Chapter 38 #2
“Caitlin Murphy. Bryan Suarez. River Jones.”
“River and Caitlin. Bryan.” His breath saws out of his lungs. “Beautiful musicians.”
“Beautiful children,” I growl, reaching around him to open the dishwasher door. “Slide out the bottom rack.”
He doesn’t comply immediately, so I dig the pen point into his nerve until he shrieks and starts to bend toward it. I ease off the pressure and grimace under my mask. That last jab’s going to leave a mark. Hopefully his messy death will cover up any stray injuries.
I haul him up by the back of his pajama top once the bottom rack is resting on the open door, the three knife blades pointed up and glinting under the light fixture.
“W-why are my knives in there?”
“Why are you acting like you don’t know why I’m here?” I retort.
“Bryan. Caitlin. Their mothers never loved them enough.” His voice is tight and scared, as it should be.
“And River?”
“River,” he sighs. It’s almost blissful, like he knows his time is almost up and this is his last opportunity to savor the evils he visited on the children in his care.
My knuckles whiten around the collar I’m gripping, although I take care not to pull hard enough to leave a mark on the opposite side of his throat.
“I’m still working with River to try to undo the damage you did to him,” I say. “He’s doing better now, but he’ll never be the kid that he was.”
“He was nothing,” Augustine spits out. “I chose him. I cultivated his talent.”
“He’s afraid of authority figures.” I press the pen too hard again. “He never touched the violin again.”
Tired of his excuses, I turn us so he’s facing the side of the dishwasher door, positioning his body so he’ll hit the silverware basket at the correct angle. Then I let go, hook my foot around his ankle, and send him face-first into the knives.
He couldn’t have landed better. I crouch next to the almost-dead man to get a better look.
The chef’s knife—the one with the longest blade—drove straight through his neck so the bloody tip peeks out of his papery skin just under his hairline.
The carving fork stabbed through his jaw, exactly where he used to tuck his violin.
The boning knife didn’t stab into him. No, he hit the sharpest of the knives at just the right angle for the blade to travel along the center of his face as he fell, carving a deep gash that starts at his chin, shunts off the bridge of his nose, and ends with the tip of the knife lodged in his left eye.
One of his nostrils is sliced completely open, and the blade bisected his lips, causing them to hang like curtains around his prominent yellow teeth.
I don’t bother to pull my mask off. He doesn’t know me, so there’s no reason to be that dramatic.
Instead, I step back and wait. I wait for his body to go limp.
I wait for him to shit himself as his central nervous system powers off and his muscles lose control.
I wait until I’m sure Augustine Horne has left the earth forever.
Even after death, blood continues to leak from his body—or, in the case of the knife embedded in his eye, blood mixed with the same vitreous liquid I watched Rue collect from Aaron McEwan’s corpse.
And just like that, any pleasure I might take from this textbook-perfect kill is gone. I can’t tell Morticia about how smoothly I shifted gears when I needed to. I can’t listen at the mailbox as the neighbor girl describes one of my crime scenes to me. I can’t have any part of Rue.
She’s not mine.
The blood flowing down Horne’s face patters like rain onto the metal door. I’ve gotten justice for River, Caitlin, and Bryan, but it’s like I’m observing it through a thick layer of Bubble Wrap. Nothing penetrates.
I grab my backpack and run upstairs to collect my camera, then do the same with the ones on the main floor.
Once they’re stowed away, I pluck his phone and highball glass from the bar cart.
The glass I rinse and leave in the sink, and the phone I place on the counter just next to it.
Ideally, the investigators—Rue, you know it’ll be Rue, she’ll be the one judging your work—will see an old man who rinsed his glass in anticipation of placing it in his dishwasher and instead had a fatal kitchen accident.
The blood under Augustine’s body has started to drip onto the floor, the coppery smell making it past my mask to coat my nose and throat.
I now run the risk of leaving footprints, which means it’s time for me to go.
But before I do, my fingers creep to the small innermost pocket of my cargo pants, where I’ve stashed the herb clipping.
Leaving one near the body is my calling card for Rue, which means it should stay in my pocket. We’re done. She made that clear. Hell, she doesn’t even understand the significance of the little plant, so why am I bothering?
I turn on my heel and stalk to the door, determined to leave her in the past along with the silly rituals I’ve built around her. But when my hand touches the knob, I breathe a curse and turn back around.
The blood’s still spreading along the beige linoleum, making it a risk to get close to the body, so I walk to the very edge of the red puddle and lean forward to tuck the clipping into the cuff of his pajama pants.
The tips of my boots come dangerously close to touching the liquid, but I jump back in time to avoid contamination.
It won’t help me sleep any better tonight; nothing does these days. But this is my love letter to her. I’m not going to stop until I’m in a cell or in the ground.
I jog back to my car feeling even emptier than when I started the night.