by Aubrey Dark
“We're all our own prisons, we are each all our own wardens and we do our own time. I can't judge anyone else. What other people do is not really my affair unless they approach me with it. Prison's in your mind. Can't you see I'm free?”
Right. Free as a goddamn bird. I looked around at the library walls and laughed. I remember back in kindergarten, my teacher had told us all that if we could read, we could always go and explore new places in our minds. We would never be constrained.
My kindergarten teacher had never been locked in a library by a serial killer, though.
Rien
Vale stepped out behind me, the muzzle of a gun prodding my lower back from under his jacket.
“Rien,” he growled.
“Nice to see you too, Vale,” I said. Such carelessness. And yet, all I could think in that moment was: If I died, how would she escape?
Vale shoved me into the alleyway in front of him and I raised my free hand up casually. “What’s up?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“First, against the wall.”
I turned and waited as he patted me down. In my mind, I ran through my story. I would have to play dumb. I’d killed the couple, sure, I’d killed them. Well, they were locked in my house, anyway, and my security system was unbreakable. It came out to the same thing. Even if I wasn’t planning on killing Sara. Vale kicked my leg out and patted my thighs.
“Feeling frisky? Vale, all you have to do is let me take you out to the club sometime. You’ve got a real Paul Newman thing going on with the blond hair, blue eyes. Maybe we could get you in the pictures.”
“How about you let me buy you a drink,” Vale said, grabbing my arm once he was satisfied I wasn’t carrying a weapon.
A drink? I didn’t want to talk to my boss now.
“It’s a little early.”
“You might need one. I know I do.”
He led me back down to the street and into a shitty dive pub. We went back into a corner booth and he snapped his fingers for the waitress.
“This is a real classy place, Vale,” I said, running a napkin along the sticky tabletop. “I bet if we ask them, they’ll even wipe the table down for us.”
“Two whiskeys. Neat,” Vale called to the waitress, who had taken a break from studiously ignoring us.
“Make mine a double. On the rocks. Can you put my groceries in the fridge behind the bar there?” I asked, flashing a winning smile. “Thanks.”
The waitress came back with two whiskeys and set our drinks in front of us. Vale threw down a crumpled ten dollar bill.
“You’re flying high, aren’t you? What do they pay spooks nowadays?”
“Not enough for dealing with shitheads like you.”
Vale leered at me and threw back his whiskey. I sipped mine. The waitress sat in the front of the bar, out of earshot. Vale dropped his voice anyway.
“I hear rumors flying around. Rumors that Susan Steadhill was killed.”
“Yeah?” I said. “You’re welcome.”
“Rumor is that you didn’t do it.”
I licked my lips, uncertain of how much to tell him. If anything.
“They came into my house. I killed them.”
“Yeah, that’s what the surveillance tapes show.”
“And?” I raised my eyebrows, pretending to be sincere. I thought about what Sara had told me about method acting. I had killed them, I told myself. They were dead. If I believed it, he would believe it.
“And I’m not buying it,” Vale said, eyeing me warily. “Because I got this rumor tells me that Susan was killed before she ever got to your house.”
“You have proof of that?”
“No. This rumor didn’t come with a body.”
“That’s a shame.”
Vale slammed his glass down on the table.
“Where’s Susan Steadhill?”
I took another sip of my whiskey. I’d always been good at lying. Kids who hate their parents are always good at lying.
“I don’t know. I thought she was dead. I thought I killed her.”
“Don’t joke about this.”
“You’re the one who sends me the witnesses. I just get rid of them once they walk in. The woman who came in said that she was Susan Steadhill.”
“Yeah, well, she might not have been.”
“Not my fault.” I went to slide out of the booth. If that was all he had, he had no business keeping me here.
He grabbed me by the arm. I winced.
“We might have killed an innocent person, Rien.”
“When did the U.S. government start caring about that? Hold on. Strike that. When did you start caring about that?”
“We don’t know where the wife is. I don’t have a body.”
“So she could still be alive?”
“Maybe,” Vale said.
“Have you tried looking in Brazil?”
“Ha. Real funny, Rien.”
“I haven’t seen her. Can I go now?”
“Sure, sure. You have their teeth for me?”
Shit. There it was.
“No.”
“No?”
“I was out on a grocery run, for Chrissake.”
“I need proof, Rien. I need to find out who that girl is and do cleanup.”
“Yeah.” I need to find out who she is, too.
“And I need proof that it was Steadhill who came in alongside the girl. They might have both hired body doubles for all I know.”
“Okay.”
I took the glass of whiskey and shot the remainder. I didn’t know how to deal with Vale. He rarely asked for proof, but when he did, he meant it.
“So?”
“So what?”
“So give me the teeth. Let’s go back right now.”
“I don’t have them out yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’m having some fun with their bodies.” That at least was true. “I haven’t incinerated them.”
Vale’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re a sick fuck, Rien.”
“Yeah, well, good luck getting someone who’s not a sick fuck to do your dirty work for you.” I stood up from the table.
