Brock opened another desk drawer. He reached inside.
Sara tensed, but then she saw what he was doing.
Brock laid a pink scrunchie on top of one of the binders. The elastic band was sprinkled with white cartoon daisies. His hand disappeared again. He pulled out a plastic barrette. A pink headband. A red Chanel hair tie. A silver hairbrush. A plastic comb. A tortoiseshell hair clip with one of the teeth missing. Sara lost count of the number of ties and bands until Brock retrieved the last of his trophies, a long piece of white ribbon. Sara didn’t need to read the orange and blue letters to recognize the Heartsdale High School logo.
“Is that—”
“I would never hurt you, Sara.”
Heat rushed through her body. High school. Tennis team. Sara remembered tying up her hair with a ribbon exactly like the one that dangled between his fingers.
She struggled to ask, “You took that from me?”
“Yes, but only so you wouldn’t use it anymore.” He carefully laid the ribbon across both the binders. “That’s how they got my attention. A flick of the hair. Running their fingers through their curls. They’d be in the store or at the gym and just reach up and … It was those private moments that always pulled me in. It was special, only something that I would see. I would watch a light spread around them. Not like a spotlight, but a glow that came from within.”
Sara felt tears on her cheeks. She remembered the hair tie now. She had borrowed it from Tessa. Then she had lost it. Then there had been a screaming argument with slamming doors and Cathy had finally sent them both to their rooms.
Brock said, “Gina Vogel.”
The name echoed inside of Sara’s head. She could not take her eyes off the ribbon.
“I saw Gina at the grocery a few months ago. She’s very funny. You’d like her.”
“What?” Sara could only see herself at the store, Brock watching her from afar as she untied the white ribbon from her hair.
“Sara?” He waited for her to look up. “I was saving Gina for March, but I had to move things along. I knew that I wouldn’t fool you a second time.”
Sara felt the knowledge of what he was trying to say come down around her like another avalanche.
The thing they had all feared the most was coming true.
She said, “You abducted another woman?”
“Gina is my insurance policy.”
Sara looked around his office with a new understanding. He had known that it was going to come down to this. The boxes were carefully labeled. All of the paperwork was filed. This was the office of a man who had decided to put all of his affairs in order.
She said, “You want to trade Gina for what? You’re not walking out of here, Brock. There’s no way—”
“You’ll take care of Mama for me, won’t you?”
Sara moved to the edge of her chair. She could see over the green binders. Brock wasn’t planning on walking out of here. He had placed a syringe out of view of the camera. The liquid inside was dirty brown. The plunger was pulled back as far as it would go.
She shook her head. “No.”
“I can tell you where Gina is.”
“Brock—”
“You’re such a kind person, Sara. That’s why you’re here. Don’t you want to give the families closure?”
She watched his eyes go to her purse. He had known that he was being recorded.
“Gina is still salvageable.” He added, “If you find her in time.”
Sara frantically searched for a way to stop him. He was going to inject himself. What could she do? Take the revolver out of her pocket and threaten him? Shoot him? Say the codeword and hope that Will killed Brock before he could kill himself?
Gina Vogel.
Still salvageable.
“You’re a smart woman, Sara. You’ll put the pieces together.” His eyes flicked down to the binders. He was telling her what was inside. “I don’t want a trial.”
“Tell me where Gina is,” Sara pleaded. “We can stop this right now.”
His hands moved methodically behind the binder. He uncapped the syringe. Pushed the air out of the plastic barrel. “You know they’ll put me to death. Maybe I deserve it. I didn’t really give those women a choice. I’m not so far gone that I can’t see that.”
“Please,” she begged.
“I want to thank you for your friendship, Sara. I really mean it.”
“Dan. We can work something out. Just tell me where she is.”
“Wallace Road intersects at 515 about a mile south of Ellijay.”
“Please …”
The needle slid into his vein. He rested his thumb on the plunger. “Gina is two miles west, about fifty yards from the fire road. I always did like a fire road.”
Sara said the last word that he would ever hear. “Salad.”
Brock looked confused, but his thumb was already pressing down the plunger. The brown liquid shot into his vein. His mouth dropped opened. His pupils constricted.
“Oh,” he gasped, surprised by the rush.
By the time Will busted down the door, Brock was dead.
29
Gina felt something wet hitting her face. She thought a dog was pissing on her, then she thought she was in the shower, then she remembered that she was in the woods.
Her eyes opened.
The trees swayed overhead. Dark clouds. Still daylight. A drop of rain tapped against her eyeball.
Her eyes were open!
She blinked. Then she blinked again to prove that she could do it. She was controlling her eyes. She was looking up, seeing things. It was daylight. She was alone. He wasn’t here.
She had to leave!
Gina thought about the muscles in her stomach. The—the abs. The six-pack. The eight-pack. What was wrong with her? Why did her only knowledge of stomach muscles come from Jersey Shore?
For fucksakes.
He was going to come back. He had told her that he would be back.
