Suicide Blondes

by T. Blake Braddy

  He shifts his weight and runs one hand through his hair. “And then on the other,” he continues, “we have the idea that some little gremlin of a man is killing each member of the famed Suicide Blondes and is planting evidence to make it look specifically like you. How close am I?”

  “Pretty close,” I respond. “It’s far-fetched but not impossible.”

  “For you to be believed, it would have to be an amazing coincidence. Would, in fact, have to be several coincidences, all strung together.”

  “Occam may be right in a lot of cases, but he’s wrong here.”

  “Could be,” he says. “But either way, we are going to be extremely thorough with every single piece of evidence we recover. If you’re free and clear, then there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve made my reputation in this town on being diligent but fair. I’m not going to railroad anybody.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “But if you’ve been jerking me around, then I’ll have no choice but to come down on you with the full weight of the Metro PD. Do you understand that?”

  By the time I reach the hospital, it’s the middle of the night, and the nurses don’t want to let me in, but I think they’re pretty much terrified of me, so of course they do.

  I shamble in like the walking dead and seat myself next to mom. She sleeps peacefully, and under the light in this moment, she doesn’t look nearly as sick as all the tests and the doctors’ somber discussions make her seem.

  Eventually, though, her eyes flutter open, and she seems aware of my sorrow, because she speaks in a plaintive, gentle voice.

  “You were always such a sensitive child,” she says, and I am momentarily dismayed by the need to be comforted by her. She’s the sick one, after all.

  She reaches up and touches her face, as if she’s forgotten what it feels like, and then she gets a distant look. “It’s that ugliness with the St. Clair girl. It changed you, changed the whole way you carried yourself. I expected you to go to an Ivy League school, you know that?”

  I shake my head. Mom never mentioned college, in part—I believe—because of everything that happened with Dad. When he died, all the fight just seemed to slowly seep out of her, until she was nothing more than the silhouette of the strong-willed woman of my early childhood.

  “And now here you are, afraid for your life. It should have never gone this far.”

  “This was the way it was always going to go,” I say. “Wherever I am now, it’s where I was always meant to end up.”

  She plucks at the bed sheet, like a dress she hadn’t expected on wearing. “Which means I was always meant to end up here,” she says. “So sad. So sad, indeed.”

  I draw a deep breath and try to muster the strength to contradict her, but I can’t. I believe my life has led inevitably to this point, and so instead I just let the night slip away from the both of us.

  Before long, she’s asleep, and so am I.

  It isn’t until the next morning that I realize Audrey and my mom are in the same hospital, so I swirl enough sugar into my coffee to stand a spoon in it, and then I head down to ICU. A stern-looking nurse stops me before I can make it to her room, and the whole time she denies me, I can see recognition in her eyes.

  She knows who I am.

  “If you’re not family,” she says, “you cannot be allowed inside. I’m sorry.”

  The last bit is so sarcastic, I can practically see the shade she’s throwing at me.

  “I just need to see her,” I respond, adding, “I’m the one who found her.”

  Somehow, that does it, and moments later I’m standing outside her little pod, staring in as if she’s the most pitiful kind of zoo animal on the planet.

  Her beauty is in the fragile nature of her existence. She’s barely hanging on, and for some reason, it makes her look stronger. Even unconscious, she has the air of a fighter, of someone who will not give up, and suddenly I’m embarrassed by my own previous perceptions of her. She’s as strong as anybody I’ve known, and I only hope she makes it to the other side of this so I can tell her that.

  She has done what Madeline St. Clair was unable to do: survive.

  I’m not much of a pray-er—as in, one who prays—but nevertheless, I close my eyes and say a few private words on Audrey’s behalf. I muster all the dignity of a lapsed Catholic and give my godly side a stretch. I don’t know if that sort of thing works with God—don’t know if He’d even listen to someone like me—but then again, it can’t hurt.

  Then, I go outside for a cigarette. I’ve started smoking again. I haven’t had that many cigarettes, but I make the decision that it’s time I start in earnest again, not just when I’m stressed or when I drink. I am a smoker again, and all I want to do is just smoke and smoke and smoke. Stare off into the distance, maybe, and wonder how things will turn out. But mostly just smoke.

  When I reach the hospital’s front entrance, however, I’m mobbed by reporters of all persuasions, each looking for an angle for their shitty news story.

  Do you know who did it, Mary Ellen?

  Is it someone connected with the Coughlin family?

  Have the cops contacted you about the crimes?

  Can you speculate as to whether or not there’s a serial killer on the loose?

  It’s not speculation, if you know it’s true. Someone is mowing down the Suicide Blondes, and he’s basically halfway there. Maybe he’ll circle back around to Audrey, once he’s finished me and Gillian off.

  I push past them and hurry to my car, as if that were the whole intention all along. I get in and light a cigarette and just drive. No idea of where I’m going, but I know I’ve got to get the hell out of there.

  Eventually, I end up at Gillian’s place.

