Chapter 44

I should've known it was Bentley. All those months of playing detective and I couldn't see what was right in front of me.

Bentley sits across from me. He still looks so handsome, even now. I should be revolted by him and instead I'm revolted with myself for thinking about his handsomeness at a time like this.

The clues were always there; I just hadn't been able to put them together. The way that the murders seemed to follow William around like a grudge. How Kelsey Jenkins died just as it seemed that William was going to go to prison for life. The man at the bar who knew Bentley, like he'd been there many times before. They look so similar, William and Bentley, almost indistinguishable to someone who didn't know what they were looking for.

Still, questions remain.

"What do you mean that you took what was owed to you?" I ask.

"Anna Leigh wasn't as innocent as she made herself out to be," Bentley says. "I'm sure that my brother never told you this, but the two of them were having a little affair long before I entered the picture. I guess he didn't satisfy her or maybe she, like you, was the type of woman that could never be satisfied. Either way, she came on to me when I was sitting in the lobby of William's office, waiting to pick him up to go to dinner. She already knew who I was. ‘You must be William's brother,' she said."

"What a come-on," I say dryly.

Though I suppose that it's true that Anna Leigh didn't have to say anything at all to make me love her.

"We went out for drinks so that she could pick my brain. Those were the words that she used. We ended up at a hotel later that night. I asked about her husband and she said that he wouldn't notice that she was gone because he was out drinking with his friends, which he did a lot. Really, I can't blame her for wanting to have an affair. Anna Leigh liked rough sex. Her husband, he was boring, vanilla. All he knew was how to climb on top of her and pound away. She needed something more than that. The fact that she was also involved with William, that was just the cherry on top."

Bentley looks at me while he talks. I think about when he pushed me against the wall in the bar and kissed me, a night that I've thought about again and again. I don't know what he wants from me now. Does he want me to be turned on or revolted? I do my best to keep my face still, unmoving.

"Why did she have to die?" I continue to press.

"I didn't intend to kill her, not at first. I told myself that I wasn't a killer, not like William."

"William's not a killer," I say. "Isn't this proof of that?"

Bentley laughs.

"You and William really don't know each other, do you? Did he ever tell you about Gracie?"

I search the recesses of my brain for the name. As much as I pretend to care about victims, my life revolves around the men who have hurt them.

"Gracie from the notes," I say out loud.

It's Bentley's turn to look confused.

"What notes?"

"I found notes in William's old desk at your parents' house from Gracie to William. I thought they didn't mean anything."

It's the first time that I've seen Bentley look angry, like the way that I think a serial killer should look. I worry that it's enough for him to kill me before I get the whole story. I recognize that there's no good time to die, so I put parameters on it. Not until I know everything, not until I feel satisfied about this one single thing.

"Gracie was my girlfriend," he says. "William killed her."

The statement shouldn't shock me considering that I've spent a year of my life investigating whether William's a killer, but it does. I realize that I've grown complacent while living with him. It's like those people who live with giant cats who are surprised when they're suddenly missing an arm.

"Gracie was a sophomore when I was a senior. She was a lot like Anna Leigh. Very smart, mature for her age. We got to know each other when she came by the house to work on a group assignment with William. I had dated other people before Gracie, but she was my first serious relationship. We were even talking about doing long distance when I went off to college, something that I never imagined I would do."

"How did she die?" I ask.

Bentley stands up and begins to pace the room. It makes me nervous the way that he hovers like a man on the verge of murder.

"There was a party during the summertime. Real amateur shit. William got drunk. He'll say that this isn't what happened, but it is. William got drunk and decided it was a good idea to buy cocaine. He and Gracie snuck off together; that much I know. Gracie didn't do drugs, not like that. She barely even drank."

Bentley shakes his head.

"I don't know what happened in those woods. All that I know is that William called our father in the middle of the night and said that he needed his help. Gracie was found the next day near the house where the party had been held, dead of an apparent overdose. The police never connected what happened to William, but I know that he was involved. He kept telling me he was sorry, over and over again. What a stupid word. He offered to let me punch him and I told him that wasn't what I wanted."

