It had been easy to lure Enrique to the fountain. He was used to these assignations, and suspected nothing.
He always did what I told him to do.
When he was close, I stepped from the shadows, frightening him.
"Those two detectives," he fretted. "I'm afraid they might start asking questions I won't know how to answer."
"You worry too much."
"You didn't kill them, did you? Gary Turello and Jordan Kemp?"
"Of course not. How could you think such a thing?"
"I'm sorry."
"I'm not mad at you. I should be, but I'm not."
He smiled. Enrique of the pretty face. The pretty teeth. He always did what he was told, but Enrique was weak. If the police brought him in for questioning, he would talk. In the end, his loyalty would be to no one but himself.
"I'll never ask you to do anything you don't want to do ever again," I said.
I used to pretend that something had come over me. That a spell, a curse, had turned me into something else, a new species. But then I realized. This is what it's like to be human. What it's like to be alive.
The smells.
Glorious.
The hunger.
The cravings.
So much time had been wasted.
"Come and play," I whispered. "Wade with me in the fountain."
A smile hovered near the corner of his mouth, but he made no move.
The tabby brick wall was wide. I ran, landing on the top, silent and smooth as a cat, then I slipped quietly into the water.
He would follow.
I heard a splash behind me and smiled to myself.
The water wasn't deep. No more than three feet.
I dropped to my knees, then rolled to my back and floated. Something brushed my hand, and I realized it was a fish.
Stars. In a black velvet sky.
"I haven't told anybody," Enrique said. "And I won't. Ever. You know that, don't you? Your secret is safe with me."
"Shhh," I whispered. "Look at the stars. Just look at the stars."
"They're beautiful," he whispered.
I rolled to my stomach. "Keep looking." With my feet on the bottom of the pond, I pushed and floated to Enrique's side. "Don't stop looking."
He always did what he was told.
I could see his eyes, see the stars in his eyes. The eyes in his pretty, pretty face.
I pulled out the knife. "Are you looking at the stars?" I asked him.
"I'm looking."
I could hear the echo of the smile in his voice as I slit his throat.
Your secret is safe with me.
Hot blood ran across my fingers. Sticky. Smelling sweet and bitter and metallic, all at the same time.
I'd been planning this moment for days so I knew what to do. I worked diligently, and soon everything was exactly the way I'd seen it in my mind. I filled his clothes with rocks, so he would sink. So he wouldn't be found for at least a few days.
Finished, I climbed from the fountain, water pooling from my clothes. I was hot and tingly, my nerve endings singing. I could smell the worms living in the soil beneath my feet. I could taste salt in the air, from the marshes miles away. I could hear people fucking in the safety of their homes and beds.
I stroked myself through my soaked clothes and thought about the detective David Gould.
The salt in the air became the taste of his skin; the whispers, his soft encouragements and groans of sexual satisfaction.
I hurried through the darkness. In my bed, I stripped off my wet things and slipped under the covers, putting my arms around Mr. Turello, pulling him close, whispering sweet tales of death in his ear.
Chapter 30
James LaRue was on the run.
On the run.
He liked the phrase. It sounded important.
His frantic escape from Savannah had been harrowing, with cops everywhere, all of them eyeing his car with suspicion. One hour into his panicky flight to the Big Easy, he'd exited Highway 95 and taken the back roads the rest of the way.
Exciting.
Like a movie.
Or television.
James LaRue, badass.
To someone who had been teased and humiliated his entire life, it had a nice ring.
Not that he'd always been a straight edge. Hell, no. As early as eleven years old he was doing a bit of walking on the dark side.
Always a curious kid and never one to pass up an opportunity to get something for free, he'd been digging through the trash behind a funeral home one day and had come upon a mother lode of Polaroids.
Of dead people.
The family funeral business was folding and they'd cleaned out their files.
One person's trash was another's treasure.
He took off his hooded sweatshirt and filled it with photos, then tightly bundled the sleeves together. He pedaled home, dumped his treasure in his bedroom closet, then returned at night with garbage bags to fill with more loot.
The photos were a hit with his school buddies.
He could have unloaded them for five bucks a pop. Instead, he kept them all, every one of them. They filled four shoe boxes that he hid in the back of the closet. His favorite was a full-frontal nude of a teenage girl whose face had been smashed in, but whose body had remained flawless.
He sometimes let his buddies take a look at his private collection, which was something he learned to never do again.
Never let anybody else in on your secret or it won't be a secret anymore.
The photos gave one of the kids, Shawn Hill, nightmares and he ended up telling his dad about the stash in the closet. Big trouble. A life-altering moment.
All because of some snapshots that had been thrown away. Trash was trash. Public property, if any of the public wanted it. He hadn't done anything wrong.
His father was shocked. Disgusted. Confused.
Embarrassed.
His old man had been reading the latest parenting book, written by the latest self-proclaimed expert on child rearing. In the chapter "Punishing the Wayward Child," the author suggested that the punishment should always be related to the crime. Say, if you had a dog that killed a cat, then you would beat the dog with the dead cat.
As punishment for his Polaroid crime, James was locked in his bedroom closet for two weeks with the Polamids.
Cunning.
Sick.
James' father wasn't an evil man, just misguided. How was he to know that the person who'd written a book on child rearing would end up in prison for child pornography?
In adult time, two weeks wasn't much. For a kid, it was a lifetime.
Things became confused in that closet. Even though it was dark, James could see the photos in his mind. He could see the dead people.
They became his friends. His comfort.
Things were never quite the same after he got out.
He was never quite the same.
Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
A psychiatrist would probably say that his time in the closet had twisted him, maybe even damaged him. Not true. It had cleared his head. Made him strong.
And just maybe a tad obsessed with death.
But one thing hadn't changed. He wanted to please his dad. Needed to please him.
James would have enjoyed his present notoriety more if it hadn't been for his dad. James kept imagining him sitting in the living room in front of the TV. James' face would suddenly fill the screen. His dad's heart would leap, because he'd long expected James to gain international attention as a famous scientist, someone who'd used his knowledge to better the world. Not as a fugitive from the law.