“No, they wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“They’ll want to confirm it’s mine,” he explains.

She’s perplexed. “I sent your wallet with it.”

“They’ll match the DNA,” he reassures her. “It will take a few days.”

She lowers her perfect face next to his again. “They’ll know I took it out of you while you were alive. And they’ll find traces of the drugs I’ve given you.”

“It’s important to you, isn’t it?” he asks. “That they know what you’re doing to me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I want them to know that I’m hurting you. I want them to know that and not be able to find you. And then I want to kill you.” She places a hand on his forehead and holds it there like a mother checking a child for fever. “But I don’t think I’ll give you back, darling. I think I’ll let them wonder. I like to let them wonder sometimes. Life shouldn’t always be so cut-and-dried.”

He had squatted in the rain next to so many corpses, seen so much death. He had always wondered how many more she killed. Serial killers often killed for years before the police caught on to a pattern. He wanted to know. He had spent ten years living for the answer to two questions: “Who was the Beauty Killer?” and “How many had been murdered?” He knows the answer to the first question. Now some part of him felt that if he knew the second, some door on the person he had been might close. It was as if the more she confided in him, the more he belonged to her.

Gretchen grows impatient. “Just ask me how many people I’ve killed. I want to tell you.”

He sighs. The effort hurts his ribs and he winces. She is still waiting, her anticipation palpable. She is like an insistent child who must be indulged. It is the only way to make her go away. “How many people have you killed, Gretchen?”

“You will be number two hundred.”

He swallows hard. Jesus Christ, he thinks. Jesus fucking Christ. “That’s a lot of people,” he says.

“I had my lovers kill for me sometimes. But I always chose whom it would be. It was always at my bidding. So I think I should get to count it, don’t you?”

“I think you can count it.”

“Are you in pain?” Her face is shining.

He nods.

“Tell me,” she says.

He does. He tells her because he knows it will satisfy her, and if she is satisfied, she might give him some peace. She might let him rest. And when she lets him rest, he gets the pills. “I can’t breathe. I can’t take a full breath without a searing pain in my ribs.”

“What’s it like?” Her eyes gleam.

He searches for the right words. “It’s like razor wire. Like someone wrapped razor wire around my lungs, and when I breathe, it cuts deep into the tissue.”

“What about the incision?”

“It’s starting to throb. It’s a different kind of pain. More of a burning. It’s okay if I don’t move. My head hurts. Especially behind the eyes. The wound, where you stabbed me, it feels like it’s getting infected. And my skin itches. All over. I think my hands are asleep. I can’t feel them.”

“Do you want your medicine?”

He smiles, imagining the tingling wave of fog that follows the pills. His mouth waters for it. “Yes.”

“All of it?”

“No,” he tells her. “I don’t want the hallucinations. I just see my life. I see them looking for me. I see Debbie.”

“Just the amphetamine and the codeine?”

“Yes.”

“Extra codeine?”

“Yes,” he says, choking.

“Ask me for it.”

“Can I have some extra codeine?”

She smiles. “Yes.”

She empties the pills from bottles on a counter against the wall and returns with the water. She feeds them to him, and lets him drink. She doesn’t check to see if he’s swallowed them, because she doesn’t need to.

It will be fifteen minutes before he feels the medicine, so he tries to divorce himself from the slow death of his body. She sits in a chair beside his bed, hands neatly on her lap, staring.

“Why did you decide to become a psychiatrist?” he asks her after a long silence.

“I’m not,” she says. “I just read some books.”

“But you’ve got medical training.”

“I worked as an ER nurse. I went to medical school, but I dropped out.” She smiles. “I would have been a great doctor, though, don’t you think?”

“I’m maybe the wrong person to ask.”

They sit quietly again, but she is fidgety.

“Do you want to know all about my shitty childhood?” she asks. “The incest? The beatings?”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says thickly. “Maybe later.”

He feels the first tingle bloom in the center of his face and begin its tidal surge across his body. Just stay there in the room, he tells himself. Don’t think about Debbie. Don’t think about the kids. Don’t think. Just be in the room.

Gretchen is looking at him appreciatively. She reaches out and touches his face. It’s an affectionate gesture he has learned often indicates that she is about to do something terrible.

“I want to kill you, Archie,” she says, her voice soft and sweet and untroubled. “I’ve thought about it. I’ve fantasized about it for years.”

She runs her fingertips over the edge of his earlobe. It feels good. His breathing eases as the codeine softens the pain of his broken bones, his split flesh. “So do it.”

“I want to use drain cleaner,” she tells him, as if discussing a wine they might serve at a dinner party. “I’ve always done it quickly. Made them drink a lot of it at the end. Death comes very suddenly.” Her face is animated. “But with you, I want to do it slowly. I want to watch you experience death. I want you to drink the drain cleaner slowly. A tablespoon a day. I want to see how long it takes. What it does to you. I want to take my time.”

He meets her stare. Amazing, he thinks, what psychopathic horror lives in that pretty, demure body.

“Are you waiting for my blessing?” he asks.

“You said you’d be good. I sent the package to Henry. Like you asked.”

“So that’s part of the fantasy? I have to take the poison willingly?”

She nods, biting her lip. “I’m going to kill you, Archie,” she says with absolute assurance. “I can carve you up and send you piece by piece to your children. Or we can do it my way.”

He considers his options. He knows that she presents him with impossible choices, fully realizing that he can choose only one outcome. She wants total power over him. His only weapon is to retain some illusion of power himself. “Okay,” he agrees. “On one condition.”

“What?”

“Four more days. That’s all I can do. If I’m not dead from it in four days, you find some other way to kill me.”

“Four days,” she concurs, her blue eyes bright with pleasure. “Can we start now?”

He watches her body language change; her excitement palpable. He nods his surrender and she immediately jumps up and goes to the counter against the wall. She pours a glass of water, retrieves a beaker of clear golden fluid, and returns to him. “It will burn,” she instructs him. “You’ll have to resist a gag reflex. I’ll plug your nose for you and follow the drain cleaner with water to wash it down.” She pours a teaspoon of fluid from the beaker and holds it at his chin. The familiar smell sickens him. “Are you ready?” she asks.

He has no sense of consequence. It is not him who is there in the basement with Gretchen Lowell. It is someone else. He opens his mouth and she plugs his nose and thrusts the spoon far back into his throat and empties the poison. He swallows. She holds the glass of water to his lips and he gulps as much of it as he can. The burning is overwhelming. He feels it scald his throat and then flame into his gullet, and for a second he is back in his physical self, his nervous system in full panic. He screws up every muscle in his face and bites down on his tongue to keep from vomiting. Then, after a while, it passes and he lies panting on the bed, Gretchen holding his head in her hands.

“Shh,” she says, soothing him. “You did well.” She smoothes his hair and kisses his forehead several times. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out six large white oval pills. “More codeine,” she explains. “You can have as much as you want. From now on.”