by C. J. Box
He looked large and blocky, wearing a black long-sleeved sweater and black sweatpants and lace-up boots. A huge belly extended out over the waistband of the pants. Large white hands extended from the cuffs of his sweater. She looked for a distinguishing mark or wedding ring but saw neither. Still, she was struck by the size of his hands. He had Legerski’s frame, she thought, but so did a lot of men.
The masked man turned slightly, stepped aside, and swept his arm to present a stark bedroom of some kind. He said, “And here we are once again. This ought to be a good one because it stars … me!” His voice was electronically altered and sounded disembodied, inhuman.
Cassie noted the camera was at shoulder height, likely on a shelf or tripod. It wasn’t high-quality video or audio and the lighting was bright but garish.
“Wait just a second until I bring out the talent,” he said, and went off-screen. The camera didn’t move with him.
After a minute of nothing but still life, the man reappeared holding what looked like a leash. No, Cassie saw, not a leash. A chain. It snaked out of his hand and extended behind him. Then he gave it a sharp yank.
A skinny naked woman was pulled into the shot and she sat down on the bed and glanced at the camera. The chain was attached around her ankle. She looked terrified. Cassie stared back at those haunted eyes. The man in black took his end of the chain and snapped it to get her attention, then fastened it to a ringbolt on the wall next to the bed. She could see the chain was long enough to allow movement around the bed but no further.
As he did, Cassie tried to see the girl better. Her face seemed familiar, Cassie thought. Then it came to her: she was one of the missing three local girls she’d researched the night before. She couldn’t remember which one, couldn’t attach the name, but she knew she’d be able to connect them when she had her files in front of her.
For the next few minutes, time stood still and Cassie was transported into a real-life version of hell. Even as she watched it, she knew she’d never be able to scrub the images from her mind for the rest of her life. She had to remind herself to breathe.
The man seemed jaunty and cruel at the same time. When he glanced back at the camera-there was a second of wide-spaced deep eyes-there was no doubt he seemed to be enjoying himself.
It came in horrible flashes, and Cassie found herself fast-forwarding, getting the gist but not dwelling a second longer than necessary on the actual details.
The man shoved his crotch into the girl’s face and grabbed at his zipper with one hand and her hair in the other …
Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward
The camera never moved or zoomed in, to Cassie’s relief, and she assumed there was no one else in the room even though the monster liked to address the lens himself as if hosting a show.
At one point, after he’d turned the girl over facedown on the bad and waddled up behind her, he addressed the camera with a flushed red face and jabbed his finger at it and said, “Don’t fuck with me again, Lizard King!”
Lizard King? she wondered.
Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward
The poor girl, Cassie thought, feeling her own eyes fill with tears as the girl cried and begged for him to stop. He backhanded her hard enough that she fell off the bed. As he bent down to pull her back up, Cassie noticed a large discolored mark of some kind on the skin of the small of his back. Like a stain or a botched tattoo. As if he realized the same thing himself, he self-consciously reached back and tugged down the hem of his sweater, hiding it again.
Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward
Staggering and spent, the man lurched to his feet and stood there, the girl curled up on top of the bed. He breathed hard, glowered at the camera. Then he lurched toward the screen and went out of view.
The girl lay on the bed in a fetal position, hugging her knees, her back facing the screen. Cassie could see her bent spine, her shoulders heaving from crying. On the small of her back was a tattoo and Cassie recognized it as the Harley-Davidson logo. She remembered one of the missing girls had the tattoo …
Then he returned, holding a long bladed knife that looked like a bayonet. He lurched across the screen toward the girl in the bed, and stopped to look back over his shoulder and smile.
Fast-forward-fast-forward-fast-forward
Blood, everywhere.…
* * *
Cassie felt as disgusted and abused and as horrified as the murdered missing girl as she removed the headphones, closed her eyes, and croaked, “Holy Mother of God.”
“What?” Sally said, alarmed. “You look like you’ve seen the devil himself.”
“I have,” Cassie said and wiped furiously at her face as if it would remove the images. It didn’t.
“Something’s bleeding,” Sally said.
“What?”
It took a moment for Cassie to realize Sally wasn’t referring to the girl in the video, but to her own hand. She’d balled her fist so tightly when she watched that she’d cut into the palm of her hand with her fingernails. She had smears of blood on her face.
“Here,” Sally said, approaching with a Kleenex.
Cassie slammed the laptop closed, even though the video was over so Sally couldn’t see it.
“What?” Sally asked again, as Cassie clutched the Kleenex with her right hand and opened the laptop and restarted the disk and then froze it during the opening minute. She froze the image of the spare bedroom itself before the girl was brought in.
“I need your help,” Cassie said. “I want you to look at something.”
Sally looked scared.
“Don’t worry,” Cassie said. “I’ve paused it. I just want you to identify a location for me if you can. You’ve lived around here for a while and you may recognize it as local.”
Sally Legerski took a deep breath and came around the table. She leaned down so closely Cassie could smell her scent.
