Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

“I know, I know-you told us all that.” Except the part about Lyssy and Lilith being in love. Were they also lovers, in that other sense of the word? Lily wondered. Had that man had sex with her body? It was almost too weird, and definitely too uncomfortable, to contemplate.

“But there’s one thing I didn’t tell you the truth about,” Lyssy continued. “That part about how Lilith said Max and Kinch killed all four people at the Corders’? That’s what we want the cops to think. That way you could go free, while one victim more or less isn’t going to make much difference to me as far as my sentence goes.

“But Dr. Cogan says the cops can probably tell from our fingerprints and stuff who killed which victim. So I figured that before you decided whether to come along with me or stay behind, you needed to know that it was Lilith who killed the woman in the bathroom-that’s what she told me, anyway. She said she-”

“No, don’t!” cried Lily, covering her ears with her hands. “I don’t want to hear about the details.” It wasn’t guilt-she felt precious little of that. Some shock, maybe, and a mounting sense of panic as the full import of Lyssy’s revelation began to sink in. Still, she couldn’t help feeling it was like one of those mystery movies where the main character has an identical twin who does all this stuff the other twin gets blamed for.

Only an alter is closer than a twin, Dr. Irene was always saying-it’s a part of you, a part of yourself that had broken off when your psyche was shattered. Lily glanced over at the psychiatrist, who was tapping her long, russet-brown fingernails on the desk in time to whatever music she was listening to, and suddenly it occurred to her how much easier it would be if she could just give up and let Lilith take over-and how much better for all concerned.

The thought was kind of scary (for Lily, not being in consciousness was a little like what she imagined being dead would be like: the world goes on, but you’re not there) but also tempting. She pictured herself waking up somewhere in the future, the way she’d awakened this morning, or in the airplane the other day, and looking around in confusion at palm trees and a white-sand beach, straw huts and turquoise reefs; on the patio table next to her there’d be a colorful drink with a tiny umbrella in it.

Where am I? she’d ask, and Lyssy would reply, A safe place. We made it, Lily-it’s all over but the happily ever after.

Then Lyssy’s voice yanked Lily back from her daydream. “Me, I’m already looking at life without parole, minimum,” he was saying. “If I’m lucky. Lethal injection if I’m not. So basically, I’ve got nothing to lose. I don’t know what they’d give you for just one murder, but if you want to take a chance on coming with me, I’m pretty sure it won’t make any difference to your sentence.”

“Do you think we really have a chance of getting away?” Lily asked him.

“More of a chance than we have if we don’t do anything, if we just sit around here waiting for a knock on the door.”

“What I still don’t get is why you want me to come with you. You’d probably stand a better chance alone. And it’s not like we were ever lovers-that was Lilith, not me.”

“But I fell in love with you first,” he blurted.

She thought she’d misunderstood him. “You what?”

“Fell in love with you -with this you-the second I laid eyes on you in the arboretum.”

“But-but why ?”

“I don’t think love has any whys,” Lyssy told her. “It just-” He broke off, cupped a hand to his ear. “Hear that?”

Footsteps on the front porch, then a clanking sound.

“It’s all right,” said Dr. Cogan, who had taken off her earphones when she saw they were listening for something. “It’s just the mailman.”

The footsteps receded. “We’re almost done here,” Lyssy told the doctor. “Would you mind…?” He waited until she’d donned the headphones again, then turned back to Lily. “The sooner we get going, the better our chances.”

“But we can’t just drive away and leave Dr. Irene-she’ll call the police the second we’re gone.”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to come with me?” Lyssy tried to keep his voice casual, though his heart was in his throat.

“You said it yourself-what do I have to lose? But what about Dr. Irene?”

“Oh, I can handle that,” said Lyssy happily.

Driving south in the red GMC pickup, Pender didn’t even try to pretend he hadn’t crossed the line. Aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice, possession of a stolen vehicle-he’d broken enough state and federal laws to put him away for at least a couple years.

Of course, he could still put it all to rights with one call to the Shasta County sheriff. But in this new, topsy-turvy world Pender found himself in, he knew that if he did the right thing, dropped a dime on Mama Rose, he’d be ashamed of himself for the rest of his life. He knew his life had been in her hands back there. She could have killed him easily enough- should have killed him, from a strictly pragmatic point of view: it was the only option that would have guaranteed her safety. Instead, by trusting him, she had put her life in his hands-that had to count for something.

Meanwhile, he’d done all he could for Mick-or rather, Mick’s wife, whom he’d never met. At least this way, all the widows would get to bury their husbands, was Pender’s thinking. And he’d get another shot at rectifying the worst mistake of his career-not finishing off Maxwell when he had the chance.

The late morning sun glinted off the hood of the pickup. Pender flipped the sun visor down and found a pair of Men in Black -looking shades clipped behind it. The fit was a little tight around the ears. Carson must have had a much narrower head, thought Pender-but then, who didn’t? He tilted the rearview mirror to catch a glimpse of his three-quarter profile. Pretty sharp for a fat old bald man, he told himself.

And there was no denying that it felt awfully exhilarating to be the Lone Ranger at long, long last. No Bureau-cracy to hem him in, no higher-ups to thwart him, and only one imperative to follow: find Ulysses Maxwell and take the sonofabitch down.

“Dr. Irene?”

Irene took off the headphones, paused Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” in the middle of the pizzicato winter ice storm. “Yes, dear?”

“I’ve made up my mind-I’m going with Lyssy.”

“Are you absolutely sure that’s what you want to do?”

“Um, excuse me? Isn’t that what ‘I made up my mind’ usually means?” said Lily, her voice dripping with adolescent sarcasm. In other circumstances, thought Irene, that would have been a healthy sign-in our culture, it was one of the primary tools used by teenagers to effect the inevitable separation from the parent. “Only there’s something you have to do for me first,” Lily added.

“What’s that?”

“I want you to put me under again and bring Lilith back instead.”

“What?” Lyssy yelped. He looked as surprised as Irene felt-obviously this was something they hadn’t discussed beforehand.

“It’s the best thing,” Lily explained to him. “She’ll be a lot more use than I would-and I couldn’t stand it if we got captured again. And maybe Dr. Irene could put in some kind of posthypnotic suggestion, so if we made it to someplace safe…” In her mind’s eye she saw the beach again, the white sand and the palm trees. “…if you still wanted to, you could, you know, bring me back like?”