by Ellie Marney
Gutmunsson grins. “It’s convenient you know the terms. Amazing, isn’t it, the quack theories some practitioners believe while still calling themselves doctors.”
“And you don’t subscribe to the theory.”
“That environmental influences are the strongest determiner of a person’s actions?” He spreads his hands. “People take their motivation where they find it, Emma, and life is full of motivation. But they have to be inclined to begin with, don’t you think? You can’t just blame it on popular culture. The Dukes of Hazzard is horrifying, yes, but come on—it’s no more likely to drive a man to murder than any other excruciatingly banal activity, like going to the mall.”
Emma snorts, surprising herself. Gutmunsson’s face lights.
“See? We’re having a real conversation now. I say something amusing, and you laugh.” He sits on the bed to face her, propped back on his hands, legs crossed at the knee. “Now tell me, are the details about Pennsylvania accurate in the papers? Or is the FBI not releasing all the information?”
“I’m not… I don’t read the newspapers.”
“Truly? You’re completely oblivious about current events? I’d have thought that’s a bit of an oversight for someone in law enforcement.”
She keeps her voice level. “I’m not in law enforcement. I’m a psychology student.”
“Oh, you’re a psychology student, well. That explains the questionnaire, and the questionable fashion choices—I know I’ve been locked up awhile, but surely acid-wash denim has gone out of style by now. Your running shoes are new, though, or at least well maintained. Do you run, Emma?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes, mm. Were you bracing to run from me? Is that why you wore those shoes today? You’re the psychology student—I’m sure you recognize subconscious behaviors.” Gutmunsson’s eyes are dark whirlpools. He stands again and approaches the bars, as if he’s unable to sit still. “I’m significantly taller, though. I’m betting I could catch you, in a running race. Wouldn’t it be fun if we could open this cage and find out?”
Emma feels a tremble in her calves, pushes down hard. “Can I ask what you were reading, when I first arrived?”
“Rereading,” Gutmunsson corrects. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. I’m studying the Romantic poets. It’s quite enjoyable—the language has a lovely gothic rhythm.”
“You’re studying?”
“You think I have something better to do? Should I be dribbling and playing with myself, like the other inmates here?”
“Excuse me, I meant are you formally enrolled.”
“At Georgetown University, yes. My dissertation is on the disappearance of the God concept correlating to the flowering of representations of the sublime across texts by Shaftesbury, Burke, and so on.” He makes an airy wave. “They won’t confer my degree until I leave this fine institution, of course, but that day may yet come.”
Emma hopes fervently not. “I see.”
“I see—ouch. And here I thought we were becoming friends. Actually I’m not sure you do see, unless you’re familiar with Byron.”
“I know a little.”
“Well, that is extraordinary. Most people of the Podunk rural classes remain entirely ignorant of the existence of art.”
Emma reaches down inside herself for her credit class in classical literature and recites: “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society, where none intrudes, by the deep Sea, and music in its roar.”
The effect is immediate. Rapid movement in the cell as Gutmunsson thrusts himself against the bars. His expression is electric, grotesque with a nameless hunger, and his voice booms like thunder in the long room. “I LOVE NOT MAN THE LESS, BUT NATURE MORE! FROM THESE OUR INTERVIEWS, IN WHICH I STEAL! FROM ALL I MAY BE, OR HAVE BEEN BEFORE! TO MINGLE WITH THE UNIVERSE, AND FEEL! WHAT I CAN NE’ER EXPRESS, YET CANNOT ALL CONCEAL!”
In the sudden resounding quiet, Emma realizes she’s taken a step back. She forces her breathing to calm. The manila folder is clammy from her grip: Her hands are clenched around the cardboard. She finds it difficult to relax them.
“I’m sorry, did I startle you?” Gutmunsson sinks away from the bars, long fingers still gripping the metal. Composed as before, his lips bloom red as he smiles. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself—the acoustics in here lend themselves to oration. You surprised me, too, with the Byron.”
