Blood and Bone(55)

“What was that? He’s still up there snoring away. Why did you do it this way? It seems sick to leave him like that, a ticking time bomb for his wife.”

“He takes a sleeping pill at night. There’s no waking him until his eight hours are up. That specific poison mimics the flesh-eating disease. He was with his family in Virginia Beach yesterday. There was a news report that several beaches along the East Coast had the flesh-eating bacteria, vibrio, in the waters. Now, to the common coroner or doctor, he has flesh-eating disease. I would diagnose that. The poison will kill him in the next two hours and eat away at the spot on his arm. He’ll die looking like he has suffered a major onset during the evening.” He smiles wide, making my heart skip beats.

I don’t know what to say. He’s a sick, sick man. And yet, he’s a genius. We turn and leave the property as I fight the desperate need to vomit. “How did you know his alarm code?”

He glances back at me as we enter the woods. “There are some people in this world who should never be trifled with. They should be left to live in peace because they are far too dangerous for the average human being.” He opens the car door for me as we reach the back road we parked on. “I am one of those people. When I decide to kill someone I learn everything. I have several possible outcomes mapped out in my head. I force myself to use the kindest means possible, depending on the person. Don was a good man. He never screwed me over on purpose. He just knew it was time to retire me. His version of retirement and mine differ. I let him retire his way.” He closes my door, and I realize he isn’t boasting. He isn’t like that. He is sincere in his words and his actions.

We drive to an older part of DC, where he parks next to a building that is a bit rough for my liking. He gets out so I follow. When he enters the building from an unlocked door on the side, I pause. I don’t want to go into the run-down building, but the streets surrounding us aren’t any better. He pokes his head back out of the door, giving me a look. “It’s nicer inside.”

I follow him into the building, trying not to flip out at the slight noises in the distant corners I cannot see. It’s a warehouse type of building, not an apartment. It isn’t at all what I imagined. We climb some metal stairs to a large door. When he opens it the sight confuses me. It’s a beautiful flat that should be where the office for the warehouse is. He holds the door open, looking smug. “See!”

“Look, you’ve been lying to me for a long time. You murdered Ronald; you were putting my aunt on a flight to Colorado, not Austria, where we were going; you murdered people for fun and for a living; and you’ve erased my mind twice, but there are things in there I can’t explain. I remember torturing my father. You’ve told me I kill cats in my sleep, but I don’t think that’s true. So wipe that smug look off your face.” I stalk into the flat, slumping down into a chair. I’m exhausted and starving.

He presses his back against the closed door. “I never killed Ronald. You did. I wasn’t lying.” He looks down. “You get confused sometimes. It’s only since the amnesia set in. You sleepwalk, but it isn’t sleepwalking. It’s real. You’re awake, and you are old Sam and paranoid. Very paranoid.”

My eyes lower to my hands. “What did I do to him?”

“You stabbed him. I followed you, but I got there too late. So I stabbed over and over, making the wounds inconsistent. I took you home and I cleaned you and put you back to bed.”

“The next night I woke covered in blood again.”

He nods. “I don’t know what you killed. I was truly at work. I thought since the threat was gone, old Sam would be at peace again. She only comes out when there’s a threat. I keep your world as peaceful as I can. You can’t run into people you might know, and you can’t get stressed in any way. It makes it worse.”

“But I haven’t done it since I started finding everything out. I haven’t been sleepwalking.”

He shakes his head. “No. It doesn’t mean you won’t.”

I never imagined I would be as much a threat as he is, or even more of one. “Are you scared I’ll hurt you?”

“Sometimes I worry about it, but I like to give you the benefit of the doubt, considering who we both are in this.” His tone is dark and eerie. It matches us. We are both dark and eerie.

“Am I still a murderer if I don’t remember doing it?”

He shakes his head.

“When did I torture my father?”

He winces. “You didn’t.”

“I remember—”