The Stranger Inside

by Lisa Unger

  “I’m Lily’s mom, present and in love,” she said, holding her daughter. “But I’m myself, too. I can be both.”

  In the comfort of Sandy’s living room, she felt like she was acknowledging the feeling out loud for the first time. You were allowed to be both, weren’t you? She managed to put herself back together without disturbing Lily.

  “I get it,” said Sandy with an assenting nod. “Just take my advice and be that first. Because nothing else matters if you fail your child.”

  She flashed on Laney Markham’s father wailing, her cored-out mother. She picked up the recorder from the table and switched it off, stowed it in her bag. The air in the room had grown heavy, the past a hulking form in the corner draining all the light from the room. They chatted anyway about breastfeeding, and jogging strollers, both of them grateful for the mundane.

  Finally Rain stood and moved toward the door. Sandy followed, embraced her at the threshold, kissed Lily on the head.

  “Did he?” Rain asked again. “Did he ever talk to you about what happened to Kreskey?”

  Sandy drew and released a breath. She still looked so young, same creamy skin, same jewel-blue eyes, high cheekbones and toothy smile.

  “You have nothing to feel bad about, you know that, right?” Sandy laid a hand on Rain’s cheek. “You survived that day. You might not have. Why do you want to go back there? Don’t. Okay? Don’t go back.”

  Rain carried Lily back to the car and strapped her in. She sat in the driver’s seat a moment. It was still early. Lily stirred, kicked her legs. If she wakes up, we’ll go to the park. If not, one more stop, she thought. Lily’s head lolled to the side; she stayed asleep. Rain put the car in Reverse and headed north. It wasn’t lost on her that Sandy never answered her question.

  As she pulled onto the main road through town, the phone rang, Gillian’s number flashing on the dashboard caller ID.

  “Don’t be mad,” Gillian said by way of greeting.

  “Okay,” Rain answered, drawing out the word.

  “I might have mentioned the story to Andrew.”

  She was instantly mad. “Gillian!”

  Andrew. She could almost see the gleam in his eyes at the thought of this story.

  “He wants us to do it.”

  She was less mad. “What does that mean?”

  “He said we can do the story as a podcast—a long-form, character-driven series. He’ll produce. Well, he will if the network accepts his pitch. And when has anyone turned down golden boy Andrew Thompson?”

  “Wow,” she said, a mingle of excitement and worry doing a dance in her chest.

  “Our terms to be negotiated, of course.”

  Some of her guilt for following the story dissipated—at least she might be bringing some money in. This wasn’t just a passion project, her own personal grudge match, dredging up a past she couldn’t forget, hurting people in the process. It was a real story for a major network.

  “Are you mad?” asked Gillian.

  “Yes,” said Rain without heat.

  “I’m sorry,” said Gillian. “It was too good not to pitch. This is big, Rain. It’s your story, but it’s bigger than that. It deserves more than some indie project that gets buried in the app store.”

  “I’m not even sure I’m up to doing this,” she admitted.

  “You are,” said Gillian. “Of course you are.”

  There were lots of layers to the story, personal things she wasn’t sure she was ready to face or share. There was a mystery, an investigation. It looped in a man with whom she shouldn’t even be involved—for a million reasons. She wouldn’t have pitched it to the network. If they accepted, she’d lose control of the story. It would take on a life of its own, sweep her along with it. Still, there was that dark tingle of excitement—that deep drive to get to the heart of the story, even if the truth was the most painful thing of all. It was a big story. A career-maker. Yes, she still wanted that. It felt good to admit that she did.

  SEVENTEEN

  Agent Brower is back—again. It’s my morning without patients, the one I usually reserve for study and research. On these free mornings, I might review my patient notes, connect with colleagues to talk things through—patient issues or challenges. Maybe I’ll even have a session with my own therapist. We all have them, you know. No one needs a shrink more than a shrink. Later, I’ll go to the hospital to see one of my more troubled souls, then take evening sessions in my office.

  I’m edgy, distracted.

  I spent most of the night reviewing Agent Brower’s files, going over her notes. I’m gratified to report that they have very little to go on. Those images from the home security cameras, even the short video. They’re grainy and blurry, the person unrecognizable. Masked. Moving fast. He’s not identifiable in any way.

  Using what she has, though, I’ve created a loose profile for her, developed some theories. Former military or law enforcement, someone young, strong, intelligent. Someone who has been disillusioned with the system, who considers himself above the law, but working in tandem with its underlying philosophies. He’s following some code. Likely, he would not be married. He might have a criminal record.

  So, when I see her face on the camera, I’m ready. I buzz her in and go to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee.

  “If you don’t get caught, maybe it’s time to give this up.” Tess.

  She has been worried, all night, pacing as I put together my notes for the FBI, a disingenuous activity if ever there was one. My profile is not purposely misleading. There are some elements of truth to it.

  Tess has never been a big fan of my dark activities. After all, she’s Sandy’s daughter, all about love and forgiveness, karma, and the balance of the universe. The things I’ve done—the things he’s done—it’s just more of the same as she sees it.

