The 22 Murders of Madison May

by Max Barry

  They were approaching Carmel Hamlet. Levi was right beside her. She tapped out a reply to Gavin that she was fine, was working, and would call him when she could.

  The Putnam County Sheriff’s Department was part of an austere gray complex that looked like nothing so much as a jail, which, Felicity discovered from the signage, it also contained. In the lobby were rows of plastic chairs and a scuffed counter mounted with thick Perspex. On the wall was a faded poster of a grinning cop with his arm around a ten-year-old boy.

  She followed Levi to the counter, where a middle-aged cop regarded him blankly. “I’m Levi Waskiewicz, with the New York Daily News. Who do I speak to about Hugo Garrelly?”

  The woman turned and barked: “Julian!” A man in glasses approached. “Some media folks asking about Hugo Garrelly.”

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “Sounds like you’ve had a real bad day here,” Levi said. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Three people aren’t,” said the woman. “Three people are definitely not okay.”

  The man frowned reproachfully. “The sheriff will be making a statement at noon, if you’d like to wait around. I’m afraid there isn’t anything I can say until then.”

  “I heard five people injured. Three dead, two survivors?”

  The man smiled painfully. “Like I said, there’s nothing I can do to help you until the sheriff is ready.”

  “I hear you,” Levi said. “You’ve been fielding a lot of press this morning, I bet.”

  “Oh, boy. You have no idea.”

  “Who’s here? You must have seen at least one of the AAP guys. Aaron Jeffries?”

  “Well . . .” said the man, and he and Levi began to discuss reporters Felicity didn’t know.

  She looked at the woman. “Are the other two going to make it?”

  “Oh, gosh, I hope so. They’re only kids.”

  “What were they doing up here? Visiting?”

  “I couldn’t say, but a lot of people come out for the lakes. Young people. They come up from the city to go swimming.”

  She nodded. “It’s a beautiful town, from what I’ve seen.”

  “Thank you for saying so. It really is.”

  “Can I talk to the survivors? Or is the hospital here in Carmel not allowing visitors?”

  “They’re not just yet. Maybe in a day or two.”

  Felicity nodded. “Thank you for your time.” As she and Levi walked toward the exit, she said: “The survivors are at the local hospital.”

  “Nicely done,” he said. “That’s good to know. The cops won’t let us anywhere near Garrelly. But there’s a guy around who owes me a favor, so I’m going to make a call.”

  “Everyone owes you a favor, is what I’m noticing.”

  “Look at you,” he said. “You figured out journalism.”

  * * *

  —

  She bought a tasteless veggie wrap at the complex’s café and ate it in the shade of a spindly birch tree out front while Levi worked his phone. Gavin had messaged her again, she saw. Ok. Just that. She chewed her sandwich.

  “Get up,” Levi said, coming toward her. “You want to see Garrelly? This is your chance.”

  He led her through the parking lot to the rear of the complex. Beside a set of red double doors idled a white bus, correction emblazoned on the side. Its rear door hung open. People from three different agencies were gathered, by Felicity’s count: tan-uniformed deputies, cops in navy blue, and state troopers in dark gray and wide-brimmed hats.

  From this crowd emerged a man in shorts and a flapping red shirt. He and Levi shook hands heartily. “Kadeem,” Levi said, “this is my tagalong, Felicity Staples. Felicity, meet the best crime scene reporter in New York.”

  “Levi is incorrect,” Kadeem said, shaking her hand. “I am the best crime scene reporter anywhere.”

  “He’s good with words,” Levi said, “but he’s better with people, and that’s what matters. One day he’ll tell me his secrets.”

  “I have told you already. I make myself ready and allow the stories to come to me.”

  “Yeah, but really.”

  “I do not force myself on people like a used car salesman.” One of the deputies told them to move back. “I am very sorry,” Kadeem said, and the man nodded and returned to the bus.

  “See?” Levi said. They hadn’t actually moved.

  Felicity said, “They’re taking Hugo back to Sing Sing?”

  Kadeem nodded. “Garrelly was supposed to be moved an hour ago, but there was a delay.”

  “What kind of delay?”

  “Squabbling,” Levi said. He gestured to the soup of uniforms. “Even I can see that.”

  “Yes. What do you already know?”

  “Hugo Garrelly escapes from Sing Sing, stabs five people, gets arrested.”

  Kadeem shook his head. “Three stabbed only. The other two were injured in a collision with Garrelly’s car. You should also know that shortly beforehand, one of the victims phoned the police to report being followed by a man who fits Garrelly’s description, driving the same color of car.”

  Felicity said, “Who are the survivors? Madison May and Clayton Hors? Do you know those names?”

  “No,” Kadeem said, “but I am interested in how you came by them.”

  “Me, too,” said Levi.

  She didn’t know how to answer that. Kadeem looked at Levi. Levi said, “Excuse my colleague. She doesn’t know how this works. Felicity, what do you know?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “I thought we were helping each other,” Kadeem said.

  “We are,” Levi said. “That’s what we’re doing. Felicity?”

