He blinks, twice in a row, hard. “How’d you know?”
“You’re not in any of the pictures.”
That makes him smile. “You caught me,” he says. “I’m staying here for a while.”
“Where are the people who live here?”
“Oh, they’re around,” Ethan says absently, and she has to bite her lip, hard, to keep from moaning. That’s what the smell is, she should have known.
“If you love me, let me go,” she says instead. “Untie me and let me go.”
“I do love you,” he says. “Seever loves you too. I saw one of his paintings yesterday, of you. Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“He made you beautiful.” Ethan ducks his head and smiles, a coy smile that makes her shudder, and then it disappears, and everything is dark. “And he made you dead.”
“Please, let me go. I want to go home.”
“No.” Ethan gives her a sly look. “If I let you go, you’d go to the police. You’d tell them everything.”
He leans closer. He smells of sweat and piss, of food gone bad. It’s the smell of insanity, she thinks, as if his pores have opened up and bloomed with crazy.
“You would tell on me, wouldn’t you?” he asks. “You’d turn me in?”
He’s waiting for her answer; her life depends on it. She could lie and tell him no, that she’d never turn him in, thank him for everything he’s done. She’s been telling lies her whole life, she’s been weaving her stories at the loom and pulling the threads tight, she’s good at it, she could make Ethan believe, and he might let her go, but he might not. He has an eager look in his eyes; he’s waiting for her to say something, to tell him she loves him, to plead for her life, because he loves her, that’s what he says. It’s a boyish look, the desperate look of a man terrified of rejection, but there’s something else there too, buried deep under that charm but still peeking through, just around the edges but it’s enough for her to see.
It’s nothing. Nothing at all. A screaming void that swallows up everything it can. He’s used her as an excuse, said that he killed all those people for her, that she’d wanted him to, and maybe he believes it, but it was really for himself; he’d probably been fantasizing about killing for a long time and needed an excuse to soothe what scraps of conscience he might’ve had, and he’d latched on to her. And even if she lies to him, it’ll be the same. He doesn’t love her. He’d been the one to call her, he knew she was coming over, he’d already had the twine in his pocket. He was prepared. It’s all the same to him. He wants her to beg and cry, but it’ll be the same in the end. Do you like it fast or slow? Seever had asked her once, and she’d found it funny then, but now it’s horrible, it has a completely different meaning.
So she doesn’t bother lying. Not because she’s a hero, not because she wants to die, but because she’s so damn tired of it all. And she’s angry that she’d fallen right into this, that she hadn’t had a clue, and now here she is, and she wants to hurt him.
“I would go straight to the police, I’d tell them everything,” she says. “I’d tell them that you killed all those people. That you’re a sick fuck.” She blinks, slowly. “I’d tell everyone that you couldn’t get it up, even when I was jiggling your dick in my hand.”
He flushes, ugly red from his scalp all the way down his neck, and he leans over, pulls open the side-table drawer, and grabs a pair of wire cutters with bright-yellow handles. They could be brand-new, except for the dark spots on the blades. It could be rust, she thinks. Could be. But who does she think she’s kidding? They look sharp, and she knows they’ll have no trouble cutting through her flesh and bone.
HOSKINS
“Pause it, right there,” Hoskins says, leaning over Loren to get closer to the TV screen. They’ve been sitting in the front of the bank of video equipment for the last two hours, moving backward and forward through the recordings of the day before, in the ten-minute window when Weber was there. It should’ve been simple enough, but the owner had installed a lot of cameras, and there were a lot of pumps to watch—twelve of them total—and although the credit card statement told them when Weber was there, it didn’t tell them where he’d been. There was a lot of footage to zip through. But finally, Davey had found something. “That’s him. That’s our guy.”
It’s Weber all right, alive and well, his head a few hours from being beaten in. He sticks the pump into his tank and starts it up, then looks up at the sky, shades his eyes with the flat of his hand. He looks disgusted, as if he’s completely disappointed with the winter weather, then turns and climbs back into his car.
“He didn’t talk to anyone,” Loren says. “He filled up his tank and drove off.”