"So instead of punching him you kill four women?" I ask.

"I killed four women because I needed to do something that my father couldn't erase."

"What do you mean that your father couldn't erase? Do you think that he helped cover up Gracie's death?"

Bentley snorts.

"Of course he did. That's what my father does. He intervenes or he pays someone to intervene for him. I think it really rattled him seeing William go to trial. He thinks of himself as having a kind of immunity, like he's the president or something."

I think of the way that Mark drove around to the locations where the women had disappeared. Lauren was right: he had been investigating, trying to figure out how something had slipped through the grasp of his control.

"Look," Bentley continues, "I didn't start off intending to kill them. I thought that I was going to sleep with Anna Leigh, ruin whatever she had with William, and let that be enough. But when I wrapped that rope around her throat—we were just fooling around that time—I could feel William's panic. Her death broke through William's posturing as this sensitive feminist. He's not that, you know. No matter how much he pretends to be. I never thought that I would do something like that, but it's easy to cross a big line once you start crossing little ones. You know that already, don't you, Hannah?"

"Don't compare us. We're not the same."

"I think we are," he says. "We're both bored and looking for meaning. You get off on thinking you're about to be murdered and I get off on murdering. It's not that different."

"What happened after Anna Leigh? Wasn't that enough?"

"It was Kimberly's own fault that she died," Bentley says, and then looks at me. "Kind of like you. She was always talking, asking questions. I went in there a couple days after Anna Leigh disappeared—my brother was distraught, you see, and I went to his condo to comfort him—and I stopped for gas on the way home. She recognized me. I'd stopped for gas there before. ‘Remind me of your name,' she said, and I told her. That wasn't enough though; she wanted to know how my evening was and I explained that I'd just been to see my brother, who was upset because the woman he was having an affair with had disappeared. ‘I hope she comes back,' Kimberly told me, and I let it slip that she was never coming back because I had murdered her. You don't know how good it felt to say that. But then, of course, I had to murder her too. That really made my brother panic—you should've seen him, drunk and crying, wondering if he was committing murder in his sleep."

"Is that why you killed Jill and Emma? To make him feel crazy?"

"Partially. I could tell that William was interested in Jill from the way that he talked about her. He was right—she was interesting. I found that out on the date that I took her on. Interesting, but insecure. And Emma, well, I wasn't interested in her romantically. She was more my brother's type. I thought it would be fun, though, to see what happened if I pointed the arrow directly at him."

"You led the police to William on purpose."

Bentley shrugs.

"I guess you could say that. We used to do stuff like that as kids, try to get each other in trouble. He should've known it was me right from the start."

"What about Kelsey Jenkins? Surely, you knew that it would be impossible to pin that one on William."

"Listen, I was trying to target William, not put him in prison forever. I thought if someone else died, it might help his defense. You're lucky it wasn't you, Hannah. I know you were at the ravine that night. You didn't think it was a coincidence, did you? That a body was found right after your visit? It would've been so easy for me to kill you right then and there, but I liked our little chats so I decided to let you live. I thought the trial would end and we would never see each other again. Imagine my surprise when you resurfaced after the trial. At best, I thought that William was stringing you along, but then it turned out that he actually liked you. It's a pity, Hannah. We were almost family. If only you had stopped digging, just let yourself be satisfied. Ironic, isn't it, that my brother had the matchbook that ultimately will bring about your death? Almost like he's the one doing the killing. I knew I was taking a risk going to that bar with you, but I needed to know what you found. If only it wasn't for Ricky, that stupid man, always interfering where he doesn't belong. I saw your face when he recognized me and knew it was only a matter of time before you put it all together. It's not all bad though. At least you got to spend the end of your life mooching off my family's money."

"I never asked for your family's money."

"You didn't have to, did you? William gave you everything you wanted because he thought dating a girl like you would make him a better person. He didn't realize how terrible you actually are."

"I'm not terrible."

Even as it comes out it sounds like a lie.

Bentley stands up from the chair. He approaches where I sit and leans over. My muscles brace for death.

