You Kill Me

by Alison Gaylin

  I turned the combination. Left one. Right seven. Left seventy-three. He used my birthday. I let myself feel flattered for just a few seconds. Then I opened the door.

  First I saw his service revolver, but when I lifted it out, I noticed rows and rows of white business envelopes, then a few piles of glossy rectangles. Photographs. Turned over.

  In my mind flashed the killer’s “All About Me” collage—that twisted gift in Nate’s dressing room. He takes pictures, stores them in that safe.

  “Oh, God.”

  I picked one up and held it in my hands. But I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.

  I held my breath, closed my eyes, counted to seven.

  “I don’t know what good you think luck will do,” said Krull. The only person in the world who ever noticed my superstitions anymore. In the room with me. I hadn’t heard him come in. But that was nothing new. I never heard him come in.

  “You opened my safe,” he said.

  “I had to.”

  “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

  I whirled around, and showed him Pierce’s semi. “Don’t come near me,” I said.

  “Jesus, Sam, where did you get—”

  “I mean it.”

  Krull backed up one step at a time, ’til he was standing halfway across the room.

  Only then did I turn the photograph over.

  It was a school picture of a smiling little boy in a striped T-shirt against a pale blue background. He had curly hair and large black eyes, and for a few moments I just stood there, a panicky confusion washing through me. I looked at Krull’s face. “Who is this?”

  “That’s Ethan,” he said carefully. “He’s my son.”

  I didn’t feel I had much use for the gun anymore as Krull plucked more items from the safe and spread them out on the bed for me to see. Birthday cards, drawings, little notes that said, I love you, Daddy, all from Ethan Brody, Krull’s seven-year-old secret son—a sweet kid, but borderline autistic. He had a tendency to scratch and bite and sometimes hit—hence the wounds on Krull’s hands, hence his asking me if boys were prone to violence.

  Krull had married Ethan’s mother, Sheila, when she got pregnant (just like Marla and Gil had been planning to do), but they couldn’t make it work. They were divorced, and she took the baby and left town a week after his first birthday.

  Krull—who had run DNA tests on my hair—used police software to track down his family in Salt Lake City, Utah. He sent weekly checks, letters…all were returned. Until finally Sheila started cashing the checks.

  Now, though, she was practically a neighbor. Sheila and Ethan Brody moved from Salt Lake City to Brooklyn nine months after September 11, when Sheila had reached an “emotional breakthrough” and decided to “stop being such a sympathy vulture” and reunite her son with his father. All this information came from the letters Krull had removed from the safe—this shrine to his secret family.

  And, as we looked through it all, I felt such overwhelming mixed emotions that I wanted to cry, just cry and never stop. “Why didn’t you tell me, John?” I said.

  “Patton wanted me to tell you.”

  “Patton knew?”

  “This afternoon she knew. I told all of them in the interview room. I had to. It was my alibi.”

  “Your—”

  “It’s where I’ve been disappearing to, Sam. I get phone calls from Sheila. Ethan gets out of control, and she needs me to talk him down. Last night…” he said. “Last night he punched Sheila in the stomach. I had to restrain him. He bit me. After he finally fell asleep, she was so upset she asked me to sleep on her couch.”

  “God, John. Why did you keep all this to yourself? I could’ve helped you. I would’ve wanted to—”

  “I didn’t tell you at the beginning because Sheila and Ethan were across the country. All I did was send money. And…I know how you feel about dads who leave their families.”

  “But they left you. You didn’t—”

  “I could have tried harder to keep them around. I was working up at the Thirty-third, and hardly ever home, and when I was, all I could think about was trying to make detective. I drove them away. And look what happened to him.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “How do you know? I could sit and talk nature/nurture with you to the end of time and neither one of us would—”

  I looked at him. “What about when they moved here? Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “I was…afraid…of how you might react.”

  “Did you honestly think I’d leave you because you have a son?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  I picked up one of Ethan’s drawings: a smiling head on two stick legs, wearing a policeman’s hat. Underneath, in huge, crooked letters, was one word: Daddy. “That’s what’s wrong with us, John. We don’t really know each other.”

  “I know your favorite movie,” he said. “Your favorite flower, your favorite baseball team.” His face was very serious.

  “Yes.”

  “I know you sometimes snore, and you cry during old episodes of thirtysomething and you’re terrified of clowns and I love you more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  A slow warmth filled my chest and a smile curled my lips, even though I didn’t want to smile. I couldn’t help it.

  “I also know you have a semiautomatic, and you apparently aren’t afraid to use it.”

  I sighed. “It’s not loaded…. I borrowed the semi from Pierce because I was afraid of…what was in your safe. I thought you had problems. But it’s not you. It’s us. We have problems.”

  “I guess we do…but—”

  “But.” I put a hand to his mouth. “Everything’s fixable.”

  “I’d like to try, Sam. I really would.”

  “Then let’s try.”

  Krull kissed me with the relief of someone freed of secrets. “Is it too late to go back to that Indian place?” he said.

  I said, “Why the hell not? It’s still open.” And as he went into the bathroom to wash up, I whispered, “Take two.”

