He followed her into the room as she tried to escape, her eyes wide, blue, and wet. But there was nowhere to go. There was only the bed and us beyond the velvet rope. Her blond hair was long, tousled.
“Please,” she screamed. She rushed the rope. “Please.”
Men in the front rows, who I had not seen until that moment because they blended perfectly with the shadows around them, stepped forward. They pushed her back into the spotlight, into her attacker’s arms. Someone—more than one person—laughed.
I grew tense in my seat, having a sick feeling that I knew where this was going and what was I going to do about it.
He lifted her kicking and screaming and threw her onto the bed. She was so light and the force of his strength so great, that she bounced on the mattress, her legs going wide for a moment and her mouth opening in surprise. She tried to roll off the other side, but he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her across the mattress to him.
She screamed.
He hit her hard across the mouth and she stopped struggling. I’d moved to stand without realizing I’d done so until a hand was on me, pulling me back into my seat. The hand gripping my arm tightened and pulled me down without letting go.
“He hasn’t even gotten started,” Fizz said. His eyes were shiny in the dark. His bright hair muted in the shadows. “You wanted to know what he does with the special girls. Then watch. And you are seriously outnumbered, man.”
I didn’t mention my lack of backup.
“That isn’t your girl anyway,” he said.
He was right. Even if they’d dyed her hair blond and added extensions, the girl’s heart-shaped face didn’t match Rachel’s angular one. If I busted open this place now, and Rachel was being held somewhere else, they might kill her, dump her, or sell her to the highest bidder.
“Just watch,” Fizz said again.
I didn’t want to watch. The man was raping her, right there in front of everyone. The bed squeaked in a terrible sickening rhythm. Regardless of her unconsciousness, I looked away, but couldn’t block out the noise. “You can’t expect me to watch this and not do anything.”
“That’s exactly what you’ll do,” said Fizz. “Unless you want to die. You can’t escape here with your life and hers.”
My mind raced for the options of how to walk out of here with the girl. I couldn’t leave her here. I also couldn’t die and leave Jackson alone with the burden of finding Maisie.
My thoughts were interrupted by a low hissing and boos from the crowd.
“What’s happening?” I asked and sat up to see over the heads in front of me.
“They’re bored,” he said.
I wondered if I looked as horrified and sick as I felt. “Isn’t this what they came to see?”
“No,” Fizz said. “We can see girls getting fucked anywhere. Porn, hotel rooms. Why pay to see a dude beat his nuts soft while we sit quietly in our seats?”
A man appeared on the side lines wearing dark cargo pants and a black T-shirt. I recognized him immediately.
“Chaplain,” I whispered and for a moment I saw his dark eyes turn toward mine as if he heard me over all the commotion caused by the viewers, cramped together in the dark.
When our eyes met, I felt strange. A shiver ran over me and my hands relaxed.
Fizz had also gone very still beside me, but I observed this as if from a great distance. Chaplain broke our locked gaze then and turned to the man who still had hold of the girl, but was no longer thrusting his dick into her. As Chaplain stared at the back of the man’s head the man lifted the unconscious girl’s long slender arm as if to consider it. He took it in both of his hands almost delicately. Then he snapped the arm.
The girl came awake, screaming. Her eyes wide and bulging. Her scream was that of an animal’s as her arm bent back unnaturally at the elbow. The mechanical way in which the man moved, the lack of passion or interest that he’d held for the girl just moments before, I didn’t understand it until much later.
He slipped a large, calloused hand, definitely a working man’s hand, under the pillow and when he removed it, a shining blade caught the overhead lights and gleamed.
Gripping the handle tight, he thrust the blade down into the girl’s chest—again, and again, and again. Every time he pulled out the blade, bright red bursts blossomed on her white gown, the blood pooling and spreading until it sprayed from her mouth in desperate coughs.
She was crying, her face screwed up in pain, but no sound was coming out. I saw all of this, and every time I started to get upset, or react, something in me relaxed. Then the man let go of the knife just long enough to wrap both of his hands around the girl’s neck. He choked her, squeezing until her wet, red face, bulging with veins relaxed.
She was dead.
She was dead. Something inside snapped awake.
“They come to watch them die,” I said. I looked up to the cameras trained on the scene and knew the truth of Chaplain’s operation. “The NRD girls are murdered for the films. Snuff films.” I’d heard of them. And as long as they don’t damage the brain, they have an endless supply of fodder. “Fizz, have you seen a girl with dark features—Fizz?”
People were leaving, but Fizz was frozen in his seat. His eyes forward. I nudged him but he didn’t respond.
I felt eyes on me and looked up. Chaplain stared at us from the spotlight until someone came up to ask him a question.
“We will get it in editing,” he replied to whatever the concern was.
“Fizz, we need to go,” I said because I’d realized we were the last two in the house, with Chaplain staring hard at us if in deep consideration. A man came and collected the girl’s body, carrying her back through the dark door as if she’d never been there at all—save the bright blood stain left on the white bed. Another man stripped the sheets to reveal stain on top of stain.
How many girls had died here in this bed? How long had these shows been going on?
