cool to be a detective. I really wanted to be a cop, you know, but my parents had other ideas. I still think about it—all the time. But Miranda, my wife, doesn’t like the idea any more than my parents—”
He went on, but Harrison wasn’t listening. He was thinking about the footage of Gray entering Briggs’s room right after Briggs’s murder. What is this worth? That’s the question he found himself asking a lot. Where does this have the most value? Does it help my case, my career? How much would Gray Powers pay to make this go away? Then he came back to himself and flushed with shame; that was an old way of thinking. This now was about me, about helping Annie Powers—or whatever my name was. But if he could do that and still help himself, wasn’t that even better?
I don’t know how long it was after we’d left my father’s place that I met Simon Briggs; it might have been six months or more. All the days and months during that period run together, and I have no markers for the passage of time. I know now that I’d had a total psychotic break and that even though much of my memory has returned, many of the day-to-day events are never coming back. I can’t say I’m sorry. But there must have been moments of lucidity, because when some of these memories return, they are painfully vivid.
The night I first saw Briggs, I was sitting in a diner with Marlowe. We’d both altered our appearances. I’d dyed my hair an awful black. With my pale skin, I looked like a ghoul. Marlowe had shaved his hair and had grown a goatee and mustache. He looked like a vampire skinhead. You’d think at this point we wouldn’t have been able to eat in public. In the movies a killer eats at a truck stop and his picture is posted behind the counter or randomly pops up on the television screen. Someone notices him, and the chase is on. But in the real world, people are oblivious, living in their own little heads. They barely see what’s going on around them, and when they do, they rarely believe their own eyes.
Marlowe went to the bathroom, and while I waited, staring into the depths of my coffee cup, a man walked past me too close and dropped a napkin onto the table. I turned to see his wide, heavy frame and the back of his bald head as he walked out the door.
I unfolded the napkin. There was a note: Bad things are about to happen to Marlowe Geary. Save yourself, if you still can.
I crushed the note in my hand and dropped it on the floor, adrenaline flooding my body.
“What’s wrong?” asked Marlowe when he returned and sat across from me.
I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m tired.”
“You’re always tired,” he said.
“Maybe it’s the company I keep,” I said, the words escaping before I could catch them. He looked at me, surprised. Then he leaned his face close to mine over the table. “Watch yourself.” His voice was tight with menace. There was a trail of brutally murdered women behind us, his tone said to me, and I could easily be next.
I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The bathroom was filthy, dirt gritty on the tile floor, graffiti scratched on the stalls, and it smelled of urine. I was unrecognizable to myself with my jet-black hair and pallid complexion; my reflection was frightening.
How can I explain myself? How can I explain my relationship to Marlowe Geary, who I loved and hated, feared and clung to? I can’t, not then, not now. Save yourself, if you still can.
When I walked back out, Marlowe had already left the restaurant. I knew he was outside waiting for me in the car. That’s how sure he was of me. There were two uniformed officers sitting at the counter. They hadn’t been there when I entered the bathroom, but now they sat, both drinking coffee from white ceramic mugs. Their radios chattered; large revolvers hung at their hips. Their shirts were bulky with the Kevlar they wore beneath. I think we were in Pennsylvania at the time. I remember that the uniforms were brown, light shirts with dark jackets and pants. One of them laughed at something the other said.
Everything around me slowed and warped as I approached the counter where they sat. Save yourself, if you still can. I