Page 98 of Haven't Killed in Years
I made a point to turn my head and stare out the window as if everything he was saying wasn’t devastating, made all the worse by how dumb he sounded performing for me like a total clown.
“My first instinct was to just kill her, get her out of my way. But, of course, I was curious about who she was and why she was watching you all the time. She had all these notebooks in her apartment. Crazytown. Page after page of nonsense. A real slog to get through, but then I saw her for what she was finally: someone I couldreallyuse.”
I would have had a million questions, but I’d read her journal too, so I said nothing.
He didn’t care for my simulated apathy and tried harder to get a rise out of me. “Her life was so insular, I knew I just had to penetrate her bubble. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it might.” He shook his head. “Sad, sad lady. I crafted an alter ego, moved in next door, got in her space, played house for a few weeks. One night”—he paused to snicker—“when I knew she was watching, I pretended to fall and pass out. She snuck into my house and rubbed my face. Creepy, but I knew then I had her on the hook. Once I knew she was comfortable with me, or at least fixated on me, then I spun my story and put her to work.”
He glanced back at me in the rearview, but I refused to turn away from the window until I thought of something worth saying.
“But then you lost control of her,” I said. “You didn’t want her to do that video.”
“She told you that?” he asked.
“She didn’t have to.” Technically that was true, but I was trying to come across more as having a gift for reading people like my fatherand less as caring about the semantics of her having written it in her journal instead of telling me directly.
“Look,” he said. “I knew working with her had its risks. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t pivot around.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” I said, finally finding something to enjoy in this conversation.
“Does it look like I’ve lost control of the situation?” he asked.
“Depends what your definition ofcontrolis.”
He looked at me through the mirror. “How about who’s in the handcuffs and who has the key?”
“Wow,” I said. “A real mastermind.”
“Stop,” he said. “I know what you’re doing. Just shut up and wait. You won’t be so cocky once we get there.”
“Can’t wait,” I said, going back to the window. I bookmarked that little back-and-forth. Undermining what your enemy takes great pride in can sometimes be a more effective weapon than anything you can shove into your sweatshirt pocket. “Why didn’t you just kill her then?” I asked. “When she did that?”
“Meh,” he said. “I still wanted to use her for this next part, but then you went and showed up.”
I didn’t love what he was insinuating there. If I hadn’t gone to her, she would still be alive. Even if it wouldn’t have been for much longer, there would have been a chance. And hats off to him; it would have been a real dagger to have no idea of Natalie’s involvement until the moment he brought me back to the Abbington house and slit her throat right in front of me. It would have seemed so random, so nonsensical, so unnecessarily cruel that my brain may have exploded on the spot.
“So I had to go ahead and kill her,” he said, shrugging.
I had spent my whole life callous toward life and death, but I still hated the way he was so carefree about murdering Natalie and theothers. Mostly because he had gotten the better of me. Mostly because I was embarrassed.
“So this is all for revenge?” I asked, hoping he could wrap it up.
“I like to call it closure,” he said, challenging the connotation.
“What kind of closure are you going to get from this? You killed…” I added them up on my fingers: Oswald, James, Reanne, Natalie. I paused the count. “Did you kill John?”
“What?” he scoffed. “No.”
“You killed four people,” I continued. “You cut up bodies and delivered me their arms. You don’t need closure; you need to be in a mental hospital.”
“Probably,” he said. “Maybe we could get a group rate.”
Fifty-Seven
The old Abbington houselooked the same as it had on Dominic’s tour—abandoned, run-down, and exactly the kind of place where you would expect people to have been murdered.
Jake coasted the van into the driveway, trying to soften the impact of the rutted dirt. There were no attempts to stay hidden. Who was there to hide from? This little street was nothing more than an extension of the house, rotting until it disappeared.
He slid open the van door and I tried my best to kick at him. Even if I’d somehow managed to kick him so perfectly in the jugular that his throat collapsed and he dropped to the ground suffocating, what would I have done, starved to death in the van? Maybe I could scream loud enough that someone would hear me? Maybe Elyse would come looking for me? I wouldn’t have to find out, because I barely made contact with him. He backed out of the way and waited for me to tire myself out.
