Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

  ‘I want to start by saying I’m very sorry for what happened. We want to make this right with you and your family. Layla has never done anything like this before.’

  The mother opens her perfect mouth, and any guilt Gabi is feeling is allayed by the incredible stupid that comes out of it. ‘I hope not. I really hope not. You being a single mother and all.’ It’s worse than patronizing. It’s matronizing. ‘I admire your courage, trying to do it on your own. But it means … I’m sorry, this is probably hard to hear. But it means you can’t be there all the time. You don’t know what she’s doing. Where she’s going. What she’s taking.’

  ‘Layla wasn’t on any drugs.’

  ‘We’ve asked for blood tests.’

  ‘Not without parental consent.’ She’d give it, of course, but she wants to remind them that there are procedures, that the law is democratic and justice is blind – or that it’s supposed to be.

  ‘The school is going to search her locker. We’re going to prosecute. And take it as far as we can.’

  ‘I understand you want her to be punished—’

  Donna smacks the table with her open palm. ‘She ruined his face!’

  ‘It’s going to cost nineteen hundred dollars per tooth,’ Edward says with awe, as if this is something to be proud of.

  ‘I’m absolutely willing to cover whatever your insurance doesn’t pay. It’ll come out of Layla’s college fund.’

  ‘College?’ Donna laughs bitterly. ‘She shouldn’t be going to college. She should be admitted to a mental hospital! She needs serious help. And it’s not just the reconstructive surgery. What about the humiliation? In front of the whole school. Do you know what kind of damage that does to a young person’s confidence?’

  ‘Please listen to what I’m about to say to you. You’re well within your rights to press charges—’ Gabi is holding on to her patience with a death grip.

  ‘Yes, we are.’

  ‘But even with the most severe judge on earth, I can tell you that Layla is not going to serve any time in juvenile detention or prison. She will do community service. It will go on her record, but because she is fifteen, it will be expunged when she turns eighteen. The judge will take into consideration that she has no priors, that she is the daughter of two upstanding long-serving police officers, and that she experienced a traumatic event two days earlier that affected her emotional state—’

  ‘This is corruption!’ Donna shrieks. ‘This is exactly what people are talking about when they complain about the system. You people look after your own.’

  ‘It’s the way the law works. For any teenager with no prior record.’

  Edward puts his arm around his wife. ‘Your daughter is not going to walk after assaulting our son with a deadly weapon.’

  ‘The charge would be “serious assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder”.’

  ‘That’s for the judge to decide. Whether she was trying to kill him. Totally unprovoked.’

  Gabi finds her death grip is slipping. ‘Let’s talk about that,’ she says. ‘About provocation. About what is going to come up in the case, and parents who don’t know what their kids are up to. Let’s talk about Travis distributing child pornography.’

  ‘Honey?’ Mrs. Russo looks across at her husband, but it’s more of an appeal for him to put Gabi in her place than any real concern.

  ‘Do I need to call my attorney?’ He’s bored with all this. Money buys you a nice house in the suburbs, along with expensive lawyers who can make problems disappear.

  ‘Travis posted a video to his Facebook page of an underage girl being sexually assaulted at a party.’

  ‘That’s not child pornography.’ Still bored. Still the upper-class hand.

  ‘Technically, it’s exactly child pornography. If convicted, Travis will get a place on the Sex Offender’s Registry. Which does not get expunged from your record when you turn eighteen.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ the father says, half-standing up. She worries that he is going to bump his head on that ridiculous lamp. ‘Your daughter viciously assaults our son, probably hopped up out of her mind on drugs, and you dare to try to turn this around on him?’

  ‘This is America. Sex is worse than violence.’

  ‘You think he made some video? You think our son would do that?’

  ‘That would be a much more serious charge. It’s from Oakland, made a year ago. It’s of a fourteen-year-old girl called Isabella Amis being sexually assaulted at a party. Travis was just being a dumb kid and sharing it around without thinking about the consequences. He made a stupid mistake.’

