Priest blinked at me, expression completely unreadable. Then he moved forward, grabbed my hand, and placed a swift kiss to the palm before turning around, buck naked, towel discarded on the wet tile to stroll into the bedroom.
“Sometimes, the cost is worth the reward,” he tossed casually over his shoulder without looking at me before he disappeared out the door.
I sat there for a long while, legs dangling over the porcelain sink, wondering if it was Priest’s close association to death that gave him this magical ability to turn the darkest days of my life somehow to gold.
Bea
I sat at the microphone breathing.
The podcast was officially on the air, the recording sign blinking unobtrusively over the door to the exit.
Eric was behind the soundproof glass window across from me, but I didn’t look at him. We hadn’t spoken beyond a few texts since Priest had interrogated him. I found I didn’t have the energy to give the problem my attention in the grand scheme of everything else. It meant something, though, that he’d shown up for the first podcast since we’d discovered Brenda’s head stuck under the desk.
Priest was there in the room with me, sitting on a chair he’d dragged up from Honey Bear Café. I didn’t bother telling him to be totally silent because I knew he wouldn’t make a sound. I also didn’t bother to tell him I didn’t need him there with me because that was a lie I couldn’t entertain for long, even in my own thoughts.
I felt raw, my skin scraped off with a scalpel, my heart scooped out of my ribs to beat its mangled murmur outside of my chest.
Loulou hadn’t wanted me to continue the podcast. The funeral for Amelia the day before had taken the air out of my lungs, but it was sitting vigil at the hospital while Cleo fought for her life that left me anaemic as if the wound of that tragedy couldn’t or wouldn’t clot.
I bled and bled for her.
It was impossible to feel as if I wasn’t responsible for my best friend getting nearly murdered. As I watched her in a coma in the hospital bed, hearing the news that she’d been stabbed too often in the belly to save her womb, that she would no longer be able to have children even if she survived, it eviscerated me.
The guilt was manageable, mostly, after Priest’s confession and Lion’s speech, but it was the fear that stalked me.
I was more afraid than I have ever conceived of being in my entire life.
I was the little girl who begged to watch rated R horror films, the woman who studied violent crimes and psychopaths in university, who hoped to one day be a criminal profiler.
But there I sat, randomly trembling with bouts of terror that moved through me like ghosts of the women who had already died at the hands of this madman.
Cops were listening in because this entire episode had been an idea they approached me with two days ago, but Lion had them grouped together on the other side of the glass, far enough from me I wouldn’t have to focus on their presence.
I’d been quiet for too long. I needed to find the words I wanted to say, but they lay in graves dug six feet deep in my soul.
Finally, I sighed.
“Hey everyone, I’m Bea Lafayette, and this is another episode of Little Miss Murder. We usually start these episodes with a macabre storytime before we delve into the details of each murderer, their psychological profile, and how they were ultimately found out or brought to justice. Today, I’m going to begin in a slightly different vein by telling you all about a story that has no ending yet.”
I looked over my shoulder to reassure myself with a glance at Priest. He was standing in the back corner beside the chair we’d brought in for him, leaning against the wall while he silently whittled a block of dark wood. The moment I shifted my gaze to him, he looked up, eyes catching mine and tethering my floundering spirit to his so I could find focus.
I took a deep breath.
“For the past few weeks, Entrance has been plagued by the effort of a serial killer the press has dubbed the ‘Prophet of Death’. As you all know, giving serial killers catchy names plays into their psychosis, their need to be seen and acknowledged for their crimes. So, I will not refer to him by this name, but instead simply as ‘the murderer’ or ‘the killer’, so he understands that his violence doesn’t make him unique. It makes him plebeian, one of a score of faceless murderers now caught that the public conscious has forgotten about.”
Lion gave me a thumbs-up through the glass partition. We had gone over my talking notes before, how I would set up the podcast as a live stream in hopes of baiting the murderer into calling or writing in. It was clear to everyone that he was at his breaking point, and he just needed one last push.