After he passed out, his dogs escaped through a driveway gate he’d failed to close all the way behind himself earlier that evening. Given their reputation as fearsome beasts, it took only one or two sightings of the dogs running along Pala Temecula Road before neighbors placed concerned calls to local law enforcement. A little while later, a routine door knock ended up unmasking one of the most sadistic serial killers in American history.
Since then cable news has been filled with criminal justice and forensics experts who can’t get enough of this story. Of its crazy irony. The killer being brought down by the implements of his crimes. None of them have paused to wonder if it’s all too neat. If perhaps the whole thing was staged.
Maybe they do, just during commercial breaks.
If Cole Graydon’s men left behind any evidence that a combat-ready team of soldiers had practically blown the place apart in the minutes before I was triggered, local law enforcement hasn’t found any of it.
As for Pemberton, the contents of his confession have not yet been made public, aside from the fact that it’s most definitely a confession. What other choice did he have? the experts ask. Was he really going to insist that the entire contents of his lab, right down to the three faceless corpses in his refrigerator, were somehow carted in and staged there while he slept on the floor? How would he explain the fact that all of it was slathered with his fingerprints? Maybe he’s told them some crazy story about one of his victims overpowering him, but if he has, the police sure aren’t acting on it. I’m sure I have Cole Graydon and his men to thank for that.
Defeat.
That’s how, in the eyes of the world, the story of the Mask Maker has ended. Total, pathetic defeat.
And I’m not going to lie.
This satisfies me.
It does more than that, to be honest.
It makes me very happy.
So happy that I’m not afraid to admit to myself—and to Luke and to Marty—that my memory of the fear in his eyes, the pain in his expression as I snapped his wrist, does not fill me with guilt. Every now and then I feel like it might. But then I close my eyes and try to imagine the faces of the women whose lives I probably saved, going about their daily business. Laughing. Loving. Crying over silly movies. Future victims of the Mask Maker who might have looked away too quickly from Frederick Pemberton’s unusual features.
I removed from the world the hours of agony and torment and terror Pemberton’s next victims would have suffered at his hands. Save the world? Maybe not. Make it a better place? I think so.
It took me about three days to realize this.
You could say I was in shock. But it wasn’t the kind of shock I’ve heard described by car accident victims. I wasn’t speechless or paralyzed. It was like I was skating across the surface of what had happened. Like if I just didn’t talk about everything I’d done, it would eventually seem perfectly normal. So I went about my days at Marty’s house, then at Luke’s, because his place was bigger, showering, eating, and watching cable news coverage of Pemberton’s arrest.
It was strange, logging in to my e-mail, but it didn’t bring me back to reality the way I expected. The messages waiting there just seemed like terse dispatches from a life that wasn’t mine anymore, most of them inquiries from the travel agency I worked for. The first message was politely curious, the second, concerned. The third, arriving after I’d missed my second shift in a row, was all disciplinary talk of probation. In the fourth, I was fired.
And then there were the voice mails on my cell phone. Several from the Scarlet Police Department, from one of the cops I’d met when I went to register my alarm. Poor guy, he’d sounded so halting and nervous. Probably overwhelmed by federal agents. I thought I could hear some of them talking in the background.
He just wanted to know if I was out there, is all. They’d tried knocking, ringing my buzzer. There’d been a big mess out in the desert nearby, if I hadn’t heard. Could I get back to them as soon as I could?
Five calls over the course of two days. Then they’d stopped altogether as the attention of the federal agencies involved was directed to other sources by an invisible, powerful hand.
Thanks, Cole.
Did he call politician friends and get them to look away? Did he blackmail federal agents into extending their investigation south toward Scarlet and not north toward my house? I’m in no mood to ask the guy. If I ask him anything, I’ll be required to answer his question first, and I’m not ready for that. Not yet.
Around sunset one night, Luke drove me out to the beach and Bayard Rock. He told me it was where he used to bring Bailey when their mom was sick.
Bailey’s got no interest in coming home, apparently. This has hurt Luke’s feelings all over again. Apparently the fact that we’ve made powerful new friends who could probably get Bailey back in the country, maybe even keep the FBI off his back, means nothing to him. Wherever he is, whoever he’s working with, he’s happy there. And it’s hard for Luke to argue with him. Because wherever Bailey is, whoever he’s working with, allowed us to take a vicious monster out of circulation. So can we really complain?
There are already construction vehicles out at the old resort. Clearing out debris. Getting ready to pick up where they left off. There are advertisements for job fairs in town. Mostly construction stuff, but they’re also interviewing for positions at the hotel once it opens. Kitchen staff, housekeeping. Stuff like that. It makes me dizzy to think all that might go away if I turn down Cole’s offer.
For a while Luke and I sat watching the sunset. I’ve taken his physical affection for granted these past few days. At first it just seemed like a natural outgrowth of what we’d been through. Now it’s constant. And welcome. And so when I rested my head against his shoulder as we sat together on the sand, it didn’t seem like a big deal. And when he took my hand in his and held it against his chest, it didn’t seem like a big deal, either.
When our lips finally met, it felt necessary. Essential. Not the forceful, desperate thing I’d seen in movies, and nothing like the hesitant, exploratory hour I’d spent with that guy I met on my road trip. It felt like an extension of what we’d been through. To kiss him. To get as close to his woodsy smell as I possibly could. To learn that his lower lip is sensitive, and if I lift my hands to the sides of his neck and just graze my fingers gently across the muscle there, he gets shivers all over his body. He doesn’t just laugh. He giggles, and then he gets embarrassed that he’s giggling, tries to turn it into a manly laugh, and ends up coughing. Which I really like. A lot.
I never anticipated that just kissing someone could be an event. With different stages and acts. The slow approach. The commitment. The taste. The smell. The withdrawal and then going back in for a second taste, a deeper one. It’s happened three times, and we haven’t had some big talk about it. We haven’t named it. And we haven’t tried to get each other’s clothes off. For now it’s just something we need, even though it’s brief. Even though it’s nameless.
For now.
We’re together right now as I write this, on a plane headed for Atlanta.
The e-mails from Cole have been pretty steady the past two weeks. They all say the same thing: “Ready to hear your decision when you’ve made it. —C.”
But there’s only been one e-mail from Dylan and it arrived yesterday: “Let’s meet. So much to discuss, it seems. —D.”
Followed by a screen cap of a Google map of an area I knew all too well.
Marty offered to go with me, but I could tell he was at risk of losing several jobs given how much time he’d spent away. Luke had put in regular shifts ever since we got back, and he’d told Mona a good enough cover story to explain his absence.
Twenty-four hours. That’s how long we’ve scheduled this trip for. Twenty-four hours that could decide my fate.
And Dylan’s.
It seems insane to be writing in this notebook again.
What if I dropped it or lost it? Whoever picked it up would probably think it was someone’s idea of a novel, that’s what.