The 22 Murders of Madison May

by Max Barry

  The egg, she presumed. “Yes.”

  “Nowhere it might be stumbled upon by a random passerby? I’m sorry to press. But the consequences of allowing it to fall into the wrong hands are . . .”

  “Clay?”

  “Yes,” Henrietta said. “Exactly.” She touched her chest, and for the first time, Felicity noticed her brooch: a silver circle crossed by five lines. Felicity had first seen that design on the wall of a bedroom, and then on Hugo’s cap.

  “So this is Soft Horizon,” Felicity said. “I don’t see where you make the juice.”

  Henrietta laughed lightly. “So much changes, you see. We need a way to identify one another on those occasions we don’t all cross at the same time. And a place to rendezvous, without knowing in advance whether any particular location will exist. Soft Horizon is our little front. There is no juice.”

  “I heard it was a government research project.”

  “Oh, gosh. That was a long time ago. Only Dr. de Boer was involved with all that. He developed a technique for crossing over, but found himself in a place he didn’t recognize—and couldn’t go back, of course. Eventually he decided to form a group of like-minded individuals. But it’s really nothing very formal. We’re a loose organization of ordinary people who share a common interest.”

  “In what?”

  Henrietta smiled ambiguously. “Come.” She led Felicity to a room with a long table and a solid wall of glass. Below, traffic crawled through the skyscraper forest. Henrietta beckoned Felicity to stand by the window. “Here. What do you see?”

  “Midtown,” Felicity said.

  “Yes. Midtown. Are you happy with it?”

  “Am I happy with Midtown?”

  “The homelessness? The injustice? Or would you change it, if you could?” Henrietta gazed at her. “I used to feel so helpless about the world’s problems. The selfishness and ignorance. But Dr. de Boer showed me a way to make a difference. That’s what brings our group together: the desire to make the world better. Our work is small—in a Multiverse with no end, believe me, we’re very aware of our own insignificance. But we carry the best of what we find in each place to the next. Books. Art. There’s a woman in India, whose name you won’t know, who wrote a poem to her dying daughter, and her words were so beautiful, they softened the hearts of millions. They may have prevented a war. We took that poem with us. That is what we do, in a nutshell. Step by step, a little at a time, we preserve that which is valuable. And I’m proud of what we accomplished. We made kind, loving worlds.”

  Fire engine horns blared. Felicity glanced outside.

  Henrietta sighed. “This isn’t ours, of course.” She moved to the table and arranged herself in a chair. “Before all this madness, moves were planned weeks in advance. Because the act of moving establishes a path. Once it is done, those behind are forced to follow. Which, in a practical sense, renders their moorings useless, or even lost. Only those at the head of the path can determine where it leads.”

  “Clay isn’t waiting for you,” Felicity said. “He’s moving by himself.”

  “At a frenetic pace. Most of us still haven’t caught up. So much has been lost. I truly wish you could see what we had done.” She sighed again. “It’s funny; do you know what I miss most? A perfume. I was in Paris years ago and passed a woman with the most incredible scent. I actually stopped her in the street so she could tell me what it was. God only knows what she thought of me. Elucent. I’d never heard of it. Because everywhere I’d been before, it didn’t exist. But there, I was able to purchase a bottle. It became one of my moorings, so that everywhere I went, I would find women wearing it.” She gave a short laugh. “I’m sorry to bore you with a silly story. Others are so much worse off. Dr. de Boer himself is very sick. All because of Clayton’s obsession with that poor girl. He murders her, you know. Repeatedly.”

  “About twenty times, Hugo said.”

