Blood Will Out

by Jo Treggiari

  “Hey, you came closer than anyone else,” Jesse said. “It wasn’t until I saw her grab a cat off the street that I started wondering.” He looked sheepish. “I started wondering if she was not the odd yet gentle library assistant we all knew. Talk about being stupid.”

  “Ari didn’t say she was stupid,” Lynn said hotly. “She was naïve. Like we all were. Anyway, go on,” she told Ari.

  “So, I went back to the library that day. There was this book I remembered seeing, written by this woman who had been married to a serial killer and hadn’t known until he got caught trying to kill his fifteenth victim. And I wanted to check it out, see if I could get some insight into how a murderer would hide their true self even from those closest to them. I wrote down some notes and Miss Byroade started asking me a bunch of questions.” Ari shook her head. “I told her that I suspected there was a psychopath living in Dempsey Hollow, because of the butchered pets.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She was so sympathetic. I think she put her arm around me.” Ari shuddered. “I hate the thought of her hands on me.”

  “She’s dead, Ari. She can’t touch us now.”

  “That’s right, Ari. We won,” Jesse said fiercely.

  “She said she was sure I was right. I left, and a little while later, she pulled up beside me in her car. And then she told me she’d just seen Sourmash with a dog. She thought she’d discovered another killing zone, a fresh one. I think she actually used that word. She was shaking with what I thought was outrage, but now I think it was excitement.” Ari swallowed hard. “And so I said I’d go with her to check it out and catch Sourmash in the act.” She felt the beginning of a bad headache coming on, something that had continued to plague her since her time in the well.

  “And what about Stroud?” said Lynn, scooting closer and propping Ari’s shoulder with her own. Ari leaned into her, comforted by her warmth and solidity.

  “He was in her car. He was pretty much passed out. She had brandy and I drank some just to settle my nerves. I was so set on us catching up to Sourmash that I didn’t really think about him. He was mumbling and laughing, just saying stupid shit about how high he was. She said she was giving him a ride home. I trusted her—” Her voice choked off.

  Taking a deep breath, Ari continued. “Once we got to the cabin I followed Miss Byroade into the woods. Stroud got out too and went into the cabin. He could hardly walk.” They exchanged glances, and Ari knew they were all thinking the same thing: Stroud had gone into the cabin and Miss Byroade had killed him there.

  “I should have done something. I noticed she was watching you. Like, all the time,” Jesse told them. “With this intense, hungry gleam in her eyes.” He ducked his head, and then looked at Lynn and back at Ari with an almost sorrowful expression. “I started tailing her and then following you, but it was nothing specific, just a bunch of suspicions.” He thumped the table, making the coffee mugs rattle. “When I ran into you in the maze, I’d just watched her bury a plastic bag out there. I dug it up. Two dead kittens.”

  “Were they…?” Ari couldn’t help but ask. Flayed was the word that had sprung to her mind.

  “No, just dead. Really dead.” Jesse swallowed audibly. “I should have said something to somebody.”

  “No one would have believed you,” Lynn said, fussing with a scab on her lip.

  “I wouldn’t even have believed you,” Ari said, handing her some lip balm. For a moment Lynn looked at it as if she wasn’t sure what it was.

  “And then, that day—” He paused. Lynn gave an almost imperceptible nod. That day would always only mean one day for all three of them. “After you pulled the fire alarm, Ari, I saw her at the school. She was there. And I followed her out to the house. I was so stupid. I just figured I was going to be able to deal with whatever happened.”

  “When she changed,” Ari said, giving voice to the memory that still visited her in nightmares, “it was like watching a wolf go from lying in the grass all lazy and sleepy to ripping open a deer.”

  Lynn’s face whitened. She’d been looking out the window and her eyes went wide and blank. She let out a shuddering breath. “I need to tell you.” She paused and Ari interlocked her fingers with Lynn’s. “It was the same for me. I was on my way to meet you, Ari, after getting that text-to-voice message…” She gulped. “Of course, it wasn’t from you.” She took another deep breath and continued. “I was going to the bookstore to pick you up the new Mary Russell mystery as a peace offering, and she drove by, stopped and offered me a lift. She said she was on her way to the bookstore too. We were chatting, and she pulled over behind a gas station. And then she went quiet…and her face transformed.” Her hand went to her throat. “She got her hands around my neck so fast, I passed out before I even knew what was happening.”

