He looks up at the ceiling of the cell, clasps his hands behind his back. Sighs, like this is all terribly wearing.
‘All right, then. Special Agent Carter should check vital records for a list of Pittsburgh residents who died in the eight weeks prior to the first murder. Check their beneficiaries for young men in the target demographic – poor Peter simply can’tstandto be alone. There will be a link to Brosky, although you may have to dig a little. Use the composite you’ve created to match identification. It should all be fairly simple.’
There it is.Emma feels a crushing weight lift, but flooding in to take its place is a pall of exhaustion. Does it show on her face, how tired she feels? She needs to get out of here.
‘Is that everything?’
Simon shows his large, empty palms. ‘That’s everything I have. You’ve wrung me dry of truth. All that stands between us now are these bars.’
Emma says a silent prayer of gratitude for the bars. ‘Okay. Thank you, Simon.’
She nods, preparing to turn. But Simon has already moved nearer, the folds of his blue scrubs pressing against the cold steel of the cell bars.
‘Will you come to my execution, Emma?’
She blinks, caught off guard by the question. ‘I … I don’t know if I can do that.’
‘I would like to see you one last time. And someone should be there for Kristin.’
Go with honesty.‘I don’t like watching people die.’
‘You would deny my final request?’ Simon straightens, and his eyebrows lift. His expression shifts in subtle ways. ‘Am I not the only one to have seen your agony and looked you in the eye afterward?’
Emma feels her hackles rise. ‘Are you expecting applause?’
‘To view is to witness – it’s not a passive act.’ Simon’s eyes peer out from below the fall of his white hair. ‘I ask only that you stand witness to my throes, as I stood witness to yours.’
‘I didn’t ask you towitnessanything.’ A pulse of pain at her temple, a lightning bolt. ‘If you watched the videotape, you only witnessed a version of me that Huxton constructed. Not the real me. Not the me I am inside, not the me I am now.’
‘Indeed?’ Simon’s full lips are sly at the corners. ‘But so much of the current you was prologued in that construction, dear Emma.’
Her spine goes rigid immediately. ‘That’s not true.’
‘You were then as you are now. You held nothing back.’
‘Simon, don’t.’ She feels his attention on her like a thick tongue lapping at her brain stem.
His voice slithers in the space between them. ‘The other girls were catatonic from long use, but you were fresh and raw andreal. You fought so hard—’
‘Shut up.’ She is losing control of this conversation.
‘Do you remember the ritual of it? The sliver of light would enlarge as the door opened. He would come down the stairs …’
Emma closes her eyes. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘He removed his rings, one by one.’
I was down there. He grabbed me, and I went down…She gripsthe back of her neck. All her muscles are wires. The brown granite of the jail presses on her, and Emma scrapes for energy to combat it, comes up dry.
‘Stop now,’ she whispers.
Simon presses against the bars, greedy for her reactions. ‘The girls would start to cry. There must have been a smell—’
‘Sweat.’ Her throat is like a desert. ‘He smelled of sweat.’
‘Vicki and Tammy could only make the sounds of crying, with no tears. Were they too dehydrated?’
Emma shakes her head, furious, then nods, helpless.
