8

Ann stood in the middle of the living room over a half-packed box, frowning down at Rachel. “I can’t believe you just invited him to church,” she said. “What if he’s crazy?”

“Of course he’s crazy. He thinks we were fated to meet.” Rachel sketched air quotes around the phrase and rolled her eyes. She sat on the floor amidst wobbly stacks of books that Ann had pulled from bookshelves and piled around her. Pushing a handful of curls from her face, she grabbed a stack of dry-rotting paperbacks and wedged them into a box.

“You don’t think that’s just a line he uses on all the ladies?”

“Possibly,” Rachel said, considering. “He seemed fairly sure of himself.” She straightened and began patting the floor around her. “Where’s the packaging tape?”

“I think you’re sitting on it.”

Rachel hitched up a hip and found a roll of packaging tape partially stuck to one of the pillows beneath her. As she pulled it loose, the free end of the tape came unstuck from the pillow and glued itself to the rest of the roll. While Ann crammed stacks of paperbacks into a shallow box, Rachel set about trying to unstick it, with very little success.

“What are you going to do if he actually shows up for church on Sunday?”

Rachel tilted her head to the side. “Run?”

Ann looked pointedly at Rachel’s casted leg, stuck straight out in front of her. “I’d like to see you run.” She folded the flaps of the box shut and held out her hand toward Rachel. “Tape.”

“Keep your pants on.” Rachel had managed to get a sliver of thumbnail under the edge of the tape, but when she pulled, only a small shaving peeled away from the roll, sticking to her thumb. She pulled the tiny strip free and pressed it directly into the center of Ann’s outstretched palm. “Here you go.”

Ann picked the tape off her hand. It stuck to her fingers. She pulled it free, and it stuck to the fingers of her opposite hand. She exhaled a long, slow breath through her nose. “Rachel,” she said, trying to scrape the tape off her hand against the side of a box, “if we’re going to get this stuff packed up in time, we’re going to have to focus.”

“I’m so sorry for slowing you down with my inferior tape-unsticking skills.” She scraped her fingernails over the tape roll ineffectively.

Ann shifted the box against the far wall and started filling the bottom of another with a layer of hardbacks. “You have too many books.”

“First of all, there’s no such thing as too many books.” Rachel yanked another sliver of tape from the roll and growled at it.

“There is when it comes time to move them.” Ann shoved another half-packed box across the floor toward Rachel. “You’re going to have to put something else in the top half. Another layer of books would make it too heavy.”

Rachel gestured toward her open bedroom door. “I was thinking clothes.”

“Great,” Ann said. “Good luck with that.” She stood, stretched, and disappeared into her bedroom.

Rachel worked her fingernail under the edge of the tape and began peeling slowly, careful not to let the strip tear away from the roll. She knew better than to ask for more help than Ann willingly volunteered. After all, Ann had her own stuff to pack, and she juggled a schedule that allowed much less time for packing than Rachel’s.

Once the tape flap was successfully unstuck, Rachel leaned back amidst the rubble in the middle of the living room and closed her eyes.

Life was rather unfair.

She had broken her ankle in the most ridiculous way possible and at the worst possible time. She wanted sympathy, comfort, and someone to wait on her hand and foot. She wanted Ann to tell her that she was going to do everything she could to get them both ready to move out on time.

She also wanted Ann to notice that she was thirsty and bring her a drink. Alas, these were not the ways of Ann.

Rachel texted Lynn. Friday night packing. Wish you were here.

Wish I could come help tomorrow. Lynn texted back. Maybe later next week, so save some for me. A moment later, the phone pinged as a separate text came through. And lock your doors tonight!!

It was on the tip of Rachel’s brain to rehash her arguments about the Memento Killer not being a home invader, but at the last second she thought better of it. Despite her aching leg and sore lower back, Rachel crutched around the apartment twice, checking and double-checking the locks on the doors and windows. The Memento Killer might not be a home invader—that anybody knew of, that is—but Lynn was right. It didn’t hurt to take precautions.

~*~

On Saturday morning, Rachel intended to get up early, cook a real breakfast, start her laundry, clean her bathroom and the kitchen, and then spend the rest of the day packing. Instead, she woke to the dim light of a stormy morning. Nothing could be less inspiring to productivity.

