Page 112 of Serial Killer Games

“He can’t just come up. Someone has to let him in.”

She shakes her head, face pale.

This is all pretty new to me, but friendship for me must be like a breaker switch, because I feel myself moving, realigning to enclose Laura within my own invisible armor. I put my hand on her arm. “Stay. If he comes up, we’ll send him on his way.”

“I’m sure Jake’s told you about him,” she says, her voicedropping, like she’s about to say something dirty. “He’s…not very nice.”

She smiles at me again—a warm, fake smile—and I get a dreadful inkling of where Jake learned his fake smiles and why.

This is why I don’t teach my daughter to be polite and gentle and nice. Listen to enough murder podcasts and you’ll eventually learn about fight, flight, and freeze’s lesser-known baby sister, fawn.

“I’ll just go down and smooth things over,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”

I lean over the wall to look again, and he’s gone.

The bulkhead door groans open next to us and Laura flinches, even though it would be impossible for Andrew to be joining us so soon. A woman stomps onto the roof in practical thermal galoshes and a puffy purple straightjacket of a coat.

“Cynthia?”

Cynthia blinks through her owllike glasses, misted up from her own breath forced upward by her scarf. She stares at me, expressionless, and I notice she’s holding…a paper airplane? I recognize the paper clip I shoved onto the nose.

The fucking creep. I didn’t invite myself to her house when she left a paper crane on my desk. This is myhome. That’s mydaughterover there.

Two dozen steps and I’m toe-to-toe with her, blocking her advance, before I’ve even thought of what to say.

“Dolores,” she intones. She looks past me at Laura and Cat, and scans the rooftop for anyone else. Just one other neighbor with a Chihuahua in a Christmas sweater. Her ice-pick eyes bore into mine. “I hadn’t realized you would be here too.”

“What do you mean?”

“Although perhaps I should have expected it,” she continuesin her carefully enunciated monotone. “You remind me of myself in that way. You take initiative. You like to identify problems and fix them yourself. I knew that when I saw the list.”

That fucking list. “You don’t know anything about me,” I snap. “Who do you think you are?”

Her face is an impenetrable wall when she says, “I know whoyouare, Dolores. You’re an ethical person. Someone who isn’t afraid to do the right thing, even if the right thing is difficult. And the right thing is always difficult.”

Another person who knows all about me. There’s the same sensation of my stomach dropping out that I felt just a moment ago with Laura, but more than that, a familiar feeling up and down my spine. Little mallets tickling a xylophone tune from my bones.

“I think we understand each other. I knew that when you left this for me,” Cynthia continues, and I notice the paper airplane again. What did I do when I left this paper airplane on her keyboard? What message did I send?

With dead fingers I take it from her hands and unfold it. Inside I find the notes she made during our HR dressing-down. Jake’s name. My address.

Tinkle. Tinkle. Tinkle.

My stomach feels acidic.

“Why are you here?” I whisper.

Cynthia’s eyes are as cold and hard as pavement.

“Jacob Ripper’s exit interview.”

And then the door swings open again.

50

The Paper Pusher

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