31. Unraveling To Whatever End
Unraveling To Whatever End
Two Weeks Later
The necklace Audrey made me swings in my rearview as I head back toward home.
Back toward the funeral home my father's father's father built with his own two hands. Blood, sweat, and love built this house. Compassion held it together, empathy and a genuine pride in doing good for the world, or at least the small community it serves. I can’t say that’s why I’ve officially told the mayor I’ll be making it my permanent residence, nor why I called my job at the ME’s office back in Piedmont to tell them I’m resigning effective immediately.
It’s because Audrey and I were meant to be right here.
To whatever end.
Thoughts of the women I left brutalized back in Washington are admittedly further from my mind than they should be, and the cases there. The screws and if they’d managed to trace them back to the hardware store I bought them at two cities outside of Piedmont.
I’d imagine they have.
Again, I’ve been preoccupied. I made a choice in leaving Piedmont, in deciding to stay.
I relinquished control, an airtight facade, years of hard work and honeyed lies.
In leaving, in staying gone, I chose to ignore the writing on the walls, the warning bells as they screamed until their clappers bled.
I let it unravel.
To whatever end.
The sun is lowering itself behind Crosswell Mountain; there’s a cake nestled in the floorboard of my car, and the most perfect girl in the world is turning twenty-six today.
Of course, I wouldn’t spare a thought for the failed copies of her; they were a means to an end, a pet project, a way to pass the time and make the years without my best friend more bearable.
Even if in the end they only served to draw attention to the Audrey-shaped wound she left behind.
Like before, all thoughts are on her. Perhaps even more so.
It’s… worse than I remember, but it feels so good to be consumed with her again.
Only this time, I’m forgetting to eat. To sleep.
Hours pass with my eyes locked on her. Following her, thinking about her, watching her, obsessing over her, pleasuring her, making sure she’s safe, happy, cared for, ensuring there’s nothing she could possibly want for, desire nothing I haven’t already provided.
As my tires hit the bend over the bridge, any semblance of calm, of a good mood, evaporates.
A slim figure leans against the railing of Audrey’s porch, a cigarette dragged between their fingers.
It doesn’t take any substantial degree of intelligence to know who it is.
Jessica Jordan, the wayward child of Reene Jordan, is lurking.
That buzzing builds in my chest, slipping backward, deeper into the cavity, toward my spine.
From there it silvers upward, higher and higher as I exit my car.
Where is Audrey?
Has she said something?
Tipped my puppet off?
Will Audrey be scared?
She’s delicate, my girl. We can’t have someone upsetting her, not at all.
Certainly not on her birthday. The figure shifts in response to my staring.
I’ve stepped out of my car and turned toward her directly, haven’t budged an inch.
Those people my father told me about, the ones that will take one look at me and know…
Jessica and the fuckwit detective are some of those people, and damn my luck to be in close contact with them both recently.
The screws, if they track them—
No, it’s a tiny family-owned shop. They didn’t even put my cash in the register; nobody is keeping tight books there.
I was nice, but not overly… unmemorable.
I don’t move, but my mind is running a million miles a second, my eyes glued to the corpse as she shifts again, dropping her cigarette to the porch before smashing it out there.
How disrespectful.
I don’t bother hiding it; maybe she can even see the way my lips jerk up into a horrid smirk.
What my mother once called a mockery of a smile.
A grotesque misrepresentation of an emotion I rarely get to feel: happiness.
I think I might’ve today, but she’s here to ruin that, and I simply cannot allow it to continue.
Is Audrey inside? No… the lights are off.
Audrey is home, in my home. Brave, perfect girl being at the right place at the right time.
Brilliant puppet, and this fucking cunt is waiting her out.
I take a step forward, the buzzing swelling until it's building like a pressure in my skull.
Yes, I had already known Jessica Jordan would die. But it was an afterthought, something down low on my to-do list.
That has just changed.
We can’t have you messing things up for us, Jessica. Not after everything is finally falling into place.
