Bad Girl

Bad Girl - Blake Crouch


Indianapolis, 1995

Lucy sat down at one of the few empty tables on the perimeter of the hotel bar and hoped none of the waitresses would notice her. She was fifteen years old, and even wearing the makeup she’d taken from her mother’s vanity, she knew her chances of getting served a drink were remote. Worse, she was taking up real estate that legal customers willing to pay ten dollars for a mediocre glass of wine could have inhabited. And there were plenty of them about, the bar nearly full and the hotel lobby bustling with well-dressed adults older than her mom.
The convention didn’t technically begin until tomorrow morning, so none of them wore name badges. But she felt sure her eyes were passing over famous mystery writers, perhaps even people she’d read. The man she’d come to see, Andrew Z. Thomas, the convention’s guest of honor, for whom she’d stolen her mother’s car and driven six hundred miles on a learner’s permit, had yet to make his appearance. Just the thought of him being in the same building made her knees feel weak.
“Hi there.”
Lucy turned and met eyes with a waitress now standing at her table, a pretty girl, probably in college, her dirty blond hair drawn back into a ponytail.
Lucy said, “Could I just get a water, please?”
“I’m afraid you can’t sit here, sweetie.”
“Why not?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
The waitress laughed. “I’m twenty-three, sister. You ain’t twenty-two.”
“Please don’t make me leave. I don’t—”
“I’ll get in trouble if the manager sees you sitting in my section. I’m sorry.”
Lucy stared at the waitress, then lifted her handbag off the table and climbed down from the chair. They’d already refused her a room because of her age. Now this. What a mean hotel.
She was two inches shy of five feet, and she felt even smaller threading her way through the groups of conversing adults in the lobby.
“—got a two-book deal for mid-six figures, which just strikes me as a crime considering his last didn’t even hit—”
“—switched agents—”
“—not sure if my editor’s coming or not. She was supposed to have finished my manuscript by now—”
“—and every time I turn around, Darling’s right there, like he’s stalking me or—”
The smell of cologne, perfume, wine breath, and cigarette smoke overpowering.
She broke out of the crowd and found a cluster of unoccupied chairs and plopped down in one. From this distance, the din of conversations mixed together like the static of a waterfall. She leaned back in the leather chair and stared up the full height of the twenty-one story atrium, the uncomfortable pang in her gut not all that dissimilar to what she experienced every day in the high school cafeteria. Invisibility. The people around her untouchable, unreachable, as characters in a movie while she watched them onscreen from the darkness of an empty theater. This sense, that had been with her for as long as she could remember, even before her father had died, that she wasn’t a participant in any of this. In anything really. Only an observer.
When Lucy straightened in her chair, she saw that a man now sat across from her. He looked old to her, though he wasn’t even thirty. Sports jacket. Khacki slacks. Sending out big wafts of cologne which she thought smelled pretty. He seemed either angry or nervous, and he kept looking at his watch like he was waiting for someone, but if he was, they never came.
She watched him, and the third time their eyes met, the man gave a thin smile and nodded.
He didn’t have a name badge either, but Lucy took a stab anyway. “Are you a writer?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Are you a writer?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” The man looked at his watch again. “Are you here for the convention?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“What books have you written?”
“Well, my first one just came out two months ago.”
“What’s it called?”
“A Death in the Family.”
“I’ve never heard of it. What’s it about?”
“Um, it’s…well, it’s like, it’s about this big family in Portland who has this reunion and one of the older brothers is killed. Or rather he’s found dead, and the police come and make everyone stay while they investigate. What you’d call a locked-room mystery, I guess.”
“Is it good?”
“I like to think so.”
“Will they have it in the book room?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Do you have a copy with you?”
“Not on me. Look, it was very nice meeting you, but I have a, um…something to get to.”
“I’m Lucy.”
“Mark.”
Lucy watched Mark wander back toward the hotel bar where he stood on the perimeter of the crowd. He looked around and kept glancing at his watch. After awhile, he turned away and started back through the lobby to the elevators.
Lucy stood up and grabbed her handbag and followed.
The middle elevator in a row of three lifted out of the lobby, and through its glass, she could see Mark leaning against the railing inside, looking out across the hotel.
She watched it climb. Counted the stories until it stopped and then followed Mark’s progress onto the fourteenth floor, counting doors to the room he disappeared inside.

