Chapter 27

After Ethan had left, I used the bedpan, then reclined again on the cot, closed my eyes, and thought.

I'd gotten a good enough look at the chain that was keeping me secured. The cuff around my ankle was secured with a lock, and I wondered if Ethan kept the key to that lock on his person. If he did, it gave me a very slim possibility of escape. He wasn't scared of me, not physically scared, anyway; I'd learned that by how close he'd gotten to me when we'd had our conversation. So, if I could somehow procure a weapon it was possible that I could disable him while still shackled, then get the key and unlock the cuff. But I didn't have a weapon. And the chances were that the key was hanging somewhere in the house, out of reach.

I sat up and took a closer look at the cuff, wondering if there was any wiggle room that would allow me to somehow get my foot free. There wasn't. I could saw my foot off, but I didn't have a saw.

I lay back down, looking up at the water-damaged drop ceiling. I didn't think there was any way out of the situation, not a physical way. My best bet was to try to stay alive as long as possible in the hope that Henry Kimball might figure out where I was. And the way to stay alive was to keep Ethan's interest, keep him talking, keep him entertained. Once I'd made that decision, that my best hope was in delaying the inevitable, I relaxed a little and began to think of other things. I was worried about my parents, who would have reported me missing the night before. My mother would be panic-stricken, and my father would probably already be grieving. He'd told me once that every time I left the house he wondered if I'd return. It was because his own father had left his mother and him when he was young. He'd been a salesman, my grandfather, named Siegfried Kintner, and had left for a trip to the North of England and was never heard from again. "It explains everything about you," I'd said to my father once, when I'd been a freshman at Mather College. "Nothing explains everything about someone, Lil," he'd said.

I thought about my father and mother some more while waiting for Ethan to return. If these were my last hours on this earth, and they probably were, I wasn't planning on wasting them in terror or regret. And I wasn't in the worst possible position. I was alive and I'd found Ethan Saltz. That counted for something, at least temporarily.

Ethan returned at around noon, coming down the basement stairs, humming a tune I recognized as "Manic Monday" by the Bangles. He was carrying a paper bag with him, glanced in my direction, then set the bag on the bar. I was still lying on my back and he might have thought I was sleeping. I listened to him unwrap the bag and then I could smell food and I sat up.

"You're awake," he said.

"You brought lunch?"

"I have a meatball sub and an eggplant parm sub, and I have a ham and cheese."

"They all sound good," I said, "but if you're asking, I'll take the meatball."

He unfolded one of those old television tables and brought it over and put it in front of where I was sitting. As before, he'd gotten close enough to me that I could have touched him if I'd wanted to. I still couldn't imagine a scenario where I could harm him. He had about a hundred pounds on me, and there was nothing I could use for a weapon.

After setting up the table, he went and got the meatball sub and brought it over, putting a plastic bottle of Coke next to it. I resisted the urge to thank him and began to eat.

While I ate, Ethan sat quietly and watched me. It was unnerving, but I tried to ignore it. He'd changed his clothes since I'd last seen him, and he was dressed in soft tan corduroys, a checked shirt, and a blue blazer.

"Where are we?" I said, before taking my last bite of the sub.

"I told you already. A house I own under a different name."

"No, what town?"

"We are in the lovely burg of Tohickon in the state of Pennsylvania. Did you ever think you'd die in such a place?"

I shrugged. "I always thought I'd die in Shepaug, Connecticut, so I guess I'm all right with Tohickon. Where do you plan on dying?"

"Anywhere but here, I suppose," he said, laughing, looking a little confused, as though he were a child who hadn't grasped the basic concept of mortality yet.

"Surrounded by loved ones?" I said.

"As you know, I don't put too much weight on the concept of love."

"Have you ever loved anyone? Did you love your mother?"

"You're trying to needle me, which I understand. I didn't particularly love my mother, but I didn't hate her, either. She was just someone who gave birth to me. People think that connection—the maternal one—is so important, and yet it's so random. We don't get to pick who our parents are, any more than they get to pick their children. We'd all be better off going through this world without having high expectations for the people who share our blood. Don't you agree?"

I genuinely thought about it, then said, "Having high expectations for anyone is a mistake, but I do think family is important. It is to me, I suppose. What else is there, in the end? Our work and our family."

"The most important thing is legacy, leaving one's mark on this world. Leaving something in one's wake."

"I'll be dead then. What will I care?" I said.

He said, "It's nice to think about what people will write about me after I'm gone. I'll have killed a hundred people and gotten away with it, and everyone will be looking for the reason that I did it. Was it his parents? Did something go wrong in his childhood? Was it a sexual thing? And it's none of those."

"You kill people because you can," I said.

He smiled. "See, you get it."

"I've killed people, too," I said.

He tilted his head, still smiling. "Have you? You're not just telling me that because you think it's what I want to hear?"

"No, I'm telling you because it's the truth, and seeing as you're either going to kill me or I'm going to find some way to kill you, it doesn't matter if you know."

"Who have you killed?" he said.

"How old were you when you murdered your grandfather? I know you told me, but I've forgotten."

"I was eleven."

"I was fourteen when I first killed someone. His name was Chet, and he was one of my parents' summer guests, an artist."