“Do you know this room?” Cassie asked. She watched Sally’s face and saw a twitch of recognition in it.
“What happens in that room?”
“Never mind that. Do you recognize it?”
“Possibly.”
Cassie felt an electric charge fire through her. She tried to remain calm.
“Where is it?”
“I said possibly.”
“Is it connected to your ex-husband?”
“I just don’t know without seeing more.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Cassie said firmly.
Sally sighed. “Rick bought this place, this old abandoned ranch not long after we moved down here. I thought it was idiotic at the time and I still do. He made noises about fixing it up for our retirement home, but the house was a wreck and the well hardly worked.”
“This bedroom is in the old house?”
“No,” she said, “the man Rick bought it from built this underground shelter. I don’t know how much it must have cost, but he claimed it would withstand a nuclear war. It’s right outside the house, the entrance, I mean. This looks like the bedroom that was down there. I never spent more than ten minutes in that shelter because it creeped me out and I was mad at Rick for blowing our savings on it, but this sure looks like the bedroom but I can’t swear to it.”
Sally pointed toward the screen. “I recognize the concrete walls but those ring things are new…” her voice trailed off when she seemed to realize what she was saying. “What happened in it?”
Cassie ignored the question and said, “Is it known as the Schweitzer place?”
Sally said, “How did you know?”
“I think it’s where the girls are,” she said.
It wasn’t “There at the Schweitzer place” as written in the ungrammatical scrawl. It was: “They’re at the Schweitzer place.”
Sally reached out for the side of the table so her knees wouldn’t buckle beneath her.
* * *
Cassie walked toward the back of the shop, through a packed storeroom, and through a storm door into a tiny backy
ard. She needed air, and she needed a few minutes. There was a chain link fence along the end of the yard. Just a few feet beyond the fence was the rim of the canyon where the Yellowstone River roared far below.
She gripped the top rail of the fence with both hands and closed her eyes. When she did she could see the terrified face of the girl on the video looking back, then the set of his shoulders when he approached her with the bayonet. She’d read enough and learned enough at the academy to know most serial killers kept trophies of some kind to remind them of their victims. Photos and videos weren’t unusual. But she’d never actually looked at them, and she wished she could somehow unwatch what she’d seen. She wondered how many victims were on the second and third disks.
Then she raised her head and opened her eyes. She was suddenly furiously angry, and she cursed herself for taking the time to gather her thoughts, to regroup. It was time the Sullivan girls-and possibly Cody-couldn’t afford to have wasted because of her indecision.
She glanced at her watch. Enough time had lapsed. She felt a pang of guilt regarding the dirty trick she’d played on Sally, leaving her in there with the laptop. But she had no doubt Cody would approve.
Cassie turned on her heel and marched back into the shop. Sally Legerski sat again behind the counter but didn’t look over as Cassie sat back down at her computer. Sally looked shell-shocked. The paused image on the screen included the man and the girl. It was just after he’d yanked her back onto the bed.
“You watched some of it,” Cassie said.
“I had to.” Then, “It’s him. It’s Rick.”
Cassie felt a surge of excitement. “How can you be sure? We never see his face.”
Sally wouldn’t meet Cassie’s eyes. “That birthmark on the small of his back. You can see it when his shirt pulls up. I recognize that birthmark. It’s purple and it covers most of his back. He was always self-conscious about it because it’s sort of in the shape of a skull. He used to call it his death’s-head, and it does kind of look like that.”
“You’re sure?”
Sally looked over with fury in her eyes. “It’s him.”
At least, Cassie thought, looking at where the video was stopped, Sally hadn’t advanced it to the end.
“What’s your Wi-Fi password?”
Sally didn’t respond. She seemed to be in a rage.
“Sally, what’s your password?” Cassie asked sharply.
After Sally told her, Cassie went to work. Sally talked in a wooden voice, as much to herself as to Cassie.
“He is a very controlling man.”
Cassie acknowledged her with a “Um-hmmm.”
“For the first few years, I didn’t mind it that he wanted to know everything I did during the day and who I might have talked with. I found it kind of endearing that he was so jealous. But it wasn’t just jealousy-it was possessiveness. Like he didn’t trust me at all and he was suspicious of everything I did or said. He’d go over the phone bills and ask about strange numbers, or check the computer to see what Web sites I looked at. And he’d get angry if I didn’t agree with him on something, even if it was trivial. After a while, I felt suffocated and I couldn’t stand it.”
Cassie could guess the next part, and it came.
“But I never thought he was capable of something like this.”
* * *
After the last five minutes of the video file was copied to her hard drive, compressed and sent, Cassie opened her cell phone and redialed the most recent number called. Again, she got the receptionist at the Park County Sheriff’s Department.
“This is Lewis and Clark Investigator Cassandra Dewell. I need to talk to Sheriff Pedersen right now. It’s an emergency.”
“He might have left for the day, ma’am.”
“Then patch me through to his cell or his house. Right now!”
The receptionist paused as if to argue but thought better of it.
