Page 64 of The Carnage We Keep

“Like me,” I mutter.

“A literal Murder Muppet?!” He throws his head back and roars a laugh. “Oh, that is good.”

“I’m glad you’re finding the comedic value in all this,” I growl dryly.

“Wait, so…how like you is she?”

I frown. “I mean she’s like me, Cenzo. She…you know.”

“Kills people?”

I nod. My brother sucks on his teeth as he digests that.

“Hmm. But you’re not out there whacking hitchhikers or strangling coeds in creepy cabins in the woods. You have…you know, your thing.”

He means my code.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve done some serious research on psychopathy and antisocial personally disorder as it pertains to people like me who kill. Fun fact: at any given point, there’s an estimated fifty active serial killers at large in the U.S.

Another fun, highly relevant fact: the U.S. national homicide clearance rate is around fifty-eight percent. As in forty-fucking-two percent of murders in this country go unsolved. But that clearance rate jumps to a staggering ninety-five percent when you focus exclusively on serial killers.

This actually makes perfect sense. A single murder means a single murder scene. There’s only so much evidence to collect. But if someone commits several murders, that means several crime scenes. Not to mention that serial killers tend to follow a pattern, and law enforcement loves them a good pattern.

Another big reason that the “gotcha” number is so high for serial killers is that they have a way of picking victims that people give a shit about. Pretty college girls getting strangled with electrical wire and left in truck stop restrooms or road-side ditches make headlines. Headlines get public outcry. And public outcry, like it or not, is a huge factor in crimes actually being solved.

I learned all of this at the library and on the internet when I was nine. Later, when the pressure inside of me grew too strong to contain and my dad was forced to acknowledge that I wasn’t just “like” him but was him to the nth degree, we found an excellent solution that would satisfy my urges and keep me out of prison.

People care about innocents getting murdered. But no one gives a fuck when pieces of shit get flushed down the drain. You kill a sorority girl, you’re going to have problems. But stomp out a violent pedophile?

Now we’re talking cold cases that no one gives a shit about.

“You mean my code.”

Cenzo rolls his eyes. “Dude, you watched way too much Dexter when you were way too young,” he chuckles.

I flip him off.

“And, like, you might have your code and all that. But what about her?” His smile drops. “What happens when your psycho new wife decides you’re her next⁠—”

“Not gonna happen.”

He frowns. “You might have an inflated sense of your own charisma, pal. You are not as charming as you think.”

“Trust me,” I sigh, “I’m never going to be a target for her.”

“Why not?”

I shrug. “Probably because I’m not a pedo piece of shit?”

He cocks a brow. “Wait, she also has a code like you?”

“More or less.”

“Interesting,” Cenzo muses. He glances over at me. “So when you killed Gaz⁠—”

“We didn’t.” I frown. “It’s…complicated. We were there for someone else⁠—”

My brother explodes with another laugh as he points a finger at me. “Dude, this is like the most fucked up rom-com ever.”