She clenched her muscles. All of them. Every single streaky slab in her body. She opened her mouth. She screamed as loud as she could, as long as she could, one single word.
“Go!”
Her body flopped onto its side. She had no idea how she had managed to turn, but she had managed to turn, so she could probably manage other things.
But she was so tired.
And so dizzy that the world flipped upside down.
Vomit spewed up her throat. The pain from clenching her stomach was a razor inside her body. She couldn’t stop vomiting. The smell made her feel sicker. Her face was in it. She sniffed it up her nose. It was blue with specks of black. She was vomiting blue.
A moan came out of her throat. She sniffed. The chunk of vomit in her nose slid back down her throat.
She closed her eyes.
Don’t close your eyes!
She saw her hand in the puddle of vomit. Close to her face. She could smell it. Taste it. She watched her fingers move through the thick, blue lumps. She was going to stand. She knew how to stand. She could feel everything now. Every nerve in her body was alive and on fire.
The pain …
She couldn’t let the pain stop her. She had to move. She needed to get out of here. He was going to come back. He had promised he would come back.
He had begged her to wait for him.
Move! Move! Move!
She tried to push herself up. Knees on the ground. A girl pushup. She could do this. Her head was pounding. Her heart rolled like a wheel. Her eyelids fluttered. She was so tired.
She heard footsteps.
Move, dammit, move!
She saw shoes. Black Nikes. Black swoops. Black pants.
He was going to rape her.
He was going to rape her.
Again.
She squeezed her eyes closed.
Don’t drink it. Spit it up. Run.
She heard the punch of his knees hitting the ground as he knelt down beside her.
His fingers pressed open her eyelids. H
e was making her look at him. She had tried so hard not to see his face, to be able to honestly tell him that she had no idea what he looked like, that she wouldn’t tell the police, that she could not identify him, that he could trust her because she would never tell and now he was making her, forcing her, to look at his face.
She felt her eyes roll wildly, like a rabid dog, as she looked at the ground, the vomit, the trees, anything but his face.
“Gina Vogel?” the man said.
Her eyes moved of their own accord. He was younger than she had thought. He was wearing a black baseball cap. She saw the word above the brim. Bright white letters stitched against the black.
POLICE.
“Wha—” she croaked. Her throat was too sore. From the cold. From the stuff he was making her drink. From the vomit.
From him.
“You’re going to be okay,” POLICE told her. “I’m going to stay with you until the ambulance comes.”
He wrapped a blanket around her body. She couldn’t sit up. She was so dizzy. Light kept flashing in her eyes. So many lights. Her brain was like that turny thing inside of a police light, swirling and swirling, occasionally catching reality, then just as quickly letting it slip away.
“The man who did this to you is dead,” POLICE told her. “He will never hurt another woman again.”
Gina’s fist went to her lips. She tried to hold onto his words, to not let them slip away. She had survived this. She was alive. She would go home. She would make changes. She would become a healthier eater. She would work out three days a week. She would call her mother more often. She would be kind to her sulky, sullen niece. She would tell her twelve-year-old boss that she actually did know how to sync her Outlook calendar.
POLICE rubbed her arm. “Just try to breathe through it, okay? You’ve been drugged.”
No shit sir that is abundantly clear!
“They’re almost here,” POLICE said. “Go on and cry if you need to. I’m not going to leave you.”
Gina realized she had shoved her fist into her mouth. She looked at her fingers like a mindless baby. Pointer. Middle. Ring. Pinky. Thumb. She could move them all. She closed her eyes. She could still feel them moving. She didn’t even have to think about it.
A laugh fluttered out of her mouth. Holy shit she was so stoned. How could she be this high when she had literally thrown up her stomach? It was lying on the ground like a Smurf shit. She waved her fingers again, trying to catch the soap bubbles floating like amoeba through the air. The colors were glorious. Gina was glorious! She was a gemstone tumbling inside a kaleidoscope. A warm, fluffy sock lazily dancing around other warm, fuzzy socks in a clothes dryer.
“Ma’am?” POLICE said, “Ma’am?”
God dammit, she was still old.
One week later
30
Sara stared out her office window. The sun was setting. The parking lot at GBI headquarters was nearly empty. She could see Will’s car parked beside Faith’s Mini. Sara’s car was at home. Will had insisted on driving her the last few days. Amanda’s Acura was several spaces closer to the front entrance.
She turned back to her laptop. She had paused the video from Brock’s office. The only part she cared about was the last sixteen seconds.
Sara studied Brock’s face.
She wanted to see madness there, danger, aggression—
But it was just his face.
He had asked her to take care of his mother. Myrna Brock had been found lying dead in her room at the assisted-living home. Her hair and make-up had been done. An empty syringe was on her bedside table. The residue inside was dirty brown. Analysis showed that she had been injected with what was called a hotshot, heroin mixed with a lethal substance, in this case, embalming fluid.
The same chemicals had been found in the syringe that Brock had injected into his own arm.