Lucy rode alone, watching the lobby fall away beneath her as the elevator car soared up the back wall of the atrium.
She walked the exposed hallway, the noise from the lobby faint up here and no one else about. From the door beside 1428, she grabbed a “Do Not Disturb” sign and hooked it on the door to Mark’s room.
Then she put her ear to the door, couldn’t hear anything. Knocked.
In a minute, it swung open, and Mark, now wearing only a white oxford shirt and khaki pants, stood staring down at her, looking both confused and vaguely annoyed.
He said, “Yes?”
“It’s Lucy.”
“I’m sorry, what do you want?”
“I just wanted to see your book. The one you told me about.”
“You followed me to my room to see my book?”
“Yeah. It sounded good.”
“Look, maybe I’ll see you downstairs tomorrow, and if you buy one of my books, I’ll even sign it for you. How would that be?”
Lucy furrowed her brow and made what she hoped resembled a wounded expression. “Why don’t you like me, Mark?”
“I don’t…dislike you, I don’t even…”
She put her face into her hands and pretended to cry.
“Jesus.”
“You’re the first real author I’ve ever met. I don’t know anyone here.”
“Where are your parents?”
“My mom’s in our room watching ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.’”
He sighed. “If I invite you in—and only for a minute—will you stop crying?”
“Yes.”
“All right, come on in, Lucy.”
Lucy wiped her face and followed Mark into the hotel room. His suitcase lay on the bed, open but not yet unpacked, and Mark was bending over a cardboard box and trying to tear open the top.
“I brought twenty copies of A Death in the Family.” He pulled a trade paperback out of the box and handed it to her. Lucy thumbed through the pages, skimmed the flap copy on the back.
The cover was of a gravestone, the book’s title engraved into the stone above the author’s name: Mark Darling.
“Is anybody else sharing the room with you?” Lucy asked.
He tilted his head slightly, like he couldn’t comprehend the question. “No, just me.”
“I need to use the bathroom.”
“Right through that door.”
“Would you sign this for me while I pee?”
“Um, sure.”
She gave back the book and walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Write something good!” she called out from inside.
She did have to pee actually, and when she’d finished, she flushed the toilet and washed her hands and took all of her clothes off. She folded them and stacked them on top of her black Chuck Taylors on the toilet basin under a towel, then turned her attention to her handbag.
The marble of the sink was cold against the soles of her bare feet. She walked down to the end and crouched down beside the door.
She’d been in the bathroom more than five minutes already, and she crouched there another five, her legs beginning to cramp, before Mark’s voice passed finally through the door.
“Lucy?” he said.
She brought her hand to her mouth to suppress the giggle. She’d imagined this a hundred times, and something about the moment finally being here struck her as funny and surreal. It was the strangest thing. Her body felt all tingly, like whenever she had been around Bobby Cockrell, the first boy in high school she’d had a major crush on.
“You’ve been in there awhile,” Mark said. “Everything okay?”
She didn’t answer.
“Lucy, I need to get back down to the lobby.”
Silence, Lucy smiling.
“I’m opening the door, all right? Are you um…are you decent?”
She watched the doorknob turn and the door ease open.
Mark’s head appeared.
“Lucy?”
She was right beside him, well within reach, but he didn’t see her. Kept looking at the toilet, and then the shower, as if trying to piece together how this girl had vanished through the walls.
Lucy reached out and pulled the blade of her dead father’s Zwilling J.A. Henckels straight razor through his windpipe in a quick, delicate swipe and the blood from his carotid artery sprayed her face and she squealed with delight as Mark clutched his throat and stared wild-eyed at her.
He staggered over to the sink and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and all of that blood pouring out of his throat down the front of his white Oxford with a kind of disbelief, Lucy giggling as Mark tried to physically squeeze the opening in his neck back together but the blood kept coming and he gave up and started toward Lucy with a madness in his eyes but the floor was slicked with his blood and his feet shot out from under him.
He slammed flat on his back and his head cracked against the tile.
Lucy slid off the sink and stepped carefully across the floor, dodging the bigger pools of blood and watching a puddle widen around Mark’s head, his eyes already beginning to glaze and his hands at his side.
She stood there watching him bleed out and when he finally stopped twitching and blinking, she set the straight razor on the sink. Lucy weighed eighty-three pounds at her last physical, and she figured Mark had at least a hundred on her, but the shower wasn’t far. She only had to drag him over a two-inch lip and the blood on the floor provided decent lubrication for the job.
When she’d crammed him into the shower, she closed the glass door and looked at the bathroom.
Blood everywhere. Spots and spatters and streaks on the mirror, the walls, even the ceiling.
What a mess.
What a beautiful mess.
She got down on her knees and flattened herself across the tile and rolled through the pools of blood which were sticky and cool and gave off a dank metallic smell like a thunderstorm coming.
Lucy stood for a long time watching herself in the mirror, kept thinking it looked like she had the most lovely body art imaginable, how she wanted to walk naked through the lobby just like this and soak in the stares. What would Andrew Thomas think to see her like this? She suspected he might love her.
The blood was growing cold and beginning to congeal on her skin when she slid open the shower door and stepped inside. Bending down, she pushed Mark up against the wall and curled up to him, her spine against his chest. She draped his arm around her and closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Woke in the middle of the night, cold and shivering. Turned the shower on full blast and let the hot water pound the blood out of her hair and her face. She collected her clothes from under the towel atop the basin—not a drop of blood on them—and grabbed the robe off the back of the door and slipped out of the bathroom.
Mark’s wallet sat on top of the television, and she went through it and pocketed two key cards and two hundred in cash. She dressed and left the room. Rode down to the lobby which was mostly empty now save for a handful of die-hards who’d persevered beyond last call to sing drunken show tunes on a leather couch.
Outside, the autumn air was cool and scented with the spice of a city she did not know.
Wind blew between the skyscrapers.
The sidewalks were empty.
The streets were empty.
It felt strange to be out here alone, no sound but her footsteps on the pavement. Impossible that her father’s funeral had happened today. She wondered if there were people still at her house comforting her mother and brother, or if they had all gone home.
The glow of a payphone caught her attention on the other side of the street.
She ran across to it and dug some change out of her wallet, dialed the number.
Her mother answered on the fifth ring in a tired voice gone hoarse from crying.
“Hello?”
Lucy said nothing, just listening, her eyes filling up.
“Hello? Lucy, is that you?”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Oh my God, where are you? Are you okay?”
“I just wanted to tell you something.” She was beginning to tremble.
“What, honey? What?”
Lucy shouted into the phone, “He loved me, you stupid bitch! He loved me! I wish you had died! He’s the only thing I ever f*cking loved!”
She slammed the phone down on the hook and screamed inside the booth until her throat burned.

