Pretty Little Dead Girls (13 page)

“Oh my goodness,” his eyes replied shame-facedly. “Where are my manners? Of course I shall help you. I will just . . . oh dear.”

Because, you see, the blood and the fear and the pain and the shock and everything were too much for our Bryony, who simply passed out cold.

This was good for two separate reasons: 1) The young, clumsy killer-in-training wasn’t prepared for this, and the weight of her body suddenly going limp threw him off, and 2) Peter the Original Murderer now didn’t have any witnesses.

“Why’d you have to choose this one?” he asked the mystified younger killer. “I’ve been watching her for weeks. You really should have been more careful. There’s etiquette, you know.”

“I’m . . . sorry?” said the younger killer, but it really didn’t matter because it was already too late for him. Peter grabbed the knife from his shaking hand, rammed it into the side of his neck, and watched him bleed out. He dragged the body off the trail and under a particularly camouflaging group of bushes and fallen trees. He had stashed bodies here before, and it did quite nicely in a pinch. He’d sneak back and dispose of the wannabe killer later. Then he returned and sat on the ground, cradling Bryony’s head in his lap.

“We’ll just wait for somebody to jog by and help us, shall we?” he said. She didn’t reply as she was unconscious, and the youthful killer didn’t reply either, as he was dead.

Peter sat there in companionable silence with the young woman he knew he would eventually murder, watching her chest move as she breathed, feeling the breath leaving her lungs, and reveling in the fact that they shared the same oxygen, the same
space.
It would be a shame to see her go, really, and for the first time he felt something almost like a stab of regret, but then it was gone. For we are what we are, and he had always thought this, and he was born to be a killer while Bryony was born to be killed, and thus their relationship was set in stone before they ever met. If things had been different, perhaps they would have had a long and healthy friendship, and their children would have played together in the sandbox and on the monkey bars, and they would have gotten together with their respective spouses for neighborly game nights and laughter, but alas, this was never meant to be.

So Peter looked at his ultimate victim, and ran his fingers across the bone under her hair and across her cheek, and down her arms and legs. He was checking the wounds which really were superficial under all the blood. For this he was grateful because he didn’t want to wait very long before he killed her, but she needed to be healed first because that was only polite, because that was good form. He wondered what her last words would be and he wished, not for the first time, that somehow he had been able to tell her his name.

“It’s Peter,” he said to her now. “Peter Culpert.”

She didn’t answer, and he didn’t expect it, and he hummed a sort of calming lullaby as he waited, and plotted exactly where he would twist the knife in her ribs when the time came.

She started to come to, and moved a little.

“Shhhh,” he said and stroked her hair. “Everything is going to be all right.”

There,
he thought, picking out a particularly fine knifing spot.
Right there.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Sorrow and Stars and Light

Eddie Warshouski was getting tired of Detective Bridger.

“So your old girlfriend and your mother were both murdered, and now your new wife is attacked, as well? You’re sort of the Typhoid Mary of killers, aren’t you?”

Well, ouch
, Eddie thought.
This man pulls no punches.

“I told you I wasn’t in town for my mother’s murder. I was getting married. And a man in my girlfriend’s building killed her. He was a whack job. And this guy that attacked Bryony—”

He couldn’t finish. He was furious. The idea that some sadistic killer would step out on a popular running trail and try to drag his wife off to do who knows what was beyond him. What a horrible and distasteful affair. How absolutely hurtful and unforgivable, whatever he had planned.

Well, he knew what. He knew exactly what this creep had planned to do, and he could hardly think straight. Bryony was still in the hospital, cut and bruised and shaken, but otherwise whole, although they wouldn’t let her out for a few more hours as “a precaution”.

Eddie wanted to hit something.

This detective, mostly, but it wasn’t his fault.

He had spoken with Bryony after she found the body floating in Lake Washington, and he, too, had been unable to deny the tiny bits of her spirit that diamonded out of her eyes and broke upon the floor.

Eddie knew Detective Bridget wanted to protect her because it was his job.Because he was human. Because this was a land of monsters, and right now a monster had gone after a girl made of nothing more than sorrow and stars and light.

