What Lies Beneath

by Archer, David

  Oh, there were too many questions. Who was the other man? Why did it seem like some sort of planned and staged event? Was it possible that it really was all an act, maybe some kind of roleplay that Mike was into?

  How the hell could Cassie ever find out the truth?

  She forced herself to get up off the concrete floor and go into the house. The clock on the microwave said she had another hour at least before Mike would get home. She had to make some kind of decision before then, and she was terrified of making the wrong one.

  There was only one person in the world she could talk to about something like this. Abby was at home in Chicago Heights, but the two of them had talked a lot on the phone until the day when Mike had hit her.

  They still talked, but not as often. It had been a week or so since the last time. She picked up her phone off the table and scrolled to the contacts, pressing Abby’s name with her thumb.

  “Hey, girl,” Abby answered. “Haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything okay?”

  “Oh, yeah…” Cassie cut herself off. Just like that, she was ready to bury the whole thing and pretend it never happened, but that wasn’t why she’d called. She’d called Abby because she needed help, she needed to make what might be the most important decision of her life, and there was no one else she could trust with something like this. “No, Abby,” she said, suddenly fighting back tears again. “I don’t think anything is okay.”

  “I wondered,” Abby said softly, her voice heavy with concern. “You haven’t called in a week, and I was just thinking a little while ago that I should call you. What’s going on?”

  Cassie told her about Mike hitting her, then about Mike’s reaction when he saw her going through the boxes and about the fact that the only time the St. Louis Ripper murdered new victims was when Mike was out working late. She told Abby about finding Mike messing with his computer at one o’clock in the morning, and about going and looking for the boxes again, about finding the DVDs and taking a couple of them into the house to see what might be on them.

  And then she told Abby exactly what she had seen.

  “Oh, my dear God,” Abby said. “Cassie, you have got to get out of there. I don’t know if there could be any kind of logical explanation for what you saw, but I know this. You are not safe there, girl, and you need to get out now.”

  “How? How can I do that?” Cassie asked. “I don’t have anywhere to go where he wouldn’t find me, and I’m not sure I want to go and hide. Like I said, this might be just some kind of roleplay or something. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Cassie,” Abby shot back. “If he’s hit you once, he will hit you again. Cassie, even if you want to ask him about this, don’t do it while you’re alone in the house with him. Get out of there, go somewhere else and call him. Ask him about what you saw over the phone, but not face-to-face. If he can prove it wasn’t anything as bad as it looks like—not that I believe that’s possible—then, well, maybe you can work it out with him then. He’s a cop—he’s bound to understand why this would scare you.”

  “He’ll be home in about twenty minutes,” Cassie said. “Where could I go?”

  “Go to a hotel,” Abby said. “Get out of St. Louis and check into a hotel. Stay there tonight, and just call and talk to him on the phone. Maybe, just maybe there is some kind of reasonable explanation for what you saw, or maybe you’ll find out he’s a psychopath that you don’t want anything to do with. Better if you find that out now than after the wedding, right?”

  Cassie felt the tears running down her face, but her friend was making sense. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m gonna get out of here for tonight. Let me get off the phone so I can grab a couple things and get out before he gets home.”

  “Good move,” Abby said. “Call me when you get checked in somewhere. I want to know you’re safe.”

  Cassie quickly grabbed her purse and keys, stuffed a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and her toiletries into an overnight bag, then headed out to the garage. She started to get into the car, then thought about the videos she had seen. She tossed her bag into the Kia and hurried around to the other side, pulled out the two boxes, and took the discs. She quickly shoved the boxes back, got into the car, and threw the DVDs into the back seat.

  She pushed the button on the garage remote above her sun visor and backed out as soon as it was open. She closed the door again as she backed into the street, then put the car in drive and shot forward. It took her only four minutes to reach I-70, and she took the westbound ramp. She didn’t have a particular destination in mind, but she didn’t want to head toward her parents’ home, either.

  Cassie didn’t feel that she needed to go far, so she pulled in when she spotted a nice hotel just off the interstate. She wasn’t more than twenty minutes from the house, but St. Louis is a big city. She didn’t think Mike would actually come looking for her, but she didn’t want to be that easy to find if he did.

  Once she had checked in and gotten into the room, Cassie sat down on the bed and tried to think. She was fairly sure that Mike would get home soon, and he would undoubtedly call when he didn’t find her there. She needed to organize her thoughts, try to figure out what it was she wanted to say.

  “Okay,” she said out loud, talking to herself, “I need to know where those videos came from, and I need to know what happened to those women. If he can explain those things to me, then I think we can get through this.”

  But what if he can’t? she asked herself.

  She didn’t have an answer for that question, so she picked up her phone and dialed Abby again. “Hey,” she said when her friend answered. “I’m at a Super 8 off I-70. I’m okay, just trying to figure out what to say when I talk to Mike.”

  “You say you’ve got to get this worked out,” Abby said. “You tell him you have to know that he’s not some kind of crazy serial killer. And then you have to listen, listen to what he actually says. Sometimes, guys like him can be good at saying what they think you want to hear. Don’t settle for that. Make him answer your questions, and answer them honestly.”

