Skin Deep

by Michelle Hanson

  “Hidden webmail?” I repeated.

  “It’s just like email but hidden in the Deep Web. It doesn’t leave a trace,” she added. One by one, emails loaded onto the screen. She scrolled down a long list of emails, and I glanced at how far back they dated.

  The message started two weeks after Lathan Collins’ murder spree began and ended the day before his death. But that wasn’t the only odd part of the emails. Every incoming message was from the same person. I leaned in further so I could see the screen more clearly, to ensure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.

  Every single email was correspondence with Lathan Collins.

  I took a deep breath and held it as my heart pounded in my chest. The beat intensified as disquiet grew in my stomach. I could feel my throat spasm as it gave in to the nausea rising in the back of my throat.

  Cait placed the mouse over the first email and let it hover, as if she wasn’t quite sure whether she wanted to open it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to either. Doing so would only confirm any involvement between Abram and Lathan. I still wanted to believe that Abram was on our side. I wanted to believe that one of our own wasn’t capable of this.

  I wanted to believe the impossible.

  “Open it,” I urged. As much as I wanted to live in blissful ignorance, we had to know the truth. Maybe somewhere in those emails would be a clue as to where Rachel was. The Casting Call Killer—either Novak, or possibly Abram—stated we had five days to figure out who he was. Today was the fifth day. It was also the fifth day that Rachel had been missing. And if the Casting Call Killer was following Lathan’s MO, then Rachel’s fifth day would be her last.

  Cait opened the email and read it to herself.

  “Abram’s introducing himself to Lathan Collins,” she said aloud. “‘I watched your video. Good stuff, man. The way that bitch screamed.’” Cait continued to read in a low monotone.

  “Video?” Flu interrupted. “What video?”

  I didn’t see a video attached to the email, but I did remember Cait’s assertion that the murders were somehow related to Deep Web entertainment.

  “Cait theorized that Lathan recorded his victims’ deaths,” I spoke up, “and then uploaded them to the Deep Web for either payment or entertainment. Maybe both.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Flu asked. “Why would anyone watch?” He paused. “Read the rest.” He gestured to the screen in front of Cait.

  She clicked through multiple emails and scanned the body of each message for highlights of the conversations between Lathan and Abram. “It’s mostly Abram praising Lathan for his ‘work.’ He refers to him as ‘an artist with impeccable taste for his craft,’” Cait said as she continued to scan. “This one, here.” She opened another message. “This one goes into great detail of one of the murders.”

  I look at the date on the message. “That was sent a week after Sophia Good was reported missing,” I recalled.

  “Lathan skinned his victims, correct?” Cait asked.

  “Correct.” I nodded. “Except Sophia wasn’t skinned. She was fully decapitated.”

  “I know,” Cait said with anguish. “Abram offered Lathan six thousand dollars for her head.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Flu muttered as he took a step back. He ran his hands over his head and gripped what little hair he had as he tried to compose himself. “Agent Porter, stay here and go through the emails—make a copy of each message before we leave. If Abram slipped through our background checks, we have to assume others have too. We can’t trust his computer won’t be tampered with while it’s sitting in evidence,” Flu commanded.

  As Cait downloaded the emails onto her flash drive, I looked around the room again. Now that I had been standing here for quite some time, it felt strikingly small. It could have been the fact that there were three of us in the space, but there was something else about it.

  “Evans, search this room for anything that could possibly link Abram to the murders or to Lathan Collins,” Flu continued. “And I’ll let the officers know we’ll be conducting a full search of the rest of the house.” With that, Flu left.

  I stared at the bookcase to the right of the computer and eyed it from top to bottom. Nothing seemed unusual. Books of different sizes and colors were neatly placed on each shelf. I walked toward the bookcase and scanned the titles. Almost every book was about a specific serial killer. Those that weren’t about murderers were medical books about human anatomy and body decomposition.

  I knelt down to examine the bottom shelf. Only one book resided there. I reached into my pocket and pulled out two latex gloves. I slipped them over my hands before I picked up the beat-up, leather-bound book. The cover was blank as well as the majority of the pages. This was a journal—most likely Abram’s personal journal. I flipped through the pages that had writing on them.

  Rambled thoughts had been scribbled onto the first one hundred or so pages in thick black ink. There was no organization to the journal. Some pages had sketches of Mirror Woods Lake, other pages told a story of just how troubled Abram’s mind was. As I started to read his thoughts, my eyes and my heart stopped when I saw a familiar name: Pamela Westlake.

  Then another: Fionna Michaels.

  Wilma Reynolds.

  Kristin Valeri.

  Next to each name was an explanation of how Abram had lured the woman to meet him for an audition. It was exactly as Cait and I had surmised: He’d posted an ad for female actors to audition for lead roles. The auditions had been held at Novak’s property downtown, and that was where the murders had taken place.

  What I couldn’t find in his journal was an explanation of how Novak was involved, or why he specifically sought out actors. I flipped to the beginning of the journal and read each page more carefully.

