The Dark Heart

by Julie Cave

  “Both women have been recently murdered,” said Elise. “What are your thoughts on that?”

  “You’re wondering who I think might have done it?” O’Grady scratched his head and smoothed his mustache. “Well, Robert Langer could have done it quite easily. Perhaps he was sick of the liability of having them around, and the chance they might talk. He had never shied away from violence. He could have done it in a heartbeat and walked away with a smile, make no mistake about that.”

  This observation about Angus Whitehall chilled Dinah.

  “But it could have been a number of others, too. Purcell, for one. Like I said, he was loyal to Shutter and swore revenge. He might have finally found them and gotten rid of the easier targets first. Or it could have been someone else sent by Shutter. He’s still well-regarded in prison by all the white-supremacist groups, and he could have ordered the hits through those networks.”

  Dinah remembered past conversations with Angus, who’d made vague references to people who might want to hurt him and his family. A few other things began to slide in place, gaining sharper focus, like when an optical illusion became apparent. The fake ID’s had been necessary to hide from their old gang. The apparent inability of Malia and Lola to settle down and have normal lives, haunted by their past and the knowledge that it could catch up with them at any moment. The otherwise inexplicable relationship between the town’s Baptist pastor, a drug addict, and a restlessly drifting woman, all bound together by invisible ties of mistrust, loyalty, and shared horror.

  In the middle of these observations stood Angus. He had almost total control over the group’s money, stolen from Shutter. He’d been able to marry, have children, and hold down a meaningful job. Perhaps this meant that the past bothered him less than it did the two women. It was this very past that made him more capable of murder, not less, in Dinah’s view. O’Grady had said he could have murdered Malia and Lola with barely a rise in blood pressure, and Dinah could, from all that she knew about the man, imagine this. The question was, why? Had he wanted the nearly quarter of a million dollars for himself? Was he worried the women might one day expose him? Was he simply sick of looking out for them and wanted to be free of them and what they represented?

  “How much did you ever find out about the members of the cell — Robert, Harry and the two women?” she asked.

  “Well, we gathered as much information about them as we could,” said O’Grady. “They were living double lives, you see. By day, they were harmless college students, and by night they were ruthless racists. So once we suspected who they were, we watched them and found out as much as we were able about them.”

  “What did you discover?”

  “Randall Shutter and the Southern Cross Militia were on our radar for a long time. During the 1990s, they were the most organized domestic terrorist group in the country. Randall Shutter was already well known to us as a former Marine-turned-violent thug and we obviously felt that if we could incarcerate Shutter, the entire Southern Cross Militia would collapse.” O’Grady stared out his picture windows, his mind far away in another time, another place that was as violent as his property was peaceful.

  O’Grady continued, “We watched Robert Langer — or Angus Whitehall, as he’s now known — for a long time. He was the most dangerous of the four members of the cell, not least because he was organized and intelligent. The attacks he executed were well planned and carried out smoothly. If I’ve mentioned that Shutter had charisma, Langer had as much of it, too. He was good-looking, smart, and disarming. He could tell you that the world was flat and the moon was made of cheese, and eventually you’d believe him. I believe that that’s how he recruited the two women into the gang, and into his cell. The few times I managed to observe them together, he was always in control, and they were doing his bidding. They were certainly in his thrall. I don’t know how he managed to maintain it, but he seemed to inspire their loyalty and entice them to commit violence on his behalf.”

  Dinah thought she knew. It wasn’t uncommon for a vulnerable and broken woman to want to love and please a charismatic and powerful man, to be loved by him in return.

  “We were never able to find out where the three of them had come from, or what their home lives had been like,” continued O’Grady. “But violence ran in the blood of Langer. He was smart enough to be subtle about it while at college, but we found out about a few incidents from the campus police.”

  “What kind of incidents?”

  “One young man in a class with Langer stood up to him in public, about what I don’t know. Langer waited for him at his dorm room and beat him up pretty badly. He was given a warning and put on probation, but the damage had been done. From that moment, Langer was able to use the threat of violence to get what he wanted or to intimidate others. He had the history, and nobody wanted to take him on. Some of the students I spoke to said they could tell there was something very wrong with him, that he wasn’t quite balanced. I have to agree. From what I knew about him, I’d say he was a sociopath who derived pleasure from violence.”

  “Were there any instances of violence against women?” asked Elise.

  “There was an allegation that he tried to attack a young African-American woman on campus,” said O’Grady. “But it was never proven and eventually it went away.”

  “What about Harry Purcell? What did you know about him?”

  “I know he made a good soldier. He always did exactly as he was told. What he lacked in leader’s magnetism he made up for with his enthusiasm. He was perhaps a less disturbing individual, but he seemed equally happy to carry out the violence.”

  “You mentioned he went to jail after the other three vanished?”

  “Yes, but it was only a five-year sentence. He’d be well and truly out by now.”

  “Do you know what happened to him after he got out of prison?”

  “No. I didn’t hear anything from him. As far as I know, he stayed out of trouble, at least in my district.”

