Page 60 of The Darkest Half

Kenneth smiles, maybe even blushes a little, feeling foolish, but then shakes his head.

“Well, what I mean to say,” he backtracks, “is how did you come to be standing here right now, so soon after taking out this organization’s leader just days ago? Was there no special procedure, trial, or an interview at least?” He gestures both hands. “Or is it like in the dynasty days of kings and queens, when one dies, a successor automatically inherits the throne?”

“It is…complicated,” Victor answers. “And I do not have the time to explain everything to you. However, rest assured Vonnegut is dead. And you need not waste any more time and resources hunting him.”

“Now we just have to keep our eyes on you,” Kenneth says, half joking, half serious.

“You can,” Victor says with a nod, “but you might find the job quite boring, seeing as how The Order no longer has dealings in weapons, drugs, or human trafficking.”

Kenneth smiles. “So, just a lot of killing, then? I doubt I’ll ever find that boring, Mr. Faust.”

Victor smiles, too, and I’m starting to feel there’s a lot of secret communication between them.

“Ahem.” I make myself visible. “Are you two on some kind of new terms now?” My eyes fall on Kenneth Ware, full of faux suspicion and jealousy. “Or is my relationship with Victor in…peril?”

Kenneth laughs—so does James Woodard standing off to the side. Victor smiles and shakes his head.

“No, love,” he says. “I can assure you that is the least of your concerns. But yes, we are on new terms—job-related only.”

I grin and leave it at that. I’d wanted to put in a few more playful comments about sexual orientation and whatnot, but I’m just wishing Kenneth would get on with the news he came here to announce.

“Have you found him?” Victor asks as if he’d read my mind.

Kenneth Ware appears stoic at first glance, but upon further investigation, I start to see a fire in his eyes, a newfound obsession, the kind that only someone like Kenneth Ware can understand.

“We found a body,” he says, and my heart lurches. “But it wasn’t the body of Fredrik Gustavsson.”

“Oh?” Victor inquires.

Kenneth nods.

“My investigation led me to a basement inside a house in Virginia,” Kenneth begins. “Gustavsson’s car was found parked at a Burger King just blocks from the house. Employees had called the police, who called for a tow truck. The plates were run, and when Fredrik’s alias came up, I was alerted and took it from there.”

He paces, his arms down at his sides.

“After acquiring camera footage from the restaurant, I found that a peculiar person, not Gustavsson, had been driving the car. A small woman, who I later found out through a series of new crime scenes and evidence obtained from each of them, that the woman was none other than the serial killer I’d been hunting for years. To make a long story short—”

“I prefer long stories, Mr. Ware,” Victor puts in. “Pesky little details and all.”

Kenneth smiles and buries both hands in the pockets of his dress pants.

“Oh, yes, I’m well aware,” he says and paces again, “but I’m here on borrowed time. I can send you the full report this afternoon, but I don’t have the time to go that far into pesky details at the moment.”

“Very well,” Victor agrees.

Kenneth picks up where he left off. “Everything led to the Virginia house. The woman came and went from the home several times, but only in broad daylight. The neighborhood was always busy, with neighbors on all sides and kids playing in the street. I couldn’t risk entering the home while she was away in my search for Gustavsson because if she knew I was onto her, she might’ve killed or tried to move him.”

“Whose body did you find, Mr. Ware?” I asked, wishing he’d just get to the point.

He stops pacing and looks at me.

“It wasn’t Fredrik,” he repeats. “But the body of the woman who’d abducted him, the serial killer. She had been strung up inside the basement and sliced open from here to here.” He made a motion with his finger from his throat to his pelvis.

“So…Fredrik killed this woman in self-defense,” I try to tell them—and myself. “She was going to kill him, obviously, but he outsmarted her.”

Victor doesn’t look at all convinced of my theory. And I don’t, deep down, believe it myself.

Kenneth shakes his head.

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