Except for the squall building outside, the apartment lay in complete stillness. Rachel shrugged the duvet higher over her shoulders and listened to the gusts against the window. If she lay perfectly motionless, she could almost forget about her throbbing leg.

Unfortunately, her bladder had other ideas.

With herculean effort, Rachel rolled sideways and sat up. She set the heel of her cast on the floor and reached for her crutches, which at some point during the night had fallen sideways and now lay splayed across the bedroom floor. For a moment, she felt thankful that she had not tripped over them in the middle of the night. Then she remembered that she would have needed the crutches to get far enough across the room to trip over them.

Crutching from the bathroom toward the dark gloom of the kitchen, Rachel determined to have her morning coffee sitting down. She had hoped that Ann would be up and would carry her mug to the table, but Ann’s half of the apartment was silent. Rachel briefly considered making a racket in hopes that Ann would emerge from her room, but odds were high that if Rachel woke up her sister, Ann was more likely to punch Rachel in the face than to help her.

Rachel didn’t bother turning on the kitchen light, choosing instead to wait in the semi-dark while the coffee brewed. Rather than crutch across the room to sit and wait, she stood next to the coffee maker, leaning her arms on the counter to relieve pressure on her left leg.

Once the coffee had been poured into her favorite mug and the perfect amount of cream swirled in, Rachel slurped a few sips in order to lessen the odds of spilling. She nearly scalded her tongue in the process. She stretched out her arm and set the mug on the counter as far away as she could reach. She crutched forward a few steps and moved the mug farther down the counter. By this tedious process, she eventually reached the edge of the kitchen. She had now arrived at a critical juncture. She must transfer the mug from the counter to the kitchen table without precipitating disaster.

By crutching forward to bridge the distance between table and counter, Rachel found that she was able to pass the mug from the counter to the table—from her left hand to her right hand—with only very little dribbling onto the carpet. Since the carpet was brown, Rachel decided not to bother about a few little coffee drips. She collapsed at the table, hoisted her right leg onto a chair, slipped her cold hands around the warm mug, and sighed. It didn’t seem possible that this used to be a daily indulgence.

Having coffee sitting down, she texted Lynn. Crutch level = EXPERT. Lynn did not respond, likely because she was still asleep, like a normal person.

By the time Ann emerged from her room an hour later, Rachel’s joy over realizing that she could move objects from the counter to the table with relative ease had overridden her normal distaste of morning. She had downed three cups of coffee and consumed an entire plate of cheesy scrambled eggs and now leaned back in her chair, both legs propped up on the kitchen table.

“I regret nothing,” she said when Ann scoffed at her for overloading her bladder. “If I’m to be trapped in here packing all day, I might as well enjoy the luxury of being near a toilet.”

Standing at the stove, Ann wiped out the pan with a paper towel, cut in a fresh pat of butter, and switched the burner to low while cracking eggs into a mug. She used a fork to whisk in pepper and garlic powder and poured herself a huge glass of milk while the eggs cooked.

Rachel watched, thinking how much she would miss having Ann as a roommate.

Ann carried her plate of eggs to the table and set it down. Pulling out a chair and discovering a stack of magazines piled in it, she shook her head. “You need to get rid of those,” she said as she shifted the pile to the floor.

“I can’t. They’re research.”

“For what?” Ann asked.

“Life.”

Ann paused, fork poised over her plate. She shook her head. “I’m worried what your new place is going to look like after a year or two.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re a hoarder.”

“I am not a hoarder.”

Ann shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth and spoke thickly around them. “You have hoarder tendencies,” she said. “At the very least.”

“Just because I hold on to a few magazines—”

“It’s not just the magazines. It’s the books and the mugs.”

Rachel set down her coffee and laid her hands flat against the tabletop. “Hey.” She glowered. “The mugs aren’t entirely my fault.”

“Interesting.”

“Most of them were gifts.”

“From students whose names you probably don’t remember.” Using the side of her fork, Ann scraped the remaining eggs on her plate into a mound before scooping them up.

“I remember all my students’ names.” Rachel said with exaggerated piousness. “Ever.”

Ann yawned. “I’m sure you do.”

“I do! And if I hadn’t already packed up the old yearbooks, I would prove it.”