  “Hey, at least she didn’t hit you with a lead pipe. I feel like the dead guy from Clue,” Jesse said. His tone grew serious. “There was nothing human in her. Nothing.”

  Frances had put a Vince Guaraldi CD on—Ari always imagined Schroeder from the Peanuts cartoon bent over his tiny toy piano while the rest of them gathered around Charlie Brown’s pathetic tree. She felt tears burn at the back of her throat. Once upon a time her world had been all about presents and comic strips and Linus with his smelly old blanket that transformed from a thing of comfort into a weapon.

  Her mother bustled in from the back room, carrying a platter of assorted cupcakes. “I thought you might be hungry,” she said in a forced cheerful voice. “There’s chocolate ganache, salty caramel and lemon buttercream.”

  She put them down in the middle of the table and looked at them expectantly. Ari reached for one and then held it in her fingers. It looked huge. Impossible to swallow. She put it down beside her uneaten cinnamon roll.

  “Eat them all. Please,” Ari’s mom said, dropping a gentle kiss on the top of Ari’s head. After a moment, she did the same to Lynn, and then to Jesse, before whirling around and disappearing into the back room.

  “Moms,” Jesse said wryly, but he looked pleased. “My grandmother’s been making me the full roast beef dinner every night. I think I’ll puke if I see another fluffy mound of mashed potatoes.”

  Ari pushed her cupcake around. “Fixing the world with butter and sugar.”

  “Mine’s let me choose dinner and a movie every day this week,” Lynn said. “The L.H. just about imploded from the injustice of it. And the Shits are staging a full rebellion.”

  “Mark probably thinks you just did it for attention,” Ari said, cursing herself when the shadow fell over Lynn’s face again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay,” Lynn said. “You’re totally right. I think he’s working out how to get kidnapped and held for ransom.” This time the smile stayed in place for a few seconds.

  “She was twenty-four,” Jesse said abruptly. “Not that much older than we are.”

  Just like that the atmosphere became dark and oppressive, as if every lightbulb had blown at the same time. Lynn grabbed Ari’s hand.

  For a moment they all stared at each other, eyes flicking away and then back again. Ari saw some of the wariness they had in common. A knowledge, an alertness that most people were lucky enough to escape. She thought she’d learn how to handle it, but worried about Lynn and hated seeing the traces of fear, the sadness sketched on her face.

  Jesse cleared his throat and pulled his hat down lower over his forehead. Ari couldn’t help notice that he’d spooned about half a canister of sugar into his coffee and now he couldn’t stop stirring it.

  Under her cast, her arm itched. She groaned and wriggled and Lynn let go of her hand to pass her a spoon. Ari tried to poke the end in to scratch it, but she couldn’t reach the spot.

  Lynn found the words that were juddering around inside Ari’s head. The thought she woke up to and went to bed with. “Is she dead? Are we sure?”

  “The police found a black glove,” said Jesse.

  “And?” Ari
couldn’t help but ask.

  “I saw her go under.”

  Ari hadn’t seen anything. She’d been drowning.

  “While you were calling the cops, we watched the river to see if she’d surface,” Jesse said. “And they sent divers in and they dragged it.”

  “She was so strong. It was as if insanity made her stronger,” Ari said.

  “She was crazy but she wasn’t invincible. Like us.” Jesse’s voice drifted away, and an uneasy expression crossed his face. “She drowned,” he said finally. Emphatically.

  Ari wondered who he was trying to convince.

  “The creek cuts into a ravine for a few hundred yards,” Lynn said. “They think her…body probably got trapped in there. Underground.”

  Ari shuddered. It must have been a horrible way to die.

  Miss Byroade had tried to kill all of them, but still Ari couldn’t really equate that woman with the one she’d thought she’d known. Known and liked. Then she thought about how the librarian’s face had transformed into a mask of rigid, emotionless control. It just didn’t seem that a river and some rocks could extinguish that kind of energy.

  “I survived it,” she said.

  “Because we pulled you out.” Jesse shook his head. “No way to get divers into the ravine, but no sign of her anywhere else.”

  Ari wished with her whole being that she could believe it.

  “It’s been three weeks. They set up road blocks. And alerts. She’s dead.”

