The 22 Murders of Madison May

by Max Barry

  He produced a phone. Calling the police, Felicity assumed. She did not want to be arrested for trespassing in a pool. But she didn’t want this to be for nothing, either. She waded toward the far corner, where she hadn’t searched yet.

  “You have to get out now,” the guard said.

  “You think I’m doing this for fun?” she said. “You think I want to be in here?”

  “I don’t know what you want. But you can’t be in the pool.”

  “Is this your pool?” she said, because he was being very protective. But she couldn’t fault him for that. He was doing his job. “I’ll be one minute.”

  “No. No minutes.”

  “One minute,” she said, and went under again. In the far corner was a plastic bag. She forged toward it, gripped it, and hauled it out of the water. Inside was a gray stone.

  “You found it?” the guard said aggressively. “What you were looking for?”

  She began to wade toward him. “Yes, thank you.”

  He watched her silently. When she reached the edge, he stepped forward and offered his hand. She took it and he hauled her out of the water.

  “Thanks,” she said, dripping.

  “That’s what you lost?” he said, eyeing the stone.

  “It has sentimental value,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  She squelched back along the sidewalk with the plastic-wrapped egg in her pocket. While waiting at the crossing, her phone rang. “You’re here?” Maddie said. “Where are you?”

  She was in the shadow of the mall where it had happened. “Beverly Hills.”

  “Where in Beverly Hills? Can I come to you?”

  “I don’t want to bother you,” Felicity said, because who knew; Maddie could be doing Hollywood things.

  “It’s no bother,” Maddie said firmly. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been looking forward to this. Are you free now?”

  “I am. But I’m wet.”

  “You’re wet, did you say?”

  “I had to get into a pool in my clothes.”

  “You’re so fascinating,” Maddie said. “I’m sure you’ll dry. It’s L.A.”

  They met at a café on Wilshire Boulevard, which Felicity walked to, like a New Yorker. Maddie was right: She dried. By the time she pushed open the door, even her shoes were quiet.

  Maddie rose from a table, wearing an emerald knitted dress, her hair a few shades lighter than it was the last time Felicity had seen her. She came forward and they hugged. “Hi, oh my God,” Maddie said. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Your hair is amazing,” Felicity said.

  “Amazingly time-consuming. I spend half my life in front of a mirror now. It’s not healthy.” She gestured to her table, where sat a young woman with remarkable cheekbones. “Felicity, this is my friend Zar.” Zar rose and shook Felicity’s hand. “We were together when you called. She’ll stop bothering us in a minute.”

  “I just need a sandwich,” Zar said.

  “She wanted to meet you,” Maddie said.

  “The person who saved your life, yes, that’s true,” Zar said, gazing at Felicity as if Felicity were the movie star, not Maddie.

  “I don’t know if that’s what happened,” Felicity said.

  “It is,” Maddie said. “Zar, stop looking at her like that. You’re embarrassing her.”

  “I’m not,” Zar said, and laughed. “Maybe I am. I’ll get out of your hair. Thank you for saving my friend, Felicity Staples.”

  Maddie ushered Felicity to the table, which was tucked away in a corner of the café. “We went to NYU together. I brought her out a couple months ago, when things started to get wild with my career.”

  Felicity nodded. “It’s so good to see you.”

  Maddie smiled: a wide, beautiful expression that put Felicity in mind of the first time she’d seen her, as a real estate agent, on a website. “You, too.” She glanced around. “You know, I saw him here once. He was watching me from across the street. I didn’t realize it was him at the time, but it must have been. He was following me.”

  It took her a moment to realize who she meant by “him.” “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

  “No, no. I’m in this area a lot. All the ghosts are gone by now, I think.” Maddie smiled. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought you might leave.”

  “Oh,” Felicity said. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I don’t really know how to think about it,” Maddie said. “Sometimes I can’t remember exactly what happened. I’m not sure how much was real.”

  “I remember. Ask, if you want.”

  “Maybe it’s best not to. I could let it be a kind of dream.”

  “If you want,” Felicity said, although, if it were her, she would want to know.

  A moment passed. Maddie laughed. “I’m a little nervous. He’s gone, isn’t he? That’s my first question. Is he really gone?”

  “Yes. God, yes.”

  “I know he died. But I keep thinking about how he came from somewhere else. He went to places where I was . . . a real estate agent. Or a bartender. Or this, but with different hair. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Maddie nodded and sipped at her water. She was building up to something, Felicity sensed. There was another question she was almost ready to ask. “He’s not the only one who moved from place to place. You did, too. And your friend. Hugo Garrelly.”

  “Yes.”

  “He hasn’t gone anywhere, though,” Maddie said. “He’s in Sing Sing.”

  She nodded again. “He lost his chance to move when he came back to help me.”

  “Is that what you do? Move places to help people?” And before Felicity could think how to answer: “I’ve thought about visiting Hugo. But I don’t know why he was there. At the mall, I mean. I feel like I owe him.”

