A night of deception. A monster one foot away. A gun to her head. On her knees before the Acid Man, Kelly sucked in a breath and stared him in the eye.
“May I sit on the couch?” she asked.
He withdrew the gun. “No tricks.”
“No tricks.” She eased back slowly. The cushions felt like quicksand. She had to cough to speak. “So you have the use of your arms.”
He kept the gun pointed at her heart. “Yes. You shot me
in the seventh cervical vertebrae. That’s the cutoff point between having the use of the arms and being totally paralyzed. For two months after my surgery, I was a complete quadriplegic. But as the swelling in the spinal cord decreased, I began to regain the use of my arms.”
“A fact you kept carefully hidden.”
He nodded. “A case could be made for a complete crippie—even a serial killer like myself—being spared a trial. Being put under house arrest rather than thrown in jail. The extreme nature of my handicap helped grease the wheels of my comfort, so to speak.”
He chose his words carefully. Grease was slang for bribe in certain quarters.
“I always wondered why you didn’t have a trial,” she said. “Slate gave me the reasons. You were no danger to anyone. The cost of keeping you locked in a federal prison would be prohibitive. You had humiliated and murdered the wives of prominent men who wanted the case to go away. All these reasons were logical. I suppose most people fell for them. But I never did. Your father was a rich man. Obviously he shared that wealth with you. Tell me, Professor Banks, how many people did you have to bribe to avoid the death penalty and life in prison?”
He was pleased at her insight. “Two major players in the FBI. Three judges on the federal level. A handful of cops on the local level.”
“How much did all this cost?”
“They knew what I was worth. They bled me dry. Ten million.”
“Did Slate take any money?” she asked.
“No. He is a man of principle. He wouldn’t take a cent.”
“But he knew about it?”
“Sure. But the reasons he gave you were still logical. No one wanted to see me brought to trial. The publicity would be too messy for all concerned.”
“Not for me.”
“Still wanting to be acknowledged as a hero?”
“Perhaps. Did you pay Charlie any money?”
“Your partner? Don’t be silly.” He chuckled. “I had you suspecting everyone.”
“How did you get my cell number? How did you know my husband left me?”
“Oh, that information. There was one other man in the FBI that I paid off. Do you know Agent Lentil?”
Kelly felt disgust. “I know him.”
His tone hardened. “What happened at Michael and Julie’s house?”
“At Scott’s house?”
He blinked. “You know.”
“Aren’t you proud of me?”
He waved the gun. “Talk.”
“I discovered you had a brother. I went looking for him but couldn’t find him. But then I began to put a few facts together and it was obvious. Unfortunately, I asked Scott revealing questions and tipped my hand. He drugged Julie and Robert and tried to kill me.” She shrugged. “But lucky me, I managed to inject a syringe filled with vinegar into his heart.”
The Acid Man went very still. “He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
His grief was real. Her admission was a sword through his chest. He struggled to catch his breath. In the process she was surprised he did not pull the trigger. He bent over and his aim wavered.
“How did you overcome him?” he gasped.
“Your brother was a textbook psychopath. You know that. You ruined him at an early age. He was predictable, and as a result he was easy to manipulate. When I spread my legs, he got all excited and I killed him.” She added, “I didn’t enjoy it.”
The Acid Man wiped at his eyes with the gun. His right hand was still tied down.
“I regret having involved Scott in my personal difficulties,” he said quietly. “When I was a teenager he was the only friend I had. I had no one else to share my pain with.”
“Sounds like you guys shared more than pain.”
“You spoke to my father?”
“Yes. What did he know about all this?”
“He knew my brother was sleeping with my wife. That’s all.”
“You lie. He wasn’t totally innocent. He suspected a lot more than that.”
“My father was a good man.”
“But he wasn’t your father, was he? I read the pain in Dr. Banks’s face. Your mother’s affairs were more numerous than he wanted to admit, even to himself.” Kelly paused. “Do you know who your real father was?”
He hesitated. “The milkman.”
“I understand.”
“Do you? As a child I saw her with this man that was not my father. She did little to hide the affair. Twice, I saw them fucking. Then I began to see I looked like the other man. I was seven years old at the time.”
She nodded. “Your father was everything to you. You were your father’s son. And when that was taken away from you, you were no one.”
“No one,” he whispered, sinking inside.