Ann did not seem particularly sorry to have missed this promised treat. She lifted her plate and scraped the rest of the egg bits directly into her mouth before leaning back in her chair and stretching. She accidentally jiggled the table in the process.

“Careful!” Rachel yelped. She steadied her cast with both hands. “It’s still really sore.”

“You shouldn’t have your leg up on the table. What would Mom think?”

“Mom would think you were rude for jiggling the table while my hurt leg was on it.”

Ann looked around at the jumble of half-packed items they had left in the living room the night before. “Where are the rest of the empty boxes?”

“I think we used all the boxes last night. Which only means one thing.”

Ann nodded and drank down the rest of her milk. “Dumpster run.”

Rachel nodded. “Dumpster run.”

~*~

With a grime-filled day of cleaning and packing ahead, Rachel hadn’t bothered to shower. Now, as she stood next to the dumpster behind the mall two blocks from the apartment, she had cause to regret it. Although the rain had stopped, heavy clouds rode low against the horizon, trapping the heat close to the ground. The air, pregnant with humidity, clung to the skin. It was like standing in a warm bath.

This was not a garbage dumpster, but one full of recyclables. Still, Rachel felt conspicuous standing next to it while Ann hoisted herself up to sit on the side. With her toned arms and sleek build, Ann made even dumpster diving look easy. Meanwhile, Rachel stood with one foot up, leaning on her crutches like a demented Sandhill crane.

Ann peered inside. “The boxes on the top are sort of wet,” she told Rachel. “So it looks like I’m going in.” She gripped the sides of the dumpster and fell backwards like a scuba diver into the ocean.

Not for the first time, Rachel felt thankful to be living far enough from school that there was little chance of a student or parent driving by at that particular moment.

“Heads up!” Ann called. Flattened boxes sailed over the sides. With considerable difficulty, Rachel shifted them from the ground into the bed of the truck, while balancing on one leg and trying not to tip too far forward as she leaned to pick them up.

By the time Ann heaved herself back over the side, vaulted to the ground, and stuck the landing, Rachel had managed to get fewer than half the boxes into the truck bed. While Rachel struggled with a box, Ann leaned down easily and scooped the remaining ones into a single stack. She lifted them all at once and slid them on top of the messy pile that Rachel had made.

Rachel became aware of a pressing need. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Ann laughed. “The coffee!”

“Let’s hurry home.” Rachel crutched around toward the front of the truck. “It’s just a few blocks.”

“We’re not going home.”

“What?” Rachel’s voice rose shrilly.

“No need to get screechy. I told you that we need more packaging tape and more black markers, remember?”

Rachel leaned her face against the glass of the passenger’s side door and groaned.

“You might as well use the bathroom in the food court. I’ll wait out here.”

“I hate that bathroom.”

“Then hold it.”

“I can’t hold it,” Rachel explained. “It’s coffee.”

Ann shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Why is my life like this?”

Ann flipped her keys back and forth in her palm. “I’ll drop you at the entrance.”

“No, it’s not far. I’ll just crutch there.” Rachel made no move to leave. Just the thought of crutching all the way across the parking lot made her feel tired.

“Whatever you want,” Ann said lightly, unlocking the truck and pulling the driver’s door open. As Rachel finally turned to crutch away, Ann added, “But be careful once you get inside. The tips of your crutches are wet, and the floor will be slippery.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

Ann lifted her hands, palms out. “No need to get cranky. I’m just saying. The last thing you need is to break another bone.”

As she crutched into the gross mall bathroom, Rachel tried not to think about what would happen if she lost her one-legged balance while hovering over the toilet. She imagined slipping sideways onto the sticky patch of floor between the toilet and the wall. If that happened, she would just lie there and wait for death.

On her way out of the food court after conducting her business, she paused at the double glass doors. A small band of thuggish boys approached from the outside. All baggy clothes, scruffy faces, and tattoos, they did not seem the type to step back and give her the right-of-way. To her surprise, the largest thug—an oversized youth possessing a remarkable, spider-webbed neck tattoo—pulled open the door and stepped back. He motioned for his friends to fall in behind him, giving Rachel room to maneuver through the doorway with plenty of clearance. A smaller but no less disreputable-looking member of his group caught the other door and pulled it open to provide wider berth.

“Thank you,” Rachel said, smiling at them, surprised.