“I want their teeth. I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
“No can do. I’m busy all day.”
“Tomorrow night.”
I pretended to consider.
“I’m not asking, Rien. I’m in a mess of confusion and I need to know who’s dead and who’s not.”
“Fine. Tomorrow night. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to buy a cupcake.”
Sara
I continued reading the book. I had to say, Manson wasn’t all insane. I mean, he was mostly insane, but all of his thinking made sense, in a weirdly consistent sort of way.
Pain's not bad, it's good. It teaches you things. I understand that.
Creepy. I understood why Rien had this in his library.
Living is what scares me. Dying is easy.
And killing is even easier, apparently. I flipped forward again to a random page.
Anything you see in me is in you. If you want to see a vicious killer, that's who you'll see, do you understand that? If you see me as your brother, that's what I'll be. It all depends on how much love you have. I am you, and when you can admit that, you will be free. I am just a mirror.
I paused there. Was that how Rien saw himself? When he killed people, was he doing it out of hate, or out of something else? From what I’d read so far, Manson didn’t think that killing was bad, because dying wasn’t bad. Which made sense, in a crazy-ass serial killer way. There wasn’t any right or wrong in his world.
Then I hit one of the last pages. He was talking about Hollywood. I pulled the book closer.
I lived in Hollywood and I had all that, the Rolls Royce and the Ferrari and the pad in Beverly Hills. I had the surf board and the Beach Boys and the bishkis and the Neil Diamond and the ramskam and the Jimmy shriffen and
the Elvis Presley's best of bestlies and all them guys. The Dean and Martins and the Nancy Sinatras and the goffs and sofrins, "Will you do it to me? I hear you do it good honey" and all that kind of "Will you come up to my house later?" So I went through all that and I seen that was a bigger prison than the one I just got out of and I really didn't care to go back in prison. See, prison doesn't begin and end at the gate. Prison is in the mind. It's locked in one world that's dead and dying, or it's open to a world that's free and alive.
My mouth dropped open. I don’t know how many times Rien had read this book, or if he even knew what was in it, but the words struck me with the force of a slap on the face. Was that what he thought I wanted as an actress? I didn’t want that. I didn’t care about fame and fortune or any of those things.
No, that was what Rien had already. The sexy car, the luxurious penthouse. He had the Hollywood dream, and all it took to get there was killing people. He took fake people living fake lives and killed them. Because, after all, death wasn’t bad. Living a lie was the worst sin of all.
So Manson said. And he repeated his words. Prison was in the mind. And Hollywood was a bigger prison than any jailhouse. I thought I understood. Or at least, I began to understand. I don’t know if I really could ever understand Rien.
He’d told me to think about what I wanted.
What did I want?
I couldn’t read this anymore. I set the book down on the couch and stood up. I stretched. I rolled my neck.
And I had nothing else to do.
“Prison is in the mind, Sara,” I said out loud. “I can go anywhere.” Just like in the Reading Rainbow song. I hummed it as I looked through the bookshelves. There must be something that could take my mind off of serial killers.
There were a ton of medical books on the shelves. Clinical Anesthesia. A Manual of Surgical Procedures. Respiratory Physiology: The Essentials. Even the titles made my head spin. I turned to look at what else he had. Old histories. Books in French and Greek. I sighed as I ran my fingers down the shelf.
“Not too much of a fiction guy, huh?” I murmured. But then, it made sense. Rien seemed to hate anything fake. He didn’t want to live in a pretend world.
Good for him. It would make my days a lot more boring, though, if I didn’t have anything to read.
The rest of his library was similar, but as I moved onto the back bookshelf that led to the operating room, things got a little better. There were some books on ancient children’s fables that looked promising. And then a bunch of philosophy. I didn’t really care for the heavy stuff, and my fingers brushed past Locke and Kant and Hume. But then I saw a title that looked familiar.
Man’s Search for Meaning.
My mom had gotten a copy of that book from the library. I remember because I was thirteen, and we had just gotten evicted from our new place. The women’s shelter we stayed at was across from the public library, and she’d brought it home to read. She’d fallen asleep and I remember picking the book up off of the floor.
It was about the Holocaust, and how this guy had survived through years in a concentration camp. I didn’t understand it all when I was thirteen, but I understood why she had gotten it. It talked about how no matter how bad things got, you could still find meaning in life.
Well, things had gotten pretty bad for me, stuck in the library of a killer.
I reached out for the book, and as I slid it out from the shelf I heard a click. I jumped back as the wall began to move.
The bookcase spun open.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rien
I picked up the cupcake for Sara–I decided on red velvet, with cream cheese frosting–and called up the forensics lab as I walked back home. I asked for Jake.
“Rien? You know you’re not supposed to call me at this number,” Jake hissed into the phone.
“Hey, Jake, good to talk to you too.”
“Seriously, Rien—”
“Remember that time you almost got caught by your girlfriend with a body in your trunk and I drove it down to the dock for you?” I nodded to a woman walking her poodle as she passed by me.