"He was a pervert," Ethan said, not asking, and leaned in.

"He was a pervert," I said. "He hadn't done anything to me yet, but he was thinking about it. I killed him to protect myself."

"How did you get away with it?"

I told him the whole story, about luring Chet to the well and pushing him in, and how I'd packed up his things to make it look like he'd left our guesthouse. I told the story as truthfully as I could tell it.

"That's quite a story," Ethan said when I'd finished. "Now you're going to tell me how much you enjoyed killing him, right?"

"I didn't," I said. "It was a lot of work, and I'd rather have been reading, to be honest. There's a big difference between us. I've killed people because I don't mind killing. There's probably always been versions of me running throughout history. I'd be the one in the village who was tasked with drowning the bag of kittens when there were too many of them. Someone has to do it, so give the job to the person who isn't skittish. This is a bad example, because I'm not sure I could actually drown kittens, but killing Chet was not a problem for me. I didn't enjoy it, though. I've never enjoyed killing anyone."

"Who else have you killed?"

"I'm tired of talking," I said, hoping to end the conversation while he was still interested in talking with me. "I'm just tired, actually. Maybe I could lie down, and you could tell me about all the people you've killed."

"It's a long list."

"Tell me about some of them. Tell me about the people you killed trying to frame Alan Peralta."

He told me his stories, and I listened. I could feel the joy in his voice, not the joy that he had taken in killing people but the joy he was taking in telling me the details, telling me how clever he had been. I was particularly interested in what he told me about the murder of Nora Johnson down in Fort Myers, Florida, how he'd killed her right next to Alan Peralta.

After he'd spoken for a while, I said, "It seems clear to me that after you killed your grandfather you discovered that you liked it."

"Why do you assume that?"

"Because you've kept doing it, and you kill strangers, people who have done nothing to you, or, presumably, the world. It's obviously something you like."

He lowered his brows a little and I thought he was thinking about what I'd just said, as though it had never really occurred to him. "I do enjoy killing people," he said at last. "I'm not a psychopath, though. I don't love to see blood spurt from people and hear screams or things like that. I just like it as a game. It's hunting, I suppose."

"You don't think hunters get off on the act of killing?"

"Hunters are sick people. They're playing a game that is far too easy. When I kill someone, I'm compelled to do it in a way that will ensure I never get caught. Do you know how hard that is?"

"I do," I said, as I lay back down on top of the cot. I really was tired, but I was also thinking that it made sense to fade out of the conversation while I still had Ethan's interest.

"Killing is hard, but you know that."

"It doesn't make it an accomplishment," I said.

"You weren't proud of what you'd done to that pervert when you were fourteen?"

I thought about it. "I was happy, but no, I wasn't proud."

"You'd done something special."

"Not really. It was murder, and that's not particularly special, and it's not particularly rare, either. Not in the history of our species. Or any species."

"It is rare when it's done well."

"Getting away with murder doesn't make it special," I said. "Besides, it's clear that you eventually want to get caught in some way. That's why you've made your list."

"I think it will be of interest."

"Where did you put it?"

He didn't say anything immediately, and I turned my head slightly. "Do you think there's a chance I'm going to get out of here?"

"What do you mean?"

"You hesitated about telling me where you hid your list."

"I didn't want to hide it in too secure a place. I have a hollowed-out copy of a book in my office library at my house in Philadelphia. It's in there. Every name, date, and place. It will be found."

"What book did you choose?"

"The Stories of John Cheever."

"So you are like a hunter, after all. You want heads on your wall eventually. You want people to know what you did."

He didn't say anything immediately, so I said, "There's nothing wrong with that."

"It is a kind of art, isn't it?"

I propped myself up on an elbow. "Killing?"

"Sure," he said. "Why not?"

"That sounds a little delusional," I said. "Art adds something to the world."

"What about all the great art there is about death? I'm sure you're a fan of Artemisia Gentileschi? Judith Slaying Holofernes?"

"But that actually is art," I said. "What you're doing, and what I did to Chet, that was just butchering, really. Getting away with it doesn't make it art. It might make you smart, or clever, but that's all it is."

Ethan was quiet, and I wondered if I'd gone too far, if he was going to get up and come over and slit my throat. I closed my eyes and accepted that possibility.

"We can't control other people's opinions," he said at last. "I suspect that when people know what I've done there will be varying takes on it." He sounded resigned, almost.

"I'm not sure the takes will be as varying as you think they are, but never mind. You're good at what you do, and you also enjoy it. I suppose that's the recipe for happiness as a human being."

"I do want to hear more about you, Lily," he said. "More about people you've killed."

"I'm tired," I said. "I'll tell you later."

"You're stalling for time. Do you think there's someone out there who might rescue you? Who have you told about me?"

"I haven't told anyone," I said. "But, yes, I'm stalling. I'm obviously a missing persons case at this point. Maybe someone saw you stalking me in Shepaug. Maybe someone here saw you take me from the trunk and bring me into the house. I don't know. Maybe you're about to get caught anyway, for something else you did. Stalling is my only option."

"Plus, you want to live as long as possible."

"I suppose I do. Live to see another food delivery, at least."

"I might be able to do better than a meatball sub," Ethan said, and in my peripheral vision I saw him stand and walk away from me.