Snuff

by Simonson, Melissa

  Jerry nodded mechanically. John had a feeling he’d squandered his tears in the weeks his wife had been missing. Now—when he really needed them—they wouldn’t come.

  “Do you have any idea who’s done this?” The black-haired man beside Jerry said, a touch of indignation creeping into his voice. “I mean, for God’s sake, this is the fourth time.”

  “It’s Jack, isn’t it?” John waited for a nod. “I realize this has happened before, but I haven’t been involved until about twelve hours ago. I flew in from DC and headed straight here.”

  Both men exchanged dark looks across from John on the scarred leather couch in the vacant hospital break room.

  John pulled an iPad out of his briefcase and opened a blank Word doc. “I need to get a few of the obvious questions out of the way. Abigail never mentioned being followed or complained of odd things like hang-up phone calls?”

  Jerry shook his head.

  “Brooke didn’t either, nothing like that,” Jack said, slapping his knee. “I’ve told Sergeant Jennings all this. I still haven’t gotten to see her.”

  John held his pale blue gaze for a moment and tapped in a few notes. “Abby had a regular routine, didn’t she?” When he received another nod, he turned to Jack. “And Brooke as well?”

  Jack tore both hands through his hair. “Brooke keeps odd hours. She waits tables, but she’s an actress. Filming for a new sitcom she’s been cast in starts in a few months, so until then she’s picking up as many extra shifts as she can. We’ve both been so busy. The only days I get to spend with her are Sundays.”

  “Do you think someone was watching my wife?” Jerry stared vacantly through dry, subdued eyes. “I can’t imagine why they’d want to do that to her. She never hurt anyone in her life. She was a Sunday school teacher. The nicest woman I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m sure she was,” John said. Abigail may have been a sweetheart, but in his experiences being a good person didn’t keep bad things at bay. “I can’t say if someone had been watching her. The way Abigail and Brooke were abducted appears random, not targeted. Parking lot snatch and grabs are usually spur-of-the-moment affairs.”

  Jack heaved himself back into the couch cushions, one anxious knee bouncing. “If it’s so random, and he hasn’t been found yet, I doubt it’ll ever happen. I want to see my girlfriend.”

  “You can. Soon.” John flipped through a packet the Foster had given him. A feminine hand had scrawled a plethora of notes into the margins of the case reports. “Have either of you felt like you were being watched?” The notes told him wallets as well as forms of identification had been swiped from each girl’s purse, though the bags had been left on-scene.

  “Yeah,” Jack snapped. “I’ve been watched. Because I’ve been in the police station every goddamned day asking about Brooke. I’ve practically lived there. I’ve been watched by patrol officers, homicide detectives, and the fucking LAPD receptionist.”

  “All right.” He looked at Jerry. “What about you?”

  “No. I’ve been home waiting by the phone. In case Abby called. But she never did.”

  If he’d been sequestered inside a stuffy house waiting for a call that would never happen, he probably hadn’t noticed if anyone was lurking around. John annotated that into the Word doc.

  “Abigail and Brooke seem to have led low-risk lifestyles, which makes them difficult prey. Is there anything else I should know? Any skeletons that might have made them vulnerable?”

  “Brooke is the epitome of the girl next door,” Jack said with a sigh that made his shoulders sag. “She moved from Michigan when she was eighteen, but she’s not stupid or naïve. She knew how to keep herself safe, and she doesn’t have any deep, dark secrets that would explain what happened to her.”

  John’s gaze shifted to Jerry. “And Abigail?”

  Jerry pressed his lips together for a moment and shook his head.

  Well, he’s holding out.

  Though John wasn’t inclined to force an answer when he could find out on his own. “Thank you. I’ll try to have some answers as soon as possible.”

  It starts with blood.

  Just a stream. Nothing more than that, trickling down the back of my neck, and it's easy to deal with. Manageable. Almost comforting. It’s familiar, and it’s always been there, like an invisible extra limb. I’d just never realized it existed until They brought it to life.

