Kate sagged. She had a sudden heartbreaking vision of Nikki hanging in her parents’ house. “Did you kill Nikki McCormack?”
“How else was I supposed to get your attention, Kate? You ignored all my letters. I had to orchestrate our meeting at the funeral somehow.”
“And you’ve been following me around for years?” she said. “Why not just kill me?” Her voice was shrill, but Palmer didn’t respond. Kate choked back a sob. “Did you kill Nelly, too?”
“No. But there’s no mystery about who did: Derrick Ward’s a brutal man.”
“Who are you to speak of brutal men?”
“I wasn’t always this way. I was an obedient child. But your mother changed me. I loved her, and she mocked me for it. There were hundreds of girls in Stigler’s study—why did I choose only nine? Julia had a thing for Eddie Gafford. She flirted with Emera Mason’s father. I could go on.”
“So everything goes back to my mother?” Kate exclaimed. “It’s her fault?”
Palmer shrugged. “None of us is innocent.”
“She never did anything to you.”
“She shamed me.”
Kate tried to keep her voice even. “I don’t believe she made you who you are. Something happened, something that made you turn a corner. So what was it, Palmer? What allowed the pre-existing psychopathy to bloom?”
Palmer raised an eyebrow. “You want a convenient story? Fine. My father was a beat cop in Manchester. Same shift for years, noon to midnight. Everybody knew him, and they relied on him to keep the neighborhood safe. But at home he was a mean bastard, who beat up me and my mom. He left us when I was six, and after that, Mom fell apart. Looking back, there was always something beneath the surface, but Dad kept it in check with his fists. Once he was gone she became paranoid, she smoked and drank and watched TV for hours. She went for long walks and came back with grass clinging to her ankles. I suspected she went down to the train tracks, that she was thinking of throwing herself in front of the train.
“Gradually she became more unhinged.” Palmer smiled crookedly at Kate in the rearview mirror. “You’d have recognized the signs. She became like Julia. The house was filthy. One day I found her kneeling on the kitchen floor, picking up grains of spilled oatmeal, sobbing. Another time she became convinced her face was lopsided. She spent hours staring at herself in the mirror. That’s when she started buying dolls from Goodwill. She said their faces were perfect. Soon our house was full of them. At first they scared the daylights out of me—they never moved, they never spoke. But I grew to like them for that very reason.
“Every day after school, I’d come home and Mom would be playing with her dolls. She painted their faces and cut their hair. One day, she attacked me with a pair of scissors. She stabbed me sixteen times—luckily she didn’t hit anything vital. Then she sat on my chest and cut off my hair, even my eyebrows. She claimed that I brought lice into the house, and they were eating her brains out. After that they put her away, but the doctors never made her right. Treatment back then was brutal—hydrotherapy, lobotomy, meds that gave her the shakes. She died in an asylum.” He shrugged. “That’s the end of my story.”
They were traveling in the foothills along the western slope of a mountain. Tight and winding curves. Sharp drop-offs on either side of the road.
“Once you enter the darkness,” he said, “the darkness enters you.”
A trickle of sweat curled down Kate’s cheek.
“A dead person smells almost sweet,” he went on, “like rotting fruit. Once you carry a dead person in your arms, she’s always with you.”
Kate’s heart fluttered. She sawed at the tape. Almost there. Keep going.
“You’re a psychiatrist. What do you think I suffer from? Persecutory delusions? Narcissistic personality disorder? Or just plain old ordinary psychopathy?”
She paused, breathing hard. “You want the truth?”
He shrugged. “Give it your best shot.”
“I think you’re sick and tired of playing games. You want to show the world who you really are and what you’ve accomplished. You want to brag a little.”
His face twitched. “I’ve done all the bragging I care to.”
She softened her tone. “You’re damaged, and maybe you can’t be cured. But you can change. You can stop any time you want.”
“Kate.” Palmer laughed. “That’s so transparent.”
“Talk to me. I’m not going anywhere.”
He let the silence stretch.
“You know what you are. But I’m sensing you want to change that.” She was lying—he would never change. She was stalling for time. Her fingers were busy. She could feel pins and needles in her hands as she worked the ring back and forth in a sawing motion. “You must be tired of playing games with people who don’t realize what you’ve done. But in a world where everyone else is stupid, doesn’t it get boring?”
“That’s why you’re here. I’m not done with you yet.” He raised an eyebrow. “And isn’t that the real question? What I’m going to do with you?”
She nodded slowly.
“So? Spit it out, Kate. Quit beating around the bush.”
She swallowed hard. “What are you going to do to me?”
He smiled broadly. “I don’t know yet. That’s the beauty of it. But you belong to me now.”
She had no emotions left to bargain with. She felt her resistance melting, like flesh melting off bone.
Then in one swift motion, she ripped the duct tape off her wrists, unbuckled her seatbelt, reached forward, and grabbed Palmer by the neck. She squeezed tight. His hands left the wheel and he slammed on the brakes. He lost control of the vehicle.
There was the smell of burning rubber as they slewed across the road and plunged down an embankment, dropping through the snowy woods, bumping over ditches and overgrown trails until they hit a stand of trees.
The collision was explosive. Glass shattered. Kate flew forward into the front seat as the airbags burst open like rotten watermelons. She felt her face colliding with plastic and trapped air, and then… nothing.
59
KATE HEARD A SOFT ticking sound and opened her eyes, only vaguely aware of where she was. She saw the world through a fuzzy lens. Fear burned through her. The Jeep had collided with a huge evergreen tree, now bent at an angle, the bark stripped off and the trunk split. The vehicle was upright but leaning at a steep angle. The front end was crumpled, and the windshield had shattered.
Steam. Smoke. She stirred in her seat, and pieces of glass shifted off her lap. Shattered glass fell out of her hair. A chilly breeze blew across her face. The driver’s side door was flung open, and Palmer was gone. She looked outside into the whiteness and couldn’t find him anywhere.
She tried to open her door, but of course it was locked. She started to pull herself into the front of the car to get out of the driver’s door, but her legs and ankles were still bound together. The glove compartment had popped open, flinging its contents into the back seat. Kate rummaged through the debris—road maps, spare change, sunglasses, a greasy red bandana. She wrapped the bandana around her hand for protection, selected the biggest piece of glass she could find, and then used it to cut the duct tape off her legs and ankles. Moments later she was free.