  But the question that kept circulating through her brain and waking her in the middle of the night was what if she isn’t? She could have survived too. She could be out there, disappearing and then appearing somewhere else, as someone else. Ari tried to remember what the librarian’s face had looked like in repose. It was blurred, no features distinct, except for those weird, unfocused eyes. It was easy to imagine that people would barely register her; that she could slip off one mask and put on another, look younger or older at will. Ari felt a chill slip up her spine. She was the perfect predator. She had evolved.

  “What do you think, sweetie?” she asked Lynn, who had her head down, staring at her untouched food.

  Ari had shredded her cupcake without even noticing. She swept the sticky crumbs up into a pile, wiped her fingers on a napkin. She pushed the platter toward Jesse, who had already eaten two and now helped himself to a third. At least her mother’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

  “I think she’s dead,” Lynn said finally. “What I want to know is”—she looked up, her face crumpled and tear-streaked—“why she did that to me.”

  Ari felt her heart break. There were no words. Time was what was needed. That was what Dr. Barker had told her, and what she was sure Lynn’s and Jesse’s therapists had said as well. Time for things to balance themselves out again. For life to regain some semblance of normality. Ari wasn’t even sure she knew what normal was anymore. What had happened was too raw, too recent, too overwhelming.

  “It wasn’t you. She was insane. She was psychotic. It could have been anyone. Random,” Jesse said.

  No motive. That was one of the things that made serial killers so hard to catch. They killed for the thrill of it, Ari thought.

  “She selected me,” Lynn said, shaking her head. “She had a plan. You know it.” She turned to look at Ari. “She chose you too. Out of everyone out there, Miss Byroade picked us both, Ari. What does that mean?”

  It was a question without an answer, but still it hung heavy in the air between them. Without realizing it, they all drew closer together.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Jesse said, raising his head. “The police have her sketchbook.”

  Ari shuddered. She didn’t think she’d ever forget those drawings. They were like a window into Miss Byroade’s mind. A diary of what she’d done and what she planned to do. Her grand design.

  Not Byroade, she thought, Rose Columbine Maddox. That was her real name. Three names, like all the famous serial killers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I bitterly regret the loss of my sketch diary. The police will pore over my words and art and they will understand nothing. They will vilify me.

  Two things give me comfort.

  I have always been good at making myself useful, at ingratiating myself. Every small town and big city needs volunteers for the soup kitchen or the library or the school cafeteria. I will find my place again. After all, I have my boning knife with me.

  Everything else I need—my tableaux-to-be, all the beautiful details, their faces, their scents and mannerisms, my experiences—still live and evolve, imprinted in my cerebral cortex where memories are preserved.

  Even Ari’s phone number.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanking people always makes me feel like I’m Sleeping Beauty’s parents—sure to forget to invite someone crucial to the party—but here goes:

  My fierce agent Ali McDonald at The Rights Factory for going above and beyond in all things always, and for enervating drinks in airport bars, and Diane Terrana for her incredibly valuable and incisive editorial input.

  Editors extraordinaire Lynne Missen and Peter Phillips, and everyone at Penguin Random House Canada, as well as Linda Pruessen, copy editor, and Sarah Howden, proofreader.

  Amazing writer friends who gave much-needed critical feedback and/or talked me down from the ledge: Alison Gaylin, my critique partner E.M. Alexander, Kat Kruger, Elisabeth Bailey, Charles de Lint and Lynn McCarron.

  For unending love, support and punctuation, my beta readers Susan Treggiari and Silvia Rajagopalan.

  And Charise Isis, Nancy Wilson, Charity Valk, Madeleine Kendall, Kelly Jane Barker and Lisa Doucet—because YOU! And me without you equals not fun.

  Thanks to Doug Kearney for the website and human answers to all my cyber questions.

  Much love to Deb Lavin, Denirée Isabel and Miss Sara J.

  Also Darrin White who let me interrogate him for hours about butchering animals with humanity.

  Thanks and accolades to indie booksellers everywhere, specifically (since I co-own it) Lexicon Books in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and my delightful partners in books and wine, Anne-Marie Sheppard and Alice Burdick. Eternal respect and love to the libraries, librarians and library assistants of the world.

  My kids, Milo and Lucy, who are the reason for everything I do.

  And you, Dear Reader.