Her Every Fear

by Peter Swanson

  After five minutes, he stepped halfway out from behind the curtains. He could hear the faint sounds of the television in the den. At least now he knew where Kate was; it was only a matter of waiting to see if Henry appeared. He stayed where he was, listening intently. An hour, or what felt like an hour, passed. Corbin began to wonder what he was doing there, what he hoped might happen. He even began to wonder whether he’d really heard anything on the stairwell below him. Maybe he’d imagined it. These were the thoughts that were going through his head when Henry Wood, casually, as though he lived there, walked into the living room. Corbin, frozen, watched him, his fingers numb where they held the knife. It was definitely Henry, his hair cut short and dyed, wearing a dark midlength coat with an upturned collar. He was headed toward the den.

  Corbin dropped to one knee and yanked his shoes off, one by one. Why hadn’t he done that earlier?

  In his socks, being careful not to slip, he moved down the hall and entered the den. A black-and-white movie filled the screen. Kate was under a blanket on the leather couch, clearly asleep. There was no sign of Henry. He spun, looking back down the hall that culminated in the living room. Henry was in one of the two spare bedrooms, the second bathroom, or the laundry room. Kate shifted on the couch behind him, emitting a tiny snort. Corbin thought of the hideaway in the closet in the den, the secret place that his father had had built in when he’d first bought the apartment. He needed to wake Kate and tell her to hide there. That way, if he couldn’t find and kill Henry, or if Henry killed him, at least Kate would be safe. It would be all over for him no matter what happened, but he could accept that.

  Keeping Kate alive was all that mattered now.

  He dropped to her side, put the knife on the floor, pushed the hood off his head, and pressed his hand against her mouth. She woke, struggling, and he put his other hand on her shoulder to hold her in place. He told her—using what he hoped was a reassuring voice—who he was.

  “You have to trust me,” he whispered, “or we are both going to die. Do you understand?”

  Kate finally nodded, and Corbin felt like maybe she’d begun to listen to him. He told her about the hidden back in the closet—the one his father had put in to hide gold after the collapse of the technology bubble—and how she’d need to go in there and stay in there until he came to get her. She seemed to get frantic again, but she was struggling less. He kept telling her that she needed to do this, and finally he felt her body relax. She nodded, and he took his hand away from her mouth. Strands of hair, wet with tears and saliva, fanned across one of her cheeks.

  “Who is it?” she asked. “Who’s here?”

  Corbin told her it didn’t matter, that she needed to go to the closet. Obediently, she followed him. He felt as though her will had been broken. He desperately wanted to pull her close to him, to hug her. They were family, after all, even if they didn’t know one another. He resisted, but right before she stepped toward the back of the closet, he said, “I am going to save you.” For that moment, he believed it.

  With the closet door shut behind him, he went to the foot of the sofa and picked up the kitchen knife. The film still played behind him, something in black and white, with English accents. A man and a woman at a fancy ball. He was glad for the sound of the television; hopefully, Henry still had no idea that there was someone else in the apartment besides Kate and himself.

  Corbin looked down the hall. The doors to the bathroom and the laundry room were closed, but both of the doors to the guest bedrooms were slightly ajar, one more than the other. It was more than likely that Henry had gone into one of the bedrooms. Corbin crept along the hallway’s Persian runner and was about to peer into the first bedroom, when movement from the living room caught his eye. He turned and looked. And there was Henry, looking back at him. The light from the single lamp was enough so that Corbin could read his expression. Surprise, mostly. Maybe even some amusement.

  Corbin pressed the flat edge of the knife along his jeans to hide it and walked toward Henry.

  “You came,” Henry said, and smiled, his upper lip pulling back to reveal the large white canines.

  “What are you doing here, Henry?” Corbin asked, his voice sounding calmer than he was.

  “I’m here because of you, dude. You didn’t think . . .”

