by Chris Culver
“What do I need to do?” asked Jude.
“Do you admit that you’re a sinner?”
“Yes,” said Jude, nodding. He seemed sincere, but he didn’t understand the depths of his own depravity yet.
“I wish I believed you,” said Glenn, his voice almost a whisper. “Prove it. Go to Paige and take her.”
Jude blinked, unsure of what he asked.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” said Glenn. “Give in to your nature. I can see it in your eyes. You want her. Take off her clothes and lay with her as a man does with his wife.”
Jude looked to his girlfriend, shaking his head.
“She doesn’t want to. Maybe if you give her some food. We’ll do whatever you want.”
“Food is for the strong,” said Glenn. “If you want to eat, prove that you’re a man. Rape your girlfriend.”
“No,” said Jude.
“Okay,” said Glenn, smiling. The others had resisted at first, too. They all gave in soon enough. “Once you change your mind, you can have the rest of the sandwich. You can even share it with her. If you don’t, you will both die here in more pain than you can ever imagine. Think about that. I’ll be outside. Start when you’re ready. I don’t plan to watch.”
Glenn didn’t wait for a response. Instead, he put the sandwich on the ground outside the fence. Then, he walked to Helen and helped her up. The two intertwined their fingers and climbed the steps, just as they had done many times before. Helen cried, but she understood what they were doing.
They stopped at the top of the stairs and waited for almost ten minutes before Paige cried out.
“Please, don’t.”
She was louder than he had expected. The others had barely been able to whisper by this point. Everything about this couple had surprised him, though. He should have expected this as well.
“I don’t want this.”
Paige’s voice was equally strong this time. Glenn squeezed his sister’s hand.
“This had to happen,” he said. “It won’t be long now.”
Helen nodded. For a few more moments, Glenn listened to the struggle downstairs. The bile rose in his throat as he heard Paige fight, cry, and fail to protect herself from her boyfriend’s advances. As the teenagers coupled in the dungeon, Glenn removed a five-gallon bucket he had purchased at a home center from his trunk. He then walked down an overgrown path to a lakeshore that had once been alive with the sounds of laughing children. Now, it was silent.
Glenn filled his bucket to the brim and carried it to his dungeon. Helen sobbed at the top of the stairs, while no noise at all came from the bottom. Jude must have finished.
“Go,” whispered Helen. “He did what he had to do. Now it’s your turn. Finish this. Please.”
Glenn nodded and carried his bucket downstairs. Paige lay on the cot. Her eyes were closed, and a threadbare blanket covered her to her chin. Jude sat on the ground beside her. Neither cried, which was unusual. From the start, though, Paige and Jude had exhibited an unusually strong bond for people this age. They had leaned on each other. It allowed them to last weeks longer than anyone else. Now that Jude had shattered that bond, this should go easier.
“It’s time to go home,” said Glenn, looking at Jude. “Your family will know what you did, but I’m sure they’ll forgive you in time.”
“What about Paige?”
Glenn drew in a breath through clenched teeth and shook his head.
“Paige has to stay. She has other appointments.”
“What appointments?”
Glenn looked down and paced in front of the chain-link fence.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “After the betrayal you put her through, anything I can do would seem like a lover’s kiss.”
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he said.
“And yet you did,” said Glenn, turning to face him. “That’s who you are. You need to accept that.”
Jude stood and shook his head.
“I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I’m not going to touch her,” said Glenn. “When her appointments arrive, I’ll tell them to be gentle with her.”
“Will you let her go afterwards?”
Glenn shook his head and knelt to look in Jude’s eyes. Kids were so easy to manipulate.
“She’s never leaving this place. She’ll die here, but you get to choose how that happens,” he said. “Option one, I take you home right now. You’ll grow up and live a happy life, but you’ll leave someone you love down here. Men will line up to have her just as you did. Option two, I give you a bucket with water, and you end her suffering. You become a hero and save her the pain of what comes ahead. It’s your choice.”
“I won’t hurt her again,” said Jude. “Please don’t make me.”
“You won’t be hurting her,” said Glenn. “You’ll be saving her. As exhausted as she is, she won’t fight. She’ll welcome the release. Help her die. Drown her. You’re the only one who can do it.”
“And then I’ll go free?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Glenn. “Then I’ll set you free.”
Had Jude been healthy, he could have overpowered Glenn, but in his present state, he couldn’t overpower a child. Paige didn’t have the strength of a child, though. It wouldn’t be long now. Glenn unlocked the padlock that held the gate shut but didn’t open the door.
“Walk to the far wall and put your hands flat against the stone.”
Jude did as Glenn asked and scurried away, allowing Glenn to step into the cell unmolested. He put the bucket beside Paige’s bed. She didn’t react. Once Glenn had the bucket in place, he stepped out and walked upstairs, where his sister waited for him.
“It’s always surprising when they break,” said Helen, leaning her head against her brother’s shoulder once he sat down. “When we first tried this, I didn’t know it would work.”
“If you hurt someone enough, he’ll do anything to make it stop,” said Glenn.