“Rien, don’t—”
“I’m calling in the favor, Jake.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. I could hear Jake shutting a door, and then his voice came back on the phone.
“Hell of a time to call, Rien. I’m in the middle of a big investigation. The whole lab is swarming with police right now, and not just the L.A.P.D. asshats. What do you want?”
“Can you run a search for me?”
“That’s it? That’s why you called me here?”
“It’s important. I need you to run a search on Susan Steadhill. Mask it. I don’t want anyone knowing you pulled the file.”
“Susan Steadhill?”
“There’s feds involved. I need to find her before they do.”
“I know there’s feds involved.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“What do you think the investigation is for? She’s a federal witness and they lost her. It’s all supposed to be very hush-hush.”
“I pinky promise not to tell anyone,” I said. “But if you hear about a lead, let me know. And pull that file.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Everything. And while you’re at it, anything you have on Sara Everett.” Saying her name into the phone felt wrong. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t trust anyone, not in my line of work. But it felt bad to mistrust her, for some reason. Jake was talking, but I hadn’t heard a thing he said.
“Sorry, what?” I asked.
“That’s one of the girls.”
“What?”
I stopped cold on the sidewalk. Two joggers scowled at me as they swerved around me onto the grass. How did Jake know about Sara?
“That’s one of the girls who went missing this past week. Your boss was the one who contacted me, that Vale guy. Creepy dude, even for a fed. He had me run them all.”
“What do you mean, run them all?”
“All females eighteen to thirty-five. Thirty-two missing persons matching that description across America. Three of them were the L.A. area, though. She was one of them.”
I licked my lip. My mouth was dry.
“Listen to me. Don’t tell Vale anything. Don’t tell him that I was here. If you can, find a way to drop Sara Everett from his roster.”
“Hey, I’m not getting involved.”
“Jake—”
“Uh uh. No. I am not getting anywhere close to between the two of you. That’s way over my pay grade, man.”
“You owe me.”
“A favor, yeah, but not that big a favor. I cross Vale, that crazy son of a bitch will have my head.”
I breathed out shakily.
“Fine. But you’ll let me know if you have any leads on Susan?” I needed to find the wife, and find her before tomorrow night. If I found the wife, then there would be options. Right now I had zero options. And if I was forced to kill Sara because of it—
I closed my eyes. The sun was so hot today. A perfect California afternoon. I couldn’t give up my life here for her. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to.
“Sure. The feds are all over this one already, Rien.”
“I know. Call me once you have the information.”
One day. That’s all I had, and then I would have to make a hard decision. I still didn’t know what I would decide, if it came to that.
So I just had to make sure it didn’t come to that.
Sara
I looked back over my shoulder at the oak door. Rien had left a while ago. I didn’t know when he would be back. Still, this was my chance!
I went into the operating room. Gary was lying still on the table. At first I thought he was dead, but then I saw his chest rise slowly.
Just asleep.
I tiptoed across to the waiting room door and tried it. To my surprise, it opened up easily. I stepped into the waiting room. The lights were off, al
l except for a single small spotlight on that glass bowl that stood in front of the entryway. The little plastic shapes inside looked even more like they were trying to crawl out.
Trying to escape.
Quickly, as quietly as I could, I walked to the door to the outside. This was where I’d originally come in. If I could get out the door, I would be free. Free! I put my hand on the door handle and tried to turn it.
Stuck. I tried again, wiggling the handle, but it wouldn’t even move. The door was bolted shut. The metal lock didn’t have a turnkey or anything that I could see. It was a blank steel plate on the door. I tugged harder at the door.
So close! I was a couple of inches away from the outside world. I had to get out! I had to!
I looked around frantically. In my mind, I imagined Rien coming in through the front of the house. I imagined him finding the library door open. I had to get out somehow, but how?
The chairs in the waiting room were leather, but there was a metal stool next to the coatrack. I picked it up and swung it at the door handle. It crashed, bouncing off of the handle. Nothing. I swung again, harder this time, but it only bounced back again. I took a deep breath and swung with all of my power, aiming at the end of the handle.
This time the metal stool hit the handle so hard that the reverberation made me lose my grip. The stool flew back and crashed into the stand for the sculpture. I watched as the stand swayed, then tipped over completely. The glass bowl fell and shattered on the ground, sending glass and plastic pieces across the floor.
I stared agape at the broken bowl. From the other room, I could hear Gary screaming through the gag. I tried the door handle, but it was as stuck as before. I couldn’t get out that way.
Shit. Shit, shit shit.
I brushed the glass pieces aside with my foot. What could I do? Where could I go?
There weren’t any windows around. I didn’t know what to do. In a daze, I picked up the stool and walked back into the operating room. Maybe I could break the huge glass window.
I swung the stool against the window. The stool bounced off so hard that my hand turned numb from the shock of the reverberation. I looked up. It didn’t make so much as a dent. I dropped the stool, my energy spent. I couldn’t get out of here. There was no way.