I watch the local headlines for several weeks, waiting for news of a girl’s body found in the woods, or any further developments with Carl Danvers.
He’s got no family locally, and a vast amount of police effort is driven by nagging. The cops are spread thin from the protests breaking out all over the city. Without any invested parties prodding for an answer, it appears the SFPD are happy to let the file on some minor art critic’s disappearance languish at the bottom of the pile.
Getting away with murder is pretty fucking easy.
Only 63 percent of homicides are solved under the best of circumstances—and that includes the cases where the idiot criminal is literally holding the smoking gun. There are precious few genius detectives, despite what network television would have you believe.
I’ve killed fourteen people and I’ve yet to receive a single knock on my door.
A pretty young girl is a different story—the media loves to sensationalize Alastor’s work. They call him the Beast of the Bay for the way he batters his victims and even bites chunks out of their flesh.
He draws too much attention to himself.
If the girl was found, her case would be linked to the seven he’s killed over the last three years. He leaves them out in the open, proclaiming what he’s done.
I don’t like loose ends.
I hope he cleaned up his mess.
He probably didn’t, that reckless piece of shit.
I’m not going back to check. I won’t go anywhere near the mine in the foreseeable future, or possibly ever again. That’s what angers me most—the loss of a convenient disposal location that took me a long time to find.
Shaw has successfully thrown a wrench in my process.
I ponder how best to deal with him.
I could just fucking kill him.
He’s been a thorn in my side for too long. He knows too much about me, and his careless behavior puts us both at risk.
However, Shaw is no oblivious art critic, easily lured and easily disposed of. He’s a predator, already on his guard because he’ll be expecting retaliation.
Besides that, killing within my personal circle adds an element of risk. Even Alastor isn’t stupid enough to hunt within the art world. He never slaughters women he’s dated publicly.
Our supposed rivalry is so well-publicized that Alastor’s disappearance would cast a spotlight in my direction, drawing unwanted parallels to Danvers.
I decide to break into Shaw’s apartment instead.
He invaded my space—I return the favor by visiting his penthouse on Balboa Street.
I disabled his security system, but as soon as I enter his living room, I spot the camera hidden in the face of his clock, doubtless sending a motion alert to his phone, as well as footage of me strolling around his space, insolently picking up his tchotchkes and flipping through his books.
I manhandle his belongings, setting them down in different places, knowing it will enrage him.
The penthouse is luxurious in precisely the way I’d expect from Alastor. The floor-to-ceiling windows offer a postcard view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the flat, dark water of the bay.
The walls are hung with massive prints of Alastor’s own art. The canvases pop in eye-searing shades of fuchsia, canary, and violet. Shaw can’t keep the originals because he has to sell them to pay for his toys. He’s the son of a teacher and a plumber, something he proudly touts in interviews when he’s pretending to be salt of the earth. In truth, he hates that he was ever middle class. He’s acutely sensitive to the cars he drives, the watches he wears, the restaurants he frequents, in case he betrays himself.
His designer furniture is cartoonishly exaggerated—I see several serpentine Wiggle chairs and a Magistretti lamp that looks like a chrome mushroom. His couch is a giant scarlet gummi bear.
A gleaming Harley parks against the far wall, an electric guitar set in a stand next to the bike.
I highly fucking doubt that Shaw plays the guitar.
Everything is a performance with him. Everything is for show.
This apartment screams “eccentric artist” because that’s how he’d love to be perceived.
I open a bottle of merlot and pour myself a glass.
A key scratches in the lock twenty minutes later.
Shaw’s heavy tread crosses the open space between the kitchen and the living room.
I’m sitting at the head of his dining table, sipping the wine.
“Hello, Cole,” he says.
He’s very angry, though he’s trying not to show it. There’s a tightness to his lips, a flush to his skin.
“Hello, Shaw. Have a drink.”
I pour him a glass of his own wine.
His hand twitches as he takes it.
The tension is thick between us. We’ve never been alone together. I’ve only spoken to him at formal events.
“This is cozy,” Alastor says.
“I was admiring your view. My house is just over there . . .”
I nod toward my own mansion, perched on the ridge directly above the bay, clearly visible from the living room window. In fact, it cuts off the lower-left corner of Alastor’s view.
“I know,” he says, molars grinding.
I take another sip of the wine, thick and plummy.
Shaw does the same, the glass dwarfed by his over-large hand. His bull-like shoulders hunch almost up to his ears. His biceps bulge as he raises his arm.
I’m sure he’s making the same calculation—his strength against my speed. His brutality against my cunning. I see no clear winner—a dilemma that intrigues us both.
Alastor relaxes, his smile widening, tiny threads of wine between his teeth.
“How did you enjoy my gift?” he says.
“I didn’t.”
Shaw frowns, disappointed.
“What a waste,” he says. “I thought you’d do something with those tits at least—so much better than I expected, once I got them out. You never know what you’ll find . . . flat as a board under a push-up bra, or a pussy that looks like a handful of roast beef.” He laughs crudely. “Sometimes though . . . sometimes it’s better than you hoped. Sometimes it’s near perfect . . .”
“Not my type,” I repeat dismissively.
His face darkens.
“The fuck she wasn’t. You did something with her before you tossed her down the shaft.”
