by Vera Kurian
Charles texted Chloe and Andre of his success immediately as he walked out of the restaurant, expecting accolades, but no one answered. He pouted, heading toward Shaw Tavern, where Kristen was having dinner with friends. He had been encouraging her to be with friends as often as possible, which hadn’t been hard because she, like many other students, were spooked about the murders, still following every bread crumb about the investigation.
Would Kristen be jealous if he told her he just had dinner with Emma, or would she be proud of him for being kind enough to spend time with a lonely girl? He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his peacoat, feeling the familiar grip of his Glock. Even though he had already taken the gun, he had asked his father to borrow it the morning after Kristen’s break-in. “God, take it, take the shotgun if you want,” his father had said, not even looking away from the mirror as he tied a perfect Windsor knot.
Charles paused at a red light, then saw a familiar figure across the street, half a block away. “Chloe!” he called, but she didn’t hear him. He jogged to catch up to her. “I texted you—I just met with Emma!”
“Good,” she said, sounding distracted, not stopping to talk. She was wearing an oversize book bag. He walked with her.
“Slow down, let’s talk.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
She had never brushed him off before. She was always posturing in one way or another—this was the first time she seemed genuinely preoccupied.
Will, Charles realized. Maybe Will had finally told her he didn’t have the video.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said.
“I’m busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“School,” she said, annoyed. “The protests.”
“Since when do you go to protests?” She ignored him. “Did you talk to Will? About the video?” Silence. “Do you want me to press him? I could get him drunk, ask him what he was doing the night of the murders.”
“Don’t bother,” she said flatly.
“You’re not going to...do something, are you?” he asked.
She was about to turn at the street corner and walk away from him but he reached out, catching her elbow. He half expected a teasing come-on, but also half expected the impatient look she gave him. “Chloe...sometimes you think for a long time that you want something and that you’ll be happy when you get it, but usually it doesn’t turn out that way.”
She sighed. “I don’t have time to give you relationship advice, Charles.”
47
Day 0
It was time. My plan had been set in motion, but then there had been an unexpected development. Yesterday, Will messaged me on the dating app. I have the phone and will give it to you. Really? That’s funny considering THAT I WAS HOLDING HIS OLD PHONE IN MY HAND. That lying little shit. Let me see it, I messaged back, curious as to what he was scheming. He sent back a picture of a generic iPhone 4. Does he really think I’m that stupid?
I told him we would make the exchange tomorrow night, and that I would delete Snapchat off my phone in front of him. He sent back a bunch of question marks asking why we couldn’t do it today. (Because Day 1 is too early, dummy!) I said tomorrow at 11 p.m., and that I would message him the exact geocoordinates when the time came, and that if he came with anyone else or told anyone, I would not delete Snapchat and little Davey might get a visit from his online girlfriend.
I streamed the news on my computer as I got ready. Adams had already sent out messages every day this week with security alerts—some of the protests in the lead-in to the big one had gotten violent after dark. The police were out in full force and even yesterday there was a palpable increase in out-of-towners carrying signs. Today, almost every channel showed the clogged streets of downtown DC.
I got dressed in black clothing I had gotten from a thrift store—it smelled as if they hadn’t been washed. I slicked my hair back into a ponytail with gel and bobby-pinned the hell out of it, then secured a tight skullcap. I had leather gloves and men’s sneakers that were half a size too big. Tucked away in my backpack were two Duralogs, a bottle of lighter fluid, my baggie of hair and DNA, and a couple other treats for Will.
I left behind my smartwatch and set up my laptop to stream Netflix while I was gone—it would do that for a couple hours, and Yessica would be able to hear it through the closed door of my bedroom. Then out the window and down the fire escape I went. I couldn’t afford to have the hunter follow me, so I took special care: I darted down alleys, disappeared into buildings, then out different exits, then ducked into a Metro station, less because I needed to go there than because it was a mess of escalators on different levels. Eventually I got into a cab and had them drop me off a ten-minute walk from my desired location, arriving two hours before Will would, and an hour before I would even message him the location. The whole drive over I could hear police sirens and helicopters from local media trying to film the protests.
Ultimately this site beat out the other contender—the arboretum—the moment I saw it in person. The McMillan Sand Filtration Site was built in the early 1900s, back when the city got water from an aqueduct and used sand to filter it instead of chemicals, at least until World War II. Now the massive lot was fenced off and abandoned, the supposed plans to develop the land at a standstill for probably boring reasons.
I waited until there was no traffic, then scaled the chain-link fence. It was lined with green material on the inside, which made the site feel closed off from the rest of the world from the inside. It seemed strangely isolated in the middle of a city where space was at a premium.
The lot was an entire city block of overgrown grass and weeds that were black in the darkness. Giant brick silos that had once held sand stood in a line, some covered in dark ivy, each with an arched entryway cut into the center. I went through one entryway and down a staircase that led to the subterranean cavern where the sand used to filter the water.
