Just Try to Stop Me. Gregg Olsen

      For the first time, Birdy noticed a curl of smoke in the frame. She tapped her finger on the screen.

      “She’s going to burn her,” she said.

      “It’s one of her favorite things to do,” Kendall said, sliding back into her chair. “She almost did it to her child.”

      “Who does that?” Birdy asked.

      The answer, of course, both women knew, was a sociopath like Brenda. Maybe no one had seen someone so profoundly evil in the annals of crime. Kendall had. She’d been in the cage with the predator when she interviewed her on the Darcy Moreau murder case. She’d seen the charm and pretense of being human play out, the sickening game of those who have no other purpose in life but to win others over and destroy them.

      Brenda tugged at the chain around her neck, the amethyst rising and sinking, swinging back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch.

      “I know I shouldn’t smoke,” Brenda said. “It’s a nasty habit that I picked up in county jail and carried over to prison. Not much else to do in that hellhole.” She looked at Janie over her shoulder. “No offense.”

      Then back at the camera, those gorgeous but lifeless eyes, sucking in every viewer who’d ever look at the video. “Smoking really scares me. I do not want to be one of those women whose mouth is a sagging sphincter that wicks out lipstick and is an instant sign that she’s getting old.”

      Brenda reached in the direction of the curling smoke. Her fingertips now held a cigarette. She took a deep drag and then, seemingly absentmindedly, examined the filter before exhaling a sliver of smoke.

      “Plus I have to constantly reapply lipstick, and in prison—not that that’s a problem at the moment—decent cosmetics are hard to come by,” she said. “I let a hideous creature from Preston fondle my breasts in the shower as payment for a tube of L’Oreal that came into the institution in someone’s rectum. Gag me. The things one has to do to look halfway decent.”

      Brenda let out a laugh.

      Kendall shot a look at Birdy.

      “She thinks she’s a star,” she said.

      “A Kardashian, maybe,” Birdy said, her eyes still on the video.

      Kendall was caught off guard. Birdy was more Kerouac than Kardashian. “You watch that crap?”

      “No,” Birdy answered. “But Elan’s girlfriend Amber does. She’s over a lot.”

      The exchange between the forensic pathologist and the detective was that kind of forced break in the tension that people engage in when watching a horror movie.

      The popcorn is stale.

      Have to go to the bathroom.

      I just remembered I left the water running.

      “Suddenly,” Brenda said, getting up and walking over to a now squirming Janie, “I’m hungry. Do you like Indian food, Janie? I love curry. Don’t get me started on tandoori chicken. Love. Love. Love tandoori. Surprisingly, there was a fantastic Indian place in the Tri-Cities that I used to go to with my boyfriend. It had the best tandoori in the Northwest. Better than Seattle. Honestly. So, so good. Well, Janie, do you like Indian food?”

      Tears rolled down the superintendent’s face.

      “When I was a girl,” Brenda went on, “we held dandelion blossoms to our chins, and if it reflected gold on your skin it meant that you liked butter. Did you ever do that?”

      Janie didn’t answer. She couldn’t, of course, even if she had wanted to. The black panties used to keep her quiet were tied so tightly that the corners of her mouth appeared to have dripped blood.

      Brenda swiveled around to face the camera. Her eyes met the camera’s lens with the perfection of a newscaster.

      “Did any of you?” she asked.

      She held her stare and then turned back to Janie.

      “I want to make sure you are seeing this, but it’s hard to manage the camera, the shot, the script, and the talent. I have newfound respect for TV producers and camera crews. What they do is not as easy as it looks.”

      Brenda took one more drag on the cigarette, making sure the camera captured the glow of its amber tip.

      “Let’s see if you like Indian food,” she said, her voice completely devoid of irony. As the cigarette’s red-hot end moved toward Janie’s forehead, a terrified Janie turned away, her cries muffled in the lingerie that silenced her.

      “Don’t fight me,” Brenda said, in words that were splinter-cold. “You know you can’t win. You’re weak. I’m stronger. You’re smart. I’m smarter.”

      She grabbed Janie by the hair with her free hand and yanked so hard that it looked as though the captive woman’s neck might snap.

      “She’s a monster,” Kendall said.

      Birdy didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

      “Let’s see if you like Indian food!” Brenda yelled.

      And then while tears streamed and Janie struggled, Brenda pressed the lighted tip of her cigarette into the center of Janie’s forehead.

      “Don’t squirm, stupid bitch! Once I moved when the crappy stylist my mother took me to cut my hair. I ended up with bangs that made me look like a trailer park kid!”

      Through the struggle, Janie’s muffled scream was captured.

      “A monster,” Birdy said.

      “Pull yourself together, Janie! You like Indian food! You do!” Brenda said, laughing as if she’d pulled off some practical joke.

      Kendall knew it was a pretend laugh. All of Brenda’s emotions about others were as bogus as her breasts. She was incapable of recognizing the pain of others because to her, others were only objects. Things to be used. Things to get her whatever it was that she wanted.

      To serve her needs.

      Brenda turned to the camera and whispered. The whisper was fake too. She spoke loud enough for Janie to hear every word.

      “Everyone who is watching this already knows that Janie didn’t get her Indian dinner out. You already know that she’s dead.”

      Brenda looked down at the cigarette she’d ground into Janie’s forehead. It was still smoldering. She took another puff, breathing in the burning tobacco and the incinerated flesh of the woman who’d helped her escape from prison. She made a face and extinguished it.

      “Did you find my mark on Janie, Dr. Waterman? Sorry about your little boy, Detective Stark. Kids love cookies. I was a cookie monster when I was a little girl.”

      Kendall looked at Birdy, gauging her reaction to being named. The reference to Cody and the incident at school was spine chilling. It made her skin crawl. If anything on the video was a shock to her, it was the fact that the two of them had been named.

      Birdy stared at Kendall.

      “She was too badly burned for me to observe the cigarette burn,” she said.

      In silence, they watched the clip to its end.

      “God, I hope this goes viral,” Brenda said.

      The screen went black and another advertisement for a cruise popped into view.

      “She got her wish, Birdy,” Kendall said, ignoring the ad and wondering why the advertising tool on YouTube thought she was in her 60s. “More than 500,000 views and climbing.” She refreshed her laptop screen. “Five thousand more since we started watching.”

      Birdy looked at Kendall. Her expression was grim. “This is going to encourage her, Kendall. She’s a narcissist who lives for this kind of attention. She craves it like we crave our morning coffee.”

      Kendall