  “Do you think he could be capable of tracking down Angus, Malia, and Lola to exact revenge, even 20 years later?”

  O’Grady thought about that for several minutes. “He wasn’t as smart as Langer. He was a thug, a soldier. He was good at following orders. So if he’d been ordered by Shutter or someone else to find the rest of his cell, then yes, absolutely. He’d have no problem with killing any of them. He would have felt betrayed, just like Shutter did. They didn’t split the money with him and they disappeared without him. So his sense of treachery would have been as high as Shutter’s.”

  “What sort of thug was he? Did he favor a gun? His fists?”

  “That cell had been armed with very few weapons, as I recall. Since their orders were not to kill, they often used their bare hands or weapons like baseball bats or tire irons.” O’Grady shook his head at the memory. “Brutal stuff. In many ways, it’s easier to simply shoot someone.”

  “If I told you that the two murdered women had been strangled to death manually, would you attribute that to Purcell or to Langer, do you think?” asked Elise.

  O’Grady finished his coffee and stroked his mustache. “I tend to think that’s the style of Purcell,” he said, at length. “But Langer would be equally as capable. I wouldn’t discount either of them.”

  Dinah digested that for a moment. It didn’t allow Angus Whitehall clearance, but it added another suspect. The big question was whether he had been in Virginia at the time of the murders.

  “Let me ask you something,” said O’Grady. “Did you see the autopsies for either of the women?”

  “I attended the first and read the report on the second. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s an irrelevant question,” said O’Grady. “But I always wondered what they did with their tattoos.”

  “Tattoos? What do you mean?”

  “Well, like most gang members of any color or creed, tattoos are a rite of passage. Members get the logo of the gang, or the number of kills they’ve made, or hate symbols li
ke the swastika. All three of them had tattoos — Langer would have had more, but the women definitely had tattoos, too. It’s also a way of marking a person for life as a member of the gang, to help ensure that they can never leave the gang. So I always wondered how they covered them up.”

  Dinah suddenly remembered the flat, bleached skin on the arms of both women. The medical examiner had thought they had been crude tattoo removal.

  “I think they had laser removal,” she said. “The autopsy reports found the scars from pretty crude treatment.”

  O’Grady nodded. “Well, it sounds like they thought of everything to begin their new lives, right?”

  Almost, thought Dinah. Except for the part where a killer re-emerges from the shadows to destroy the cell once and for all.

  ****

  Chloe hated gym class. In fact, to be truthful, she loathed it. In every other class she usually made an A, but she consistently scored D’s in gym.

  She stood listlessly on the volleyball court, watching the ball thunk from one side of the net to the other. When it was absolutely necessary, she made a half-hearted attempt to lunge at the ball.

  Usually, she managed to work herself up into an outrage during every gym class, silently lambasting the faculty for making gym necessary, building arguments as to why it was a totally worthless class. But today, she was unable to muster even a solitary resentful thought, and she stood as usefully as a lump of wood as close to the line as she dared.

  Ordinarily, the scathing looks sent her way by the athletic kids in class made her cringe and blush with embarrassment. But today, she returned their stares woodenly, barely registering their disgust.

  It didn’t help that the shorts highlighted the soft, pale pudginess of her legs, or that her face went an alarming shade of ketchup when she moved faster than a walk. All of these things added up to make gym class a thoroughly miserable affair. The only thing today’s gym class had going for it was that it was the final class of the day, and at least afterward she could take a long shower and go home.

  Finally, the teacher blew the whistle and Chloe sent her silent gratitude skyward. She trudged into the locker room behind the rest of class, and turned on the shower so that it was hot. Since she didn’t have another class to get to, she luxuriated in the warm spray, scrubbing away the final remnants of gym class from her body.

  When she turned the faucet off, the locker room was quiet. Everyone else must have showered quickly and cleared off. Chloe was glad to be alone.

  She toweled off and dropped it on the ground, climbing into her underwear. A sudden noise made her look up.

  Her stomach clenched in an icy fist.

  Jessica Hunter stood in front of her, flanked by Sarah Mallister and Alice Greendale. Jessica held a cell phone up, the light on the camera steady and unblinking.

  With a smirk, Jessica kept the phone trained on Chloe as she descended into panic, trying to pick up the wet towel to cover herself.

  The towel had fallen into a patch of water and was thoroughly soaked. Jessica and her minions continued to laugh as she filmed Chloe try to pick up the towel and wrap it around herself, dripping with water.

  “What are you doing?” Chloe shouted, angry and humiliated.

  Jessica continued to film, laughing and showing Sarah and Alice.

  “Give me that! Delete the photos!” Chloe cried. Grasping the towel in one hand, she lunged forward to try to wrestle the phone out of Jessica’s hands. It was an instinctive urge, but in reality, Chloe had no chance. She felt the onslaught of tears, all at once; furious, frustrated tears.

  Jessica deftly handed the phone to Sarah and laughed.

