The Ophelia Killer

by Valerie Geary

  He searches through the medicine cabinet and under the sink but finds nothing interesting. He sticks his head out the door, listening to the sounds from the kitchen, clinking porcelain and water running, like Archer’s washing dishes, then darts across the hallway to the room on the opposite side.

  The room across from the bathroom appears to be Archer’s bedroom. It’s the least cluttered part of the house that Jimmy has seen so far, almost monk-like compared to the rest. A single bed has been pushed under the bare window. On a small nightstand beside it rests a lamp, an ashtray, and a cigarette pack. A braided rug covers a large section of the floor. There’s a dresser on one wall, the top covered by an extensive collection of music boxes. On the other wall, paperback novels cram a tall bookshelf.

  Jimmy hovers his hand over a bouquet of dried flowers lying on the top shelf in front of the books. The faded whites and purples of the petals are identical to the flowers found near Cherish Spalding’s body. A flush of adrenaline runs through him. He’s getting close. But a quick sweep through the rest of the room turns up nothing else but clothes and shoes in the closet and dust bunnies under the bed.

  The next room Jimmy enters might have been considered a second bedroom if someone other than Archer French was living here. Instead, Archer seems to be using it for storage.

  Several bookshelves are lined up the way they would be in a bookstore, sticking out from the walls rather than flush against them, creating a labyrinth-effect in the small room. Jimmy steps inside and pushes the door closed as soon as Trixie’s through. He knows he’s been gone too long and should get back to the kitchen before Archer comes looking for him, but the room seems to draw him in deeper.

  He gets lost in it. Walking between the shelves, examining the trinkets on display. It’s like a museum. There are old coins, arrowheads, shards of pottery, small animal bones bleached white and arranged with tender care. There are framed photographs of happy families. In one of the pictures, a young Archer French stands in front of a carousel next to a woman with features similar to Mary Andress. The woman has her arm around the boy. The boy’s holding an ice cream cone, and it’s melting. Vanilla cream drips onto the hot asphalt at his feet.

  Farther back in the room, things become more cluttered and more strange. Clumps of hair, torn bits of clothes, a pile of fingernail clippings. There are metal filing cabinets tucked in one corner, but when Jimmy opens them, he finds they are empty, hollow shells storing nothing but air.

  It’s on the last shelf, the one closest to the window, that he finds what he came here for, what part of him was hoping not to find even as he knew it was inevitable. The mason jars are arranged to catch the sunlight filtering in through the window. A plush armchair faces the shelves. The clear fluid inside each jar glints and sparkles.

  Trixie lets out a low whine and pulls sharply against the rope around her neck, refusing to go any closer to the chair and the shelf filled with jars. Jimmy drops the rope and steps toward the shelves, the hairs on the back of his neck lifting. He picks up one of the jars and turns it to get a better look at what’s inside. The shape is unmistakable.

  Cut from the mouth, the tongue is longer than he’s ever seen it, stretched out in a disturbing manner, bobbing in the fluid, shifting as if it were still attached, moving around silent secrets and the many horror stories it could tell if given a chance.

  He counts the jars. Eleven jars, eleven tongues. Each lid is labeled with two letters. Initials, he realizes as he finds jars labeled LR and CS and NT.

  He checks each one but finds none with the letters M and B.

  A floorboard creaks. When Jimmy turns around, it’s Archer French’s shadow he sees first—a slim blade cutting across the floor.

  “Find what you’re looking for?” Archer steps into the room.

  “I guess I got a little turned around.” Jimmy lets out an uncomfortable laugh.

  Archer doesn’t buy it. He takes a step closer. “Why are you here?” Another step. The floor groans under his weight. “And don’t give me any more bullshit about a lost dog. Why are you snooping through my things?”

  “Margot Buchanan.” The name slips from Jimmy’s mouth before he can stop it. “You have all the others here.” He flicks his eyes to the jars and then back to Archer. “Where is Margot?”