  Gil’s waiting for me with a half-gallon of moose tracks ice cream, and I sort of half-collapse in her arms for several minutes before I can regain my composure.

  We sit on the porch of her swanky digs, looking out over the Nashville skyline’s recent facelift. I’m not really hungry, but I plow through the ice cream like I haven’t eaten for days, and then I smoke a cigarette, all in silence. Gillian only watches, paying attention to the broad strokes of my movements without commenting on them.

  Finally, she asks, “Want to talk about it?”

  I shake my head no, like I don’t, but then I do exactly that. “Privately, I made fun of Audrey,” I say, “like her fears about being stalked had more to do with her mental state than the truth. I thought, you know, it was just Audrey, being her dramatic self.”

  “I think we all engaged in a little bit of that,” she says. “It’s totally understandable.”

  “The irony is, I had all this disdain for her because of my stalker. Now, it is entirely possible that Timothy Allred is her stalker, too.”

  I avoid her eyes because she’s staring at me. This is how Gillian operates. She doesn’t leap to conclusions. She processes things. She’s like a human computer chip, moving information from one format to another.

  After a lengthy pause, she says, “That’s just speculation, though, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, M.E. It’s obvious the guy is out of prison. That much we do know. But it seems to me, I don’t know, that you’ve created this whole narrative about him tracking us down out of whole cloth.”

  “He was released, Gil,” I reply.

  “That’s true, but do you have any evidence that he’s here and not hiding out somewhere in Washington state?”

  I roll my eyes. “Because I know, all right? He’s here, and he’s behind this. If he’s not, then I’ll treat you to a dinner at the Catbird Seat, my treat.”

  “If we make it through to the end.”

  “Gillian!”

  “We’re down two, girl,” she says. “It’s not unrealistic to think that maybe one or both of us will not see Christmas.”

  “You sound oddly okay with that.”

  She blows out a long, discontented breath. “I’m just fac
ing facts. We cannot go blindly into the end game of this thing. If it keeps moving toward its inevitable conclusion, then one or both of us will be targeted.”

  “Detective Ciccotelli—has he talked to you yet?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Well, either way, he’s offered to place me into a protective custody. I’m sure he’d do the same for you. Maybe that’s the way through. Be surrounded by cops one hundred percent of the time.”

  “Like we’re Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or something,” she says, smiling. It never quite gets to her eyes, but it’s a nice try, either way.

  “So should we go into witness protection or something?”

  Briefly, as if it’s a physical tic, Gillian glances at her door. The deadbolt is locked, so I’m sure she can breathe a sigh of relief, but the gesture brings up something.

  “How bad is it, Gil?”

  She avoids my eyes.

  “Oh my God, you’re getting them, too, aren’t you?”

  With a quick shake of the head, she attempts to push the idea away.

  “What is it? Threatening texts?”

  A single tear forms in the corner of her eye, but she wipes it away before it can fall. She is not the type to allow tears in front of people. She thinks it a form of weakness.

  “Tell me, Gillian.”

  “I—”

  “Just say it.”

  “He—if it’s your malevolent phantom—hacked into my computer.”

  A lump settles way down in my chest, like I’ve swallowed something dry and big, and it’s stuck way down in my diaphragm.

  I have a sneaking suspicion that someone’s been peeking around in my work computer, that maybe whoever broke into the Airbnb might have gained access somehow. If they were able to get into the computer, there are ways of them accessing my stuff remotely. I could see the same thing happening to Gillian, truth be told.

  She gets up, pours herself a glass of wine and returns to the couch.

  “I have this—thing,” she says. Her voice is shaking. “It’s a folder in one of my cloud drives, where I keep some...risqué images—”

  “No.”

  She nods. “Just, you know, private things. Some videos, too. It’s no One Night in Paris, but I don’t want this stuff getting out. It could ruin me.”

  The words revenge porn flash across the front of my mind as she talks. It’s the worst kind of digital violation, and yet it’s consistent with what our unnamed stalker—

  (Timothy Allred)

  —wants to accomplish. To humiliate us and then end our lives.

  This would be step one, and a fitting one for one of the Suicide Blondes.

  It just happens to be Gillian’s turn.

  “And not just me,” she says, continuing. “I’ve been involved with some guys who have careers. None of them will end up in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, but they can fill venues. If any of the stuff in that folder gets out, it will be some hashtagable material.”

  She buries her face in her hands.

  “Could it be a jealous ex? Someone you’ve dated who might have a grudge?”

  It’s my attempt to give her the benefit of the doubt, to pull this out of the realm of the entirely speculative.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I genuinely don’t know. All I can say for sure is that someone’s been in that folder without my consent.”

  “But so far you haven’t seen any of it outside the folder?”

  “No,” she says flatly. “It’s just swirling unnecessarily in my head.”

  “There’s a chance nothing will come of it.”

  She nods, but there’s no weight behind it. She knows I’m just being nice.

