Hush

by Anne Malcom

  Muhammed Hosseini brutally raped and sodomized six girls between the ages of seven and eleven over the course of five years. His twenty-five-year conviction was overturned three years later, after an appeals court found his trial had been delayed beyond statutory requirements.

  Orion crushed every joint with a sledgehammer—his knees, his ankles, his wrists and elbows. By the time she got to his face, he was barely breathing outside of the gurgles. And then she made his face disappear.

  Allen Randell was a cop, St. Louis PD back before he was caught by a Dateline NBC show called To Catch a Predator. A search of his home turned up a terabyte of child pornography, and it was discovered that he had visited Thailand seven times over the course of his ten years as a police officer. They connected him to a brothel there where they specialized in girls under thirteen. He worked out a sweetheart deal and only served eighteen months.

  He was risky for Orion, being an ex-cop and all. But he was a short man, out of shape by that point, and he lived a secluded life.

  After capturing him, she tore his limbs off one by one with a rope and the backhoe, until he laid there, just a bloody torso, his face grey and twitching. She could feel herself wavering, changing, as she buried his pieces beside the others. Each kill fed her just a little bit less and made things just a little bit more complicated.

  It all happened too quick. She knew that. Doing this too often increased the risks. Increased the chances of getting caught. This was all logic though, and Orion’s need for revenge did not know logic. The acid underneath her skin did not understand it.

  She had hungry beasts living within her, and one was ravenous for a semblance of a normal life. For Maddox, for love.

  The other craved pain, death, and retribution.

  Wasn’t life all about the beast you fed?

  It said a lot about her that she found it easier to kill pedophiles than to have a relationship with Maddox.

  She was willing to bury dead bodies in the middle of the night rather than brave a physical relationship with the boy she used to love and the man she was falling in love with.

  Orion had dreamed of many versions of life after The Cell, each vision changing after the years in chains passed her by. Eventually, she stopped with the visions all together. But even her most morbid ones didn’t include this.

  That was life.

  Fate, maybe.

  And fate was shining on Shelby, who was late meeting Orion at a trendy coffee shop in downtown St. Louis.

  She had texted to say her flight was late.

  Shelby was coming from New York, where she’d done a segment on Good Morning America, promoting her book. On her own. No parents. No Orion—though she’d offered and had been relieved when Shelby said no.

  Orion had never been on a plane before. Now, she had the money to fly anywhere in the world if she wished. It would be the smart thing to do. To buy herself a one-way ticket to New Zealand, disappearing into a small town where no one knew her name and she had no troubles.

  But that was the thing. Troubles and demons alike didn’t need money to follow you around the world. They didn’t need plane tickets either. She was either too much of a coward or too brave to get on that plane. She suspected it was the former.

  Orion was daydreaming about her next kill. She’d chosen him already. Alan Stephens. He was in his forties, overweight, and liked little boys. He’d been given a light sentence because he was rich. She was beginning to see a trend. The more she researched these monsters, the more she realized money talked loudly in the justice system.

  He was going to be slightly harder than the others. She’d chosen the others because they smaller in stature. Skinny and out of shape. Loners. Not many people would miss them. But Alan had money, which meant he had a wife that stuck by his side, and the golfing buddies who “never believed he could do such a thing!’”

  She was careful not to get too cocky. Too arrogant. That’s when she’d make a mistake. And she needed to make sure she didn’t make a single one with Alan Stephens. He had people to miss him. Not many, to be fair, but enough that they would quickly notice his absence. Enough investor buddies to realize something was amiss almost immediately.

  She hadn’t seen the others on the news. She’d checked and they had been reported missing, by employers, by parole officers, but it didn’t seem much effort was put into finding them.

  How would she lure Alan out of his routine? Where was his weak spot?

  She had followed him for a week, but he always seemed to be out doing things, to be busy. She worried she might never find the opportunity to strike, that she might have to move on. But she couldn’t. Once she had prey in her sights, she couldn’t shake the desire to strike.

  “I know, I know. I’m late,” Shelby said, rushing toward the table, interrupting Orion’s murder planning.

  Everyone stared at Shelby. Not just because they recognized her, but because she was something to be stared at. Orion didn’t know quite when this happened, but at some point, Shelby had changed. Her hair was shiny, curled, healthy. Eyes lit with real happiness. With life. Her outfit was expensive, her heels high.

  She had seen photos of her, of course, on the internet, on social media. They had communicated a change in her, a blossoming, but nothing like this.

  Orion stood, hugging her on autopilot, too shocked at the creature she was in the presence of to do much else.

  “We had delays on the plane,” Shelby explained, sitting down. “And then at the airport, some media figured out I was arriving, and that was a whole other thing.” She rolled her eyes.

  Orion saw no signs of panic or fear at being mobbed at an airport by photographers. Who was this woman?

  Shelby ran her eyes over Orion. “You look good. Life treating you well?”

  Death was treating her well, more like. She’d slept better this past month than she ever had. Her skin looked brighter. She worked out harder. Food tasted better. Life was more detailed.

