FiFty Fifty

Chapter Three

SHE

When they brought her into the First Precinct, the booking sergeant looked her up and down, explained her rights, then told her what was going to happen.
'You'll have your personal property taken as evidence. Including your clothes and underwear. Two female officers will accompany you to a private room where this will take place. An outfit will be provided. The detectives investigating this case want to take a DNA swab, a dental impression, and clip your fingernails too. Just comply. Don't fight us. It'll only turn out bad for you. The female officers will also take your picture and your fingerprints. You'll then be moved to an interview room and the detectives will come by and ask some questions. Is there anything you don't understand?'
She shook her head.
'Do you have an attorney?'
She shook her head. Said nothing.
'Well, you will have by the time you leave,' he said.
The cop had been right. It happened exactly as he'd said it would. She had
stripped, silently, in front of two female officers, and given them her bloodstained clothes, which they put into large, clear plastic bags. They gave her some underwear, and an orange jumpsuit. When she was dressed they clipped the tips of her fingernails into a bag, and ran a cotton bud around the inside of her mouth. It left a bad taste.
Then she was taken to an interview room, and left alone. There was a mirror on one side of the room, and she guessed they were watching her from behind it.
She put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward, hanging her head. Her eyes were focused on the white rubber shoes they had given to her. She was quiet for a time. Motionless and silent.
She had not spoken since the police had arrested her in Franklin Street. She'd heard one of the cops mention shock, and she let that play out.
She was not in shock.
She was thinking.
And listening.
The steel table in front of her was pitted with dents, and scratches. She wanted
to reach out and run her fingers along those lines, to smell the table, touch it and

feel it.
It was a compulsion that had started young. Another little annoyance for
mother, who slapped her when she caught her touching and smelling her surroundings. She could pass an hour with a leaf, a stone, a peach. The smells and sensations were almost overwhelming and then Mother – smack – don't touch that. Stop touching everything, you dirty little girl.
Enjoying the sensation of touch became something else she had to keep secret. Music helped shield the compulsion. When she fell in love with a particular song, she saw colors and shapes and the music became something all the more real and physical to her, which helped keep her hands still.
The song was still playing in her head. The one that she had heard when she entered her father's home at 152 Franklin Street that evening. It had been her mother's favorite – 'She', the Charles Aznavour version. Whereas she had always preferred the Elvis Costello cover. The song floated around in her mind, playing loud and red, blanking out all other thoughts. Sitting in the small, foul- smelling interview room, she mouthed some of the lyrics as the song played only for her.
She may be the face I can't forget ...
Her thoughts flashed images as the music played. Her father's tie. The knot still tight around his neck. The glint of white bone in her father's chest. And all those pretty sparkles of light on the blade as she tore it free from his chest, raised it and plunged it into his stomach, his neck, his face, his eyes, again and again and again ...
She ...
It had been planned. Of course, she had fantasized about it for many years. How good it would feel not just killing him, but ripping him to pieces. Destroying his body. Decimating it. And the thought occurred to her that all those other kills had merely been a rehearsal for the main event.
Practice.
At first, watching the light die in a victim's eyes was exhilarating. Like watching a kind of transformation. Life to death. All of it at her hand. There was no remorse. No feeling of guilt.
Her mother had beaten that out of her, and her sister, at a young age. Mother had been a brilliant chess player and wanted her daughters to be better. In her younger years, Mother had watched the Folgar sisters take the game by storm, and wanted the same for her own daughters and began their chess education early. From the age of four, she had been made to sit in a room with the board in front of her, moving pieces while Mother looked on and taught her the classic techniques. How to watch the line formations, middle game strategies that

quickly moved to mates. They would practice for hours. Every day. Separate from her sister. Mother never allowed them to play against one another, not even to practice. Practice was with Mother. And Mother never let her eat before afternoon practice. No lunch; the bowl of cereal or fruit for breakfast a far-off memory. She spent many hours in a little room, with Mother – confused, frightened, and hungry.
If Mother saw a mistake in strategy, or she took too long holding a piece, feeling the grooves in the polished wood, or trying to catch its scent, Mother would snatch the chubby, offending hand that had played the move, hold it aloft, and bite one of the fingers. She could still see it now. Her mother grabbing her by the wrist. It felt like her arm had been trapped in some terrible piece of machinery that would then slowly draw her hand into a buzz saw. Only this wasn't a blade, but instead she saw her mother draw back her bright red lips to reveal two rows of perfect white teeth. Her fingers would tremble, and then – snap.
The bite hurt. It was punishment, not intended to draw blood. But to shock. To make sure that mistake never happened again. She wondered if all mothers were like this. Cold, unfeeling women with sharp teeth.
She always felt hungry playing chess. Mother said hunger helped the brain stay creative, alive. Every time she saw those teeth coming for her little finger, she felt sick, and hungry, and anticipated the pain, which was always worse than the bite itself.
She had learned from her mistakes.
She recalled the look on her dear sister's face that day when Mother fell down the stairs. Her sister cried and cried until, finally, Father came home. Sister never got over it. It made her think that even with Mother biting and hitting both of them, and forcing them to play and read about chess for hours every day, there was still some part of Mother that her sister would miss. Some connection that had been forever broken.
Even now, years later, she could still hear her sister's cries when she saw Mother's body. Sister stood at the bottom of the stairs, that stupid toy rabbit in her hand, her knees locked together and a dark stain growing on her burgundy tights, spreading from her crotch, down both legs. Sister's sobbing became so bad that it robbed her of her breath, that panicked, gasping, staccato crying.
Now, the bites and the beatings and the tears were all a memory. A part of her, something that had helped to shape her into the perfect creature she was today.
Tonight had been perfect. It looked messy, frenzied, and the body of dear Daddy had been left where it fell. A maniac kill.

That's what it looked like. That's what she had wanted it to look like. In truth, she had enjoyed it. Her kills were always controlled, and there was satisfaction in the execution, though nothing had compared to that first time. Not until tonight. She had really let go. Those impulses, which she held in check with willpower and meds – all of it had been unleashed on Daddy dearest. It felt like loosening a pressurized valve in her head – the relief was wonderful.
She had never before been connected to any of her crimes by law enforcement. Now she sat in a police precinct, facing a charge for a murder she had committed.
She was exactly where she wanted to be. Where she had planned to be.