-

"...her body was found in Hudson Heights between W 186th and Bennett Avenue, and her head was found a block away in a Dumpster. Authorities estimate time of death to be Tuesday night at 11:28 PM. The victim has been identified as 'Zoey Altmann' who had been working as a Physician Assistant student at New York-Presbyterian at the time of her death—"

POP! My bag of pretzels breaks open. Finally. I reach in and take out a pretzel. Leaning against the fridge, his arms crossed, is Doc, and sitting next to me at the table is Sadie who looks like she's about to throw up. The overall mood of the break room is, simply put, grim.

"Tuesday night?" she says. "That was yesterday!"

"It's been, what, two weeks since the last murder?" I ask no one in particular.

"Oh my God," Sadie says, her voice breaking.

Doc is silent, his expression weary but pensive. "Yes," he says. "Two weeks."

We watch as the words "The Barbie Slayer" rolls out on the TV screen as the camera pans over the area where Zoey was found.

Next to me, Sadie starts to cry. "Those poor women. What is wrong with some people?"

Doc looks over at us. His brow is furrowed deeply, and his mouth is set in a tight line. "Sadie, honey," he says, "go home."

For several seconds, she doesn't reply. Then, she drops her hands from her face and says, "No, it's okay, I'll be fine."

"You don't look fine," I say.

"Erin's right," Doc says, "you need a break. Take the rest of the day off."

"But what about—."

"Don't worry about the patients," he says. "Erin and I got it."

I open my mouth to tell him that, actually, no, we don't got it because neither of us has a nursing degree, and, oh yeah, I think it's pathetic that Sadie can't get ahold of her own emotions during work hours, but Sadie beats me to it. 

"Are you sure?" she asks.

Doc nods, his voice stern. "Please. Go."

I bite down on my pretzel; it breaks in half with a clean crunch. I wonder if that's how it happened with Zoey.

"You guys are the best, thank you," Sadie says. "I promise I'll make it up to you both when I'm back tomorrow." She gets up from her chair. She gives me a wave and hugs Doc. Before she leaves, she turns around. "If you have any questions about anything, please just call me."

You wish. I hear her footsteps down the hall. I look over at Doc; his broad shoulders are hunched even more, and his brow is back to its knitted state. "You know," I say after a moment of silence, "it's considered employee discrimination if you give one of us the day off and not all of us." I circle the air with my finger, indicating Doc and me.

That makes Doc laugh. It's getting annoying, people thinking I'm joking when I'm not; I could really use the time to work on my rings. "I'm sorry, my dear," he says. "I'd love nothing more. Trust me. But..."

"But?"

"The babies." He says it as if he's the only obstetrician in the entire world. Now, I want to laugh.

I continue eating my pretzels. We stay like this, me at the table, him against the fridge, watching commercials. Every five seconds, he shifts his position. I frown. First Sadie, and now him — why can't they leave their emotional shit at home? Why do they always have to bring it here, to me?

"You sure you don't need some rest?" I want him to leave me alone so I can eat my pretzels in peace. "You can use one of the beds in the back. I can just tell the patients that we're running over."

He smiles at me. "You're very sweet, Erin, but I'm alright, thank you," he says.

He continues to fidget. At one point, he lets out a big sigh.

"Doc," I call to him. "Here." Using my heel, I push out the chair opposite me.

He stares at the chair before coming over and sinking into it. I get a whiff of his cologne as he does so. "Thank you," he says. He rubs his forehead with his hand, the one with the raven tattoo.

"What's the story behind the raven?" I ask him, mainly to stop him from squirming around, but also, I'm realizing now, because I'm curious.

He turns his hand as if to check that it's there. "Ah," he says, "Ciottolo."

"What does that mean?"

"Pebble. She loved pebbles. She would come to my backyard every week with a pebble as a gift. I started giving her pebbles for her collection. That went on for a few weeks until, eventually, I taught her how to play tic-tac-toe. She beat me every time."

"I don't believe that at all," I say.

He sees my expression and chuckles. "Ciottolo was smarter than most ravens."

Or maybe you were just dumber than you thought. "That's impressive," I say. "What happened to her?"

Something dark flashes across his features. "She died."

"Old age?"

There's a brief pause before he says, "Yes."

I reach into my bag and take out a pretzel; it's in one piece, and the salt crystals are nearly perfectly uniform along its ridges. I hand it to him and take out another for myself. "To Ciottolo."

He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "To Ciottolo."

We tap our pretzels in cheers.

We turn back to the TV. The commercials have ended. The news anchor, Kelly Greenwald, sits behind her desk, her posture so ramrod straight that the only way she can sit like that at all is because she has a literal stick up her ass. Doc and I watch silently as she rattles off everything we know about The Barbie Slayer, which is, besides his penchant for real-life Barbies, nothing.

"He's getting cocky," I say.

Doc looks over at me, but I continue watching the TV. "You think?" he asks.