She’d left her mother’s car in the only parking space she could find—a three-hour meter four blocks from the hotel that had long since expired. There were five orange envelopes under the windshield wipers, and the right front tire had been booted.
She unlocked the car and dragged the guitar case out of the backseat, started back to the hotel.

The keycard worked on the second try, and she slipped into her room and locked the door after her. Stowed Mark’s suitcase, his shoes, his wallet, and his sports jacket in the closet.
She’d left home in a hurry, jamming her favorite books, clothes, and a few toiletries into the first thing to cross her path—her brother’s guitar case. Now she flipped open the clasps, opened it on the bed, and dumped everything out. Set to work choosing outfits for the convention and smoothing out the wrinkles.
Before bed, she went back into the bathroom, sat on the toilet seat just watching Mark lying motionless in the shower. She got down on her knees and stroked his hair, caressed her finger through the gash in his throat.
By four a.m., she was in bed in her nightgown, and already dreaming of what tomorrow might bring.

The hotel was crawling with people in the morning and Lucy had to wait five minutes to catch an elevator down to the lobby. She picked up her name badge and book bag from registration, bought a latte, and headed off to the first panel of the morning.
“Walking on the Dark Side: What Makes a Bad Guy Bad?” featured five mystery writers, only one of whom she’d heard of. But they were all entertaining. After the panel and with Mark’s money, she bought each of their books from a cranky Milwaukee bookseller named Katz.
Walking through the book room, where vendors had many of the participating writers’ books for sale, she couldn’t get over the thrill of being around so many people who loved to read. She never saw anyone reading in school. At least not for fun. And the few times she’d sat in the common area by herself with a book, she’d been bullied and mocked. The downside was that most of the people here were as old as her grandfather and many of them looked just as mean.
She took a table in a café downstairs and studied the schedule of events once more, looking for two panels to attend in the afternoon, though nothing caught her interest. Things didn’t really get interesting until the star of the whole show arrived: the thriller/horror writer, Andrew Z. Thomas, was going to be interviewed in the main ballroom tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., with a signing to follow. She’d brought every one of his books with her to be autographed.

She sat in the lobby all afternoon, her attention divided between Mark’s book, which she was really enjoying, and wanting to be with Mark in the shower again, and watching for Andrew Thomas, figuring if he was here, he’d have to walk past her at some point.

After the last panel of the day let out, the hotel emptied for an hour, and then slowly refilled again, everyone dressed to the nines now, lots of sports jackets and evening dresses, the book bags exchanged for stylish handbags.
She’d been sitting in the same chair for almost four hours, and her legs felt wobbly and faint when she finally stood.
The hotel bar was packed. All the writers seemed to be there.
She strolled over and wandered through the bar which was becoming more crowded by the minute, searching the faces for Andrew Thomas, but he wasn’t there.

Back upstairs, she ordered room service. Stayed in watching television and eating a lavish meal on Darling’s tab. A few minutes past midnight, she climbed out of bed and dressed and wandered down to the lobby.
The bar was even more crowded than before, and she scanned the faces in the smoky lowlight, eyes passing over countless groups that constantly shifted and changed, the occasional loner who spoke to no one, the softer, restrained groups huddled on the perimeter.
At the furthest corner of the bar, she finally spotted the man she’d come to meet, and her stomach fluttered.
He sat on a stool, surrounded by a dozen attentive, smiling faces, all listening as he told some story whose words she couldn’t begin to pick out from the impressive noise of all those conversations.
She stumbled forward into the outskirts of the crowd, then elbowed and squeezed her way through the heart of it, until she stood just outside the group of people orbiting Andrew Thomas.
His face was fuller than the author photograph on his latest book jacket, and he had a few days’ stubble shadowing his face, but he was undeniably…Andrew.
She’d never heard his voice, and it didn’t sound anything like she imagined. He was more soft-spoken, and he had an accent. A southern accent. He was talking to a man seated to the right of him, but there were countless people eavesdropping.
“…so they show me the mock-up for the book cover, and I say, ‘Guys, I know you’ve been really working on this thing, and I appreciate that, but you’ve just put a penis on the cover of my book.”
The hovering crowd broke into laughter.
“They said, ‘It’s not a penis, Andy, it’s a minaret.’ I said, ‘It’s flesh colored, it has a shaft, and a bulbous head that appears to be ejaculating the title of my book! Could I please have a new f*cking cover without a cock on it?”
While everyone laughed, Andrew tossed back a shot of something.
The man standing behind him said, “Another shot, Andrew?”
“I buy you shots, Billy. Everyone in for a shot of tequila? Bartender! We need…” Andy counted the people around him. “…thirteen shots of Patron Silver.”
Lucy stood watching him, mesmerized, trying to wrap her brain around the idea that the man whose words and stories she’d fallen in love with at twelve was sitting ten feet away from her, under the same roof, breathing the same air. She’d suspected it before, but last night with Mark Darling confirmed it: Andrew could read her thoughts. She knew he must have killed before because the way he described what it felt like for the killers in his books had been her experience exactly. She wanted to be closer to him, but his crowd had effectively cloistered him off from the rest of the bar.
Something was coming apart inside of her, this dark, mad need to connect with him, and for a moment the sound of the crowd dropped away. She stared at him, willing his eyes to meet hers, willing them to give her just a single slash of attention as the bartender lined up thirteen shotglasses and began to fill them from two bottles of Patron.
Andrew never looked at her. She watched the bartender bring the tray of shots, watched Andrew pass them around, heard the shotglasses clinking, heard the “cheers.”
And she was crying, invisible again.
She pushed her way back through the crowd into the lobby, moving quickly toward the elevators at the other end and telling herself there was still tomorrow. Andrew’s book signing. Anything could happen.

