Terrorscape (11 page)

Her eyes shifted to the next link. No deaths in
March, April, or May. Then three in June. One of those
was Sheila, who had been left out in the hot Arizona
desert for the buzzards to feast on. That was also
when it seemed like he'd begun marking the bodies.

None in July.

 

Another three in August. California. Oregon.

Washington. Fear tied up her solar plexus in knots as
a horrible thought occurred to her. She clicked the
browser's back button, looked at the location of the
Angelica Peters case. Connecticut leered back at her.
West Virginia. North Carolina. Ohio.

He's working his way North.
And then a moment
later, she corrected herself.
North-West.

No murders in September so far—unless you
counted Blake. They wouldn't, of course, since he
wasn't a girl and didn't have red hair but….

What if he was faking at being a serial killer?
What if this was some sort of high-stakes diversionary
tactic?

No, that didn't make any sense.
And then Val remembered that closet at his
house, paneled with beasts of prey, chess moves,
flowers—and
photographs
of
her.
Photographs
riddled with dozens of tiny holes where he had
thrown darts at her likeness. Killing her hundreds of
times in effigy with the merest flick of the wrist.

“Killing me in effigy,” Val whispered, staring at
the screen. Maybe this is what Lisa had meant,
accusing her of taking others with her. Gavin couldn't
find her, so he was killing young women superficially
like her. Giving himself a temporary sense of closure
while also sending her a message:
When I find you, this
is what awaits you.

Then she remembered Lisa's cryptic message—
Are you frightened?

Except it wasn't Lisa who sent that message, but
Gavin. She knew that just as surely as she knew her
own name.

Just like that, as if the final piece of a puzzle had
slipped into place, everything made sense. He had
expected her to make the connection before now. If he
had one weakness, it was assuming that others would
be able to follow his own brilliant, snarled chain of
logic. He was taunting her,
mocking
her.

Hunting her.

Her stomach churned, and she had to dash to the
bathroom to keep from throwing up on the rug.
He's going to kill me
.

But how could he? He had no idea where she
was. Val clung to that like a life preserver.
He doesn't
know where I am
. And even if he did, her name was
different. She met her unfamiliar eyes.
She
was
different. A leopard couldn't change its spots, but
other animals could. They could change their colors,
make
themselves
drab.
Blend
in
with
the
environment. Val rinsed with mouthwash and when
her breathing had returned to the normal rate she did
a search on serial killers.

A lot of them were motivated sexually or by
pleasure; for whatever reason, killing tapped into the
dopamine pleasure pathways, reinforcing them to kill
again and again. Their patterns of killing were cyclic
with resting periods in between dense clusters of
victims. There were a few names she recognized
offhand and the comparisons made her sick.

She did a search on “Gavin Mecozzi.” The chess
sites she remembered from freshmen year had been
eclipsed by articles headlining his participation in the
murders from that one horrible night. There were also
pictures from the trial. Nothing recent, apart from
speculation about his disappearance, and reward
offers for any information pertaining to the former.

She looked at that picture of him in the dark suit
with that studied look of solemnity, and her heart
ached when she saw his handsome face.

Nobody had linked him to the killings.

And
why
would
they?
He
wouldn't
leave
evidence behind; he was a grandmaster at chess, used
to thinking several moves ahead each game. He
would take into account all possibilities, from greatest
to least likely, and plan for each accordingly.

Val looked at the picture of him again, the one
that had made her weep when she was fourteen and
had only just learned what it was to have your heart
broken—not just broken, but toyed with, battered,
and completely annihilated. There was something….

She went back to the other open tab with the
articles about serial killers. Yes. There had been a
photo there, too. One of those terrible men at trial. He
had the same expression on his face. It chilled her,
that similarity; it was a sort of malleable penitence
that could just as easily become amusement in
another form of light. Those dead, soulless eyes….

Gavin had the most intense stare. Most people
couldn't look another individual in the eyes for too
long without feeling uncomfortable, but his eye
contact had always been unflinchingly prolonged.

