36
“Look.” Alicia comes around to stand in front of Julia, her back to me. “However you two sort this out is not my problem. I want my money. So let’s do whatever it is we have to do to make that happen. Then the two of you can go from there. I’m not wasting any more of my life on this.”
Before Julia can answer, I decide to take possibly my only shot at a credible diversion. Frankly I’m surprised my old friend hasn’t thought of this herself. Then again, maybe she has. “I’m afraid that might be a little more difficult than you may have anticipated.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Alicia whirls on me but takes a moment to glance at her phone. She has turned it back on and kept it handy as if she’s expecting news.
If her boyfriend is on the way, I need to make this quick.
“For starters, I’m sure you’re well aware that the bank and the rest of the people around here, as well as those in my life in Manhattan, think I’m Julia. They are not going to just turn everything over to her”—I nod to Julia—“without some sort of legal clarification.”
Alicia’s expression falls. “You’re saying she can’t access any of the money—nothing—without taking some sort of legal steps.”
“Right. She has to prove her identity and disprove mine.”
Alicia twists to face Julia. “What the hell? You never mentioned anything like this?”
How stupid do you have to be not to have thought of it? I decide not to point this out.
“All I have to do,” Julia insists, “is explain my story to the police, and we will get this done.”
Now I smile. Can’t help myself. And I thought I was the only one in the room who was fucked.
“You’re saying we have to call the police,” Alicia suggests. “And go through, like, an investigation?”
Please do!
“We will get it straightened out,” Julia insists.
“Just one thing,” I pipe up again.
Alicia directs an impatient face to me.
“You and Brian killed Eleanor. That’s murder for him and at least conspiracy to commit murder or some accomplice thing for you, in case you forgot.
Helen is tied up out in the barn—that’s probably assault and battery and possibly kidnapping.
You lied about who you are to gain employment with me—that’s fraud.
” I furrow my brow in concentration. “Is there anything I’m forgetting? ”
“If you think,” Alicia warns me, then twists to do the same to Julia, “that I’m going down for any of that or walking away without my money after devoting a year of my life to this shit, you are out of your minds. We are not going to the police. We are getting that money. Today.”
“Yeah,” I say, “going to the police would be a seriously bad idea.”
“Yeah,” Alicia repeats. “You killed seven people. You kidnapped Julia. You have no right to judge anyone. I’m pretty sure there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
“You are one hundred percent right.” I nod toward Julia, enjoying the melee I’ve created.
“The same goes for her. She lied to the detectives—to the freaking FBI—about what happened twenty years ago. She is indirectly responsible for anyone who was taken after me.” I send a pointed look at Julia.
“For all those who died because no one knew where to find them.”
I can almost see the smoke rising from her ears.
“Basically,” I confess, “we’re all fucked.”
Then I remember a little something else I had almost succeeded in blocking from my memory. The stab wound Julia mentioned. “How did you get the stab wound in your leg?” I ask her.
Julia blinks, stares as if she has no idea what I mean.
“You had to fight to keep your slot,” I answer for her, recalling rumors of the games the Monster played.
How he would pit one woman against another in a fight to the death.
Only the winner remained in his good graces.
Not that it was anything to brag about, but it was better than dying. “How many times?”
She looks away.
That’s what I thought. No one in this room has a right to judge the other when it comes to taking a life.
“How am I getting my money?” Alicia demands again.
God, she’s like a damned broken record.
“She can access the money,” Julia says, a glower pointed in my direction.
Alicia stares at me expectantly, and I say, “I have half a million in my safety deposit box at the bank. Will that take care of what you were promised?”
Her greedy eyes bulge. She whips back around to glare at Julia. “You were only going to give us two hundred K.”
Sounds like that one is another win for me.
“I couldn’t be sure how much of my money she had gone through,” Julia fires back, shooting daggers at me with her gaze.
Alicia shifts her attention to me once more. “Let’s go get it. Now.”
Such a naive girl. “The bank is closed. I can’t get to the money before Monday. They open at nine, so we can go then.”
All we have to do is live through the next thirty-odd hours without killing each other.