  When the dam behind that stream bursts, the avalanche drowns Me, or any Me that’s real—though I’m not convinced I ever was. I’m not real until the flood fills my hollow spaces, rattling bones, dripping on my tongue, running its cold, hard fingers of Now down my spine.

  I’m a parishioner, sweating in a pew, hanging onto the salvation it promises.

  It's a salesman, pitching plots and schemes. It's convincing, because it knows everything about me. Which buttons to push, what pictures to show. How to get the blood boiling.

  There are many ways to break someone down. It knows all of mine.

  But I’ve begun to realize I’m not as alone as I’ve always believed. Now I have you.

  Friday at 5:02 p.m.

  IP Address: 75.84.67.69

  Sent via contact form by an anonymous viewer on your website

  ELEVEN

  “Six have been buried,” the coroner told John when he’d made it to the morgue. “You can listen to my autopsy tapes, and we have pictures. Best we can do.” She pulled a thick file from her desk drawer and slid it across the table.

  John caught it with his fingertips and flipped it open. “He doesn’t seem to have a type.”

  The coroner put on a pair of spectacles and leaned over the table. She pointed at a photograph. “This one’s hair was dyed. Beth Grant’s family says her hair was naturally light brown, but it was black when I got her on my table. Vienna Pierce was a brunette, but when her body got here, she was a redhead.”

  He scanned the images. “No preferred body structure. He crosses racial boundaries, too.” Four Caucasian girls, one Japanese, and one African-American. “He’s most likely white. Most killers stick within their race, the same way most kill the sex they’re attracted to.” He spared her a glance over the manila edge of the folder. “Have you started the autopsy?”

  “I thought I’d wait for you.”

  He snapped the files shut when he’d seen enough. “There’s no doubt the survivors killed themselves?”

  She shook her head. “None. They were clear suicides. Two happened in this hospital. Makes me wonder what really went on. If it’s anything like what I’ve seen on the other sets of girls it’s probably a blessing they’re dead.”

  TWELVE

  “You’re doing great, Brooke.” Lisette squeezes my hand. I try to squeeze hers back, but the restraints don’t allow wiggle room. “Does he say anything else?”

  I shake my head. “His voice seemed familiar. I tried figuring out where I’d heard it, but never came up with an answer. Maybe I just imagined hearing it before.”

  “Do you think he was a customer you served?”

  “If it was one of the regulars, I’d know right away.”

  “Does Abby recognize his voice?”

  “No.” In Abby’s mind, it’s the voice of a reckoner, a fallen archangel, someone who Knows What She’s Done and wants to feast on her blood.

  “So this cocksucker gives you his fucked-up rules. What happens before he speaks again?”

  ***

  Abby and I talk a lot. We have nothing else to do. Every once in a while she shifts and her kneecap brushes mine. I keep thinking how odd it is we’re talking all this time, yet I’ve never seen her.

  I paint her hair blonde in my mind and add a splash of blue for eyes. This is California; she’s probably tan. She must be my height—5’5—our legs seem the same length. The image I construct matches her voice. Darkly feminine. I hear a century of melancholy in it, but something tells me it isn’t strictly due to present circumstances.

  I feel her shake her head. “I’ve
been sitting here wondering what I could’ve done to deserve this. I think I’ve figured it out.”

  That she entertains for one second this is her fault infuriates me, but it might be because I’m doing the exact same thing. “You didn’t deserve this. This guy’s a freak who missed a few hugs from his mother. He deserves this, not you.”

  “I used to do heroin.” The way she says it makes it seem like she’s never told anyone. Nobody but me.

  “Everyone’s done drugs before. It’s not a cardinal sin.” I’ve never met someone who hasn’t smoked a joint once or twice.

  “When I was sixteen my boyfriend overdosed. He died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. I gave him that needle. He died because of me. I always knew it would catch up.”