The phone rang. Val stared at it, as if it had
become a scorpion poised to sting her with its
phenom. She considered letting the call go to voice
mail. But what if it was important?

What if it was Lisa?

One look at the caller ID told her it wasn't, but she
picked up anyway, averting her face so her shaky
breathing wouldn't be audible over the line. “Y-yes?”

“Hey. Is this Val?”

 

She forgot to turn away this time. “W-who is
this?”

 

“It's Jade. You know, the party—Mary's friend.”

“Jade?” Her lips felt numb. She realized that she
had been compressing them, to keep from gasping in
anticipation of bad news. “Oh. Oh, thank God.”

“That's an unusual reaction.” His voice was light.
Deceptively so? Val didn't know him enough to tell.

“No, I was just—um, yeah, yeah I guess it was.”
She forced a laugh. It sounded fake to her own ears.
Maybe he'd chalk it up to the connection. “Sorry.”

“It's cool. So anyway, I was gonna ask you if you
were still up for coffee. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Coffee. Tomorrow.” Val closed her eyes and tried
to pull up a mental calendar. It turned up blank.
There was no room for coffee in her world. All she
could see were the eyes of those young girls. Of the
killers. “Okay.”

“See you at six?”
“Okay,” she repeated.
“Are you feeling all right? You sound sick.”
“Fine. I'm fine. Allergies. You know.”

Where were all these lies coming from? She had
never been a good liar. Even as a child, she had found
it easier to admit guilt and tell the truth.

This isn't me.

Fear was transforming her, rewiring her. She was
metamorphosing into a version of herself she no
longer recognized, and that frightened her.

She
didn't
think
Jade
would
buy
such
an
obviously contrived excuse—she wasn't even sniffling
—but he must have because he said, “See you
tomorrow then? At the Student Union?”

“Uh-huh.”

Val waited until she heard him hang up. She
stared at the phone in her hand. The details of their
conversation
started
to
turn
hazy,
just
seconds
afterward. She felt as if her mind were floating and
her limbs were lead weights keeping it anchored
down. People were dying. People were dying because
of
her
. And she had a date.

Reality chose that moment to hit her with all the
subtlety of a grand piano. She would never be able to
have a normal life; the past would catch up to her, no
matter what she did. And even if the past didn't,
Gavin would. The two were one and the same.

(I am her future—and she is simply that: mine.)
Val pitched down the phone and sobbed.

 

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

The student cafeteria was a small, comfortable
place with paneled white walls and plastic tables.
Comfortable was not the word Val would use to
describe
her
current
state
of
mind.
Awkward,
nervous, paranoid—yes. Comfortable? Not so much.

Serial killer facts and trivia floated in her head,
periodically bobbing to surface like monsters from the
deep. Their murders were often based on fantasy and
fetishism, paraphilias so terrible that no normal
person would ever act upon, let alone possess them.

She couldn't stop wondering whether Gavin had
done
any
of
those
things
she'd
read
about.
Cannibalism. Necrophilia. The sick sorts of acts that
were universal in the repulsion they caused. She had
seen him drink blood,
her
blood, as if it gave him a
sort of erotic thrill. Vampirism. She shuddered.

College was supposed to be her safe place. She
had dyed her hair, changed her name. Only her
parents
knew
her
address
and
phone
number,
although Lisa probably knew the latter too.
Now
.

Poor Blake. Poor, poor Blake.
His only crime had been surviving.

Val chose an empty table near the back of the
cafeteria. She tried not to fixate on the automated
doors. Snatches of conversation drifted towards her
but she couldn't make heads or tails of any of the
actual
words.
The
muffled
tones,
pitches,
and
inflections merely fed into her hysteria, mimicking
the voices in her own head.

Nobody here knows who you are.

Rather than comforting her, this thought made
her feel lost, adrift in a frightening sea of malicious
strangers. She glanced down at her watch. Five
minutes. Five tortuously long minutes.