  Orion shrugged. “Not as well as you.” She paused, looking Shelby over again, searching for those tics she’d had for years in The Cell. Her eyes blinked a little too rapidly and her finger tapped on the table, but that was pretty darn impressive considering it hadn’t even been a year. “I’m proud of you, Shelby.”

  Some of the light left her friend’s eyes. Sadness, more recognizable, replaced it. “I’m proud of both of us.” She leaned over to squeeze Orion’s hand quickly before reaching into her purse. “The book is almost finished,” Shelby said. “That’s what I was in New York for. My publishers wanted to create hype.” She rolled her eyes again. “As if there wasn’t enough. But I wanted you to have it.”

  Orion eyed the thick stack of paper that Shelby handed her. It looked like a lot of words, but not nearly enough to tell the story.

  “It’s a rough draft,” Shelby said quickly, slightly shy. “There’s editing that needs to happen, and it’s probably riddled with errors. I didn’t exactly get to finish out English in school. I’m a little rusty, but I think it’s pretty good. I wanted you to be the first to read it. Make sure you’re okay with everything. I’ll remove anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

  Orion took the papers. “You wouldn’t dare, bitch,” she said, forcing lightness into her voice. “This is your story. I’ll be okay with however you tell it. I’m just happy a shrink isn’t the one writing it.”

  “Yet!” Shelby said, chuckling. “And it’s our story, Orion,” she corrected. “I know I wasn’t there to meet the other girls, but I feel like I know them, if that makes sense? I wanted to speak for the girls who never got a voice.”

  Something stuck in Orion’s throat like a half-eaten potato chip. Her eyes prickled, her nerves lit up with pain.

  “I think that they would appreciate that,” Orion said.

  Shelby nodded, tears in her eyes.

  Then they moved on to lighter, easier subjects. It was awkward. Stilted. They would be connected forever. They would never forget each other. But they
didn’t belong in each other’s lives, not now.

  Orion didn’t belong across from Shelby, who was living in light, without blood on her hands.

  The weight of the manuscript was like carrying around a bag of bricks. She could drag a dead man to the grave she’d dug, but she couldn’t spend an hour carrying around Shelby’s book.

  It was tempting to file it away somewhere in the apartment, hide it under a floorboard, and tell Shelby that she read it and loved it. But she owed it to Shelby to actually read it, to support her work.

  So, she poured herself a glass of wine and started reading.

  It was a perfect summer day.

  I didn’t think that anything bad could happen when the sun shone that bright, when the sky was that blue.

  I was walking home the long way because I didn’t want this day to end. My brand-new cheerleading skirt swayed slightly in the breeze. I’d never worn something like this before, and my mother did not approve. We had argued. I was too young to be a cheerleader, she said. But I was a teenager, and she’d agreed that if I made the team, I was allowed. I guess maybe she didn’t think I’d make it.

  But I did.

  I was happy. The happiest I’d ever been. That’s why I was taking the long way home. Because I didn’t want Mom to ruin it. She wouldn’t mean to. She never did. I knew she was a good mom and I was lucky, and many girls at school had it worse than me. Mothers drinking all day, others screaming at them for no reason. Not caring.

  Mom didn’t drink except for one glass of wine with dinner. My dad sometimes had two beers after work and not much else. My house never had yelling, violence, only love.

  I was lucky in the way a teenage girl knows she’s lucky. Cognizant, but not truly grasping the magnitude of it all.

  I would truly grasp how lucky I had been when they threw me into their van. When they tore off my cheerleading skirt and choked me with it.

  I’d worn it one day. My happiness lasted one single day. Then it lost meaning.

  Orion was surprised and horrified at the single tear that landed on the page, staining it with evidence of her weakness.

  It was evidence of Shelby’s talent.

  She had done well.

  Orion knew this. She didn’t need to read the rest of the book to know this. She couldn’t. It was too hard. She couldn’t imagine what it would’ve taken for Shelby to write all of this down, to have it stare at her, know that the world would be leafing through pages of her pain, consuming it like cannibals.

  Not for the first time, or even the thousandth time, she wished Jaclyn were here to marvel at what Shelby had turned into. And she knew Jaclyn would be proud of the girl who never stopped crying.

  Shelby’s boyfriend was named Christopher. He was five years older, worked as a high school P.E. teacher, was sweet, kind, and patient with her. Orion had already broken her silence and texted Maddox to get a background check on him, just to be safe. She had already done her own investigating using her considerable web skills, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  By the way Shelby’s eyes lit up and her cheeks flushed when she talked about him, Orion sensed he was a good man. Shelby had too much experience with monsters to be fooled by a farce. They were accustomed to them, trained like dogs at an airport to sniff them out.

  She had said he was understanding, gentle, and didn’t push her to . . . do anything. The way Shelby had leaned forward to whisper that across the table almost made Orion want to smile. She was acting as if she were some chaste virgin, unaccustomed to such things. In the most horrible of ways, she was not a virgin. But in other ways, she still was. She’d never been touched by anyone with her permission, never been kissed or held in a way that was reverent.

  Orion would keep an eye on it, on this Christopher. Maddox already said he was working on the background check. She’d relax a little more when she got that back.