I take a step forward and watch as she rushes down the steps of the porch, the world descending into twilight.
Taking a mere second to ponder how difficult it must be for her as she walks down the drive toward me before veering off and nearly running up the road toward town.
I don’t stop walking until I’m on Audrey’s porch, discarding the half-drunk bottle of vodka the corpse left behind.
As I spin, I bring my hand to my face, adjusting my glasses, wondering if it’ll ever get easier.
If my fixation on my best friend will ever become something that mellows and doesn’t require the death of others.
I’m back across the street pulling her cake from my car when something deep hits in the pit of my stomach, an illicit surety that she and I will likely never find out.
Audrey, Present Day, 1994
I flip through the news, lying on the couch upstairs at the Bell Funeral Home, the nameless orange tabby sprawled next to me on the windowsill.
My flipping is mostly mindless, trying to keep myself away from the windows, checking to see if Jessie has left yet.
I’d already been heading back home after dropping off Gideon’s watch he’d left at my house last night.
I’d pivoted and bolted inside; facing ghosts seemed better than another showdown with her. That was three hours ago.
My flipping abruptly cuts off, a gasp leaving my throat as a familiar face pops up on the screen.
A wide-brimmed cowboy hat and huge buckle, but mostly the thick, groomed mustache of Detective Altman.
Despite my anxiety about the woman across the street, I laugh.
He looks like a piece of straw in a bucket full of steel.
The men around him are all dressed neatly in formal suits.
“…Detective Martin Altman, who is leading the case, will be making a statement. There will be no additional questions at this time.” The man behind the podium steps to the side, nodding and leaning in to whisper something in Altman’s ear before the new man settles at the helm.
Even out of place compared to those around him, there’s no doubt he’s in his element.
“We are now treating this as a confirmed victim of The Marionettist, as we released yesterday. The young woman has been identified, and we’re notifying her family now.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the family who has just suffered an unbelievable tragedy. ”
He takes a deep breath, shuffling the papers on the podium despite not looking like he’s reading from anything.
“The FBI and I are proud to announce that a witness to the abduction has come forward. We’re working closely with this unnamed individual.
Until then, we believe he has moved locations.
This suspect is highly intelligent. He would know the heat is becoming unpalatable here.
This individual is likely a well-mannered man, around his early to late twenties.
He will work in the medical field or have an interest in it.
A hobby perhaps. He’s a chameleon, but most of all, the suspect will be someone who is deeply lonely.
To him, a deeply unwell man, his victims are beloved. He cherishes them—"
“Bullshit.”
I scream, my heart slamming into my chest as I lurch from the couch to flee. Only my foot gets caught in the blanket there, sending my knees to the carpet. I whirl, finding Gideon standing in the doorway, his chest heaving as he watches the TV.
“Holy hell, Gideon, you scared me.”
He doesn’t respond as I untangle my foot, plopping down where I fell in front of the TV.
“…likely thinks of them, each one as his potential soulmate, his own perfect dolls—"
“No, he fucking doesn’t, and that fucker knows it,” Gideon seethes, and I spin to look at him over my shoulder before turning my attention again to the TV.
“… that brings the victim count to seventeen. Seventeen failed attempts to persuade these women to love him—" The TV cuts off, the sound of the remote cracking in his palm has me getting to my feet. I barely reach him before he grabs me, slamming me close.
“He doesn’t fucking love them,” he spits. “That washed-up John Wayne fucker is either incredibly stupid or incredibly na?ve.” I cant my head back to look at his face, his ocean eyes turbulent and frigid.
“Gid—"
“He doesn’t love them, Audrey. He hates them.”
“I mean, the police probably have those profiler people. They know—"
“Audrey!” he snaps, making me jerk in his arms. His hands tighten at that, punishing like he’s scared I’ll move away. I bring my hands to his chest, pushing deeper into him, making sure he knows I won’t. It does little to calm him. “They mean nothing to him.”
