You Kill Me

by Alison Gaylin

  “What happened to your hands?”

  “I told you—”

  “Don’t say bar fight to me again, John. You don’t get in bar fights. Where were you all night last night? Where were you the night before? Don’t say walking, John. Nobody goes walking for four hours in a thunderstorm. I want straight answers.”

  “Sam,” he said, quietly, “can you save the questions for after I finish getting questioned? Please?”

  I looked at those sad black eyes, the gentle mouth, the nose I knew he’d broken as a kid while jumping off his roof, pretending to be Superman. It was the kindest face I’d ever known.

  “Sam, you don’t think I killed those people, do you?”

  “Of course not.” I put both arms around John Krull, held him as close as I could.

  The squad car pulled up, turning into the alley. He got into the backseat, and I slid in beside him. We hadn’t discussed this; some things just went without saying.

  Of course the Tenth Precinct detectives wouldn’t let me join Krull in the interview room, so I went back to their break area, which had vending machines, a long table and a wall-mounted TV, turned off. I bought myself another orange soda, found the power button and turned to CNN. The main story seemed to be about the September 11 anniversary, which would take place in exactly a week, but Nate’s murder had taken over the crawl.

  SLAIN SOAP OPERA STAR NATE GUNDERSEN WAS “A TRUE HUMANITARIAN,” SAYS NEW YORK MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG.

  MEANWHILE, THE SEARCH CONTINUES FOR GUNDERSEN’S KILLER….

  What a strange feeling it was to see his name skittering across the national news like that, under footage of the burning Trade Center. No link was described between Nate and the two other murders. Nikolas did make the crawl too, but as a completely different story: (A YOUNG MAN WAS FOUND DEAD IN AN OFF-OFF-BROADWAY THEATER. POSSIBLY DRUG RELATED.) The cops hadn’t given out the information connecting the slayings, and, being the source of that information, I was grateful.

  Across from where I was sitting, through a long rectangular window, the setting sun glowed pinkish lavender, and I felt a feeble relief; at least this day was over.

  New York sunsets look like drugstore eye shadow. I put my head down on the table and closed my eyes.

  “Fancy seeing you here…and I do mean fancy.”

  I looked up and saw Marla sitting across the table. She wore a bright red sequined cocktail dress and matching lipstick.

  “What are you doing in my precinct?”

  “I’m waiting for John.”

  “Is he still in that silly interrogation? I hate to think I went and got him arrested—and all just because of the show.”

  “The show?”

  “You know. With the knife, and the blood…It’s a new finale we’re working up for Shakespearean Idol. Nate and I are playing Corky and Juliana. We’ve got awesome chemistry.”

  “So you’re alive?”

  She tossed her shiny brown hair over her shoulders. “Don’t I look it?”

  “That’s such great news. We have to tell everybody. We have to tell the police!”

  Abruptly, she leaned in so close, her mouth nearly touched mine. “First, could I ask your honest opinion about something?”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you see my autopsy scars? I tried putting makeup over them, but they just keep showing. Especially from where they took my brain out.”

  I jolted awake to see Krull sitting across the table from me, in the exact same seat where Marla had sat in my dream.

  “You were snoring,” he said.

  “That’s embarrassing.”

  I watched him for a few moments. “So. How did it go?” I said. But I needn’t have. You could tell how it went by the paleness of his face, the tightness of his jaw.

  Krull said, “Ever hear of Capgras Syndrome?”

  “Is it a disease?”

  “Sort of…It’s more like a neurological disorder. Pierce was telling me about it the other day at the gym.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s where you wake up one morning, and you think everyone close to you—your girlfriend, your parents, your friends, even your pets—you think they’re all exact doubles, masquerading.”

  “If you think they’re all exact doubles, how are you supposed to prove that wrong?”

  “You can’t really. In fact, a lot of people who have it go on for years, relating to their wife, their friends, their pets as if they’re the same people, the same animals. But in their hearts, they’re terrified.”

  “Well,” I said, “no matter how bad things get, you can say, ‘At least I don’t have Capgras Syndrome.’”

