leave.
The front door was closed tight and in much better shape than my own. The mailboxes listed him and his roommate as apartment 2. Dominic lived with another stepbrother, Kevin, but Kevin had a job implementing IT systems around the country and was always out of town. Dominic had told me that in a way to make it seem like he basically had his own place, clearly self-conscious about it after moving out of the condo he’d shared with his fiancée.
I cut through the path between his building and the nearly identical one next to it. I had to turn sideways to slink through the tight spots caused by a broken washing machine and a couple of heavy-duty city trash cans.
Behind the house there was cheap white plastic patio furniture and a crusty firepit. I looked up to see the second- and third-floor balconies, one on top of the other. The balconies were self-enclosed and my only way up would be flying or climbing.
I yanked one of the garbage cans toward the back of the house, leaned it against the siding, and used one of the plastic chairs to climb on top. I could barely reach the bottom of the second-floor balcony. I sort of hopped and was able to grab two of the rail posts. I proceeded to hang there with my feet inches above the trash. My noodle arms and neglected abs were enough to lift my legs to about my waist, but there was no way they were getting my butt above my head. I let go and fell back onto the trash can. It wobbled as the top buckled slightly under my weight, and I lowered my center of gravity to balance.
I dropped to my knees and reached for the plastic chair, lifting itto my level. I flattened myself against the vinyl siding to make room atop the trash can for the chair. Then I did a delicate shimmy to slowly transfer my weight onto the seat. After a couple of close calls, I was on my knees, balancing on the chair on the trash can.
Calling upon the ten squats I had done three years ago, I used my thigh muscles to slowly rise to my feet. It was enough for me to grab the crossbar of the railing and swing my leg up. The rest was easy and I flipped my body onto the balcony.
Maroon curtains were drawn over the locked sliding glass door. What was not locked was the window to the right of the balcony. Not enough people lock their windows. Lazy landlords slap cheap coats of paint over the window frames without making an effort to avoid the latch, and layers harden on top of each other until eventually the latch won’t budge. My father taught me that.
I leaned over and pressed my palms under the lip of the lower pane. A few tight jabs were enough to scoot the window up. I climbed onto the railing and slid my legs through the opening. Once there was more of my weight inside than out, I heaved off the balcony. It wasn’t very graceful, but it was effective.
I slithered over a radiator in the bathroom until my feet hit the floor. It was a gross guy’s bathroom, full of shaving residue, one bottle of all-in-one shampoo/body wash in the shower. There was some gel on the sink and I thought of Dominic compulsively grabbing at his hair all the time.
I walked into the living room and nothing appeared out of the ordinary—a little breakfast bar, a brown leather couch, a large flat-screen, clean other than a dirty coffee cup in the sink. No posters. Actual adults might have lived there.