Alicia’s mouth drops open. Then she snaps it shut. “You don’t have any money here?”
“There’s ten thousand in the safe in the bedroom.” Phillip calls it his lake house slush fund.
She blows out a big breath. She checks the time again.
“Is Brian headed this way?” He is a complication I do not need.
She makes a face. “That’s none of your business, but, just so you know, he’ll come when I give him the word. And he won’t think twice about killing whoever gets in our way.”
Good. This means he isn’t here now. Really good.
“So,” Julia suggests, “we sit tight until Monday, and then we take care of your money, Alicia.” She turns to me at that point. “Then you and I will finish this.”
Alicia holds her hands up in front of her. “I have nothing to do with that part. You two are seriously sick bitches.”
Time to share my next news flash. “We may have another slight complication.”
“What now?” Alicia demands. Her patience has reached the breaking point.
Good.
“Casey Duval is here. I’ve seen him—in the city just before we left. You remember the guy watching the house,” I say to Alicia. “I wasn’t sure it was him until yesterday when he paid Helen that visit and gave her a message to pass along to me. But I don’t think it was just for me.”
Julia looks to Alicia in question.
“‘The end of this is coming,’” I tell Julia since Alicia obviously didn’t. I take a breath and hope like hell she buys it. If I’m lucky, it will work to my benefit.
When both remain speechless, I add, “I guess he decided it’s time.
” I look from Alicia to Julia. “We’re the only ones left who can ID him and tie him to the murdered girls in the Judge case, as well as to filling orders for all those keepers.
I guess that article in the Times brought him out of his hiding place. ”
“You said you didn’t believe he was the Judge.” Alicia says this to Julia.
“She was in love with him,” I point out. “He was her first love. Her first lover. She might not see the truth about him even now.”
“I’m not blind,” Julia argues. “I can see that this is the way it looks. But you can’t be certain he fully grasped what he was involved in.”
Oh my God. The woman really is still in love with the idea of him. Now that is fucked up.
“If he’s the Judge and still out there, then he’s probably the one who leaked that article to the Times,” Alicia suggests.
She looks from Julia to me and back. “He’s probably been watching both of you all this time.
Why the hell didn’t you warn me?” This she directs at Julia. “He’s fucking dangerous!”
Valid points, I muse. Except I know the entire concept is irrelevant.
“As I said,” Julia insists, “there has never been any evidence that Casey was the Judge.”
“How can you be sure?” Alicia demands.
You go, girl. I mentally cheer her on. Distract and divide. It works every time.
“Because—” Julia begins.
“Because,” I cut her off, “she never stopped seeing him until I came for her.”
Her gaze jerks to me, surprise and maybe just a little fear glittering in her eyes.
But then, that isn’t the only bad, bad thing I learned about the seemingly good girl Julia Anderson after my escape from hell. Alicia has no idea what a monster Julia is herself.
“You’re a liar,” she shouts, spittle flying from her lips.
“Don’t listen to her,” I argue. “It’s him.” Time to come clean with another of my secrets I’ve been saving for just the right moment. This certainly appears to be it. “Casey Duval is the Judge, and I can prove it.”
Julia is holding up her hands for me to stop again, fury rolling off her in waves.
“If that’s true, then why wait all this time?
Why hasn’t he come for one or both of us.
He knew where I was for almost ten years after that last day we were all together, and he’s known where you were the past decade.
Why wait all this time to protect himself if what you say is true? ”
Ah, the perennial question.
Before I can answer, she rushes on, “Because you’re lying.” She shakes her head. “As for the business with the Times, I can’t see him making a move like that. It’s not his style.”
“How do you know what his style is?” I contend, “People change. If it has really been two decades since you saw him, you can’t possibly know anything about him.”
Julia only glares at me, her lips twisted in fury. She’s lying and she understands I know.
Alicia waves her arms like a referee who can’t seem to get control of the situation.
“If you’re telling the truth,” she says to me, “and this Casey guy was in touch with Julia all that time, then why didn’t he reach out to you after you took her place?
