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Her expression doesn’t change, but he sees it again: that flare of animal panic in her face. But it is sometimes his job to do hateful, necessary things.
You really want to send these kids back into the nightmare?”
“This unit is not concerned with active cases. That’s a bureau directive, by the way. You’re only researching perpetrators who’ve been convicted and are serving sentences.”
You were right, his eyes say. Unusual to meet a guy who’ll admit that.
“My dad was a US Marshal. He was murdered by a serial offender.”
Three days of horror in a serial killer’s basement—that’s all it takes to make you an expert.
“Bad at spelling, good at strangling women. He can put that on his résumé if he ever gets out of jail.”
And this focus on the perpetrators sticks in her throat. It’s like the victims get forgotten. Why is it always about the killers?
The crime scene photos showed the elaborate arrangement of the bodies in meadows and wooded areas. Emma knows from her studies that outside displays mean the perpetrator is showing off. She also knows that victim-posing is not a common feature of serial homicide—that it’s a sign of a sophisticated fantasy, unusual in such a young offender.
He is an ice angel. If he ripped out your heart and held it up to the light, the colors would bleed together beautifully.
I suspect Dr. Scott is one of those earnest people who believe that murder is the consequence of too much violent television.”
“Now, don’t be coy. I think you are special.”
“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?”
You cannot look back on the path out of the Underworld.
I didn’t use my models and then throw them out with the trash.
There’s the occasional variation, where Gutmunsson’s written Why are the questions on these things always so puerile? and Television made me do it, but on the fourth page, the answers change.
“It’s a fine, sharp-edged, non-serrated blade, isn’t it.
“Let me know when he starts taking their hair.”
The gun is so terribly heavy, and there’s a dread in the pit of Emma’s stomach with a similar weight.
He’s so curious about locked boxes. He would like to crack you open.”
“He can’t handle me, because I’m like marshmallow. Soft and amorphous. There’s nothing to hold on to and I keep changing shape. It drives him crazy.”
That’s the difference between Simon and me—I know that what he’s done is wrong. It’s part of my family’s history of shame,” she says sadly.
“And Gutmunsson isn’t only interested in Pennsylvania. You heard Kristin. He’s interested in you.”
Or maybe, Emma thinks, Simon Gutmunsson has simply lulled Dr. Scott into believing he could be reformed. She wouldn’t put it past him.
“I consider him to be a kind of… human black hole. Sucking everything into himself, every scrap of light. Beyond that, now that he’s incarcerated, I try to think of him as little as possible.”
“You and Kristin have both placed yourselves in positions where you can indulge your post-traumatic peccadilloes. She’s at Chesterfield, where she can relax into fantasy. You’re with the FBI, where you can channel your fury.”
“It’s the same quality that keeps you running, Emma. That keeps you pounding the track every day. It’s what will save you, in the end.
“You think your glow is gone. You think that by saving these new lost ones, it will come back, but that’s not true. It never left. You’re only a little tarnished. Rub off the rust and your beacon is revealed, like a sliver of light in the dark.”
“He’s protecting her.”
“Okay, tell me now. Are you sure you want to go in? Because this is it. Once you see this stuff, you can’t unsee it. It changes you.”
She looks for as long as she can. Records everything behind her eyes, as Cooper instructed. Records it also in her viscera, in the marrow of her bones, in the sinews of her legs, in the mysterious recesses of her mind where no light enters.
“If he sets himself up somewhere comfortable, and he’s real careful, he could keep going for a long time. For years. We might never find him. Jesus.”
“You don’t try to tame the lightning, son. You just give it the respect it deserves.”
“Simon Gutmunsson hasn’t been sharing ‘insights’ about the case. He’s been corresponding with the Butcher this whole time.”
“The legend goes that Siegfried bathed in the dragon’s blood, and it made him invincible.”
“You still run in your sleep, don’t you? You feel guilt that you couldn’t save them, and despair at the guilt. You wonder if it will ever go away, and you wonder if you really saved yourself after all. Maybe it would have been better to stay with Vicki and Tammy and all the other sad brides, if living means you’ll be slowly eaten away from the inside like this.”
“A girl created by a serial killer who hunts serial killers.”
“We’ll catch you,” Cooper whispers, remembering his promise. “No, you won’t.” Hoyt is stripping off his gloves, removing the surgical cap. “The venerable FBI—grizzled old men doddering along the same predictable paths of investigation. You don’t stand a chance against someone like me.”
“Yeah. So I think I joined this unit to save prospective victims, but also to save myself.”
“I don’t say that anymore.” Before he disappears out the atrium door, he meets her eyes. “Let’s say ‘good hunting.’”
“None shall sleep, indeed. Certainly not tonight.”
The anger, for one, and the instinctual fear, and the ruthlessness you used to escape. You’re going to rely on all those things when he comes.”
But the division was imperfect: Instead of two mirror images, they are one being split apart—Kristin the repository of the single soul, and Simon the beneficiary of pure mind. Between them, one beating heart.
He looks as if he’s applauding a particularly terrible fault stroke in a game of croquet. “Emma, you never cease to amuse.”
“Run out that door and I will shoot him in the head.”
“I will kill you, you know,” Simon remarks conversationally.
And the most terrifying thing Emma has ever seen emerges from the shadows. Simon Gutmunsson, free and unrestrained, walking closer, sauntering really. In the darkness of the asylum he resolves like smoke poured onto glass, gleaming like a phantasm when the moonlight hits him. White skin, red lips, his hair a beacon. Eyes glittering, fathoms deep.
“And then you see me from afar, and you wonder if you dare. Do you dare, Anthony? Of course you do. You are transformed, and Simon Gutmunsson is just a boy like any other boy, an exaggerated myth.… So you make your plans and place your ads and send your letters, and you’re thinking about it the whole time, aren’t you? What it would be like to dance beneath me in the warm-rushing shower of red…”
“You, I did not anticipate.” His eyes travel over her face. “How interesting. Come and visit me again sometime, Emma. We’ll have croissants.”