  ‘And your daughter did the same?’ Donna sneers. Gabi admires the way she loads up her sarcasm with extra syrup.

  ‘Your son also grabbed Isabella Amis’s breasts at a party, in front of her peers, if you want to talk about public humiliation. So, add sexual assault plus a cyber-bullying charge, although Michigan lawmakers are still figuring out the protocols on that. This could be a landmark case. None of this excuses what Layla did – but her defense would definitely raise this as extenuating circumstances. It would all come up in the trial, if you did decide to prosecute.’

  ‘You’ve got proof?’

  ‘I have screengrabs of his timeline. Comments by his friends. I’m sure he’s deleted everything he can by now, but social media leaves ghosts. The corporations back up everything: Facebook posts, text messages, Snapchats. All on a central server somewhere, and they can be requisitioned by a court of law. Deleted is a terrible misnomer.’ Only half of this is true, but Mr. Holt gave her all the jargon to dazzle them with. They sat and went through the kids’ profiles together, grabbed what they could. He did it with the grim satisfaction of a survivor.

  ‘Show us this video,’ Donna Russo challenges.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. It would constitute a criminal offense. You’ll have to ask your son about it.’

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18

  Turning Over

  Gabi wakes up from an uneasy sleep, too early, five a.m., to a house that’s unnaturally quiet. Layla’s absence is a physical thing in the darkness. Is this what it will feel like when she goes to college? There’s a warm weight on her legs. NyanCat, who hunkers down in protest and tries to make herself heavier when she moves.

  ‘I’m bigger than you, cat,’ Gabi says, tipping the animal off the bed. She stalks away, tail quivering in outrage.

  She never understood the name. Some video game? Layla showed her a clumsy animation of a piece of toast with a cat’s head trailing a rainbow, so she took to calling the kitty-litter box the ‘rainbow dropzone’ just to annoy her. Layla makes it too easy. Gabi mangles pop culture on purpose to get under her skin. Somehow this has become an acceptable shorthand for ‘I love you’.

  Gabi gets up and starts flipping through the reports. Boyd dropped off a bunch more last night, after she got back from dealing with the asshole parents, looking as exhausted as she felt. She was so wiped she forgot to ask him if he’d heard from Sparkles.

  She flips open the files.

  ‘What the fuck do you want? What are you trying to do?’ She flips through the photographs of the doors. The monstrosity of Daveyton’s remains in the garden, the deer’s hollow eyes.

  NyanCat meows plaintively from the floor, and she rubs her with her foot, idly. It’s all the encouragement the cat needs. She jumps into Gabi’s lap, tipping all the files onto the floor.

  ‘You ridiculous animal!’ She pushes the cat away and starts sorting the reports back into the right folders. She examines the names of the participating artists on the spreadsheet. Fifty people. She turns the page over, not for any good reason. Cop instinct.

  There are three more names, printed in red, in an eight-point font, and struck out. Two men, one woman.

  Vincent Nadel

  Clayton Broom

  Alette von Randow

  She gets onto her knees on the floor and starts digging for the student registry at Miskwabic Pottery,
running her fingers down the names from the last three years, looking for a Vincent or a Clayton.

  Nothing.

  But maybe he was there before that. There’s an accounts book in the evidence box at the precinct. She pulls on a sweater and a pair of jeans, gathers up all the files, and drives down to the station.

  She phones Boyd from the road.

  His voice is thick with sleep. ‘Another one?’

  ‘No. But I think I have something. Can you come down?’

  He finds her flipping through the hardcover book where Betty Spinks tallied her income and expenses.

  ‘Here. 19 April 2010. “$50. General assistance. C. Broom.” 30 April “$35 Custodial work. C. Broom.” 11 May “$50 minus clay purchased = $35.” And look at the list of participating artists. Clayton Broom. Crossed out on the back pages. What do you think that means? He dropped out? They dropped him? Why?’

