“I dumped his body down the shaft in two industrial bins I’d bought in cash from a hardware store with no cameras. I doused his remains in oxygen bleach and left nothing in the house—not a single hair off my head, no blood from him. Only a little urine in the bed from where his bladder let go.
“The key to getting away with it is this: no body, no murder. I left his car in the driveway, but I took his wallet. He had no wife, no children. Our professors were hardly the picture of reliability. I knew it might be weeks before he was properly reported missing. By then, I doubted a police dog could get a sniff of anything in his house.
“I had no fear of being caught. In fact, in the aftermath, I felt deeply peaceful. No itch tormenting me anymore. I had righted the scales.”
Mara gives a slow shake of her head, understanding that wasn’t the end of it. Not even close.
“Shaw knew,” she murmurs.
“That’s exactly right. Alastor watched it all happen, from the moment Professor Oswald turned on me. The other students knew I’d fallen out of favor, but only Alastor knew why.
“Once the news of the professor’s disappearance spread across the school, Alastor intercepted me on the way to the library. By this point I’d given him enough verbal slaps that he knew better than to speak to me, but he did it anyway, sidling up and saying in his overly-familiar way, ‘I suppose you’re glad to see Oswald gone.’
“I played it off. I said, ‘The professors miss more classes than the students do. He’ll be back when he remembers he needs his paycheck.’ Shaw licked his lips, giving me this grin like we both knew better. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.”
“Was he threatening to tell someone?” Mara asks.
“No, no, no. The game with Shaw has never been about exposing each other. He wants to be in on the secret together. He never intended to be rivals: he wants to collaborate.”
Mara’s face blanches. She was another of Shaw’s attempts at “collaboration.” He began the process of killing her, hoping I would complete it.
I take a breath. This is the part I didn’t want to tell her. The part I’ve tried not to think about since. The only other thing that’s ever made me feel guilty.
“At that point, as far as I know, Shaw had never killed anyone. I’m sure he had thought about it. Fantasized. Watched movies, read books, looked at porn that scratched a certain type of itch for him. But it was all theoretical. All imagination.
“I had taken fantasy into the real world. And to Shaw, I was a hero. An icon. Everything he wanted to be, but wasn’t. Any boy at our school with talent or swagger wanted to be friends with me. All the girls wanted to date me. None more than Valerie.
“I liked her, but I wasn’t interested in dating anyone. All I cared about was the trajectory of my career. Now that Oswald was out of the way, every door stood wide open.
“Shaw was obsessed with Valerie. She had a specific look that you’ve probably seen replicated in every girl he’s killed: slim, beautiful, with long dark hair, and at least one tattoo.”
“Everyone except Erin,” Mara murmurs.
“That’s right. Everyone except Erin.”
“Even me.”
“Yes,” I admit. “Though for me, that had nothing to do with Valerie. I noticed you because of what you did with that dress. But I’m sure Shaw loved that our tastes were finally aligning.”
“He wanted Valerie because he thought you wanted her.”
“Yes. He could never understand the difference between respect and desire.”
Mara sighs. “I don’t know if they are that different. It wasn’t your looks that drew me at first—I admired you. So much that it overpowered everything else.”
“You didn’t want me for my looks?” I say, pretending to be hurt.
Mara laughs, despite herself.
“Not back then,” she says, “But don’t worry, I’ve become much more shallow. Now I notice them every minute of the day.”
“Thank you,” I say, tossing my hair and smoothing it back with both hands.
Mara sorts and punches me playfully on the arm. But then she remembers what we were discussing, and her smile falls away.
“I’m guessing there’s a reason I’ve never heard of Valerie Whittaker,” she says.
“Yes.” I’m likewise not smiling anymore. “There’s a reason. They found her body draped across the lap of the sculpture of Lincoln on our campus lawn. Her naked flesh covered in bruises and bite marks. The first appearance of the Beast of the Bay, though I’ve never seen the police make the connection.”
Even though she knew it was coming, Mara’s face falls into lines of deep misery. She feels for each of these girls as if she knew them.
In this case, I did know Valerie. Mara is right to mourn her loss.
“Shaw left her there for me, like a cat bringing a dead bird to your doorstep. I didn’t have to see his smug smile the next morning in class to know who had done it.”
I swallow down the disgust rising in my throat.
“He thought I’d be impressed. Proud of him, even. I shut him down hard. Turned away if he even tried to speak to me. That was the real start of our enmity. He had shaken off my snubs before. But failing to acknowledge his first kill … that he couldn’t forgive.”
“Did you consider telling the police?” Mara asks.
“No. Shaw would expose me in turn. There was no evidence of what I’d done to Professor Oswald—Shaw hadn’t found my dumping ground yet. But he could draw attention where I didn’t want it.
“I felt sorry for Valerie, to a degree. But you have to understand Mara, I had no real attachment to her, or to anyone. Not until I met you.”
For Mara, who bonds with everyone she meets, this must seem incomprehensible. Still, she nods, understanding me even on our point of greatest difference.
“Valerie’s death drew much more attention than the professor’s disappearance. The arrival of TV cameras was exhilarating to Shaw. That was when he truly began to transform: he arrived at school with his hair freshly cut and combed, wearing an outfit that was almost stylish. He spoke confidently to the cameras, telling them how close he was to Valerie, how wonderful she was, what a loss her talent would be to the art world, and how he hoped whoever had done it would be caught quickly.
“Her death energized him. He made his first painting that scored the top mark in the class—a large abstract in brilliant color.”
Mara grimaces, finally understanding what each of those garish, vibrant canvases means to Shaw. His technicolor rainbows are the energy he feels when he brutalizes a girl, ripping her soul from her body in wild, erotic abandon.
“That’s what the inside of his head looks like,” I tell Mara. “And that’s why you have to be very fucking careful around him. I’ve killed from anger, or because I felt justified. Shaw delights in it. There is nothing more erotic to him than causing pain. Hearing a woman’s screams as he rips her apart. If he ever gets the chance, he will slaughter you without hesitation. He wants to kill you. More than anything else. More than he wants to kill me. He wants me alive to see what he’s done to you.”
Mara sways in her chair, her skin dull as chalk.