The Final Girl Support Group

by Grady Hendrix

  A plug opens in my belly and tension drains out in a cold flood. Someone is finally listening. It may just be Garrett P. Cannon, but I’ll take it.

  “It’s more than one person,” I say. “It has to be. Christophe Volker went after Adrienne and then everything happened too fast for it not to be organized. Someone called Russell and told him about my book—”

  “You’re writing a book?” He actually sounds hurt.

  “Not like that,” I say. “I never meant for it to get out.”

  “Then what’s the point?” he asks.

  “It was an exercise,” I say. “For my peace of mind.”

  “Hippy-dippy bullshit,” he grumbles.

  “But someone got it,” I say. “Off my computer.”

  “You ever heard of a password?” he asks.

  I ignore him and keep going.

  “They read it and they got Russell Thorn to go to Julia. She knew my address and so the two of them came to my place. Whoever shot them was waiting for us to be together. Then they burned down Heather’s halfway house. Then Harry Peter Warden came forward about Dani. Then Billy Walker told the DA’s office about those letters. It’s all happening too fast.”

  “Someone who can organize communication from inside prison and outside,” Garrett says. “That takes a lot of effort.”

  “Dr. Carol,” I say. “Process of elimination. She’s the only one who knows how to press all our buttons like this.”

  “Motive?”

  “I think she’s sick in the head,” I say. “I think she believes that the only way to cure us is to kill us.”

  “A crazy headshrinker,” he marvels, then he tries out a tagline. “The doctor is in . . . sane.”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than that,” I say. “Maybe she wants to write a new book and needs a peg.”

  “That’d be cold-blooded,” he says, but I hear respect in his voice.

  “It’s a cold-blooded business,” I say. “Right now I think if someone looked at the visitor list for Billy Walker and then for Harry Peter Warden they’d find her name on both.”

  “Someone would have to be a genius to check those visitor lists, wouldn’t you say?” Garrett asks.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, this genius already has,” he beams. “I haven’t paid Mr. Warden a visit quite yet, but there’s one name that’s all over Billy Walker’s list like shit on a hog. And it ain’t your lady doctor. She sent someone to run her errands. It’s one of you girls.”

  I know who he’s going to say before he says it.

  “Chrissy Mercer,” he says.

  I was expecting Heather.

  “Oh,” I say, but I’m relieved for a moment that maybe Heather’s back on my side again.

  “Makes sense,” he says. “Your lady doctor loves collecting final girls. She just didn’t tell you she had the complete set.”

  My relief disappears and I feel sick again but that doesn’t matter. It’s possible, and if it’s possible I have to see if it’s true.

  “Mr. Warden and I are going to have a little come-to-Jesus while you engage in some girl talk with Crazy Chrissy,” he says. “I even brought some of your topless pictures to help flush her out.”

  Of course he still has those pictures.

  “What about Provo?” I ask.

  “Hell,” he says. “I was never going to take you to Provo, Lynne. Your daddy would come back from his grave and kill me dead if I did that. Come on.”

  He crunches across the construction rubble and unlocks his trunk. Inside is my go bag and fanny pack. My pistol is still in it, my cash, my cell phone.

  “I charged up your phone and helped myself to five hundred dollars,” he says. “Finder’s fee. I’ll give you an invoice later. You can deduct it as a business expense. A ‘thank you’ would be the appropriate response. I know you got a hard time with social cues.”

  “What about you?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “What about me?” he tosses back. “I figure I pulled over because you were complaining of cramps and then you had some associates jump me. I’m thinking two, maybe three Black males, five-eleven to six-two, two hundred pounds apiece. One of them with a sawed-off shotgun. Maybe throw a skinhead in there, just to make it less racist.”

  “A skinhead and two Black guys?” I ask.

  “All you got to do is pop me in the eye, scuff me up a little, handcuff me to my vehicle,” he says. “Then you hike on back to that diner we passed. It’s about a forty-minute walk. You can call yourself a cab from there. You’re resourceful, Lynne. I’ll keep in touch with you about Warden and keep an eye on your doctor and you go hunt down Crazy Chrissy. Right now you got a hunch. If our book is going to be a bestseller, we need proof.”