  The phone vibrated in Cassie’s hand. “He’s beeping in,” she said. “I’ll call you back in a little while.”

  She hit the button to accept the incoming call, and said, “Hello?”

  “Babe?” Mike said. “Where are you?”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m—I just needed to get away for a little while,” she said. “Mike, there are some things we have to talk about.”

  He hesitated for couple of seconds. “Okay,” he said calmly. “Like what?”

  Cassie closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall behind her. “Mike,” she began, “I started thinking today about—about some things that have been bothering me. I know this is going to sound crazy to you, bu—Mike, I’ve been listening to you talk about the case, the Ripper case, and I got curious about it so I’ve been following the news stories on it, and I noticed something kind of odd. Mike, the only time the Ripper kills a new victim is when you are out working late trying to find him. I know, I know that sounds crazy, but—well, last night I woke up and had to go pee, and then I was going to get a drink of water out of the kitchen but—I saw you sitting at the table with your computer, and I saw you take the SD card out of your phone and—I couldn’t see what you were doing, but it looked like you were saving some kind of video. The thing is, it made me wonder about—about those things you were worried about me finding in those boxes of yours.”

  “Is that all?” Mike asked. “Babe, all you had to do was ask me…”

  “Mike, I found the boxes in the garage.” She waited for a moment to see if he would say anything, but there was no reaction. After a few seconds, she went on. “I found a bunch of DVDs, and I got to wondering just what kind of things were on them, so I took a couple of them in the bedroom and watched them.”

  There was silence on the line. “Mike?”

  “I’m here,” he said slowly, and there was a chill in his voice that reached
her spine. “And what did you see?”

  Cassie was suddenly struck by how utterly calm he sounded. It was the kind of calm you heard when people felt they were caught in some kind of mischief, when they were trapped and trying to think of a way out.

  “I saw you and another man, with a girl,” she said. “Mike, you beat that girl up, and then—and then it looked like the guy with you cut her throat. And there were other videos, and sometimes it was you who was cutting the woman’s throat. Mike, I want to believe this is just some kind of game or something, but—my God, Mike, that was terrible.”

  She heard him sigh. “Yeah, that was one of the things I never wanted you to see,” he said. “Baby, it’s not what it looks like. That was—those girls, they are masochists, girls who like to get hurt. For them, it’s all part of foreplay, and some of them like to act out getting killed. Those were trick knives, like to use in the theater. They squirt blood to make it look real, but it’s really not.”

  Yes, Cassie thought, that was exactly what I expected him to say. Just all part of some kind of game, and nobody really got hurt.

  “It looked awful,” she said, “and there was an awful lot of blood.”

  “Yeah, that’s what made it work for them. It had to be pretty realistic, but we had to be careful not to really do any serious damage, you know what I mean? We couldn’t break any bones, and we weren’t allowed to hit them hard enough to cause, like, internal bleeding or that kind of stuff.”

  Cassie licked her lips. They seemed awfully dry. “Mike, they really didn’t look like they were enjoying it.”

  “Well, that was their part of the act,” he said after a pause, and Cassie realized that he had hesitated just long enough to think of an answer. “They pretend to be scared and beg us to stop, because that makes it more exciting for everyone involved.”

  Tears of relief started to flow down her cheeks, and then one more thought crossed her mind. She closed her eyes. “Mike,” she asked, “where are those girls now?”

  There was a second of hesitation. “Now? I have no idea. Honey, that was years ago.”

  “I just wondered,” she said. “Mike—why do you do these things? If it’s about sex, am I just not enough for you?”

  He hesitated and then sighed again. “Cassie, babe,” he said, “it’s all just a game. That wasn’t even a real knife, just a toy that looked real. It’s just how the game gets played, that’s all.”

  A sudden shiver went down Cassie’s spine. Everything she had seen had been so realistic, she could not quite make herself believe it was some sort of sexual game. On the other hand, if it wasn’t, then Mike was lying, and that would mean he was almost certainly lying about everything.

  Chapter 9

  “Cassie?” Mike asked. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” she answered. “Mike, I just need a little time. I’m sure everything will be okay, but I’m just—I’m just a little overwhelmed right now.”

  “Where are you? Let me come and talk to you.”

  “No, not tonight,” Cassie said. “Honey, I really just need to think. I’ll be home tomorrow. I just need to wrap my head around this and get past it.”

  “Come on, baby, don’t do this,” Mike pleaded. “I promise, I’ll never do anything like that again. I don’t need that kind of thing. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Cassie said. “Mike, please? Just let me have tonight, and everything will be fine tomorrow.”

  “Cassie, no,” he said, his voice less pleading and more stern. “We can’t do this—we can’t just run away from each other if something gets a little tense.”

  She felt anger rise up within her. “A little tense? Geez, Mike, I think this qualifies as more than just a little tense.” She forced herself to calm down. “Baby, I just need tonight. One night, that’s all I’m asking. I’ll be home tomorrow—I just need to let this all soak in. Please?”