He had designated Sara as the executor of his estate. He’d left exact instructions on how his mother’s remains were to be handled. He’d pre-paid for everything, a common practice in the industry. Sara had ensured that Myrna had been given a proper Christian burial in the Heartsdale Memory Gardens. Her own mother had attended the graveside, but the rest of the town had stayed away.
As for Brock’s remains, nothing had been specified in any of his documents. He had left it to Sara to dispose of his body. She imagined that he’d assumed Sara would be kind.
She had paid for his cremation out of her own pocket. She had stood over the toilet in the funeral home and kept flushing until every last bit of his ashes were gone.
Sara pressed the space bar to start the video.
Brock said, “I didn’t really give those women a choice …”
She closed her eyes, but she had watched the scene so many times that she could still see the wisp of a smile on his face. Brock had been in control from the moment Sara had walked into his office. She had watched him roll up his sleeves. He’d prepared the hotshot ahead of time. He’d concealed it inside the edge of one of the binders. He had made sure that his mother would never hear about his crimes. He had dangled Gina Vogel’s life over Sara’s head.
Unlike his victims, he had gone out on his own terms.
On the video, Brock said, “I always did like a fire road.”
Sara opened her eyes. This was the part that always got her. The only indication that Brock was injecting himself was an almost imperceptible twitch in his shoulders.
She heard her own gasp on the recording.
He was pushing down the plunger.
She stopped the video.
Gina Vogel. Still salvageable.
Sara’s hand curled into a fist. The familiar admonishments rolled like breaking news at the bottom of a television. This hand had been gripping a loaded revolver. This hand could’ve grabbed the syringe away. This hand could have slapped Dan Brock across the face, beaten him, pummeled him, instead of remaining safely tucked inside of her pocket.
Sara did not know what to do with her anger. There was a part of her that longed to see Brock in shackles, shuffling across the courtroom, head hanging down, his brutality exposed to the world.
Then there was the part of her who had been on the other side of that courtroom. A victim watching her rapist. Her eyes swollen from crying. Throat raw from crying. Taking the stand, weakly raising her arm to point at the man who had taken away her sense of self.
Could Tommi Humphrey do that? Could she walk across a packed courtroom and take the stand? Would the chance to confront Brock help heal her soul? Sara would never have the opportunity to ask her. Tommi had blocked Sara’s number. Delilah had closed her email account.
Callie Zanger had not been granted the same invisibility. Faith had told her in person. The woman had a right to know. It wasn’t their secret to keep.
None of the victims or their families would have ownership of their secrets for long. The news organizations were already suing for details under Georgia’s Sunshine Laws. They wanted access to the green binders.
Dan Brock had left six inches of pages meticulously recording his crimes against both the dead and the living. His stalking diaries went back to high school. He had raped for the first time while attending mortuary college. Tommi Humphrey had been his first mutilation. Rebecca Caterino his first paralysis. Leslie Truong his first murder.
His notations included the victim’s hair color, eye color, physical build, and information on their personalities. His collection of stolen hair accessories had been described down to the exact location they’d been found. Brock had brought his coroner’s talents to the crime scenes, describing wounds and gashes, detailing the locations, the degradations, the return visits, the waning effects of the Rohypnol, the points at which he’d decided to permanently paralyze them, the approximate times of death, the slicing tool he’d used to draw blood so the animals would take care of any trace evidence.
Murder, rape, assault, stalking, forcible sodomy, mutilation of a corpse, necrophilia.
Dan Brock had bui
lt nearly one hundred cases against himself.
And then he had made sure that he would never have to answer for any of them.
“Help.” Faith knocked on the doorjamb as she came into the office. She held out her phone to Sara. “Is this Ebola?”
Sara looked at the photograph of the rash on Emma’s belly. “Have you changed your laundry detergent recently?”
“I’m sure her cheap-ass father has.” Faith slumped down in a chair. “We finished looking at all of the security footage from Callie Zanger’s building. Brock went into her apartment three months before she was attacked, just like he outlined in his stalking journal.”
Sara knew they would spend the next few months verifying the details from Brock’s binders. Only a fool would take him at his word. “What about the man in the black beanie from Leslie Truong’s crime scene video?”
“Nothing. It’s VHS. All they could get was a blob.”
Sara looked back at the paused video. Brock’s thumb rested on the plunger of the hypodermic needle. She wanted to leave him like that—forever frozen in the process of taking the easy way out.
Faith said, “I’m telling you this as your friend. You need to stop watching that video.”
Sara closed her laptop. “I should’ve done something.”
“Take out the part where you saved Gina Vogel’s life by going into that office in the first place,” Faith said. “If you had reached for that needle, Brock could’ve injected you instead. Or hit you. Or something bad, Sara, because he was nice to you for some reason, but he was a psychopath who murdered and mutilated women.”
Sara clutched her hands in her lap. Will had told her the same thing. Repeatedly. “I’m so angry that he had agency. He got to end it on his terms.”
“Dead is dead,” Faith said. “Take the win.”
None of this was a win. Everyone had lost.
The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10) Page 51