The Mentor

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

  William sat patiently until they passed by Eldridge Cliff. It was a precarious turn on Route 10, one that people under the influence had misjudged before and shot right over the fencing. The FBI whizzed through the turns like they were race cars on a track. Sheriff Pealey wouldn’t be so lucky.

  William bashed his face—once, twice—into the grate that separated him from the front seat. He used all his might, as if he were a mother lifting up a car that had fallen on her baby. He wiggled through the partition and lunged at Deputy Hawker with his teeth bared, chewed off a piece of the young rookie’s ear. He spat the deputy’s mangled ear in Sheriff Pealey’s face and chomped down on the sheriff’s nose. Cartilage crushed with each bite as the sensation of flying coursed through William’s veins. He swiveled around and saw only the night before him through the front window, the moon close enough to kiss, but other than that only a black void, nothing, as the car plunged a thousand feet below into trees that lit up instantly upon impact, their nuclear leaves dotting the skyline.

  From far away across Long Island Sound, spectators later said that they thought someone had been launching fireworks.

  41

  THE NEXT DAY, Kyle woke in the hospital from a dream where he was running but going nowhere, chased by some monstrous being. His legs still moved even after he opened his eyes. The doctors had stitched up his face when he was brought in, the sewn scars making him feel like a busted piece of furniture. The doctors gave the scars a fifty percent chance of healing. He had made a joke about it that he couldn’t remember because of the pain meds. He did, however, remember that it hurt to smile.

  Two FBI agents spent the morning grilling him. He went through every detail, tripping up a few times over what really happened versus the plot of William’s novel. A few bits, especially from ten years ago, were difficult to place in a time frame.

  “You saved Sierra Raven’s life,” one of the agents said. Kyle wondered why Sheriff Pealey wasn’t the one questioning him.

  The FBI found all of Erik Lassen’s body parts that William had strewn throughout the park. As for William’s body, it had incinerated in a fiery blaze. All that remained were a few teeth as identification.

  “And the sheriff?” Kyle asked. “He’s the real hero.”

  The two agents gave each other a stern look.

  “Sheriff Morris Pealey and Deputy Jesse Hawker were unfortunately killed too. Looks like Lansing caused their car to go off the cliff. The road was icy.”

  “But William is absolutely dead, right?” Kyle asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it verbalized.

  “Yeah, that son of a bitch is deader than dead.”

  Later, as Kyle ate his lunch of soup and Jell-O, he tortured himself by reliving the last few weeks. How much had William planned? Was everything orchestrated to create this ending? Had there been a decade of careful moves to reach this destination?

  A nurse entered after what must have been an hour of steady concentration.

  “Mr. Broder, your girlfriend called to say she’s on the way. We thought you were sleeping so we didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Thinking of Jamie momentarily quieted his obsessive mind. He longed to hold her. The nurse went to leave.

  “Wait. How is Sierra Raven doing?”

  “She’s gonna to be okay,” the nurse said. “Come on, I’ll take you to see her.”

  He found Sierra sitting up in bed. The doctors had affixed metal tips that resembled thimbles to all of her fingertips. She was attached to machines by various tubes. Her laptop glowed at her side, displaying a blank Word page.

  “Doing some writing?” A sharp pain stabbed into his cheek. He’d have to mumble when he talked for a while.

  Sierra pushed at her laptop until it fell off the bed, crashing to the floor.

  “Hey, hey,” he said, picking up the laptop and putting it on the side table. It had a crack down its center but still looked like it worked.

  Sierra stared straight ahead, a zombie.

  “The nurse said you’re gonna be all right. Me too, except for the slashes—” He ran his fingers across a sewn-up scar. “Are your folks coming? From Missouri?”

  “I told them to leave,” she said. Her voice sounded like every word was a chore. “They’re checking into a hotel.”

  “I can’t believe you were dragged into this, Sierra.” It was all he could think of saying.

  “When I came home, William was already inside my house,” she said in a monotone. “I don’t know how he got in. He was sitting on my couch, and I had grocery bags in my hands. I told myself to run, but I didn’t have the energy because I knew he’d catch up. So I gave in. I woke up paralyzed in darkness, trapped in his trunk.”

