Snuff
© 2013 Melissa Simonson
All rights reserved.
No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by David Broom
ONE
“I’ll be right here the whole time. Okay? Nothing’s going to happen. I just need you to walk me through everything.”
I nod, but don’t meet her eyes. I can’t; it’s impossible. I’ve already tried.
“What’s the first thing you remember?”
I stare at my hands, the dried blood that’s crept into wrinkles on my knuckles. It makes my heartbeats speed. I need to wash my hands. Like, now.
“I’m sorry to have to put you through this. I want to catch this fucker, but I really need your help.” She adjusts the blanket around my shoulders. “Close your eyes. Go back to the first thing you remember.”
I follow her soft order. She’s only doing her job. I don’t want to look at the inside of an ambulance anyway. I don’t need medical attention, I’m fine. That’s the worst part. I’m completely fine.
“What do you see?”
Nothing. The whole world’s gone black. Like God turned off the lights. “It’s dark. I can’t see anything.”
“What do you hear?”
My lower lip trembles, so I bite it back. “Breathing.”
“You hear yourself breathing?”
I shake my head. “No. Her. She’s breathing. Really loudly. Like…like she’s scared.”
“Are you scared?”
Scared doesn’t capture it. I’m terrified.
“What do you smell?”
Urine and fear. I’ve never thought emotions had scents. I was wrong. “It smells sweaty. Sort of stale. Like it’s never been cleaned.”
“Do you say anything?”
“She does.”
“What does she say?”
“‘Hello’.”
“Like when you answer the phone? Or she sees you, and it’s a greeting?”
She says it like there are fifteen syllables in that one little word. Weak and wobbly. “Like on the phone.”
“Do you answer?”
“I ask her what this is.” Somehow she sounds both relieved and frightened when she hears me. She’s glad it’s not him, but she’s so scared it’s me. Another one.
“What does she say?”
“Nothing. She starts crying.” Crying usually sounds wet. She doesn’t. Tearless sobs, like she’s exhausted her supply. “She asks my name.”
“Was it Abby?”
“Yes.” Hearing her name hurts. Then I’m disgusted for even thinking that. I don’t know pain. I don’t know it at all. Abby, she knew pain. I’m lucky. I’m so fucking lucky, though I feel anything but.
“What next?”
“I ask her again what’s happening.” It’s like talking to a phantom. Or an invisible friend. It’s too dark for shadows, even. Just a big black blank of oblivion. I can’t see her. I didn’t really see Abby until she was already dead.
“Does she answer this time?”
The life drains out of her voice when she responds. Throaty, but flat. A monotone, like she’s steeling herself. Like she’s dying already, but Abby isn’t that lucky. “She says he’s going to decide which one of us gets to live.”
TWO
John chewed the inside of his lower lip, eyes downcast on the table inside an interrogation room.
He hadn’t said anything to the prisoner sitting across from him. Hadn’t even looked up at his face. Mostly out of fear of seeing his own. He didn’t have a weak stomach, but if he recognized distinct characteristics they shared, he feared he’d vomit up the liter of black coffee he’d had for breakfast.
“Why’s the FBI interested in me?”
The sound of his voice made John’s fists clench, and he felt like his heart had been tossed into a blender, pulverized into bloody mush. Their voices were similar, but warped somehow, the way a recording of his voice sounded when he played it back. It was him, but not him. The same arcs in pitch, the same tenors, yet still so foreign.
John ran his thumb over the leather case he kept his credentials inside. “They’re not interested in you. I am.”
“Who are you?”
“John Maxwell.”
“I’m more interested in why you want to speak to me. Though it’s nice to know you’ve got a name.”
John didn’t know why he was there. He couldn’t recall how the idea to visit had become cemented into a concrete plan. Maybe it happened sometime during the night as his insomnia subsided, when he teetered on the edge of sleep.
Finally, he glanced at the prisoner’s face. A warm wave of relief washed over him when he did. He didn’t look like him. Only the same dimple in the left cheek. He didn’t inherit his mocking gray-green eyes or sandy hair.
John didn’t know his own face well enough to see that they had the same wide bone structure, squared jaw, and the same thick black eyelashes that had a slight curl at the tips. Or perhaps he didn’t want to admit it to himself. If they stood, he would have learned that they were the exact same height, at six-feet-three-and-a-quarter inches. The only thing John would have been interested in was gutting this man, ripping through cartilage and blood and bone to discern whether they were cut from the same mold. To see if they had the same predatory heart and brain, but used them in vastly different ways.
“You raped my mother forty-three years ago.”
A flame of excitement leapt in Seth Lowry’s eyes, but he reined it in quickly. “What was her name?”
“I didn’t think you stopped your assault to ask.” John cleared his throat. “Her name is Molly. She was seventeen when you raped her. She had me about ten months later.”
A slow smile slashed Seth’s lips apart until they spread from ear to ear. It only made that dimple, the one that had been replicated onto John’s face, more defined.
“I never knew about you.”
“Well, why would you? My mother never reported you. And she certainly wouldn’t have written you.”
