Chapter 32
In all my years interviewing killers, I’ve never met one who lied as fluently as Billy Lundby. The only time we could confirm he was telling the truth was when he confessed to the killings. Even then, he embellished the details.
—Wheels Upside-Down: My Time with the FBI, a memoir by Donald Dellman
I run to Billy’s containment drawer, pressing my hands flat against the cold metal to steady myself. The keypad beside it blinks red.
Okay. I can do this.
I’ve watched Nico open these dozens of times. His fingers moved fast, but I was paying attention. I’m always paying attention to him.
I punch in the code, my finger trembling over each number. Each beep makes me flinch like Nico’s going to materialize behind me and demand to know what the hell I think I’m doing.
There’s a pneumatic hiss, and the drawer opens. The container looks more battered than the others I’ve seen, its handles rubbed smooth from frequent handling. Pale gray mist pushes against the glass like it knows I’m here.
My stomach turns over, but I force myself to pick the thing up.
Jesus, it’s heavy. Nico makes it look so easy.
The port on the base that connects to the control panel is scratched, the threads worn and partially stripped from age and use.
I grunt as I attach it to the control panel, double-checking that I locked it in correctly because the last thing I need is to make Billy Lundby’s day and accidentally release him into the room.
I flip the right switch first. Nico always does the right one first. Then I adjust the dial to the third setting. The lights turn on around the dome’s base.
Sliding the goggles over my face, I close my eyes and go to my stage. I position myself right next to the control panel, my hand hovering over the big button labeled END, so I can pull the plug if this goes sideways.
Here goes everything.
I push TRANSFER.
The system hums to life. The temperature plummets. Cold cuts through my clothes, raising goosebumps across my arms, but in my theater, I’m warm under the spotlight.
“Well, well.” Billy’s voice slides through the speakers of my mental stage, as oily and smooth as the first day I met him. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
“Hi, Billy.”
Movement flickers in my peripheral vision. I turn my head, and there he is, sitting in the front row of my audience with easy confidence, wearing a turtleneck sweater.
“I see you’ve come alone,” Billy says, twirling his finger to gesture around himself. “Does Nicholas know you’re here?”
I take a couple of seconds to consider my words. “You and Nico seem to know each other well.”
“We have known each other for a very long time,” he says, crossing one leg over the other. “He likes to visit me. Late at night when he can’t sleep. Which is often.”
“What do you guys talk about?” I ask.
“Oh, the usual tedium. Donald Dellman has a bureaucratic questionnaire he’s asked poor Nicholas to use. ‘How do you feel about your crimes?’ ‘Do you experience remorse?’ Terribly dull stuff.” He uncrosses his leg, leaning forward over his knees. “What is your interest in our conversations?”
I can already feel Billy’s presence pushing against my outer walls, testing for weak spots. My time is limited. I need to get to the point.
“I know what you’re doing to Nico,” I say. “And it has to stop.”
“What is it you think I’m doing?” he asks, amused.
“Nico’s not going to let you out of here, if that’s what you’re hoping for.” I force the next words out even though they make me feel gross. “He’s not your fucking pet.”
Billy laughs. “You think he’s my pet?”
“I don’t know what you think you’re trying to accomplish by manipulating him, but I know you’re trying to hurt him, and if you don’t stop, I’m going to tell Donny,” I say.
I’m not sure if Donny suspects Billy is messing with Nico, but if he does, I’m sure Billy would have figured that out. If Donny suspects something, maybe Billy will brag that Donny knows and is doing nothing about it, and if Donny doesn’t, Billy might brag about that instead.
“Nicholas is so easy to hurt,” Billy purrs. “So emotional. He feels everything so deeply.”
A warning bell goes off in my head. He sounds like he’s savoring a private joke I’m not in on.
But I can tell he wants to tell me. He’s running his tongue over his bottom lip like he’s tasting whatever he’s about to say. In my experience, manipulative men can’t resist showing off how clever they are. They need you to know how much control they have.
I’m totally right about him manipulating Nico. I just need to figure out what his goal is and if Donny knows.
“Nicholas and I have a special relationship,” Billy says. “You could say I know him quite… intimately.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Billy smiles ear-to-ear. “You really don’t know?”
Obviously I don’t know anything. “Don’t know what?”
Billy’s voice gets conspiratorial. “Did you ever hear of the Boy Next Door Killer?”
Of course I’ve heard of him. Everyone has. When I shared a room with Maya, the true crime fanatic, I had to overhear an entire podcast series about him. Three episodes about a teenage boy who killed seven girls in Maine in one year before disappearing without a trace.