  She began to cry. Kyle had never seen anyone appear so wounded. He hugged her, both of them bawling, squeezing out every last tear until there were none left.

  “You’re gonna be okay,” he said, echoing the advice to himself. “We’re gonna get over this.”

  She shook her head.

  “Never.” Her face became frozen in horror. “Never, never, never.”

  “No, we will. It’ll just take time—”

  “Part of me will always be in that shack, as he sliced off my fingers.”

  She curled into a fetal position with her back to him. He put a careful palm on her shoulder.

  “He wins if you act like this,” Kyle said sternly. “Don’t you see? We beat him and survived. That’s what matters.”

  “Nothing matters,” she said, a chill in the room, the hospital cold. Kyle became aware he was wearing only a gown and slippers.

  “This will make you a better writer,” Kyle said.

  Sierra turned over, disappointed. “What does that mean?”

  “I know you can’t see this right now,” he said, his words half a step ahead of his brain. “But you’ll use what happened to you. It’ll seep into Girls Without Hope. It’ll make the pain of the girls more palpable for the reader.”

  “I have no plans of ever writing again.”

  He laughed in shock and then winced from the pain. It felt like a stitch had torn.

  “Sure you will.”

  “I’ll pay back my advance if I can, or give it all away to a charity that works to end violence against women and girls, or sue me, I don’t care … I don’t care,” she repeated, turning over and bringing the sheets up to her neck. “Like, what’s the point?” She coughed from choking on her tears. “What’s the fucking point? What’s the fucking point?”

  She rocked herself into a fit. A nurse came in to calm her down. She glared at Kyle as if he was responsible.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to both of them. Once Sierra settled, the nurse exited with a warning not to agitate her again.

  “This is what William wanted, Sierra. He was jealous of your book and that’s why he did this to you. You have to keep writing to prove him—”

  “He is dead, and I don’t give a flying fuck what he wanted. All I know is that my fingers feel like they are on fire. The doctors said that if we were rescued five minutes later I would have lost too much blood.” Her mouth was gaping, one bloodshot eye throbbing. “I want to crawl into a hole and never come out.”

  “That’ll pass, all it takes is time…”

  But he didn’t know what time would bring. It was just one of those clichés people said when there was nothing sensible to say. He imagined waking up every night with his heart slamming into his chest. He felt woozy.

  “We will never be okay,” she said, her whole body shaking before she sank back into a fetal position.

  He had the desire to back out of the room, rationalizing that he would be fine again. He’d give Jamie a key to his place and have her move in. He’d get right back into editing books like Shane Matthews’s The Dead Can’t Hunt You Down and even Girls Without Hope once Sierra was ready. He wouldn’t wake from a nightmare with his heart exploding from his chest. He had defeated William and would win in the end. />
  As he was about to leave her room, he spied a Post-it pad with a pencil on the bedside table. He took a moment to compose his thoughts and scribbled YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL VOICE THAT NEEDS TO BE PUT TO PAPER. He went to tap Sierra on the back to show her, but then just left it on her pillow.

  42

  BACK IN HIS hospital room, the nurse asked Kyle if there was anything he needed. Since Jamie hadn’t arrived yet, he requested every major paper in the newsstand with William Lansing in the headlines. She seemed hesitant but came back with a stack. She told him that reporters were waiting outside but the hospital wouldn’t allow them in. He went to the window and saw a crowd of vultures below. The nurse left and he spread out all the papers on his bed. Newsday: “Editor Lured to a Deadly Shack.” The Wall Street Journal: “The Manuscript That Helped Solve a 10-Year-Old Cold Case.” New York Daily News: “Grieving Mother of Missing Girl Gets Devastating Closure.” New York Post: “Did the Lansing Family Aid in Mia Evans’s Death?” The New York Times: “The Murdering Mentor’s Last Words.”

  He picked up the Times, which had a picture of the note William left in Mia’s skeleton fist a decade ago:

  To Laura and the twins.

  And to the one who got away.

  La Vita Nuova.