When I had first visited, sunlight had beamed down from an opening aboveground, showing off the vaulted ceilings, which curved down into regularly spaced columns. At night, it was as black as a catacomb, the sand cold beneath my sneakers. Belowground, isolated, quiet—it was the perfect place.
I hid my bag behind a column and set to work, spreading the hairs around, and taking the tampon—wet with a little water in a baggie—and rubbing it all over my leather gloves. It didn’t matter how careful I was or how much research I did: if you kill someone, they can catch you with a single spot of blood. I had no idea how much of my own DNA could possibly be transferred during this whole thing, and I didn’t want to take chances.
When I messaged Will the geocoordinates he said, Okay. But then twenty minutes later, he was confused, standing outside the fence. I messaged him to climb the fence and to head to the underground part through any entrance—he’d be able to see me. I stood behind a column, crouching, and watched as the bright light from his cell phone bounced down the stairs and into the chamber. “What the hell?” I could hear him say—he was facing the wrong direction.
“Over here,” I called. I had set a small disposable LED light on the ground. He came toward it, predictably.
“What the hell? Why’d you make me come all the way out here? What is this place?”
“Don’t be a baby.” That’s what he said to me that night.
As soon as he was bending over the LED light I moved, zapping him with the stun gun. He gave a short scream and fell to the ground, shaking. I squatted beside him as he cursed at me, but I kept the gun near his head. “There’s something fucking wr-wrong with you! I brought the stupid phone, now leave me alone!” He dug it from his pocket and with some difficulty threw it into the sand.
I pretended to examine the phone, making sure he could see my face. “You know what’s funny? I’m pretty sure this is your phone,” I said, pulling out the real phone.
“If you had it all the ti
me, why the fuck—?”
“You dropped it somewhere in the SAE house, you idiot.”
“Fine you ha-have your stupid phone. Are you going to leave my brother alone?”
“Once we’re done here, I’ll delete everything and stop talking to Davey.” He looked skeptical. “I promise. I just want you to do one thing for me.” I gestured for him to sit, then put the real phone down in front of him, with the video ready to play. “I want you to watch this.”
“Wh—” I stunned him again. He screamed and fell over. “Okay, okay!”
I stood behind where he lay on his side in the dark, watching him rather than the video. He didn’t say or do anything—he was clearly waiting for it to be over. I looked at his face, realizing that it would be the last time that I, or anyone, would see him alive. He didn’t understand the significance of the moment and I couldn’t point it out to him. I couldn’t give a final villain speech the way they do in movies because it would destroy the element of surprise. There was no background music or camera zooming in. This was real life. In real life, we don’t get to edit out the painful parts.
I held the coiled jump rope in one hand and moved closer behind him as the video was a few seconds away from finishing. I looped the jump rope around his neck, shoved him into the sand, putting my foot on his head for leverage. He struggled, bucking, making the mistake that most people make when they’re being strangled: they bring their hands to their neck.
If you occlude the carotid artery, the lack of oxygen to the brain can render a person unconscious within ten to fifteen seconds—it’s this period of time where they struggle. But once they’re unconscious, this doesn’t mean they’re dead: the heart is still beating, the brain could still recover. There are a number of ways to die from ligature strangulation, or garroting. Cardiac arrhythmia from putting pressure on the carotid artery nerve ganglion. Obstructing the blood flow to the brain via the carotid arteries. Obstructing the jugular veins so the brain can’t return venous blood, creating a backup. Forcing pressure on the larynx to restrict air flow to the lung, causing asphyxia. I held the jump rope tight and counted to one hundred just to be sure, my arms and shoulders burning.
I let him go and his head flopped silently into the sand. I would have preferred to check his pulse but didn’t want to leave a single Chloe cell on him. I watched him—he wasn’t breathing. I had to move quickly. I took his wallet and his phone and put them in my backpack. Next, I lay the two Duralogs on top of him, covered everything with lighter fluid, and lit him up. The state the body would be in would buy me some time. I imagine they would eventually look at dental records. By then, I would have already framed our mystery killer and Will would be the official next victim. I opened his phone (same stupid password) and deleted the dating app just to be on the safe side.
I had a million things to do—and fast—but suddenly it was as if my body balked at the idea of moving. I found myself abruptly, almost violently, sitting down in the sand, my gaze directed at the fire, which was starting to smell.
I had done it. Six years of planning and research all for this. I had succeeded, and Will was dead. I almost couldn’t believe it despite the sight in front of me. I had won and he had lost. I couldn’t help thinking about Michelle, the former me, the twelve-year-old me sitting alone in her bedroom the day it happened, the beginning of an idea forming in her head. It was almost as if I could reach into the fire and talk to her through time and tell her, Yes, I did right by you, setting her free.
