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“Drive me to the police station,” Steven said. “I can’t do it myself. Please.”
He didn’t wear makeup tonight. His face looked thin, paler than usual. And the scar on his face was clearly visible. A dark mark against his pallid complexion, just underneath his left eye.
This monster had taken so many lives, had come close to taking Tristan’s. I couldn’t let him escape. This had to end tonight.
I unholstered my gun and kept it in my hand as I walked around the car, getting into the driver’s seat. I took a glance into the back seat, just in case. The Midnight Chemist was known to work alone, but maybe he had picked up a bloodthirsty guard dog I didn’t know about. All that was back there were a couple black t-shirts and a sea of black, cracked leather. No growling mutt or masked assailant.
It was just me and Steven.
“I’m sorry,” Steven said. I couldn’t tell if he was apologizing to me or to himself. He was looking out the window as I slammed on the gas. The police station was only a couple of streets away. I kept one hand tight on the steering wheel and the other holding my gun, the barrel aimed at Steven.
I asked the one question I always did when this moment came. “Why?”
He didn’t answer. I reached a red light and wanted to blow right through it but stopped with a screech of the tires.
“Why did you kill those innocent people? Why did you stalk Tristan? Break into his house? Kidnap him?Why?” I asked again, firmer this time.
That seemed to do it. The floodgates opened. Steven started to speak in a manic sort of way. The words fell out of him like an uncontrolled leak from a roof sitting underneath a torrential downpour.
“Because I’m broken. I’m fucked-up. I’m twisted, inhuman, snapped. Do you know what it’s like being locked in a closet for weeks on end? Pissing and shitting in a cup? I should have been worried about pimples and first kisses and school dances, but instead, my father found out I was gay and made me pay for it. He was raging. A big macho conservative politician now had his worst nightmare sleeping in the room next to him. My stepmom didn’t care about anything besides the pain pills my dad fed her.
“First, he thought he could conversion camp it out of me. But the moment I got back was when I met the boy I fell in love with. He was the only person I ever felt some kind of emotion toward. I was inlove. My dad found the emails and moved me into another school district.
“But the emails didn’t stop, and my father’s anger spiraled.
“He had enough. I’ll never forget the first night he pushed me into the same closet he kept his overflow fish tanks. Locked me in there. Full of clown fish—his least favorite—and the anemones they live with. I stared at them until my eyesight blurred. When I’d get hungry enough, I’d stick my hand in and take out a fish, but sometimes my hand would brush up against an anemone.
“It hurt. Really hurt, but it was a feeling. I was starting to lose my grip on those. So I kept sticking my hand in, finding comfort in the burn, figuring that if the toxins took me out, then so fucking be it. But they didn’t. I became immune, and I became obsessed.” He rubbed his hands in his lap. I noticed there were hairline scars I’d never seen before, flashing in the passing orange glow from the street-lamps. He must have used makeup to cover those up as well.
“My father was the first person I killed. Poisoned him with the same poison I’d get from the anemones, dropped into his coffee. It became easy after that. I went after other gay people, the ones who were living out and proud. Happy. Something I never got to do. It was jealousy—that was really what made me do it. And I don’t regret a single fucking second.”
I could hardly comprehend the depravity and darkness that I was hearing. Nothing could excuse Steven for his actions, but this would definitely explain them.
The police station was up ahead. I let myself feel a rush of excitement at picturing Tristan’s face when I told him it was done. I’d kept him safe. I’d protected him. And now, no one else would ever feel the same terror Tristan felt. The killer would be locked up behind bars. Over time, Tristan would be less and less frightened of his own shadow. We could live a normal life together. One that wasn’t ruled by fear and anxiety and paranoia.
I was stopped at another red light, looking at a defeated Steven wringing both hands in his lap, when the needle plunged into my neck. My eyes bulged wide in shock. A jet of cool liquid shot into my artery, pumped directly up into my brain. I couldn’t even get a word out before my tongue swelled. Steven only smiled. His thin lips twisted into a sinister smear across his thin face.
The curtains closed on my vision as I slumped forward onto the steering wheel.
30
TRISTAN HALL
I didn’t even makeit to intermission. It took me about twenty minutes before I leaned over to Eric and whispered to him that I was running to the bathroom just as Alexander Hamilton was singing about not throwing away his shot. Eric made a move to stand up and go with me, but a quick hand on his shoulder stopped him. I mouthed to him that I’d be quick and ducked out into the aisle. My heart was in my throat as I walked through the empty lobby, finding a corner where I took out my phone and opened up the tracking app.
I wasn’t sure what I’d find or what I’d do when I found it. I just wanted to make sure it didn’t ping back that my watch was in a ditch somewhere or at the bottom of a very deep lake.
It took a second to locate my watch. The spinning wheel on my screen looked terribly ominous. I half expected a skull and crossbones to appear, the word “DEAD” written in bold red underneath.
The blue dot appeared on a small map. I zoomed in on it.
He was back at my place. Weird. Maybe he had to pick something up? I decided to call him, the ringing only lasting about three seconds before the line went completely dead. Any other calls went directly to his voicemail.
“Hey, this is Gabriel. Please lea—”
I hung up. His gravelly voice, normally a balm toward any burns life inflicted on me, now seemed haunted to me. As if the voice was slightly altered, adding the kind of distant echo that only belonged to a ghost.
I looked back to the doors of the theatre. The streets weren’t barren, but they were much emptier than when everyone was still in line waiting to get checked in. I could go back inside, wait until the show was over, try calling Gabe again, and if he still didn’t answer, then I could figure something out with Noah and Eric.
