Kendall staggered to her feet, facing the monster with the knife. She wasn’t going to die without a fight, but how did you fight a huge knife?
“I have you at last.”
The voice was familiar. Friendly.
“I’ve wanted you for so long.”
“Great,” she said, fighting the tremors in her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you for some time, but I kept my distance. I thought that you’d be the biggest mistake. You have such passion, but sometimes great passion must be denied. On the other hand, genius must be rewarded.”
“You killed Sheila,” she said.
“Obviously.”
That voice…She knew it.
“You must understand. I’m considered a genius in my field…and my field has helped me so much. I know what they look for, when they find the dead. And I know that if they don’t find the dead, they don’t find what they should be looking for. And where better to keep the dead than where the dead should lie?”
“Jon Abel,” she said flatly.
“Of course.” He pulled off the hood. He looked just as he always did, and that was almost more frightening than anything else. He shook his head. “I guess I’ve gotten…hungrier lately. So many only come to me when they’re broken, old, mutilated. There’s something beautiful about death, you know. Especially death just as it happens. And the pressure of my job…”
“You’ve been killing for a long time,” she told him.
He scowled at her. “I was not so hungry then, as I said. But…when I discovered that there was actually a crypt below the family vault, it was suddenly so easy. Meant to be, you might say. Of course, I didn’t figure on the river and the water level—stupid, you say? Not really. In all this time, only two bones have ever washed out, and if it weren’t for your lover, no one would ever have known. And you know, the women I’ve…shall I say loved? Have actually been better off. Their lives were small, unimportant. They’re not the kind of women anyone would miss.”
“Sheila is missed,” she snapped.
“Well, yes, but Sheila…she was necessary. She was too interested in this place, in its history. I couldn’t take the chance that she would find out about this little…retreat of mine. There was a casket of remains, a soldier from that unfortunate business between North and South. The body was quite rotted, of course, but he’d kept a diary, which was very nicely preserved in a piece of oilcloth. He was quite an interesting man. He and I had quite a lot in common. Not only that, in his journal he talked about the way he disposed of corpses out here. It made things so much easier for me. And so—”
“And so Amelia saw lights,” she said.
He smiled. Just as Jon Abel always smiled. He still hadn’t changed.
The only thing that had changed was that now she knew, knew exactly what kind of monster he was. Knew that he could kill and, if his victims ever did turn up, fill in false reports.
He could stage a break-in at the coroner’s office.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” she said softly, “this will probably sound like an in—a ridiculous question to you, but why?”
“Because of the hunger,” he said, as if she should understand perfectly. “And I’m a genius, but you already know that. Not every man can be allowed to indulge the hunger, of course, but as a genius, I deserve to have what I want. And because so much of what I see in my work is so ugly, that’s why…lately…I’ve been hungrier. And that’s why I need the pretty ones, alive and afraid…. I’m tender with them at first, of course,” he said, walking toward her. But the knife was still down. He wasn’t going to strike, not just yet.
If only she could find something to use as a weapon.
He paused in front of her. “You see?” he said softly, indicating the body parts floating around her. “Death can be so ugly. But not at first. It takes the terror in a woman’s eyes and replaces it with peace, the peace that comes with death. And it’s beautiful, so beautiful. Until the rot comes. And there is no one who can stop the rot.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw an arm bone. Her heart quivered in her chest. It was still wearing the remnants of a black fleece sweatshirt.
He was close now, so close. He reached out, and she felt him touch her face. “You’re such a pretty one.”
Now or never.
She reached down for the bone and brought it up as hard as she could, striking him a tremendous blow across the face. He shouted hoarsely and recoiled, so she lifted her weapon to strike again. But he came back at her quickly, catching her arm with a surprising strength. He slammed her against the wall and held her there, but somehow she managed to retain her hold on her weapon.
“You don’t understand!” he told her angrily.
“I do,” she told him quickly. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. The body rots, but the soul doesn’t.”
“What?” he demanded.