Emma finds her voice, dust-dry. “We people of the Podunk rural classes have our moments, from time to time.”
Gutmunsson bursts into a laugh. The sound is quite musical. His face, so distorted only moments ago, becomes radiant. “Oh, Emma, you’re delightful! I could chat with you all day.”
“Unfortunately I don’t have all day. Will you do this questionnaire for me? Or should I leave it and come back?”
“No, no—don’t go.” Gutmunsson makes his look an appeal. It’s hard to credit, that a boy with a mien like this should have the soul of a hyena. “Ah, you remind me so much of Kristin.…” He shoves a hand through his fall of white hair. “But where do I know you from? It’s positively tearing at me.”
“Maybe I have a common-looking face,” Emma suggests. She keeps her expression perfectly blank.
“Goodness, no. All right, I’ll put it away, I’m sure it’ll come to me. Give me your questionnaire now.”
She finds her anchor. “I’d like to, but I can’t hand it to you.”
“Then we’ll call for Pradeep, shall we?”
The orderly arrives holding a long-handled instrument with a pincer grip. “Mr. Gutmunsson, we do this in the usual way. Please go behind the privacy screen. If you do not obey the rules, the usual prohibitions on your news dailies will apply.”
“Pradeep, may I have a cigarette while I complete the questionnaire?”
Pradeep considers. “You may have a cigarette now, but not after dinner this evening. Is that acceptable?”
“That’s perfectly agreeable, thank you.”
Gutmunsson retreats, peers over the screen as Pradeep expertly lifts the folder in the pincer and slides it through the bars of the cell. The cigarette is done in the same way, but with one entertaining variation: Pradeep takes a single cigarette from a pack in the pocket of his uniform, lights it and puffs on it once, then swiftly transfers it into the cage.
As soon as Pradeep calls out, Gutmunsson swoops from his naughty corner and falls on the cigarette, puffing furiously to keep the ember alight. Then he selects a felt-tipped pen from his desk and perches on the end of his bed, blue pages in his lap.
“Let me see what we have here,” he says, uncapping the pen. With his long limbs, he looks rather like a large white spider hunched over the pages. “Hmm—boring, boring, boring, the usual dull stuff. I can complete this while we talk.”
“Thank you for completing it.” She can hardly refute his assessment of the questionnaire. A standardized instrument designed for the McMurtrys of the world is unlikely to be incisive enough for an offender like Simon.
“Not at all. Are you comfortable? Would you like to sit? I’d offer you a chair, but Pradeep is sitting on the only one.”
Emma decides that this situation could not really get any more bizarre, so after checking the level of dust on the floor, she sits down on it cross-legged.
Gutmunsson is already intent on scribbling on the questionnaire pages. “You said you don’t read the papers, but you’re connected through Cooper. So how is he getting on with Pennsylvania?”
Pennsylvania—again and again, that word keeps returning. And again Emma’s senses ping with the feeling of wrongness, of forces moving, pulling her toward something she doesn’t fully understand.
“I actually have no idea.” Emma registers the cigarette smoke trailing up toward the rafters, the acrid smell. “My unit is only concerned with old cases at this stage.”
“At this stage, that’s an interesting way of putting it. It suggests you’d like to be more involved.”
This is not a direct question, Emma concedes. “I’d like to put the information we’re gathering to use, yes.”
“To stop more people like me, of course.” Gutmunsson grins again, ashes his cigarette, and flicks to the next page. “But, Emma, you must know something. Have they given our Pennsylvania friend a name yet? The popular press is always so entertaining with that kind of thing. The Artist, they dubbed me—they weren’t far off, actually. Do you think our new friend is an artist like me?”
“Your activities were very… different.”
“By that you mean I didn’t use my models and then throw them out with the trash.”
Models. Emma registers the word, remembers the crime scene photos she viewed last night. She recalls the sun-dappled “tea party” scene, in which wire, fishing hooks, and catgut line were creatively utilized on four victims beneath the trees. There was strong evidence that Gutmunsson went back from time to time to assess his compositions at each scene and tweak them for his own amusement.