Neck Tat shrugged, looking both pleased and embarrassed. “I’ve been there, man,” he said, his voice deep and booming. “It stinks.” He gave her a little smile, displaying a set of rabbity front teeth.

“It really does,” Rachel agreed. She crutched past the little group, who waited until she was a respectful distance away before going through the door themselves.

“I guess you never can tell about people,” Rachel told Ann as she hauled herself up into the cab of the truck moments later. “Those thugs were so nice.”

“What made you think they wouldn’t be? Don’t you teach your students anything about not judging books by their covers?”

“As if I would say something so cliché,” Rachel said with a snort. “It’s true, though. Clean-cut men aren’t necessarily any less dangerous than scrubby-looking ones.” Rachel’s voice took on a pontificating tone. “After all, take Ted Bundy. He looked positively All-American, and just think what he pulled off.”

“Unlike you, I try not to think about things like that. But since those thugs seemed so nice, maybe you should have asked them to help us pack.”

“I doubt they were that nice. I mean, they may have held the door for me out of sympathy, but if they helped us move, I doubt all my stuff would make it from Point A to Point B, if you know what I mean.”

“They don’t sound like the type to steal books.”

“I own more than books.”

Ann said nothing.

~*~

“How’s it going over there?” Ann asked. Since returning with boxes, tape, and new markers, they’d been at it for hours.

Rachel took a break from packing to stretch her back. She pulled her ear buds out of her ears and yawned. “It’s going fine, except that every time I bend over to put something in the box, my ear buds fall out.”

Ann looked her up and down. “Do you have them in the right ears?”

“Very funny.”

“You know I’m not kidding, right?”

“About what?”

“About the ear buds.”

Rachel stared at Ann. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s a left ear bud and a right ear bud. If you get them in the wrong ears, they’re going to fall out more easily.”

“Whatever,” Rachel scoffed.

“Pick them up and look at them.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Ann started another box. “Suit yourself.”

“But now I really am curious.”

Ann’s eyes fluttered closed, as if she were praying for patience.

“It can’t be,” Rachel reasoned. “An ear bud is an ear bud. There are no right or left ones.”

“I don’t understand how this is new to you.”

Rachel began to suspect that Ann might actually be telling the truth. She held her ear buds directly in front of her eyes. “No way.”

“See? I told you.”

Rachel drew the ear buds closer, squinting at the tiny L and R on each earpiece. “All these years,” she mused. “All these years, and I’ve never known.”

“You’re such a moron sometimes.”

Before Rachel could defend herself, Ann pointed out that they’d packed through dinner and they should probably knock off for the day.

Rachel, who’d only just begun to feel less panicky about how far behind they were, protested.

“Enough is enough,” Ann said. She undid her ponytail, scooped her hair into a messy brown bun, and knotted it to the top of her head. “Grab your crutches.”

“What are we doing?” Rachel had been sitting amidst a drift of half-folded shirts, which she had slowly been layering over stacks of books in half-packed boxes.

“We’re going to see a movie.”

“What movie?”

“Whatever’s playing. And we’re stopping to get dinner at Stu’s first.” Ann ducked into her room and came out flipping her keys back and forth against her palm.

“Wait. Right now?” Rachel reached up a hand to touch the top of her head, feeling bright coils of hair springing in every direction. “Aren’t we going to get cleaned up first?”

“We can’t afford to lose momentum. If I take a shower now, I’ll just want to go to bed. We’ll pick up Stu’s and eat it in the car on the way to the theatre.”

“But I look ridiculous!”

“You always look ridiculous,” Ann said. “Besides, we’re just going to get dinner to go and then sit in a dark theatre for a few hours. Who cares?”

“Hold on,” Rachel said. “I need to put on some shoes at least.”

“Don’t you mean that you need to put on a shoe?”

“Ha-ha. Where is it?” Rachel’s eyes scanned the wreckage.

Ann moved aside some crumpled newspaper to reveal one black slip-on. She picked it up and tossed it to Rachel, who missed the toss and had to crutch three steps to the left before she could don the shoe. Feeling like the world’s worst gymnast, she balanced precariously on her crutches, lifted her left foot off the ground, and jammed it into the flat, nearly falling over backward in the process.

“OK,” she said. “I’m ready.”