  “That’s not why I brought it up.”

  “Well, what, then? You think you have it? Do you feel like I’m a replica?”

  “No,” he said. “I feel like I’m the replica. I feel like…I was one guy when you met me. But inside me, there’s always been this whole other guy and he’s…consumed the guy you know. From within.”

  I looked at him. “You’re freaking me out, John.”

  “I’m sorry. There’s just…There’s so much I want to show you. But I’m afraid.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid you’re not going to like what you see. And…that’s going to kill me, because even though you’ve never seen it before, it’s who I am.”

  His gaze darted around the precinct break room; then he looked so deep into my face it startled me. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I can’t say it in here.”

  Suddenly, my spine felt as if it were coated in thick ice. I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it. He didn’t…

  Krull’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and looked at the screen.

  “Who is calling you?”

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “You’re not going anywhere until you explain what the hell you mean.”

  He kissed me on the forehead. “You know what? Forget I ever said anything,” he said. “That was just this terrible day talking.”

  “Unless I heard wrong, you’re trying to tell me about a secret life?”

  “I really gotta go.”

  “Can you just answer one question for me, please?” I said slowly. “You don’t have to answer anything else—and you can leave right away. I just want you to be truthful.”

  He shifted his head from side to side, as if he were literally weighing the concept in his mind. “Okay.”

  “In your secret life—the life I don’t know about. Did someone…” I closed my eyes, opened them again. “Were you struggling with someone who bit your hands?”

  His gaze was steady, almost laserlike. “Yes.”

  My breath grew shallow. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll see you later.” And with that, he ran off into the darkness that pressed against the building.

  12

  The Quiet Invisible

  I stood in the break room, staring at the CNN crawl until the news stories started repeating themselves. Then I ran outside and to the street corner, where I grabbed a cab that seemed to pull up out of nowhere.

  “Where did you just come from?” I asked the driver.

  “Heaven.”

  I peered into the rearview mirror at a pinched, bearded face.

  “Store opening uptown. Heaven. Lots of rich people there.”

  The radio was tuned to WLUV. “We’ll be right back with Dr. Sydney’s ‘Art of Caring,’” the announcer said.

  I looked at my watch. Seven thirty. “I thought she wasn’t on until eight.”

  “It’s a rebroadcast,” he said.

  My mother’s voice floated out of the car radio. “Welcome back to Dr. Sydney’s ‘Art of Caring.’ I care about you. Next up, we have Sarah from Manhattan. Sarah, what can I—”

  “Change the station please,” I said.

  “Okay, okay,” said the driver. “I thought everybody loved Dr. Sydney.”

  “She’s not a doctor.”


  The driver found a baseball game, and I closed my eyes, listening to the soothing monotone of the announcer. I remembered joking around with Krull and Pierce in front of the Yankees game, and realized it had only been yesterday.

  It seemed like something out of an old home movie. Even Pierce and Krull’s spat had a quaintness to it, a warmth.

  When did everything become so strange, so cold?

  As soon as we were a few blocks away from the apartment, I asked the driver to stop, and paid him. I wanted to walk the rest of the way. I needed the air, didn’t want to go inside. It hit me that no one was watching me right now. I knew it for a fact, because Krull wasn’t around.

  As I passed a busy playground, I recalled a time, over the summer, when Krull and I had walked by the same place. For quite a while we watched this one little boy pushing his baby brother on a swing. Back and forth, back and forth, he did it with infinite gentleness and patience, making the little boy squeal and laugh incessantly. I grinned at Krull, expecting a comment on how cute they were, what good brothers, but was shocked by the pall over his face. “That’s as happy as they’ll ever be,” he said. “Before everything starts to hurt.”

  Maybe there was another reason for Krull’s disappearances, for the Sterling roses on the bodies, for the fear in Nikolas’s eyes when Krull had approached him in Starbucks, for all those notes, warning me not to make “him” angry. Maybe there was another reason why he’d run out into a rainstorm after I’d said, “We shouldn’t have moved in together”—the same night a woman was killed, then removed, from my old apartment.

