Stefan exhaled and put his hands on his hips. He peered in through the one-way mirror at Virgil. The man was picking at a thread of dead skin on his thumb, rocking slightly with each pick, his lips moving.
“How did he buy it?”
“Cash, no credit card trail. His word against the storeowner’s. The other employees, of course, say they don’t sell anything like that there.”
“You think that could be him on the video?”
Lunds shook his head. “No. The guy on the video is clearly white. Just in case, I had Virgil strip nude and checked him out. The nipples and penis are different. Virgil’s got a birthmark on his lower back that the man in the video doesn’t have. Sorry, Stefan, but we don’t really have shit as far as finding who that child is or the bastard who did that to her.”
Stefan rubbed the side of his head. “I’m gonna need help.”
6
Kelly had wanted to meet at a local pub and get the night started with some drinks. Sarah no longer drank, but she was happy to drive everyone if they wanted to. She drove Kelly’s Nissan with six girls crammed in and the music turned up so loud it hurt her ears. Two of the girls, Kelly’s friends, were already singing at the tops of their lungs.
When they arrived at the pub, Sarah let them out. Kelly stayed in the car as Sarah tried to find parking.
“You’re quiet,” Kelly said. “Talk to them. They’re fun girls.”
“I’m just tired.”
“Well, you’re never gonna make friends, young lady, unless you put yourself out there.”
Friends. She hadn’t thought about friends in a long time. At one point in her life, the point when she was drunk every day, she had a lot of friends and a lot of men. That seemed like a lifetime ago, now. Since her breakup, she had no inclination to go back to that life.
“Maybe this was a bad idea, Kel. You guys would have more fun without me.”
“Bullshit. You’re just sulking ’cause of Gio. Forget him. There’ll be guys here.”
Sarah sighed as she found parking around the building and thought for a moment while Kelly stepped out of the car. Eventually, she let out a deep breath and undid her seatbelt before climbing out.
Kelly linked her arm with Sarah’s in a casual gesture of affection. Sarah instantly doubled over in pain. It began in her stomach, just below the navel, and emanated in all directions. And it wasn’t slow, like fire. The closest comparison she could make was if someone had set a bomb off inside of her.
She groaned, holding her stomach, the pain forcing her to her knees. Kelly held on to her arm tightly, panicking. She took out her cell to call for an ambulance, and Sarah managed to gasp out, “No ambulance.”
Sarah saw Kelly but not as she was now. Sarah saw a date, a high school dance, with kissing and drinking and friends. Then a boy drove her in his car, a silver car going fast on the highway. He pulled over in a dark spot near a canyon and they were kissing when he tried to remove her dress. She said no, and he ripped it off and raped her as she screamed for help. But nobody came.
“You okay?” Kelly said, bending down next to her.
The pain could hit like a sledgehammer, but it always went away. Sometimes it lingered, and sometimes it was a flash that would topple her and disappear as quickly as it had come. But it always went away. Her greatest fear was that one day it wouldn’t.
Sarah got to her feet and cleaned the blood away from her nose. She looked into Kelly’s big, beautiful eyes. More than anything else, she wanted to ask her what happened to that boy—if he had ever been prosecuted or if this was a pain she carried every day alone. But Kelly wouldn’t understand. Even Sarah didn’t understand.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing. Just migraines I get sometimes.”
“That seems like a pretty big deal, Sarah. We should go to the hospital.”
“No, no it’s fine. Let’s just go in. I’ll have some water and be all right. Really.” Sarah took her arm, ignoring the throbbing that lashed out inside her head every few seconds. “What were you saying? Something about having a lot of fun tonight?”
The night dragged on about as Sarah expected. Kelly and the girls got drunk, flirted with boys, and danced, while Sarah sat at a table away from everyone else and tried to look as unwelcoming as possible. She didn’t want to speak to anybody and hoped a stern face was enough to ward people off.
But the men still came and tried to talk to her. She had to brush them off—politely at first and then rude and to the point. The more who approached her, the more it aggravated her. Though she knew she wasn’t unattractive, she didn’t believe herself to be stunning, either. She wondered what it was about her that drew men in.
After several Diet Cokes, she checked her watch: it was only ten thirty. She wasn’t going to make it to two or three in the morning.
“Kelly,” she yelled over the din of the music at the bar, “would you guys mind calling a cab? I think I’m just going to go.”
“No, no, stay here,” she said, her speech slurred from the countless shots.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Just either call me and I’ll come back, or please call a cab. Don’t go home with strange men when you’re like this.”
“Of course I’m going to. What fun would it be going home with strange men sober?”
Sarah grabbed her arm, staring right into her pupils to make sure Kelly was paying attention. “Because they could hurt you. Call me or call a cab, okay?”
Kelly lost her smile. Something passed between them, but Kelly didn’t know what it was. She pulled away. “What’re you, my mother?”
