Chapter Reaping
V.
REAPING
Yates
. . . Today
August 26th, 8:32 am
I STAND BEFORE THE GRAND doors of Lancaster Manor and stare at the camera hidden beneath the roof of the stone portico, my cheek lashed with rain whipped up by the violent wind.
It’s ancient by technological standards, one of only two on the entire estate that capture grainy videos connected to a system in the main floor office.
Well, two that Arthur installed, at least. There are forty-six additional cameras of my own hidden on the property.
Twelve in the cottage. Nineteen in the main house.
Five in the sheds and garages. And the remaining ten are scattered throughout the grounds.
I smile and tip my hat at the camera, though I already know he’s not watching.
I grip the door handle and a burst of excitement crackles through my veins.
I pause to savor the unfamiliar sensation.
It’s so rare for real emotions to break through the shell that surrounds me.
Shallow affect, they call it. All the facial expressions I wear, the animated reactions, the smiles and frowns and furrowed brows. They’re paintings on a blank canvas.
But this sensation? This electrical storm that zings through my veins as I push the door open?
This is real. The artistry of death brings me closer to perfection. Destruction, the purest form of poetry.
Mon coeur, comme un oiseau, voltigeait tout joyeux
Et planait librement à l’entour des cordages;
Le navire roulait sous un ciel sans nuages;
Comme un ange enivré d’un soleil radieux.
Death is the only thing that makes me feel alive.
I close the door behind me and take a deep breath of sanctuary.
Perhaps this is what the devout feel like when they enter a religious temple.
Reverence. Alignment to a higher purpose.
Oneness with the divine. I’ve so rarely entered the manor house.
It’s not the same as watching through a camera feed.
Familiar objects come alive. Scents and sounds add a vibrant new dimension to a once-pixelated perspective.
I take a pair of nonslip disposable boot covers from my jacket pocket and slide them over my wet shoes. And then, one silent footfall after the next, I follow those scents and sounds down the darkened hallway that leads to the kitchen.
When I stop at the threshold, Arthur is standing at the island, scooping sugar from an ornate green bowl into his tea.
I watch in silence. I’ve always appreciated his refined taste—the cashmere sweater vest, the ironed button-up shirt beneath it, his opera music playing through the speakers.
Even his sugar bowl, the lid with a jade-colored crystal that he holds with delicate precision as he puts it back in place.
But then he frowns at his tea. He stares down at it for a long moment.
Then he takes the lid off again and repeats the motions he just completed.
He doesn’t remember that he’s already done this.
I wait until he finished his ritual a second time, and then I step into the light.
Arthur startles as I remove my hat and draw to a halt. It takes him a moment to work out who I am. At first, I think he might have forgotten. But then he says, “Sheriff Yates. What are you doing in my home?”
I smile. But he does not mirror my expression. “I apologize for entering unannounced.”
“Then why did you? You could have knocked. Surely you have my phone number.”
“This isn’t the kind of visit that is prearranged.”
His eyes narrow, never leaving mine as he stirs his tea. Each tink, tink, tink of his spoon against the teacup marks the passage of time to inevitability. “I see.”
I set my hat on the kitchen island and come a few steps closer. Arthur tries to hide his unease as he takes up his cane, but he doesn’t back away. The music crescendos, a soprano and a tenor singing with urgency in their voices.
“What are you listening to?” I ask as I stop a few feet away.
“You’re here to discuss opera?”
“I’m here to discuss many things.”
Arthur taps his spoon against the edge of his cup three times, and then sets it on the saucer. He raises the cup to his lips with a slow, careful hand, as though taunting me with the delay. “It’s Puccini’s Tosca. You are not familiar with opera, are you?”
I chuckle, hooking a thumb into my belt. “No,” I admit. “More of a country music fan myself.”
It’s become so easy to slip into the skin of another life that I hardly feel it shrink around me. But Arthur sees it. He knows that there’s something different about the man who just claimed to enjoy country music versus the one who slid into his lair like a snake.
I let the skin shed, dropping the pretense of the amiable town sheriff when I say, “The literary arts, however . . . well, let’s just say I’m a fan of poetry. Particularly Charles Baudelaire’s.”
I can see the pieces snap together in his thoughts. Confusion. Realization. Grief.
And bottomless rage.
His knuckles blanch around the handle of his cane. My name is a hiss across his lips when he says, “La Plume.”