“I suppose that’s right,” she said, squeezing his arm. Together, they sat and listened as the wind rustled the leaves of nearby trees, as insects buzzed, and as Paige thrashed her face inside the bucket as her boyfriend drowned her. With every moment Paige struggled, Helen squeezed tighter until Glenn thought her fingers would break through his skin.
And then there was silence.
“I did it,” Jude called a moment later. “Now come down and let me go.”
Glenn rubbed his sister’s back.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he whispered. “No one will ever hurt you again. I’ll take care of you this time.”
She nodded and closed her eyes. “Do what you have to do.”
He walked down the steps, knowing his task with this couple was drawing to a close. When he reached the bottom of the steps, he paused. The light was off. He thought he had left that on, though. It didn’t matter at this point. If the light bulb had burned out, it had burned out. He’d get a new one for the next couple.
As he stepped forward, the gloom surrounded him. He couldn’t see Paige’s body, but water had spilled onto the floor.
“Jude?” he called. He paused and waited.
“Do it!”
Paige screamed. Glenn’s breath caught in his throat, but before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, water hit him in the face. A shadow flashed to his left as something sharp and barbed pressed into his neck.
Then, pain exploded all over his body as electricity coursed through his system.
16
I drove to my station and walked to the conference room the FBI had borrowed for their Apostate task force. The room was quiet, but a few agents sat in front of laptops around the conference table. Delgado was gone, but Agent Lawson closed a laptop at the head of the table and stood before walking toward me with a crooked smile on his face.
“Morning, Detective,” he said, nodding. “Your dispatcher told me to expect you.”
“Thank you for not going into hi
ding,” I said. Lawson’s lips curled into a smile, but it disappeared behind his professional countenance. “I’d like to talk to you again about Trinity and Thad, my missing teenagers. I’m still early in my investigation, but this looks like the Apostate.”
“Walk with me,” said Lawson, already heading toward the door. I followed along a step behind him as we left the room. “We can talk outside.”
“Okay, I guess,” I said. “But like I said, I visited—”
“It’s a nice morning, isn’t it?” asked Lawson, interrupting me as we approached the stairwell that led to the lobby. “It’s all sunshine all the time here in St. Augustine. Can’t complain about that, huh?”
I hesitated as we walked down the stairs.
“Yeah, the weather’s been nice lately—”
“It’s too hot in the summer for me, though,” he said, once more interrupting me before I could talk. “I’m four years from retirement, but my wife and I are looking for places. We like Irvine, California. The Pacific regulates the temperatures pretty well, so it doesn’t get too hot in the summer, and it never gets too cold in the winter. Sounds just right for me.”
Once more, I hesitated before speaking. We had reached the lobby. Trisha smiled from the front desk but said nothing. I smiled at her but focused on Agent Lawson. Evidently he wanted to make small talk. I could play along for a while.
“What would you do in California? You’re not old enough to retire.”
We crossed the lobby, and he held open the front door for me.
“I’ll get something in private security for a while,” he said. “Then, maybe, I’ll take up golf.”
“If I were in California, I think I’d learn to sail. It looks fun.”
Lawson grunted as we passed through the door and onto the street. Once the door shut, Lawson glanced at me.
“Sorry about that. Your station has ears,” he said. We walked a few feet down the sidewalk before he stopped and cocked his head at me. “You really want to learn how to sail?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling and imagining it. “Can you imagine drinking coffee in a boat in the middle of the ocean with nothing around and no sound but the waves beating against the sides? It sounds peaceful.”
“It sounds lonely,” he said.
“I’d be alone, but that wouldn’t mean I’d be lonely.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Lawson. He drew in a breath as we walked down the sidewalk. “I got an email this morning from Sheriff Delgado. After an exhaustive search, he determined that someone used his cell phone to contact Angela Pritchard and leak the information about the Apostate’s church.”
“I’m truly shocked,” I said, my voice flat.
“He claimed someone stole the cell phone from his desk a week ago, but he promised to do his best to find it.”
I glanced at Lawson but didn’t break stride. “I hope you don’t believe that.”
“I do not,” he said. “He’s a weasel, but he’s a weasel with authority. He gave me a stolen-property report dated six days ago alleging that someone took his cell phone from his locker in the men’s room of your station.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding and putting that together. “He called Angela Pritchard and made a false police report to cover his ass.”
“That’s pretty much how I see it,” said Lawson. “And that’s the problem. If we’re right and Delgado has that phone now, he’s got evidence of a crime committed in his station, and he’s covered by paperwork. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did to you two. I should have kept my concerns quiet and nailed him before he had the chance to point the finger elsewhere. I’m sorry.”
I tilted my head to the side. “No harm, no foul, I guess. Where are we walking, anyway?”
“Coffee shop up the street,” he said. “And there is harm. That phone is a weapon. He won’t have enough to charge anyone with a crime, but if he hides that phone in your desk or in the desk of someone else he dislikes, he’ll have every justification he needs to fire people.”
The muscles in my back stiffened.