  “ ‘About.’ What a terrible word. It’s twenty exactly. We made a spectacular mess with Clay. We were complacent and arrogant. And that girl is paying for it. Even now, some in our group consider him to be a lunatic who kills for no reason. To me, though, there’s nothing particularly difficult to understand about a man who murders what he loves, and blames her for it. That’s depressingly familiar.” She flapped a hand at Felicity. “In any case, this disaster began when Clay managed to obtain a token. He wasn’t chosen. He simply found himself in possession of it—much like you did, when Hugo gave you his. Which was terribly reckless, by the way, but a calculated risk to avoid it falling into Clay’s hands.” She glanced at her watch: a thin gold strap. She rose from the table. “I’d best consult with the others. Would you mind waiting? Then we can decide how we’d like to proceed.”

  “There’s a man out there who attacked me,” Felicity said.

  Henrietta nodded. “You don’t have to see him again. But I hope I’ve managed to explain a little about why we take this so seriously. You do seem like a lovely person, Felicity. I mean that. It’s just that we’ve seen what can happen.”

  * * *

  —

  Almost an hour later, the door opened. Henrietta greeted her and took her to the first room, with the white furniture. The blond man, as Henrietta had promised, was gone. The others introduced themselves: The tall man was an academic, another was an engineer, and a woman was a business owner. Although these were ex-professions, Felicity gathered: things they’d done before they’d begun traveling the universe. She was given coffee and asked about her life. “Mark worked for a newspaper, once,” Henrietta offered, and the tall man nodded gravely and said it was terrible, what had happened to the industry, which made Felicity feel like defending it. Throughout all this, Hugo lay draped across a chair like a coat.

  “We have a plan to put a stop to Clay,” Henrietta said finally, when Felicity was beginning to think the entire conversation would be small talk. “We want to initiate the next move before he does, using moorings that will set a path to a world that will act as a trap. We’d be very glad if you would help us.”

  “I don’t want to move. I want to deal with Clay here.”

  “That would be ideal, obviously,” said the ex-newspaperman. “This would be a fallback.”

  “Either way, we must delay him,” Henrietta said. “Clay’s injuries will slow him down, we suspect, and the more time that you can buy us, the better. It might also give you time to reflect on what you’d like to do with the token, and whether you trust us sufficiently to return it. What do you think?”

  She thought they probably intended to take it, no matter what she decided. But she nodded. “That works for me.”

  Henrietta smiled. “I’m so glad.” She glanced at her watch, then stood. Felicity took the hint and set down her coffee. “I do hope we’ll meet again.”

  * * *

  —

  Hugo was silent until they were inside the elevator. “They like you,” he said, not looking at her. “They were impressed with what you did in Carmel.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I know you’re lying, though.”

  “About what?”

  “About not keeping the token. Just go ahead and ask to join. They won’t hold it against you.”

  “I don’t want to be in your club.”

  The elevator doors opened. “Sure,” Hugo said.

  “What happened to the person who was here before me? The other Felicity?” She stopped. “I need to know. Is she gone? Replaced? If I move, do I leave behind people wondering where I went?”

  Hugo walked back and regarded her. “Yes.”

  All the breath went out of her. It was what she’d suspected, of course. She’d known it might be the case. But she’d wanted so badly to believe it might not be. “That’s terrible,” she said. “Don’t you see how that’s terrible?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t you talk to Hen? The smart people
can explain it.”

  “You explain it,” she said.

  He gestured vaguely. “It’s not just one world. You need perspective.”

  “Which means what? A few people here and there don’t count?”

  “It’s harder to get broken up about them.”

  “By that logic, what about Maddie? Do you even care that she’s been murdered twenty times? Which would have been twenty-one, if I weren’t there while you were off wherever.”

  He scowled. “You know where I was.”

  “Getting arrested. Not a whole lot of help when that happens, are you?”

  He stared at her. “No, I don’t particularly care.”

  It took her a moment to backtrack and find the question. “About Maddie?” She’d thought that was rhetorical. “You don’t care?”

  He leaned toward her like a falling tree. “There’s an ocean of Madison Mays. Clay could murder one a day for the next ten years and the next time we moved, there’d be another fucking Maddie May. That’s the truth. And before you lecture me, let me ask you something: When did you figure out that moving means replacing? Not this very minute, right?”