  Kyle recognized the dedication from Devil’s Hopyard. This meant that when he murdered Mia, he had already started on his novel. He’d killed her for fodder so he could write a bestseller. But he also loved her, as proved by the additional reference to Dante’s book of prose and poetry La Vita Nuova—The New Life. When Kyle had first read the dedication, he’d glossed over the Italian words, but now he recalled a Dante seminar William had taught the semester after Mia went missing. The professor began with the author’s first sonnet, which alluded to a tale of infatuation Dante had with a girl named Beatrice.

  The newspaper article went on to dissect Dante’s sonnet as a clue for a possible motive to William’s barbaric acts. Although Dante barely knew Beatrice, she became his muse. In their final meeting, Dante wrote of a heart being consumed:

  Joyfully Love seemed to me to hold

  My heart in his hand, and held in his arms

  My lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.

  Then he woke her, and that burning heart

  He fed to her reverently, she fearing,

  Afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

  After Beatrice’s death, Dante’s love for her only grew. Beatrice became more alive to him than in the flesh. Dante called her “La gloriosa donna della mia mente,” the glorious lady of my mind, a muse that he was free to imagine as he wished. It was clear that Mia became William’s Beatrice.

  Kyle’s head hurt. How much of the truth had William confessed in the shack? Would he ever truly know the whole story? Everyone would keep trying to fit together the parts of a puzzle the psychopath laid out, but a few pieces would always remain missing. The air in the hospital room became colder, nipped at Kyle’s skin. He tried not to shiver but was unsuccessful.

  Kyle picked up the Post and read the article, “Did the Lansing Family Aid in Mia Evans’s Death?” The reporter stated that Laura Lansing was being held for questioning after she was found handcuffed to her sofa. A call had come into the sheriff’s office requesting backup at the Lansing house. The sheriff’s secretary, Loretta Samuels, replayed the phone message, which stated that Laura Lansing had attacked Sheriff Pealey. Mrs. Lansing was brought in for questioning along with her children, Alicia and Bill Jr. At the moment, it was still uncertain whether Alicia and Bill were involved too.

  A thousand theories spiraled in Kyle’s brain. Had William contacted Bill to help him bring Mia’s body to the shack? Did Alicia find out that her brother aided in Mia’s death and choose to remain silent?

  The article continued with the FBI discovering a rock covered with blood in William’s office along with boxes of journals outlining Devil’s Hopyard. The reporter stated that it would take days to comb through everything William wrote.

  Kyle turned to The Wall Street Journal’s article: “The Manuscript That Helped Solve a 10-Year-Old Cold Case.” The FBI found Kyle’s copy of Devil’s Hopyard left in the rental car and posted a photo of the manuscript’s cover. Kyle had never noticed it before, but the D in Devil’s had been drawn in the shape of a devil’s tail with an arrowhead. The journalist went on to discuss the origin of the arrowhead on the devil’s tail. Whenever a soldier was shot by an arrow to the chest, often the arrowhead was dangerously close to the heart. The wooden arrow and the head would be covered in blood. As Satan was frequently depicted in artwork as red, the red arrow and arrowhead became the devil’s tail.

  A knock on the door disrupted his concentration, but he ignored it. The desire to read through the rest of the newspapers was too great. Theory upon theory of how William could be hiding such a horrible secret for so long. Kyle was desperate to know more and spied a final headline, “The Real Hannibal Lecter,” with a picture of William staring back, his eyes black like marbles.

  “Kyle?”

  Jamie stood at the door.

  “Jamie!” He pushed William aside and opened his arms. She ran into them and buried her head in his shoulder. She felt his face hesitantly.

  “Oh, God, what did he do to you?” she asked. Heavy circles weighed down her eyes; it looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” he said, even though it hurt when she touched his scars.

  “I should have listened to you,” she said. “You warned me—”

  “It all sounded too crazy to be true.”

  “The things he did,” she whispered. “How could anyone…?”

  “He was sick, disturbed.”

  “I just want to pretend like it all never happened.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his Badgers key chain.

  “Bucky Badger saved my life.”

  She laughed at the absurdity of it, but then started crying.

