trotting. Cassie told her friend, Leo Koslenko, what had happened, and then told her mother, Natalia.
Natalia sprang into action. She dispatched Leo to remove Ellie’s body and dump it at Terry Burgos’s back door. It was a brilliant move. Burgos stalking Ellie was already a matter of public record. There was the restraining order, as well as Burgos’s own history of mental instability. He was the perfect patsy.
And when Burgos disposed of Elite-when he brought her to this very room in which we are standing-Koslenko took it as a sign that Burgos was working on his side-that Burgos was one of us.
Us. A team of spies. A team that included, at a minimum, Natalia Lake Bentley, Terry Burgos, Leo Koslenko, and me.
Ellie was a gift from God, Burgos had said. He’d meant it literally. God had placed this girl on the back porch of his house, dead from a blow to the head. God was telling him to begin the course of action Tyler Skye had spelled out. God had given him the woman he coveted, as the first of six victims. So he ripped out Ellie’s heart, in accordance with the song, and moved the body to Bramhall Auditorium.
I consider how quickly I could remove the knife from my jacket and use it, if necessary. But I know that isn’t the play here. I take another step toward Koslenko and Shelly and watch his reaction. His eyes are focused somewhere on the floor. He is reliving what happened sixteen years ago.
With his left hand, he wipes a stray bang off Shelly’s face. His gun is pushed into her ear, his finger on the trigger. I can’t tell how aware he is, but I can’t risk it. He’s shown his physical abilities to me before. If I rushed him, Shelly would be dead before I reached him.
And there’s a better way. We are comrades, he and I. It may have taken me a while, in his eyes, to come aboard again-including, ultimately, using Shelly as leverage-but here I am.
“You’ve done your part, Leo,” I say. “It’s time for me again. Just like before.”
I take another step toward him. With a little momentum, I could lunge forward and reach him. He watches my feet, then looks up at me.
“Burn Albany,” I say. “I’ll do it. There’s nothing more you can do.”
His eyes pinball about. He is lost again in his thoughts. But the gun is still planted in Shelly’s ear. I can’t risk it.
“You and Terry are heroes,” I say.
“Te-Terry. Hero-heroes.”
KEEP WATCHING, Natalia tells him. Keep watching Terry. Tell me what he does.
Leo obeys, he knows how to watch, knows how to follow, he likes it, another mission. Terry stays in the house all day Monday. Leaves in the Chevy Suburban at a quarter to six in the evening. Drives to a place called Albany Printing a few miles from the Mansbury campus. All the other cars are leaving, he’s working alone, stays there until nine o‘clock, then he pulls out of the parking lot, but he doesn’t go home, no, not home, he goes to the city instead. Leo follows. The Suburban cruises around the city’s west side, driving in a loop. Leo needs to be careful he won’t be noticed.
But nobody notices Leo.
The Suburban pulls over to the curb, and a woman, a prostitute, walks up to his car, talks like she knows him, she gets in, he drives off, they go back to his house.
Same thing around midnight, same thing as last night with Ellie, Terry carrying a body out the back door and into the side door of the garage. Garage door opens, the Suburban backs out. This time, Leo is ready. He follows. The drive is short, not ten minutes, five-six-seven-eight minutes. Terry parks his car in front of some kind of theater, big building, fancy building. Leo stops his car a block away. Terry pops the trunk of the Suburban and removes the woman’s body, wrapped in a bag, rushes up the stairs with her in his arms, uses a key to unlock the tall door. He comes out twenty minutes later. Leo waits for him to leave in his Suburban. This time, he will know everything. He pulls up where Terry pulled up. The front of the building says BRAMHALL AUDITORIUM. He gets by the lock on the tall front door, he’s inside, follows the dirty footsteps to another door, gets through that door, too, follow the footsteps, follow the footsteps.
Follow the footsteps, they are both there, in the final room down the long hallway, Ellie and the new girl, both naked, Ellie’s chest carved out, bloody gash, huge open wound, no heart, other girl’s throat is slit, all the way across, torn open. He uses his switchblade to mark them, just like they marked their kills in the Soviet Union, where nobody would see it unless they were looking, a slice between the fourth and fifth toes, a sign that the kill was state authorized, authorized by the state, wrap it up, no questions asked, no questions answered, no answers questioned.
He tells Natalia. She is relieved. She is happy! A job well done, she says. His chest warms with her approval. He has done well. The operation is succeeding.
She sends him back to watch Terry. It happens again, the next night, Tuesday, a different part of the city, but otherwise like clockwork, out of work at nine, pick up the girl, take her back to the house, then, later, carry her to the garage, drive her to Bramhall Auditorium, and leave her in the basement.
Next day, Wednesday, he stops at the house, reports to Natalia, he sees Cassie through the crack of the door to the bedroom, oh, poor Cassie, torment washed across her face, no sleep, dried tears on her beautiful face, Natalia watching her carefully, She mustn’t leave the house, don’t let her leave, we have to protect her, go Leo, go, go watch Terry, see if he does it again tonight-
Hey, you. Hey! You!
He turns as he’s leaving the house, after reporting to Nat, after seeing Cassie but not speaking to her, Gwendolyn-
Gwendolyn Lake, the cousin, her house, but she’s never here, always overseas, but she’s here, she’s been here now over a week, the drinking and drugs, Ellie and a boy named Brandon and Gwendolyn and sometimes Cassie, and, here she is, Gwendolyn, expensive clothes and hair done up fancy, getting out of her Porsche, hiking her handbag over her shoulder, she has looks like Cassie but not gentle, not sweet, harsh, crushing a cigarette with her shoe and looking at him, she never looks at him, but she’s looking at him-
Leo, right? You have any idea what the fuck is going on? In my house? What the hell is wrong with Cassie?
He doesn’t answer, he rarely speaks, not out loud, he doesn’t talk so well, he shrugs his shoulders and keeps moving-
Don’t they have a fucking house of their own across town?
KOSLENKO LOOKS in my eyes. I nod, as if I knew everything he just said. Terry Burgos provided the ultimate cover for Natalia’s plot to cover up Cassie’s murder of Elite-he went on a murderous rampage and killed four prostitutes. Nobody would suspect that Ellie had been murdered by someone else, given what Burgos had done.
Maybe we would have looked at the final murder differently, if given the chance. But Natalia asked the county attorney to drop that murder from the case and the county attorney was more than willing to accommodate his heaviest financial contributor.
And I let him do it. It’s something I will have to live with. But, for the moment, I need to use it to my advantage. Koslenko thought I did it because we were working together. He thought I was part of the cover-up.
“Under-stand? Underst-stand?”
I force a soft smile on my face. Understand.