"It's only been two weeks," I say. "He's either sloppy or desperate for attention. These serial killers — they all have huge egos. They say they're doing it for themselves, but, really, they're doing it for the show. It's how he's going to get caught."

"You sound very confident."

"Just historically speaking."

"You like true crime?"

"People killing each other? No, but the psychology is fascinating," I say. "Until you realize that these killers are just sad nobodies who desperately crave attention because they don't have the wherewithal or, let's be real, the IQ, to realize that murdering people only makes them even more of a loser."

"Perhaps, and I'm just playing devil's advocate here, they just need someone to understand."

I think back to the team dinner a couple weeks ago, how Doc had said something about trauma and how that can bring people to the point of killing and how Sadie had found it sad that these psychos never got the help they needed. I'd never heard such stupid shit in my life. Serial killers are killers, point, blank, period — there is no use in trying to sympathize for them.

I face Doc. "What do you think his trauma is then?"

"They tried to make him someone he wasn't," he says.

"You sound confident," I say, throwing his own words back at him.

He winks. "Just historically speaking," he says.

I scoff. He chuckles. After a moment, he says, "How, exactly, do you think he's going to get caught?"

From the angle at which Doc is sitting, the glare of the TV screen reflects off his glasses so that one of the glass ovals is illuminated and the other is not; the eye behind it stares directly at me. He's no longer hunched or fidgeting either; rather, he seems to have gotten bigger, crowding the space around us with his six foot three bulk.

"How they always do," I say. "He'll taunt the police. With a good, old-fashioned letter, if he has no imagination."

"You look disappointed."

"They're not creative, these killer types."

"Mm," Doc says.

The screen displays a police sketch by a supposed eye-witness of the serial killer. The sketch is that of a man in his mid-to-late forties with a bald head and a goatee — it's as if they had asked AI to conjure up an image of what it thinks a serial killer should look like. Could the police be any more incompetent?

"He does not look like that," I say.

Doc widens his eyes. "You've seen The Barbie Slayer?"

"No," I say. "But he doesn't look like that."

His look of surprise morphs into amusement. "Why not? That has to be from a credible eyewitness, no?"

"More like an attention seeker who is wasting everybody's time," I say.

"What do you think he looks like?"

"He's..." I trail off. Before today, I had never taken the time to truly think about it, but as I do now, the words tumble out of me. "...tall, stylish, and confident. A Ted Bundy type — just as charismatic, if not more. And, he donates a lot. He's a philanthropist to, in a way, offset all the bad shit he does."

He cocks his head and squints at the police sketch. "I think you may be right," he says.

"I'm always right."

He laughs out loud.

The screen cuts to commercial again, and I finish my bag of pretzels. I crumple up the packet to throw it away. Doc holds out his hand, palm up; he's asking for it so he can throw it away. I hand it to him. As I do so, our fingers graze, and a jolt of electricity travels up my finger and into my wrist. What the hell?

Our eyes lock. "Sorry about that," he says.

"Jeez, Doc, are you trying to electrocute me?" I say lightly.

His eyes bore into mine, and I find myself pinned in place. "I won't let anything happen to you, Erin," he says, his voice suddenly solemn. "Ever."

Weird, but okay. "I'll be at the front," I tell him. "Holler if you need me."

I leave the room, thinking that Doc desperately needs a nap.

-

Courtney Taylor is turning out to be the pickiest bitch I've ever had to work with. My phone buzzes against the table where I'm working on her ring. I already know it's from her without looking at the screen. It buzzes again. Then, again. And a third time.

"Oh my God, she's obsessed with you," Isaac says. He's polishing his diamonds across from me, his loupe glasses making him look like he's about to go into the operating room.

"Everyone's obsessed with me," I tell him as I file down a rough corner of the band.

He snorts. "And yet, here you are, at my place of business."

"Only for your shiny rocks," I say.

He gasps loudly; I roll my eyes. My phone buzzes again. I put down the ring and file, wipe my palms on the cloth in front of me, and pick up my phone. As I'd predicted: Courtney. She's sent me additional photos of rings with parts that she likes about them encircled in red. She's also sent a paragraph of text that I don't read. It's not her fault that she doubts herself. New clients don't understand that I already know what they want before they do. I shoot her a text assuaging her fears. I put down my phone when it buzzes against the table again.

I let out a curse. Instead of Courtney, though, it's Mad Cow. I have the Summarizer feature turned on in my phone, so, without clicking on the text, I know that "family" dinner is set for next Saturday evening at a French bistro in SoHo.

"You okay, babe?" Isaac asks me.

I'd been sitting stock still for the past thirty seconds or so. "Mad Cow," I say by way of response. Isaac knows about Mad Cow. Not the details, no, just that she's tried to kill me a couple times...

"Wait, for real?" he asked me.

We were sitting out on the patio at an overpriced café in Tribeca that both of us had been meaning to try. After meeting at a trade show where he'd complimented my outfit four months prior, and I'd bought a single diamond from him, this was our first official date outside of business hours.

