Quinn thought of the security video and nodded. He had seen Buzz’s jacket, then. It was one piece of the puzzle that hadn’t worked with the theory, but now it fell into place.
“So one day I find Buzz skulking around my house, even sitting in my chair,” Kyle said. “For the life of me, even now, I can’t think of why he didn’t confide in someone. He could have told the police, or you, or Laurence, or somebody. I don’t get it, I really don’t. When I saw him in that chair, I thought the game was up. Seriously, he should have at least passed a note, or left something in his will, right?”
“He was paranoid,” Quinn said. “Just like you said.”
“Yeah, he had that whole thing with the police,” Kyle said as if reminiscing good-naturedly about an old colleague. “I thought that was pretty funny, actually. I have to say-Buzz was not on my target list at all. I never liked him, but he was respectful of me. Not of Kyle Thompson, I mean, but Lord Halloween. He was always talking me up. Talking about how I would come back, about how the police would never catch me. I thought he was a pretty good PR man myself. It is a real shame he had to die.”
“What happened?”
“Well, Buzz pulls out this gun and starts like he is the psychopath. I thought I could bluff my way out at first, but he didn’t go for it. No, he knew he had the right guy.”
“How?”
Quinn waited for Kyle to make a sudden move, maybe pull a knife, but he seemed enraptured by his own story.
“Who knows?” Kyle said. “I went to his house and there was a file on me that was unbelievable. He had detected movement patterns, sketches, a whole bunch of stuff. It was a pretty accurate record. I mean, I didn’t stop killing in those 12 years, did I? And Buzz somehow could see my work all over the place. Out in West Virginia. On the Appalachian Trail. Most of the time he got it right. But I still don’t know how he landed on me.
“So he sits there with a gun in his hand. Now I don’t like guns myself. I think they are overly violent and not as… artistic as a serious person would like. A knife-that is a weapon I can really embrace. But good ‘ol Buzz waited too long. I think he wanted to ask questions or something. He told me not to move, but I knew what was coming if I stayed still. So I jumped. He fired and missed me. I, on the other hand, did not miss. I never miss.
“He had guts, I’ll give him that. Not like you-running through the forest like a man being chased by a bee.
“So I looked at Buzz and realized it was time for Kyle Thompson to sail out of the picture. It was very liberating, Quinn. I just sliced and diced, and suddenly I didn’t have to worry about how Kyle looked anymore. Kyle was dead. And all I had to do was call Laurence once and talk with a really low voice. He really thought I was Buzz. That man is an idiot.”
“The police identified your body. They even had DNA testing. We couldn’t figure out how you pulled that off,” Quinn said.
“Come on, Quinn, catch up,” Kyle replied. “I mutilated Buzz’s corpse and killed a police courier that was taking the DNA sample for testing. I replaced the kit with some of my DNA. No one even thought about why I would kill a police courier. That is the benefit of being random all these years. When you do it on purpose, nobody knows.”
Kyle cocked his head to the side and grinned.
“Am I scaring you?”
“How many people have you killed?”
“I’ve lost count,” Kyle said. “I really have. But now it’s my turn to ask questions. You figured me out. How?”
“You just said it yourself. Not all your killings were random over the years.”
“Good. Very good.”
“This whole ‘Lord Halloween’ thing was a shtick, wasn’t it? I mean, you enjoyed killing people, but you could have done that without drawing attention to yourself.”
“I had become quite good at it,” Kyle replied.
“But you invented Lord Halloween. Why?”
“I think you must know,” he replied.
“It was so simple we didn’t see it,” Quinn said. “Tim Anderson said you were always hanging around, that you were obsessed with the paper. You wanted to be a reporter.”
“Not just any reporter, Quinn,” he said. “I wanted to cover crime. I enjoyed it. I reveled in it. Crime was the beat for me.”
“But they already had a crime reporter.”
“And he was good,” Kyle said. “No, he was fantastic. There was no way they would give me that beat as long as he was there.”
“So why not just kill him? Why invent a whole persona?”
“For one, it was a fun challenge,” he said. “I’d been killing for years, but changing patterns, changing methods, ensuring not to draw attention to myself. This was different. This was a direct challenge to God and man to find me. Secondly, I wasn’t even a reporter yet, Quinn. If I had killed Tim, someone else at the paper would have taken his place. Then I would have had to kill them. At what point would someone figure out what I was up to? No, I had to create a disincentive to being the crime reporter. It had to be a job no one wanted 12 years ago. And it worked like a charm. Anderson ran off and… there I was.”
“The girl in the basement? She wasn’t random either, was she?”
“No,” Kyle said. “She wasn’t. I went on three dates with her, did you know that? I thought the whole fireman-thing would really work, you know? But she just wanted to be ‘friends.’ And man, was I cool about it when she told me. But I knew she was into Tim. Everyone was into Tim. So I made sure she was on the list.”
“Why not kill Tim?”
Kyle paused at this.
“Cause he’s the only one that truly stood up to me, Quinn,” he said. “His last article was begging for me to kill him. So I didn’t. He wanted death. I thought surviving would be harder for him. And it was.”
“Why now? Why bring Lord Halloween back now?”
“Look around you, Quinn,” Kyle said. “The world is dying. Journalism is dying with it. How long before Ethan sells the paper? The Chronicle is struggling and you know it. It’s not the business it once was. Even the mighty Post is going to die soon. So I wanted a good story before it all went down. And Lord Halloween was the best story this county ever had.”
Kyle paused and Quinn could see him smiling, even in the darkness.
“Of course, that was before someone tried to hone in on my story,” he said. “Before someone tried to steal it from me.”
“I never did, Kyle.”
“Oh, who could blame you?” Kyle said. “Lord Halloween is a sick, sick fuck. I’ll admit I’m laying it on thick. The theatricality that comes with that persona is addictive once you get started. But it’s not me. Lord Halloween will have his final stand tonight, and I’ll move on. Maybe I’ll get a reporting job in Bluemont, what do you think? You could have joined me, if you hadn’t left that message on my cell phone-a dead man’s cell phone-asking to meet me here. You were a good reporter.”
“I am a good reporter,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, gotta say-I just don’t think of you in the present tense anymore,” Kyle replied.
He laughed. But far from a maniacal laugh, this one was quite casual.
“You know, I’m really enjoying this,” he said. “All the others I wanted to put on a show for. You know? To live up to their expectations. But I’m just chatting with you. It’s very freeing.”
“So glad I could help,” Quinn replied.
“It was more than just the paper, though,” Kyle said. “I did this because it’s what I do. To know that every October, you aren’t like the bogeyman, you are the bogeyman. You are the thing that keeps people up at night, the bump in the dark, the figure they see out of the corner of their eye. You own these people. Is that enough for you?”
Kyle took a step forward. Quinn backed up.
“Hang on, hang on,” Kyle said. “I wouldn’t want you to go running through those woods again. I thought you were acting all crazy. But I guess you aren’t exactly acting, are you?”