  When I picked up the letters and brought them back to the open safe, I noticed so many more inside. How could he look at this every morning? I was sleeping right behind him, sometimes even talking to him while he was sitting here, his other life right in front of his eyes. There were stacks of letters, cards in childish script with Utah postmarks. And so many more, with older dates on the postmarks, addressed to Ethan from Krull and marked RETURN TO SENDER.

  I saw an old pacifier, a stuffed Clifford toy, and wondered, Did my dad keep mementos of me?

  Yeah, right. My mother ghostwrote his birthday cards.

  As I picked up the bright red Clifford dog, I spotted something shiny underneath it. A state-of-the-art silver digital camera. It didn’t look like something Krull would own. But then again, until fifteen minutes ago, none of this stuff looked like anything Krull would own.

  “By the way!” he shouted from the bathroom. “How did you figure out the combination of my safe?”

  “Pierce suggested I try my birthday! He said that’s what he would use if it were his safe!”

  “Man, that guy has a crush on you.”

  I turned the camera over, looked at the small stored-pictures screen and pushed the button.

  Krull said, “But he was right!”

  The first picture was of a valentine heart, drawn in blood, on an exposed brick wall.

  “I chose your birthday because I knew I’d always remember it!”

  The next was of a woman’s bare leg against some kind of dull pink background, gashed all the way down to the exposed bone.

  “Isn’t that nice of me?”

  After that was a man’s chiseled abdomen, a chunk of flesh removed around the belly button. Nate.

  “Sam?”

  What would you do if you found out something about me? Something that…isn’t good?

  “Are you okay, honey?”

  I dropped the camera to the floor. “Som
e things aren’t fixable,” I whispered.

  13

  Pillow Talk

  I swiped Pierce’s semiautomatic off the floor, shoved it in my purse, backed out of the door and bolted down the hall to the elevator. No one had taken it since Krull had come home, so when I hit the button, the doors opened immediately. At least something was going my way tonight.

  “Sam! Wait!”

  I could hear his footsteps heading down the hall as the door closed and the elevator went down. The one elevator on our entire wing.

  Don’t celebrate. He’ll take the stairs. And he’ll be fast about it.

  I touched my bag, where I’d put the gun, and stared at the blinking lights announcing each floor as we passed. Ten, nine, eight…keep going….

  The elevator stopped on five. “Shit.” I was about to hit the CLOSE DOOR button when a very old woman yelled, “Wait a minute.”

  “I’m in a huge hurry,” I said, between my teeth.

  She rammed her foot between the closing doors. “You ever hear of karma, young lady?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kindness and positive energy come back to us tenfold,” she said. “So does rudeness.” She hit the fourth floor.

  “You don’t understand. Somebody wants to kill me.”

  “I don’t blame him.” When the doors opened again, seconds later, she placed her hand in front of the electric eye. “Hmmm,” she said. “Is this really the floor I wanted?”

  I removed the gun from my purse. “I’d say it is.”

  She got out fast.

  The elevator reached the lobby and I raced through it. Just a little bit farther. I pushed through the front door, ran through the courtyard onto the street. Three cabs came roaring by, all of them off duty.

  He’s going to catch up.

  I whirled around, tore across the courtyard into Pierce’s building and headed through the lobby to the elevator. I hit the button and waited for it to show. Krull was downstairs by now. He had to be. Don’t think of Pierce’s place, please don’t, please don’t. I crossed my fingers behind my back; then I crossed my wrists, my ankles.

  Like a much-anticipated date, the elevator arrived. I hit the eighth floor, ran to Pierce’s apartment, banged on the door.

  And when he opened it, I saw he was on the phone, saying, “I’m still enjoying that twelve-pack.”

  My eyes wide, I mouthed the word no.

  “Sam?” He looked at me, forehead knotted with confusion. “No. Umm…no, she’s not here, John. Maybe you just misplaced her; she’s pretty small.” He chuckled. “Okay then. Yeah, I’ll let you know if she calls.”

  After he hung up, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. “Thank you, Zachary.”

  “Uhh…I gotta say, I’m a little confused.”

  “That makes two of us. Invite me in; I’ll explain.”

  Pierce’s couch smelled of stale beer, and sitting on the left side, I got an embarrassingly intimate view of 1995’s Playmate of the Year. It was not the kind of place I usually found warm and welcoming. But tonight, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

  I glanced at a dark blue sleeping bag, unfurled in the corner on the dirty shag rug. “I don’t sleep there,” Pierce said. “The ghost does. I use the couch.”

  I stared at him.

  He gave me a nervous smile. “That was a joke. Ummm…you want a beer or something?”

  “If you don’t mind,” I said. “Can I tell you what happened tonight?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said, and I proceeded to describe Krull’s mood swings, my growing, gnawing suspicion of him. “Oh, Sam,” said Pierce. “John wouldn’t—”

  But then I asked if he’d seen the gruesome “All About Me” collage that Jenna had found in Nate’s dressing room. And after he said, “Yes,” I told him about the digital camera that Krull kept in his safe—about each picture I’d seen stored in it.