  “You know what? Don’t visit Hugo. They don’t move to help people, Maddie. And you don’t owe anyone anything. Just go enjoy your life.”

  Maddie was silent for a moment. “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “Exactly,” Felicity said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “It’s a choice, then? You’re not stuck, like Hugo?” There was a short silence. Maddie laughed. “I’m sorry. These questions are so personal.”

  “I’m here because I choose to be,” Felicity said, which was kind of true, starting from roughly the moment she’d collected Hugo’s egg from the Wells Fargo pool. “What is it you really want to know?”

  Maddie glanced away, embarrassed. She wants the egg, Felicity thought. It should have occurred to her earlier. It was a magical transdimensional portal key—who wouldn’t? “I was thinking . . . and I know it’s silly . . .” Maddie leaned forward and planted her elbows on the table. “If there are more of him, could he . . . start again?”

  Felicity blinked. “Oh, shit, Maddie. In none of the other places does Clay get a token. You never meet him. None of us do. He’s just a sick kid. End of story.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I promise. Forget him. Seriously. Him, Hugo, all of those people: Forget them. There are enough assholes in this world for you to worry about.”

  Maddie gave another small laugh, this time of relief. “Thank you.” She wasn’t going to ask about the egg, Felicity saw. She never had been. “I won’t forget about you, though. Not ever.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Felicity said. She was glad she’d come. “That’s fine.”

  * * *

  —

  Four weeks later, she received a phone call from a woman who told her in a brisk monotone that a fifteen-minute visit with inmate Hugo Garrelly had been approved. Felicity parked in a small lot off a narrow road that ran alongside the prison’s appar
ently endless concrete wall. In reception, she stood in line with a dozen or so other people, including a depressing number of children, and showed her papers to a man with small glasses and pink cheeks. She was an hour early, because apparently that was the rule. Eventually, she was taken to a room with four chairs facing glass panels. Behind one of the panels was Hugo.

  He had a wired phone to his ear, but for a few moments, she stayed where she was and just looked at him. He had lost a lot of weight. He was clean-shaven. She sat and picked up the phone. “No beard,” she said.

  “They don’t force us to shave,” Hugo said. “But if we choose not to, we get solitary. I held out awhile.”

  She nodded. He was nervous, she thought. Not in a way that most people would see. But she could tell.

  He said, “Did you get it?”

  “Straight to the point,” she said. “As usual.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes, I got it.”

  He blinked rapidly.

  “I got pretty wet,” she said. “It was a whole thing.”

  He shifted his weight. “Felicity—”

  “I realize you saved my life. Clay would have killed me if you hadn’t come back. Would have killed Maddie, too, by now. I want you to know I appreciate that.”

  “But you’re keeping it,” Hugo said.

  She sighed. “I almost threw it away. I almost destroyed it. Because I think it’s shitty, what you people are doing. But it’s not my token. So I’m giving it back.”

  He bowed his head for a moment. His face was full of relief. “You can’t mail it to me. You have to find a guard who—”

  “Please,” she said. “I’m not an idiot. I’ll get it to you.”

  He nodded.

  “Do something good with it, if you can. Because what you’re planning—spending your days looking for someone you might never find—that’s not actually a life.” She raised her hand and wiggled her ring finger. “Did you notice? You didn’t congratulate me.”

  “You’re engaged?”

  “June wedding. I’ll send you an invitation.” This was a joke, but he didn’t smile. “Gavin, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Which one?” He gestured at his face. “The beard?”

  She shook her head. “He makes shoes. But doesn’t cook.”

  “Huh,” Hugo said.

  “They’re all the same, though,” Felicity said. “That’s what I figured, eventually.”

  He nodded.

  “Except me,” she said. “I think I changed. I have you to thank for that, I guess. My wedding day, I’ll have a drink for you.” A silence fell between them. “Maddie says hello. She’s an actor now. A real one.”

  “I heard.”

  “Oh, of course.” He had mentioned that in his letter. The silence stretched. He was already thinking about the egg. Planning how to use it. “Well,” Felicity said, “that’s it, I guess.” She rose. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. If I don’t see you again, have a nice life.”

  “You, too.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll try.”

  19

  The curtain came down, and then went up again, and repeated this two more times, and finally Maddie hurried offstage to the echoes of applause. She wiped the greatest excesses of makeup from her face and wriggled out of her 1950s A-line skirt. She hung it and her blouse where the costumer would find it, dressed for the current century, and headed for the lobby.

  The audience was milling there, still talking excitedly. A woman of about seventy spied her, her eyes lighting up, and Maddie stopped and smiled as the woman tottered toward her. In theory, Maddie had plenty of time to walk the three minutes to South Street and catch the 39 bus downtown. But it was Boston, where timetables could not be trusted.

