Chapter Twenty
It’s after sundown by the time Nomi makes it back to her apartment. Being at the tenement makes her nervous, but she’s really sick of feeling like she hasn’t got a home to go to. Fuck it—if Claude Ameche comes, let him come. If Simon Noone knocks at her door, let the cards fall where they may.
It’s Friday, and she has other priorities.
She lets herself in, walks down the hall, dumps her tote and her leather jacket in the living room, backtracks to the bathroom.
Grabs her kit bag and returns via the kitchen, where she collects a beer from the fridge.
She’s still got her holster on, and she’s too impatient right now to take it off.
Her whole body feels fragile. Her skin is tight, itching and humming, like she’s a glass balloon stuffed full of angry bees.
The apartment is still dark, which suits her mood, but she needs a light to do this. Nomi moves a strand of spider plant aside, switches on the mellow standing lamp in the living room, sets up on the coffee table. Her skin feels grimy with sweat, but she’ll feel better soon.
The Valium she bought from Mischa last night is still in the key pocket of her jeans, but again, it’s not her priority right now.
Her hands are shaking slightly. Preparing her tools—arrowhead, Kleenex, alcohol, dressing—only takes a minute, seems to take forever; this is the economy of time when you’re about to perform the ritual.
Once she’s got everything laid out, she unbuckles her belt and tucks the hem of her T-shirt under the bottom edge of her bra, uncaps the rubbing alcohol; the acrid smell immediately brings a metallic-tasting wash into her mouth.
She’s always tempted by her left arm, but those days are over.
When the scarring got too bad, too noticeable, she got her first tattoo cover-up: Now inky flames and thorns and roses protect that space, warning her not to create further damage.
Instead, she finds a piece of soft, unblemished skin near her belly button, just above the place from last Friday.
She wipes it down, feels herself shiver, takes up the obsidian arrowhead’s reassuring weight.
Shoves her hair out of the way, holds her breath, makes two swift cuts—yes and yes . . .
As the blood springs out and a glittering euphoria slides through her body, she exhales deeper than she ever has in her life. Okay, now she feels better. Now she feels human.
Nomi lays her tool on the table and puts her head back.
She’s allowed to enjoy the rush of cutting but not rely on it.
It’s tempting to say, “I’ve had a hard day, I deserve this,” but it’s a trap she refuses to fall into.
Cutting logic is to feel deserving every day, because every day is hard.
That’s a downward spiral to nowhere. She has appetites; she controls them.
Otherwise, the appetites control you, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before she lets herself be controlled again.
She’s fine about feeling relief, though: The last twenty hours have been a fucking nightmare.
Blood dribbles down into the waistband of her jeans in a warm leak, and it’s absurdly peaceful.
The buzzing inside her has settled. She feels focused, clear, with a kind of satisfied tiredness, like she’s just gone for a long run.
There’s a mild sting, and she folds a Kleenex, presses it over the wound to settle it, pulls down her shirt.
As she leans forward to do the cleanup, a voice to her right says, “Were you ever going to tell me?”
Nomi jerks around and draws her Smith she licks a finger and jams it over the wound. “That I cut? It’s really none of your—”
“That I’m a mass murderer.”
He’s washed out, his cheeks hollowed, posture stiff; it’s not the loose, easy way he usually occupies space.
He looks like he’s in shock. But how can she tell what’s real with him?
She thinks of his panty-dropping grin at the bar, thinks of his face contorted in a snarl as he confronted Ameche on the stairs.
She slaps a dressing on her cut, rearranges her shirt.
“You’re not a mass murderer.” Nomi realizes she needs to clarify. “That’s more like when someone kills a whole lot of people in a spree event—”
“Jesus Christ.” Noone scrubs his hair back with one hand.
“You killed a lot of people over about five years.” There’s no good way to say it.
“Simon Gutmunsson—” He stops, presses his lips together until they’re white. “Me. I was a serial killer.”
“Yes.”
“Twenty-one people. I murdered twenty-one people.”
“Including six law enforcement officers. Yes.”
“That’s why you’ve been avoiding me. Because I’m a serial killer.”
“Yes.” She pauses. “Also because I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“Okay, I need to sit down.” He finds the brown lounge chair and drops into it.
The coffee table is clean now, but hanging above it, in the air between them, are all the words Nomi remembers from the file: “multiple victims” and “evisceration” and “dangerous” and “statewide search” and “most wanted” and . . .
There are a lot of words. None of them are good.
Still feeling the sting on her stomach and a mild high, she pushes her Schlitz toward him across the table. “You have this. I’ll get another.”
She knows he doesn’t like beer, but apart from schnapps, that’s all she’s got. She stands and goes to the kitchen, fetches a second bottle of Schlitz from the refrigerator, sits back down on the sofa just as Noone takes a swig from his own bottle, shudders.
His voice comes out hoarse. “So where have you been hiding?”
“I waited until you went to work before I came back here,” she admits. “I left you a message with Sofia Rosa so you wouldn’t chase around after me.”
“I got the message,” he notes. “And I still chased around.”
She’s not going to apologize. “Today, I’ve mostly been at the library, getting verification and doing additional research.”
“What other details did you find out?” His tone is dry, but the words are halting.
Nomi uses the edge of the coffee table to pop the cap on her beer.
She doesn’t need to consult her notes to give him a broad outline.
“You came from a wealthy Massachusetts family—privileged life, educated in Europe . . . That’s how you’re fluent in the Romance languages.
You started young. Eleven homicides before you were caught and tried as an adult in 1980.
Insanity defense got you incarcerated in a hospital. ”
“I’ve been declared legally insane?” With each new revelation, he pales further.
She nods, short and once. “You participated in a juvenile-offender interview program run by the FBI in 1982. As a result, you were transferred to—and then escaped from—a Pennsylvania jail.”
“Right.”
She takes a swig from her beer. “You killed another ten people following your escape. Fled toward nonextradition Cuba, pursued by law enforcement. You were presumed dead after a confrontation near the Mexico-Guatemala border in November of that year.”
He grips his bottle on his thigh. His other elbow is on the arm of the lounge chair, his fingers against his lips. “I did all this by the time I was twenty?”
There’s only one explanation she can give him. “While imprisoned, you were diagnosed as a pure sociopath.”
He blinks. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a personality disorder. It usually manifests in early adolescence.”
“What are the symptoms?”
“High impulsivity. Heightened sense of superiority. Propensity for violence.” Each dot point sounds like a coffin nail being hammered in. “Deceptive and manipulative behavior. Disregard for morals and social norms. A fundamental lack of empathy.”
There’s another pause, longer and more weighted.
“Working as the manufacturer intended, huh?” His hopeless snort seems self-directed. Noone sips from his beer, clears his throat. “All that stuff you described—the murders, the imprisonment. I don’t remember any of it. Not one bit.”
“Your body seems to remember, though. The languages you speak are Gutmunsson’s languages. The dreams you have of the girl with white hair—Gutmunsson had a sister, Kristin. There’s a lot of his instincts in you. The way you dress, the way you . . . change.”
“Being good at following people—it’s a hunting pattern.” He meets her eyes, stunned at the realization.
“Yes.”
“The medical proficiency. And I have a job in a slaughterhouse, I know how flesh works.” It’s all coming together for him now. “Are you scared of me?”
“Should I be?” But she holds herself very still when she says that.
“I don’t even know.” He makes a short, desperate laugh. “Most people would say yes.”
“I’m a little scared of you,” she admits. Her body is tense. “I’ve seen you menace people. Examine a corpse. Manipulate a witness. I’ve seen you lose your shit.”