  ‘Because he’s a psycho killer? I’ll run his name through the system.’

  ‘Can you get me the curator on the line?’

  ‘You know it’s six in the morning, Versado.’

  ‘I give a fuck.’

  Patrick Thorpe materializes half an hour later with Darcy D’Angelo, both of them effervescent with nerves.

  ‘Of course it’s him. Of course!’ Patrick says. ‘I should have put this together! He’s always been peculiar, but lately he’s been …’

  ‘More insane than usual,’ Darcy offers.

  ‘His work developed very suddenly, almost overnight. This amazing vision, but a very disturbing direction. Do you think it’s because he was killing people? Do you think that opened him up creatively?’

  ‘Can you slow down please, Mr. Thorpe.’

  ‘He was supposed to deliver this wonderful waxy fat man for the show, but he bailed. Oh God, do you think there was a body in there, too? But the picture you showed me of the thing in the garden, it was so crude. Not like his other work at all. Slapped together. But that makes sense, doesn’t it, because don’t serial killers start unraveling, getting sloppier? And he’s got a history, hasn’t he Darcy? That blood-stained hospital sheet he once put up as an artwork.’

  ‘Don’t you remember what he did to Marcelle?’ Darcy chimes in. ‘You all tried to play it down as a prank, but let me tell you the girls in the house knew he was off from that moment.’

  ‘What prank? When was this?’ Gabi snaps.

  ‘It must have been seven or eight years ago,’ Darcy says. ‘There were a group of artists sharing a communal studio squat. It was a scene, lots of parties, and Clayton was couch-surfing there for a while. No-one really liked him – he was very intense – but they couldn’t figure out how to ask him to leave. Anyway, there was a girl he liked, Marcelle. Clayton painted her portrait and when she said it was ugly—’

  ‘He said, “I’ll show you ugly!”, Patrick interrupts.

  ‘He went and got dried-up sheeps’ intestines from the abattoir next door and glued them onto the painting, over her hair. Marcelle was very upset and there was a huge fight. They threw him out over it.’

  ‘I’m going to need you to go on the record with this.’

  Patrick gasps. ‘Darcy! What if it wasn’t sheeps’ intestines?’

  ‘I don’t think speculation is useful. Rather let us investigate. You’ve been very helpful,’ Gabi hustles them out. ‘We’ll follow up with you, but in the meantime, please don’t talk to anyone about this, especially not the media.’ She shuts the door on the pair and leans against the wall.

  ‘Jesus,’ she breathes.

  He’s been right here, in front of them, this whole time. They’ve even got him on tape at the party, just for a second, before the camera dips down. ‘I need a camera,’ he says, chillingly. ‘I need people to see.’

  Clayton Elias Broom. Fifty-three years old. Arrested several times. But never for a felony crime that would have required fingerprints. Loitering. Disturbing the peace, traffic obstruction.

  He’s on the personnel list from the meat-packing plant. Worked there for three months in 2010, and again more recently, before they ran into trouble with the unions. He definitely would have had access to the meat glue.

  He is in Betty Spinks’s accounting registry.

  He’s in the fucking phone book, address and all. Daveyton’s bus route goes right past his house.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ Boyd says.

  ‘Not until he’s in custody,’ Gabi says. She is strapping on her bulletproof vest. Everyone has rallied. Everyone is ready.

  ‘Shit,’ Boyd says, shaking his head. ‘Can’t believe me and Sparkles missed this.’

  Gabriella freezes. ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Not this morning, no.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Dropped him off on Sunday after we did the door-to-doors.’

  ‘And yesterday?’

  ‘No. But I was busy. We all were.’

  ‘Has anyone seen Officer Jones?’ Gabi yells out. She thinks about the missed call from yesterday. She never checked to see if he left a message. She dials voicemail. ‘Hi, Detective Versado,’ Marcus’s voice says, ‘I found some more names on the list, I’m going to—’

  It cuts out there. She plays it again. Fuck.