  Knowing he couldn’t get into a conversation with Henry—knowing he needed to act—Corbin took two large strides and lunged with the knife, but he wasn’t quick enough. Henry pulled his stomach in, hunching his shoulders, like a kid trying to avoid getting tagged in the playground. Then, with Corbin off balance, Henry tackled him, bringing them both crashing down onto the floor, the air punched from Corbin’s lungs. Henry pinned Corbin’s hand that still held the kitchen knife, and with his other hand tried to twist the knife, slicing open his palm. He hissed in pain, and Corbin, his lungs beginning to work again, managed to hold on to the handle of the knife while toppling Henry off his body and onto his back on the floor. Corbin took a wild shot at Henry’s head, stabbing the knife’s tip into the floor next to Henry’s cheek. Henry’s eyes were wide with adrenaline and what Corbin hoped was fear. Corbin began to pull the knife out of the hardwood plank, but his hand, slippery with sweat, slid off the handle. The motion caused him to rock backward a little, landing off-balance on the palm of his left hand. The knife vibrated like a tuning fork. Corbin watched as Henry quickly got to his feet, grabbed the handle of the knife, twisted it out of the floor, and lunged. All Corbin could do was put up his right forearm for protection and kick out with his legs. It wasn’t enough. The knife found his throat.

  Corbin rolled onto his back, both of his hands instinctively grabbing at the wound, warm blood oozing out between his fingers. He heard scrabbling along the floor, but couldn’t raise his head to look for Henry. Instead, he stared up at the coffered ceiling, all feeling from his body beginning to dissolve. He was ready to close his eyes when he saw Kate crouched above him. You look a little like my father, Corbin said, but all that came out was the sound of his own blood gurgling in his throat. You have his eyes.

  Chapter 29

  Alan woke, the alarm clock rattling in his ear. He gingerly turned his head toward the digital numbers. They were telling him it was ten thirty. For a moment he didn’t know if it was day or night, then he realized it was dark outside. He thumped at the clock and closed his eyes again. His temples throbbed as though his skull were pinched in a vise.

  The alarm went off again. He sat up this time and looked around. It wasn’t his clock. It was the door buzzer. He jumped off the bed, surprised that he was still dressed, and walked sloppily across the living room to the intercom. Kate, he thought. Fragments of the evening came flooding back to him. There was Jack, and the long, rambling monologue about Corbin having killed before. There was the walk back across Boston, and the Irish pub, and then it started to get hazy. Still, he remembered seeing Kate. They were arguing and she looked scared. It was in a kitchen, he thought, but he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there, or how he’d gotten back to his own apartment.

  He pressed the button that answered the intercom.

  “They’re on their way up,” the doorman said.

  “Who?”

  “The police. They showed me a warrant.”

  There was a loud rap on the door. Alan felt a wave of nausea but went and opened the door.

  “Alan Cherney?” It was the woman cop he’d seen before. Behind her were two uniformed officers, both male, both shorter than she was, plus another woman in plain clothes, who looked like an intern along for the ride.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Detective Roberta James, and this is Agent Abigail Tan from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and we have a warrant to search your premises.” She handed Alan a piece of paper that looked as though it had been folded and unfolded many times.

  “Okay,” Alan said, and took a step backward to allow all four into his apartment. “Does this have something to do with Audrey Marshall?”


  “It does, actually,” the agent said, her voice sounding as young as she looked. She removed two pairs of latex gloves from her jacket pocket and handed them to the uniformed officers. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about your relationship with the deceased?”

  Alan rapidly shook his head, aware that he was having trouble meeting her stare. He felt another sharp wave of nausea. “Excuse me,” he said, and bolted for the bathroom.

  He managed to get the door shut behind him before kneeling on the hard tile, vomiting until there was nothing left but bile. Then he splashed cold water on his face and brushed his teeth. He studied himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, the lower lids wet with tears from throwing up. His skin was the color of chalk. Wiping away the tears, he felt a terrible sense of dread, not just because the police were searching his apartment, but because he knew something was very wrong.