The answer to the riddle. Who could have committed the crimes he had? Only a soul who had lost all identity. He was a hollow vehicle capable of channeling energy from the bowels of the earth. She half believed him possessed. He looked as if a demon sat inside him now. His pale face shone with a purple light. Perhaps a trick of reflection. In the distance she saw a firework burn to nothing in the black sky. The demon withdrew—the man before her merely looked exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He glanced up. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because I have learned your secret. You lie.”
“We all lie. No one more than a woman.”
She stood. “I can’t argue with you. I have lied to you.”
He shook the gun angrily. “Sit back down!”
“No. I have to finish what I came here to do.” Taking a
step forward, she picked up the duct tape she had dropped when he had stolen the gun from her holster. She hardly noticed when he raised the gun toward her head and put pressure on the trigger.
“You know I’m not afraid to kill,” he said.
“That gun belongs to your brother. It’s not loaded.” Reaching around to the back of her belt—beneath her shirt—she pulled out her own gun. “But this one is.”
He froze. “How?”
“I spoke to your doctor last night. He insisted you were completely paralyzed. But he was pompous and I didn’t trust him. I read more about the seventh cervical vertebrae and learned what you just explained—it is the cutoff point for feeling in the arms. When I was here last, I noticed you had kept your weight-lifting equipment. Specifically, I noticed you had kept the equipment that developed upper body strength.”
He lowered his gun. “Clever.”
“Thank you.” She tore off a piece of duct tape. “We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way.”
He was indignant. “You’re not going to kill me.”
“Wrong. I am going to kill you.”
He snorted. “You’ll go to jail.”
“You wanted me to go to jail for life. You had your brother steal the gun from my apartment. The same day I was supposed to come here to put you out of your misery, Scott was going to shoot Julie in the heart with my gun. Scott would have been here to stop me from hurting you, but I would still have been blamed for the death of your wife. The poor, obsessed FBI agent who couldn’t get over what the Acid Man had done to her. The girl just lost it. Naturally, the prosecution would have had access to all the records of my travels to the Midwest. All files closed, huh?”
“You cannot get away with killing me. You’ll be the first one they’ll suspect.”
“I’ll make it look like a suicide.”
“Your bottle of potassium chloride? You’re inexperienced when it comes to this business. The coroner will spot that immediately.”
“I’m not going to use potassium chloride. That was another lie.”
He looked worried. “What then?”
Kelly slipped on a pair of gloves.
She smiled as she came closer with the tape. “A new and improved screw.”
He squeezed the trigger but the gun just clicked. Then he dropped the weapon and, using his left hand, tried to turn the wheelchair away from her. She did not mind—there was nowhere to go. Coming over his head, she stretched the tape across his mouth and pulled it tight. Always important to consider the neighbors. He tried to tear off the gag but she grabbed his hand and pressed it down onto the arm of the wheelchair. She had watched his videos closely. Tearing off more tape, she began to wrap his arm in place. The muscle strength in his arms was poor. He must still have partial paralysis. It took her only a minute to finish. His eyes bulged—she had seen the sight before.
“You look like one of your victims,” she said.
His voice came out muffled. Did he beg for mercy?
She quoted. “The instinct to survive is not as strong as people think. Pain is more daunting than life. The sick and depressed crave extinction. Even content souls wonder about death.’” Pausing, she withdrew a small screwdriver and file from her pocket. “What a crock of shit, huh?”
He fought to explain. She was not listening.
Kelly knelt and began to undo the screw at the base of the tiny bulb that controlled his chair. Because the FBI and the doctors knew he had slight use of his right hand, she worked on that side. When the screw was halfway out, she picked up the file and began to sharpen the edges. He talked gibberish the entire time but it didn’t bother her. She had planned this for a long time. She knew what had to be done. When she was ready, she sat back and looked at his face.
“You bribed your help to leave you alone for the night. That is a verifiable fact. But my presence here will never be known. Before I leave, I’ll clean up. I’ll not leave so much as a hair. I’ll return to Julie’s house and wake her. I’ll act like I was just attacked by Scott. She won’t know any better. No one will know that you didn’t spend this last night alone slowly opening the veins in your wrist.”
There was blood in his face now. Soon it would be on the floor.
Kelly took his wrist and—slightly loosening the duct tape—rubbed the skin over the razor-sharp screw. Pressing down hard, the flesh caught and tore. Deeper layers of tissue became visible around the silver spike. He resisted but the effort was feeble. Blood spurted out, first in a dribble, then in a strong rhythmic pulse. A hole in the heart. A hole in the vein. Either way a person died. Sitting back, she watched as the puddle grew beneath his wheelchair. The stain was not far from the stain her blood had made on the floor.