“No,” she says, working to keep her expression neutral, “you had a little more style.”
“Style—yes, the style of the thing is important, isn’t it? But our new friend leaves the bodies in garbage dumps.”
“I didn’t know that,” Emma confesses.
“Didn’t you? Well, now you do. What does it suggest to you, Emma, that he disposes of his victims in that way?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you do. Think harder.”
“I suppose it suggests that he’s done with them? That they’ve served his purpose and now they’re worthless.”
Gutmunsson holds his cigarette up and considers the burning tip. “What worth did they have to him before, then?”
“The experience of killing them might be the primary—”
“Wrong,” Gutmunsson pronounces with relish. “Consider it from our friend’s perspective. He saw something in them that suited him. That called to him, if you like. You spoke about his purpose and how it might be served—try again in that direction.”
“His purpose is… He sees something in them that he recognizes or wants. He takes them, prepares them, and kills them, which gives him that something, whatever it is—”
“Unpack that a little for me. He prepares them—how does he prepare them?”
“I don’t know.” Emma spreads her hands. “Honestly, I don’t know. I told you, I haven’t been allowed to examine any details of—”
“Active cases, yes, right. Well. That’s a bit tedious, isn’t it? The FBI has brought you all the way from Podunk, Ohio, and they haven’t even given you anything useful to do. What’s the point?”
Emma is uncomfortably aware that she was making a similar argument to Bell in the car two nights ago.
“But that in itself is interesting, Emma. Why did they bring you all the way from Podunk, Ohio? Are you special somehow?”
The hair on her arms lifts. “I told you. There’s nothing special about me.”
Gutmunsson stubs out his cigarette on the bed rail. “Now, don’t be coy. I think you are special.”
She rises from her seat on the floor, trying to make the movement seem natural. Every cell in her body is blaring a warning. “I’d like my questionnaire back now, if you’re finished with it.”
“A very special girl,” Gutmunsson whispers, staring at her, “who works with the FBI. Miss Emma Lewis from Ohio…”
She sees the moment in him when he knows, feels it like a vibration in her spine. Her vertebrae quiver like a radio antenna and she has to brace her legs. Gutmunsson stands, pages slowly tipping from his lap and onto the floor of his cell like a drift of blue leaves.
“Miss Emma Lewis from Ohio—the last bride of Daniel Huxton…” Haloed by light from the stained-glass windows, his face is enraptured. His pupils expand into a maelstrom of blackness. “The girl who got away, the girl who ran. Oh, if only I’d realized this sooner! What fun we might have had!”
“I think we’re done talking now.” Emma hears how her voice has gone thready, feels as if she is tipping toward some endless, horrific maw.
“Answer one question for me first—you thought you were running away to save the other girls as well as yourself, didn’t you? Did it burn, when you realized the truth?”
“That’s two questions,” she says automatically. “I’m going to leave now.”
“Is that why you came to work for the FBI, Emma? To make yourself feel better about it?”
“I came to work for the FBI so I could help them catch people like you.” But her lips are numb, and the words feel clunky in her mouth, like an ill-fitting retainer.
“They don’t understand, though, do they?” Gutmunsson grips the bars, shivering with excitement. “The FBI isn’t known for its lateral thinking. They’ve got you slaving over old cases, gathering useless information.… They don’t understand you at all! A fighter like you! One of their best soldiers, and they’re wasting you! They probably think you shaved your hair to scare people off—”
“Will you give me back my pages, please?”
“Did you know he would slit their throats when you ran?”
She feels pressure building up behind her eyes, and in her soft palate.
“It must have cut you to the quick, when you found out. Did it cut you, Emma?”
Her vision goes white and her voice bursts out like an explosion. “YES, okay? It cut me. Is that what you want to know? Is that what you want to hear?”
The echoes of her shout ring through the chapel, like ripples in deep water. Gutmunsson looks at her, seems to breathe her energy in. A great calm comes over him.
