Charles Destin is at the back door to Manderley, the one Brian and Tessa exited to visit the pool. Destin likes to bring women to Manderley for tours, though he rarely does this on Tuesdays. He is opening the back door.
The Killer’s head turns to the sound of the back door. To the sound of Brian and Tessa, on the stairs (“Go! Go, Tess!”) as they run past the second floor. The Killer goes toward the back door. He is most of the way there when Destin says, “Voilà!” and flips on the chandelier.
The woman screams. The Killer has the knife high. Destin manages to say, “Who—?” before the knife’s length disappears into the top of the woman’s head. Her eyes become all whites. The stairway door flies open. The Killer lifts the knife, and the woman rises off the ground a few inches, before sliding off and making a pile of skin and bones and thin gold fabric on the floor. The chandelier is bright, now specked with red splats from a geyser that shot from the dead woman’s head, and Destin is running for the front doors. Brian and Tessa are also running for the front doors, and the Killer is limping after them. His legs are long; he is still impressively fast. As Tessa screams, “Del, oh my G—,” Brian is screaming, “Go, Tess!” but Destin shoves Tessa as all three of them near the exit. Tessa slaloms to the left. Destin is a strong man, and determined. Tessa bashes into the fireplace, unsettling the mantel. Delores’s head falls and rolls. Brian runs to help Tessa. Destin gets to the doors and pulls on them, taking for granted they’ll open. They don’t open. The Killer is directly behind him. The Killer stabs, but Destin evades, does a move from his lacrosse days, runs through the wreckage of Delores, and slips. The Killer is running for him, and slips. The both of them bobble hopelessly through the bloody lobby like a pair of children trying to do a standing run down a Slip ’N Slide. Brian and Tessa watch. It’s too strange a sight not to watch. Tessa’s perhaps thinking how, this afternoon, Destin greeted her with a hello and a kiss to each cheek before reading the riot act to his every other employee. Tessa bleeds from a small cut on her right cheek, from the mantel. Her left hand is bleeding again, through her bandage. The Killer’s arm draws back, and the knife whips forward, whirls, sticks—with a thwap—in Charles Destin’s neck. He falls forward.
It would appear Destin didn’t bankroll this hell after all.
Brian rockets forward, pulling Tessa toward the back exit, but the Killer moves to block them, and so Brian and Tessa of one mind divert to the stairway door again, and climb.
“Where’s fucking security?” says Tessa, her voice like a choir in the stairwell.
“This floor, c’mon!” Brian says, stepping up to four, letting Tessa precede him into the hallway. The carpet is white, the walls white, the doors white with gold numbers on them, and card key locks of gold--plated steel. Brian puts his back to the stairway door and whispers, “We’ll hear him pass us.”
Tessa shakes her head, takes his hand, and leads him to a bend in the hallway. They somehow avoided the quarts and quarts of blood that have spilled in the lobby, so Brian’s boots and Tessa’s bare feet leave no prints. Brian puts an arm around her. He lays a finger to his lips. They listen.
The Killer is sitting on the arm of a reception sofa, pulling up his pant leg to check his wounds. His shin is bleeding, but not badly. It isn’t that serious, but it’s an annoyance.
The Thinker is pulling up a seat at the security counter. Right beside me. He deposits a playing card facedown in front of my open eyes. Then a card in front of him. Then another card in front of me, until both of us have five cards. The Thinker picks up the five cards he dealt this seeming--dead man and studies them. It’s a hand of poker.
The Killer rolls down his pant leg and stands. He skirts the sofa, bends, and stands again with Delores’s head in his right hand. In his left hand is the knife that he pulled, laboriously, from Destin’s neck. The Killer places Delores’s head back on the mantel and goes to Destin, who is not dead but dying. Destin has crawled so that only his feet are visible around the check--in desk, with the angle of Camera 4. There are other angles available, but they are higher in the bank of monitors, and I can’t look because the Thinker is studying my poker hand. It’s a good hand, one card from a full house. The Thinker makes a sound of displeasure and deals two new hands.
The Killer walks toward Charles Destin, and Destin’s feet become frantic. The Killer bends to him, and his feet become still more frantic. The Killer’s elbow appears periodically, in a sawing motion.