  He didn’t answer for several seconds, but then she heard another sigh. “Fine,” he said. “Just tell me you’re safe.”

  “I am,” she said. “I just need a night by myself, and I’m sure I’ll be perfectly fine tomorrow.”

  “But, where are you?”

  “I just got a hotel room, that’s all,” she said. “One night, Mike. That’s all I’m asking. Please?”

  “Okay, okay. You’ll be home tomorrow, though, right?”

  Maybe, she said to herself. “Yes, I’ll be home tomorrow, before you get off work. We can talk about all this then, okay? I’ll be a lot less upset by then, and it may not even matter anymore. Just get some rest tonight, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, babe.”

  “Good night,” Mike said. Cassie ended the call and clutched the phone to her chest as she closed her eyes and let the tears flow.

  She sat there for a couple of minutes, then called Abby back.

  “Did you talk to him?” Abby asked.

  “Yeah, and he had an explanation for everything. He said it’s all just a game and the girls like to get beat up and have this fantasy about getting killed.” She sniffled. “As crazy as it sounds, you and I both know such things do happen.”

  “Yeah, they do,” Abby said. “The trouble is, you don’t really sound convinced. Why is that?”

  Cassie suddenly realized she was biting her thumbnail as they talked, and she yanked it away from her mouth. “It was the last few seconds of that first video,” she said. “I asked him about the girl’s throat getting cut, and he said it was just a trick knife that looked real and squirted blood. He said it was all part of the game, that the girl liked to pretend they were killing her when they were done.”

  “Holy cow,” Abby said. “Even if she really was into that stuff, that part sounds pretty sick. That’s the part that’s got you upset?”

  “Not exactly,” Cassie said. “Abby, I’m a farmer’s daughter. We butchered our own pigs, and I’ve seen my dad cut their throats because that’s the most humane way to kill them. I wish there was a DVD player in this room so I could take another look. If I could see for myself that it wasn’t real, I could believe him and maybe everything would just be okay, you know?”

  “Oh, Lord,” Abby said. “Okay, look. I’m coming down there. It’s only a little after five—I can be there before ten. I’ll bring my little portable TV with me; it plays DVDs. We need to get to the bottom of this, Cassie. To be honest, I’m scared to death for you right now.”

  Cassie started to protest that Abby didn’t need to drive all the way to St. Louis, but her friend shushed her. By the time they got off the phone, Cassie was actually quite relieved to think that she would have someone to talk to that night.

  With nothing else to do, Cassie began to think about dinner. There were several restaurants nearby, so she decided to just walk to the closest one. It was a nice place, and she surprised herself by ordering steak and shrimp, then eating it all. She hadn’t expected to have an appetite.

  The service had been a little slow, though, so it was almost 6:30 by the time she was finished eating. She started back toward the hotel, but then the neon lights of the bar attached to it caught her eye. It had been quite some time since she’d had a drink, and tonight just felt like a good time to take it up again.

  The place wasn’t terribly busy, so she sat down at the bar and ordered her first margarita. She wasn’t planning on drinking a lot but mostly just wanted to occupy herself until Abby arrived. She sipped slowly on the margarita and listened to the music coming from the DJ set up in the corner. It was actually quite relaxing, and after the shocking revelations she’d had that day, relaxation was what she needed.

  Back when she and Abby had gone drinking regularly, Cassie knew she could put down four margaritas and still manage to walk, but that had been a few months ago. Common sense told her to go slow, so she finished the first one and then drank a glass of iced tea. By the time she finished that, most of the buzz was already starting to fade, and she allowed herself another margarita.

  Her phone rang at abo
ut nine, and she snatched it up. It was Abby calling, and Cassie told her to just come into the club when she got there. There was plenty of time to look at the video, but Cassie really needed her old drinking buddy.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Abby said. “Just tell me where.”

  Cassie texted her the address, which she got from the bartender, and Abby arrived forty minutes later. Cassie was sipping on another glass of iced tea, but Abby insisted they switch back to alcohol. She ordered a pair of margaritas, and the girls moved to a table by themselves.

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” Cassie said. “God, Abby, this is such a nightmare. Mike has been the best thing that ever happened to me, but…”

  “Yeah,” Abby said. “But. I wish you had told me about all this sooner. I would’ve been down here days ago.”

  “Well, I didn’t know about these videos until today. I guess I could’ve told you about when he hit me, but that isn’t exactly something that would be easy to talk about, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, if something isn’t easy to talk about, then it’s probably something you need to tell someone. That’s the reason we have friends, Cassie, so we have someone to go to when life starts to suck.”

  Being back with Abby at a bar had the effect of relaxing Cassie even more, so when they finished their drinks, they decided to order two more. It was almost 11:30 by the time they left the bar and headed back to the hotel room. Abby stopped by her car on the way to get her little portable television, a battery-powered model with a built-in DVD player. She had had it in her room at college, but the screen was so small that they usually just watched Netflix on computers.