When she walked into her hotel room, she stopped, lingering for a moment in the doorway, wondering if by some chance her room service food could have spoiled so quickly. No. It wasn’t that. Of course.
She opened the bathroom and the waft hit her. Mark did not smell so pretty anymore.
She grabbed a towel off the rack and closed the door and tucked it against the crack between the door and the carpet. Lucy walked to the bed, kicked off her Chuck T’s, and crawled under the covers. She hit the light. Closed her eyes. Opened them. The stink was still there. Potent and getting stronger every second. She turned on the light and sat up against the headboard. This was bad. First of all, because she couldn’t sleep with the smell, and it would only get worse. But more importantly, when she brought Andrew Thomas up here tomorrow, the smell would totally gross him out, make a bad impression.
She hopped out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Opened one of the mini-bottles of shampoo and squirted the entire thing over Mark, who now looked purple and swollen. She cranked up the shower. As the hot water beat down on the corpse, she saw that it was leaking, and the heat only made the smell more intense.
She turned off the shower, grabbed the trashbag out of the waste basket beside the sink, and headed for the door.
Her bare feet tracked down the carpet toward the alcove where the vending machines hummed. Down in the lobby, a hundred and fifty feet below, she could hear Irish drinking songs lilting up out of the bar.
She held the plastic bag open while cubes of ice rattled down out of the ice machine. Carried it back to 1428 and into the bathroom, where she plugged the shower drain and dumped the ice over Mark Darling. Her heart sank. The bag of ice had barely covered him. She was going to need a lot more.
After five trips, the ice was beginning to look substantial piled on top of the dead writer’s chest.
After ten, she stepped into the shower and spread them around, felt a glimmer of relief as they nearly covered him. One more trip, maybe two, and she’d be done.
Lucy reached down and grabbed the bag off the floor.
As she started toward the bathroom door, it swung open.
She froze.
A man stood in the threshold, and for a fleeting second, she thought it was Andrew Thomas, but he was wearing different clothes—a white tee-shirt and blue jeans. And his hair was messy, eyes still squinting like he’d just woken up.
He was staring at the blood spatters on the bathroom floor, and at the trash bag in Lucy’s hand, and now at Lucy.
It seemed like an entire minute passed without either of them speaking, Lucy thinking about the straight razor in the bedside table drawer. Useless now. Her eyes moved around the bathroom, looking for something with heft, or with an edge.
It surprised her when the man smiled. He said, “Who you got in there?”
She didn’t answer. She made fists to stop her hands from shaking but all it did was give her shaking fists.
“Quite a mess,” he said. “You’ve been a naughty little girl, haven’t you?”
He took a step forward, glanced in the shower.
Lucy’s eyes welled up. A sob escaped.
“No,” the man said. “No, no, no. Don’t cry.”
He knelt down in front of Lucy.
The eyes. She was going to have to blind him. Jam her thumbs in as far as they would go and run like hell.
“You don’t have to be afraid. What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
Her hands had been at her sides. Now, she slowly raised them.
“Lucy, did that man in the shower hurt you?”
She nodded.
“What did he do?”
“He tried to rape me.”
She shot her thumbs at his eyes, but he parried right and jumped back, laughing. Lucy ran for the open door. The man grabbed her and pulled her into his chest.
“Shhh,” he whispered as she struggled. “Don’t scream, Lucy.”
She kicked her legs and tried to head-butt him as he carried her out of the bathroom into the hotel room and threw her onto the bed.
“Relax!” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to get you in trouble.”
Lucy glared at him.
“You should be more careful, you know. Ten trips with an ice bucket in the middle of the night is bound to get somebody’s attention. Particularly if their room is next to the ice machine.”
“Mark was starting to smell.”
“Yeah, I noticed. But a few cubes of ice isn’t going to fix it. You here by yourself?”
She nodded.
“He didn’t try to rape you, did he?”
She just watched him, said nothing.
“That’s a nice piece of work in there,” he said. “That man must be double your weight, at least. How’d you pull it off?”
“I want you to leave.”
“Why?”
“Go!”
“Lucy, please. I know you don’t know me, but you can trust me.”
She stuck her chin out and fought back the tremor in her bottom lip.
“How’d you overpower that man?” he asked again.
“Straight razor.” She said it proudly.
“He flailed around a bunch, didn’t he?”
Lucy couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah. It was funny. But loud and messy, too.”
The man eased down onto the edge of the bed. “Why’d you kill him?”
“They wouldn’t give me a room. I drove six hundred miles to come to this conference, and then they wouldn’t even give me a room.”
“’Cause of your age.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever done anything like this before, Lucy?”
She shook her head. “But I thought about it a lot.”
“Wait. This was your first time?” She nodded. The man got a big grin on his face. “Well, how was it for you?”
“Amazing.”
“Yeah?”
“The blood was beautiful. So warm. I took my clothes off and rolled around in it.”
The man’s eyes sparkled. “I remember mine like it was yesterday. I’d give anything to go back and do it again for the first time.” He reached his hand out. “I’m Orson.”
She shook it.
He looked around the room. “So our friend in the shower. Who is he?”
“A writer.”
“Oh, shit. What’s his name?”
“Mark Darling.”
“Never heard of him.”
She pointed to the box of books. “Those are his books over there.”
Orson went over to the box and lifted a book, flipped through it, glanced at the back. “This is his first novel. That’s good.”
“Why?”
“No one here probably knows who he is, so he won’t be missed. Come on, where’s your stuff?”
“Over there. Why?”
“Pack it up. You’re coming with me.”
“No.”
“You can’t stay in here, Lucy.”
“I’m not leaving with you.”
“Listen. Did you have fun cutting Mark’s throat, rolling around in his blood?”
“Yeah.”
“You want to have the opportunity to do it again?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you better listen to me. If you get caught in this hotel room with that dead man, they’re going to lock you up.”
“But I’m not even eighteen.”
Orson walked over to the side of the bed and sat down next to Lucy. “Look at me.” She stared up at him. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. If you were smart, you’d do what I say, maybe even learn a little something.”
“How many people have you killed?”
“Enough to know we need to get out of this room right now.”