  “You were wonderful,” the woman said, clutching her hands.

  “Thank you,” Maddie said. “You’re so kind.”

  “You should do this professionally.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You should. I’ve seen every production at this theater for the last thirteen years. You’re the best.”

  Maddie laughed politely, because she actually had considered doing this professionally—not seriously, but as a kind of daydream, which came and went. Especially in moments like this, when she saw that she had done something: had moved people somehow, to somewhere else, for a short while. She’d once even applied to NYU’s drama program. But then her father had suffered a stroke, and after that, looking at her booklets and forms, drama had felt silly and impractical. She wound up getting a BFA at the New York School of Design instead, then an entry-level position at an architectural firm in Boston, where she mostly sat in client meetings and carried a laptop. One day, though, not too long from now, she hoped to create spaces: interiors of daring and dash, where shapes aligned in ways that comforted and contained. On weekends, for fun, she did community theater. This season: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  Across a sea of heads she saw Jamahl, who played her Nick, still in costume and makeup. He met her eyes and raised a champagne flute. Jamahl was very arrogant after performances, for about fifteen minutes. He was a good guy, but also kind of the reason she was glad she didn’t go into acting professionally. “Thank you so much. But I really have to go.”

  “Oh, of course you do,” said the woman. “Parties, I’m sure.”

  She had an hour and a half on a crummy coach to Concord, New Hampshire, en route to her parents’ house. If she were lucky, she wouldn’t be seated next to anyone too drunk or too chatty. “It was great to meet you. Thanks for coming to the play.”

  “You’re so wonderful!” the woman called as she walked away.

  * * *

  —

  During the twenty-minute bus ride to South Station Bus Terminal, she flipped open her screen and began to sketch. There was a client pitch on Monday, a corporation looking to refresh their work spaces. Maddie was a million miles beneath the notice of the people who would actually contribute competent design ideas, but she had thoughts. She inserted her earbuds and began to draw.

  She was lost in shelving ideas when a man seated across the aisle leaned toward her. She removed her earbuds. “I’m sorry?”

  He was looking at her screen. “What is that?”

  This was why she didn’t usually catch the bus. “My work.”

  “Looks cozy,” he said. “You make warm throughlines.”

  Maddie eyed him, puzzled. “Do I know you?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you work in design?”

  “No, I’ve just picked up a few things in my travels.”

  She wondered where you traveled to pick up terms like throughlines. She didn’t want to know. She would be off this bus in twenty minutes. “It’s just a sketch.”

  “You’re talented. You’ll do well.”

  “Thank you,” Maddie said. She reinstalled her earbuds and returned to her work. But over the next few minutes, she found herself glancing at the man across the aisle again. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d met him somewhere. He was familiar in a way she couldn’t place. She took out her buds. “Are you sure we don’t know each other?”

  He looked mildly surprised. “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes,” Maddie said.

  He glanced around. “I check on people.”

  “What, like a parole officer?”

  “No. Not exactly.” The bus wheezed to a halt. A woman in an ancient blue hat tottered down the front steps and off into the night.

  “Are you a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you checking?”

  He shifted in the seat, which could barely contain him, because he was hug
e, tall, and round-shouldered. Slightly grizzled face, but handsome, with a beard and a cap. “I’m making sure they’re happy and safe.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Maddie said, because it was the weirdest thing she’d ever heard. “Your job is to travel around making sure people are happy and safe? Who pays for that? Is this a service for overprotective parents?”

  “Not the parents,” he said. “It’s no one they know.”

  She began to feel that this whole conversation might be a fiction. “You’re talking about guardian angels, then. People looking out for you and you don’t even know it.”

  He smiled ambiguously.

  She laughed, because this fantasy was a nice one, worth indulging for a minute. “What if they’re not? The people you check on. Not happy and safe. What do you do?”

  He shrugged slightly. “Hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Oh, okay,” Maddie said.

  “You don’t like the idea?”

  “It’s a nice concept. I’m just not sure it’s, you know, a real thing.”

  The man’s watch beeped, and he glanced down. “Ah,” he said, standing. He had to hunch over to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. “My stop.”

  She peered outside and saw the flat red brick of Northeastern University. “Who are you checking on tonight? A college student?”

  “No,” he said. “I already met her.”

  The doors hissed open. He clomped down the steps. She wanted to say something, but her brain was jammed up all of a sudden.

  “Nice to meet you, Maddie May,” he said, even though she had absolutely, definitely not mentioned her name. The doors thumped closed. The bus pulled away from the curb. She turned to stare out the window. The man stayed on the curb for a moment, watching her, then tugged down his cap and began to walk away.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In other worlds, this book is much worse, because I didn’t have the support and critical insight of my dedicated early readers. Although I guess there might also be worlds in which I had even better early readers. Huh. So thanks a lot, Kassy Humphreys, Jo Keron, Todd Keithley, and Charles Thiesen.