  “Guess where this is going, Fat Cow?” she sneered.

  Chloe realized that the echo of sobbing sounding off the walls was coming from her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried. “Why do you hate me so much?”

  She sank down to the ground, hunched over herself, trying to make herself less of a target.

  “You are a disgusting, fat slob,” snarled Jessica. “You make me sick. You don’t even realize how gross you really are.”

  I don’t look like you. That’s the stupidity of this whole thing, right there, Chloe thought, wet hair strung across her cheek like a spider web. She just looks at me and hates me, because I look different.

  Laughter rang out and slowly receded as Jessica, Sarah, and Alice left the locker room.

  Chloe stayed hunched over herself, a slimy tendril of self-loathing worming its way through her body to her heart. It’s my fault. It’s me. Nobody else would be treated like a loser. Nobody else would end up being totally friendless, totally alone, like her.

  Finally, she stood up and got dressed. The wet towel had left damp patches all over her underwear and her clothes stuck to her in places. She edged out of the gym, checking to see if any further attack might be awaiting her. But all was quiet and with thankfulness for small mercies, she walked home slowly, hoping that she wouldn’t see Jessica again.

  She arrived home, an empty, quiet house. She went, by default, into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. She blinked at the cool air, staring unseeing at the food therein.

  Finally, she shut the door and wandered through the house until she found herself in front of her computer. Though a small, still voice was screaming at her not to look, she found herself logging into Facebook anyway.

  The video Jessica had taken had been uploaded to YouTube, and shared on her Facebook page.

  With sick dread, Chloe pressed play. She watched the video, vividly seeing her pale near-nudity, the white dimples of flesh nobody else had ever seen, seeing the pathetic look of humiliation crumpling her face. She heard, in supersonic quality, the sound of laughter, the words Jessica had thrown at her. She watched herself awkwardly try to cover up with the towel.

  The comments underneath were scathing, from the usual suspects. But there were lots of comments from people she didn’t know. People from other cities, other states.

  And when she visited the video on YouTube, she saw a stream of comments from complete strangers.

  Somehow they all knew the truth: that she was a loser, that she was fat, that she was ugly, that she was worthless, that her life meant nothing. They were saying as much in a steady trickle right underneath the video.

  That’s when the insidious thought popped into her mind: Your life is not worth living.

  Suddenly, she felt calm and composed.

  It was time to take care of a few things.

  Chapter 15

  Chloe hadn’t been to school in three days. She knew that her mother hadn’t noticed, and her father would be none the wiser. But the school would notice and would start calling Mom soon.

  She’d heard Mom leave early to catch her flight and knew that she had the whole day to herself. She’d slept in until about ten, and then had a long, hot shower. The weeks and months of roiling, retching anxiety had quieted down. She almost felt serene. She combed her hair but didn’t bother with her teeth or face cream. Who cared about that stuff anymore? It was so superficial anyway.

  She made herself pancakes for breakfast, covering them generously with maple syrup and butter. Instead of chastising herself for eating too many, she indulged in as many as she could eat. Afterward, the stomach uncomfortably full, she stretched out in contentment like a cat in the sun.

  Then Chloe returned upstairs to her room. She focused her energy first on her desk. She almost laughed. She opened her computer, and her Facebook account. She looked through the status updates and thought to herself how dumb they all were.

  Look at all their pathetic little lives, trampling on each other to make it to the top, desperately hoping that each new update will bring popularity and validation. Look at their ridiculous profile photos, with their pouting lips and makeup. They are trying so hard to be pretty. And for what? Who is in the least bit concerned with what anyone else looks like? They are too self-absorbed to care about anyone else!

  She felt
almost high. She deactivated her Facebook account with a grin on her face. It was a giddy feeling — suddenly cast adrift from the artificial world of social media, no longer beholden to the unwritten rules of posting, no longer a slave to the sweaty palms and rising dread of checking to see what Jessica or her minions had written about her.

  Next she deleted her emails, from her sent items to her inbox. Some emails required a reply, but she was sick of an inanimate object telling her what to do. Those people awaiting a reply probably wouldn’t even realize she hadn’t answered. People seemed to fire off an email every time a vague and stupid thought entered their minds.

  Her computer suddenly clean and carefree, she looked down at her schoolbooks. Algebra, history, chemistry, and English. Two of those subjects required assignments to be handed in soon. She had started researching. The notes with her open, swirling handwriting were poking from the top of the books. She pulled out the notes and read them, laughing at the futility of it all. Did anyone actually use algebra while prepping for surgery or a court case or while fixing a car or scanning groceries? Did the history of the Second World War ever help anyone pay bills or save for college or buy a house? Did the ability to use semi-colons in a sentence correctly really help a person become a CEO or a senator or a mom?

  None of it even matters. None of it.

  She tore up her research notes into tiny pieces until it looked like her desk was covered with snow. She had no intention of completing the assignments. In fact, she wished she could simply write on the paper the teachers handed out: This is stupid and I’m not doing it. Just to prove her point.