“‘My mother.” Seth studied John’s face as if he were starving, hungry to commit every one of his features to memory. “Sounds like a lot of distance there. She never cared about you?”
“She loves me. Which makes her one hell of a woman, to love me that much when all I do is remind her of you.”
“Is that why you’re in law enforcement, then? Making up for all the wrong I’ve done?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” John lied. “It’s a rare occasion when you cross my mind.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here right now. You shouldn’t lie to your old man. It’s cruel.” He bared every one of his carnivorous teeth when he smiled again, but it looked more like a snarl. “I’m the reason you’ve got that fancy badge.”
“Well it wasn’t for free, was it?”
“Is anything free?”
“I came here because I have a question. And I believe you’re the only one who can answer it.”
“I’m listening.”
John had asked himself the question on dozens, hundreds of occasions, but voicing it for the very first time to this vile man was a challenge. He fought to scrape the words from his throat. “Do you ever hear voices?”
Seth snorted. “If I heard little green aliens telling me to go around shouting obscenities I’d be doped up on Haldol right now, stuck in the rubber room with the loons.”
“Not those kinds of voices.” John rubbed one smarting temple. “Not a voice that suggests you do crazy things, but one that’s smarter than you. Knows things. It sounds like your own voice but colder, not like a conscience. Maybe the opp
osite of one.”
Amusement twisted the corner of Seth’s mouth. “I don’t even know what a conscience feels like. This voice—is it like the voice of a predator?”
“Something like that.”
Seth’s eyes grew foggy, muting the green flecks that had sparkled brighter with each word John spoke. “Sure, I’ve heard a voice like that. One that has wonderful ideas and ways of mapping them out. I haven’t heard it in a long time.”
It was an answer John half-hoped would be yes, and half-hoped had been no. He didn’t want them to have similarities, but at the same time he needed to know he wasn’t insane. And while Seth Lowry was a violent sadist, he was as sane as they came. John had checked psych reports to be certain—the man wasn’t a genius with an IQ of 130, but he was a master manipulator. He could sense weaknesses and exploit them.
This answer had at least proven that low latent inhibition-induced madness wasn’t the culprit, that hearing that voice wasn’t a symptom of advancing psychopathy.
Regardless it was still a very bitter pill to swallow.
“Why do you think it stopped?”
Seth cocked his head. John could see the makings of a dreamy smile floating to the surface of his face, and if he’d had a chainsaw handy, he would have sliced it right off.
“I haven’t been around many women in here. That voice usually only started up when some pretty young thing crossed my path. It’s still there, but sluggish. Like it’s been drugged. Nothing here seems to fully wake it up. I guess that happens when you’re locked in a metal place with no colors or interesting things.” If John had ever seen a recording of his own face while he interrogated a suspect, he would have recognized that same X-ray stare his father gave him. “I remember her now that I’m looking at you. She had her hair in pincurls that night. Red lipstick. Dark gray coat over a white dress. It was a long time ago, but those types of memories really stick.”
John had seen those hospital photographs, unbeknownst to his mother, and even if he wanted to he couldn’t have stopped pulses of the images from detonating behind his eyeballs.
Smeared lipstick. Smudged mascara. Violet bruises clutching a slender throat. Chocolate tendrils of curled hair hanging loose from the pins. Creamy dress with lace sleeves torn to shreds, hanging off one pale and willowy shoulder. Eyes clenched shut in every photo, tears clinging to the tips of her lashes.
Molly’s mother, the grandmother John had never met, disowned her once she realized her only daughter was pregnant. John had lived in a homeless shelter with Molly until he was three years old, when she was able to financially stabilize herself. The earliest memory John had was being curled up on a cot with her, studying that sad smile on her face, wondering why she looked so defeated and how he could make her better.
Even if it meant he’d never exist, he would have given anything to go back in time and erase Seth Lowry from Molly Maxwell’s history. Since that would never be an option, John overcompensated for the act that wasn’t his fault, hoping if he was good enough, she’d forget all about it.
It never happened. But over time she seemed to get better. John never knew his mother’s disposition before the attack, so he couldn’t say for certain if she’d gone back to normal, but to his scrutinizing eye she was in the best place he’d seen her in yet. He lived in a constant state of half-fear, always wondering if today was the day she’d fall apart.
His higher reasoning suggested he ought to give her more credit. She’d survived something atrocious; nothing else would ever be worse, but he could never fully shake that awful trepidation that crept up whenever he caught her staring off into space.
“That’s all you have left. Your memories. You’re never getting out of this place.”
Something between derision and pride rang through Seth’s voice. “I have a parole hearing next month. Are you sure?”
John leaned over the table. His father copied him, though not the murderous look John wore. They were quiet for a few beats, eyes trained on the other. The silence only seemed to embolden Seth. His smirk deepened with each mute moment that passed.
“Yes, I’m positive. You’ll rot in here. I’ll be at every parole hearing you’re granted. You don’t know anything about me.”
“You’re right. I don’t know who you are at all. Maybe someday I’ll find out.”
