Authors: Chelsea Cain
They were alone. A trickle of fear inched down Susan’s arms and she reached into her bag and got out one of the spray cans and pushed the purse on the floor in front of her.
Susan glanced in the car’s rearview mirror, looking for telltale flashing blue and red lights. There would be sirens any minute. There were probably dozens of cop cars headed to that intersection.
Henry would secure the situation. You could count on Henry for that—securing situations. Jeremy didn’t stand a chance. She almost smiled. She’d like to see him try to pierce Henry.
“Jeremy has a gun,” Pearl said from the backseat.
Susan snapped her head around. “What?”
Pearl sat, cross-armed, slumped in the back, her goggles on the top of her head like a pair of sunglasses. “I just thought of it,” she said. “He showed it to me once. Said he got it from his father.”
Susan lifted her hand over her mouth and sank into her seat, unsure what to do. Henry had gone inside. Did she roll down the window and yell? Get out of the car? Did she call him on his cell phone? Figure out how the fuck to use the radio?
She twisted around and looked out the back windshield. Where was the backup?
Then she heard it.
If she’d been walking by, she would not have known it was a gunshot. It was a dull pop—the kind of thing that could be easily explained away by a car backfire or a firecracker.
But it wasn’t either of those things.
Someone inside had been shot, or someone had tried to shoot someone.
“Shit,” she said.
“Was that a gun?” Pearl asked, suddenly sounding her age.
Susan needed to go inside.
There was no choice now. Henry could be shot, lying in there, bleeding. She grabbed her purse off the floor and tossed it back to Pearl. “Stay in the car. When backup gets here, tell them what’s happening. There’s mace in the bag if you need it. Don’t touch anything else in my purse.”
Pearl looked pale. “Okay,” she said.
Susan started walking to the loading-bay door. She moved quickly, the spray can in one hand, thumb on the nozzle. Her entire focus was on the door. Get to the door. Go inside. Don’t get shot.
Four people were killed every hour in the U.S. by guns. It made her feel better. What were the odds one of them would be Henry? Archie? I mean, four people. It was a big country. Over 300 million people. There were people shooting at each other right this minute in much bigger cities—spurned lovers, crazed high school students, bank robbers, you name it.
She got to the door. It was still open a crack, but it was dark inside and she couldn’t see anything. “Henry?” she croaked. “Are you okay?”
No one answered.
She lifted the spray can and went inside. She was getting to be an expert at entering dirty, unlit rooms, and she paused for a moment just inside the door to let her eyes adjust. There were some broken windows that let in shards of light, and once her pupils dilated, Susan could actually make out quite a bit. Pieces of rotting wooden pallets scattered the floor. Whatever they had made there had once been stored in boxes in this room, then loaded through the door onto trucks and shipped off to long-dead customers.
She stood perfectly still and listened. Every hair on her body lifted.
Someone coughed. It was Archie. Susan didn’t know how she
knew. She didn’t question it. It was Archie’s cough. She was certain of it.
Susan searched for the origin of the sound and identified a door that stood open on the opposite wall. She hurried to it, not even trying to dodge the splintered two-by-fours in her path.
From outside, one siren wailed its approach, and then there seemed to be a thousand all at once.
But Susan had crossed the room then.
The next room was bigger, the old manufacturing floor. A single light hung from an extension cord in the center of the room. Archie was naked, on his hands and knees, trying to stand. He looked up and saw her and she ran to him.
As she got closer she saw the bandages on his back, the white already soaked through with blood. He tried again to stand, putting his hands on his knees for leverage, and he managed to get unsteadily to his feet. His legs were lacerated and bleeding. He was buck naked. But this was not what shocked Susan. What shocked her were the scars. Susan had read the case files, the newspaper clippings—she’d even read The Last Victim. She knew what Gretchen had done to him. She knew about the basement splenectomy. She knew that Gretchen had driven nails into his chest, broken his ribs, played doctor on him with an X- Acto knife and scalpel. She knew she’d cut a heart into his chest.
But she had never seen the aftermath. His torso was brutalized, webbed with scar tissue; the slight brown hair grew in patches, around slick white new skin. There wasn’t a square inch on his chest that hadn’t been marked by her. The largest scar, the one that split him in two up the midsection, was a knotty pink rope, umbilical-like. But the one that her eyes fell to, that she had to force herself not to stare at, was the heart-shaped scar below his left scapula. Two years old, and it still looked raw, like he had spent months picking at it.
She stepped close to him, lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and wrapped her arm around his waist, the spray can still clutched in her hand. He cringed from her touch, and she saw the deep purple bruise on his side where he must have been Tasered, and she adjusted her hand lower on his hip. He swayed and his weight shifted and it was all she could do to hold him up. But his eyes were clear and focused. “I heard a shot,” he said.
“Henry came in first,” Susan said.
“I didn’t see him,” Archie said. He nodded, like he was trying to make sense of things. “My legs aren’t working yet.” He looked over at Susan. “Can you get us out of here?”
A police megaphone crackled to life outside and Susan could hear someone shouting orders, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
She kept her focus on the door. Archie could barely walk, and it took all her effort to guide him, step by step, toward the exit. “Will they come in?” she asked.
“They need to secure the perimeter,” Archie said. “Determine hostages. They won’t come in unless they hear another shot.”
To the left of their path, just at the edge of the circle of light, sat a massive pockmarked anvil. It was the only manufacturing tool they’d left in the place, like they’d cleaned out the building and decided it was too heavy to move.
“What was this place?” Susan asked.
“They made axes,” Archie said.
She saw the glint of it before she saw the weapon itself. The steel head was orange with rust and the wooden handle had faded to a soft gray. Jeremy was moving fast, and the axe was held high. He came at them, a blur. Susan thought Jeremy screamed, but it was so loud in her head, the scream might have been coming from her.
She untangled her arm from Archie’s waist, held the spray can high, squeezed her eyes shut, and pushed down on the nozzle.
Spray. Move.
She couldn’t move. She tried, but she was rooted to the floor, bracing for the blow from the axe. She could still hear the screaming.
Lizzie Borden took an axe.
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done.
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden had murdered her stepmother, not her mother. And she’d done it with just nineteen whacks.