Detective Bridger sighed. “Look, Mr. Warshouski, it’s my job. I don’t like questioning you any more than you like being questioned. I can see in your face you didn’t do these things, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask.”

He was not a man to be remiss, Eddie could tell. He sighed, too. “It doesn’t seem fair, detective, and that’s a funny thing to say because I am not a man who believes life is meant to be fair. But every day we wait. Every time the phone rings, I wonder if it’s somebody calling to tell me about Bryony. Every time I see her, I think it is going to be the last time. You don’t know how it is, seeing how fragile she can be. Sometimes it is wearying, but I don’t regret it. I don’t.”

He looked at the detective like the man was challenging him, which he wasn’t.

“You take care of her,” he said seriously. Eddie’s eyes flicked up to his, but the detective shook his head emphatically. “I know you are, but something tells me this isn’t over yet, that your wife . . . ”

“My wife was born to die,” Eddie said simply, and they both sat there for a long time and thought about it, and the words lingered heavily in the air between them, but they rang true. In the other room Peter Culpert was telling another policeman exactly what had happened, how he heard a scream and came running, and chased off the man who tried to take the girl. He was lauded as a hero and a Real Stand Up Guy, and it was an unusual and mildly uncomfortable feeling for Peter. Usually he was laughed at or picked on, and this new feeling was scarier in a way, although not altogether unpleasant. And when Detective Bridger finally told Eddie he could go, Eddie popped into the other room to see the brave and heroic trail runner-turned-white-knight, and invited him to dinner that weekend, to properly thank him for saving his new bride.

The conversation went something like this:

Eddie said, “Hello, I am Eddie and you saved my wife. Her name is Bryony, and she is special and wonderful and very dear to me, and I am afraid without you, she would have been lost. Were you also under the impression that without your intervention she would have been lost?”

Peter said, “Well, she was fighting quite valiantly, so perhaps she would . . . it could have happened that . . . no, she most certainly would have been lost.”

Eddie said, “I am ever so grateful to you—” and there was an awkward and expectant pause as Eddie realized that no, he did not know this savior’s name, and he was certainly hoping to find out, as it would seem ever so discourteous to call him “Hey you” for the remainder of their lives, especially when he owed this man such a great debt.

Luckily Peter said, “I’m Peter,” and they shook hands extremely cordially.

“How do you do?” asked Eddie.

“Very well, thank you,” replied Peter.

Eddie said, “Anyway, please come to our home for dinner on Friday night. I’d love for you to see Bryony calm and conscious, and not on hospital drugs. We would really like to thank you properly.”

Peter said, “I would be delighted. What a gracious invitation.”

To which Eddie replied, “Anytime,” and clapped Peter on the back like they were old friends.

Of course they wouldn’t be friends at all if Eddie had any idea what Peter was secretly planning, but Eddie is not psychic, and Peter will not come right out and say: “Can’t wait to murder your wife in the future. Later, man.” So for the moment, at least on the surface, they were friends. And perhaps for that second, their friendship was real, for little is known about Peter and his perception of friendship, and especially male friendship. It could very well be that this moment with Eddie was one of the experiences that he held dearest and closest to his heart. For Peter is a lonely man, a man who constantly surrounds himself with the dead, and this may come as quite a shock to you, dear reader, but the dead are not as friendly and as social as the living. This is true. And a man who reaches out in gratitude, especially a gruff and untouchable man as Eddie, well, it can be hard to resist, and has the tendency to soften even the hardest of hearts.

Yes indeed, Peter was somewhat stunned but also pleased by this unexpected gesture, and he stared at the Warshouski’s address in his hands and tried to do some basic calculations.

What he calculated was this: If Eddie goes to see Bryony in the hospital which is seven miles away (with traffic clipping along at a fairly good rate) and he has to kiss every single cut she obtained, and the younger killer had exactly one minute and two seconds to take as many slashes at her tender skin as he could (at a rather paltry rate of one slash every 3.4 seconds), then how long does Peter have to break into their apartment and poke around before Eddie comes back?