  “One move ago.”

  “One move ago,” he said. “So it’s a little late to decide you’re not like the rest of us.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” she said, but he was right, and she turned away.

  “For fuck’s sake,” said Hugo.

  “I don’t want to join your club that goes around making people disappear.”

  He leaned against the wall beside her. “Look, I didn’t mean to upset you. You don’t have to cry.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  Hugo sighed, glancing around. “I didn’t ask for this, either. I was a building contractor. My wife, Rosie, she was the smart one. She taught biology at Penn. One day I came home to find a bunch of people in my living room, and Rosie saying they could take us to other worlds. I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. I just went along for the ride. By the time I figured it out—what it meant—it was too late to debate ethics. And the way they explain it, these people, it makes sense. We keep moving because we can do good.”

  “What happened to your wife?”

  He glanced away. “You don’t want to hear that.”

  “I do.”

  “Someone gave away a token. It’s a stupid story; you don’t need the details. Bottom line, Clay bumbled his way into figuring out what it did. It became my job to get it back. Because these people, they’re thinkers. They’re not used to getting their hands dirty. That was fine by me. I had to earn my keep somehow, other than being the husband of the smart lady everybody liked. So I went after Clay. And . . . I screwed up. I thought he was just a dumb kid, who I could talk some sense into. I let him get away with it. Too many times.” He shook his head. “That’s my regret. I didn’t see what he was.”

  The revolving door turned. They watched a middle-aged couple cross the lobby. If they were Hugo’s people, he gave no sign.

  “He set it up over two or three moves, collecting what he needed. Made sure he had everything to ensure things would happen a certain way. When I walked in my front door, he was standing in the hall, large as life. He ran. I chased. I followed him over a couple of fences. All of a sudden, I’m getting tased. And when I’m down, he uses a little spray bottle. Like he’s spritzing a plant. That was where the cops found me. Like I was hiding out. Hiding from the cops in the corner of a neighbor’s yard with her blood on me.” He rested his head against the wall. “In the jail, all I wanted to know was whether they’d move without me. Because I was never the one they wanted. I had things—wedding rings, her birth certificate—things they said could work like an insurance policy, if the worst came to pass. I just needed them to come get me. It took them a few months to figure out how to do it. They had to be creative. And I figured that was it. But the insurance policy was worthless, because Clay had gotten out in front. He was setting a path, and what we brought with us made no difference. Everywhere we went, Rosie was dead, and I was the guy the cops thought killed her.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Oh, but that’s not the good part,” Hugo said. “See, I still had hope. Anything not tied to a mooring can change, so I thought I might get lucky—the roulette ball might happen to drop on the right number and I’d have her back, just from dumb luck. But when the cops found her, some of Rosie’s hair was missing. Clay killed her, cut her hair, and took it with him. So that everywhere I go, she’s dead.”

  “Oh, God,” Felicity said.

  The elevator dinged. They glanced around.

  “I’m going to work,” Hugo said. “You want to help, maybe we can actually catch him.”

  He gestured. She walked toward the revolving door and he fell into step beside her.

  11

  One of Maddie’s classes at NYU was Performance of Everyday Life, which was about how you acted in little ways all the time, even when there was no stage or camera. For example, at the coffee shop where she worked, she was smilier and chattier. This was because of implicit roles, said the teacher—activator, they were calling them now—which provided small prompts and cues about expected behavior. This was an interesting idea, although the main reason Maddie was more outgoing at work was because if she wasn’t, the store owner, Alto, would call her into the rear office, where he sat watching TV and security footage, and berate her.

  “This is business of family,” Alto would say. “This is what we make. Not coffee. Family.”

  Maddie would nod seriously and say, Yes, Alto, which she supposed was another little everyday performance: Woman Learning a Lesson. But one she was happy to play, because the coffee shop was only ten minutes from her apartment, the tips were good, and NYU didn’t pay for itself.

