The House Across the Lake(82)

“The feeling is mutual.”

“And because of that you’ve decided to drink yourself to death?”

“You, of all people, have no right to judge me,” I say. “I don’t want your fucking concern. Because this”—I raise the glass of bourbon still clutched in my hand—“is your fault. All of it. Now, we can talk all about why I drink, but only after you tell me more about those girls you killed.”

“You want to know how I did it?”

Len smiles. A sick, ghoulish grin that looks profane on Katherine’s kind and lovely face. It takes every ounce of restraint I have not to slap it away.

“No,” I say. “I want to know why you did it. There was more to it than simple enjoyment. Something compelled you to act that way.”

A noise rises from outside.

A gust of wind, shrieking like a banshee across the lake.

It slams into the lake house, and the entire place shudders, sending up a communal rattle of windowpanes. The bedside lamp again starts to flicker.

This time, it doesn’t stop.

“You don’t really want to know, Cee,” Len says. “You only think you do. Because to truly understand my actions, you’ll need to confront all the things about me that you overlooked or ignored because you were too busy nursing wounds from your own shitty childhood. But you weren’t abandoned by your whore mother. You didn’t have a father who beat you. You didn’t grow up getting passed around foster homes like an unwanted mutt.”

Len wants me to feel sorry for him, and I do. No child should experience what he went through. Yet I also know that many do—and that they easily manage to go through life without hurting others.

“Those girls you killed had nothing to do with that,” I say.

“I didn’t care. I still wanted to hurt someone. I needed it.”

And I’d needed him to be the man I thought he was. The kind, decent, charming man I wrongly assumed I’d married. That he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do that fills me with a sticky combination of anger and sadness and grief.

“If you felt this way, why did you insist on dragging me into it?” There’s a quiver in my voice. I’m not sure which emotion is causing it—rage or despair. “You should have left me alone. Instead, you let me fall in love with you. You let me marry you and build a life with you. A life that you knew all along you were going to destroy.”

Len shakes his head. “I didn’t think it would get so bad. I thought I could control it.”

“Our marriage should have been enough to stop you,” I say, the quiver growing to a quake. “I should have been enough!”

“I tried not to act on it,” Len says. “The urge refused to go away, no matter how much I wanted it to. Some nights, while you were asleep, I’d lie awake and think about what it would feel like to watch the life go out of a person’s eyes and know I was the cause of it. The more I thought about it, the more I resisted. And the more I resisted, the stronger the urge became.”

“Until you came here and did it.”

“Not at first,” Len says, and my gut tightens at the thought of him killing others elsewhere. “In LA. Sometimes, when I was out there alone for work, I’d scour the streets, find a hooker, take her back to my room.”

I don’t flinch at the news. After knowing your husband murdered at least three women, finding out he also cheated doesn’t have the sting it would under normal circumstances.

“And then one night, I didn’t feel like bothering with the room. We just got in my car, parked somewhere quiet, made the necessary financial arrangements. And as it was happening, me with the front seat reclined, her kneeling in the wheel well, giving a blow job that wasn’t worth the money, I thought, It would be so easy to kill her right now.”

I shiver, repulsed. Once again, I can’t believe that this man was my husband, that most of my nights were spent sleeping by his side, that I loved him with every fiber of my being. Even worse, I can’t get over how completely he had fooled me. During our time together, I never suspected—not once—he was a fraction this cruel and depraved.

“Did you?” I say, not wanting an answer but needing one all the same.

“No,” Len says. “It was too risky. But I knew it was going to happen someday.”

“Why here?”

“Why not here? It’s quiet, secluded. Plus, I could rent a car, drive here for a weekend, come back, and pretend I was in LA. You never suspected a thing.”

“I found out eventually,” I say.

“Not until it was too late for Megan, Toni, and Sue Ellen.”

I feel a pain in my gut, as sharp and twisting as if I’d taken the knife on the bed next to me and shoved it into my side.

“Tell me where you left their bodies.”

“To atone for my sins?”

I shake my head and take another sip of bourbon. “To atone for mine.”

“I see,” Len says. “Then what? And don’t pretend you haven’t thought it through. I know exactly what you plan on doing. Once you learn where those bodies are, you’re going to kill me all over again.”

When he was alive, I found it uncanny how well Len could read my thoughts. Sometimes it felt like he knew my every mood, whim, and need, which I absolutely loved. What a pleasure it was to have my spouse know me so well. In hindsight, it was more curse than blessing. I suspect it’s how Len was able to hide his true nature from me for so long. I’m certain it’s how he knows exactly what I have planned now.