  Archer tilts his head, and a furrow forms on his brow. He seems to be thinking over the name, tracing it back along some long-forgotten thread of memory. A look of recognition flickers over his face, a whisper of a smile that quickly disappears.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?” Archer asks, and the tone of his voice has changed, switched to something low and menacing.

  Jimmy glances at the window that’s right next to him. It’s painted shut. Cobwebs stretch across the glass. Desiccated bodies of flies litter the window sill. He could break the glass with his elbow, try and shimmy his way out, but he knows Archer will move faster and drag him back inside. Plus, there’s no way in hell Jimmy’s going to leave Trixie alone with this monster. She wandered off when Jimmy’s attention was focused on the jars. He scans the room but doesn’t see her.

  A smile splits Archer’s face. “Wow. You really didn’t think this through, did you? What were you hoping to accomplish by barging into my house like this? What did you think was going to happen?”

  Archer takes another step closer. He’s blocking the door and Jimmy’s exit, but his hands are empty. Archer isn’t that much bigger than Jimmy. If this comes down to a physical fight, it’s not entirely clear who would win. Jimmy wants better odds than fifty-fifty. He grabs a jar off the shelf at random and lifts it high in the air.

  “Put that back.” Archer lurches toward Jimmy, his teeth bared in a grimace.

  Jimmy hurls the jar at Archer. The jar deflects off the other man’s chest, drops to the floor, and shatters. The liquid sprays in an arc. The tongue slides a few feet and disappears under one of the shelves.

  A groan creaks from Archer’s lips. He seems torn about whether to grab Jimmy or rescue the tongue. Taking advantage of his hesitation, Jimmy grabs another jar and throws this one on the floor, too. The glass shatters. Archer cries out again, a strangled sound like an animal cornered. He drops to his hands and knees, scrambling to grab the tongue within reach before crawling toward the bookshelf to try and rescue the other one. In doing so, he leaves space for Jimmy to escape.

  Jimmy darts toward the door and the hallway beyond. He calls for Trixie, who appears from behind one of the shelves. She moves faster than Jimmy and gets under his feet. He stumbles and steps on her paw. She yelps and feints away from him. Even though she’s almost a year old now, she’s still all bumbling puppy, and sometimes her feet get ahead of her, and she didn’t mean to, she didn’t, but it happens anyway. She trips him, and in those few, clumsy seconds, Archer French catches up to them.

  A hand bloodied from broken glass slams down onto Jimmy’s shoulders and spins him around. He swings his arms up to protect his face, but he’s too slow. Archer’s fist connects to his cheek and knocks him backward. His head slams onto the floor. For an instant, the world goes black and numb, then he blinks himself awake again. Something hard jabs into the small of his back.

  Trixie is nearby barking, barking, then her barks turn to howls. Then there’s a sharp yelp, and Trixie falls silent. This gets Jimmy off the floor. He pushes up to a sitting position, head spinning. He might vomit, but he’s not going to let this bastard hurt his dog.

  He looks around and sees he’s about ten feet from the front door. Archer’s standing a few feet from him, distracted with something under the couch. Trixie, Jimmy realizes as he hears her now, growling and snapping her teeth. She’s wedged herself into the small space beneath the couch somehow. Archer has one arm shoved under as he tries to pull her out.

  Jimmy rises to his feet, swaying from the blow he took to the head. He reaches out for something to hold on to, afraid he’s going to fall again, and grabs on to a department store mannequi
n. She rocks on her pedestal, unsteady.

  Archer turns to look at the noise and, forgetting Trixie, leaps to his feet to come after Jimmy. Jimmy shoves the mannequin at Archer and lunges toward the door. All he has to do is get outside, get out of this nightmare carnival of a house thick with dust that shimmers gold in the air, thick with the ghosts of dead girls. Get outside, get in his car, drive until he finds a payphone, call the police.

  He shouts for Trixie. The beagle scrambles out from under the couch and charges toward Jimmy.

  He flings open the door, and she’s through it before he even has time to blink. A streak of brown and white fur, she’s halfway down the driveway while Jimmy’s still on the front porch, feeling like he’s moving in slow-motion. The blow to the head may have done more damage than he thought. He doesn’t move automatically. He has to think, lift your right foot, now your left, and even then, the muscles are slow to react. Static crackles at the edge of his vision.