She followed Orson down the hallway to the first room past the ice machine.
“It’s a two-room suite,” he said as he opened the door and let her in. “My friend’s next door sleeping, so let’s not disturb him. I think this sofa folds out into a bed.”
She dropped her guitar case on the floor and helped Orson unfold the sofa sleeper. Orson swiped a blanket from his bed and tossed it to Lucy.
“Now I have to be honest,” he said. “I’m a little worried you might want to cut my throat while I’m sleeping.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Why don’t you give me your straight razor just to be on the safe side.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know you, Lucy.”

She lay awake for a long time thinking how tomorrow was the last day of the conference, and in some ways, the first day of the rest of her life. She wasn’t going home. She knew that. After Darling, how could she go back to geometry and biology and being a teenage girl in a suburban home? She could feel this stunning blackness flooding into her. It was filling her up so fast she could barely sleep, barely keep her eyes closed. She needed to see more blood. And soon.

She never slept. When the light began to push through the curtains, she sat up on the sofa and looked over at Orson on the bed, watching the man’s chest rise and fall, thinking how he’d been smart to take the razor from her. Nothing would’ve made her happier than to slide the blade across his neck, maybe even taste his blood, let it run down her throat. She should’ve tasted Darling’s. She imagined it would be so rich and even better than the wine her mother sometimes let her sip. Oh, well. Next time.

She rode down in the elevator with Orson and his friend, Luther, a tall, pale-faced man with long, black hair who was seriously creeping her out. He kept watching her with his big black eyes that held such an intensity she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to see them alone.
They ate breakfast downstairs, the three of them sitting at a table in a corner, and the fourth time she caught him staring at her, Lucy couldn’t help herself.
“Take a picture, dude. It’ll last longer.”
Orson looked up from his bacon and eggs. “What’s wrong?”
“Why does your friend keep staring at me like that? It’s weird.”
Orson grinned and glanced at Luther, then back at Lucy. He leaned toward her and whispered. “He wants to kill you, Lucy.”
She felt a coldness spill inside her gut.
“Why?”
“It’s what he does. He can’t help himself. He’s sitting there imagining draining you in our bathtub. But don’t worry. I’ve told him you’re off-limits. Told him you might even be one of us.”
She glared at Luther. “You don’t scare me.”
He said. “You look like you’re scared, little girl.”
“Oh, you can read my thoughts? Well, if you could, you’d know I’m thinking how pretty your dark blood would look running out of your snow-white neck.”
Orson laughed out loud. “Isn’t she great?”
Lucy hadn’t averted her eyes from Luther, soaking in the psychotic malevolence.
“All right, listen,” Orson said. “I think we’re all a little hard-up for some fun. I had an idea while I was falling asleep last night. Darling’s room is already a wreck. Why don’t we all, together, find someone to take there this afternoon?”
Lucy’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah, we’ll go right after Andrew Thomas’s speech.” Orson smiled. “I wouldn’t want to miss that.” He looked at Luther. “What do you think? You brought your toolbox, right?”
Luther smiled, and it was the scariest thing Lucy had ever seen.

