Page 48 of The Way We Rot
Before I knew it, I’d downed half the bottle. I held it to him to see if he wanted some too, but he shook his head.
“I have something to tell you,” Adrian said after a few beats of silence.
“Oh, yeah?” I rolled my face toward him, still resting on the headrest. All this escaping business had me tired.
“Yeah.” He didn’t speak again for a few minutes, and the world began to grow fuzzy as sleep took me.
It was taking me fast. Almost dizzying. I tried to sit up straight. Failed.
“I had a brother. I used to be a police officer, and I had a brother.” His voice sounded so stony cold, nothing like the softness he’d just given me. “Eight years ago, I was out for a drink with him, him and some work colleagues, just having a nice time. And you know what happened?”
I tried to tell him no, but my mouth didn’t work with my brain, and my brain swirled around.
“He died.” Adrian paused. “He was killed. He wandered off with a pretty girl and was found hours latermutilated in a warehouse. Dead. Because of who I was.”
“Oh.” Flashes of my last victim flickered through my mind. I tried to lift my arm up to open the door, roll out onto the highway and run the fuck away.
But—
PART TWO
Twenty-One
Adrian
Ichose this place for a reason — an old marionette theater with busted in windows and faded wallpaper, shadows and ghosts in each corner, cobwebs tangling over every edge. It was a miserable place, once shining and full of life, now dead, decaying.
Fitting.
It wasn’t just that it came up on the market at the right moment for when I was looking for… well, looking for a lair, a place to take my time, to build and control. It felt fated. His favorite spot. Jake, my brother, loved it here. When I saw it on the realtor’s website, a sense of belonging struck me.
Jake and I would come here all the time as children, even though no one else did. It stayed at least two-thirds empty, too dark and tired, but for us, it was magic. Watching the marionettes dance across the stage and imagining starting our own theater when wewere grownups. I don’t even know why; neither of us could put a finger on our obsession, and eventually it faded when hormones struck and we decided to hate each other for a while.
Of course that happened; we turned into boring adults. I went into law enforcement, and he’d got a few years into teaching art to high schoolers when he died. He kept his dream alive, teaching our youth to be ambitious, to express themselves through art.
I sought out the worst in society and put them away.
Jake. My little, bright-eyed brother, with so much hope, so much wide-eyed faith in other people that he walked off with a killer. He wasn’t naïve, not innocent, just forgiving, easy to lead. It often took him to great places, hilarious stories, and fun adventures. But that time it led to his death.
We’d grown close, and he came out with my friends often, enjoying the company of one particular detective with long brown hair and a friendly smile. Jake always tagged along to get near my partner, never shy about admitting it.
They were just starting up when it happened.
When he was ripped from me, from us, in the most violent way, by a woman who’d done it many times before. She was vicious, brutal and pure fucking evil. I’d watched her interviews, her apparent apathy and roundabout way of speaking after she was caught.
She spent days at my precinct before being transferred to the county jail. They never let me near her, never even let me watch through the glass. I was grieving, angry and vengeful. So, the big bosses put me on leave. Indefinite leave when I tried to break into her cell half a bottle of vodka deep.
All it did was lead to my festering. Make my insights rot with that need to confront and push her.
Penelope Karner killed my brother and shattered something in me. Snatched away any good.
So I learned, adapted, broke rules and laws to get what I wanted. I dug into her case files without permission. And I learned it all. Who she was, where she’d come from, why she said she did it. She accused Jake of trying torapeher. Every man, she said, had tried to rape her or someone else before she killed them.
Not for a second did I believe that about Jake, no. That wasn’t him. And I doubted he was only her thirdvictim. She’d been too sloppy, too cocky, taking him unplanned, killing with what she had on hand. That was the work of a killer more seasoned.Losing control.
That moment I saw Jake’s autopsy photos, that solidified it for me. The fear and agony frozen on his face, slashes and stabs over all of his body. Her viciousness stained every image, and his pain clawed through to me.
Penelope needed death. The same kind as him. Brutal, prolonged. She needed to know there was nothing she could do.