  A woman comes out of the house across the street and starts to walk down her driveway toward the mailbox. Trixie runs toward her, barking. Jimmy shouts for help, but his words are cut short as a hand grabs him and yanks him back inside the house. The door slams shut. Archer shoves his full weight into Jimmy’s back, pressing him up against the wood, laying his arm across his neck, the heaviness of it like a thousand-pound boa constrictor. Jimmy struggles to push back and break free, but Archer keeps him there against the door.

  “You son of a bitch.” Archer’s voice is a rasping whisper in his ear. His smoky breath flames hot against Jimmy’s cheek. “Did you really think you could come into my house, wreck my things, and get away with it? You think I don’t know who you are? I know you, Jimmy Eagan. I know what you call me. I know who you think I am.”

  Through the other side of the door, Jimmy can hear Trixie barking and howling, scratching at the wood, and this gives him a second burst of energy. He throws his elbow back and connects with Archer’s ribs. The other man sucks in a sharp breath but doesn’t ease up. The blow just makes him angrier. He leans more weight against Jimmy’s shoulders. Something in Jimmy’s back pops.

  Archer is stronger than he looks. Rage and desperation twist into steel fists. He spins Jimmy, so they’re face-to-face, then jerks him away from the door and heaves him to the floor in the center of the living room like he weighs nothing. Jimmy tries to crawl in the opposite direction toward the kitchen, remembering another door there, hoping it leads to the garage. But Archer is on top of him in seconds.

  He pins Jimmy down, keeping him trapped, even as Jimmy thrashes and fights and tries to break free. Archer encircles both hands around Jimmy’s neck. His fingers become steel bands pressing hard against his throat, cutting off all air. He takes his time, loosening his hold enough for Jimmy to suck in a little bit of air before clamping tight again, giving Jimmy a flicker of hope before snatching it away. Sparks flash in his vision.

  This is how it was for the August girls, Jimmy thinks, as he feels himself slipping into darkness.

  It’s awful, dying this way, slow and unrelenting, the face of his killer pressed so close they are breathing the same air. He can see the hate in Archer French’s ice-blue eyes and a glimmer, a glint, the slightest reflection of another man.

  Jimmy can see himself in Archer’s eyes.

  He can see all his regrets, the pride and ego that brought him here, the future he will never have, all the stories he’ll never tell, the promises he made, broken now. He thinks of Brett, of how he might be falling in love with her, he’s pretty sure he is, but it’s too late to tell her now. He should have called her, he realizes. Before he came here, he should have called her and told her exactly what he was planning. She would have talked him out of this idiotic decision to face the Ophelia Killer alone. She would have come with him if she knew where he was going, and with his final conscious thought, Jimmy can’t decide if that would have made things better or worse.

  Chapter 19

  From somewhere far off, Jimmy Eagan hears someone calling his name.

  A woman.

  He turns his head toward the voice but sees only a long, dark tunnel with no end. He blinks, and a fleck of gold light appears. The tiniest of dots. A dust mote, a firefly. It will take him forever to reach it.

  The woman continues to call for him. The speck of light grows larger until it swallows him. He shrinks from it, groaning. He blinks, and shapes begin to materialize around him. The edges of a window frame. The sharp line where the wall meets the ceiling. The gauzy soft flutter of a curtain. A metal pole stands next to him, a plastic tube feeding into his arm. And sitting in a chair next to the bed is Brett.

  She smiles at him.

  “Welcome back.” Her voice is soft and low.

  “What happened?” It hurts to talk. Now that he’s noticing, a lot of him hurts. The last thing he remembers is being in Archer French’s house, running toward the door, tripping over Trixie. He blinks, and the images change. No. The last thing he remembers is Archer French’s hands wrapped around his throat. His own hand lifts, touching the rough patch of skin where a beard is beginning to grow. He wonders how long he’s been lying in this hospital bed, but he doesn’t have the energy to say the words out loud.