For some reason, Orson didn’t want to sit on the front row for Andrew Thomas’s speech, so Lucy sat by herself, her heart pumping as the man walked up onto the stage.
She stood with the rest of the crowd and applauded the guest of honor, then sat with rapt attention as Andrew read an excerpt from a work in progress, one of the most gruesome and awesome things Lucy had ever heard.
The book was called The Passenger, a horror novel about an unnamed, psychopathic hitchhiker who travels around the country getting free rides from people, then robbing and killing them most horribly. In the section Andrew read, the Passenger ties a man to the back of his own car and drags him down the highway for five miles.

The signing line stretched all the way around the bookroom. The eight books in Lucy’s arms were heavy, and by the time she got close to the table, her muscles were beginning to cramp.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of Andrew as he signed books and made small talk with the fans. When it was finally her turn, she set her stack of books on the table and smiled and reached out her hand.
“Mr. Thomas, I am your biggest fan. I’ve read everything you ever wrote. I’m Lucy. I love what you read today. Will you sign my books?”
He shook her hand and smiled. “Of course.”
“Um, I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas can only sign three books.” Lucy looked at the woman standing behind the writer, a large woman in a horrific dress who looked like a librarian.
“But I want all of them signed.”
The woman pursed her lips. “If everyone brought eight books, we’d be here until Christmas.”
“But everyone didn’t bring eight books. Most only brought one.”
“Pick three. You’re holding up the line.”
Lucy glanced down at Andrew, flashed her puppy dog eyes.
“Margie, I think it’s okay to make one exception,” he said, grabbing the top book on Lucy’s pile and opening it to the cover page. As he looked down to sign, Lucy stuck her tongue out at Margie.
“So are you in high school, Lucy?” he asked as he went through the books.
“I’m in 10th grade.”
“Excellent. I think you might be the youngest person here.”
“When is The Passenger coming out?” she asked. 
“Probably next year.”
“I can’t wait to read it.” As he signed the last book, she said, “Look, would you maybe like to get a cup of coffee after this? I’d just love to talk with you a little more.”
He smiled and pushed her stack of books toward her. “I’d love to Lucy, but I’m actually flying back to North Carolina in about two hours.”
“Oh.”
“It was great to meet you.”
Lucy lifted her stack of books and headed out of the book room. She might have cried if she didn’t have something else to look forward to.

“What about her?” Lucy said.
“No, I know who that is,” Orson said. “She’s a pretty well-known cozy writer. She’d never go for it.”
Lucy was sitting between Orson and Luther on a sofa at the edge of the hotel bar, the conference booklet open across her lap. Every writer in attendance was pictured in the booklet, along with a brief bio. It made the hunting so much easier.
“I see a possibility,” Luther said.
“Where?”
“Guy standing alone at the corner of the bar, looking around, talking to nobody.”
“Gotcha. Can you read his nametag?”
“No. Too far.” Luther stood up and pushed his way through the crowd, passing within several feet of the mark. He circled back around and sat down on the couch again, said, “Richard Bryson.”
Lucy flipped through the booklet and found the man’s picture and bio. She read it aloud: “Richard Bryson is not only the author of Against the Law, a thriller about a corrupt police force, but the publisher as well. He is currently working on a new book.”
“Perfect,” Orson said. “Luther, head on up. We’ll be there in ten.”

Orson sat with Lucy after Luther had left, watching Bryson drink his beer alone.
“All right, Lucy, tell me how you’d get this man we’ve never met up to our hotel room.”
“Um, I’d tell him we have a party going on and invite him to come.”
“Okay. If some person you’d never met invited you up to their hotel room, would you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“The answer is no. You wouldn’t. Listen, look at me. You’re small and young, you have no physical strength, so if you want to do this, over and over and over again, without getting caught or killed, you have to be smart.”
She rolled her eyes. He was sounding a little like her mother.
“Oh, am I boring you? Get the f*ck out of here then, you little brat.”
“You’re not. I’m sorry.”
“I’m trying to help you. So tell me. How would you get Bryson up to our hotel room?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ready to learn something?”
“Yes.”
“Vanity. Know what that is?”
She nodded. “When you’re in love with yourself.”
“Exactly. We’re all in love with ourselves. It’s our weakness. Our main failing. If you can play on that, if you can appeal to someone’s vanity without them knowing you’re doing it, you can get them to do anything you want.”
“I don’t understand.”
Orson stood up. “Follow me. Keep your mouth shut. And watch and learn.”