"For real what?" I'd already forgotten what we were talking about. I was busy ogling these heels this one woman had on; they looked like a pair of René Caovillas. She was crossing the street now, and I made a mental note to search them up later.

"Your sister tried to kill you?" Isaac wore a leaf-printed blouse that managed to look refined rather than tacky, and his nails were painted a neon yellow.

I tore my eyes away from the heels. "Yes," I said. "Three times, actually."

His mouth was slightly open, and I wanted to tell him to close it, a gaping mouth was uncouth. But his discomfort felt empowering, and I lifted my forehead at him. "Do you have siblings?"

He barked out a laugh. "Thank God I don't..."

The memory fades as I come back to the present. "Ugh," Isaac says, "what does it want?" Since then, too, he's resorted to calling Mad Cow, "it."

"Family dinner. Be there or be square," I deadpan.

"You're not going."

"Obviously," I say.

"Good," he says; he had set down his cleaning cloth, and he picks it up again now. "And if she tries to kill you again for missing dinner, I'll just kill her first."

I peer over at him. The way he's sitting, with his right leg crossed over his left, the loupe glasses strapped around his head, his four different chain necklaces glinting around his neck, and his white-gloved fingers delicately holding onto some of the most expensive diamonds in the world, Isaac Woolly looks like someone straight out of a niche luxury magazine spread — not a murderer. But, looks can be deceiving.

"Make it look like an accident," I say, returning to my ring. "As much as I look good in orange, I like sleeping in my own bed."

"I was planning on pushing her in front of the subway," he says.

"The F train?"

"The one and only."

We continue to work for the next two hours, the only breaks bathroom breaks and mini diamond showings, which are more of an excuse for Isaac to show off his newly-cleaned jewels than anything else, but I'm not complaining. I don't need any new diamonds at the moment, but I deserve to look at pretty things regardless.

Eventually, my watch reads eight in the evening, and I have a nasty crick in my lower back that I'll need to do some Pilates for to get rid of. I gather my supplies, air kiss Isaac, and then, I'm in a taxi zooming toward home.

My phone illuminates the dark space as I scroll through my apps. After liking a bunch of my clients' posts on Instagram, I find myself on YouTube. I land on a short. It's of a podcaster, a woman in her mid-thirties or so with dyed red hair and thick black framed glasses that, if they are real, are the ugliest glasses I've ever seen. I'm about to click out of the video when I catch the words, "The Barbie Slayer." I turn up the volume.

"...with that, welcome to The Evidence Locker, where we analyze murders committed by our cold-blooded brethren because it's fun, duh! I'm your host, Mel Drewes, and today, we'll be talking about the hottest serial killer terrorizing the streets of New York City right now. That's right, it's the one, the only, The Barbie Slayer!"

Mel goes on for the next few minutes about The Barbie Slayer, his victims so far, and his potential motive, which Mel believes is from a childhood of bullying or some strange fascination with preserving beauty. I disagree on both counts. For one, childhood bullying is laughably too trite of a motive, and if it turns out to be correct, I'll lose all respect for our resident killer, and for two, if he were preserving beauty, why would he hack up the bodies and leave them to rot on the nasty streets of New York?

"...Now, enough about the madman, let's talk about our girl, Zoey Altmann. Gorgeous, brilliant, and kind, is what her family and friends say, but, let's be real here for a sec, if your family doesn't say that about you, are they really your family?" I snort at this. She's right: Mad Cow, Hag, and POS would never.

"Anyway," Mel continues, "Zoey was working as a PA student doing her clinical rotations at New York-Presbyterian on the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus—" The car goes over a deep pothole, and I'm jerked out of my seat.

"Watch it," I hiss at the driver. He responds something unintelligible, maybe not even English. I already know I'm not going to tip my usual. I settle back into my seat and turn up the volume even more. It's not good for my ears, but it's not my fault that the city is hiring incompetent drivers who have the gall to try to kill me and, worse, talk back at me.

"...no known affiliation to The Barbie Slayer, and no sources, as far as I could research, have been able to deduce why The Slayer was even near the area in the first place," Mel says. "Which brings me to my next point: that our killer isn't one to shy away from inconvenience, leading me to believe that he's actually a Type A sonuvabitch who plans everything."

A text appears at the top of my phone. It's from a random number, but when I pull it down to see the message, I see that it's from Liam, the finance bro from the café with more gums than teeth. He's asking for a second date. I quickly type out a message, requesting Italian because I've been craving frutti di mare. I return to YouTube.

"...missing a gold knot earring," Mel is saying. "This looks to me like your classic case of victim trophies where serial killers, as prolific as those like The Barbie Slayer, keep something of their victims as mementos—"

"Here!"

I open my mouth to tell the driver to shut the fuck up, I'm watching something when I spot the front doors to my apartment building outside the window. I complete the ride transaction and leave the cab. The podcast is still playing, and Mel's voice is starting to grate on my nerves. I stop the video, and silence floods my eardrums. It's blissful, and I revel in it for a moment before I head inside.