What a delightful scenario. Peter always did enjoy math, very much.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Stunning in its Horror

They finally released Bryony from the hospital, and Eddie couldn’t help himself: He scooped her up and carried her to the car like an invalid.

“Eddie, I’m all right, I’m all right!” she exclaimed, but she was happy, and kissed Eddie on the cheek, and patted his shoulders, head, and arms with her bandaged hands.

“I invited the man who saved you over for dinner this weekend. His name is Peter Culpert, and he seems nice. I’m happy he was there, Bryony.”

“I’m happy, too,” she said, and they held hands and climbed the rickety stairs up to Eddie’s old apartment, which was now Bryony’s new apartment. As soon as they stepped inside Eddie knew something was wrong. His eyes darted around the room as he took everything in.

Jasmine the Guitar was lying two inches farther to the right than he had left her. He knew this because he always lined her up exactly with the vertical stripes on the awful wallpaper. He was a bit obsessive in this way.

The glass in the sink was wrong. Bryony had a strange habit of flipping every glass that she drank of upside down when she was finished with it. This glass was not flipped upside down.

The door to the bedroom was ajar.

“Bryony, no!” Eddie shouted and reached out to her rather uselessly, as she walked over and flung open the bedroom door. Eddie closed his eyes like a child, as if somehow would protect him from seeing what he knew he would see. A man with a gun waiting for Bryony. A bomb that would suddenly go off, or a guillotine of flashing steel that would zip out of the doorway with a triumphant
hiss Thunk!
Eddie suddenly believed anything was possible in this life. He was paralyzed, waiting for the world to reel.

“Oh, Eddie, it’s so beautiful!”

Eddie’s eyes flew open and he was across the room and standing beside his wife in a second. Their bed was covered with flowers, hundreds and hundreds of different colored blooms, cascading off the sheets and pooling on the ground like water. It was absolutely stunning in its horror. There were irises and cosmos and tiger lilies and something that looked like Indian Paintbrush, but taller and much finer. There were tulips and daffodils, both yellow and white, and dogwood blooms.

And yes, there were yellow jonquils.

Bryony already had a purple flower in her hair, and when she turned to Eddie, her eyes were radiant.

“Thank you so much! What a magnificent sight, so much life after such a terrible time with that man. The way he looked at me, it made me want . . . I never thought I . . . You’re so good to me, my darling.”

She walked into his arms and he automatically closed them around her, and she was bouncing from foot to foot happily, a buzz of exquisite joy, already tossing the terror of this morning aside like discarded clothing, because what was the purpose of it really? Why dwell when there was happiness and life and Eddie and flowers. My word flowers in this very room!

Eddie stared over her head at the spill of blooms, and he wondered how something so friendly and beloved could also be so sinister. He wouldn’t have been surprised at all if suddenly they started hissing and rattling their stems in a threatening manner, dragging Bryony into them and filling her mouth and nose with pollen and broken stamens. But no, there they lay, innocent and sweet and full of good feeling. They infused Bryony with a happy pleasure. She was thinking that she was home now, surrounded by flowers the desert could never produce, recently escaped from impending death, and maybe it was over, maybe that was the end of it and she could live, really
live
without always glancing behind her shoulder, and wouldn’t that be lovely? Wouldn’t that be truly remarkable?

She climbed onto the bed and slipped under the sheets, and the flowers nestled around her, snuggling into her hair and the curves of her body like warm children, and there she fell asleep. It had been such an exhausting day. Eddie pulled up a chair and watched her, unable to bear the idea of touching those flowers. They bared their fangs and snapped at him, but slid their delicate petals soothingly over the gashes on Bryony’s white face and arms.

When she dies, “she’ll look just like this. I will fill her casket with all of the flowers it can hold, and they will love her and she will love them, and she will not be alone.

Except, Eddie had another idea, struggling to break the surface of his misery. The attacks on Bryony seemed to be coming closer together, and although he thought he had understood before, now he realized completely how his life would truly be without her. How dark, how empty of magic. Bryony had swung from the red velvet curtains of mystery that finally opened in his mind, and now that he saw sunlight and tasted pure snow, how was he to live without?