Tam must have thought Greg was a possible suspect in the disappearance of Amy, if not all the murders. She thought back to the phone call she received the night before. Greg definitely had anger issues. But anger didn’t make him a murderer. Of course, neither did hitting on a young woman at your church.
She was spinning in circles. Running on empty. She knew the crash was imminent. Bess trudged into her bedroom, kicked her clothes off into the corner, and slid under the covers naked; she didn’t have the energy for pajamas. Within minutes she’d fallen down into a deep and dreamless sleep.
11
THE KNOCKING ON the door wasn’t like in her dreams. It was insistent. It was a banging. It was painful. Bess sat up in bed and scooped the blankets up around her, trying to bring the world into focus. Slowly, without any urgency, she rose from bed and dug a pair of jeans and a tee shirt out of her closet.
By the time she reached the door the knocking was a constant ramming of fist against wood. She opened it without any hesitation. Greg Leeds stood on her front stoop. His blond hair was falling into his face and there was sweat on his brow.
“Can I help you?” she asked him.
“Why won’t you answer the phone?” His voice was a degree below hysteria.
“Pretty sure I blocked your number. Was there something you needed?”
He started to walk into the house and Bess came alive for a moment, her arm shooting out to block his path. Greg glared down at her and fear began to stir low in her gut and for a moment she was glad for it. She was thankful for emotion the way you were glad when the pins and needles started up in your arm after sleeping on it all night, because it hurt, but it wasn’t dead. The pain meant you were still alive.
“I need to come in.” He took another step forward, his body now against hers, and Bess realized they were not truly alone. It was him and her and a gun in between them. She stared down at it, stunned by how small it seemed, how foreign. “I need to come in,” he repeated.
Bess stood aside and let him push his way into her home. She didn’t want him there, but it wasn’t worth dying over. “What do you want?”
“You said you could hear Amy. You told me she was talking to you through the radio.”
Bess nodded. Her mouth was so dry. She thought about getting a glass of water, but she wasn’t sure if that was allowed. She didn’t know the rules of being a hostage. She assumed sudden movements were out of the question. The thought caught her off guard. Was that what she was? A hostage?
“I want to hear. I want to know what she’s saying.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Greg. I can’t just… she’s not broadcasting at a regular time. I can’t tune into NPR at ten and six and catch her latest show.”
“Try. That’s all. Please.” Something in Greg’s face changed. A new emotion twisted his features and made him seem pitiable instead of someone she should fear. Grief infected him and made him weak. “I need to hear her again.”
“Will you put the gun down?”
“No,” he whispered.
“Okay,” Bess said. “I’ll try.” She walked to the garage door, forcing her back to stay straight and her steps to be even. No sudden movements. No weakness.
She turned to her radio, flicked it on, rolled the dial to static and stepped back. “This is where she usually finds me. In the static.”
Greg looked at her like he was trying to decide if she was lying or teasing him. Finally, he must have decided she wasn’t or that it didn’t matter. He turned his attention to the radio and waited.
“I don’t know that she’s going to talk. She doesn’t always. I don’t make this happen.”
“Just shut up,” he yelled at her. His voice cracked with emotion, but Bess didn’t know if it was grief or lunacy. She stood in silence and watched Greg pace the concrete floor, his eyes trained on the radio. She thought she might be able to catch him off guard, tackle him and get the gun. But he was so tightly wound, his nerves on such high alert, that she feared she might get shot in the face if she moved too quickly. She stayed still and waited.
The transmission came through as a whisper at first, slowly building in intensity.
ActOne. Margaret of Antioch spurns the advances of Olybrius.
Act Two. Margaret of Antioch is tortured.
Act Three. Margaret of Antioch is swallowed by a dragon.
Act Four. Saint Margaret of Antioch is disgorged by the dragon.
Act Five. Saint Margaret of Antioch is beheaded.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked Bess.
“I don’t know. I’ve heard it before. It’s a recording or something. It just repeats.”
“That’s not Amy.”
“No, but I think it’s connected. Let it go for a few minutes.”
He frowned at Bess but didn’t challenge her.
After five verses of the Ballad of Saint Margaret the recording began to break up and fade out. Static rose again.
“I need you to know, I didn’t do this,” Greg said.
“Do what?”
“Kidnap Amy! I’m not a killer, Bess. I don’t know what she’s been saying about me, but I swear I’m not a killer.”
“What who’s been saying about you?”
“Amy. She’s always looking at things the wrong way. God damn Amy. She’s the type who would see someone killed in self-defense and call it murder.”
“What was self-defense? What happened to Amy?”
“What? No, don’t twist my words. Don’t you dare. This isn’t about me. I didn’t do anything.” He was pacing again, his eyes going back and forth between Bess and the radio, the radio and Bess.
“It’s about Vlad the Impaler, right?” Bess asked. “Sure it is. You know, I wonder what he calls himself. Don’t serial killers always want to name themselves? Zodiac. BTK. This guy never named himself.” She liked it better when he was talking.
“You’re a lousy detective, Bess. I mean it. You’re absolutely terrible at this.” Greg rubbed his free hand across his mouth, pinching his bottom lip, stretching it out like a fish. “You were in the historical society with that old woman the same as I was. You heard her say what was on the wall. The Dragon. He’s the Dragon, come back to take his revenge on Margaret of Antioch for making him look stupid, right? That’s what that recording said, too. Beheaded. The end.”
“Maybe he’s the guy Margaret spurned instead. The one who had her eaten by the Dragon in the first place.” Bess watched the gun in Greg’s hand get lower and lower as they talked. Its barrel pointed somewhere around her navel.
“No, Bess. It’s the Dragon. That man is long dead. But dragons are the kinds of things that can live forever.”
“Or, I mean, not at all. Since they’re imaginary.” The gun raised back up a few inches and Bess cursed her own mouth for never knowing when to stop.
“Did it occur to you that maybe I’m doing the same thing you are? Looking for Amy?”
“It didn’t,” Bess said, honestly.
The radio behind her began to squawk and beep.
“Of course it didn’t. Women are all alike. You don’t want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.”
“Who doesn’t?” Bess asked.
The radio went silent for a split second, then a steady hiss of static filled the room. But it wasn’t empty static. There was something in there, swirling around.
“What’s happening with that thing?” Greg motioned to the radio with the gun.