I hesitate a fraction of a second, puzzled by Shaw’s words.
I didn’t put the girl down the mine shaft. I didn’t move her at all. But Shaw seems certain I did.
Mistaking my pause, Shaw chuckles. “I knew it. Tell me what you did to her.”
I rise from the table, setting down my glass.
Shaw is ravenous for details, his tongue darting out to moisten his lips. “Did she fight? She looked like the type to fight.”
“What was her name?” I ask him, “Do you know?”
Now he’s grinning, flushed with triumph. He really thinks he got me.
“Mara Eldritch,” he says.
Alastor rises in turn, walking around the kitchen island, rummaging in a drawer.
He pulls out a small plastic card, tossing it on the island so it slides across the polished marble, stopping right at the edge.
“I fucked her roommate in the stairwell. Stole her ID out of her wallet.”
I pick up the driver’s license of a voluptuous redhead with heavy-lidded eyes and a languorous smile. Erin Wahlstrom, 468 Frederick Street.
“I didn’t touch her,” Shaw says, his voice husky. “I left her fresh for you. As fresh as you can find one these days, when they’ll suck and fuck anything that walks. You don’t even have to buy them dinner anymore.”
His upper lip curls in disgust, both at the promiscuity of women and the loss of the challenge when hunting becomes too easy.
“Please don’t tell me you’re into virgins,” I scoff.
He really is so fucking cliché.
“Nah,” Shaw laughs. “I just don’t want to get crabs.”
I set the license back on the counter with a soft clicking sound.
I’m not interested in this confrontation with Shaw anymore. A much more pressing concern demands my attention.
I head toward the door, planning to leave without further comment.
But I can feel Alastor’s smug satisfaction radiating at my back. His happiness displeases me.
I pause by the doorway, turning once more.
“You know, Alastor,” I say. “The way you talk about these women . . . that’s exactly the way I feel about you. Your taste is horrendous. Just standing in this apartment makes me feel like I’ll catch herpes of the aesthetic.”
The smile drops off his face, leaving a vacant absence in its place.
It’s not quite enough.
Looking him dead in the eye, I make a promise:
“If we’re ever alone in a room again, only one of us will walk out breathing.”
The next morning I watch the front door of Erin Wahlstrom’s house. So much paint has peeled off the sagging row house that it’s difficult to tell if it was originally blue or gray. An obscene number of people seem to live inside, as evidenced by the lights that flick on as one by one the residents haul themselves out of bed. Half the windows are covered by sheets instead of proper blinds or, in one case, by a square of aluminum foil.
After a short interval, these residents begin exiting down the steep front steps, some wearing backpacks or shoulder bags, one trundling an oversized portfolio under his arm.
I see the voluptuous redhead, owner of the missing driver’s license. She shouts something back inside the house before hurrying down the steps, heading in the direction of the bus stop.
And then, when I think that must be all of them, the door opens once more.
Mara Eldritch steps onto the landing.
I’m seeing a ghost.
She was dying, almost dead. Bleeding out on the ground.
But there’s no mistaking the willowy frame, the long dark hair, the wide-set eyes. She’s wearing a heavy knit sweater that hangs down over her hands, covering any bandages that might remain on her arms. Beneath the sweater, a ragged pair of jeans and filthy, battered sneakers.
Did someone help her?
It seems impossible, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.
How did she do it, then?
It was three miles to the nearest road. She couldn’t take three steps.
I don’t like mysteries, and I definitely don’t like surprises. I watch her descend the stairs with a deep sense of unease.
I follow her down Frederick Street, keeping plenty of space between us.
The wind blows in her face, making her hair dance around her shoulders, sending dry leaves tumbling against her legs. When the same air reaches me, I can smell her perfume, the low, warm scent mixing with the dusty sweetness of the decaying leaves.
She’s covered head-to-toe in the baggy jeans and sweatshirt, giving no hint of how appealing she looked naked and bound. For a moment, I wish I took a picture on my phone. Already the details are losing their crispness in my mind. I’m struggling to recall the exact shape and color of her nipples and the curve of her hips.
How is she alive?
Alastor doesn’t know.
She must not have seen his face, or he’d be sitting in a cell right now. She did see my face, I know that for certain. Either she forgot it in her delirium, or she doesn’t know who I am. Which is it?
I was so certain she was dead.
I hate being wrong.
I hate it all the more for how rarely it happens.
My anger flares at the girl.
This is her fault. Her fault for defying the fate rushing toward her.
We’ve come to a cafe. She enters the building briefly, before re-emerging wearing an apron cinched around her waist, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. She immediately goes about the business of serving the guests at the outdoor tables.
I take a seat at a different cafe across the street, lingering over my coffee and toast so I can watch her.
She’s quick and efficient, and seems to know most of the patrons. In lulls between service, she pauses to talk with the ones she knows best. At one point she shakes her head and laughs, the sound drifting over the traffic between us.
It baffles me that she’s back at work. That she’s chatting and laughing.
She’s acting like nothing happened. Like the night in the woods was a fever dream. Like she knows I’m watching right now and she’s taunting me.
That can’t be true.
But I’m fixated on her, trying to find evidence of what the fuck happened.