Out on the sidewalk, Rachel crutched ahead of Ann, already anticipating how nice it would be to sit down.

“Hold on.” Ann jogged up behind her. “I think you’ve got your crutches under the wrong arms.”

“What?” Rachel stopped moving. Balancing on her left leg, she lifted the crutches to peer at them in confusion.

“You need to put the left one under the left armpit and the right under the right.” Ann shook her head. “No wonder you’ve been having so much trouble.” She took the crutches from Rachel’s hands, switched them around, and put them under her own arms in demonstration. “See?” She executed a few smooth hops down the sidewalk before coming back to hand the crutches over to Rachel, who had just begun to windmill her arms in an attempt to keep her balance.

Rachel held the crutches before her at arm’s length, eyeing them suspiciously. Her doctor had said nothing about left and right crutches. They looked absolutely identical.

“How can you tell them apart?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

Ann’s smile wobbled. She started to laugh.

“I hate you,” Rachel said, leaning against one crutch while taking a swipe at Ann with the other. With one smooth leap sideways, Ann put herself out of range.

“What would Mom say if she heard you say you hate me?” Ann asked, laughing.

“Mom would say you deserve it!”

~*~

It was a preposterous movie, little more than a collection of action sequences, explosions, and questionable dialogue. But the predictable plot cleared Rachel’s mind, and the leading man—while not exactly the most subtle actor of all time—was certainly easy on the eyes. Rachel decided that the awkward, one-legged hop up the theatre steps and the crutchy crab walk down the aisle to their seats had been worth the struggle, even if just for the bliss of sitting quietly in the dark with her foot up. Nothing to think about, nothing to do, nothing to pack.

Even amid her relaxation, a quiet voice in the back of her mind kept the night from being perfect. In a small corner of her brain, Rachel could not help but wonder if, at some point, one of the Memento Killer’s victims had found herself sitting in a dark theatre just like this one, not knowing that one of the strangers she’d passed earlier on the sidewalk—or met at the grocery store or even sat in front of at the theatre—had already decided when to end her life. How many people in the past had gone out for their last night, never realizing that Charles Manson had marked them as his own? Or that David Berkowitz was their next-door neighbor? Or that clean-cut Ted Bundy sat right behind them in the dark movie theatre, breathing down the backs of their necks?

Not that she or Ann could hear anyone around them breathing, what with all the explosions and gunfire.

But still. Somewhere in the city was someone who stalked women—taking his time, learning enough about them to give them anonymous gifts tailor-made to fit their interests, and then—when the time was right—he got them alone and strangled them with one of their own possessions.

And that was the thing. He could be anyone. He really could be anyone.

At some point before the victims had died, they had crossed paths with their murderer. He had seen them somewhere: in a store, on the street, in the mall. In a movie theatre. In a waiting room. He had seen them and known them as his next victim, and they had never suspected. They had just gone on with their lives.

Who knows what each of them had thought when they’d started receiving the mementos. Maybe they’d ascribed the gifts to a new boyfriend or an ex-husband or a secret admirer. Perhaps they had even been excited, expectant, looking forward to having the secret revealed.

Rachel shivered.

Such dark thoughts didn’t seem to trouble Ann. She leaned back in her seat with her feet up on the seatback in front of her as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

About halfway through the film, Rachel shifted forward, pulled a bottled water from her bag, and leaned over toward Ann. “Do you have any ibuprofen?” she hissed.

“Of course,” Ann hissed back, not taking her eyes off the screen. “It’s right here in this medical kit that I carry around with me everywhere.”

Rachel sighed. Point taken.

A sudden lull in action caused the sound to drop. Rachel could hear the people around them shifting in their seats, whispering, and chewing.

And behind them, in the dark, a quiet breathing.

~*~

As it turned out, the Memento Killer wasn’t in the theatre with them that night—at least, it was highly unlikely that he was, since that evening, he claimed a new victim. Barbara Ingram, 38, was strangled with a pair of pantyhose taken from her own bureau drawer. Her bedroom window had been jimmied up and the bureau drawer left hanging open. A cut-glass crystal swan—almost certainly the fourth memento—was found on the kitchen table next to torn wrapping paper and a small notecard, reading simply, Yours.

No matter what he’d been in the past, the Memento Killer was now almost certainly a home invader.