  I consider that and catalog my many, varied sins. When I was a kid I’d steal Starbursts from the liquor store. I’d have never made it out of highschool if I didn’t cheat on all those geometry tests. I hit a car and didn’t leave a note. I slept with the director of a play for the lead when I was nineteen, a fresh transplant from Michigan. Seven scalding showers didn’t wash him off my skin, and the memory still disgusts me. He paid out with that role, I paid in naivety—there weren’t any powerful talent agents or producers in the audience the entire month the play ran.

  I decide Abby’s large sin doesn’t equal my menagerie of small ones. “That wasn’t your fault. Everyone makes mistakes. You didn’t force the drugs into his arms.”

  Her shoulders lift, jostling mine as she lets out a heavy sigh. “I never did smack again after he died. I promised God I’d be a better person. I guess I didn’t do so well.”

  “Abby.” I grope for her hand. I find her knee instead, but I squeeze it anyway. “Stop. God’s not sitting on a cloud up there, holding your IOU. This isn’t your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault except the whack job who kidnapped us.”

  She laughs, but it’s the furthest thing from happy I’ve ever heard. “I don’t think he’s holding my IOU. I think he’s collecting.”

  THIRTEEN

  Cool morgue air and the stench of antiseptics invaded John’s nostrils. The silver compartmented walls made it seem colder. Or maybe it was the fact that corpses filled each compartment. The dead pressed in all around them.

  The coroner pulled back the sheet, and John thought the same thing he always did when staring down at a nude corpse: there was no dignity in death, regardless of the cause. If it wasn’t a coroner, it was a mortician, poking and prodding every orifice and then stuffing them into formal attire, painting them with makeup to give an artificial glow and the illusion of life. Every blemish and imperfection one tried to hide while living, out there for a parade of people to see. The only consolation was they were dead and unaware of it.

  “I need to clean her up for her husband,” the coroner said as she folded the sheet. “He shouldn’t see her like this.”

  John snapped on a pair of latex gloves. No, he shouldn’t see her this way. Skeletal and bloodied with her head half-caved. Her body was consumed by large patches of blackened, crusted burns from the throttled throat, down. “I need to examine her before you start.”

  “You have a medical degree?”

  “No. I need to profile her body. People lie, but bodies don’t. She can tell us a lot about herself, even in this state. Speaking to her husband didn’t give me any real answers.”

  Especially because Jerry Black had lied by omission—he knew something about Abby. Whether what he knew could be of any help, John couldn’t say, but it had piqued his interest. Perhaps Abigail wasn’t as sweet and wholesome as she looked. Or maybe the petite and blonde Sunday school teacher had been making up for past wrongs—he couldn’t help feeling suspicious of someone who gave up her free time tutoring special-needs children, and half her paychecks to the church and its various charity affiliations.

  John brushed lank dark gold hair from her forehead. “Her hair wasn’t dyed. She must have fit his needs as-is.” He lifted one pale lavender eyelid. Hazel eyes. He had no doubt they were pretty in life, but those empty pupils eradicated any leftover sparkle.

  Little button nose, the kind overindulged teenaged girls asked for at Christmas. He rolled her top lip back. “Her teeth are capped. She’s only twenty-six, right?” Maybe Abigail had them capped for aesthetic reasons, but John suspected she’d done it to cover extensive damage. Drug use, perhaps.

  “Born April 4th, 1986.”

  He ran his fingertip along the length of Abigail’s inner arm. “Wasted muscle tissue. She wasn’t held captive long enough for her body to degrade this much. She probably had an eating disorder. You see the scars on her knuckles? She could have been bulimic. Capping her teeth to cover acid erosion makes sense.”

  Preserving skeletons like an old drug habit and an eating disorder was something John could understand, since he had more than his share of secrets which made those look tame.

  The coroner adjusted the collar of her lab coat as she leaned in for a better look. “Those are at least ten years old. I’ll check her throat for acid wearing. Generally bulimics have normal to slightly heavier weights. She probably suffered a combination of bulimia and anorexia nervosa since her BMI is well under seventeen. Or maybe she started out bulimic, evolved to anorexia or other types of restrictive behavior when she got older.”

