I glance up at his face, wondering if it bothers him that they talked more about my show than his sculpture.
“I’m sure they’ll write about you again when the maze is finished,” I say.
Cole snorts. “I don’t give a shit about that.”
I find that hard to believe. Cole is competitive, with a well-developed sense of his own merit. I can’t imagine he enjoys being overshadowed.
He catches my look.
“Give me a little credit,” he scoffs. “Whatever else I may be, I was never a man who had to tear a woman down to shine bright beside her. If you’re not as good as me, then you’re no good at all. And when I saw you, Mara … I thought, this girl is really fucking good. I don’t want to hold you down, chop you down, diminish you in any way. I already know I found something special. Now it’s time for everyone else to see it.”
12
Cole
Shaw has killed again.
He might have done it out of anger at losing his bid for Corona Heights. But the body wasn’t found in a state of mutilated rage. She was posed like Flaming June, something that was hushed up in the papers but TruCrime managed to splash across its site in full-color photographs.
The cold calculation of the slaying disturbs me far more than Shaw’s usual lustful rage.
The girl is dark-haired, slim, beautiful. The close-up photographs show one pale hand with roughly-bitten fingernails. Two of those fingers missing entirely.
It’s the only mark of brutality on an otherwise pristine body. Not a single tear on her flowing orange gown. Her face lovely and unmarked, eyes closed with a gentleness that might be sleep.
Even more disquieting, Hawks doesn’t come calling in the aftermath of her death. Instead, I see his unmarked car trailing mine when I drive from the studio to Corona Heights. I see his tall, upright figure lingering on Clay Street.
He knows I see him. He wants me to know.
He isn’t following Shaw.
Shaw is allowed to roam free with a different beautiful blonde on his arm every night of the week, these girls never suspecting that they’re riding the cock of the Beast of the Bay, kissing the mouth that ripped chunks of flesh out of girls very like themselves.
Never guessing that Shaw’s real preference is, and always has been, exclusively brunettes.
Erin was the only redhead, something Hawks’ brain-dead profiler hasn’t seemed to have noticed.
Sometimes I think I could do any job better than the people employed to do it. The rest of the world is a morass of incompetence, everyone playing dress-up at their jobs. Are there any actual adults? Or just children that grew tall?
Mara can’t escape the news of the latest killing, which is whispered everywhere. I’d like to hide it from her, but I can’t.
Janice pulls up TruCrime on her computer, and a dozen artists gather around.
I watch from across the room. Mara lingers at the edge of the pack, desperately wanting to turn away, but forced to look at the images. Witnessing what Shaw has done.
When she turns back to me, I see the horror in her eyes.
She feels responsible.
Shaw continues unchecked because of us. Because of her.
While she’s admitted her anger, she has yet to act upon it.
Maybe she hopes I’ll do it in secret, without her ever having to raise a finger. She’ll wake up one morning and Shaw will simply be dead.
That’s not happening.
There will be no pleasant convenience for Mara.
She’s going to learn the difference between thoughts and action.
Everyone knows someone they wish would die. Very few will make it happen.
I stand on one side of a chasm. Mara has to join me.
It’s the only way we can truly be together.
13
Mara
At night, lying in bed in the darkness, I can tell that Cole is not yet asleep. No slow, heavy breaths, only the stillness that tells me he’s thinking about something with all his focus.
I’m also thinking hard.
Probably on the same topic.
We both saw those pictures this morning. And we both know what it means.
Shaw is starting another cycle of killing, with barely any break since the last. That means two more girls sacrificed to his hunger. Maybe more.
How many will it take for Officer Hawks to get the evidence he needs?
Cole says Hawks isn’t even following Shaw. He’s tailing us instead.
I’m dreading Shaw crashing my show. He wasn’t invited, but I’m sure he’d love to turn up to gloat in our faces again.
I hate him. I hate that he’s roaming around unchecked, more vicious and violent by the day.
I could have saved this girl. She was twenty-four, a year younger than me. A med student, apparently.