“We really need to go,” I said again, because I needed to assemble a team. I needed to come back, tonight even, and burn this hellhole to the ground.
Yes, I should go home. Don’t worry about the girls. The one I’m looking for isn’t even here and the ones that are want to be. Paid actresses. They love dying. Much like the girl who loved to tell her death story, these girls are also proud of their talents. And think of how many innocents who die for such horrible films to fill such horrible needs—they are practically obsolete now. Safe.
No one here is unhappy or hurt. No one.
I stood from my seat and turned toward the door. I felt heavy, on the verge of sleep. I turned back to Fizz one last time but he still sat in his seat, staring silently ahead as if watching a show only he could see.
He’ll be fine. Probably doesn’t want to be seen leaving with me anyway. Go on. I need lie down. I’m so tired.
I walked out into the night. The March air hit me with just enough force that I came awake, alive again on the steps of the Park Street house. I felt like I’d walked into a room, but had forgotten what I came here for. I looked across the street and saw the Impala waiting. So tired, with a headache blooming behind my eyes, I made my way to my car. Then I got inside and went home, having completely forgotten about my gun.
Chapter 28
Sunday, March 30, 2003
I woke up the day after the show at Chaplain’s and still felt off. My mind was foggy as if I’d drank too much. I remembered going to Chaplain’s, seeing Fizz and the horrible show, but the whole thing had a haze to it. I had images of the girl smiling and laughing in my head, but I couldn’t quite place them in the timeline of the evening.
Had she come out before and said something to the crowd? Greeted us in the doorway? I wasn’t sure. But that sense of her comradery was infectious. She knew it was all a game and was happy to play. She asked for it. She enjoyed it. Don’t let her acting fool you.
I went to the bar early. I’d learned that the best way to counteract a hangover was to simply start drink
ing again. When I walked into Blackberry Hill, Peaches wasn’t behind the bar. An open doorway cast cold gray light across the bartop, making it shine. I stood there, looking around the place, at a loss as to what to do with myself. Then the door was darkened by a plump figure and Peaches appeared, carrying a case of beer. Behind him, a man with a dolly pushed in more cases stacked high.
“Just unloading the truck,” Peaches called when he saw me. “You can help yourself if you like, or give me five.”
I decided to wait. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to pour myself a drink. But it felt wrong stepping behind the man’s bar. This was Peaches’ place.
Peaches grinned when he saw me and I didn’t have a drink in hand. “Sorry for the wait, B. You’re here early.”
“I was dreaming about your beer,” I said. “It couldn’t wait. Besides, anything with the word blackberry in it is suitable for breakfast, right?”
He pulled a mug from the cooler and opened the tap. “Darn right.”
I spent the next two hours sipping beer and trying to clear my head. I ordered a basket of French fries from the kitchen and watched the baseball preseason stuff on the large TV overhead.
I was dragging the last of the fries through a mound of ketchup when a man sat down beside me, the same man from the night before. “Shit.”
“Don’t run off just yet,” he said.
I didn’t bother to tell him that I didn’t have it in me to run anywhere. Again, I wondered about the scars on his face and jawline. A car wreck maybe? With all that glass cutting up his face? Or was he a boxer or something like that?
“I’m sorry if I pissed you off last night,” he said. “I meant no disrespect. I have nothing but admiration for guys like you.”
“Guys like me?” I grunted and washed down the salty fries with the last two inches of my beer.
“Peaches said you find people. That you’ve been looking for the ones who were swept up by The Great Panic and were never seen again.”
“Peaches needs to keep his mouth shut,” I said, just as the barkeep appeared to refill my beer. Peaches gave me a nervous, lopsided grin.
“I’m trying to say thank you,” the other man interjected.
“For what?”
“I was in the camps,” he said. “And let me tell you, no one was looking for us then.”
I stopped trying to get away from the guy and faced him. His eyes were soft. Sincere. He wasn’t lying to me for some kind of attention. There was no bravado there. No ah, man, the shit I’ve been through just beneath the surface, waiting for an invitation to wallow.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said because what the hell can you say when someone admits something terrible like that. “How long were you in?”
“About three years,” he said.
“That’s long enough to change a man,” Peaches chimed in. He’d been smart to keep quiet until now, giving me long enough to forgive him. But he’d made it clear that I would definitely have to be more careful as to what I shared with him.
Peaches went on. “I was locked up for just 18 months and believe me, I wasn’t the same when I came out as I was when I went in. And I was just in normal prison, you know? Not like the camps.” I’d heard Peaches’ incarceration story before. I didn’t care to hear it again. A petty drug charge and cost him almost two years of his life—and darkened his record just enough to make good employment hard to come by.
“When did you die?” I asked the other.
“1997,” he said.
I let my confusion show. “But the camps closed in 1997. How did you spend three years locked up?”
He scoffed. “Because the government always does exactly what it says it will?”
“You’re saying the camps stayed open?” My mind whirled. I thought back to the thin file folder on Sullivan. On the idea that Memphis was put on a bus and sent home but he didn’t hear from Eric—maybe because Sullivan wasn’t released?