  “No bruises or contusions from restraints. None I can see under the burns, anyway. I’m guessing her tox screen will come up negative. If he drugged her during the abduction it would have dissipated in her system a while ago. She’s been missing three weeks.”

  “The other girl’s tox screens came up with nothing. I’m sure hers will be the same. Bump on the back of her head makes me think he blitzed her, like the others. The only trace DNA we found on the dead girls on-scene belonged to the survivors, and vice versa.”

  “She was killed with a hammer, looks like.” Large, circular violet impressions ringed with black stretched across her forehead, and matted blood caked along her hairline.

  “That was my thought, too. She would have died of shock from the burns. The hammer just sped the process.”

  The scent of Abigail’s singed flesh filled his nostrils as he bent closer. “Three blows. Two on the forehead, one just above the hairline. Terrible aim. Odd how each was killed differently.”

  “Any theories on why that is?”

  Yes, several. He straightened up. “One smothered, one shot, one strangled, and now here’s Abigail, who sustained blunt force and fourth degree burns. Either the perpetrator is just starting, finding what suits him, or we’re dealing with multiple killers. I’m not inclined to believe he’s a beginner, since everything about their abductions and disposal is organized. If he’s not an amateur in regards to kidnap, I don’t believe he’d be an amateur when it comes to murder. He’s done this before. Probably not in the same manner, but he’s got victims we don’t know about.”

  The coroner assembled a pile of surgical tools, each falling into a metal dish with a clang.

  “Any signs of sexual assault? I doubt we can tell with Abigail, unless the burns to the genitals were a forensic countermeasure.”

  “That’s what’s weird.” She snapped on a surgical mask. “I found signs of forcible penetration on two of the girls, and one was a bloody mess. Post-mortem, thank God for them. Spermicide inside both. The others weren’t sexually violated. At least not that I can definitively prove.”

  John watched the scalpel slide over Abigail Black’s chest plate with practiced precision. “Either this is the criminal profile of fractured schizophrenic, or there are multiple offenders. A ring of men with varying perversions. A necrophile has no use for a living body. He wouldn’t keep them alive for three weeks if he were only interested in sexually assaulting corpses.” Each new bit of information that turned up was more troublesome than the last.

  The coroner dropped the bloody scalpel in a metal bin and buried her hands in Abigail’s gaping chest. “You mean something lik
e human trafficking? Multiple men involved in their torture, each with their own methods?”

  “I can’t say with any real certainty until I speak with the woman in charge.”

  The coroner pulled her hands from inside the bloody canyon with the sound of a plunger. John felt his eye twitch.

  “My assistant will give you my findings. I’ll let you know when I’m finished, unless you want to stick around?”

  The pale, flabby lump that was Abigail Black’s heart plopped into a metal basin. No, he’d rather not stick around to view the dissection of a twenty-six year-old woman.

  You’re getting less fun with each passing year, the voice in his head grumped.

  FOURTEEN

  A knock tears me from my recollections. Lisette isn’t happy. She flings the door open like it’s personally pissed her off and shouts at the visitor. “We’re fucking busy, goddamnit. How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Her boyfriend wants to see her.”

  She throws me an over-the-shoulder glance. My eyes stretch to globes and I mouth Oh, please, God no. Jack knows when something’s wrong. Of course everything is wrong now, but he’d make me tell.

  And telling Sergeant Lisette is hard enough.

  “Now’s not the time. I’ll let you know when it’ll be okay.” She lets the door slam in the intruder’s face and makes her way back to the chair. “Did Abby tell you where she’d been abducted?”

  “She tutored kids Wednesday nights. She didn’t charge their parents. Her sessions were in an open room at her church. Said he took her from the parking lot.”

  Lisette nods and reaches up to tie her Abby Gold hair into a ponytail. “Her husband said she liked to do that. She helped a few special-needs kids and their parents, too. He told me she loved children. It sounds like she was a really nice person.”

  Being a nice person didn’t assuage the guilt she felt so acutely. She told me before she died it was just part of being Catholic and mustered a half-laugh, but nothing was funny.