  “Why don’t you punch yourself?” I ask.

  “I can’t bring myself to damage a work of art.” He grins. “Now, come on. Enough fooling around.” He secures his pistol in its holster with the snap. “I don’t want my reflexes kicking in and shooting you. Aim for my right eye, and see if you can raise a bruise with those bitty little hands of yours.”

  And I realize that Garrett P. Cannon has saved my life for a third time.

  “You think it’s more believable if it was two Black guys and two skinheads?” he asks.

  I knee him in the balls as hard as I can.

  “Oofff!” he says, and goes down sideways, hands cupping his crotch too late.

  “Just tell them it was one pissed-off girl,” I say.

  I pluck his keys out of his hand and get in the Caddy. I make a big loop around him as he struggles to his feet. I floor it and raise a brown dust cloud, and then I’m on the blacktop heading for the highway. I crank the air up high and punch the gas. I’ve got an emergency stop to make before I track down Crazy Chrissy.

  Even though it’s cold, that Carl’s Jr. burger is the best thing I’ve eaten all week.

  —Julia Campbell, letter to the Board of Parole Hearings, California Department of Corrections, February 2009

  THE FINAL GIRL SUPPORT GROUP XIV:

  The New Blood

  I decide to keep it simple. I’ll just kidnap Stephanie Fugate.

  The media spent a few days swarming all over the family, so it isn’t hard to find her address: a nice neighborhood in Santa Monica. I drive as slow as I can make myself go and park across the street. Her house has two stories, three bedrooms, a two-car garage, and lots of landscaping. She’s the older of two so she probably has the bigger bedroom over the garage. I’ll go through the bushes, get on the garage roof, and convince her to come outside. I’m not sure how I’ll do that exactly, but all I have to do is keep her safe for a few days. Our monsters get too worked up to drag things out for very long.

  No muss, no fuss, my plan is foolproof because it’s simple. I’m an arrow firing straight into the future. All my decisions feel right.

  I shove open the driver’s-side door, stand on the asphalt that’s still radiating the day’s heat, and before I can let the door swing shut a man says, “Tell me why you’re watching my house or I’m calling the police.”

  He’s standing in the shadow of a palm tree across the street, wearing shorts and a worn oxford shirt, and he’s probably been watching me as long as I’ve been watching the house. He holds his phone in one hand and a leash in the other. At the end of the leash, a bow-legged Chihuahua glares at me.

  I focused so hard on the house I forgot to check my immediate environment.

  “The press has been ringing your doorbell all week,” I say, improvising, eyes on his hand, making sure his thumb’s not pressing connect. “Neighbors coming by, phone ringing nonstop. I bet you’ve already had a few people who lied to you about who they were. Those are her future stalkers and fanboys. I get why you’re upset.”

  His fingers stab the phone three times, and then his thumb hovers ove
r the screen again.

  “I’m calling in three, two—”

  I step forward, hand outstretched.

  “Dr. Laura Newbury.” I smile. “I’m a therapist who works with young people like Stephanie. You may know my partner in our practice, Dr. Carol Elliott.”

  His mouth drops open like a cartoon and he turns into another man, reaching for my hand with his phone hand, doing a doofy dad double take, sliding it into his pocket, grabbing my hand in his sweaty palm, and pumping my elbow up and down.

  “You got our voicemails,” he says, face full of relief.

  “Dr. Elliott couldn’t make it,” I improvise. “So she sent me.”

  This will be harder, but better. I’ll convince the Fugates to let me take Stephanie somewhere safe, and they won’t send anyone looking for us because I’m Dr. Carol Elliott’s partner. It’ll let me drive a little slower, think a little clearer. I’ve just bought myself hours.

  “You can’t imagine what they’ve been doing to her,” he says.

  “Actually, I can.”