  “It’s true,” he said, collecting her tears with his thumbs. “I thought my Swiss Army knife had been attached so I tried to get it out of my pocket to stab William. He had removed the knife, but it distracted him for a moment until the sheriff finally shot down the door.”

  He took off the key and placed it in her palm.

  “I want you to move in with me, Jamie. I want you to be there when I get home, always.”

  She stared at the key, and then her eyes shifted over to all of the newspapers.

  “I need to know that you can let William go.”

  “Of course I will. He’s dead.”

  “Kyle, this will follow you for the rest of your life. It’s national news. There are a ton of reporters outside.”

  “Yeah, we’ll have to give our statements, answer their questions…”

  “I know,” Jamie said sadly, as if that was not the response she wanted to hear. “And we will, but then … I worry…”

  He brushed a strand of blond hair from her eyes. “What, baby, what?”

  “I know you, Kyle, how you operate. Why William did this will become your new obsession.”

  “It was all plot for his novel.”

  She gestured to the newspapers on the bed. “How come you even bought these papers? Why would you do that to yourself after what you went through?”

  “I was just trying to find a way to make sense of it all. But you’re right, it’s unhealthy.”

  He kissed her. Her lips were dry and she hadn’t brushed her teeth. But he didn’t care. He imagined she’d been woken from sleep and rushed to the hospital when she found out what happened, no time for morning rituals. That was love. That was what Dante had wanted from Beatrice. What William wanted from Mia.

  “Kyle? Kyle!” Jamie snapped.

  “What?” He circled back to Earth.

  “You went away for a moment. Were you thinking about him?”

  Kyle gave a solitary nod.

  “I need to know if I move into your place that his name is never to be repeate
d in our house. We each give our statements to the press when you leave the hospital, and HE is never brought up again.”

  Kyle looked around at the sea of newspapers with William’s evil face. Could he really let William go, or would that madman always be there in some form, tucked away in a fold of his brain, a soft laugh that he would barely hear at first until it became deafening? He held Jamie tight, attempting to drive William out of his psyche. He kicked away all the newspapers until they were scattered about the floor. She was right about William’s presence still sinking in. Kyle needed to quit him cold turkey.

  “I promise you,” he said. He slid the Bucky Badger key chain on her ring finger as if he was proposing. “Please say yes.”

  She observed the cartoon badger as if it was an actual diamond ring. He could tell she liked the way it looked.

  “Okay, I do.”

  “I love you so much, baby.”

  They kissed again, passionately, losing themselves in it. He had shut his eyes, but through a tiny slit he could see William’s face on a newspaper that remained on the bed. The photo was from Bentley’s Web site, a formal head shot. His silvery hair neatly combed, wearing neither a smile nor a frown, gazing out at a world that was starting to fear his name.

  Kyle pictured himself strolling through the shelves of Barnes & Noble, cracking open the spine of a prominently placed book, and finding the same picture used as the author’s photo.

  He stopped kissing Jamie only because he was about to throw up.

  43

  TO ESCAPE THE media deluge that didn’t seem like it was going away, Kyle and Jamie headed to her aunt’s house in Wisconsin on Three Stepping Stones Lake.

  Since it was far into October, her aunt had already closed up the place for the summer with no plans to return until Memorial Day. The two of them would have complete idyllic isolation.

  A wall of snow banked the house. The Midwest was having the same early freezing temperatures as the Northeast. The inside had been set up with a prairie trail kind of vibe: wood everything and mounted deer antlers on the walls. Kyle had been ordered by Carter to take the next two weeks for pure vacation, so he shut off his phone and he and Jamie didn’t even bother setting up the Wi-Fi. They bought provisions from the local general store along with a dozen bottles of red wine and wrapped themselves in bearskin throws and made a fire. They listened to her aunt’s old Harry Belafonte and Simon and Garfunkel records, and they woke up at sunrise every morning to make love. They orbited back toward one another after having drifted apart. After a few days, Kyle felt the urge to do some work and started editing Shane Matthews’s The Dead Can’t Hunt You Down. He read passages out loud to Jamie and could see she was thrilled at the tale of an ex–hit man hunted down by his former organization. He realized how much he missed fiction after being sucked into his real-life thriller. Only once did he wake up with a pain in his heart.