I take the knife that he tossed onto my counter. Blood is crusted on it. Andrew’s blood. Reid and his brother will share this too. It has to be a knife. Guns are noisy. I don’t want people to come too soon.
Knife in hand, I return to bed. There’s something strange about how still Reid is when I go back into my room. I knew he was unconscious, but it seems wrong to see him that way.
I’m careful as I crawl onto the bed. I lower the knife tip to his belly and put my weight into pushing it through the flesh and into his body. What we think of as “stomach” from the outside of our skin is really intestine, but I’m not looking to kill him yet. I want him to bleed, to start to die. I want him to die as he has killed, with cuts and wounds, with slowness and care.
Reid jerks as the blade slides into his belly.
Carefully, I stab him again. This time, I aim higher, hoping to catch the liver. That’s a better spot to stab someone.
Killing my husband doesn’t take as long as it feels like it should.
As I stab him, he thrashes, but the drugs do their job perfectly. They’ll wear off, but unless someone asks for an autopsy too soon, I’m not expecting anyone to ever know about the drugs. On TV or movies, people always get autopsied, but the cause of Reid’s death will be readily apparent—and no one will ask a lot of questions about his death. If they do know, it doesn’t really matter.
I’ll be gone. Freedom has cost me my city, but I am alive. I have survived.
There are a lot of things I don’t remember, but so many of the ones I do are awful. If the police find me, here or somewhere else, I will not be able to give them all of the answers.
If I died here, too, no one would be left to mourn me.
Not Michael.
Not Andrew.
Not Reid.
I’m no different than the girls in the tub. Reid chose women with no families, no lovers, no one to look for them. I had money, and a mother I barely spoke to. Now, I don’t have those things either. I’m just like they were.
I look at the bodies in my living room as I walk toward the bathroom. Juliana is the last girl who will be in the tub. She’s the last detail to sort out before I leave New Orleans.
43
Juliana
Tess stands in the doorway. She’s naked and bleeding in so many places I can’t figure out where to look. I hope that at least some of that blood isn’t hers.
For a moment, she just stands there. Then she says, “They’re all dead. Michael. Andrew. Reid. My lovers. All three. Dead. You are not, though.”
I nod. There’s a knife in her hand still. I’m not sure what to think, except I don’t think the Teresa I sought is the same as the woman in front of me now. She’s far from stable; on that at least, Andrew told the truth. I wince at the thought of Andrew. Michael, who arrived with Tess, is dead, too.
And Reid. The Carolina Creeper is dead. That, at least, is a victory.
But if that’s all her blood, I’m not entirely sure if Tess will live.
I’m also not sure if she’s here to kill me.
“Can I help you, Tess?” I ask as carefully as I can when sheShe stands, silently bleeding. “If you have bandages . . .”
She nods.
I tug on the chains on my arms. “If you unlock me, I can help you.”
She nods again, but that’s all she does. She doesn’t move or react. I’m not sure how she’s standing. There are bruises, dried blood, and torn skin.
“He’s dead,” she repeats. “They’re all dead. But not you.”
Tess stares at me, and I wonder if there’s any chance of survival for either of us. If Reid were in the room, there wouldn’t be. She saved me from him. I just don’t know if she means to kill me or free me.
“You can’t leave here like that.” I talk to her as I’ve spoken to so many mourners in my life. “You need to cover up. People would stop you if you left like that. You may be going into shock.”
Again, she nods.
Obviously, this isn’t working, so I try a new tactic: “Unchain me, Tess.”
She meets my gaze. “If I do, you can’t leave yet. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t go to prison.” She holds out the hand with the bloodied knife. “My husband did bad things, but it was wrong to kill him. They’ll think so. It was all I could do. He wanted to hurt you.”
“You saved me.” It’s the truth, but I know it’s not enough. His death was likely self-defense, but what about the rest? If Andrew was to be believed, Tess would be hospitalized for her crimes.
I could lie to her, tell her that won’t happen, but I can’t be sure what she’d do if I tried to stop her.
“You need to get out of the tub so I can wash,” she says. Then, after a too long moment, she adds, “I don’t want you to have to die. Do you understand that?”
“You want me to be safe, but you’ll stop me if I try to leave before you say it’s okay. Is that right?”
She nods.
“I promise, Tess.” I mean it, too.
Maybe that’s the wrong answer, but it’s the one that feels right. There are three dead men in the house. The only person in danger is me. Waiting an hour won’t change anything.
Moving so slowly that I want to weep for her, she comes closer and unhooks the handcuff that has held me captive. The chains clatter to the floor beside the beautiful claw-foot tub.
“Stay in the room.”
I see her staring at the tub as if the thought of climbing into it is akin to scaling a mountain. Softly, I ask, “Can I help you?”
Tess nods again, and I help her into the tub. Over the next two hours, I help her. Eventually, the water isn’t red, and her wounds are bandaged. I apply antibiotic ointment to the worst of them. Some are days old, so I know Reid wasn’t the one who inflicted them.
“Did Michael do that?”
“He wanted to understand Reid.” Tess looks at me like she’s asking a question. “J. Michael Anderson . . . he was a writer. I was his muse.”
I am no longer so sure that the other man’s murder is a crime. “Tess?”
She meets my eyes in the mirror as I stitch her back. My prior experience with stitching flesh is on the dead. I try not to think about how different it is to stitch the living. Tess stays as still as a corpse, despite the lack of pain relief.
“No man should hurt you,” I tell her. “What Michael did, what Reid did . . . you deserve better. You deserve kindness.”
She laughs. It’s not a pretty sound. “I don’t. They weren’t the only monsters in this house. When I’m gone . . . Michael wrote things. Memories. You should take them. Send them to his agent or throw them away.”
I don’t know what they say, but I am sure that I don’t want to know either.
“They’re only partway truth.” Tess watches me in the mirror. “But they have one big truth: I’m not a good person.”
There’s nothing to say to that. I can’t argue because I don’t know what she’s done. I don’t know what Andrew’s done either. I probably never will know the whole of it. After today, there is no chance of answers other than the pages Michael has apparently written.