The fourth--floor hallway is high in the bank of monitors. But if one cannot look, one can at least listen.
Brian’s voice (in a whisper): “What’s taking him so long?”
Tessa’s: “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Je—”
Brian’s: “Maybe he took the elevator.”
Tessa’s: “Christ, Jesus—”
Brian’s: “How’s your head?”
Tessa’s: “He killed Jules. God. God, he—”
Brian’s: “Stay calm. We need to stay calm.”
Tessa’s (hissing): “You be calm!”
Brian’s: “That’s the spirit.”
Tessa’s (laughing, sort of): “We’re gonna die.”
Brian’s (serious): “No. No we’re not.”
Tessa’s (crying and trying not to): “No. We’re not. We’re not gonna die.”
Brian’s: “Again.”
Tessa’s: “We’re not gonna die.”
Brian’s: “One more time.”
Tessa’s (voice like a diamond’s edge): “We’re gonna live. We’re gonna live.”
Brian’s: “We live. That’s how this goes. Both of us.”
Tessa’s: “Right. Why’s—what’s—”
Brian’s: “Doesn’t matter. It’s happening. This is what’s happening now. So say it again.”
Tessa’s: “Both of us live.”
Brian’s (a kissing noise): “Where’s he bleeding? I didn’t notice.”
Tessa’s: “Left shin. And I think I broke his nose.”
She did. The Killer is taking tissues from a box on the check--in desk and rolling tubes to stick up his nostrils, under his mask. He bends and rises with Destin’s head in his right hand, knife in his left. He goes to the mantel and puts Destin’s head beside Delores’s.
Brian’s: “Fire alarms?”
Tessa’s (sounding regretful): “If the phone lines are—wait.”
(long pause)
The Killer looks in the direction of the stairway door. He sags. He takes out his phone, taps, and types.
The Thinker’s phone vibrates on the security counter. He puts down two pairs, jacks high, and taps. The Killer’s message reads, “Leg hurts help with these 2.”
The Thinker types, “I’ll help when necessary. Division of labor.” He sends, stands, and walks to the east windows.
The Killer’s phone lights up; he reads. He roars and kicks the check--in counter. Then he grabs his shin and stabs the check--in counter. Then he crosses the foyer, kicking Delores’s severed foot every few steps like a crabby kid with a tin can.
Tessa and Brian are hunkered low in the hallway. He’s holding her with his whole body, trying to look in all directions. Tessa’s telling him, “That phone. The one I took from the sous--chef earlier.”
“Yes!” Brian’s saying, shaking her. “Where is it?”
“By the damn dishwasher, on the fucking nineteenth floor. Jesus, shit, it takes at least ten minutes for the cops to get here.”
“What do you mean? I thought your security people ran drills all the—”
“They do. That’s why it takes so long. LAPD’s sick of us testing their response time. After that bomb threat last week, the police chief said he was putting Manderley at the bottom of their priority list until we opened. He said to expect a ten--minute wait, and then only one car would come.”
Brian knocks his head into the wall and steels himself. “What the fuck ever, it’s an idea. Elevator or stairs?”
“How’d he get to the lobby so fast?”
“Good question.” Brian looks at Tessa for the answer.
She shrugs. She’s shaking. Brian, all around her, is shaking.
He holds a finger to his lips. Then he points to the jounce of wide steps mounting the stairs. Brian and Tessa should be panicking. Even a seasoned professional, in a situation such as this, might panic. Even a team of them. Brian and Tessa are afraid, pale with fear. Brian has wiped the blood from Tessa’s cheek with his right hand, and has wiped his right hand on his jeans. Now, as they listen to the Killer—who knows exactly where they are, via text message—it might occur to Brian, as confusion sharpens his eyes, how strange it is that the Killer isn’t doing a floor--by--floor search. Tessa’s eyes are wide, but then they narrow, thinking the same thing. It’s Tessa whose neck slowly rotates to the smoke detector in the hallway, where the hallway surveillance cameras are hidden. It’s Tessa who slips from Brian’s grasp and pulls him up silently. He’s protesting; the steps are close. The Killer is two risers from the concrete landing on the fourth floor. Tessa pulls Brian to the opposite bend in the hallway—the right side instead of the left side. Brian looks at her like she’s insane, but she motions him to be still, as the fourth--floor door clicks open and the Killer’s boots sink into the plush carpet.
