“Let’s pick up where we left off.”
***
“Shhh,” I tell Abby. She falls silent.
There it is again. That noise. A little mechanical whir. I’ve heard something like that before. It’s a motion-activated camera.
Miking the room isn’t bad enough. He’s spying on us too.
“Fuck me, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this dickhead has cameras?”
That sounds like an interesting gangbang, but I don’t comment. “I didn’t know for sure until later. I saw them in the corner of the ceiling.”
She rubs the dusk-purple shadows kissing the skin beneath her eyes. “Sorry. Keep going.”
I whisper so softly I wonder if Abby can hear. “He’s got cameras. They must have night-vision.”
Her hair whips my cheeks as she cranes her neck in a futile search for the lens. “What are we supposed to be? Lab rats?”
Hell if I know. It feels like rape sans penetration. Is he some kind of voyeur? Abby and I aren’t doing anything worth watching; how can we? We’re stuck here with nothing but each other, not even a bedpan.
“What do you think he’s doing up there?”
I have a few ideas. None are pretty. Masturbating with a belt around his throat? Eating a sandwich, planning his next double-kidnapping? Grouping around the feeds with his buddies? Jack once explained to me what circle-jerking is. He laughed when my lip curled back in disgust. I hope that’s not what’s going on.
I realize this will be my biggest gig yet. A few weeks ago I thought it would be the role I landed on a new sitcom shooting in the summer. Not the lead, just the slutty best friend. I’ve got one of the leads in this, though. A guest slot on Psych Torture Porn: Kidnapped Girls in Basement edition. My biggest and final performance, since I’ve only got a fifty percent chance of living.
I’ll be known for more than just that Tide commercial now.
Abby’s having a silent meltdown. Her face must be in her hands; her tears are muffled. I can’t let her get hysterical because it’ll make me lose my shit, too.
“Hey.” I perform a blind search for her hair and stroke it the way Jack does when we have our Sunday couch potato days in front of our television. “We need to be strong. If we sit here crying we’ll only be giving him what he wants, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. We have a chance. I’m sure we’ve been reported missing by now.”
She bobs her head on my shoulder and her tears slide over my skin. “You’re right.”
I need to get her mind off this, even though it’s a stupid idea. It’s hard to forget you’re locked in a black room. “You’re wearing a wedding band, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your husband’s name?”
“Jerry.” She sucks in a long, rattling breath. “Our anniversary’s next month. Five years. Feels like we’ve been together forever.”
“What are you planning on getting him for a present?”
I hear a shaky smile in her voice. “He’s a hard man to buy for.”
Understandable. Men in general are hard to buy for. “I have the same problem with my boyfriend. Jack. He collects old bills. Money, you know? I spent a hundred bucks to get him a twenty dollar bill from 1921 for Christmas. Stupid, huh?”
She gives a thick laugh. “No. I think it’s sweet.”
“And I think it’s sweet as well,” the voice calls down. “But if you don’t mind, I need to interrupt this touching moment to consult with my sponsor.”
FIFTEEN
The hallway leading to Brooke Dutton’s hospital room teemed with hospital staff and uniformed officers when John burst through the double doors with Chief Foster in tow.
“Where’s Sergeant Jennings?” John led a winding path through the throng. “I’d like her to brief me.”
“She’s with Brooke. I have a feeling getting her to leave the room is going to be like taking a squeaky toy from a Rottweiler. Lisette doesn’t look scary, but wait until she opens her mouth.”
“I understand she wants to shield Brooke, but I can’t do my job without hearing every scrap of information. Which room number?”
Foster nodded at a door on the right.
John rapped on it, pressing his one hundred and eighty-five pounds into his hand as he leaned against the doorjamb.
A frustrated grunt erupted behind the door before it swung open. “Who the hell are you?” A woman with both blonde eyes and hair barked, scanning him from his feet to the tie at his throat. “You look like a Fed.” She spat the last word like it was a nasty, flesh-eating virus.
