“You’re a right mess,” he says. “Give me a moment.”
He disappears, and I frantically start moving my hands. The tape is especially loose on my right hand, and if I have enough time, I have a chance.
I sneak a look at Brenda's body. Sweet God, I can see her brain.
Eyes back up. Just focus on the tape, Alice. Get your hand free. I stare at the ceiling as I work my wrist, ignoring the stench and trickling of blood flowing from open wounds. These cuts won’t kill me, so I must ignore them. Focus.
Minutes later, he returns. I can’t not look at him.
Jack carries a handful of bandages, and he makes quick work of sticking cotton pads onto my nose and wrapping gauze around my head, securing the pads in place. He does the same thing with my forearm, and I pray he doesn’t notice how stretched the tape is around my right wrist. All it would take is another loop of tape to destroy the progress I’ve made.
“There,” he says, stepping back and looking at me. “You look a bit mummy-like, but it’ll work until we can get you properly cleaned up.” Then he looks at the floor. “Suppose there’s a lot of cleanup to do overall. Long night ahead, I’m afraid.”
My head is light as a balloon, and I’m on the verge of passing out. I can’t let that happen. Close my eyes. Deep breath in, count to four, exhale. Open my eyes.
Focus on Jack.
“Where did you come from? She said you were in London,” I say. Keep your voice calm. Steady. Don’t show fear.
“That’s what I told her. I wanted her to think she was in control, that she could do whatever she wanted with you.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes it all so much more real,” he says. “Real passion, real fear. If I was here in the room, Brenda would have deferred to me, and I didn’t want that. I had to be able to save you, and in order to do that, Brenda needed to fully have your life in her hands, at least for a moment. But I was here the entire time.” A soft chuckle. “The flat next door is unoccupied. I broke in earlier today. Needed to be close, you understand.” He looks down at the woman he just murdered. “And that was a little too close, if I say.”
All this orchestration. All this obsession.
“You…you killed Jimmy.”
“I didn’t kill Jimmy,” he says. “I saved you from him.”
“Just let me go,” I say. I won’t say please.
Jack looks silently at me for a long time. His eyes are as beautiful as his gaze is fierce, and it’s not hard for me to imagine him holding court in his bar, extracting the most personal of stories from strangers.
“I think you know we’re beyond that point, Alice. I don’t have much time left, and I want to spend it with you. I want to be a proper father.”
“You’re not my father,” I say.
He leans in and pats my cheek, just as Brenda had. “Oh, yes, love. I am. And I haven’t been a good one, so I need to make up for that.”
“I want nothing to do with you.”
Now he turns into something altogether different. The calm, dashing demeanor evaporates as he screams, his reddened face pulled tight in rage. “How ’bout a fucking thank-you for saving your life? Ungrateful bitch!”
The suddenness of it hits me like a shock wave, and all I can do is stammer a response. “I’m…yes…I’m sorry. Thank you.”
He straightens. Face softens. “Yes, that’s better. Right then.”
He turns for a moment, and I work my right hand. I nearly have my thumb free.
“Where to start,” he mutters, scanning the mess in the room.
“Why don’t you have much time left?” I ask. I have a sense that if I let him control everything that happens next, I’ll end up disappearing with him, and then God-knows-what will happen after that. So I need to ask questions. Lots of them. Keep him from doing what he came here to do. “You told me earlier you were sick. What’s wrong with you?”
He points to his head. “Brain tumor, diagnosed a few years ago. About the size of a walnut, but slowly growing. Inoperable, apparently. I wasn’t supposed to last this long, yet here I am. Causes terrible headaches, and at some point, one of those headaches will be my last. Could be tonight, could be a few more years from now. Who knows?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, not meaning it in the least but aware I need not antagonize him anymore.
The effect of my words is astounding. He takes a knee in front of me—soaking his pants in Brenda’s blood—and places his hands on my arms.
“Alice, darling, I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Thank you. Yes, you see? We do need to spend time together.” Jack stands. “I was a fool to wait this long. I won’t waste any more time.”
This is a desperate man. I need to be very careful here.
“You saved me,” I say. “In Gladstone Park.”
“Yes,” he says, his eyes filled with hope, as if I now understand him. What I know is he was the one who told the twins to stab me, just so he could be the one to save me.
“You saved me from Freddy Starks. From Jimmy.” He found Jimmy and somehow managed to get him to talk about that night three years ago when Jimmy shot our dealer. He spent considerable time and effort finding Freddy Starks just so he could point him in my direction, only to save me from him.
“Yes,” he says.
I nod to the body on the floor. “Her motivation was to cut me. But you’re different. You don’t want to hurt me or just to watch me. You want to save me. You saved me from her.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” His voice cracks with emotion. “They all wanted to hurt you, and would have if it weren’t for me.” He reaches out and lightly touches the gauze on my nose, which sends a fresh burst of pain through my head. “She would’ve killed you.”
Just keep talking. “You had an affair with my mother. She got pregnant. But you…you wanted nothing to do with me, did you?”