  “At a certain point,” she says. I pour the not-quite-boiling water into the filter. “You’re just one of them.”

  But no. I’m not like them. I wasn’t born, like Kreskey. I didn’t come into the world damaged, my mental illness deepening through trauma and abuse. I don’t seek out innocence and destroy it. I was made, by Kreskey. Now I unmake. I am a doctor. I remove the cancer, even though I have to make a cut to do it. Sometimes we must harm to heal the world.

  “Bullshit,” says Tess easily. “You like it.”

  She’s right. I have grown to like it. The truth is I’m not sure I want to stop. I know he doesn’t.

  “I wonder if you can stop.”

  That’s a different matter, one upon which I don’t like to dwell. Who is in control? Who is the real Hank Reams—me or him?

  Tess wears a long white dress today, a sundress like the one she wore sometimes in summer. Her feet are bare, and her hair is loose, strands of sunlight gold. She would have been a beautiful woman. Not as beautiful as you, of course. Different. She stands, disapproving, by the door as I open it for Agent Brower, who is alone today.

  “Thank you for seeing me again,” she says. I direct her toward the couch, where she sits perched on the edge. “I feel like I’ve taken up a lot of your time.”

  What’s your story, Agent Brower? I find myself wondering. What is it about your life that has you chasing monsters? We all have our reasons. Most of us don’t come to this work without them. It takes drive and ambition to become these things—doctor, law enforcement agent, investigative reporter. There are grueling trials, failures, sacrifices. I wonder what’s driving this young woman.

  “This is my job,” I say. “I’m happy to help if I can. No partner today?”

  “He’s following up another lead,” she says vaguely.

  “I see. Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Is there something about her that reminds me of you? Or is it just that you are rarely far from my thoughts. No, I think it’s the practiced facade—as different from you
as flame is from jade, silk from metal, sunlight from moonbeams. But that still surface belies a wildness beneath, that’s what you both share.

  She follows me down the hallway to the kitchen.

  Does Greg know about us, Lara? Your husband. Does he know about our time together? Does he know the side of you that you revealed to me? About our correspondence—albeit a one-sided endeavor? I’ve always wondered about that. How much of yourself you share with him.

  You made your choice. And to be truthful, it was the right choice.

  Because Greg is the kind of man you marry, right? Handsome, stable. He’s a big guy, well built. He loves you, anyone can see that. He’s attentive to you, to the baby. He carries your bags. He does the grocery shopping—I’m guessing when you can’t get out during the day. But he’s not a big personality, not like your dad. He doesn’t have some huge ego that needs to be stroked and fed. He doesn’t crave the spotlight, doesn’t need to be the most interesting man in the room. He’s perfect for you. Really.

  I still wonder. Do you love him as much as he loves you?

  If I were your confidant, or your priest, or your shrink, I’d have advised you to marry Greg. Certainly no one with half a brain would recommend that you throw in with the man who shared your dark past, who was still mired in it. Who’d been changed by it. No matter how you felt about him. I’d tell you to marry the man who loved you best. Because marriage is less about that kind of knock-your-socks-off, head-over-heels thing than it is about compatibility, patience, warmth, respect. The hot stuff burns out fast, but the other qualities endure. They deepen. Or so the research suggests. I, obviously, wouldn’t know.

  For me, there has never been anyone but you.

  That night when we found each other again—we left the bookstore and found a table at the restaurant on Seventeenth Street, some unknown spot with a fireplace—I go back there again and again. The way the candlelight lit your skin, your shining eyes, the silken ink of your long hair. The way you tugged at it. Your pink lips. I loved you when we were children, but that love stayed buried deep. It was alive that night, its heart still beating.

  We talked and talked, catching up on years—a lifetime really.

  Then you said, your voice hoarse with emotion: “I’m so sorry for that day. If I’d listened to my mother, Tess and I would have gone the long way. Then I sat there, in shock, for so long. If I’d been stronger, I could have fought with you. I could have run for help. But it was hours. I don’t remember anything after he hit me. I’ve carried it with me.”

  The man who sat across from you, the student of human psychology, he understood. We always imagine ourselves as heroes. But the truth is that shock and terror are a brain event. The limbic responses of the brain, it’s hardwired, biological, the personality doesn’t control them.

  “You were a child,” I said. “There was nothing you could have done. You were bleeding. Your jaw was shattered. Lara, please, it’s not your fault.”

  You put your head in your hands and wept then, shoulders shaking. I saw your pain. Even the monster in me was soothed. Any anger he harbored faded to dust, for a while, anyway. And then we were standing, you in my arms. And then my mouth was on yours, the salt of your tears on my tongue. We took a cab back to my place, holding each other. We barely made it up the stairs.

  I pushed us inside, fumbling with the key. My place was a Lower East Side dump, high ceilings, little furniture, piles of clothes, and books stacked, my laptop open on the kitchen table. As we made love over and over on the futon, we listened to sirens outside, and the shouts of drug dealers. From my window, I could see a fire burning in a barrel in the abandoned lot across the street. Our bodies melted into each other. I felt whole again that night. I felt like the boy I was before Kreskey broke my psyche in two.