  But what other reason could there be for the bite marks on his hands? His violent behavior in the interview room? The “secret life” he’d started to describe?

  I grabbed hold of the playground gate and squeezed my eyes against a rush of tears. “I love you so much,” I said, doubling over with a pain so great—the pain of my heart breaking.

  My lover was not a superhero. He was a monster. And everything hurt.

  When I got to Stuyvesant Town, I bypassed my building in favor of Pierce’s, then took the elevator up to his haunted eighth-floor apartment and rang the doorbell. I was aware of his eye watching me through the peephole, and then his voice, “Sam!” before the door opened. He was wearing a Yankees T-shirt and shorts, holding a bowl of Froot Loops.

  I smiled, making my voice as casual as possible. “Hey, Zachary! How’s the ghost?”

  “Pain in the ass. He keeps turning my radio to this opera station. Can I get you something? Cereal?”

  “Actually, I wanted to ask you a huge favor.”

  When I left Pierce’s apartment, my purse, chock-full as it was already, felt five times heavier thanks to the unloaded semiautomatic I was now carrying. It had been easy enough to explain the need to Pierce.

  I had a stalker after all. And Krull wasn’t always around to protect me. It did feel a bit odd having this serious conversation in Pierce’s disgusting bachelor pad, with its dirty pink shag rug, beer-stained pullout couch and Playboy centerfolds from the mid-nineties taped to the walls. But Pierce didn’t seem to notice. He asked which of his three guns I’d like, made sure I knew how to hold it properly, clicked open the magazine to assure me it wasn’t loaded.

  Just before I left, Pierce had said, “Doesn’t John have a service revolver?”

  “Yeah…but he keeps it in a safe. And I don’t know the combination.”

  He smiled. “Try your birthday, or the anniversary of your first date. That’s what I would use if I were him—something connected with you.”

  “That’s sweet, Zachary.”

  “I’m a sweet guy. You sure you don’t want any Froot Loops?”

  Krull wasn’t home yet when I arrived. I didn’t expect him to be. Though I had no idea how far away he’d gone after receiving that cell phone call, something told me he’d be there for a while.

  I didn’t even bother turning on the lights in the living room. After I was through pouring Jake’s dinner into a bowl, I sat on the couch in the gentle darkness, listening to the cat smacking his lips and then, when that finally subsided, to what Nate used to call “the quiet invisible.”

  “Turn off the TV and sit next to me, Samantha. Listen to the beautiful quiet invisible.”

  I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. The couple next door wouldn’t start up anytime soon.

  Poor Nate. You have nothing but quiet invisible now.

  Riing.

  I answered the phone to a soft female voice that sounded exactly like my mother’s. “Samantha?”

  “Ummm…yes?”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Well, I’m not bored, that’s for sure.” I glanced at the caller ID screen (PRIVATE NUMBER), then let my eyes drift to the message counter on the answering machine, saw a flashing F for full.

  “This must be such a difficult time for you,” the voice was saying. “I’m so sorry.”

  Was Sydney actually apologizing for hanging up on me today? “Mom?”

  “So did he kill him?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A highly placed police source tells us John Krull is a person of interest in the Nate Gundersen murder.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Anne Rogers with the Daily News.”

  I hung up the phone.

  I checked the messages. There was one from Yale. (“I saw it on CNN, honey. Can we please just make this stop?”) And yes, one from my mother. (“Samantha, dear, I’m terribly sorry for your loss. Listen to my show tonight—I’ll be paying tribute to your Nate. He was such a nice boy.”) But sure enough, all the rest were interview requests—the Post, the Times, Newsday, NY1 Cable, local news from all four networks…even Soap Opera Digest. I looked at Jake. “Somebody blabbed.” Probably those cops from the Tenth.

  We kept our stereo in a cabinet under the TV. It was switched to the CD player, so when I turned it on, I was nearly knocked over by the AC/DC CD that Krull had, at some point, been listening to at eardrum-shattering volume. “We’re on the highway to hell,” screamed the singer.

