He had planned it out so carefully, choosing victims and methods of murder that would trigger specific memories for people who had been working his case since the beginning. He had left clues, not all of which were subtle. The pages of “The Most Dangerous Game” he had shoved down that one woman’s throat were almost comical in their obviousness. It was perhaps hubris to display his power over these frantic little creatures trying to catch him, but he was committed to calling out to Emily. He wanted to remind her of her former life, her real life. He could almost feel her return to that place in her mind where she was still a scared little rabbit running from him in a dark swamp.
After all these years, it is her escape that echoes most loudly in his mind. Walking into his arena that morning seven years ago and seeing Emily’s escape route stretch out in front of him was excruciating—not in the least because he had to immediately dispose of Matt’s and Katie’s bodies and get to work on covering up any traces of his experiment. He had lived in that failure for years, perfecting his work and making sure not only that he would never feel that way again, but also that she wouldn’t breathe her last breath without him finally being the one to snatch it from her. Her death is his to orchestrate.
Now, watching another meticulously planned moment shatter to pieces, he is seething. He pulled the strings too hard on his puppet show. He could feel them fraying from the pressure and snapping to reveal the man behind the curtain. The scene had been almost perfect, almost the show he had intended to create.
It can still be salvaged, and there is work to be done, but now all he can hear is the fresh memory of the satisfying sounds of shovels diving into the earth over and over again. The breaths, labored and fast. The group inside the blue tarps grunting and puffing out air. The officer and paramedics were filthy with cemetery dirt, all using their arms and hands to scoop the soil away before a man in his seventies politely pushed his way to the front of the crowd holding two spades in his grip. Jeremy can’t remember ever seeing such a rare display of true kindness before or since, but despite this unforeseen civilian aid, he had been confident in their imminent devastation.
Admittedly, it had been risky. Something of this magnitude required a leap of faith, but he had leapt, nonetheless. His bells had chimed, and he had found their emphatic sound euphoric, blasting through the silence like an inappropriate joke. Crude and imposing. Jeremy had turned to face the street and leaned his back against the cemetery wall like a satisfied lover.
But, of course, everything that followed eclipsed any satisfaction he had previously enjoyed.
“You’re up! She has a pulse!”
The words haunt him now. Even a day later, he can hear her say them again and again, her tone dripping with imperiousness. She had loaded these words from her quiver and launched them from a tautly pulled bowstring with the force of a seasoned archer. They impale him even now.
At first, Jeremy had panicked at the thought that his unexpectedly surviving victim had seen his face, that she knew his name and even his alias. But he had quickly comforted himself in the knowledge that even if she had somehow survived paralysis and severe oxygen deprivation, she wouldn’t have been mentally sound enough to put him in any real danger. The muscle spasms and almost constant seizures suffered in that tiny box would have caused lasting neurological damage. Her brain destroyed.
And beyond that, Jeremy knew from the start how rare it is for a plan to follow the initial blueprint without even minor deviations. Contingencies are built into plans for this exact reason, and Jeremy felt thankful for the hemlock he injected into his victim’s sleeping body before placing her into that not-so-final resting place. Of course, it would have been better if she was found already dead upon exhumation, but contingency plans are better than abject failures. The poison hemlock coursed through her veins, and respiratory failure finished the job.
Just like Socrates.
He was seventy years old at the time of his trial for impiety and the corruption of youth. When found guilty of both charges by a jury of his peers, he was told he would be acting as his own executioner. Ancient Greece was nothing if not theatrical. Socrates was hastily led down to a jail cell and handed a cup of poison hemlock tea. He was instructed to drink and then walk around until he felt his legs give out beneath him. History would have us believe that his was a harmonious death. That he did as he was told and that he did so stoically. But Jeremy knows the real havoc that poison hemlock can wreak—vomiting, seizures, respiratory failure—and he is glad to see history repeat itself in his latest victim.