The Thinker texts twice, hurriedly, placing his phone on my royal flush—“Other corner!” “She’s figured out the cameras!”
The Killer’s pocket lights up, but he isn’t expecting a text message. A ring tone would eliminate his stealth.
The Thinker springs for the secret elevator, boards, and presses and presses the button for the fourth floor.
The Killer, if he were smart, would be watching the floor for anomalous shadows, and he would see there is an irregularity to the right instead of to the left at the bend in the hallway. Tessa and Brian are flat to the wall. Tessa is closer to the bend than Brian is. He doesn’t like this; it’s written all over him. The two of them are watching the Killer’s undaunted shadow. Then the toes of the Killer’s boots. The bloodied nose of the Killer’s mask, as it turns away from them, to the left of the bend. He raises his knife—and Tessa kicks, again with the bare hard arch of her foot, into the back of the Killer’s left knee. At the same moment, she lets fly a fist into his right kidney, as hard as she can. Brian goes for the knife, wrenching the Killer’s arm back and to an angle. The angle is unnatural for a human, but it looks oddly like a chicken wing. The Killer flails in a delightfully chickenlike way toward the floor, crashing to one knee as Tessa kicks the other knee and begins kicking him in the ribs. Brian attempts to make the angle of the Killer’s arm still more dramatically wrong, but that’s when a sliding noise happens inside the cleaning closet, which is right in front of them. Neither Brian nor Tessa notices; they are occupied.
The cleaning closet door crashes open, and the Thinker slashes with his standard issue Navy SEAL field knife toward Brian’s heart, but the Killer’s knife is flailing, and the Killer’s knife clatters against the Thinker’s knife with a sound like a small bell.
Brian jumps backward on reflex, and the Thinker’s knife’s downward trajectory catches Tessa in the right shoulder. It embeds, shallowly. She screams. The Thinker jerks it out, and Tessa screams. The Killer is struggling to get up, but Tessa’s fallen onto him. The Thinker goes for Brian again, but the Killer—jostling his feet around for purchase—accidentally trips the Thinker. Brian catches the Thinker with two hard punches to the face, while Tessa sees Vivica inside the secret elevator. Her mouth falls open and snaps shut. She covers it, swallows hard, and remembers the Killer, flailing under her insubstantial weight. She walks on her knees to his right hand and kneels on it. The Killer lets go of his knife. But now his body is free. He dodders to a crouch. Tessa uses her only opening and stabs him in the side. He howls. The Thinker took Brian’s punches to get a good shot at his body cavity. He plunges for Brian with the knife, but Tessa is a dervish. She turns and plunges, blindly, and catches the Thinker in the thigh. She is screaming, pulling the blade out and stabbing the Thinker in the thigh—his right—twice more, before the Killer takes a handful of her hair and grabs her neck in both hands to break it. Brian is screaming. Brian has lost his mind. He head--butts the Killer five times in such fast succession that his movements blur on the monitor. Tessa eels out of the Killer’s hold and shoves Brian into the secret elevator. She hits the button for the nineteenth floor. The Killer and the Thinker grunt in protest, but the elevator door slides shut. The cleaning closet remains open, the shelves sideways. Brian and Tessa don’t have a controller. The Thinker laughs.
He points at his hip, where his controller is clipped to his coveralls. He taps his temple to indicate his own superior intelligence. The Killer nods tiredly. The Killer and the Thinker examine their wounds while they wait for the secret elevator to journey to the nineteenth floor and arrest behind the juice concentrate shelf, Brian and Tessa panicking and screaming inside about why there is a wall in front of them when the secret elevator door slides open. Their shouts and battering at it will earn them nothing, no exit. And the secret elevator will time out after ninety seconds, if the juice concentrate shelf is not signaled to move aside by a controller. Then, per programming I designed in order to reduce the risk of security team infiltration, it will return to the fourth floor, with Brian and Tessa trapped inside.