  Do you remember? Do you think of it, that night?

  You were on top of me, your body pale as the moon, your hair a river almost to your flat belly, your head tilted back in pleasure as you moved, languid, rocking.

  It’s pathetic to say that there has never been anyone but you.

  There have been other women, one-night stands, half-bearable dates that led to soulless sexual encounters. There was a girl in school who I think tried to love me. Recently a woman who, in another lifetime, might have been the one.

  But no, Rain. No, Lara. It’s only ever been you.

  There was such hunger between us, such a desperate, aching wanting. Did you ever have that with Greg? Have you ever cried while making love to him? I honestly doubt it. We are connected by the evil that leaked into our lives that day; it’s twisted around us like a vine of thorns. I know you feel it, too. It hurts but there’s a pleasure there, too, a deep intimacy. You don’t have that with him.

  Why am I thinking about you when Agent Brower sits at my kitchen table, staring at me with wide, earnest eyes?

  “Do you think it could be the same person?” she asks, snapping me back to the present.

  Yesterday, I wondered if she suspected me. Now, I think not. She looks tired. Her nails, which were perfectly manicured, are a bit frayed at the cuticles, as if she’s been biting at them. I’m glad she came alone today. I’m tired of the silent, hulking presence of her partner. There’s something I don’t like about him.

  “I’d say it’s doubtful,” I answer. “As I mentioned, there’s little precedent for a serial offender of this type.”

  “But the images,” she says. “The masked person at both scenes.”

  “True,” I concede, trying to look thoughtful. “It’s just that in my experience, serial offenders have a driver, some deep need they are trying to fulfil. These crimes, they’re all very different. Various regions. Different types of crimes. Different execution.”

  That’s not the word I intended to use but she seizes on it.

  “But that’s just it,” she says. “They’re all executions. Guilty men, or men widely perceived to be guilty, who escaped justice. They’re calling him that now. The Executioner.”

  “So, the bureau thinks it’s a serial. The same person.”

  “They do.”

  “According to the file there’s no physical evidence, nothing linking the crimes.”

  “Just the images. The meticulous nature of the scenes. The victim profile.”

  I nod, pretending to consider. “So, let’s say it’s the same person. What’s the driver, the thing he needs?”

  She puts a thumbnail to her mouth, then pulls it away, sits on her hand. Her eyes are a kind of stormy gray blue; she has her hair pulled back tight from her face. She’s so young, practically looks like a teenager.

  “Justice? Revenge?”

  I nod, encouraging. “But usually those things are very personal.”

  “So, something has been done to him. He’s been wronged in some way.”

  “Or someone he loves has been wronged.”

  “He’s angry,” she says. “Maybe angry at the system for failing to bring justice.”

  “So he endeavors to bring it himself. That’s part of the profile I’ve developed—on the off chance that we are looking for one man.”

  “He watches the news, waiting.” She’s deep in thought.

  I lift my eyebrows. “Maybe he’s even in law enforcement. Or the military. Given the precision with which he carries out the crimes, the lack of evidence.”

  She raises her eyebrows, nodding. “That’s come up.”

  We go on like that for a while. I do feel bad. Because, really, we’re on the same side. Except that we’re not. I am not about to let them catch him.

  “It would take a tremendous amount of arrogance, don’t you think? To do what he does,” she says, musing.

  “Arrogance.”

  “To imagine that you know better, that it’s your right to deliver justice. To be so sure of yourself that you’d kill another person.”

 
“It does take arrogance to kill,” I admit. “A belief that your needs come before the needs of others. In fact, that your victims are less than human. That whatever needs they might have don’t even rank.”

  “He’s a psychopath,” she says, meaning it clinically rather than as a judgment. I bristle a little at that, but drink from my cup of coffee so that she doesn’t see it on my face.

  “Yes,” I say. “Most likely.”

  “But he knows right from wrong.”

  “No one disorganized or distanced from reality could kill like this.”

  The crime scene photos are spread out between us. They’re gruesome. I admit it’s shocking, the things he does.

  I feel him banging around inside me sometimes, just looking for a reason to come out. He’s wild now, howling. He doesn’t like the things she’s saying about him. That he’s arrogant. A psychopath. He hates it even more because it’s true.

  “It’s cold-blooded and calculated.” Her voice has gone soft.

  I look down at my own hands. His hands. I feel a wave of nausea. I only have the vaguest memories of those moments, flickering images, soundless, on an old film reel.

  “What do you think the mask means?”

  “A bird of prey,” I say without thinking.

  “I did a little research. The mask—it’s a kind of hawk.”

  “Oh?” She’s smart, this one.

  She pulls out a sheet of paper from one of her files. She has a scent, something clean and floral. I know the fragrance. Wait. What is it? Lavender.

  “At the bureau, like I said, they’re calling him the Executioner. But I call him the Nightjar, a bird of prey that hunts only at night.”