After a minute, Pedersen came on the line. It didn’t sound like he was using his cell. “Yes, Deputy Dewell?”
She ignored the irritation in his tone. “Where are you?”
“Here, at the office. But I was planning on packing it in early this afternoon, why?”
“Is Trooper Legerski still there?”
“I’m not sure. He might have left after he talked to the judge.”
“Please look,” she said.
“Can you tell me what this is about?” he asked, still annoyed.
“Legerski’s a rapist and a murderer. He’s probably got the Sullivan girls imprisoned right now on some land he owns and I don’t know if they’re dead or alive.”
The silence was infuriating. Cassie said, “Sheriff, find Legerski and lock him up before he knows what’s going on. He’s a fucking monster, and if you check your e-mail you’ll see proof. But detain him first, and then watch it if you can.”
“Hold on,” Pedersen said, and she could hear the receiver clunk down on his desk. In the background, she heard Pedersen ask, “Is Rick still here?”
There was an exchange of voices she couldn’t make out, then Pedersen was back on the phone.
“He was in the squad room bullshitting with a couple of deputies but I guess he left. If you hadn’t heard, the judge turned down your request for a warrant.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Go find Legerski and take his firearms away and put him in your jail. I’m not kidding, and if you don’t do it right now everybody in Montana will want to know why when this thing breaks.”
“Look,” Pedersen said, “I know Rick pretty well. What you say comes across as kind of crazy. I can’t just arrest him based on your accusation and with no evidence.”
“I told you,” she said, her voice rising until it was a shout, “The evidence is in your goddamn e-mail in-box. You’ll see proof of your buddy raping a girl who’s chained to a wall and then gutting her like a deer. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and the man who did it was in your office. Get him secured away and then cancel all the holiday vacations and get every officer you’ve got on their way to the old Schweitzer place off U.S. Highway 89.”
She paused and looked at her screen. “The coordinates for your GPS units are Latitude 45–10?06? North, Longitude: 110-51?45? West. Got that?”
Silence. Then Pedersen moaned, “Jesus. Oh, my God…”
Cassie said, “You’re looking at the video file I sent.”
“Oh, man.” Then: “Oh, my God. Where did you get this?”
“Somebody left it for me.”
“I can’t see his face. How do you know it’s him?”
“He’s got a birthmark on his back. There’s a point in the video where you can see it.”
“But-”
“His ex-wife is sitting right in front of me and she made a positive identification. She says it’s him.”
“Are you sure this thing isn’t faked?”
“It doesn’t look faked to me. Does it look faked to you?”
“Repeat the coordinates,” Pedersen said, suddenly all business.
She did.
Then, “Sheriff, don’t put the call out over the radio to apprehend Legerski. If you do he’ll hear it and run for cover. It would be better if you sent some guys to find him and pull him over.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll meet you at the Schweitzer place,” she said. To herself, she whispered, “Hold on, girls. Hold on, Cody.”
41
2:51 P.M., Wednesday, November 21
Gracie and Danielle stood huddled together along the side wall of the room under a metal air grate. It was the one place in the room they’d found where the odor from the dead body in the corner and blood on the floor was the least likely to make them gag.
Gracie’s bare feet were cold from the concrete and the cold seemed to be seeping up through her bones. She held Danielle tighter, hoping to transfer her sister’s body warmth, but didn’t know what to do to warm her feet. Sometimes when she exhaled, her breath came trembling out.
&nb
sp; She thought about snatching the blanket back from where it was draped over the dead body, but she couldn’t yet make herself do it.
Danielle stood wordlessly chanting her mantra and rocking.
“The next time someone is at that door, do the cell phone trick, okay?” Gracie said to her sister.
Danielle hadn’t spoken or looked up in an hour. It was the longest she’d ever gone without talking, Gracie thought.
“Danielle, pretend Justin is on the other side of the door.”
Danielle rocked. Gracie hoped there was some way to reach her.
“What do you say? Will you do it this time?”
* * *
There was a remote vibration in the floor and despite her freezing feet, Gracie could feel it. Danielle could, too, because her head jerked up and she stared at the door in wide-eyed terror.
Gracie whispered, “They’re back. Start texting and sell it.”
Danielle gathered up the tin and sat with her back to the wall, the Altoid box poised in front of her, her thumbs at the ready. Gracie was thrilled.
She rose, yanked the blanket from the dead body, and stood poised next to the door.
* * *
Gracie heard more distant and muffled sounds, but no conversations like before. Gracie was sure they were out there, but what were they doing?
After a series of heavy footfalls the sliding metal plate on the door slid back. Gracie stared in terror at the pair of shadowed, piglike eyes as they moved around the room until they settled on her sister.
“There you are,” the man said. She recognized the voice as belonging to the man with the badge, the man with the gun who’d shot the tall man in the corner.
“How’re you girls doing?”
Gracie looked over at her sister. Danielle had lowered the tin between her knees out of view. She wasn’t going to go through with it, and Gracie sighed and let the blanket slide to the cement floor.