Mary had arrived home as Val was getting ready
and had talked her into dressing up. Now Val felt
prissy and overdressed. How embarrassing if he
stood her up. Everyone would know.

Pathetic.

Tears pricked at her eyes. As if everything else
wasn't enough, she had to deal with rejection, too. She
blinked
them
back.
What
little
pride
she
still
possessed commanded that she not cry. Not until she
was alone, where no one would see her bleed.

“Hey—you made it.”
She lifted her head.

Jade was holding two ready-made espressos in
one hand, a textbook in the other. His outfit was more
formal than it had been at the dormal. He wore a blue
shirt the same color as his eyes with a jean jacket.
Peeking out from beneath his shirt collar was a cowrie
shell necklace.

It's good that he's dressed up, right?

Assuming it was for her. Mary would know. Mary
was adept at picking apart these situations.
She
wasn't.

“Do you need help with those?” she asked, in
apropos of other conversational gambits.

“Nah, I got it. Used to wait tables at Denny's.” He
set the drinks and the book down on the table
without spilling a drop. “Speaking of waiting, were
you here long?”
“Me? No. I just got here. You said six, right?”

“Yeah, I'm early. My watch runs fast.” He sat
down, dropping his backpack on the seat between
them.
Because it's convenient, or because it's a barrier?

“Oh,” said Val, who did not wear a watch.
“You feeling all right?”

“Allergies.” That was the excuse she had given
him wasn't it? She smiled ruefully. “I'm a little better
now, though.”

“That's good.” He smiled back. “I was beginning
to worry that I was going to end up drinking both of
these myself—until I saw that clock.” Jade nodded at
the one on the wall. “Then I felt like a total geek.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. I hate to break it to you but I'm pretty
geeky, Val.”
“Even so, that'd still be a lot of coffee.”

“I had a calc test. It burns up a lot of energy.”

She doubted that. Jade didn't have the dark circles
under his eyes that most college students had. She'd
have
noticed—his
fair
complexion
hid
no
imperfections.
Jade seemed like the kind of person
who could run on fumes for miles. Just like Mary.

God, the two of them had probably been terrors
in high school. Val could only imagine. But thinking
of high school made her think of—other things.

She took a sip of coffee. It was too hot but good.
Completely unlike the swill Mary kept letting mold in
mugs on her window sill. Her lips twitched into a
reflexive smile. She had taken to calling them Mary's
“Petri dishes,” and rather than taking offense Mary
had let out a hearty guffaw.

Her roommate was a bit of a slob—they both
were, really—but she was a kind slob. Too kind to
have such a dysfunctional roommate.

“You have that look on your face again.”

She put her cup of coffee down too quickly. A bit
of milky brown liquid sloshed over the side. “What
look?”

“Like you're a million miles away, and wouldn't
mind being even farther if you could.”

Val swallowed. He was rather dead on the mark
there. She smiled the way she always did and said,
“Not a million. Try eight hundred.”

“Homesick?”
No, sick of home
. “Something like that.”
“Missing anyone in particular?”
“No.” Too defensively.
“No one?”

His eyes lingered on hers until she looked down
at her own cup and wondered if she had said too
much. The bitter taste of the coffee clung to her
tongue with the acridness of bile and she found
herself swallowing excessively in order to keep it
down.

What the hell was she thinking, saying a foolish
thing like that? Was this some kind of Freudian slip?
An
acknowledgment
of
her
own
hidden
guilt
struggling
to
slip
free
from
the
snare
of
her
subconscious like a fly caught in a spider's web?

I wish he would stop looking at me like that. It's like he
can see right through me.

If he could, though, he'd be running for the hills.
“Are you always this thoughtful?”

“No. Yes. I don't know.” She looked down at her
hands while she played with the coffee lid.
More minutes ticked by, broken by bursts of
laughter coming from other tables. Periodically Jade
tilted his head in that direction, a faint smile on his
mouth, as if he wished he were laughing, too.
“So, um,” she fumbled for another opening, “a
little bird told me that your dad teaches Latin?”