Ten minutes went by. So much blood.
He stopped struggling and fell silent.
“You’re bleeding badly,” she said finally. “Soon you’ll lose consciousness. If you promise not to call out, I’ll remove your gag. Agreed?”
He nodded. She tore the duct tape off his mouth.
“I underestimated you,” he gasped.
“I learned from you.”
“How to lie?”
“How to kill. There’s a part of you inside me.”
“That you hope dies when I die.”
She nodded. “You said it yourself. I can’t live with you in the world.”
He glanced down at his ruined wrist and his lip trembled. “This is hard.”
“It was hard for the women you killed. Did you care?”
He stared at her. “I care about you.”
“Why me?”
“How can I explain? You are the opposite of Julie but you stir similar feelings in me.”
“You don’t feel for your wife. You gave her to your brother.”
“You’re mistaken. You think I spent my whole life killing. After my troubled youth, I tried to live a normal life. True, I had difficulty with relationships with women. They never lasted long. But I never gave up the hope of falling in love, and when I met Julie my prayers were answered. The day we got married was the happiest day of my life.”
“Then you told your brother to fuck her.”
“I asked my brother to test her. I did not expect her to fail the test. I told the truth when you first came here. When I saw her sucking on Scott’s penis, a part of me died.”
“It was already dead. Who tests their own wife?”
“I had to know. You can understand that.”
Kelly shook her head. “Julie is a blank. Why were you attracted to her?”
“What do you get when you pour one empty glass into another? There was an alchemy to our relationship. When we were alone together we were complete.” He studied his blood loss. “Oh my.”
“You didn’t need to kill those women.”
He raised his head slowly. “I feel dizzy.”
“Tough.”
“I could not kill Julie. I had to do something.”
“You ordered Scott to shoot her tonight.”
He sighed. “True. But you know how special tonight is.”
“You put vinegar in your father’s needle.”
“She was no good.”
“You took the vial of epinephrine from your father’s bag. You emptied it and replaced it with white vinegar. It was acid he accidentally injected into his own wife’s heart the second time she had an attack.”
“So? She hurt my father.”
“Your excuses bore me.”
He looked weary. “I’m a dragon. You’re a knight in shining armor. You’re victorious. The victor should not gloat.”
“Want me to kiss your ass?”
He drew in a ragged breath. “In olden days, when a dragon was defeated on the field it had to grant three wishes to its conqueror. Let us reverse that tradition and have you grant me three wishes.”
“Such as?”
“Wish number one. Bandage my wrist. Apply a tourniquet. Let me live.”
“No. You’re too dangerous alive.”
“You have exposed all my devices. I’m harmless now.”
“No.”
He appeared in pain. “Wish number two then. Let me talk to Matt.”
“Why?”
“Since you told me about him, I’ve wanted to meet him. I feel a special kinship with him. We’ve both suffered. That’s why I sent Scott to help him with Amy. Do you have his number?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a phone on my coffee table. Let’s call him, see how he is doing.”
Kelly hesitated. Her gut didn’t want the Acid Man getting anywhere near Matt, yet it was a fact the monster would be dead within minutes. Since he had already been attacked once by the family, perhaps it would comfort Matt to hear the death rattle in Gene Banks’s voice, and know the threat was finished.
“I don’t know if he’ll talk to you,” she said.
“He’ll talk to me.”
Kelly picked up the phone. She had memorized Matt’s cell numbers. She dialed the one he had given her just before Catalina. She was surprised when he answered.
TO GET to the camping spot Matt had chosen for their hideaway, he had taken a winding dirt road that was so
close to nonexistence that it could vanish in a cloud of dust. Driving down the steep terrain in the dark was a harrowing experience. He wished they had a parachute as well as four-wheel drive. But eventually they ended up on a sane road that ran alongside the same stream that stretched beneath the ledge where he had stranded Amy. He stopped the car and turned off the engine beside the water. Craning his neck, he tried to spot her but it was too dark. Jimmy stared at him with large brown eyes. It spooked Matt how much his son looked like Amy.
“Do you miss her?” he asked.
Jimmy looked sad.
Matt was surprised when his cell phone rang. For a moment he thought it must be Amy. “Hello?” he said.