She followed Orson through the throng of people, stood behind him as he leaned his elbows on the bar and waited for the bartender to notice him.
After a minute, Orson began to look around, and when his eyes fell upon Richard Bryson standing right beside him, Lucy saw a huge smile break across Orson’s face.
He said, “Oh my God, you’re Richard Bryson!”
As the man glanced over at Orson, Lucy got her first decent look at him. He seemed old as shit to her, at least fifty. His coarse blond hair was long and wavy and on the verge of turning gray, and he had what she thought was a gross mustache.
The man gave a skeptical smile that belied insecurity and said, “Um, yeah, who are you?”
“Well, for starters, I’m a huge fan of Against the Law. I thought it was the best book I’ve read this year.”
“Oh, well thank you. You know, I just made it available as an ebook.”
“A what?”
“An electronic book. I put it up on my website as a free download.”
“Oh, neat.”
Oh stupid, Lucy thought. Like people would ever want to read books on an electronic screen.
“Ebooks are going to be the future of publishing. I’m sure of it.”
“Are you working on a new book?” Orson asked.
“Yeah, I am actually.” Orson was right. Lucy saw Bryson beginning to come alive as he talked about himself.
“Can you tell me anything about it?” Orson asked.
“Well, it’s a sequel to Against the Law.”
“Oh, fantastic.”
“You know how Rodriguez died at the end?”
“Yeah, sure. That was so heartbreaking.”
“Well, he’s not really dead.”
“No kidding?”
“And he’s back and pissed off and looking for revenge.”
“I can’t wait to read it. Look, Mr. Bryson—”
“Please, Richard.”
“Richard, my name’s Vincent Carmichael, and I’m a freelance reviewer. I do stuff for Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly. I would love to do an interview with you and pitch it to PW or Kirkus. I think they’d be all over it.”
“That’d be great.”
“Do you have some time right now?”
“Um, sure.”
“What do you say we go up to my room? My recorder is up there and we can see what happens. By the way, this is my niece, Michelle.”
“Hi, Michelle.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bryson,” Lucy said.
Bryson pulled out his wallet. “Let me just pay for my beer.”
“Get out of here.” Orson pulled a five dollar bill from his pocket and tossed it on the bar. “It is so good to finally meet you, Rich.”
He patted the man on the shoulder and pulled him away from the bar.

As they rode up in the elevator, Lucy marveled at the persona Orson had adopted: an attentive, personable book reviewer who was utterly fascinated with the life and work of Richard Bryson. She didn’t know how he controlled himself, because as the doors opened and they walked off the car onto the fourteenth floor, her body was beginning to buzz with anticipation.
At last, they reached the door to 1428, and Lucy pulled the keycard out of her pocket, her hands trembling.
She swiped the card as Bryson said, “You should ask me about my publishing company, too. I hate the big New York publishers, so I’ve decided to…” He stopped talking as Lucy pushed the door open, and she knew exactly why. A subdued but foul odor seeped out of the room into the hallway.
“After you, Rich,” Orson said. He was glancing up and down the hallway, which for the moment, was empty.
Bryson hesitantly entered the hotel room and Lucy and Orson followed after him. Lucy heard the subtle click of Orson locking the door.
“My goodness,” Bryson said. “Smells like something died in here.”
“You can smell that?” Orson said. They had all passed the closed bathroom door and now stood in the dark bedroom. “It must be that sandwich half I threw away last night. It sure went bad quickly.”
Bryson took off his sports jacket. “Do you mind if I use your restroom before we get started? That beer is moving right through me.”
“Of course. Right through that door.”
Lucy stood next to Orson, watching Bryson disappear into the bathroom.
“Where’s Luther?” she asked.
“About to have some Luther fun.”
She could see the light come on under the door, the sounds of Bryson shuffling around inside.
“Orson?”
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Let’s just enjoy this moment together.”
Bryson said, “Oh God!”
Something crashed to the floor, and through the door came the sound of a desperate struggle, something banging into cabinets and walls, and then the meaty thud of hard punches.
Bryson went quiet, but there was still movement inside the bathroom. After a minute, the door opened, and Luther walked out smiling.
“Come see,” he said.
Lucy hurried over to the open door.
Bryson lay unconscious on the floor, hog-tied with zip-ties, and a ball-gag in his mouth.
“Nice work, Luther,” she said.
“You should’ve seen his face. He sat down on the toilet to take a dump, and just as he was starting to notice all the blood, I swept the shower curtain back and had Mark Darling waving to him. Good thing he was on the toilet, ’cause he shit.”
“Can I have my straight razor back?” Lucy said.
Orson glanced down at her. “Of course. But you know we aren’t just going to kill him right away.”
“Why not?”
He smiled. “Sweet, Lucy. So much to learn.”

Richard opened his eyes fifteen minutes later, naked and shivering. The balls of his feet just barely touched the dead man sprawled beneath him across the shower tile. His wrists were stretched far above his head, the zip-tie between them hanging from an anchor bolt that had been screwed into the ceiling. A giant ball had been wedged into his mouth.
Orson sat across from him on the toilet. Lucy stood beside him, and Luther sat on the surface of the sink.
“I just want to thank you again, Richard, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to sit for this interview.” Orson smiled and looked at Luther. “I think we should let Lucy go first. Okay with you?”
“As long as we get to stay in here and watch. Lucy?”
“What?”
Luther patted a red Craftsman toolbox. “I know you have a straight razor, but if you’d like to borrow anything in here, you’re welcome to it.”
“Look at you,” Orson said. “Sharing.”
Lucy saw Richard’s eyes bug out when Luther opened the box. Hers did too. “What in the world?”
“I collect ancient surgical tools.”
She lifted out a long cylinder with six tiny blades at the end. “What is this?”
“It’s called an artificial leech. It tears a superficial wound in the skin and creates a vacuum to suck up the blood.”
“It looks fun.”
“Oh, it is.”
She set it on the countertop and pulled out another tool. Richard’s bladder let loose.
“That’s in my top three,” Luther said. The metal of the instrument was dark brown with rust and looked to be several hundred years old. It had handles at the end, that when pulled apart, made the other end open wide. “It’s called a cervical dilator,” Luther said, “but it works beautifully on gentlemen as well. It fell out of use, because it typically just tore the insides apart, as you’ll see.”
She pulled out a strange-looking knife.
“For circumcisions.”
What looked like a pair of pliers, but instead of metal grippers, had a needle at the end.
“That’s called a hernia tool. I know it looks cool, but it’s kind of hard to use. Here, let me show you my favorite.” Luther reached into the toolbox and withdrew a long metal tool with a gently curving shaft. “This is called a lithotome. Shaft goes up the anus and then you squeeze the handle and a blade comes out on a spring release.”
“What was it used for?”
“To cut the bladder to release kidney stones.”
“Oh, this looks wicked.” She pulled out a hollow metal cylinder with circular blades at one end.”
“That’s a scarificator. Used for bloodletting.” He grabbed another tool. “This is a tonsil guillotine.” And another. “This is a trephine for skull drilling. Here’s a vaginal speculum, and these are hemorrhoid forceps.”
The toolbox was empty now, a veritable horrowshow on display on the bathroom sink.
“I dream of coming back as a Victorian doctor,” Luther said.
Orson laughed.
“Decisions, decisions,” Lucy said, reaching for the lithotome.