  Musings on ‘Lathan’s craft,’ as Abram referred to it, had been neatly penned, as if his admiration for Lathan was so great that sloppy handwriting would have been an insult to Lathan’s memory.

  Past the pages with the drawings of Mirror Woods Lake was a detailed plan to commemorate Lathan’s legacy. It was Abram’s intent to bring Lathan Collins to celebrity status—and to use that newfound fame to secure a movie deal to further preserve Lathan’s memory. It was an absurd plan. Then again, given the general population’s intrigue and interest with serial killers, maybe it wasn’t as ridiculous as it had initially come across.

  Abram’s plan mainly consisted of recreating the murders in hopes of gaining national attention. That’s why he purposely sent the videos to the news stations, and that’s why he sent them to West JPD, addressed to me. I was also part of Abram’s plan.

  According to his diary, he wanted to use my small-town fame as a way to secure a place in the spotlight. I was an obvious choice in his strategy because I was known for one thing in this world: beating Lathan Collins. And there was no better way to ensure nationwide recognition than to make me the focal point of a copycat murder spree.

  As I perused the journal, something on the floor caught my attention. Multiple scratch marks were etched in the wood along the edge of the bookcase, as if the bookcase had been moved back and forth dozens of times. The scratches created a quarter-circle pattern.

  I placed the journal back on the bottom shelf and stood up as I slid my hands along the frame of the bookcase. My fingertips skimmed the edge of the wall as I felt around for a lever or a switch that would release the bookcase from the wall. I pushed my fingers between the wall and bookcase, nudging it forward slightly in order to peek behind it.

  “Did you find something?” Cait asked as she turned away from the computer.

  “Yeah,” I answered as I pulled the bookcase further from the wall. “Tell Flu to come in here?”

  Cait nodded and left the room. The bookcase made new scratch marks as I dragged it across the wood floor. A burst of cool air seeped from behind the bookcase as the back wall was fully exposed—except there wasn’t a back wall. The office felt so small because half the room had been concealed behind a dumm
y wall; the bookcase served as a secret doorway.

  The dichotomy of Abram’s house was just as demented as he was. The exterior resembled a home that was warm and inviting, much like Abram’s exterior. It was bright, with flowers and landscaping, and great care had been taken to preserve the purity of the home.

  Inside, however, this hidden room revealed exactly who Abram was. Although it was just as immaculate as the other rooms in the house, the décor, for lack of a better word, was unsettling.

  A stale scent filled the dusty room, which was lit only by a sliver of sunlight cutting through a gap in the drapes. A navy blue armchair and matching couch were pushed against the far wall. Between them was an end table covered with tousled newspapers and magazines.

  The off-white walls housed several floating shelves of different lengths and heights. They were evenly leveled and free of unwanted clutter. What was on the shelves sent chunks of rancid disgust racing to the back of my throat. I covered my mouth with my hands as I stared at the horrific sight.

  “Jesus H…,” Flu said as he entered the room. Cait followed closely behind him. We all stared at the same shelving unit. Flu’s mouth hung open as he stared wide-eyed at the gruesome presentation ceremoniously displayed before us.

  Three clear shadowboxes, like the kinds used to display autographed sports memorabilia, sat on the top shelf. Four more shadowboxes were on the shelf just below it.

  Inside each shadowbox was a tattered and decayed face. We were staring at the combined seven victims of Lathan Collins and the Casting Call Killer.

  Each victim’s skin and hair had been fitted over a Styrofoam head. Pupils and lashes had been delicately painted onto the mannequins’ faces to make them appear more lifelike. The flesh resembled the waxy brown texture of a mummified corpse. Wrinkles created dark grooves in their skin as their painted eyes stared into emptiness.

  Lisa Johnson, Carmine Jenkins, and Sophia Good resided on the top shelf. Until now, it had been a mystery as to where Lathan Collins stored his trophies. There should have been a fourth shadowbox on that shelf—one that held Angela Truman—but her face had been returned to her body so that she could rest in peace.

  The bottom shelf held the faces of the Casting Call Killer’s victims. Their faces were less damaged and decayed than the flesh of Lathan’s victims.

  Pamela Westlake, Fionna Michaels, Kristen Valeri, and Wilma Reynolds neighbored one another as their painted eyes, too, stared into the blank abyss before them.

  As grotesque as it all was, there was clearly a certain care that had been taken with each face. Abram undoubtedly cherished these trophies. He had spent a lot of time and tenderness in creating this tomb for his treasures. Each victim’s hair had been brushed and held in place with barrettes. Not a single strand was out of place. He was methodical in the handling of his prized possessions. The display resembled a ritualistic adoration—as if he believed these women had died for the greatest reason on earth: to serve as “a testament to Lathan Collins’ talent” as Abram had described it in his journal.

  “Flu…,” I breathed out as I looked toward the corner of the room; another shadowbox sat solo on top of a plant stand. “Novak isn’t the Casting Call Killer.” My adrenaline kicked in and sent my chest rising.

  “How do you know?” Flu followed my stare.

