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No sadness or joy. Just a numb void that left me feeling detached from myself and the world.
Then my eyes settled on a very familiar five-gallon white-and-blue bucket of Fixx. The cleaning detergent used oxygen instead of chlorine. It was a fairly new cleaning product that erased all traces of hemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting protein in blood that was crucial in forensic tests.
“It’s amusing that most of your kind share the same traits. Not one of you keeps going when I laugh. You need the screaming to feel powerful, don’t you? But the truth is, there’s nothing powerful about you.”
“You didn’t bring enough tape. So I had to cut through your lumbar spine intervertebral space, leaving you paralyzed from the waist down.”
I could bring my audience from tears to laughter in seconds. And yet…I was a fraud. A crook. A swindler. As I felt absolutely nothing when I played.
What substance abuser would take a Lyft to the Symphony Hall, using her boyfriend’s stolen card and phone right before he was slaughtered?
“You two look like hardworking fellows who deserve a treat.” Her expression twisted to disapproval. “Unlike that no-good I had to raise. Unable to hold a job, always drinking at bars, fraternizing with tramps.”
“The crime scene looks like Jack the Ripper and Dahmer had a psychopathic child who went on a murder spree!”
“You know I don’t care about what you did to him. God knows that piece of shit deserved it. It’s how you did it, Leah. You left the body in a state that drew attention. And then you took a freaking Lyft back to the Symphony Hall? Why not flag down a patrol car while you were at it?”
“Well, get over here ASAP. We got the search warrant for the Harris residence. Larsen just called from the scene. They’ve broken into the basement, and he said it looks like fucking Dahmer’s apartment down there—his exact words. And guess what they found? A map with the victims’ names on it.”
She watched in utter shock as I remained unflinching, emotionless, as if I were a soulless doll, feeling absolutely nothing.
“I don’t engage in matters unless I intend to give them my best efforts.”
“What if the next obstacle is a crazy pervert? You should let me walk ahead.” “To perpetuate the conventional belief that navigating through uncertain times is a responsibility designated primarily to men?” “No. Because I can punch harder than you. Not to be stereotypical.” “And that’s why you’ll be more useful from behind. Men usually are.”
“Why would anyone do that? I mean, putting bodies on tracks for a train to…” His voice trailed off. A crisp breeze rustled the leaves of the dark woods surrounding us. “Because humans are as complex as they are troubled. For some, violence stimulates the brain’s reward centers or eases the pain of a hidden darkness.”
“But the law is not always right. People are not always right.”
He hoped the Train Track Killer would show up in New York, not at Hill Park Station in Boston. Not that he didn’t trust Leah to deal with him. There was no monster like that woman. The things she was capable of doing were straight out of a nightmare. She was a genius, literally—in music as much as in everything else she touched.
How was this possible? I hadn’t made a sound. Could he feel my presence? Two killers alone on the devil’s playground?
A fiery tingle erupted in my stomach—the rare sensation of anger. For years, I had pursued the Train Track Killer, and now I’d been so close. He was mine to kill, not the world’s to parade through a broken justice system that he could manipulate with a cunning lawyer and his well-groomed white-male privilege.
A killer of killers. The drop of red blood on a white canvas for the whole world to see.
He had to see her. His villain. His nightmare. His salvation. His doom.