  All he can manage is a single, rasping sound. “Trixie?”

  “She’s okay. She’s fine. Better than you.” Brett’s smile is tense, and her voice splinters when she says, “What the hell were you thinking, Jimmy? Going into that madman’s house alone?”

  She exhales and drops her head into her hands. Her brown hair falls in front of her face, and Jimmy realizes this is the first time he’s seen her wear it loose. She always keeps it in a ponytail or a low bun against the back of her neck. He wants to reach out and touch it, tuck it behind her ear, comfort her, but when he tries to move, pain burns through his entire body.

  He hisses through clenched teeth. Brett snaps her head up. “What is it? Do you need me to call the doctor?”

  “No,” he says. “No, I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine.” She rises from the chair and moves around his bed, fussing over him, tucking the sheets tighter around his legs as she talks. “You were technically dead for ten minutes. If Trixie hadn’t kept barking her damn head off, if that neighbor across the street hadn’t seen you and called the police right away—for fuck’s sake, Jimmy.”

  She straightens, settles her hands on her hips, and cocks her head to look at him. A frown teases the corners of her mouth. “I thought we’d lost you. You weren’t breathing when the paramedics got to you. By some miracle, though, they brought you back. You’re damn lucky, you know that?”

  “Damn stupid, is what you’re really thinking.” He coughs on the words.

  Brett shakes her head and lifts a plastic pitcher from the tray beside the bed. She fills a small plastic cup, sticks a straw in it, and holds it near Jimmy’s mouth. “Drink.”

  He sips the tepid water. It hurts to swallow, but he takes another sip because the water soothes his parched throat enough for him to say, “I’m sorry. I wanted to be sure.”

  “You wanted your goddamn story.”

  He doesn’t deny it.

  Brett sets the cup back down on the tray and returns to the chair beside his bed, flopping into it with a heavy sigh. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Are you going to tell me what the hell happened? The last time I talked to you, you were still in Crestwood trying to come up with a name. Next thing I know, there’s a call coming over the radio saying some dumb ass reporter’s got himself in a heap of shit.” She leans forward and rests her hands on the edge of the hospital bed. “Is it him, Jimmy? Archer French? Is he the Ophelia Killer?”

  He closes his eyes, remembering the collection of jars glinting in the sunlight streaming through the window, how all of the August girls were accounted for except one.

  “She wasn’t there,” he says.

  Brett’s eyebrows pinch in confusion. �
�What are you talking about?”

  He explains about the jars, the tongues, the initials. “There were no jars labeled MB. At least, none that I found.”

  Her shoulders hunch higher as she folds slightly into herself.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Jimmy rushes on, trying to sit up, but a bolt of pain pushes him back against the pillows.

  Brett’s frown deepens. “Take it easy. You just went through hell.”

  “He was in Crestwood that summer, though,” Jimmy says. “And the way she was found, it seems pretty clear to me. Even if he didn’t keep—” He stops himself from saying it but quickly adds, “He killed her, Brett. I’m sure of it. We got our man.”

  Brett checks her watch in a way that makes Jimmy think she’s avoiding looking at him. “He’s being interrogated as we speak. So hopefully, they’ll pull some answers from him soon.”

  “You should be there,” he says.

  She laughs, a bitter sound. “And miss out on lecturing you about your life choices?”

  “Let me guess,” Jimmy says. “Rausch wouldn’t let you anywhere near the interview room?”

  Brett’s expression is all the answer he needs.

  “Anyway,” she says with a shrug. “The investigation is over now. Like you said, we got our man. The special unit is being disbanded. They’re trimming the fat. I’m back with the sheriff’s department tomorrow. Back out on patrol.”

  Before Jimmy can ask how she feels about that, there’s a sharp knock on the door, and a nurse enters to check Jimmy’s vitals. She tells him that he’ll be sore for a while. His throat is swollen, so it will hurt to eat and swallow, but he should make a full recovery. She tells him they’re keeping him overnight for monitoring, but once the doctor has a look at him and gives the okay, he should be able to head home as early as tomorrow morning.