  “You know,” she says, “it’s almost like I always expected this to happen. As if I created that folder for the sole purpose of having it turn around and bite me in the ass someday. Perhaps the guilt made me do it.”

  Maybe, I think.

  But in reality I hedge.

  “We’ve all put things on the internet that we regret.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asks. “Do you have a half-dozen sex tapes floating around on Dropbox? Is that something you have to worry about?”

  “Well, no,” I reply.

  I can’t remember the last time I had sex. Not that it was that long ago. It was just that unmemorable. Definitely not something worth filming.

  “Then keep your fucking mouth shut about it,” she says, and then her face twists up into a godawful pained look.

  “I’m sorry,” she adds, “I don’t mean it. I’m just—God, I’m just so stressed.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I reply, thinking about the source of the hack. If it’s an ex-boyfriend, I’m in the clear.

  If, however, it’s The Man From My Past, then I should be apologizing to Gillian.

  “Anyway,” she says, “maybe we can talk about it when I have more perspective on it. Right now, it’s just so raw that—”

  “I get it,” I reply.

  “I mean, the folder was password protected and everything. I’m just—I feel so stupid. I know better. I do. I know better, and yet I left this window open so that someone could waltz in and take whatever they wanted.”

  She sighs heavily and finishes off her wine, as if signaling the end of that part of the conversation.

  After another generous pour for the both of us, she changes the subject.

  “You know,” she says, “I think I can pinpoint the moment it all started to go to shit between Madeline and Audrey.”

  She shrugs. “Not that it matters in any objective way,” she adds. “It just might give you something else to contemplate as this whole nightmare plays itself out in front of us.”

  “What is it?”

  “Amelia Wessinger told me at a birthday dinner—place called 404 Kitchen—that Madeline and Audrey got into a screaming match that ended with them swinging their handbags at one another. Full on catfight.”

  It prompts an uneasy giggle from me, which then fades into a kind of weird sadness. One of them is dead, and the other is barely hanging on, all because of me. Because I came back to Nashville.

  It’s like feeling that I’ve murdered someone all over again.

  “What else did Amelia say?”

  Pretending I know who she is.

  Gil shrugs. “In the moment, it was just a tick-tock of this happened, that happened, and then we had a good laugh about it. I mean, this was right during the Kavanaugh nomination, so we had more on our minds than our old friends’ particular brand of crazy.”

  “The details matter,” I reply. “What else did she say—anything?”

  “The only thing she said she heard was them arguing about regret.”

  “Regret?”

  She smiles. “Madeline was making this big production up about how she regrets the past but that there’s nothing she can do about it. That there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”

  “That sounds like it could be anything.”

  “Really does. I mean, shit—”

  “We’re all full of the stuff, right? Regret, that is. Not shit.”

  “Although most of us are full of that, too.”

  She smiles sardonically and then adds. “M.E., you know the both of them, know how they are. Were. They’ve always gotten into the middle of everything. If I personally litigated every issue that came between them, I’d have no time for a life of my own. That’s what’s good about you. You’ve never interfered in our private lives.”

  She sees my expression, and it causes her to krinkle her nose, a gesture I haven’t seen since we were teenagers.

  “What is it?”

  “I have to be honest with you,” I say, incapable of holding it in any longer.

  “Shoot,” she replies, her voice uneven under the weight of the conversation.

  Blood warms my cheeks, as I feel embarrassment rising to the top, and I can’t help but sigh before going into the whole ordeal.

  “So, after everything...happened, I felt isolated from
the world. Trapped on the west coast, with only myself to keep me company. But that solitude slowly cracked the foundation of my life—and then Facebook happened.”

  Gillian nods, following along, though a crease appears between her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, the private account,” she responds. “That might have fooled some people, but not me. I don’t just friend people I don’t know. I did a little research on you, M.E. Your profile name is just your mother’s maiden name topped off with a random first name. It’s not exactly rocket science—”

  “And yet no one else figured it out.”

  “It’s just the nature of being my friend, I guess,” she says.

  I let that thought sink in. She’s about to learn what it’s like to be my friend. “Well, anyway, for a time that was enough. I felt like I was getting away with something. And then I didn’t feel that way anymore. It became rote and predictable, of course, because it always does.”

  Gillian is no dummy, and so the truth of what’s happened dawns on her face before I relay the information to her.

  “You spied on me.”

  It’s not like that—my description is much less generous than that—but I have no choice but to keep going.

  “I did a little research of my own, Gil, and somehow I ended up with your social media passwords.”

  “Which ones?”

  I smile, despite myself. “All of them.”

  Gillian isn’t vicious, but she’s also no pushover, either, so her anger manifests itself in a righteous scowl.

  “That’s my private account,” she responds. “That’s my private information. I set up two factor authentication. I used a secure password.”

  “Apparently not secret enough,” I say.

  It’s a sad attempt to lighten the mood.

  “You fucking monster,” she replies.

  Yup, I think. I earned that one.

  “We’re the last two,” I reply, as if that will do anything at all. “We need to—”