  Fuck.

  ‘Did Marcus have this list?’

  ‘We had a couple of copies. He was working from one on Sunday.’

  She punches in a different number. ‘Hello, 4th Precinct? This is Detective Versado from Homicide. Is your supervisor there? Can you tell me if Officer Marcus Jones reported for duty yesterday? Yes, I know he’s on special dispensation. He didn’t call in sick with you? I know he’s supposed to be with me. He’s not.’

  Finders Keepers

  ‘Damn, it’s cold,’ Cas complains, perched on the edge of the merry-go-round turning in lazy circles. Every so often, she kicks off with her sneaker to maintain the momentum, leaving tracks in the icy sludge from last night’s snow. ‘You think he’s going to show?’

  ‘He has to.’ Layla sits on the fence, freshly painted, low enough to jump over and run, if necessary. There are houses and shops nearby. There’s a gas station across the road. This is not her mom’s advice. It’s an adolescence of watching bad horror movies and yelling at the dumb-ass characters.

  Ten thousand dollars. That has to be enough to pay for Travis’s dental work, surely?

  VelvetBoy didn’t want to pay that much, of course. But she told him he had to match her other offer. Call it a finder’s fee for his wallet. Which also includes deleting all the screengrabs of their chats and texts and the video footage from the diner, which she doesn’t have, but hey, he doesn’t know that. She didn’t tell him that the ‘other bidder’ wanted crime-scene photos off her mom’s laptop, not proof of a pedophile chat.

  ‘Can I see the gun?’ Cas asks, swirling past her.

  ‘No! God.’ The .38 in the pocket of her hoodie has its own black-hole density. They made the cab driver wait outside Layla’s house while she fetched it out the safe, before he brought them here. All courtesy of Cas’s mom’s taxi account. ‘What if he comes round the corner right now? We’ll scare him off.’

  ‘Or scare him into paying up, no questions asked.’

  ‘Is that the same car?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The green Pontiac. I’m sure it went past earlier.’

  ‘Girl, I can’t tell the difference between a Porsche and Pontiac.’

  ‘There it goes again. Same license plate. Don’t bail on me again, okay?’ she warns.

  Layla pulls her cat mask down and steps forward, waving. The other hand is in the pocket of her hoodie. Cas sits up, digging her heels into the gravel to bring the roundabout to a squeaking stop.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The Pontiac slows and she sees Philip’s pink, frightened face behind the wheel. She beckons. The car leaps forward, tires squealing, and speeds away.

  ‘Was it him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where�
��s he going?’

  ‘To have a panic attack. He’ll be back.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because he’s been past twice already. He’s already invested.’

  Cas comes to sit beside her on the fence, pulling down her own mask. Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pontiac creeps round the corner and pulls to a stop, engine still running, exhaust pluming from the back. Phil leans over to lower the window: ‘Hey! Why don’t you get over here?’

  ‘You come here,’ Layla calls back. He has red leather seats in his car. How lame is that?

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this in the open. We can go for a drive.’

  ‘We’re not getting in your car. You come here, or the deal’s off.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. Hope your boss at the electrical place is really understanding when I email him our chat sessions.’

  ‘All right! Just wait.’ The window slides up. He turns the key and the car shuts off. He sits in the driver’s seat for a moment, gripping the steering wheel.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Cas is tense as a guitar string.

  He’s banging on the steering wheel, his mouth open, yelling silently. Layla tightens her hold on the gun in her pocket. It feels even heavier.

  He stops yelling and banging and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath and turns to open the door. He comes round the side of the car, smiling. It’s not a real smile.

  ‘Snowing already, huh? Who would have thought.’ He’s rubbing his hands together, because maybe that way he can stop himself from lunging forward and choking them.

  ‘Stay there,’ Layla warns him.

  ‘Make up your mind,’ he snaps, the smile gone.

  ‘Where’s the money?’ Cas says.