“Matt, this is Kelly. How are you?”
“Fine. This is a pleasant surprise. How are you?”
“Great. Are you alone? Is Amy there with you?”
He hesitated. “Amy’s not with me. But Jimmy’s here.”
“Where is she?”
“Let’s just say you’ll read about her in the papers.” He added, “But I didn’t hurt her. You have to know that.”
“Of course. I know you. As long as you and Jimmy are all right.”
“We’ll be all right now, thank you. How’s the Acid Man?”
“He’s sitting two feet in front of me. He wants to talk to you.”
“What?”
Kelly lowered her voice. “He’s dying. He’ll be dead in a few minutes. Talk to him, it can’t hurt.”
“All right.”
A raspy voice came on the line. “Matt Connor?”
“What can I do for you?”
“First off I would like to apologize for that fright you had last night in Utah. Kelly says she’s told you about my history. I was just trying to help solve your girl problems.”
“I can take care of my own problems.”
“I understand. I overheard what you said to Kelly right now. I take it Amy is no longer in the picture?”
“She has left the picture. What exactly can I do for you?”
The man chuckled. “Nothing. Just wanted to say hi to a fellow warrior. You may not know this, but you and I have fought similar battles. I admire your style. I only wish I could say I was as successful as you. I wouldn’t be in the predicament I’m in now.”
“Are you really dying?”
“Kelly is bleeding me to death. Tough chick, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. But inside she has a heart of gold.”
“Good to talk to you, Matt. Watch out for those women. They can kill you.”
“I know.”
The Acid Man gave the phone back to Kelly.
“Matt,” she said softly. “How’s your heart?”
“It went the way you predicted. She was no good. But we’re okay.”
“You’ll do great.” She added, “I wish I didn’t have to say goodbye.”
He understood. “We were lucky. Our paths crossed at a critical time and we were able to help each other. I’ll remember you for a long time.”
“I’ll remember you until the day I die.” She sniffed. “Love you.”
“I love you, Kelly. Take care of yourself.”
He set down the phone and sat for a long time in silence. Jimmy sensed his mood and remained quiet. The night was warm and comforting. So was the sound of his heart as it beat in his chest. At least now it could heal. He decided to drive back to the West Coast and see his mother. He would explain everything. She would be overjoyed to see him. Perhaps she would travel with them to New Zealand. She had always wanted a grandson.
In the distance he heard a scream. A woman falling.
The scream did not last long. The silence returned.
A tear rolled over his cheek but he did not wipe it away.
“Mama,” Jimmy said softly.
He messed up his son’s hair. “Don’t worry. We’re better off without her.”
Matt started the car and drove away.
KELLY ALSO sat in silence after setting down the phone. The Acid Man gave her a moment. He did not have many left. His breathing was labored and he was having trouble keeping his head up. Shivers shook his torso. Bleeding to death was no fun.
“Thank you,” he said weakly.
She stared at his open veins. How his blood continued to pump from his body.
“I never killed anyone until tonight,” she whispered.
“How does it feel?”
“It was a relief to kill your brother. He was such an asshole. But with you it’s different.”
“How so?”
The truth shocked her. “It hurts.”
“Kelly. It does hurt.”
“What is your third wish?”
He struggled. “May I kiss you?”
“Why?”
“Love knows no reason. Nor does hate. I suppose that is the lesson of my life.”
“What is my lesson?”
“You know. When we first met we spoke of The Lord of the Rings. I told you that you were Eowen—the great female warrior. She was wounded in the final battle but she found love. She was able to go home.”
Kelly was thoughtful. “Frodo was the tale’s real hero. He tried to go home but his wounds were too deep. He could find no peace.”
The Acid Man choked as he swallowed. His voice came out thin as a reed.
“You’ll find peace. The dragon will haunt your dreams no more.”
She came close to his side. “Do you die in peace?”
He looked at her with fading eyes. “No. But maybe I’ll return in another age. The line between the hero and the villain is often slight. Perhaps we’ll meet in that time, and our roles will be reversed.”
Lines from her thesis. Perhaps he had read it.
She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Perhaps.”
He died minutes later. Her eyes burned, but there were no tears.
Later, she called Tony as she drove back to Julie’s house.
He sounded happy to hear from her.
“How are you?” she asked. “How’s Anna?”
“Fine. We miss you. When are you coming home?”
“I’m on my way right now,” she said.