  The air was broken by the sound of a bolt being retracted from the red door. A corrections officer barked orders. The others began to reposition. The door swung open. Two deputies emerged. Behind them, a head taller than both, was Hugo, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His hands were cuffed. He moved in a shuffle with his head down and shoulders slumped. Behind came two more officers, one steering Hugo with a hand on his shoulder. In a moment, they would bundle him into the bus.

  “Hugo!” she shouted.

  His head came up. He squinted into the crowd and saw her. He stopped.

  “Move it,” said an officer.

  “Don’t let him out of your sight,” Hugo said. She didn’t know who he meant. “He’s here. Don’t let him out of your sight!”

  “Move,” said the officer, and seized Hugo by the arm. Hugo threw it off and took a step toward Felicity, and she took a step back, even though she was thirty yards away, because it suddenly seemed he might be able to forge his way to her, tossing men aside. A corrections officer struck Hugo in the neck with a baton. A second hit his knee. Hugo went down. She lost sight of him among blue and gray uniforms. All she could see were arms and batons. Everyone was shouting: cops telling them to get back, cops shouting at Hugo, at one another.

  “Forgive me, I must leave,” Kadeem said.

  “Felicity,” Levi said, taking her arm. “We have to go.”

  There were guns, she realized. They retreated to the corner of the complex. She saw Hugo manhandled to the bus like a sack, like he wasn’t even conscious.

  Levi was staring at her. “What the hell was that?”

  Don’t let him out of your sight.

  Who did he mean? Clay?

  He’s here.

  “Garrelly knew you. How does he know you?”

  The bus’s horn blared, ragged and raw. It jumped forward, as if impatient.

  “Okay,” Levi said, sounding pissed. “You and me, we need to have a conversation. I can only tolerate being left out of the loop for so long.”

  The bus ran past them and she watched it go. She couldn’t get Hugo’s face out of her mind. He’d looked desperate. Like he’d t
hought everything was lost until he saw her.

  Clay is here, she thought. And so is Maddie.

  She’d come for answers to her own situation, not to get involved in a recurring murder. But it would happen again, she realized. Clayton Hors would murder Madison May.

  “I need to get to the hospital,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  “One of the survivors is in danger.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Levi, I can’t explain. But we need to go.”

  “Felicity, if you’re right, tell the police.”

  Excuse me, Officer, you need to protect Maddie May from Clayton Hors. He’s killed her before.

  She couldn’t tell the police. Couldn’t even tell Levi, unless she wanted him to think she’d lost her mind.

  Don’t let him out of your sight.

  Not: Don’t let Clay get away. Not: Protect Maddie. It was curiously specific.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Levi said. “All right. Let’s go.”

  She fell into step. “I’ll tell you when I can.”

  “You better. Why do you think I’m in this job? I have to know everything.”

  * * *

  —

  The hospital was close, a great beige brick perched on a hill, encased on three sides by forest. At reception, she was told that Clayton Hors had been discharged a few hours earlier, but Madison May was still in the ICU. In the elevator, she invented a story about being a relative, which she fed successfully to the nurse behind the ICU desk. She had to leave her cell phone behind and proceed alone, but she had, the nurse said, twenty minutes with Madison May in room 303.

  She walked the hallway until she found it. There was a tall window in the door, through which she could see half a hospital bed. She knocked, waited, then went in.

  The room was small and weirdly angled, as if whatever was next door was more important. To the left was a modest bathroom. Between the main door and the bed hung a curtain that could be used to create a privacy screen. In the bed, Maddie was asleep. Her face was a confusion of bruised and raw skin. The left side of her head had been shaved. From ear to temple wound an ugly laceration, jutting thick stitches. Two lines ran from her arm to a drip and a machine on a trolley.

  I saw where you died, Felicity thought. I attended the crime scene. I helped write an article about it.

  She sank into the chair beside the bed and tipped back her head. She was exhausted all of a sudden. She’d harbored the idea that seeing Maddie might grant some new insight into her situation, maybe even offer a clue as to how Felicity could get back to her old life. But it was what Hugo had described: a woman who had died before, and been attacked again. All it revealed was that he’d told her the truth. About this, and about all of it, most likely, including the part where there was no back. There was only this, or next.

  You can make a life here, Hugo had said.

  The blond man would catch up to her, eventually. He’d demand the egg. And she would have to give it to him, because the only alternative was to continue moving forward, from one world to the next, leaving behind a conga line of vanished Felicitys and bereaved Gavins. That was too monstrous to think about. She wouldn’t see the trail of destruction she left, but it would be there, all the same.

  Was this what Hugo did? And the blond man? And whoever else was traveling?

  Maybe Ken Creighton, the professor at Columbia, had it wrong. He’d been theorizing. The eggs might actually allow travel in a way that didn’t destroy people at all.

  She hadn’t yet figured it all out. The egg lets you move, she thought, but you don’t have to do anything special with it. Because she’d moved in the middle of the night, in her sleep.

  She hadn’t moved when she’d wanted to, under the subway platform at 42nd and Eighth.

