Page 82 of Girl, Empty
Kevin massaged the bruise on his temple.‘I can't confess to something I didn't-’
‘Pick up the pen!Or I’ll put six bullets in you right now!’
Kevin’s hand shook as he reached for it.Not from the concussion, Calvin guessed.This was pure adrenaline.Pure terror, he hoped.‘What happens if I write it?’
‘Then maybe Idon’tshoot you right here.’
‘And if I don't?’
Calvin smiled, but the expression felt foreign to him.When was the last time he'd smiled at anything?‘Then we skip to the part where you jump.’
‘Jump?’
‘Kevin Wolfe, overcome with guilt after fifteen years, throws himself from the building where he committed his first murder.They'll find my father's case files in your office safe, because I’m going to put them there after this.They'll see the pattern.The locked rooms.The connection.They'll think you’d seen the recent locked room murders and suffered a bout of crippling guilt.You couldn't live with what you'd done, so you killed yourself.’
‘That's insane.’
‘Is it?More insane than a man dying in a locked room with no explanation?More insane than the police shrugging and filing it under natural causes because solving it would mean more work?Are you going to write it or not?’
‘No.’
‘Fine.I can’t make you.Get up.’
Kevin managed to rise to a standing position, then collapsed and had to hold himself up on the wall of the server hut.He glanced at the door that led back to the stairwell, and Calvin caught it.
‘Don’t bother trying to escape.All the doors are locked.I made sure of it.It’s just me and you, a hundred feet in the air, and no one can get up here.’
‘How?’
‘It’s just code, Kevin.Everything is alpha-numerical code.And when there’s a finite number of possibilities, it means you can find the code if you look for long enough.That’s exactly what I did.For your building, and every other building I left bodies in.It’s really, really easy.But enough of that – raise your hands.’
Kevin complied, then backed up against the wall.‘Don’t do this, Calvin.I have children.They’re young.They need their father.’
‘I needed a father.’
‘Yes you did, and Dennis was a great one.You have his… spirit.’
‘Don’t try and butter me up, Kevin.Get over there.’
‘I won’t do it.I’m not going near that ledge.’
Calvin rushed over to Kevin, grabbed his hair in one hand, and jammed the gun into his forehead.'Then I'm going to shoot you right here.Do you want that?Do you want me to spray this roof with your brains, Kevin?'he screamed.Calvin had never screamed in his life, and the catharsis felt good.
But he needed Kevin on that ledge.
‘So shoot me.Or are you all bark and no bite, just like your dad?’
‘What?’Calvin shouted in Kevin’s face.‘Say that again.’
‘You heard me, you little shit.Your dad was an asshole.I didn’t kill him, but boy was I glad he died.Everyone was, including-,’
Rage became Calvin’s driving force.All rationale left his body and he hammered the butt of his SIG against Calvin’s head in three driving blows.‘Including who, Kevin?Who was glad?’
Then the door to stairwell suddenly detonated.The lock mechanism separated from the frame in a shower of metal confetti, and through the hole stepped a woman he’d seen before.He’d seen her last night, in the street outside Blackglass.
And her gun was pointed at him.
‘Including your mom, Calvin,’ she shouted, breathless.‘Because she was the one who killed your dad.’