I pulled out Will’s phone again and tapped on the video, which was paused on the last frame, an unintelligible blur of darkness. It wouldn’t matter because I was about to destroy his phone, but I hit Delete, anyway. It was over—I never had to think of Will Bachman again, at least once I tied up all these loose ends.
With that thought, I was finally able to get up and get moving. Half my murder accessories, including his phone, my burner, and the clothes I was wearing, would end up in the Potomac River, while the other half would get shoved into the garbage at the back of Yum’s Chinese restaurant. Speaking of which, it was starting to smell like burnt barbecue.
I left while he was still burning. I had chosen the location wisely, because he could burn for however long without any risk of setting anything on fire or drawing attention with the smoke and smell. I scaled the fence with still-aching arms, listening to the sounds of police sirens downtown. It would take me a while to get to my dump locations. I ate a LUNA Bar and kept moving.
48
The first thing I did when I woke up the next day was to check the Washington Post website. Most of it was dominated with coverage of the protests and riots. Even in the Metro section, there was no mention of a mysterious human barbecue. The closest I could do to checking on Will that wouldn’t look strange given my internet habits was looking at Chad’s and Charles’s feeds—nothing about Will going missing.
For all her basicness, Kristen was a good photographer and had posted a picture of Charles standing on a street filled with autumn leaves, smiling. You couldn’t tell there was a series of murders going on, or that Charles was secretly meeting with us behind his girlfriend’s back to scheme—he just looked handsome and stylish. I felt a pang of something weird and tried to push it away without really thinking about it. I didn’t like what he said to me in the street. It’s almost like he could tell I was about to do something.
Just then, someone tagged me on Instagram. My mouth went dry when I saw who it was: Pinprick52. It was the same account that had posted the stalker picture of me sitting in French class. No doubt, the same person who had taken the picture of me sleeping, too. When I saw the picture, I gasped. It was me, from last night, half a block from the Sand Filtration Site, still wearing all my black gear. It must have been after Will but before I dumped everything and changed clothes.
I was followed.
How? I had been so careful.
Whoever they were, they must know what I had done. The picture wasn’t close up enough that anyone could tell it was me necessarily. I clicked on the Pinprick52 account and pored over their feed again, looking at their more recent pictures and scrolling backward. That picture of a bench—in the far corner you could make out a bronze bust: one of the statues of John Adams on campus. That bench was right outside Tyler—Andre’s dorm. Then the inside of Albertson Hall—I recognized that hall from walking down it so often to get coffee, hoping I might run into Charles using one of the piano rooms. Further back was a picture of a building that seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place. In the background was a bodega, which I quickly looked up on Google maps. The bodega was near the Center for Imaging, where the panel study did its MRI studies—where Kellen had been killed. Further back was a picture of a group of boys leaving the gym. I zoomed in as best I could. There in the back, with his distinctive black cowlick, was Michael Boonark.
I knew what this account was. The Golden State Killer took random trinkets from the houses of people he killed. CRD kept locks of hair. I never understood this—they basically created a dossier of evidence against themselves for the sake of what—pride?
Pinprick52 was documenting their work in real time. Keeping a portfolio. And they had just tagged me. It was an act of aggression. Little did they know, I was the wrong person to target now that I could give them my full attention.
49
“Have you seen Will?”
Charles was so distracted by the girl who had just walked into the frat house that he barely heard Chad, even though he was yelling. The house was filled with a crush of students having a Quiet Riot party. Chad nudged him with his Michelob Ultra and repeated the question. “Will?” Charles repeated. “Did he say he was coming?”
“No,” Chad said, frowning. “We were supposed to watch the game yesterday.”
Charles shrugged. “You know how flakey he is.” He excused himself, his eyes set across the room on the slight brunette standing at the
Ping-Pong table talking to another girl.
Not eight hours ago, Charles had been heading to the psych building intending to fish for information about Trevor from Wyman or one of the RAs when he had seen this girl run crying from Wyman’s office, brushing past him without seeing him. He feigned concern to Elena, who had told him that the RA, Adelei, had forgotten to lock the lab the night before and Elena had found it open early this morning.
Charles looked around the frat party, spotting Kristen standing outside at the bonfire with her friends. He pushed his way through the crowd and across the sticky floor. Adelei was by the table of drinks, chugging some water. Would she recognize him from the study, though? He had never directly been alone in a room with her, but had seen her a couple times in the lab.
Charles sidled up next to her. “Hey,” he said. She turned and he smiled at her. “I’m Charles.”
“You’re that guy.” She was drunk. Good—that would make things easier. Someone in the back of the house was blaring away on a vuvuzela to shrieking laughter. “President guy,” she continued.
“Yes, I am.” She wavered on her feet. “Why don’t you sit down?”
They sat on one of the living room couches. She looked at him with drunk attraction. “You look familiar,” he asked. “Are you a psych major?”
“Yes!” A flicker crossed her face and her eyes teared.
“What’s wrong?” He tilted his head sympathetically.