  “Ken Fugate,” he says, still grinning at the surprise of it all. “My wife is going to be so relieved. I hope you don’t mind, but can I see some ID? To be safe.”

  “Of course,” I say, and step back to slam the Caddy door closed, which gives me the privacy to reach into my fanny pack without him seeing the gun. I’ve got five different identities in here; it takes me a second to find the right one.

  Alternate IDs got intensely illegal after 9/11, so I paid extra to get these shipped all the way from China inside a book. Offset printed, die cut, a magnetic strip on the back, and a bar code make them identical to state-issued ID. The only difference is my picture laser engraved on the front next to Dr. Newbury’s name.

  “This license is expired,” Ken says.

  “I keep meaning to get it renewed.”

  “Two years ago.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  The Chihuahua stares up at me, unblinking.

  “You can call Dr. Elliott if you want,” I say. “I’ll give you her cell number. Tonight’s parent/teacher night at Pax’s school, though. That’s her son. But I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  The Chihuahua just stares. What is wrong with this thing?

  “Come on inside,” Ken says, his celebrity crush overcoming his caution, turning toward his house. “I think all the media cleared out, but who knows. I’m sure the last thing you want is for anyone to know you’re here.”

  “Absolutely,” I say, following him across the dark street.

  I control my breathing, I stay calm, I walk the way a famous trauma therapist’s partner walks, confident and cool, like I have all the answers. I repeat my mantra over and over inside my head.

  I am Dr. Newbury. I am Dr. Newbury. I am Dr. Newbury.

  “Stephanie seems like herself,” he says over his shoulder. “But this must be crushing. To have it happen twice before she’s even sixteen? After the tennis thing she couldn’t sleep; she stopped playing and that was her life; she lost weight. Then she starts going to Red Lake and bang! Total one-eighty. Now this? We don’t know what to do for her.”

  Instead of going in the front door, he pushes open a white gate and we go around the side of the house. It’s all windows. They don’t know what to do for Stephanie? Start by boarding up all these entry points, that’s what they should do. Harden their location. Act like there’s an actual emergency happening here.

  He unlocks the kitchen door while the Chihuahua keeps staring at me, and I’m glad they’re at least locking doors. There’s weather stripping around the edges and it makes a sucking sound when he pushes hard and I follow him into the cool, expensive kitchen that smells like fresh lemons.

  A woman with gray roots in her blond hair leans against the sink, watching us. She probably saw us coming through all these windows. She looks like the kind of woman who demands a lot of explanations.

  “Cheryl,” Ken Fugate says. “You’ll never believe it.”

  Cheryl scans my face as Ken unclips the leash from the Chihuahua’s harness. The stove is huge, and its burners look like they could scorch a human face; the knife block next to Cheryl is full of German steel, and there’s a meat tenderizer that could crack a skull on the butcher-block kitchen island. So many ways she could hurt me, all within her reach.

  “Who’s this?” she asks.

  “It’s Dr. Elliott’s partner,” Ken says as the Chihuahua clicks away into the house.

  We all stare at each other for a moment, and then I put my hand out.

  “Dr. Newbury,” I say. “Carol and I are going to make sure Stephanie gets through this.”

  Cheryl launches herself at me, chin twisting to one side, forehead going up, eyes turning red, and she presses her body to mine, hands on my shoulder blades, hair blocking my sightlines. I try to hug her back, the way an award-winning therapist’s partner would, as she presses herself to me, rendering my arms useless, holding me in place.

  I am Dr. Newbury. I am Dr. Newbury. I am Dr. Newbury.

  “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you so much.”

  “Should we talk in the living room?” Ken suggests.

  As we walk through the big white house with too many windows, I check out the locks on their front door (one deadbolt, one chain), see a recently installed alarm panel, and notice every single light is on, keeping out the dusk.

  “I’ve got all Dr. Elliot’s books,” Cheryl says, going to a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, and I see her hand floating over the shelves, and there they are. She even has the first one, before Dr. Carol learned about the marketability of a punchy title, A Therapist’s Guide to Trauma. Cheryl’s fingers stiffen, and she homes in on it.