“It’s sad how he keep passing out,” Lucy said.
Luther was holding a bottle of smelling salts under Bryson’s nose.
“Yeah, you’ve got to be careful,” Orson said. “The biggest buzz-kill is when they lose too much blood. They just go into shock and die, and that’s it. Superficial cuts are key.”
Richard jerked back into consciousness and started to scream again through the ball-gag.
“These aren’t ideal conditions,” Orson said. “Of course, no matter what, we can’t take the ball-gag out of his mouth. What I’m afraid is going to happen is he’s going to throw up and choke to death.”
“I wish I could hear him scream.”
“Me, too. It adds so much more.”

Six hours later, they washed Luther’s surgical tools, left the remains of Bryson hanging in the shower, and walked out of 1428 for the last time.
It was almost nine o’clock and many of the conference attendees had already left, the lobby much quieter now.
Orson bought Luther and Lucy dinner in the restaurant downstairs, everyone happy for the moment, a quiet contentment settling over the meal.
“When do you guys leave?” Lucy asked.
“First thing tomorrow.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No.”
Lucy felt a lump swelling in her throat. “Don’t you like me?”
“Of course,” Orson said. “But I can’t take you with me, I’m sorry.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“That’s for you to figure out. Are you going home?”
“No. And my car’s booted. I only have a hundred and fifty dollars and my guitar case.”
Orson reached into his pocket, opened his wallet, pulled out a roll of bills. “Here,” he said. “This should get you started.”
Lucy thumbed through the money. Almost five hundred dollars.
“Thank you,” she said, but the sadness was still there. “How am I supposed to get anywhere? I don’t have a car.”
“You could hitchhike,” Luther said.
“That’s dangerous.”
“You’ll have to be careful,” Orson said. “Although, I have a feeling, it’s the poor people who pick you up that we should be more concerned for.”
Luther laughed. “You need to get your hands on some painkillers. Oxycodone. Something hard-hitting that you can drug people with. That’s the only way you’ll be able to overpower someone bigger than yourself. And let’s face it. Everyone’s bigger than you.”
“Seriously.” Orson reached across the table and touched Lucy’s hand. “You have to be careful. You have to learn to read people. One day, you’re going to meet someone out there like me and Luther, only they may not be so hot to take you under their wing. They might rather hang you up in a shower.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“How?”
“I won’t trust anybody.”
“Good.”
Lucy squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Orson,” she said. “I’m glad I met you. You too, Luther.”
Luther smiled. It was still scary, but for the first time, he didn’t look like he was thinking about killing her.

They walked Lucy through the lobby and out the revolving doors of the hotel. Bellhops were stacking suitcases on luggage carts and hailing cabs.
“You could stay one more night,” Orson said.
“Thanks, but I’m ready to go.” She wrapped her arms around Orson and squeezed him. “I’ll never forget you.”
He knelt down in front of her. “You’re a special girl, Lucy. You know what you are, and you’re not afraid of it, and I admire that. I admire the hell out of it.”
She turned to Luther and shook his hand, then lifted her guitar case and walked away from the hotel, out onto the sidewalk into the night.
Lucy had walked ten blocks before the first pair of headlights appeared in the distance.
She dropped her guitar case on the pavement, a small pit of nerves tightening in her stomach.
The car was getting closer.
She could hear its engine, and for the first time in her life, but certainly not the last, she stuck out her thumb.
A minivan pulled over to the curb and the front passenger window rolled down, a thirty-something woman smiling under the dome light.
“You need a ride, sweetie?” she asked.
Lucy conjured up a smile. “If it’s not too much trouble. It’s really cold out here.”
“I’ve got groceries in the front seat, but you’re welcome to climb in the back.”
Lucy pulled open the side door and stepped into the minivan, stowing her guitar case on the floor and sitting down beside a car seat, where an infant slept.
The woman looked back between the seats at Lucy.
“Just try to keep it down, if you don’t mind,” she said quietly. “As you can see, my little angel is sleeping.”
“No problem,” Lucy whispered, staring down at the baby, thinking, No Luther, not everyone’s bigger than me.