by Platt, Sean
It was him.
The man who had warned her about Ashley.
The man who had called her after the news segment, sounding drunk, asking if she thought it was ever okay to kill, wondering if she would kill her daughter’s murderer if given a chance?
Mystery Man.
“Hi,” she said, wondering why he was calling, now of all times. Did he know something about this case? She couldn’t help but think that he did. “What have you got for me?”
“Got?” he asked, surprised.
“You know stuff I don’t. I have no idea how, and right now I don’t even care. Right now, I just want to know where Jessi Price is. Can you help me?”
“I can,” he said.
* * * *
CHAPTER 50 - PAUL DODD
Paul hated this part, when fantasy crashed hard into the reality of what he’d done.
Jessi was curled up in the bed, covered in her blanket, crying.
Paul was sitting in the far corner of the bunker, disgusted with himself and his appetites.
Somehow, with each of the six girls he’d taken, it was always the same. Months of anticipation, months of fantasy, months of dreaming of that first moment when he’d finally touch their bare skin. When he’d finally be able to ravish their bodies.
And in his fantasies, they always welcomed his touch as he’d welcomed Wes’s. As his sister had welcomed Wes. As his sister had welcomed him.
But the girls he took were different.
They always resisted at first, because they didn’t know better. They didn’t know how good he’d make them feel. They didn’t understand yet.
But he’d teach them.
But not once did they ever appreciate the moment for what it was.
Never did they come to welcome his touch.
Never did they come to love him as he’d loved Wes, or his sister.
And that broke his heart.
It made Paul feel even more like a monster than he already did.
Now he felt like a broken pervert who had defiled a child. Who, in a moment of anger and sick lust, had ruined her.
He stared at the blanket and the crying shape beneath it.
Her cries cut into his soul.
Just twenty minutes ago, he hated her. He hated her smart mouth. He hated the burden of having to hide her, the burden of having to bury his love for children. And in the act of violating her, he only wanted to hurt her, and empty the evil seed inside him.
At that moment, he’d been so alive.
But now he was practically dead.
Her whimpers under the blanket only reminded Paul that he was a monster. He hated thinking of himself that way, as someone capable of hurting a child.
And that’s what he saw her as now: a child.
Not an object of his sexual desires, but a broken child, crying for her mommy.
He hated himself.
He hated his sickness.
A part of him wanted to put her out of his misery to put him out of his.
But another part wasn’t ready to let her go. Because it knew that guilt was temporary. Desire would return, and he’d need Jessi as an outlet. It would feel as earth shatteringly good as it had the first time.
Followed by more self-loathing.
The cycle usually ended just after the girl’s tenth birthday.
It was Paul’s ritual. His way of exorcising yesterday’s demon. Of punishing the girl that would become a woman who would become a bitch.
But now that the sheriff’s department was onto him, now that he could no longer exist undercover in the real world, that limited his ability to find new girls.
So, this one would have to last a while longer.
He hoped that she’d become bitchier after her tenth birthday. If he could hate her as he had come to hate Katie, it would be easier to keep doing this to her. Maybe, eventually, he wouldn’t feel remorse.
Maybe she’d even come to like it.
Come to love him.
Though Paul wasn’t sure that he wanted her love. Not if she was already this ungrateful and bitchy. Maybe this would all be more fun if he could continue to hate her.
He could probably keep her for at least a year, but Paul wasn’t sure how long he could manage after that.
Little girls had a shelf-life, after all.
Wes had his reasons for losing interest in kids at around ten, a reason he never explained to Paul, a reason Paul never had the courage to ask. He assumed that nine and under were Wes’s preferred ages. Same for Paul. He’d tried to examine it over the years and had never really figured out the why. Was a part of him trying to relive his incestuous relationship with his sister? Or his relationship with Wes? Would he have been like this had Wes never come along, or would he have been attracted to women his own age?
And if that were the case, would the desire to kill still be there?
He didn’t think the desire to kill came from Wes. Wes hadn’t ever killed anyone as far as Paul knew. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone to prison if he had.
No, those particular seeds must have come from his mother. But Paul didn’t want to think about her now, or he might lose it and kill Jessi.
If Wes hadn’t made Paul a pedophile — assuming he was responsible —would he still need to kill?
Would he be murdering women after he slept with them?
It seemed unlikely.
He hadn’t planned his first kill.
Her name was Marissa Rodriquez, a foster child who always hung out at the park he went to on the weekends with his daughter. He’d used Lily to get close to the girl, groomed her for a while before finally convincing her to get into his car. She actually liked him, thought he was funny.
He hadn’t come up with his birthday ritual and hadn’t planned to kill her.
He simply wanted her. He brought Marissa to the bunker, drugged her, then made love to her.
Afterward, the realization hit him like a sledgehammer: what do I do now? If he let her go, she would go to the police just like his sister.
His life would be over.
He’d go to prison.
He’d probably be subjected to rape on a daily basis.
He knew he had to kill her.
And he hated it.
Because of all the girls he took, she was the one who seemed least repulsed by him. She liked him, until the moment he took her virginity.
