so unique. If anyone closed in, it would be Eric Kellerman’s corpse they’d find, along with his collection of car-crash memorabilia and his fingerprints.
Dali would be officially dead, and Mercy Lane would be safe forever. I’d considered the possibility that they were working together but had dismissed it; Dali was a solitary machine.
She shrugs. “The last piece fell in place eight or nine years ago. Eric. But I’d been laying the groundwork for a long time.”
“The car accidents.”
“Yes.”
I vocalize what I’ve surmised, not so much for confirmation but because I want to show her that, yes, I figured it out, you weren’t smarter than me, I win in the end. I want to wave it in front of her face and taunt her with it.
“So if we caught on to you—or someone else did—you could suicide your patsy and leave incontrovertible evidence behind to link him to the crimes: the videos and photos of the car wrecks. Too unusual, too distinct, to be any kind of coincidence. The fingerprints left on the body bags would serve as confirmation. Is that right?”
“Essentially. It was a good plan. Where did I go wrong?”
“You grabbed me.”
She shakes her head. It’s not assertive, just dismissive. “That’s posturing, not logic. You were really no different, in terms of risk, than any other unit.”
“Fine. Let’s just say that I’m more observant than most people. I saw something germane, and then you made the really big mistake of letting me go.”
“What did you see?”
There’s an edge to her voice, to the question. It’s not driven by idle curiosity. She wants to know where she went wrong. Where did her pragmatism fail to serve her?
“Something. I saw something.” I smile, and I know it’s a cruel smile, even worse than the one I gave to Douglas Hollister.
Mercy scowls. “You’re not going to tell me.”
“No.”
“Childish.”
“But satisfying.”
“So? What’s the plan, then? Am I under arrest?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Her face clears. “Ah, I see. You’re going to kill me.” She nods her approval. “That’s smart. Practical.”
“How’d you get Eric Kellerman to pull the trigger on himself?” I ask.
“I kidnapped Eric and a young woman almost nine years ago. I convinced him that the young woman was his illegitimate daughter. Eric was an orphan, so this had a particular significance to him. I tortured them both for years to demonstrate to Eric what I was capable of.
“A few years ago I told Eric I’d moved his ‘daughter’ to another facility. I gave him the choice: pull the trigger when the time came and I’d set her free, fail to do so and I’d keep her in darkness ’til she was old and gray.” She shrugs. “He made his choice, as planned.”
“And did you? Let her go?”
“Of course not. I killed her almost two years ago.”
“Why?”
Mercy looks puzzled. The question, it seems, is a stupid one. “Eric had been suitably prepared. I had more than one hundred hours of recorded video available, on the off chance he demanded visual proof she was still alive. The woman was using up space, water, food, and electricity. I didn’t need her anymore.”
I feel Tommy stir next to me. He is as disturbed by this answer as I am.
“Why, Dali? Why did you do this?”
Mercy; Dali—I move back and forth between the names. She is both of them but neither.
“For the money, number 35, of course. My father had a daughter, but he raised me as a son. He taught me three basic lessons: Joy is everything that comes after survival. Survival is based on money. There is no soul; we’re all just meat. He didn’t only say these things to me, he proved them.” She pauses. “For example, he took the woman meat of me and turned me into a man.”
I frown, taking in the beautiful face. “You look pretty female to me.”
“That’s my cover, number 35. The mask I wear in the outside world. Would you like to see the real me?”
“Yes.”
The eyes go flat. The face changes subtly, becoming more brutal. The shoulders drop, and a faint aura of menace surrounds her. “Go ahead,” she says, speaking to Kirby but looking at me. Her voice has changed, lowered, deepened, becoming the voice I’d heard outside the trunk. “Go ahead and check my breasts.”
“Excuse me?” Kirby asks.
“Feel my breasts.”
Kirby raises an eyebrow at me. “Go ahead,” I say.
“If you insist.” She winks. “I prefer the men, but I’ve been known to like the ladies too.” She reaches down without hesitation and squeezes Dali’s right breast with her left hand. She frowns. “That doesn’t feel right.” She reaches inside Dali’s shirt. I watch as her hand fumbles.
Distaste passes over her face. Her hand comes out clutching something breast-sized and rubbery. “Silicone,” she says. “Nothing else.”
“Do you see?” Mercy Lane rasps. “Just meat to be molded. Dad cut away my breasts when they’d finished growing. He said they’d make me weak, that it was too hard for a woman to survive in this world.” She smiles. “He made me strong.”
I search for pity, but even now all I see is Leo. My desire to pull the trigger has been transformed into lassitude. The injured finger throbs.
“Time to die, Mercy,” I say.
She shrugs. “Meat to meat. I was going to die sooner or later. We all go back to the dirt.”
I screw on the silencer and walk over so that I am facing the creature in the chair, this breastless woman with the man’s voice and the faded, empty blue eyes. I raise the gun and point it at her forehead.
A last question.
“Why did you change such a successful MO? The notes telling us you existed, letting Heather go without a lobotomy, releasing me: Why’d you do those things, Mercy? They made no sense.”
She cocks her head and gazes up at me. I see no fear there, no anger, no acceptance. Mercy Lane lives in the now of an animal, a human convinced that it has no soul. She has nothing to lose to death.
“I devised my business plan years ago, after a tremendous amount of analysis. I tried to consider everything, and that included my retirement. However perfect the execution, if you do the same thing too many times, you’ll eventually make mistakes. Eric’s involvement was a part of that plan. He wasn’t just a—what did you call it? An escape hatch?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Eric wasn’t simply something to use in an emergency, he was the cornerstone of my retirement plan. The best way to fade into the sunset, when you’ve been running a criminal enterprise, is to let people think you’re dead.”
“We’ve already covered this. You’re not answering my question.”
She continues blithely, as if I hadn’t spoken, as though I’m not holding the gun that is going to kill her.
“I needed someone to find Eric after searching for me, in order to bring my retirement plan to completion.” She looks at me again, and I see an acknowledgment of some kind in her eyes. “I’d researched you, among others. You’re very good at what you do, very competent.
“When Douglas Hollister violated our agreement, he provided me with the opportunity to start laying bread crumbs. You were the logical recipient, given the geographical area. Dropping Heather off at the wedding was the first step. I knew keeping her cognizant, so she could tell you what she’d been through, would motivate you more than handing her over as a vegetable.”
I stare at her and my head starts to spin.