She turned away and took another shot. Sarah had done all she could do. Maybe she’d swing back around closing time and make sure they weren’t going home with anyone they shouldn’t be.
Once out of the club, she realized how warm it had been in there. The air cooled her skin, and the sudden change from warmth to cold made her skin flush. One of the bouncers said, “You leaving? Aw, come on. Come back in and lemme buy you a drink.”
Sarah smiled briefly, her teeth clenched so she didn’t snap at him, and turned away without saying anything.
“Hey,” the bouncer yelled as he chased her down, “night’s just starting. Come back. You too pretty to be sittin’ at home on a Friday night.”
“I appreciate it, but no, thank you.”
He swung around in front of her and blocked her path to the parking lot. “Nah, don’t be like that. Come in and have a drink.”
“I don’t drink anymore.”
“You wouldn’t be in there if you didn’t want somethin’ to drink. Just come in. My name’s J. J. I’ll take excellent care of you.”
The bouncer touched her arm lightly, and pain shot through her as if she had been injected with acid. She saw J. J. sitting next to a hospital bed, reading to a man who didn’t move. A machine beeped near him, and with each beep, the man’s chest would go up and down.
“Is it your father?” she asked.
“What?”
“The man in the hospital, is it your father?”
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Never mind,” she said, trying to get around him. “Excuse me.”
“Hey,” he said, sticking his hand in front of her and pushing her back. “What did you say? What about a man in a hospital?”
“Please leave me alone.”
“Not until you tell me what you just said.”
Sarah touched him lightly on the arm. His mouth fell open and his hands gripped his head as he screamed. She jumped back.
“I’m sorry” was all she could say.
Sometimes, the pain could go the other way. Something she’d only learned this past year.
Sarah hurried past him. He yelled things at her and followed her a few steps before crumpling over in pain again. This was what happened when she let her guard down, when her mind wasn’t completely focused and closed to any impressions she might get. This was why she didn’t like going out anymore.
She got
into her car and looked around to make sure the bouncer hadn’t followed her. Before she could get the key in the ignition, tears streamed down her face, and she rested her head against the steering wheel and wept.
7
The Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office, Beth Mertz, had risen through the ranks of the Bureau’s anti-terrorism division. She had a PhD in Middle East studies and a near-fluent mastery of Arabic and Turkish. Stefan knocked on her door late in the evening and wasn’t surprised when she was still in. Unlike many SACs, she still put in twelve-hour days.
“Got a minute?” he said.
“Sure,” she said, not taking her eyes away from her computer monitor.
Stefan crossed the office. The windows behind her looked down to the city of Phoenix, and the light reflected off the skyscrapers made the surrounding sky a light gold. He sat down across from her with a sigh he couldn’t stifle.
“It’s that one I caught in Scottsdale. The snuff film.”
“Uh huh,” she said, still not looking up.
“I think I need some help.”
“What kind of help?”
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “The detectives have had it for weeks and haven’t turned up anything. There’s nothing on the video, and the people the owner supposedly bought the video from deny its existence.”
She shrugged. “You’ll catch cases that don’t lead anywhere. Happens to everybody.”
He shook his head. “Not like this. If you watch the video… I’ve never seen anything like it. The barbarity…”
She stopped typing and turned to him. “How bad?”
“There’s nothing at Quantico that prepares us to watch something like this, Beth. The man that did that isn’t human.”
Beth nodded. “Don’t ever underestimate how cruel people can be. Stick to that, and you’ll never be surprised in this job.” She glanced back at her computer screen. “Gio Adami. He’s an ASAC and one of the assistant directors for the BSU. Call him.”
“Thanks.”
He rose to leave before she said, “And Stefan? It’s going to be odd when you finally catch him. He’s not some demon. He’ll just be a man—one you may even get along with and like. Sometimes that’s harder to deal with than their actions.”
He nodded and left the office.
Stefan went back to his office. The Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a position as prestigious as any in the Bureau. Behavioral Science used to be the go-to people for serial murder, but that changed after September 11. A lot of things had changed then. The Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI had become a research division, and the ViCAP was born. Stefan preferred the split. There were people who were good at theory and research, and there were people who were good hunters—good out in the field, chasing down their prey. Mixing the two didn’t seem like a good idea to him.
Too young to know which camp he fell into, a part of him hoped he was a research and theory guy. The hunters didn’t last long. The amount of stress from chasing serial murderers was off the charts. More than one special agent had suffered coronaries and strokes far too soon in their lives.
Stefan looked up Gio Adami on the Bureau server. A voice message told him to input his party’s extension, and he dialed the number listed on Gio’s profile. It took four rings before he picked up.
“This is Gio.”
“Oh, hi. Sorry, I was actually expecting to leave a message. Um, this is Special Agent Stefan Miles with the Phoenix office. Beth Mertz asked that I give you a call.”
“Sure, what can I do for you?”