  “Time is of the essence for Stephanie,” I say like I’m worth listening to, sitting on their white sofa with all the purpose of a doctor who cares about saving lives.

  I have to put my back to the empty living room because they’re standing by the other sofa. All that open space behind me makes my skin crawl.

  Ken and Cheryl sit next to each other, Cheryl poker-up-the-ass straight, Ken resting his elbows on his knees. The low Scandinavian coffee table between us holds a silver crane with a beak sharp enough to stab out an eye and a series of glass orbs heavy enough to smash someone’s teeth.

  “I can’t believe you came,” Cheryl says. “I mean, you’re not Dr. Elliott, but still, she wouldn’t work with you if you weren’t someone. Have you published any books? I assume when you’re here it’s like she’s here, isn’t it? Is she coming later? Not that I’m not sure you’re a wonderful therapist in your own right.”

  “Honey,” Ken says, putting a hand on her knee. “Let Dr. Newbury talk.”

  “Sorry,” she says, flashing me a skull’s hard smile. “It’s been a difficult week.”

  We wait while she finds a Kleenex and touches it to the corners of her eyes, then blows her nose.

  “We get hundreds of calls each week,” I say, which sounds like something Dr. Carol, who treats so many patients with so much care, would say. “But Stephanie falls into a very special category of trauma victim, which is why I’m here.”

  “She’ll be okay?” Cheryl asks in a very small voice.

  “No,” I tell her. I refuse to lie about this, even while pretending to be someone else. “That’s not possible.”

  “What?” Cheryl’s face collapses.

  “Keeping her safe is the best we can do,” I say, not sounding like Dr. Carol at all.

  “Exactly,” Ken says, rubbing Cheryl’s hand. “Once she’s safe, the hard work can begin.”

  “I need you to understand that Stephanie is what the media refer to as a final girl,” I say.

  Cheryl’s eyebrows meet in the middle.

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Denial won’t help Stephanie,” I say.

&
nbsp; “No,” Cheryl says, standing up. “I’d like to hear Dr. Elliott’s opinion. Can we speak to her? I want to know what she thinks. I’m sure you’re a fine therapist, but she is who we called.”

  These two are really starting to frustrate me.

  “Cheryl,” I say, speaking loudly and assertively. “There are things happening you don’t know, and they relate directly to Stephanie’s safety.”

  “What?” Ken asks, reaching for Cheryl’s hand without looking. She sits back down and unconsciously they lean into each other.

  “A week ago, someone began targeting final girls in the Los Angeles area,” I say.

  “Some of them live here?” Cheryl interrupts.

  “All of them,” I say. “Obviously you’re familiar with Adrienne Butler, but the day after she was killed, someone attacked Julia Campbell and Lynnette Tarkington.”

  “Who’s Lynnette Tarkington?” Cheryl asks.

  Is she kidding?

  “A final girl.”

  “Do you remember that one?” Cheryl asks Ken.

  “It’s not important,” I say, annoyed at their lack of focus. “What is important is that Stephanie is in danger.”

  “An officer drives by the house every three hours,” Ken says. “We thought about hiring a private security outfit but our neighbors already hate us without strangers tromping through their yards. Do you think we should go ahead and pull the trigger?”

  “The police, private security, they’re useless,” I say. “When one of these monsters comes after a final girl, nothing can stop him.”

  “But Christophe Volker is dead,” Cheryl says.

  “Volker is irrelevant,” I say. “This goes beyond Volker. The danger is very real, and it’s very immediate.”

  Something click-click-clicks on the hardwood floor and the Chihuahua prances into the room on its tiptoes.

  “Come here, Gordon,” Cheryl says, scooping him up. He sits on her lap and starts staring at me, again. Jesus Christ.

  I really want to look over my shoulder. I don’t like having this big empty room at my back, I don’t like having this tiny dog’s eyes boring into me, but a famous therapist’s partner wouldn’t look over her shoulder. Famous therapists and their partners aren’t scared of tiny dogs.