  He heard a police radio out in his living room. What were they looking for? Before heading back out, he opened his medicine cabinet to look for ibuprofen, grabbed his allergy medicine by accident, and putting it back on his shelf, got a sudden, jarring flash of Jack scratching at his forearm in the bar the day before. Hives, he’d said, something about springtime. Only they hadn’t looked like allergic hives to him, and Alan suddenly realized what they were, and what that meant. A dizziness coursed through his body at the thought, and he felt an alarm go off that Kate was in terrible danger. He didn’t know why, exactly. It was just a feeling, but a feeling as real as anything he’d ever felt.

  He exited the bathroom, turning into the living room just as the young agent was crossing the room toward him. She was removing her gloves. Behind her, in the alcove kitchen, he could see the other cop bagging one of his kitchen knives. Alan began to speak, although he was not entirely sure what he was going to say. He stopped when he saw the agent remove her handcuffs from under her jacket. “Alan Cherney,” she said, her eyes expressionless, “I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Audrey Marshall . . .”

  She read him his rights as she cuffed his hands behind his back.

  Part II

  An Even Split

  Chapter 30

  The friendship—or whatever you wanted to call it—with Corbin Dell had been special. Henry Wood, for the first time in his life, imagined that he felt what normal people felt when they fell in love, or looked at a parent, or brought a new puppy home to live with them. Then the friendship ended—Henry getting the call from Corbin after they’d both murdered the insignificance that was Linda Alcheri—and Henry felt deeply hurt, another new emotional experience. Not just hurt, but shocked. After all, Henry had introduced Corbin to a new and better world. He’d taken him from Kansas to Oz, and now Corbin, for some reason, wanted to go back to Kansas.

  Had Corbin not realized that what had happened in the Boddington Cemetery was something beautiful? And that what had happened on Eel River Pond could have been even more beautiful?

  That was how Henry thought of it, especially their shared moment in London with Claire Brennan. Some of it was probably the heightened nostalgia of college memories, but, no, he had felt the incredible beauty at the time, as well. For the short time after the murder that Henry was in London, and then all during that incredible summer in New York, the world was composed of new colors. Henry, every night as he fell asleep, replayed every detail of what had happened between Corbin and Claire and him on that wet Wednesday afternoon. It had been a spontaneous dance in which each participant knew their dance moves without having practiced them before. That was how he remembered it. Claire’s death was the climax, and her spilled blood was shared, in perfect equal measures, by Corbin and him. Even the rain, coming when it did, had added to the beauty, washing the blood away, cleaning the air.

  Occasionally, Henry altered what had happened, tweaked it to make it a little bit better. For instance, he always took away that awkward moment when he’d slipped on the slick ground and fallen to one knee, the knife slipping from his fingers. He also always reduced the amount of time it had taken to dig the grave, Corbin beginning to panic that someone would come along. And sometimes he allowed himself to add a scene, one in which they’d slice Claire’s body down the middle before burying it. One half for Corbin, and one half for me, Henry thought. An even split. It would have been a way to memorialize why Claire had died; that she’d foolishly shared her love and paid the price. But it would also have memorialized what had happened between Henry and Corbin.

  Of course, Henry found out, after Linda Alcheri, that Corbin didn’t really understand, and never would really understand. Cutting Linda had been a present that Corbin didn’t appreciate.

  Still, when the phone call came—Corbin telling him that their friendship was over—Henry was shocked.

  And then he got angry.

  What did Corbin think? Did he think that after what they’d done together, he could just somehow stop? Did he think he was going to go back to a normal life? Did he want to get married? Have children? Did he actually think he’d be happy back in Kansas, living in a world drained of all color? And Henry decided that, if nothing else, he would make sure that none of that ever happened. That was not how the world worked. Corbin was like him. He could pretend he wasn’t, but that wasn’t going to change facts, and Henry would make sure that Corbin never forgot it.