My smile stretches a little wider. This time, I feel it within me.
The quickened beat of my heart. The surge of exhilaration that tingles in my skin.
Arthur buries his rage beneath layers of hatred—hatred not only for me, but surely for himself too.
For never knowing that I was always right within his reach.
“You know, Mr. Lancaster, I never intended to stay in Cape Carnage,” I say. “It was because of you that I did.”
His brows lower. He seems unimpressed with this revelation. “So that you could become a small-town sheriff? How painfully uninspired.”
“Personally, I think it’s got a certain symmetry to it, wouldn’t you agree?”
“No,” he says.
I grin. “You searched for years for La Plume. Searched and searched for the man who plucked your Poppy from the world. And all the while, I was right there next to you, helping you look.”
Arthur’s eyes narrow, but he maintains his composure.
“I suppose you were just too good at playing the inept police officer. Perhaps it comes more naturally to you than this pseudo-intellectual La Plume persona that you try so hard to inhabit.” He scoffs, his focus dropping down the length of me before returning to my face with a sharp glare.
“Did you know Baudelaire regularly had to beg his dear mother for cash when he wasn’t dodging his creditors and fucking his way through Paris until it killed him? Indolent fool.”
My leather glove creaks as my hand tightens into a fist. He’s got bark, that’s for sure. But I know he also has bite. Or at least, he used to. “I’ve always admired your archaic little barbs. ‘Inscrutable flea’ was my favorite. I’m afraid I will miss your sharp tongue.”
I take another step closer to the corner of the island that separates us. A beat of silence passes between us. Arthur should back away. But he doesn’t.
“Why my daughter?” he finally says, more a demand than a question. “Why would you stay here?”
“I’d taken the targets of other serial killers before,” I say.
“Sometimes their distant relatives. Anyone they seemed to value. But when I watched them to see what emotion my artwork brought to the surface, I only ever saw their apathy, or frustration, or anger and surprise. Never grief.” I rap my fingers across the counter, one at a time, then point in his direction. “Not until you.”
Arthur’s jaw works, clenching and releasing in another swell of fury. His eyes take on a glassy sheen. Maybe, if he were to live long enough, this single memory would persist. The one of his daughter on the floor of her cottage, my finest piece of art.
“You were unique,” I continue. “You had the kind of life I thought impossible for people with our . . . proclivities. I found that deeply fascinating. I wanted to be like you.”
“You will never be like me.”
“You’re right.” I round the corner of the island and stand face-to-face with Arthur Lancaster. “I am superior.”
He doesn’t need to look down to know what’s in my hand. He has an instinct honed from so many moments like this one.
Moments when he was the predator and not the prey.
His grip holds steady on the cane, even though his lip quivers. Grief is an echo in his face, almost as potent as it was that day when I watched through the window of the cottage. But there is still determination in him. “You will not take my Harper too,” he says.
“You’re right. I won’t. At least, not in the way that you think.”
I lunge forward and bury my blade through cashmere and linen, into the depths of Arthur Lancaster’s body.
His eyes widen. He gasps for a breath. I keep my hand clasped to his shoulder. The bone is so delicate beneath my palm. The notes of the soprano soar around us. Musical poetry, two worlds colliding to become one. Maybe this is mercy. Or maybe mercy is meaningless for people like us.
“I will coax her out of her chrysalis,” I say, holding the blade steady within his trembling frame. “With your death, Autumn will transform.”
Arthur’s eyes shift between mine, as though he’s able to decipher my design through my unflinching stare. And perhaps he does.
Because he’s faster than I thought. And smarter.
Arthur hits me in the temple with his cane—not hard enough to stun me, but surprising enough to distract me. And with his other hand, he smashes the sugar bowl over my head in a dizzying blast.
I grit out a frustrated growl. Arthur slips away as sugar and broken porcelain rain across the marble floor. I raise my fingers to my head, where small cuts sting along my scalp. Bloody shards are surely at my feet.
When I whip around to glare at Arthur, he’s pulled the blade from his belly, a crimson stain spreading from the hole in the cashmere. He holds the polished steel against his neck. His eyes blaze with determination. With hope.
“You’re right—with my death, Harper Starling will transform. Because she will outsmart and overcome you. And then she will kill you.”
Before I can grab the knife, he slides the blade through his neck and falls.