John pushed back from the table, collected his briefcase, and headed for the exit. “If you ever do, you’ll regret it.”
THREE
I make protesting noises when they strap me to a gurney on the way to the hospital. I don’t need a doctor. All I have is a sore spot on my head.
“It’s protocol,” she says. Protocol means little. I assume it has something to do with the army, Secret Service, chains of command, etiquette for royals. “We need to make sure you’re going to be okay.”
I don’t know how many ways I can rephrase I’m fine so I give up and fall back against the gurney. She looks down at me, lines of concern I don’t deserve rimming her eyes. The ceiling bulbs backlight her head, a blinding halo ringing gold hair. She shimmers around the edges. For a moment I think she’s an angel, but then I remember. I’m fine.
Her hair looks like Abby’s.
“How did he take you?”
I don’t answer.
“You got off work at nine that night.”
She knows my whole life story. I don’t even know her name.
“Jack said you never made it home. He’s been so worried, practically living at the police station. He’ll be relieved you’re okay.”
My eyes burn. It’s good to know he’s safe. I need a few days to beef up my composure before I can see him, though. I don’t want to be around anybody—I’m not even human anymore. “I think he…hit me from behind. I don’t remember much.”
“In the Norm’s parking lot?”
“The last thing I saw was my car. I had the keys in my hand. I was almost there.”
Static buzzes. It’s her walkie-talkie. She snaps it up and unleashes rapid-fire police gibberish mixed with a lot of filthy words I’ve never heard before. It ends with a sharp fuck me with a buzz saw, you can bitch as much as you want. Nobody’s doing anything till I’m finished.
She’s irritated when she shoves the walkie back into her belt loop and blows out a sigh. It’s been a long day for both of us, but it’s only three a.m.
“Where’s Abby?”
Sympathy wades through her eyes. It’s too much for my stomach to handle. I need to throw up.
“Abby’s going to the morgue.”
Everyone’s final destination. I knew the answer. I don’t know why I asked.
I sit up when acid invades my throat. There isn’t a bucket around.
She knows what’s happening. A trash can magically appears under my chin, and she holds my hair back. Salty mucus slides over my lips when it’s over. I don’t care, but she must. She mops it up.
“I don’t know your name,” I say while she pulls an elastic band from her wrist and plaits my hair into a messy braid.
She doesn’t throw around professional titles like officer or detective. “Lisette.”
I decide I like her.
FOUR
“It’s nice to see you,” Molly told John inside her sunny kitchen. “Phone calls just aren’t the same.”
“I needed to get away for a little while.” He took a sip of the black tea his mother had made him. “I haven’t been interested in work lately. Bank robberies are dull.”
“Your last case must have gotten under your skin.” She covered his hand with her own. “You shouldn’t get too invested in these things. I don’t like seeing you get sadder and sadder with each visit.”
“I’m not sad.” John twirled a sugar packet between his fingers. “Stoicism is something they hammer home in the Academy.”
She gave him a wry smile, the morning sun playing across her face as it rose behind the kitchen windows. “You’ve never been stoic. Even when you were a little boy. How many stray dogs did yo
u drag home? I swear we’d have lived in a zoo if I hadn’t put my foot down.”
“I don’t do that anymore. The only living thing I’ve got at home is a cactus.”
He looked up from the packet and locked eyes with her. He had always thought his mother was attractive in an ageless and frail Audrey Hepburn sort of way. Waif-thin, never a brown hair out of place, tailored dresses in colors that flattered her rose-tinted cream skin. It was true he’d inherited a good portion of his looks from his father, but the resemblance to Molly was undeniable. They had the same coloring, the same mouths that always curved on the cusp of a half-smile, and the same complexion that never seemed to wrinkle despite the years that passed.
A stab of self-loathing twisted his gut whenever she smiled at him so affectionately. How big was her heart, to love him when he was the product of the worst thing that happened to her?
“Seth Lowry’s got a parole hearing coming up.” John hated to mention the name, but aside from visiting Molly, Seth Lowry was the reason for his visit to Maine. “I’m probably going to make an appearance.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, just fingered the lace collar of her coral shirtdress. “I don’t think I need to tell you that doesn’t seem like a very good idea.”
“Do you think I want him paroled?”
“I think you hate him so much it’s unhealthy. I moved on a long time ago. The minute you were born I stopped hating him. The sadness left a few years later.”
John’s forehead puckered as he scowled. “Is it so awful to not want him out of jail? Would it be terrible to do what I can to keep him in prison? How can you fault me for that?” He neglected to tell her about his impromptu visit with Mr. Lowry just an hour and a half before, knowing it would only incite a frown, a mini lecture, and then an infuriatingly kind smile.
“If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have you. You’re the best thing that happened to me.”
John’s teeth clenched, but he didn’t look at his mother, just stared at the pale yellow curtains framing the windows by her glass patio doors. He’d never understand how she had the capacity to love him so much, and he’d had twenty-eight years to wonder—he’d found out about his mother’s rape when he was fourteen.
Snuff Page 1