  The timing mattered. That was the reason behind Hugo’s watch alarms. Every so often—every thirty hours or so, Creighton had said—there was a twitch. A “bubble collision.” And that was the moment you could move.

  But there was one more step. Something else she was missing.

  Creighton had mentioned an “observer effect.” She hadn’t understood at the time, and it was still a mystery.

  Hugo, only an hour before, referring to Clay: Don’t let him out of your sight.

  The door clicked. She was almost dozing and jerked upright. A man stood by the bed. His face was bruised. Brown hair hung over a bandage. He smiled lopsidedly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  It was Clay. For a moment she was frozen, caught between wake and sleep.

  The smile began to slide from his face. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked and sat up. “Sorry. Was I drooling?”

  “No,” he said, and this amused him, she saw; this put him at ease. He glanced at Maddie. “How’s she doing?”

  “Better, I think.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “She’s kind of . . . peaceful this way.”

  She had no phone; she’d had to leave it at the ICU desk. Was there a call button? Yes—but on the other side of the bed.

  Run, she thought. Get the fuck out. There would be security somewhere. She could bring them. Possibly in time to stop Clay from doing what he wanted to do. Possibly not.

  He rolled aside a trolley with a tray to reach the seat on the other side of Maddie’s bed, unslung a gray backpack, and set it on the floor. This made it invisible to Felicity, which unnerved her. She didn’t know what was in that bag. She worried that if she left Maddie, even for a minute, it would be too long.

  Clay looked at her. That expression, the little half-smile she didn’t believe, was back. “How do you know her?”

  “Family friend,” she lied. “We practically grew up together.”

  “Interesting,” Clay said.

  “How about you?”

  He gazed at Maddie. “Honestly? I used to be in love with her.”

  “Oh?” Felicity said, and she had to be careful, because she couldn’t let her feelings show.

  He glanced at her, doing the loopy half-smile. “That’s too much, isn’t it? I’ve been told I talk too much.”

  “No, no,” she said. She couldn’t see his hands, she realized. He was leaning forward with the bag on the floor and who knew what his hands were doing. Her imagination vomited forth terrible ideas and she jolted to her feet.

  Clay’s eyebrows rose. There was nothing in his hands. Maddie’s sheet was tucked into the side of the bed, unmolested.

  To cover, she fooled with Maddie’s pillow, as if it needed adjustment. Then she sat again. Clay studied her. “You know,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate a minute with Madison alone.”

  I bet you would.

  “My husband will be back soon,” she said. “We’ll leave then.”

  His expression didn’t alter. “You said you grew up with Madison?”

  She nodded.

  “Then she must have talked about me.”

  A trap. She shouldn’t know Clay’s name. “Sorry, who are you?”

  “Clay.”

  “I don’t remember Maddie mentioning you,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Right.” He kept staring at her. Then he sat back. “Well, it didn’t really work out between us.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I haven’t given up hope, though. I’m going to keep on trying.”

  Something beeped. She said, “Was that you?”

  “Yeah. My watch.”

  “I thought it was a machine, and I should fetch someone.”

  “Nope.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Three thirty-three.”

  “Funny time for an alarm,” she said, unable to stop herself.

  “I think it’s busted,” Clay said. “You don’t have a watch?”


  “No.”

  “You must have a phone.”

  “I had to leave it at the desk.”

  “Ah, of course,” he said. “No recording devices.”

  You just told him you can’t call for help.

  She heard rustling. The unsnapping of a bag clip. “I lost so much shit in the accident, I can’t even say.”

  “Oh?” she said, and rose to her feet, because that was almost like an invitation to come and look, wasn’t it? He might believe she’d interpreted it that way. Clay was bent over his backpack. The flap was open, but she couldn’t quite see what he had in there.

  “The cops said anything missing must have been lost at the scene.” He shook his hair. Flop, flop. “I’ve been hunting around for it this morning. It really pisses me off. A couple of things I could buy, but most of it was irreplaceable.”

  “What did you lose?” she asked, although she knew. Moorings. Things he carried to set the color and texture of the next world.

  “Just stuff.” He looked at her. “When is your husband coming?”

  “Soon.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time.” He pointed to his bandage, giving her the lopsided smile. “I’m actually not supposed to be walking around at all.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”

  The smile hung on his face. He’s figured it out, she thought. I’m resisting too much; he’s suspicious—

  Clay flipped closed the top flap of his backpack and clipped it. He heaved it onto his shoulder and rose to his feet. “I might get a soda, then.”

  “Okay.” She tried to keep the relief from her voice.

  He paused at the door. “Want anything?”

  “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.” What was the most time-consuming item she could request? Food? Something that had to be cooked? Would he jump in a cab and pick up a cheeseburger?

  “They have a machine at the end of the hall. Coke, Pepsi, and Soft Horizon Juice.”

  The last three words hit her with unexpected recognition. She was too slow to keep it from her face.

  Clay released the door handle. He moved back into the room and drew the curtain behind him, the privacy screen that sealed them from outside view.