“How many did they keep?” I asked.
“As many as they could,” the other man said and pushed his empty pint toward Peaches who filled it with a solemn face. “At first I thought they’d kept me because I didn’t have anyone waiting for me. But Peaches says your desk is packed with missing person cases. Maybe they kept whoever they could, regardless of the consequences. After all, whose door would they be able to bang on for answers? We were moved once the camps officially “disbanded” and it wasn’t like they left a trail for us to be found. Some buses went home, others didn’t.”
“Where did they send you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you think they told us where we were going?”
“Landscape?” I asked.
“Desert,” he said.
Arizona maybe, I thought. My mind swam with this information. The camps didn’t close. What if they still weren’t closed? It would certainly explain the pressure Charlie was getting from his higher-ups, but it wouldn’t explain the desperation to find Sullivan so quickly. And there was Maisie—I wasn’t over Maisie. Until I had a plan though, I might as well keep myself busy.
“Are they closed now?” I asked.
He paused. “You want my best guess? No.”
“So how did you get out?” I asked.
“They got tired of me.”
It was a lie and I knew it. But why? People lie for a lot of reasons. It could be something as simple as the fact he didn’t really know me, or trust me. Or it could be so much more than that.
I should’ve known it was so much more than that.
Chapter 29
10 Weeks
I drive to the cemetery again. As I pull through the gates, I see Kirk, tall, black, and bald, stepping out of the funeral home in his solemn suit, standing proud before the plantation-esque building. It rings sourly of darker times, when Kirk would’ve been little more than a butler for some arrogant white prick. He lifts his hand in a hello and I raise mine in return. I should talk to him. I’m sure Jackson will take my body here, and we should talk about that—as if the after is any of my business.
As the Impala chugs up the steep hill, an old and familiar dread twists my guts.
I’ve been avoiding my grave, I realize. As if in coming too close to this piece of earth with my name on it, the ground will split open and swallow me. As if by walking on my own grave I am asking for it, but it is more than that.
I park beneath the willow tree again and climb out. Long knotty tendrils swing in the welcome breeze as I cross the grass to the marker ahead. From my vantage point, I see Kirk’s hearse slide down the hill and out the iron gates, turning right onto the main road before disappearing.
I sink to my knees in front of the grave. The July heat is unbearable even this late in the day. The sun burns the back of my neck and a weak breeze pushes through my hair. Already I can feel the sweat trail over the skin trapped beneath my leather jacket.
Like armor, I won’t take it off.
I reach out and place a hand on the rough headstone. “Fuck, Charlie.”
I imagine the corpse in the box below—both corpses—entangled in each others’ limbs, where I so unceremoniously dumped them.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him. “Why would you ever help him?”
About ten months ago, Caldwell made his first strategic move against Jesse. A small cell of his killers, led by a man named Martin, used local prostitutes to set up fake death replacements. Jesse, believing she was doing her job and saving someone’s life, was tricked and attacked. Her head was almost fully decapitated while I was detained and questioned.
Realizing we were in trouble and in a shitty situation, I disappeared. But unless killing is the order of the day, I couldn’t work alone. So I asked two friends, two guys I trusted, to help me with my investigation.
What’s going on, Charlie? I’d asked. Is the FBRD corrupt? Is it someone else? We have to find out the truth.
Of course, Jim. I’ll help you. You know that.
I look up at the sky and feel
the heat on my face, the back of my neck itching with sweat. My hands feel warm and swollen as I rock back on my heels.
I can still hear the way Charlie laughed, like he was out of his mind. He must’ve been to hand me over to Martin and Caldwell like that.
“Why Charlie?” I ask again and touched the granite. “I could never give Jesse or any of them up. How could you do it to me?”
I wipe sweat off my face with the back of my hand and sigh. I get up, brush the fresh cut grass off my knees and head back to the car.
I’m grateful I never told Charlie about the second boy in the desert.
Chapter 30
Winter 2002
I took Aziz home. His family had reported him missing two months earlier. They said he was walking the goats too close to the border in Kunar, the province of their home. When he did not return, an elder from his village went to collect the boy, but only found the goats.
I wrapped Aziz in a green military blanket and put him in the backseat of the car, sitting up like a swaddled baby.
I paid the driver 3000 Afghan Afghani, crisp red bills. “I’ll give you three more if you bring me back. Alive.”
I wore a uniform and held my assault rifle in plain sight. I did not want to scare him, but I did not want him to think he could screw me over and leave me on some hillside with the body of a dead kid either.
“I understand,” he said with enough conviction that I believed he did.
We drove away from the base out to the hills. You would imagine desert, I’m sure, but these hills were green. The road was narrow and steep, but the car got us to the village where Aziz lived.
“Wait here,” I told him. His black eyes regarded me warily as I climbed out and retrieved Aziz from the backseat.
I carried the swaddled boy into the village, toward a group of young kids wearing sky blue tunics, kicking a ball between them. I didn’t want them to see Aziz, so when I saw an elderly man propped against the building, one hand clutching a staff as he watched the children play, I went to this man instead.
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