My Lovely Wife

But my guess is that Crystal told Millicent. She was tortured into it.

I do not want to think about that.

The press conference is still on, and Claire introduces a man whose name I recognize from a documentary about Owen. He is a rather famous profiler, now retired, who is now an independent consultant and has written several true-crime books. This man—this tall, thin, decrepit-looking man—steps up to the podium and says he has never encountered a killer like me.

“He kills women he knows in a peripheral way, such as this cashier, and he also has created a separate persona, a deaf man named Tobias, that he uses to find more victims. The variety of methods used may be what has kept him from being discovered for so long.”

Or maybe it’s all a lie. But no one says that.

Piece by piece, my life is destroyed, like it was never real at all. It was just a line of dominoes set up by Millicent. The faster they fall, the less likely it seems I can get myself out of this.

And still I watch.

I watch until my eyes blur and my head feels like its crumbling into my neck.

Definitive proof. This is what I need. Something like DNA evidence on a murder weapon, or video of Millicent killing one of these women.

I just don’t have it.

* * *

• • •

The phone wakes me up. In the middle of watching my personal apocalypse, I dozed off. Kekona’s theater seats are just too comfortable.

I pick up my phone and hear Andy’s voice.

“Still breathing?”

“Barely.”

“I can’t believe they haven’t caught you.”

“You underestimate my intelligence.” On TV, they are showing a picture of me at my high school prom.

“More like dumb luck,” he says.

On top of everything else, there is the guilt. Andy believes in me because he doesn’t know the half of it.

Another profiler is on TV. He has a deep, twangy accent that makes me want to turn the channel. But I do not.

“The level of torture can be directly correlated to the level of anger the killer has for the victim. For example, the burns on Naomi indicate that the killer was furious with her for some reason. It’s impossible to know if the rage came from something she did or someone she reminded him of. Likely, we won’t know that until he is caught.”

Now I turn the channel. And I see a ghost. My ghost.

Petra.

Sixty-seven

She is not only alive; she looks different. Not as much makeup and less flash. More upscale, as if she has spent the past couple of days getting a makeover. Her blue eyes are sharp and focused, and her previously unremarkable hair is shiny and stylish.

I remember her apartment, her bed. The cat named Lionel. She likes lime green and French vanilla ice cream and she couldn’t believe I like ham on my pizza. I don’t.

I also remember the sound of Petra’s voice when she asked if I was really deaf. The same voice she has now, on TV. Suspicious. Accusatory. A tiny bit hurt.

“I met Tobias in a bar.”

When the reporter asks why she waited days to come forward, Petra hesitates before answering.

“Because I slept with him.”

“You slept with him?”

She nods, hangs her head in shame. For having sex or for choosing me, I don’t know which one. Maybe both.

At first the media portrayed me as just a sick, twisted psychopathic serial killer. Now I am a sick, twisted psychopathic serial killer who cheats on his wife.

As if people needed another reason to hate me.

If they knew where I was, they would be lined up with pitchforks. But they don’t know, so I am still able to sit here, watch TV, eat junk food, and wait until they either find me or Kekona returns home. Whichever comes first.

Petra goes from being nowhere to everywhere. She lies about some things, tells the truth about others. With each interview, the story becomes a little more detailed and my depression digs in a little deeper.

I still have moments when I think I can do something, so for hours I go through that stupid tablet like something new will appear. Perhaps a video of Millicent in that basement or a list of the women to kill.

When I’m not doing something useless, I am useless. A lump of self-hate and pity, wondering why I ever got married in the first place. Wishing I had never seen Millicent, much less sat next to her on that airplane. I wouldn’t have turned into who I am now without her.

And when I’m not sinking into the quicksand of depression, I stare at the TV. I pretend all of this is someone else’s problem.

I wonder how much my kids hate me. And what Dr. Beige is saying about me. I bet he is telling Jenna I am the source of all her problems. It was never Millicent, never Owen, always me. Because it couldn’t be her.

Andy calls again.

“I saw your wife,” he says.

“You what?”

“Millicent. I went over to your house and saw her,” he says.

“Why?”

“Look, I’m trying to help you out here. It’s not like I want to be in the same room with that woman,” he says. “So I called her. Millicent and I have a lot in common. We’ve both lost our spouses.”

Except I’m not dead. “Were the kids there?”

“Yes, saw them both. They’re fine. Maybe a little stir-crazy, because they’re staying in the house. The media and all.”

“Did they say anything about me?”

A pause. “No.”

This is probably good news, but it still hurts.

“Listen, whatever you’re going to do, you better do it fast,” Andy says. “Millicent said she wants to take the kids and get out of here for a while.”

This would be reasonable for a wife who’d discovered her husband is a serial killer. It would also be reasonable for a serial killer who’d framed her husband. “She didn’t say where, did she?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“One more thing,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“If I hadn’t talked to you before all this happened, I don’t know if I’d believe you. Not after seeing Millicent like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like she’s devastated.”

The last part is what worries me. No one is going to believe a word I say. Not without proof.

* * *

• • •

As the hours pass, I sink further into Kekona’s chair. The images on the TV float past my eyes: Lindsay, Naomi, me, Petra, Josh. He is talking, always talking, and he repeats everything. Autopsy. Strangled. Tortured. He must have said that last one a million times.

At one million and one, I sit up straight.

I am up, racing around Kekona’s house, throwing aside my clothes and garbage until I find it.

Millicent’s tablet.

She had looked at medical websites for information about the kids’ ailments, but maybe there was more. Maybe I had missed it.

If I was going to torture someone but not kill them, I would have to research it. And I would start by looking up various injuries on medical websites.

A long shot. A very, very long shot.

As stupid as I feel for thinking that this kind of evidence might be on the tablet, what keeps me going is imagining how stupid I would feel if I didn’t look … and it was right there all along.