“Such a fascinating case,” Billy continues, standing from his chair and stepping into the aisle. “A seventeen-year-old boy from a good family. Captain of the cross-country team. The kind of young man mothers trusted with their daughters.”
I feel as though I’m being wrapped in something cold and heavy, like that boa constrictor from The Jungle Book has wound around my body and is squeezing me tighter and tighter, and I’m too hypnotized to move.
“The first girl was an accident, they said.” Billy walks closer, his steps careful and deliberate.
“A moment of rage that spiraled out of control. But they were wrong. There was nothing accidental about it. The boy had been fantasizing for months about what it would feel like to have complete power over another person.”
Billy’s almost at the stage.
“It only took some gentle encouragement,” Billy says. “Some… mentoring, if you will. The boy was so receptive to my guidance. So eager to learn. He was bloodthirsty, and oh, so pretty. Our girls trusted him so readily.”
“You’re lying,” I say, but my voice wavers.
“Such misplaced faith you have.” Billy leans his hip against the edge of the stage, his whole posture slouching. “Have you ever paid attention to Nicholas’s eyes? With that gray ring around the irises? They used to be such a lovely green, but I made that color go away.”
I can picture Nico’s eyes so clearly, that greenish teal color, the same shade as a milky pool, with the cloudy gray rings that I thought were just unique, part of what made him beautiful.
“Tell me, Eden,” Billy continues. “Have you ever wondered why he’s so cold all the time?”
I open my mouth to reply, but those words hollow me out. He’s right. Nico’s always wearing hoodies and long-sleeved shirts even when everyone else is in T-shirts.
“It’s because he remembers what it feels like to have something cold living inside of him,” Billy says. “Even years later, his body remembers. Why else do you think he would never leave this house?”
“Because he has work here,” I manage. “He has too much to do—”
“Nicholas is a loose cannon,” Billy interrupts. “Unpredictable. Dangerous. I sure do love that about him. That edge he tries so hard to hide.”
“You possessed him.” As soon as I say the words out loud, I feel sick, grasping for logic. “You killed those girls.”
Billy makes a soft tutting sound, standing there with his hands at his sides. “I can only enter willing participants.”
“That’s bullshit,” I say. “Anyone can be possessed if the entity is strong enough. I wasn’t willing, and you still crawled into my head.”
“I couldn’t occupy you from in here if I tried.
” Billy pushes off from where he’s leaning and floats up onto the stage, legs pedaling through the air before he lands on the surface.
“Besides, I’m not interested in you. You, my dear, don’t have the same parts, nor do you have the appetites my Nicholas does. ”
I think of all the words we threw up on the board during our team meeting. LONER. SINGLE. CRIMINAL RECORD. Nico is the center of this team and hardly a loner, and he couldn’t be more different than Ed Mathis, living alone in that sad apartment.
“Nico’s nothing like other people who get possessed,” I say.
“Is that so?” Billy hums, sounding disbelieving.
“Did you ever stop to think that not every one of us would choose the same type of person to possess? Or wonder why Donald Dellman could so accurately predict who I’d choose?
My chosen one had to be like me. Nicholas had enough anger festering inside of him that it was easy for me to slip inside.
He was begging for someone to give him permission to act on all those thoughts he’d been having. ”
“You’re making things up.” I scramble to my feet because he’s getting close to me now. “That’s what you do. You embellish.”
Nico may have raised his voice, slammed the console, but he seemed as shocked as me that he did. He lost himself enough to forget his duty and left me here alone. Nico would never hurt anyone. He’d never be excited at the thought of murdering someone.
Billy weaves his head from side to side in a serpentine motion. “What if I told you that’s why he came down here to talk to me the night we met?”
My back hits the wall of my mental theater. I can almost feel the soft black curtain rubbing against my exposed skin. Billy continues walking toward me. I don’t want to wait around to see what happens if he reaches me.
I run toward the wings. Billy keeps his pace methodical and controlled, and with a pang, I realize it’s the same way Nico moves, like a panther, full of power and ready to spring at any moment.
“Nicholas couldn’t bear having you in the house,” Billy says. “The temptation was too much. He needed my guidance on how to handle the situation. How to make the urges stop. I told him how he could remove the urges… permanently.”
“You’re a liar,” I say.
“How else would I have known your name when you were all the way upstairs in your room?” Billy asks.
Everything inside me stills.
“Nicholas Grady,” Billy says. “Go ahead, search his name if you don’t believe me.”
I slam my hand down on the return button. Billy’s laughter echoes as he gets sucked back into the containment unit, and the chamber seals with a click.