  You can say that again, Angus, or whatever your name is.

  I turned down the volume and switched over to the radio. WLUV wasn’t hard to find—it was on the right side of the AM dial, one of the strongest stations in the city.

  I recognized my mother’s voice immediately. It sounded even smoother, even gentler than it had on the phone. And what she was saying was, “…Love him.”

  A few, dramatic seconds of dead air. Then, “That’s what Samantha said. ‘I love him, Mom.’ What could I tell her? What can you tell a headstrong, twenty-one-year-old girl? Even if you know she’s about to make the biggest mistake of her whole, fool life.”

  My heart thumped against my ribs. This is Sydney’s tribute? I shut off the radio, but half a second later, I switched it back on.

  “…was it a mistake? Was it really?”

  I dropped to the floor and sat down, crosslegged, like a child. Then I lay on my back, closed my eyes as if she were telling me a bedtime story.

  “I met him once,” Sydney said. “At a party, after their college graduation. He didn’t say much. Boys that age tend to be quiet with their elders. But I do recall one exchange we had. ‘Nathan,’ I said to him. ‘If you want to become an actor, why are you driving all the way to New York? Why don’t you two just get an apartment in L.A.? That’s where all the movies are.’ Do you know what he said?”

  Another stretch of dead air.

  “He said, ‘Mrs. Stark-Leiffer, I like waiting in the wings. That moment just before going onstage is so exciting. It’s my favorite thing about acting. Movies,’ he said, ‘Movies don’t have wings.’

  “My daughter drove all the way across the country with a boy, moved to a city where she didn’t know anyone, a city with—I’m sorry—lousy weather…just so he could have his wings. Not so he could make money and support her. The theater doesn’t pay well, and he didn’t even think about soap operas until after they broke
up. Not so she could ride on his coattails to fame. Fame—in some god-awful off-off-Broadway experiment? In some ridiculous Disney musical, getting drowned out by the sound of babies crying in the audience? Please! My daughter sacrificed her life so he could have his wings, listeners! That’s love.

  “No matter where you think Nate Gundersen has gone, whether it’s heaven, or nirvana, or maybe another life to start all over again, he goes there having inspired a feeling that strong—that selfless—in another human being. He goes there with wings. I’ll be taking calls after the break.”

  When I opened my eyes, a couple of pent-up tears streamed down my face. “Thanks, Mom,” I whispered.

  Next to me on the floor was Pierce’s semiautomatic. Throughout the night, I’d keep it close enough to grab. I picked it up and, for a long time, I just lay there, feeling the cool weight of it in my hands.

  After listening to about five home-loan commercials in a row, I turned off the radio, crept over to our bedroom and cracked the door.

  “Goddamn you!”

  I jumped back, but recovered fast. I knew it was just our neighbor, yelling at his churchin’ wife.

  “Bet she never waited up for you, holding a semiautomatic,” I said.

  Based only on what I was capable of doing, I’d formed a rough plan in my head: When Krull came home, I would hold the gun on him, force him to give me all the details of his secret life. And if what he said matched what I feared, we’d find him a good lawyer and call Boyle or Patton together.

  I was not capable of shooting Krull, which was why the gun wasn’t loaded. And I wasn’t capable of leaving him—not without hearing the truth first.

  “You can’t leave me!” the woman next door shrieked. “I’m already gone!”

  I opened the closet door, stared down at Krull’s safe. What did he keep in there? Why didn’t I know the combination?

  “Try your birthday, or the anniversary of your first date.”

  Our first real date had been in early March 2001. Krull had just gotten out of the hospital, and he still wore a bandage over the bullet wound in his neck. I took a personal day from my job at the Space. We had a few beers at a Mexican place on Fourteenth Street, then took the nine train down to Battery Park and watched the lavender-pink sunset from the observatory at the World Trade Center. “I’ve always loved it up here,” Krull said. “You look down, and there’s no drama. Just lights and rooftops and traffic. Everything moves at just the right speed.”