  Inside the shadowbox was Novak’s decapitated head. His eyes were shut, and his bottom lip drooped into a frown. His gray hair was severely disheveled—the exact opposite of how the female victims were presented. There was no attention paid to Novak’s remains. He was cast to the side, not even worthy of being on the shelf.

  Flu slumped back as the blow of looking at his friend knocked the wind out of him. A heavy silence fell upon the room as we looked at the demonic display of death before us. Anger and sadness simultaneously rose within my body. I wanted to cry and punch and kick and wail at the person responsible for this. I wanted to do the same to Abram that he had done to Novak and these women, so that he would know what it felt like. But death was too humane for him. Abram deserved to suffer. He deserved to endure the cruelest torture possible, but I wasn’t convinced anything I came up with would fit the type of brutality he was capable of.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Flu mustered as he broke the sickening silence in the room. “We’ll get Crime Scene here for photos and bagging.” He scanned the tomb one last time with an agonizing look on his face, and then he left the room.

  A low chirp hummed from behind me, and I reached into my back pocket to pull out my cell phone. “UNKNOWN” loomed across the top of the screen as I stared at my screen.

  “Hello?” I answered the call and raised the phone to my ear.

  “I see you found who you were looking for,” Abram breathed into the phone. I looked around the room for any sign as to how he could’ve known the exact moment we stumbled upon his sadistic crypt. “Behind you,” he said. “Top corner.”

  I turned around and looked up. There, in the corner of the room, was a small camera overlooking his shrine of faces, like a security guard keeping a watchful eye over Abram’s most cherished belongings.

  “This spoils my plan. You weren’t supposed to find me until tomorrow,” Abram playfully said.

  Everything I had wanted to say to Abram, to the Casting Call Killer, or to Lathan Collins, escaped my mind. Just seconds ago, I had wanted to rip into him, to claw my hands deep into his chest just to see if he actually had a heart. Now, I was frozen. Not with fear, but with such disbelief that Abram actually found it humorous to call me. He taunted me with me such euphoric arrogance, the kind reserved only for a malicious monster—which he truly was.

  As threatening words of hostility filled my head, I brought the receiver closer to my mouth. “Why?” I asked. Sorrow and frustration tangoed in my heart. As good as it would have felt to spit insults at Abram, I needed to know his reasons. I needed to know what could possess another person to do something like this. “Why? Why would you do this to these poor women? To these innocent women?”

  “Poor women?” Abram repeated. “They served the greatest purpose imaginable,” he said. “They had meaningless lives, and I gave them purpose.” Pride rose within his voice.

  “You can’t honestly believe that,” I countered. “Lathan is not someone to idolize. He took your girlfriend for Christ’s sake.”

  “Took her?” Abram’s voice rose with laughter. “I gave her to him.” I bowed my head in defeat. There was no use in reasoning with him. Tears welled behind my eyes as the madman on the other end of the line spoke. “You just had to be the hero?” he continued. “You couldn’t have just left it alone.” He paused, and then there was a sudden shift in his tone. “She was meant for him,” he growled. “Rachel belonged to him, and you took them both.” The hatred in his voice swelled, as if I had robbed him of the only thing he ever loved. Maybe I had. By killing Lathan, I had deprived him of ever knowing happiness again.

  “Where is she?” The words shook as my body trembled with fury.

  “Where she’s always been,” Abram retorted.

  He was toying with me again, throwing out breadcrumbs in the form of riddles. Where has Rachel always been? She’s been home—she’s been safe. At least physically, she has been. Mentally safe was a different story. If she and I had anything in common, it’s that we were still trapped in that basement, figuratively speaking. We were still being held against our will by Lathan.

  “The house,” I answered. I remembered Abi telling me that someone had recently purchased the home. She couldn’t remember the name, but that didn’t really matter. Abram was full of aliases.

  “Come alone,” he hissed into the phone before a brief pause. “No….” His voice shifted. “Bring Agent Porter with you,” Abram ordered. “Someone needs to audition for Rachel.”

  Before I could counter his demand, the line went dead. The abrupt silence left a deafening pierce in my ear. I slipped my phone back into my pocket and looked at Cait. Her face was consumed by curiosity.
My mind spun as I tried to pinpoint the words to explain the conversation. Abram’s voice echoed in my head as I thought about Rachel and the peril she was in.

  If Abram was recreating the murders, then he needed to recreate that night. And there was no one better to play the victims than the original characters themselves. But if Abram needed Cait to audition for Rachel, that meant Rachel was no longer alive. A burst of anger and despair shot from my body, and I cupped my hands over my mouth to hold it in.

  “Lena?” Cait took a step closer to me.

  “No.” I shook my head. “We have to go,” I said in a low voice. If Flu, or anyone else, was within earshot, I didn’t want to be overheard. This was something I needed to do alone. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to.

  If Rachel was alive, showing up to the house with the entire police department would be a guaranteed death sentence for her. If Abram saw Flu and a pack of police officers behind Cait and me, I would be responsible for Rachel’s execution. Abram wanted this battle to stay behind closed doors. And if I wanted to give Rachel a chance at survival, I had to play by Abram’s rules.