"Do you remember when we kissed, Hannah?" he says into my ear.

"You kissed me," I respond. I worry about how I smell, my hangover breath and yoga pants still damp with my urine.

"Only because you wanted me to."

"I love William."

"You thought he was a murderer until today."

"No, I thought that he might be a murderer. There's a difference."

"And that wasn't enough of a deal-breaker for you?" Bentley stands up and folds his arms over his chest. He's looking at me like a person who knows that they're right.

"What about Virginia? Does she know what you've done?"

"I don't want to talk about Virginia," Bentley replies.

This seems like an unfair term of the discussion, but I'm in no position to argue.

"Fine," I say. "Maybe I did think William was guilty and maybe I did like it when you kissed me and maybe I did take advantage of your family's money. Is that what you want to hear?"

Bentley smiles.

"I knew you liked it when I kissed you. I liked it too."

It's pleasing to me, even now, that a man like Bentley enjoyed kissing me. For all my feminist posturing, I can never fully get away from this desire to please men. I'm not even sure what it would look like to fully please myself. All the moments in which I have loved myself most have been through someone else's gaze.

When Bentley leans down to kiss me, I accept it.

"Did you like that?" he says.

I do like it and I hate myself for that, but I've already been playing this game for months. There is little difference between kissing a man who you think might be a murderer and a man who you know is one. It occurs to me that this might be my last ever kiss. That Bentley will be the last person to touch my body while I'm still alive to feel it. I have so many regrets that they're not even worth counting.

I kiss Bentley again in response. I realize that I've been waiting for this, a resolution to what happened that night in the bar. I just didn't realize that it would likely end in my own death.

"What would you do if you only had twenty-four hours to live?" I posed to Meghan once.

"Eat all the ice cream I could," she replied, and we both laughed.

I have no ice cream. All I have is this man in front of me.

"I'll fuck you if you let me live," I whisper, and Bentley laughs.

"Oh, Hannah," he says. "I do like you."

We gaze at each other as he unties my ropes. I do my best to make an escape attempt, but it feels like playacting as he grabs me and holds me so that I can't move.

"Don't do that," he says.

We kiss again. For a moment, both of us are free and we lower ourselves to the floor, which is cold, but I don't care. Any sensation is a worthwhile sensation when I know that I have so few of them left. Bentley reties the ropes so that my hands are above my head as I lie on the floor. I can tell that he's practiced at this. When I try to picture how I look lying there, I see Anna Leigh's face instead of my own.

He slowly pulls down my sweatpants. I'm briefly embarrassed to be wearing something so obviously unsexy and then I push the embarrassment aside. There's no room left for that in my life.

I don't bother pretending that I don't want Bentley to fuck me or that this is somehow against my will. We will have sex and then he will kill me and I will be memorialized like all the other women who came before me. There's something so logical in this inevitability that it's almost comforting.

He touches my clit and I wonder at the fact that my pleasure still seems important to him even as he's threatening to kill me. I moan and don't bother to parse the distinction between pleasure and pain.

People always think of violent men as having small penises, but that isn't true for Bentley. He pulls down his pants and I gasp when I see it, which makes him laugh. Bentley enters me and I think, Ah, yes, this is what it really feels like to have a serial killer inside of me. It's scary and thrilling and I'm able to wholly devote myself to this moment in a way that I haven't fully experienced anything in a long time.

"Are you sure you want to kill me?" I whisper as Bentley ejaculates.

"I have to," he replies, matching my tone.

He kisses me on the forehead. It reminds me of William, a gesture that is more paternal than sexy, and then slowly pulls out.

The sky is pitch-black and starless out the window behind us, as though Bentley and I are the last things to exist in the universe. It's a game of desert island where the human race fails to survive because one of the two remaining people is compelled to kill the other.

There's something peaceful in the knowing. I once read an article online that said the rejuvenating force of a vacation isn't the trip itself, but the anticipation of a break. The power of death lies in its inevitability combined with its unpredictability. We all know it's coming; we just don't know when and that makes it terrifying. Except for me. I know because I sought it out in the body of a man.