He looks at me in stunned silence, as if a mask he’s worn his entire life has just been removed. “Alice, I’m so sorry. I was so scared. She was ready to leave Reggie for me. We could have had a proper family. A home of our own. And I-I said no. I was a stupid man. I shunned her. I shunned you. And I’ve never forgiven myself for it.”
“Don’t call him Reggie,” I say. “Only his friends called him that.”
“Is that so? Well, then, at some point, I must have been his friend, because that’s what I called him at the pub.”
“I don’t care. Don’t call my father by any name.”
“Alice, love. You can juggle semantics all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m your father.”
My mind buzzes. I think about my mother, my father. How they always acted around me, around Thomas. The fights. The drinking.
He knew. My dad knew I wasn’t his child. He loved everything about me, except where I came from. He didn’t leave my mother; he didn’t leave me. But he knew the truth, and it poisoned everything from the time I was born.
“You destroyed my family long before you told the Glassins to stab me. My mother turned into another person entirely because of you.”
I think this is quite probably true. I never knew my mother before I was conceived by her and Jack. Was she a wonderful, selfless person at some point in her life?
“And what did she become, Alice?”
“She…” It hits me in its sudden incredible simplicity. “She became just like you.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course it is. She keeps Thomas medicated just so she can be his savior. This…this whole fucking inflated sense of self-worth. The thought that only she can make things right. She’s just like you. She’s addicted to saving him.” So many realizations dawning on me that I’m beginning to lose sense of what’s happening. Lose sense of the fact I’m still taped to a chair, covered in my own blood, vomit, and piss. “She creates pain just so she can get
the credit for healing.”
“I haven’t had any contact with your mother in a very long time.”
If nothing else, I will survive this night for Thomas. We will be together, and we will go far away. I have to live, if for no other reason than that. I look at Jack and strive to see any part of him that will be merciful, or even the slightest bit sane, but I see none. I came from a monster. A fairy-tale villain. A manipulating demon. My father must have seen this as well, spotted it through the handsome, engaging shell of a simple bartender. And when he found out about my mother and Jack, it must have shredded his guts. When my father told Thomas and me the stories of Chancellor’s Kingdom, he didn’t just create Mister Tender on the spot. He’d been thinking about him for some time. He’d been thinking about Jack.
But this man before me is not just a simple bartender with whom my mother had an indiscreet affair. He is a ticking bomb, a collection of synapses blindly firing. If I had to guess, he’s always been unhinged, but something made him more so. Something made him obsessed with me. With saving me.
Of course.
My father’s books.
“My father created Mister Tender to hurt you.”
“Reggie was a hack,” he says. “He was never good enough for you. Or your mother.”
“Don’t use his name.”
“Knowing I had a daughter out there who I couldn’t see was agonizing enough,” he continues. “But I accepted it. I made a decision and couldn’t go back. Your mother refused to allow me to see you. I respected her decision.”
My mother. All the secrets. And how could she not tell me about this man, especially after she knew I was being stalked by someone? She’s just concerned with her own world, with self-pity and suffocating caregiving. As sick as him, maybe.
“But then your father created that awful comic. He made me into the devil, a source of evil. He mocked me, and it made him rich.”
“We were never rich.”
He lashes out again. “You had more than I had! I was in my thirties and working in whatever pubs would have me. I wanted my rightful family and couldn’t have it, and all I could do was watch you grow up.” He rubs his forehead, as if struck by a sudden burst of pain. “And I watched you, you know. For a long time, a lot longer than you realize. Where you went to school. I knew things about you, knew you weren’t popular. Knew you wanted friends.”
Here is where I have to choose whether or not to engage. None of his logic is rational, except to him. He feels justified in everything he’s done, including bringing me to the edge of death and back more than once. Nothing I can say will convince him he’s anything other than heroic.
He stalked the Glassin girls after hearing from Maggie they were obsessed with the Mister Tender novels. He convinced them to do what they did.
He created a site dedicated to following me for years, amassing a twisted collection of fans. Fans like Brenda.
He told Freddy Starks where to find me. He killed Jimmy.
He told Brenda to cut me, saving me only in the last moment.
He…
Oh God.
It has to be.
“You killed my father.”
“Alice—”
“You did, didn’t you?” I openly yank against the tape, not bothering to hide my intent any more. I’m going to get free, and then I’m going to rip him apart. Gouge his eyes, bite off his nose. “You did it.”
“Alice, calm yourself.”
“Be a fucking man and admit it, then. That’s how you got his drawings, isn’t it?” My mind spins, trying to fit everything together. “You hated him all along, but you didn’t do anything about it until you found out you were dying, isn’t that right? You killed him, then ransacked his flat. You found that book with the inscription, didn’t you? He meant that for me.”
There’s a hint of panic on his face, as if he’s losing me. He thinks there’s a chance I could see him as something more than he actually is. He puts his hands on my shoulders to calm me, which enrages me further. “But he never sent it to you, did he, Alice? He kept that book locked away, and only I gave you the chance to see it. I even added my own drawings. I gave you that gift. Not him.”
“So you don’t even understand the inscription.”
“No, of course not. What would I know about some penguin?”