“Pradeep, would you please retrieve these papers for Miss Lewis?”
As the orderly arrives, Emma regains her senses. It takes everything she’s got to step back, wait for Gutmunsson to collect the papers, wait for Pradeep to transfer them with his long claw. Once the folder is in her hands, Emma looks up at Gutmunsson, feeling the wasteland in her expression.
“Thank you for seeing me. And for… this.” She holds the folder low and away from her body. “Good luck with your dissertation.”
She turns to leave, and Gutmunsson speaks again.
“Emma! One last thing!”
She is holding on to her control with thin reins now. You cannot look back on the path out of the Underworld. She looks over her shoulder.
Gutmunsson stands by the front of his cell, the shadow of the bars on his face. Every other shadow in the room swarms in his eyes.
“Tell Special Agent Cooper I said hello.” Gutmunsson smiles. “Tell him he chose well.”
CHAPTER TEN
Emma’s not actually sure how she makes the transition from Simon Gutmunsson’s chapel room to the outside of the asylum. But Cooper must notice something about her when she emerges, because he deals with Dr. Scott and the sign-out process, and before Emma knows it, she’s walking through the foyer.
Cooper takes her elbow, and Emma, dazed, looks at him and thinks, I should punch you in the face. Right in the face. But that sounds as if it would involve way more energy than she is capable of right now, and then she’s out the main door and the moment has passed.
The sunlight in the parking lot is weak, but it’s clean, and the air is clean. She walks away from Cooper, who is caught up talking to Scott, and onto the grass. Her T-shirt slaps against her body with the wind. Some of the things Gutmunsson said have made her angry, and some of the things she herself said have made her angry. Above all, she hates the hot, prickling feeling that she has been rooked. But she knows if she can get a grip on it now, she can use the anger; she can funnel it down into the great storehouse inside herself, draw on it when her funds of energy are low. She thinks of the Byron, and then she thinks of a quote by Mary Shelley: I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.
She senses more than sees it when Bell arrives to stand beside her.
“He got inside you
r head a little, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.” She feels her gut cramp, tries to ease down and realizes her abdominals have been clenched this whole time. “He’s perceptive. And he’s cruel. He likes poking at people’s scars.”
“You can’t let him in, Emma.”
She turns to face Bell then. “Do I look like an easy get?”
“No. But he would like that kind of challenge.”
“I’ll be okay. It’s like going on a fairground ride—you get tipped up and down and rolled around, but when it’s over your stomach settles.” It’s true. Her equilibrium is returning. “At the end of the day, he’s still in there and I’m out here. And he completed the questionnaire.”
“What?”
“Here.” She hands it to him. “Don’t give it to Cooper before we’ve had a look at it.”
Bell stares at the folder in his hands, holds it as carefully as she did. She’s suddenly, forcefully relieved that he didn’t come in with her to the interview. The memory of Gutmunsson’s taunts brings up an uneasy vision of Bell, enraged, leaping the sawhorses, putting himself within arm’s reach.…
“Another thing. Simon Gutmunsson knows something about Pennsylvania. I was right—the whole interview was a sting, and Gutmunsson is a part of it somehow. I need to talk to Cooper about—”
“One second.” Bell touches her arm lightly. “We’ve got the car ride with Cooper. Pitch it to me first.”
“Gutmunsson talked about the Pennsylvania killer’s purpose,” she says. “Suggested it might relate to the way he chooses victims and prepares the bodies. I need to know the details of the case before I can put it together.”
“I can fill in the gaps with what I know.”
“This might all end up leading toward an active case, Bell, and we were told to steer clear of anything other than our assignments. Are you comfortable with that?”
He glowers at the asylum, returns his gaze to Emma.
“I can’t go in there. But I can support you out here. If you want to get involved, I’ll back you up.” Bell spares another glance toward the asylum’s doorway, where their boss is still talking to the superintendent. “Let’s go sit in the car and figure this out before Cooper’s done.”