“Well, I think maybe it’s best you watch something first.”
Stefan had uploaded the video onto the case’s official digital file yesterday. He gave Gio the case number and then waited for a call back. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Holy shit,” Gio said.
“Yeah.”
“There’s almost nothing in the file. You haven’t made any progress?”
Despite Gio’s tone being inquisitive rather than accusatory, Stefan couldn’t help being defensive. “I’ve been on the case two days, but I know when I can and can’t do something. I wanted to see if you had someone who could come out.”
There was silence on the other end for a long time.
“No, no one who could deal with something like this. I’ll come out myself.”
“Oh. All right. If you think that’s best. Sir.” He still felt defensive and slightly foolish for being roused so easily.
“Any guesses on why the number forty-two on the disc?”
“None. Sir.”
He paused. “I’m nervous it’s a victim number. That there’s at least forty-one other videos like this floating around.”
“Yeah, I did think of that, but we just don’t know.” Stefan waited a beat. “I don’t know if we’re gonna get anything on this.”
“I know someone that can help. We’ll be out in a day or two.”
“Thank you… sir.”
Stefan hung up. Something about Gio didn’t sit right with him. It wasn’t that he seemed like a bad guy, but there was some authoritative streak in his manner of speaking that told Stefan they probably weren’t going to get along. Then again, every job forced people to work with others they didn’t get along with. Maybe he was just being too sensitive.
Either way, it didn’t matter. He was just relieved he wouldn’t be on this alone anymore.
8
The bookstore was nearly empty in the morning. One young woman came in and browsed through the poetry section. Other than her, Sarah hadn’t seen anyone else. A morning shift was difficult for her. Maybe it was something about being locked indoors when the sun was out. But she had agreed to cover the shift weeks ago, and she swallowed her discomfort and focused on other things.
She sat on the stool behind the cash register and watched the sunlight pouring in through the windows. Some of the newer books near the front were illuminated, glossy and eye-catching, while the older books in the middle and back of the store remained dark and seemed decrepit and unappealing.
“Excuse me,” the young woman said as she stopped in front of the register. “Do you have a compilation of Oscar Wilde’s poetry?”
“Yeah, we do. Lemme grab that for you.”
Sarah went over to the poetry section. Poetry, something women in the Amish community were not allowed to either write or read, had been a revelation when she stumbled across it later. Somehow, intuitively, she had always known that language had limits and that experience couldn’t be described. Only poetry, of everything she’d read since leaving the community, had come close.
“Here it is,” Sarah said, lifting a thick tome and passing it to the woman.
“Thanks.”
“He’s one of my favorites. I feel like too many poets take themselves too seriously, and I don’t think he did.”
The door opened and another customer walked in.
“It’s actually for a paper,” the woman said. “I know I could go online and read everything he’s ever written, but I like holding a book in my hands, you know?”
“Yeah, I do. It feels real. Lets you know that these dead people actually did leave something behind.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty cool when you can bore people even when you’re dead.”
Sarah giggled and then stopped when she recognized the person who had walked into the store.
Giovanni Adami wore a gray suit and green tie. His shirt wasn’t buttoned at the top, and the suit coat hung lazily off his body, giving him a more languid appearance. He smiled, and Sarah looked away before she excused herself to the customer.
Sarah ignored him and went to the register. She contemplated leaving the store entirely and then thought how silly that would look, so instead she pulled up some boxes of receipts and began going through them. She’d already entered them all into QuickBooks but needed something to distract herself right now.
“How are y
ou?” Gio said, walking up to the register with his hands in his pockets.
“Fine.” Without looking up, she began sorting the receipts on the counter. “What’re you doing here?”
“Can’t an old flame just stop by to talk?”
“Not when that old flame is an asshole.”
He grinned, looking down at the receipts. “If I recall, you dumped me.”
“I dumped you because you wanted me to be a whore and nothing else.”
“No, I didn’t. You wanted to move in after—”
The customer walked up and laid the Oscar Wilde book on the counter. Sarah rang it up, shoved the book in a large green bag, and handed it to her with her credit card receipt.
“I’m not here for that,” Gio said softly. “I’m sorry it happened, and I’d love to talk to you about it sometime, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
“I have something I need your help on.”
She chuckled. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to help you.”
She hurried away from the register to a rolling cart full of books and began shelving them, her back to him.
“I know you’ll never join the Bureau. That’s not what I’m asking.”
“What are you asking, Gio? Because from here it looks like you broke my heart and now you’re asking for a favor.”
A long silence.
“I didn’t know it hurt you that bad. I’m sorry.” He moved closer and leaned against the bookshelf she was stocking. “You know my favorite part of our whole thing? When I’d come pick you up. I’d text you and then have to wait to see what you looked like that night. You always looked beautiful, but I could never predict how beautiful. I could never imagine correctly how beautiful you really were.”
Murder 42 - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries Book 2) Page 3