I just stare dumbly, my brows knitted together.
“Tell me you know that nobody would mean anything to him. They mean nothing. He’s not some lonely fucking creep.”
“I mean he’s a murderer who turns women into dolls, Gideon. That’s lonely creep behavior.”
He just stares at me, and god, if he doesn’t look a little… pleading. Like he really needs me to understand. My mouth pops open the moment realization sinks in. “Oh god, you worked on this case, didn’t you?”
He blinks for a moment, taking a deep breath and tucking me into his chest, his nose burying in my hair. “Yeah.”
“No wonder you got so upset. That must’ve been horrible.
They’ll catch the sick bastard,” I assure him, pressing a kiss to his chest, making his palm pause where it was running through my hair.
Wishing there weren’t layers of clothes separating my lips from his skin, even though Gideon looks great in a suit.
“That’s why Altman was down here to talk about the Marionettist. Shit, no wonder you weren’t in any rush to go back,” I say the words casually, not trying to pry, but the idea of a serial killer targeting young women traveling around the United States seems scary, but not as scary as the idea of Gideon leaving me to help them find him. “Is there a problem with the case?”
“Just some washed-up detective desperate to make a name for himself before retirement and a grieving family being taken advantage of to push his flawed narrative.”
“I mean, you’re the doctor on the case, right? Like the crime scene guy?”
“Medical Examiner,” he clarifies like it explains everything, only elaborating after my continued silence. “I focus on the body evidence.”
“Oh, well. That seems straightforward.”
He scoffs at that. “It is until you start adding in other pay-to-play ME’s that are willing to interpret evidence differently.”
I open my mouth to respond, but suddenly I’m being hurled into his arms, making a shit-eating grin spread across my face.
His eyes are just as intense when they land on mine, but I don’t care. I keep smiling for the both of us as he carries me into his bedroom. “He may be sick, may be lonely, but those women… he doesn’t care about them. They’re tools, no different from the coloring pencils in your art box.”
I just nod because now my core is pressed against his hardening length, each step adding just enough friction to make me squirm.
“His loyalties… his dedication to his art is driven by something else. It’s not about them.” He angles his chin up, brushing his lips across mine in a featherlight kiss that sets my core on fire and sets flutterflies off in my stomach.
“He has a muse,” I supply, groaning as he lays me down on his bed, shifting over me, his hands everywhere.
“Yes, everything else… everything that isn’t her is just noise to him. Tools.” His mouth finds my peaked nipple through my T-shirt, teasing it.
A moan leaves my throat as I push into him. “I feel sorry for her too, then, his muse.”
He doesn’t respond, and soon enough my thoughts are far away as he wiggles my jeans down my thighs, his tongue tracing their descent. “Happy birthday, puppet.”
I giggle. “Is this my present?”
“One of many.”
I nearly cry when he takes his lips off me, bending forward, his hair tickling my cheek as he reaches under the bed. I’m lying there, panting in my T-shirt and underwear for a second before what he’s doing catches up with me. “Oh, ew, don’t get those tapes out right now. I-oh.”
My eyes widen at the bundle of fabric in his hands, the familiar colors and lace making water spring into my eyes. “Another dress for Krissy.”
“Much too big for Krissy.”
I scramble up, all but jerking it from his hands as I unsteadily get to my feet on top of his bed, holding the beautiful garment up to my chest, emotion clogging my throat.
He chuckles, reaching out to steady me, his hands on my calves.
“Oh, Gideon, it's beautiful,” I croak out, staring down at the layers of thick, luxurious light green fabric.
The skirt is made up of the same fabric but piled with tiers of white lace. “My very own Krissy dress.”
When I finally lift my eyes to him, he’s blurry, but he’s sitting there, kneeling in front of me, and for a moment, I’m swallowed whole by the utter devotion in his eyes.
The intense, unyielding adoration. I was stupid…
to have ever thought for a second that this man, the boy he was before, hadn’t loved me.