  Henry Wood became Henry “Hank” Torrance, mediator specializing in business disputes in St. Louis, Missouri. It was easy work. There were so many simple ways to manipulate people, especially people weakened by grievances. Especially stupid people. He met a woman named Kaylee Buecher who reminded him of Claire, the way she looked and moved, and the smuttiness behind her eyes. He took her to dinner and listened as she told him, in that ugly midwestern accent, how she was the first one in her family to go to college, and her parents didn’t appreciate her, just wondered why she hadn’t gotten married yet. He never called her back but stalked her for half a year. She lived in a single-family in Webster Groves, a rental. He followed her, learned her schedule. He bought a set of picklocks, taught himself how to use them, and broke into her house whenever he felt like it. He liked to rearrange her things, spit in her leftovers, read her pathetic diary (“Hi Future Me!”). One afternoon, she came home early from work with a man from her office. Henry hid in the bedroom closet and listened to them have sex. Afterward, the man cried, moaning that he was married and he’d never cheated on his wife before. Or that’s what he said, anyway. After he left, Kaylee got on the phone and told some friend of hers all about it, then she called her office to tell them she’d be at home the rest of the day with a migraine. Henry stayed in the house all that evening and through half the night, leaving at three in the morning after standing over Kaylee’s bed and watching her sleep.

  Being alone in the house with Kaylee was the best feeling he’d had since spending time with Corbin.

  He visited as much as possible. He learned every hiding place in Kaylee’s Dutch Colonial, memorized every creaking floorboard and unoiled hinge. He found he could move around the house at ease with Kaylee in it. He was nearly caught only once. He was in the downstairs bathroom, the one Kaylee never used, when she came home from a night out, bolting into the bathroom to pee. Henry had time to step into the shower stall but not to pull the curtain all the way across. Kaylee sat on the toilet, ferociously emptying her bladder, and if she’d looked up and into the mirror she would have seen Henry’s face from behind the shower curtain. But she never looked up, never taking her eyes off her phone. It was what had saved her, some text she was reading that was making her laugh and cry at the same time.

  Eventually, the owners of Kaylee’s house put it on the market because of the real estate boom, and Kaylee decided to move back into the city with a girlfriend. On Henry’s last night with Kaylee in the house, he cut a deck of cards in the living room while Kaylee slept upstairs. Red and he’d kill her in her bed, black and he’d let her live. It was a seven of clubs. Before leaving, Henry got a pair of scissors
and cut every picture of Kaylee Buecher that he could find in half, replacing the two pieces back into the frame, or taping them together and putting them back up on the fridge. Then he stole a hand-signed screen print of Andy Warhol’s portrait of Mao that was probably worth tens of thousands.

  Being with Kaylee had been fun, but also somehow lonely. Even though he’d left her the photographs he’d improved, she would never know it was he that had done it. It would just be a mystery in her life.

  Henry decided it was time to find Corbin. Time to get revenge.

  It wasn’t hard. According to LinkedIn, after a few years in New York City, Corbin had moved back home to Boston to work at the headquarters of Briar-Crane. During his summer vacation, Henry flew to Boston to look for Corbin. He shadowed Briar-Crane’s small South End offices; it was clear that Corbin was away. Henry left a fake business card with the chatty Briar-Crane receptionist and learned that Corbin was on the North Shore with family for most of August. Henry rented a car, drove north, and checked into the New Essex Motor Court, the only hotel with a vacancy at the height of the summer season. He tailed Corbin and his beautiful, dark-haired girlfriend for the week. Corbin was tan and muscled. He ran on the beach every morning. And he seemed genuinely happy in the presence of the townie he’d picked up. Henry learned her name. Rachael Chess. She had long, dark hair like Claire Brennan had, and she was always smiling in the presence of Corbin, or draping an arm around his shoulders, or wrapping her legs around him when they were in the ocean together. Wrapping those legs around him every night, as well, Henry imagined. And never suspecting that her golden god had once pounded a woman’s head into the ground till she was unconscious. Henry’s rage almost made him want to just take Corbin out, sneak into his bedroom some night and slit his throat, stare him in the eyes as he bled out. But, no, that was too good for Corbin. He decided to have some fun first.