“We were young. Eleven or twelve,” Saffy said.
It landed. A visible unrest. Ansel shifted like he wanted to stand, or run, and Saffy knew that she had snagged something. Whatever substance Ansel was made of, finally, she had touched it.
“The fox came first,” she said. “Those animals, at Miss Gemma’s house, down along the creek. Can you describe it to me, Ansel? I want to know how it felt, to hurt them.”
“It felt like nothing,” he said.
“That seems unfair,” Saffy said. “I mean, I imagine it feels good to kill something. The release. The relief. It must feel good, right? Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“It feels like nothing,” Ansel said. “Like nothing at all.”
The song accelerated into climax, ethereal and uncanny. Saffy reached into her briefcase.
“You know what these are.”
First, the barrette. Then, the bracelet. Little bits of dirt were caught in the barrette’s clip, between the bracelet’s milky pearls. A sheen of sweat had broken across Ansel’s forehead—he appraised the trinkets like an archaeologist, uncovering lost artifacts.
“I’m curious, Ansel,” Saffy said. “Why did you take these? What purpose did they serve?”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Wait, you don’t have to explain. I can tell you the story. You were at Jenny’s house for Christmas that year. You were what, seventeen or eighteen, right? Hazel told me all about it. Her parents got you those nice gifts, even after Jenny promised they wouldn’t, and you felt small and poor and insecure. You’d been carrying these trinkets for months, because you liked the memory, a reminder of a moment where you were big and important. You gave the ring to Jenny that day to feel a little taste of that power again. But then you realized what you’d done. You’d incriminated yourself—if anyone recognized the ring, you’d be in deep shit. So you got up in the middle of the night and buried the rest in the yard.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like, then?”
“I gave her the ring because it was beautiful. I wanted her to have it.”
“But you took this jewelry off those girls. When you left their bodies in the woods. You took these trinkets to remember. To relive all the sick things you’d done.”
“No,” he said, louder now. “No. Stop.”
“You got high off remembering. You relished in it. You loved—”
“Stop!” A bark of a yell. He heaved, his breath fading ragged. “I never relished in anything.”
It was like a crack of lightning. The breaking was physical, a massive shudder, the sign Saffy recognized from her many years in interrogation rooms like this one—his walls were crumbling. One more nudge, and he would shatter.
“Then why?” Saffy asked gently. “Why did you need to take these trinkets?”
Ansel reached for the bracelet, his fingers shaking wild. He could not stop himself. He slipped the delicate strand of pearl onto his hairy wrist, admiring the ivory beads, elegant and feminine.
“They were supposed to keep me safe.”
“You killed those girls for the same reason you killed Jenny. Because you felt small.”
“No,” Ansel said, remarkably calm. “You’re wrong. I don’t know why I killed them. I don’t know why I killed any of them.”
Ansel stroked the pearls affectionately as he spoke, as if in a trance. His voice, distinctly childlike in its recounting. The story formed, the details fused. The recording device clicked forward, forward.
He confessed.
*
As the story spooled from Ansel’s mouth, Saffy saw her perfectly. Jenny, that night, as she should have been.
She would have been tired. She would have set her purse on the counter, flicked on the lights, turned a Sheryl Crow album loud on the speaker. There would have been no banging at the door—the kitchen knife would have sat, untouched in its plain wooden stand. Jenny would have microwaved a bowl of leftovers, then eaten them standing up over the kitchen counter.
After, she’d have run a bath. A splash of eucalyptus oil. Jenny would have stripped off her scrubs and lowered herself in; submerged in steaming warmth, her muscles would have released, exhaling the ordinary day. She’d have lowered herself farther, farther, until her head went fully under, the glassy pulse of water like an echo, or the thoughtless slip into a dream. The sound of her heartbeat, miraculous in its magnification, expanding along the porcelain walls. This quiet, exquisite—this being, a wonder. Time stoppered, sublime.