  His eyes widened. “My God.”

  “Who knows how long he’s had these urges?” I said. “Who knows how many other people he’s killed?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But this is…it’s all about you, isn’t it, Sam?”

  “Huh?”

  “He killed those three people for you—Nate ’cause he thought you were sleeping with him, Nikolas ’cause he wouldn’t stop sending you those notes, and Marla ’cause she lived where you used to live.”

  I sighed.

  “Maybe it stops and starts with you—and if he gets help, it’ll all be over.”

  “He slashed them up and took pictures, Zachary. He cut a chunk out of Nate’s stomach.”

  He turned to me, a look of raw fear on his face. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Let’s go to the precinct house, okay? You have a car?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Help me find my keys—they might be in the kitchen drawer.”

  I hurried into his tiny kitchen. The counter was surprisingly clean, especially compared to the rest of this place. There was more than one drawer, of course. Pierce had never been terribly specific about things.

  How strange that I was terrified of Krull, and the only cop who could help me was the most overreactive one in the whole precinct. They’d better not think Pierce is crying wolf again. Why hadn’t I taken the camera with me?

  I slipped open a drawer. There was a set of keys inside, but not one of them looked as if it belonged in an ignition. Behind them was another set, which I pulled out, then another. He obviously has a key drawer. But when I looked closer at the set I’d just removed, I felt the tiny hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

  One of the keys was a dense, five-inch-long rectangle with piranha teeth. Another SAF-T brand. What are the odds?

  I reached into my overstuffed bag, produced my apartment keys, my classroom keys, keys to the Space’s box office and theater.

  They were identical.

  I didn’t need to pull the last set out. I knew what they were just from looking at them. The keys to Marla’s five dead bolts.

  He’d made copies of all my keys. And he started doing it last year, when I still lived in that apartment.

  An icy dread seeped out of the core of my chest, into my legs, up through my scalp.

  I backed up, but connected with Pierce’s broad, bulky chest. One of his overstuffed arms slipped around my neck. “I think we should stay home instead,” he said softly.

  I felt cloth in my face, coated with something that smelled sickly sweet, like bad air freshener. Wait, I tried to say. And then everything went black.

  What hit me first, as I started to wake up, was the awful throbbing, as if my skull were suddenly too big for the skin that covered it, and the feel of my eyeballs—slippery and dense, like hardboiled eggs.

  My tongue was completely dried out. What I really wanted was to walk into the kitchen and get myself a huge glass of water, but the thought of getting up made me dizzy…. Man, do I have a hangover.

  I remembered the cheap wine at the Indian restaurant, followed by that exquisite twelve-year-old, which I must have polished off as well. Why else would I be feeling like this? Why else would I have called my mother’s program last night? Did I really do that?

  Then my eyelids started to flutter. I remembered a seemingly endless dream…. Yale calling, and the stranger from Starbucks dead onstage. Jenna Sargent, showing Terry and me that gruesome “All About Me” collage. Then Nate…in the art-supplies closet…Krull was a father, and then a murderer…. Then something about Pierce. Pierce and my keys…

  What a horrible dream, I thought. Until I realized I couldn’t move my arms or legs. I felt the gaffer’s tape around my ankles, and something else fastening my wrists behind my back. Handcuffs. The new, plastic kind used by police officers.

  It was not a dream, but I was in bed. I could feel thick pillows under my head, neck, upper back, a cool, soft smoothness under my bare arms and bound hands. A satin comforter.

  Not my bed. A bed. I’d never owned a satin comforter in my life.

  Slowly,
I opened my eyes. My vision was blurry, so I couldn’t discern shapes right away, but I was overwhelmed by one color. Green. Everything was green.

  As my eyes started to adjust, I was able to pick out the emerald comforter beneath me, the avocado-colored walls, a sea-foam vase atop a teal dresser. Even the TV—set up across from where I lay propped up on those pillows like a hospital patient—the TV had been painted a flat grass green. All green, except the blue-and-white Dodgers penant on the wall, the Sterling roses in the vase.

  I became vaguely aware of a man’s voice, humming in my ear, before becoming more distinct. “…look so pretty here…”

  “Pierce?” My voice came out frail and croaky.

  His shaved head appeared in front of my face. “Please call me Zachary. I love that.”

  “Where am—”

  “My bedroom. Your bedroom. You like it, right? Green’s your favorite. I have all your favorites.” He hit a remote control, and dancing munchkins appeared on the TV. “Ding-dong, the witch is dead,” they sang.

  The Wizard of Oz.

  “I…didn’t know you…?”

  “You didn’t know I had a bedroom? No one does. It’s my secret. Like my hobby.” He stared into my face. “Like you.”

  His eyes were huge and mud-colored, wide with insanity. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?

  “Ezra said you like polar bears. I saw that polar bear on your ‘All About Me’ collage, and Ezra said it’s because they’re your favorite.”

  “You talked to Ezra?”

  “Oh, yeah, we’re buddies.”

  I remembered Ezra, curled up in a ball under my desk.

  “What are you doing down here, honey?”

  “Hiding from monsters.”