“And I told him to fuck off, it was a workday and I had another hour to sleep. So he went away.”
“Did he say what was wrong with her?” I asked.
“No. He just said, 'There's been an accident. Dan really fucked up this time.' That's what I remember. I was asleep, like I said.”
“Did he say where she was?”
“No, he didn't say where she was. Like I said, he was in a hurry and I was pissed off. We didn't discuss the thing, he just woke me up.”
“What did he look like when he came into your room?” asked Hester. “Was there anything unusual about him?”
“How would I know? It was dark, and all he had was a flashlight.”
“So,” she asked, “he just went away?”
“Look, I remember he was all whiny, like a dorky little kid. But he left, and I went back to sleep.”
“When did you find out she was dead?” I asked.
“When they called me and Huck at work,” he said.
“So,” asked Hester, “when did Toby tell you about the 'mistake' that was made?”
“When we got back,” he said.
“Not on the phone?” I asked.
“He just talked to me,” interrupted Huck. “I told Kevin she was dead.” She looked squarely at him. “You never told me anything about Toby coming to you that night.”
“That's because you don't matter,” he said simply.
Huck flinched.
“Who does matter, in this?” asked Hester, quickly. This was no time for an argument between Huck and Kevin.
Kevin smiled, enigmatically. “Depends.”
“Well right now,” I said evenly, “it better be us.” I was getting really irritated with his attitude. “So tell me what Toby told you.”
It worked. Better than I'd hoped.
“All he said was that Dan and him and Edie were together, and Dan wanted to do that 'secondhand' experience thing he kept talking about, and he had Toby and Edie get it on, and then Edie got all wild on them, and things just went all ugly from there.”
Well, at least it was fairly succinct.
“And, where did he say they were when this was going on?”
He sighed, all exasperated and put out. “I told you, Toby didn't tell me.”
He was, of course, lying. He was an easy tell, too.
After that, it was pretty much a communal effort to inform us about what Dan Peale considered a good time.
Because Dan Peale apparently believed that he would be able to experience emotions “secondhand” if he ingested the blood of another, at a time when that other person was experiencing a strong emotion, he had tried his theory out first with pleasure being the target. He said it worked, and was able to “experience the afterglow” of a woman's orgasm with Edie. Given the fact that he was probably doing some meth or ecstasy at the time, and so was she, go figure.
Anyway, things progressed, as they always seem to, toward more and more extreme events. It dawned on him at some point that blood coming directly from the brain would contain the most undiluted pheromones or endorphins, or something. He obtained some needles, and as far as they knew, did his first jugular stick in June 2000.
“That was me,” said Hanna. “I was pretty high, and it still hurt like hell, and it was the scariest thing I ever did. I never let him do that again. Ever.”
“Why did you let him do it in the first place?” asked Hester.
Hanna gave it about one second's worth of thought. “Because he scares me to death,” she answered. I think the irony escaped her.
As it turned out, it wasn't just the pleasures life offered that Dan Peale wanted to experience.
“The next step,” murmured Melissa, “was fear. Well, he called it 'terror,' and I suppose it was.” She looked up. “That was me. Back in August.” She shook her head. “Terror isn't the word. You really can't move, you know. I mean, with that thing stuck in your neck. Hell, he tied my hands, but he really didn't need to. 'If you move, you could kill yourself,' he said. No joke.” She shuddered, and rubbed the right side of her neck with two fingers. “He told me that it made such a small hole, there was no problem. Then, after he got it in, he said he'd lied. The prick stuck it in there, and starts telling me that, if I moved, I'd bleed to death. That the hole was bigger than he'd said. Then he'd, like, make sudden moves, you know? Clap his hands. Yell. Just to startle me, scare me. Shit.” She seemed to get more of a grip on herself. “But I made it, didn't I? He didn't use too big a needle, after all. He said he was sorry. Afterward. I didn't know whether to hate him for scaring me or for lying to me. But he didn't really injure me,” she added quickly.
I was dumbfounded, truly, that he could get them to do that. But this wasn't the time to go there.
“See?” said Kevin. “That's probably what happened to Edie. Like I said, an accident.”
“But you don't know?” Hester was starting to press him.
“Well… ”
“So you don't, then.” She said it with finality.
“Don't jump to conclusions, lady.” Kevin was getting insulting with the “lady” business.
“I'm not the one jumping,” said Hester. “So Toby only told you that's what happened? Right?”
Right, but with a twist. It seems that Toby had told Kevin that he, Edie, and Dan Peale were involved in a threesome, and that both he and Edie had been surprised when the blood thing had been brought up. They weren't expecting more than just some heavy sex, apparently.
“So,” I asked, “he didn't always get into the blood?”
“No,” said Huck.
“Not all that much,” said Melissa. “Just sometimes. Sometimes you could tell when it was going to be, sometimes you couldn't.”
“Edie got a little reluctant,” said Kevin. “So Dan had Toby hold her.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “If Toby was in love with Edie, why would he do that?”
There was a long enough pause that I began to think I had really missed something obvious. Huck finally spoke.
“He'd help Dan,” she said, “because the only time Edie would let him get into heavy duty snogging with her was when Dan was there, too. Edie did it for Dan, and without Dan, Toby would never have had a chance with her.”
It took me a second to digest that.
“Right.”
“See,” said Kevin, “Toby wouldn't have helped kill her, though. Like I keep trying to tell you, it was an accident.”
It was left to Huck to play the last card.
“No, it wasn't. It was not an accident.” Huck put her chin in her hands, and regarded me for a beat. “I know for a fact that the times with Hanna and Melissa were 'test flights,' like he called them.” She stopped my question by saying, “Dan. Dan called them that. He told me what he really wanted, and he told me that I'd have to die if I told anybody else.”
She folded her arms across her chest, defiantly. She took a deep breath, and then said very rapidly, “He told me that he wanted to experience death secondhand. But that to do it right, the donor would have to know they were going to die, and he'd probably have to kill them.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