  “I wish I could show you,” Alto said, clutching at his spine, “but I have bad back, as you know. I cannot stand for more than one minute. Even that, very painful.”

  “Yes, Alto,” she said.

  “Smile.” He pushed up the corners of his lips with his fingers. “See? Is not so difficult. Smile and treat like family.”

  “I hate my fucking family,” said Zar, Maddie’s coworker and also friend from NYU. They attended most of the same classes and had actually responded to the same ad, which had been posted in the hallways of Tisch Hall, a building shared by actors, dancers, and other young creative types brave and foolhardy enough to pin their futures on unlikely dreams.

  “Shh,” Maddie said. “You know he hates it when we swear.”

  “Alto should be fucking glad I don’t treat our customers like I treat my fucking family,” Zar said. There were regulars, for whom Maddie would also adopt slightly tailored personalities without entirely meaning to. For the two little old Jewish ladies who met at the same time every Tuesday over the same order of green tea and banana toast, Maddie was quiet and dutiful, like a favored granddaughter; for the lightly mustachioed guy who was writing some kind of book or script, she was curious; for the junkie who crept up when no one was looking, she was strict. Becoming aware of this was the point of Performance of Everyday Life: to realize there was no hard line between acting and not acting, and therefore stop trying to cross it. The result, in theory, was a more natural performance. But it was also something of a mindfuck, which occasionally made Maddie wonder who she was.

  In June a woman began to show up every day, encamping at a table near the rear of the store and staying for hours. She wore sleeveless tops and had no-nonsense dirty-blond hair, often pulled back as she worked a laptop. She was writing an article, the woman said, although what kind of article required her to sit in a coffee shop for five hours a day, week after week, Maddie didn’t know.

  “It’s a feature,” the woman said. “About serial killers.” She swiveled her laptop for Maddie to see. On-screen was a dude with shaggy hair and the hint of dimples. �
��Ever seen this guy?”

  “No,” Maddie said.

  “If you do, run,” the woman said. “He’s a psychopath. I’m serious.”

  At this point, Maddie wasn’t a hundred percent sure the woman wasn’t a psychopath. But she nodded solemnly, another little Performance of Everyday Life.

  “Clayton Hors,” said the woman. “That’s his name. Clayton Hors.”

  “I’ll remember,” Maddie said, and carried the woman’s empty coffee cup back behind the counter, where Zar was loading the dishwasher. Maddie nudged her with her hip. “She’s writing about serial killers,” she muttered.

  “Mmm?” Zar said, and straightened. They’d been trying to figure out the woman for a while. They’d invented wild backstories for most of their regulars, just to pass the time: The Jewish ladies were plotting a robbery, the screenwriter was a government spy, and so on. The woman, Maddie and Zar had decided, wasn’t writing anything: She didn’t type enough. And she didn’t appear to be doing much research. Although that was true of everyone: A lot of people brought laptops into the coffee shop and said they were doing research of one kind or another, but whenever Maddie saw their screens, they were writing messages.

  “Serial killers. That’s what she said.”

  “Interesting,” Zar said. “Maybe she’s a serial killer.”

  “Interesting,” Maddie said. “She pretends to study serial killers while looking for victims?”

  “Exactly,” Zar said. “That’s what she’s researching. Her next kill.”

  “Interesting,” Maddie said.

  “Interesting,” Zar agreed.

  In the second week, the woman was joined by a man. He was huge and broad-shouldered, with a rough beard and disheveled hair. Maddie leaned into Zar and pinched her leg. “Oh, my,” Zar murmured. The man and the woman arranged themselves across the table from each other in poses that suggested familiarity yet wariness. This was an exciting development, and Maddie abandoned the smoothie she was preparing to hustle to the table. “Hi!” she said. “Can I get you anything?”