He would have realized right away that you weren’t the real Julia. ”
“Because,” I admit, “I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore. We were over. I needed to move on.”
Julia laughs long and loud. “Like he would ever have believed you.”
“Since he never contacted me again,” I argue, “he must have.”
Alicia’s gaze narrows. “Seems to me if you dumped him, he would have gotten pissed off. So why didn’t he kill you then?
That way he didn’t have to worry about what you knew.
” Her mouth forms an O as if something big has occurred to her.
“The better question is why didn’t you kill him?
You said he’s a serial killer. Didn’t he deserve to die as much as those other assholes? ”
“Exactly,” Julia agrees, her expression gleeful as if her side just won the round.
Casey Duval was no simple serial killer—not to say serial killers are simple. But he was a different kind of animal. Julia must have recognized the kind of predator he was. But maybe she was blinded by love. The FBI was damn sure blinded by something.
“I guess he loved you too much to kill you, and as far as he knew, I was you,” I offer.
“Everyone else sure thought I was. And if you didn’t out him back in the beginning, why would you ten years later?
” I decide to push further, make her scramble for a reasonable explanation.
“For that matter, what did you really know about him? I’m the one who saw his dark side when he left me with that old bastard. For money, obviously.”
“I told you about the girls he would goad me into talking to,” Julia reminds me unnecessarily. “I knew at least two of them went missing. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe he was responsible. I just couldn’t.”
I roll my eyes at the ridiculous excuse. “He was counting on that. Like I said, he wasn’t worried about you—or me, as it were.”
The truth is, in my opinion, Julia is just as twisted as her former lover. I only need her to show her real self to her minion, who seems to have some weird sense of right and wrong when she feels slighted or lied to in any way.
Alicia waves her hands back and forth to shut us up. “I don’t give a shit who loves who or what anyone said or didn’t say, I just want to know why he’s back now.”
“How would I know?” I shift the attention to Julia. “Have you been in contact with him?”
“No.” Julia’s features are set in grim lines. But there is something more than the frustration. Something she doesn’t want anyone to see.
I was right. She does still have some sort of feelings for him. How stupid and sick can you be? No need to ask, I know exactly how sick she is.
Rather than dwell on the idea, I say, “He must suspect something is going on,” I insist. “If he was the leak—and he must have been if it wasn’t either of you—then he has a plan, and he wants us to know it.
” I rub at my forehead. The drug hangover is not fading nearly fast enough.
I shift my attention to Alicia. “Is there anything you or Brian did that could have gotten his attention?”
“We had a carefully constructed plan,” Julia argues. “The goal was to quietly confront you and decide how to handle me getting my life back and you paying for what you did. Nothing we’ve done had anything to do with Casey.”
“Our plan was not like this at all,” Alicia confirms. “We were very careful and . . .” That look—the one that captures your face when you realize what you just said might be wrong—seizes her.
“I did a lot of surfing on the net for stuff about the Judge. But Brian is the one who did the real research. He’s big into online stuff, especially true crime chat groups and all that shit.
He probably asked questions and . . .” She closes her eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
“So he may have accidentally warned Casey.” Not possible but if she believes it, that’s all that matters.
Her boyfriend’s proficiency online no doubt explains those damned emails I received.
Hundreds of them with the photo marked “liar” filling my inbox pings over and over in my brain. I struggle to exile the memory.
“No,” Alicia argues, squaring her shoulders. “It was you. You told that Talia person you were doing a memoir.” She points a finger at me. “It was you who triggered him.”
“Does it really matter what prompted his move?” I argue. “He’s here. That’s the real problem.”
Alicia sinks down on the sofa next to Julia. “What do we do?”
“We make a plan,” Julia assures her. “Decide how we’re going to handle him if he shows up.”
As much as I would love to believe these two and I are on the same team when it comes to any aspect of this, I would be a fool to trust either one. I’ve been many things in my life, but I was a fool only once.
Julia shares a look with Alicia, then says to me. “Our choices are limited. We can kill him or we can go to the FBI.”
Killing him works for me. Except I already did.
I think I’ll keep that to myself for now.