After that, she was scared of him just like all the others.
Paul hated that he had to kill her.
He wasn’t even sure how to go about doing it, so he wound up making her drink a concoction of Kool-aid laced with sleeping pills.
He thought he was being gentle, doing her a mercy.
But watching her asphyxiate in her sleep, choking to death, hardly seemed merciful.
It terrified him.
There was even a moment where he thought about trying to save her. But his nature’s better devils warned against it.
Paul never saw himself as a murderer. But then, suddenly, he was. He needed the birthday ritual. It helped to remove himself from his actions and see what he was doing as a gift.
He was celebrating their innocence.
Preserving them as perfect little children.
They’d never grow up to disappoint their parents or become vacuous self-obsessed bitches. They’d never grow up to raise children they didn’t even care about.
They were going out on top, and he was helping them.
But as Paul sat there alone in the aftermath of reality, listening to Jessi’s hitching cries, he found it hard to justify what he was doing as kindness.
The birthday ritual was a lie he told himself so that he could continue to do what he needed to do. It was self-preservation, and to pretend otherwise was ignoring reality.
It was funny how he saw things with perfect clarity in moments like this, saw himself as he truly was.
Paul wished he could carry this self-awareness through his normal life. Maybe he wouldn’t be a slave to his desires or stuck where he
was now, running from the law, life as he knew it over.
Paul wanted to cry.
But a beeping alerted him to a threat outside.
He stood, went to the four security monitors on the wall, and saw a stream of cars and vans on the dirt road leading to his bunker.
They’d found him.
Paul screamed.
* * * *
CHAPTER 51 - MALLORY BLACK
The bunker was right where Mal’s mystery caller promised, in Timucua County, a plot of undisturbed woodlands abutting the Timucua National Forest, a place that people often went to disappear, or make sure that bodies did. A place trekked by hunters, tree huggers, and few others.
The Timucua Sheriff’s Department chopper found Paul’s car dumped in the woods about a half mile from the bunker, which increased the likelihood that he and Jessi were hidden underground as Mal’s mystery man said that they would be.
Two perimeters surrounded the bunker by dinner time.
Mal and Mike stood outside the mobile command unit RV. The scene was a flurry. More than fifty people led by the FBI, including the Creek County Sheriff deputies and SWAT team, local officers from Timucua County, paramedics, and a host of others, all with two jobs: save Jessi Price and apprehend Paul Dodd.
They gave the bunker’s barely visible square hatch a wide berth of nearly fifty yards. You couldn’t have officers tromping all over the grounds given that there could be booby traps hidden in the nearby woodlands.
Two members of the SWAT team trained in explosives ensured a clear path to the hatch where the FBI’s crisis negotiator would soon attempt to make the first contact by way of a throw phone.
After that, the ball was in Dodd’s court.
Being underground with only a single access point, and holding a child hostage, the FBI couldn’t exactly lead a full-on assault to take him out.
This required a crisis negotiator’s delicate touch. There were four on scene, two from the FBI and another two from Creek County Sheriff’s Office. It paid to have as many negotiators as possible — you never knew who was most likely to reach the suspect. Someone like Paul would be far more likely to respond to a male negotiator than a female. But there was a female negotiator on hand, just in case their profile was wrong, and a woman’s touch was needed.
Even with the right negotiator standoffs could drag on for days, during which time the number of people on-scene would multiply, swelling anxieties, along with the potential for negotiators and SWAT to start getting pissed at one another, with the SWAT team wanting to take the fucker out while the negotiators aimed for a peaceful resolution.
Meanwhile, the outer perimeter turned into a tent city of media outlets, all vying for the scoop.
And as the hours ticked, the pressure to do something increased until something had to give. All too often, these sorts of situations ended when the suspect realized he was fucked. That he was out of options, and may as well go out with a bang, make everyone remember his name — murder-suicide.
This was the worst possible outcome for the authorities, but probably the best and most-hoped for among the media vultures. If it bleeds, it leads. And if the victim is a child, the ratings go wild.
Mal wished she could pause time before they made the first contact with Paul Dodd and everything got out of hand.
She wanted a crack at convincing him to surrender.
Mal wasn’t a crisis negotiator, though she’d had some training. The man was obsessed with her, going to the extreme of sending her “gifts” and breaking into her house to put a gun against her head as she slept. Mal sensed there was some connection to exploit.
She headed inside the mobile command unit, approached SAIC McDaniels, who was talking with Gloria and Robert Tellison, the FBI’s first negotiator.
She looked at McDaniels. “I want to try talking to him.”
Gloria looked like she was going to weigh in, but McDaniels beat her to it.
“With all due respect, Ms. Black, you’re a civilian, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“The man is obsessed with me. He broke into my home and stood over me as I slept. He could’ve killed me, but didn’t. I think I can reach him.”
She had worked with Tellison once before. He was a six-foot-four thin, bespectacled black man who reminded Mal more of a university professor than law enforcement. He said, “I won’t say no outright. Let’s keep you as an option.”