“Well, damn,” I said. “I didn’t consider that.”
We walked for another few minutes.
“You want to talk about your missing kids now?” asked Agent Lawson.
“I’d rather run my boss over with a truck.”
“Me, too,” said Lawson. “Barring that, tell me what you found out about Trinity and Thad.”
I scowled but then drew in a breath and nodded.
“They’re still missing. I talked to the principal at their school, and he said they had a lot in common with Jude and Paige. They were the same age, they played sports, and they came from similar households. If the Apostate has a type, they’re it.”
Lawson nodded. “Except for drug dealer parents. None of the other kids had that kind of history.”
“And nobody knew Trinity and Mackenzie did, either. Maybe the Apostate didn’t know.”
“That’s possible,” said Lawson. “It raises an issue, though. These kids are healthy athletes. We assumed the Apostate knew his victims well. We were thinking he might have been some kind of church official. If he doesn’t even know his victims, though, how is he getting them to do what he wants? Thad weighs about two hundred pounds. He would have put up a fight if someone threatened his girlfriend.”
It was a good question, one I couldn’t answer. We walked for half a block and stopped at a street corner, where I saw a pair of girls crossing toward us. There was an older girl on a cell phone a few steps behind them. The older girl looked annoyed, which made me think she was babysitting her younger sisters. It reminded me of something.
“Mackenzie Foster lied about what happened to her and her sister,” I said. “I thought she was covering for her sister and Thad, but what if she was covering for the Apostate?”
Lawson raised an eyebrow and then tilted his head down.
“Like she’s working with him?”
“No,” I said. “More like he told her he’d kill her and her sister if she told anyone the truth. She’s just a kid. If a crazy man with a gun threatened someone she loved, she might do what he said.”
“You might be right,” said Lawson. “We’ve been considering something similar. Let’s assume you’re right. Let’s assume the Apostate took Thad and Trinity, killed Trinity’s parents, and threatened Mackenzie. He’s escalated his behavior and become a lot bolder. He’s taking risks he hasn’t taken before. Why?”
“He knows we’re on to him, and he’s scared,” I said. “He’s worried he won’t be able to finish his work before we catch him.”
“And that work is?” asked Lawson.
I considered what I had seen so far and shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“At least our ignorance puts us all on the same page.”
Agent Lawson and I walked the remaining half block to Rise and Grind, where he held the door open for me. I ordered a chai latte, and he got a black coffee and pecan roll at my suggestion. Our food and drinks came out within just a few minutes, and we took a table by the front window. An elderly couple sat at a table nearby, and three teenage girls sat near the front door. Otherwise, the dining room was empty.
Lawson almost said something, but I held up a hand to stop him once I noticed the teenage girls cast sidelong glances in our direction. I smiled at them. One of them stood from her table and walked toward us.
“Are you Detective Court? I saw you on TV,” she said. I nodded and smiled again. “I’m Emma.”
“Hi, Emma,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“We knew Paige,” said Emma, looking over her shoulder to the other girls. “She was older than us, so we weren’t friends, but she was nice.”
I nodded again. Lawson looked annoyed at having our conversation interrupted, but I kept a smile on my face, encouraging her to keep speaking.
“Everybody says she was nice,” I said.
Emma looked down.
“Is she dead?” she asked. “Nobody
will tell us anything, and our parents won’t even talk to us about it. There’s all this stuff online, and we don’t know whether it’s true or whether it’s made up or what.”
“What kind of stuff are you seeing online?” asked Lawson.
“Just rumors,” said Emma. “Nobody knows what’s going on. We’re scared.”
Lawson started to say something, but I spoke before he could. I had been a young girl once, so I knew how to speak to one.
“It’s okay to be scared. You may not see us, but we’ve got a lot of officers out on the streets. Until this blows over, it’s best if you stay in groups and keep your phones handy. If someone creepy approaches you in the street, tell him to leave. If he doesn’t, call 911. Nobody will judge you or think you’re overreacting. At home, don’t answer the door unless you know the person behind it and are expecting them. Most of all, use your head. If a situation seems wrong, call the police. If you use your eyes and your head, you’ll be okay.”
She didn’t seem convinced, but she nodded.
“What about the Apostate? They say he’s, like, some kind of devil worshiper.”
“We’re searching for him,” I said. “If you want to help, call the police if you see something creepy. We’ll take care of the Apostate.”
“Okay,” she said, turning. “Thanks, Detective. I saw Angela Pritchard’s news story about you. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but it was a long time ago.”
Emma nodded and went back to her group. Lawson sipped his coffee and lowered his voice.
“Do people ask you about cases often?”
I shrugged. “More than usual since Jude and Paige disappeared. The Apostate scares people. It’s natural.”
He nodded and drew in a breath before reaching into his jacket for a notepad and flipping through pages.
“Our coroner identified the bodies at the church through dental records. Victims are John Rodgers, Matthew Bridges, James Tyler, Simon Fisher, and Andrew White.”
I recognized the names from my initial research into the Apostate.
“Where does he dump the girls?”