A small satisfaction. Jack doesn’t know about Chancellor’s Kingdom. That’s something special, known only by a dead man and his two broken children. Jack doesn’t know about Ferdinand’s advice: trust no one. Now I see what my father meant by it. He was referring to Jack. He was referring to my own mother.
“Alice, enough,” Jack says. “Please understand the considerable efforts I’ve made in protecting you. Now that you’re finally safe, you need to be with me. I’m the only one who can keep you from further harm, but we don’t have much time. We need to get you cleaned up and out of here.”
“Then get me out of this tape,” I say. “I’ll go home, take a shower, and then we’ll go wherever you want.”
It’s my only hope, but Jack has impulses only a dying man can feel. He killed my father, and now, on borrowed time, he’s come for me. The idea of being someone’s final wish fulfilled is a chilling one.
He softly shakes his head and gives me the slightest smile. I can feel his pull again, his allure, even as a man who must be almost sixty. There’s a genuineness to him, which is all the more tragic when coupled with an obsessive personality. As much as Jack disavows Mister Tender, I can see what my father surely must have seen. Jack is Mister Tender, through and through.
“Alice, I know I still need to earn your trust, though you must see by my efforts how much I love you. Still, I’m not convinced you’re willing to accept me as your family. It will take time, and until then, I’m afraid your freedoms will be limited.”
“So what are you going to—”
“I’ll be back.”
He leaves again, and it’s perhaps my final chance. When he comes back, he’s going to do something to incapacitate me. When I come to, who knows where I’ll be? A cell somewhere? Chained to a wall? He’s had years to plan this very moment. If he takes me, I’ll never be seen again.
I bend at the waist, enough so I can get my face near my fingers. When I’m at my limit and can go no further, I reach and pull the gauze and pads down over my nose. There is pain now. Much of it. My wound begins bleeding again, unrestricted, a fresh burst of bright-red blood, which I direct over my right wrist. Soon, my wrist and hand are coated in it, and I start yanking once more against the tape. The fresh blood relubricates, and I pull and pull, not caring how much skin comes off in the process. I’m a fox in a bear trap.
Finally, it works. My right hand slips past the tape, the flesh around my wrist and the base of my thumb stinging raw. Frantically, I reach in my front pocket for the wine opener, pulling it along the inside pocket of my tight jeans. The second it’s free, I lose my grip and it falls to the floor, next to Brenda’s head. I reach, leaning, stretching my fingers as far as they can go. I can’t help but look at her, and once again, I feel my body starting to shut down at the sight and smell of all the gore.
Grab the opener. Sit back up. I try to work the foil cutter open, but it’s impossible with one hand, so I put the opener in my mouth and hold it fast between my teeth. With my free hand, I pull out the cutter.
It looks remarkably dull and ineffective, but there’s the slightest serrated edge to it.
He’s coming back soon. Any second. I’m so close.
Saw through the tape on my left wrist, which takes an eternity. Sweat-stained hair falls over my face. Blood drips onto my jeans, which now contain nearly every bit of fluid that can come out of my body.
Left hand free. I just need to do the ankles. That’s all I need.
Reach down.
Door opens.
I look up.
Richard.
Fifty-Six
“Oh my God. Alice.”
He drops his phone at the sight of me and doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Richard,” I whisper. “Hurry. He’s coming back. Help me get out of this.”
Richard doesn’t move. He just stares. This man who works nights in an emergency room can’t comprehend the carnage in front of him.
“Richard, help.” My whisper is now a hiss.
Suddenly, he gasps, as if just emerging from a full minute under water. I think the smell just hit him, because he bends over and heaves.
Damn it.
I need to do what I’ve always done. Rely on myself. I lean over and saw at the tape on my left ankle, then see something I curse myself for having forgotten.
Brenda’s scalpel.
It’s close to her hand. I can’t reach it without tipping myself over.
“Richard, listen to me. Listen to me. Hand me the scalpel from the floor. That’s all you need to do. Then get out of here and call the police.”
Richard looks at me, a wave of guilt washing over his face. Then he smacks his own face. Actually hits it, hard. Shakes it off, and suddenly he’s in control of himself. He takes three steps, reaches for the scalpel, but doesn’t hand it to me. Instead, he quickly slices through the tape on my left ankle.
He moves to the tape on my right ankle and is just about to cut it off when Jack comes in and shoots him.
Fifty-Seven
Richard spins to his left and collapses. He tries to push himself up, but his arm gives out, and he lands with a thud against a stack of banker’s boxes, the top one of which wobbles but doesn’t fall over.
The scalpel is still in his right hand, and he’s just close enough to reach out and hand it to me. I grab it before Jack can make another move, then I stand. My muscles scream in protest, and it’s difficult with one ankle still shackled to a leg of the chair, but I need to be standing right now.
I hold up the blade. Jack’s gun is pointed at my face. He’s ten feet away.
Richard moans. He’s on his back now, and he grabs his left shoulder with his right hand. I can see the red blossoming through his dull-olive army jacket. Brenda is only a few feet away. This room is a slaughterhouse.
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