Classic negotiator response, avoid a hard no to pacify her, or at least avoid conflict.
McDaniels added, “I’d also suggest that Dodd isn’t obsessed with you so much as he’s using you to relive whatever he did to your daughter. You’re not the object here — merely a vessel to achieve his needs. Your engagement could increase the odds of him killing Jessi Price.”
Mal hadn’t considered that. “Shit. Maybe you’re right. I don’t want to screw things up. But if you need me, for anything, I’ll be here.”
“Thank you,” McDaniels said.
Mal met Gloria’s eyes. She seemed relieved that Mal was backing down rather than escalating this into an argument.
Mal headed back outside the RV where Mike was pacing, a huge wad of gum forming a giant ball in his right cheek.
“Man, the department really ought to let you guys smoke again. You look like a fucking hamster.”
“Whatever,” Mike said. “So, what’s the word inside?”
“Nothing. I was just availing my services, should they be needed.”
“Yeah, they gonna try sarcasm as a negotiating technique?”
“Fuck you, hamster.”
Mike laughed.
Mal joined his pacing, staring over at the bunker’s hatch, barely visible through the surrounding brush. The bunker was something you’d never see unless you stumbled upon it by accident or knew exactly where to look.
“This fucker thought everything through,” she said.
“I just hope they’re both still down there. That we’re not wasting all our resources and time while he’s swapped cars and is crossing state lines.”
“We’ll know soon enough. I think Tellison’s about to make contact.”
“I wonder if he knows we’re here,” Mike said. “You ever been in a bomb shelter? Not sure how deep it is, or if it’s soundproof.”
“I’d guess fifteen feet deep, maybe more, depending on the water table in these parts. I have a feeling he knows we’re here, though. He probably has cameras in the trees.”
Mike looked around, chewing on his wad of gum, and sighed.
Mal asked, “So, is this all over the media yet?”
“I haven’t looked. But if not, I’m sure it will be soon.”
Mal thought of Jessi’s parents turning on the news, maybe seeing reporters in the woods outside the second perimeter, learning of the standoff, and the hell they must be going through.
Mike asked, “So when are you gonna tell me more about your tipster?”
“I told you I’ve got no idea who he is.”
“He’s gotta be connected to Paul somehow, don’t you think? Or maybe Wes? Maybe a third member of their sick little tribe?”
“I considered that. But, I dunno. That doesn’t feel right.”
“How else could he have known that Ashley was in danger? Or where Paul took Jessi?”
“I dunno. But let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“And you tried getting him to come in?”
“He wasn’t having any of that.”
“Sounds fishy as hell,” Mike spit out his gum, dug a fresh pack from his jacket, and shoved several new pieces into his mouth. “You think he’s the guy that Paul’s wife mentioned. The private investigator?”
“Definitely possible.”
“We need to get with her again, maybe bring a sketch artist.”
Mal nodded. “Maybe he really is a P.I.?”
“Working for the Price family?”
“Well, you’d have to ask them. I’m thinking maybe he works for someone else
, though, and that’s why he’s keeping to the shadows. Maybe he works for Paul, or, more likely, Wes. Maybe he got a bit too close to what they were doing but didn’t want to come forward publicly.”
“Lawyers,” Mike said with a resigned sigh, “gotta make everything complicated. What do you think he’d be doing for Wes?”
“I don’t know. Could be real estate stuff. Maybe he accidentally discovered some shit he wasn’t supposed to.”
“And calling you is his way of reaching out without screwing up his reputation for discretion?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“What if he’s not a P.I.? What if he’s an accomplice? Or maybe, like I said before, a pervert like Paul. Except maybe he’s only into watching kiddy porn, not kidnapping or raping kids. Maybe he’s a customer of Paul’s?”
A flash of anger burned in Mal’s gut at the thought. She imagined, not for the first time, Paul recording what he did to Ashley, then selling or sharing it with other pedophiles. Her daughter’s innocence stolen on repeat, alive on the internet forever, swapped in videos via anonymous message boards and chat rooms. She had no reason to believe that he’d done that. Nobody from cyber crimes or the FBI had reported seeing photos or videos of Ashley during their daily treks on the dark web. Still, she couldn’t help but imagine a bunch of sick fucks getting off on Paul violating her baby girl.
Mal wondered if any of them were aware who Ashley even was. If she was just another anonymous victim, or if they knew her identity. Maybe that was part of the appeal, getting off to a dead girl getting raped. Maybe he’d even recorded himself killing her, then shared, traded, or sold that.
She’d seen enough horrors in her time as a detective and was rarely shocked by the heinous shit that people did to one another. But this was the worst of the worst — exploiting a child for sexual gratification, then sharing that crime with the world.
If people were out there watching her daughter’s final moments, Mal hoped they every one of them died horrible deaths.
“Thanks a lot,” she said, punching Mike in the shoulder.
“What?”
“I hadn’t thought of my mystery guy as an accomplice until now. There was a time after Ashley died when I assumed the killer was calling just to mock me. But recently, I started thinking that wasn’t the case. That he might be a good guy.”