  Though she wondered what Bob Collins would’ve looked like. Squeaky clean except for a couple of parking tickets, she guessed.

  No one could really know on paper what a monster was.

  No, it was only when it was too late that you found out.

  Twenty

  “Bro, you still hung up on that Collins murder?” Eric asked from behind Maddox.

  Because he was well practiced, he managed to hide his flinch. It was a bad quality in a detective to not know when someone was sneaking up on you. Especially someone with a gun on his hip.

  Yes, this was his partner and arguably closest friend, but it was the principle of the matter. Plus, Maddox probably had some latent hostility aimed at his best friend and partner for dating his sister. Even though Eric was a good man, treated women right. Treated his sister in a way Maddox knew she’d never been treated by a man. Yes, all good things. But April was his baby sister and his best friend. It was the principle of the matter.

  “I know it’s high profile since he’s very rich and well respected by the mayor, who’s pushing the chief, but we’ve got nothing. We can’t make a perp out of nothing.”

  Eric was right. They didn’t have anything, despite the fact it was a grisly crime scene that had all the hallmarks of a crime of passion—those were usually the sloppiest and easiest to solve. It was in a pretty public place as well, but they hadn’t managed to catch a single break. The murder took place in a shitty but well-trafficked neighborhood, and in an alley that didn’t offer much shelter or privacy.

  The killing itself wasn’t quick. There were defensive wounds on the doctor’s hands, so there was most likely a struggle. Yet they had found no DNA. No one walking by, no CCTV cameras. Maddox’s gut told him that the murder was one of opportunity, but the victim wasn’t robbed. The man’s twenty-thousand-dollar watch had been on his wrist when discovered. This had been personal.

  It would surprise a lot of people to know just how much luck factored into homicide.

  He knew all too well just how powerful luck, or lack of it, could be to a victim.

  Maddox learned that when Ri didn’t turn up at school the day after he finally made her his girlfriend. He learned that ten years later, when he found out just how unlucky she was to be biking home that night, alone, with no one there to stop it.

  But, with crimes of passion, there was a connection. Random murders were nowhere near as common as the media liked to tell the general public. It was easier to accept the thought of a deranged man with a broken past murdering you for no other reason than because he was evil. It was much easier than thinking your husband might snap and stab you to death because you were fucking your personal trainer.

  Bob’s wife was fucking her personal trainer. But both of them had alibis. They were across the country, in a hotel in California, with security cameras at the hotel confirming their presence.

  Maddox and Eric had done a deep dive of the doctor’s relationships. He was widely respected and well liked, if a little arrogant, but nothing that would make someone want to butcher him like a pig.

  He had no record, except some parking tickets paid promptly and one speeding ticket, also paid promptly. The solicitation charge in the eighties had never actually been put on his record.

  His financials were impressive, matched up with the car, the house, and the twenty-thousand-dollar watch that remained on his wrist after he was murdered. There were some large charges that had been leaving the family account and going to a private corporation, but those stopped months ago, and it was probably nothing. Though Maddox made a mental note to look into that further because it was the only remotely curious thing about the man.

  Nothing was adding up. Maddox was missing something.

  “There’s never nothing,” Maddox told his partner, not looking up from the initial report.

  Eric clapped him on the shoulder. “No,” he agreed. “There is always something, somewhere. But we’re human, and we miss shit. Either we’ll find it eventually, or we won’t. Staring at that report is gonna do nothin’ but give you a migraine and waste your night.” Eric paused. “And I t
hink you have better things to do with your night.”

  Maddox looked up because of the knowing behind his partner’s tone.

  “What do you think I have to do that’s better than solving the murder of a prominent doctor, with a wife, albeit an unfaithful one, and a daughter?” Maddox challenged him with more hostility in his tone than needed.

  He hadn’t been sleeping because he was frustrated. With not just this case, but with Orion’s. All of the women had spoken of men coming and going, having “regulars,” making it sound like more of a business than anything.

  Which it was. The two gatekeepers were drug addicted lowlifes. They lived mostly in squalor, but the basement underneath the house was sprawling and spotless. They had found out the original builder of the house had been paranoid about the cold war and nuclear fallout, so he had built an entire second house underneath the small, two-bedroom one.

  The Cold War never happened though, and what was meant to save a family damned many girls.

  He was failing this doctor’s family and he was failing Orion. And, on top of it all, he was falling in love with the damaged, broken woman who was nothing like the girl he had kissed ten years ago. That night he’d seen her in person two fucking months ago haunted him. He saw something inside of her, something that scared the shit out of him. Something that intrigued him, because it awoke something dark inside him too.

  Eric did not react to Maddox’s anger. He was used to him being a miserable bastard. Eric continued on even keel no matter what was going on. It was working wonders for April, who was finally getting her life together. Maddox wondered what Orion had to do with that.

  “Now I know it’s morally questionable to get involved with a victim, and you know I have a deep respect for the rules,” Eric said. “But I also know that the situation with this particular woman is different. Exceptional. I don’t believe in girly shit like fate, and romance, I’m too much of a cynical old cop for that.”