sensed the bloody fantasy that had coursed through him as she’d run for her car and was determined to let him simmer in it. Not just simmer. Drown altogether.
He blamed her for the deep throbbing ache in his jaw that alerted him to the fact that he’d been gritting his teeth for an hour. He blamed her for the sickness that had come over him later that night, even though he knew those disgusting little crawly things in the pool were probably to blame. (The chills and the nausea had gripped him while he was still in the car on the way home with his father. Of course, his dad hadn’t pressed for an explanation; he lived in such terror that his only son would turn out to be a bone smoker, Marshall could talk his way out of anything with even the vaguest story implying he’d been alone with a member of the opposite sex.)
And then came the final and most crushing blow.
They were back together. Nikki and Anthem, Cannon’s most perfect couple. After all the work Marshall had done, trust had been restored. How was it even possible? As he lay awake at night, seething with rage, those footsteps up the oyster-shell driveway toward Elysium’s darkened pool seemed like the last few seconds before an Olympic diver hit the water at a contorted angle, the chance of a medal rippling out away from him as he plunged under the surface. But the moment he couldn’t wash from his mind was the last words Nikki had said to him before fear had gripped her entirely.
The Delongpre residence was a two-story Greek Revival on Prytania Street, just a block from Lafayette Cemetery. The second-floor porch was big enough for a swing, and a high wrought-iron fence protected the front yard. But the driveway, an expanse of red brick, was open and exposed to the street, and that’s where the family’s hunter-green Ford Explorer sat with its cargo door half open, the dome light sending a soft spill of light over its leather cream-colored seats.
Half a block away, Marshall sat behind the wheel of his father’s BMW, watching Millie and Nikki Delongpre load their overnight bags and groceries.
In the locker room at school, he had overheard talk of a party, a birthday party for Nikki’s mother. But it wouldn’t just be a celebration of Millie Delongpre’s forty-seventh. It was also the first social occasion Anthem and Nikki would be attending together following their reunion, their official coming-out-after-coming-apart party. So far, there had been no sign of the man of the hour, no glimpse of Anthem Landry’s cherry-red F-150 pickup truck. Maybe he was meeting them tomorrow. At almost nine o’clock, the Delongpres were certainly getting a late start.
The party would be held at Elysium the following evening, and when Marshall imagined the place with lanterns strung from its cypress branches, when he thought of well-dressed guests standing and chatting in the same spot where he hurled Nikki into the pool, he was filled with a silent, focusing rage that distracted him from the stapled-shut grocery bag shifting on the passenger-side floor of his father’s BMW.
If he waited in the car any longer, he would lose his opportunity.
He could still hear Nikki’s parents calling to each other inside the house when he lifted the Explorer’s cargo door by about two feet and set the grocery sack in between two Louis Vuitton satchels and a crate of Beaujolais. Then he took his car key and made three quick cuts in the side of the bag, each one large enough for the inhabitant to work its way through when it decided it was time to emerge.
By the time he was back to the BMW, he heard the back door to the Delongpre residence close with force, followed by the family’s excited laughter. Nikki was recounting some childhood story about how her father had once screwed up his fishing line and hooked a lump of her hair in the process.
Marshall slid behind the driver’s seat of his father’s BMW and waited. He waited until the Ford Explorer pulled out of the driveway and headed down Prytania Street. He waited until the red taillights turned the corner, leaving him alone with a steady, rasping sound. At first he thought it was coming from the grocery bag next to him—he had spent most of the day with the thing—but then he remembered that his gift had been delivered, that it had been tucked inside the SUV that had just driven past him into the night, leaving him with the desperate rattle of his own strained breaths.
5
ATLANTA
MAY 2013
Arthelle was at the drink machine when she heard the screaming.
She’d know as soon as she rounded the corner up ahead if the commotion was coming from Ferriot’s new room.
Things had been quiet for a week now, probably because Emily had steered clear of the boy, and there’d been no more strange animal deaths outside the center either. The only one to raise the subject of Ferriot at all had been Tammy Keene, and only to Arthelle. Tammy had two kids she had to support on her own, which meant no time to fill her head with stupid books about UFOs and doomsday prophecies; in other words, she was as eager to keep Emily in check as Arthelle was.
Emily was the one screaming, all right. She was standing outside the open door to Ferriot’s room, bent at the waist, hands to her mouth as she wailed. Other nurses had come running too. They also stumbled in their tracks when they saw the bloody footprints Emily had made around the doorway.
Ferriot was in his wheelchair, just like he was every morning, staring into space with the same slack-jawed expression that made him look like he’d been trying to remember someone’s phone number for years.
Tammy Keene was on the floor, curled into a fetal position, back to the doorway, the blood flowing from her chest forming a dark curtain across the linoleum. Arthelle hit the floor on both knees, rolled the woman onto her back and saw her wide, staring eyes, radiating nothing but shock over the fact that the box cutter she always carried on her hip when she was doing gift distribution was embedded in her chest. The other nurses started pouring into the room, but not Emily. She was still screaming.
“
Once she pulled Tammy’s bloodstained shirt up over her bloody chest and saw the extent of her wound, Arthelle started cursing under her breath, bloody fingers trembling as she traced a gash that started just above Tammy’s navel and made a straight, gurgling line right up to where the box cutter’s blade had caught on the underside of her rib cage. The blood was everywhere. Tammy’s lips moved, but nothing came out except weak, hissing breaths. Everyone around them was sliding into action, and that was good, because Arthelle was paralyzed, stunned, trying to put it all together.
No blood on Emily’s hands or face. None at all. But the only screams she’d heard had come from Emily, not the gutted colleague the other nurses were now rushing to save. And the window was closed and Ferriot was right in front of it, so how could someone have scrambled out into the alley without knocking the poor boy out of his wheelchair?
These thoughts were assaulting Arthelle from all sides, reducing her to a quivering wreck in one corner of the room while her colleagues tried to stop the flow of Tammy’s blood, ignoring as they worked the fact that Tammy’s eyes now stared up at the ceiling with the glaze of death.
An alarm screamed. But it was the wrong one, not the steady honking of the Code Blue alarm meant to summon all of them to a patient’s room. This was the old
Emily was halfway across the room before Arthelle sprang to her feet. The crazed girl had hauled the fireman’s ax back over one shoulder, its red and silver blade glinting in the fluorescent light. The nurses working on Tammy were too busy to see what was about to happen, but Arthelle did. The ax blade struck the arm of the wheelchair a few inches from Marshall Ferriot’s limp right hand. By then, Arthelle had driven Emily face-first into the floor with enough force to knock the wind out of the crazy little bitch.