“That’s because I am.” He offered his hand, which she ignored. “It’s imperative I speak with you.”
“I’m not finished. You’re going to have to take a fucking number like the other douche canoes.” She jammed her thumb toward the hallway.
Taking a fucking number wasn’t a viable option. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s urgent, and not a request.”
Their eyes snapped together. Anger made hers swirl like they were comprised of molten gold. “I can’t leave Brooke.” Her voice dropped to a hair above a whisper. “You know what the other girls did. I won’t risk leaving her on her own, even for a minute. I don’t trust anyone else to watch her.”
“I’ve heard her boyfriend wants to see her. That’s the best I can offer. It won’t take long.”
She crossed her arms over the LAPD logo on her hooded navy sweatshirt, lips mashed together, a muscle working in her slender jaw. The curve of her face was surprisingly feminine, more so when it belonged to a woman who had the foulest mouth he’d heard on anyone outside the armed forces.
“She says she doesn’t want to see him. You know how fragile her psyche is because of this fuckface. I don’t want her breaking down when I’ve just started making progress.”
“Look.” John pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wish I didn’t have to do this. But you know—and probably better than me—what’s going to happen in three days. Two more are going to disappear, and in three weeks we’ll have another Brooke.” He glanced beyond Sergeant Jennings to the nervous-eyed brunette strapped to the hospital bed, her pale, skinny wrists twisting in restraints.
She sighed and turned to Brooke. “I have to update Mr. Federal Agent, but I’ll be back. Maybe while I’m gone you can see Jack.”
“I can’t. I can’t see him like this.”
“Yes, you can.” Sergeant Jennings walked over and clasped her hand around Brooke’s belted one. “You’re strong, and you can do it. He’s your boyfriend, not an alien. I’ll be back soon. Right?” She turned a challenging gaze on John.
“Right.”
She stomped past him and yelled through the open door. “Someone get Jack Callahan from the lobby.”
A uniform scuttled off, and she turned to John. “If that girl freaks the fuck out and goes batshit when I’m gone, I’m blaming you.” She pushed past him and stalked down the hallway, long blonde ponytail swaying as she shoved through her fellow brothers in blue.
John let the door shut behind him. “Noted.”
SIXTEEN
The door flings open, and Jack fills the threshold. It’s good to know I was right in thinking the threats the man made against Jack were empty.
He stands there staring like his eyes are deceiving him. I wonder why until I remember my hair’s not strawberry blonde anymore, the only shade he’s seen it. “Oh, God, Brooke.”
I struggle to sit up, but he’s already in Lisette’s chair, wrapping his arms around me. My face crumbles—I can’t help it. It’s hard staying strong when he’s around.
He kisses my forehead, stroking my hair. I did the same for Abby before she died, and my stomach revolts at the recollection.
“You just rest now,” I croon foolishly, brushing my lips across her hairline. They’re wet when I pull away. I don’t even want to know what from. Blood, sweat, pus? A cocktail of all three?
“I thought I’d never see you again. I didn’t know what I’d do without you.�
� His hands cup my face when he presses his lips against my chapped ones. I peek into his light blue eyes for a second, but I have to look away. It’s like staring into the sun. “How are you feeling?” He prods the restraints. “Why’ve they tied you down?”
I want to lie, but he’d see through it. He usually can. “They think I’m going to kill myself.” I catch sight of his horrified expression. “I’m not going to.” Abby martyred herself for a good reason. I can’t up and kill myself because then all this would be for nothing.
“I know you won’t.”
It’s funny. As I stare at his hand clenching mine, I realize I can tell when he’s lying, too. I must know him as well as he knows me.
He says I’m like Red Bull with a splash of crack cocaine, a rush of blood that makes his head swirl. In contrast to my supposed eccentricities, he’s predictable and safe, like a quilt my now-dead grandmother made. He keeps me warm and doesn’t ask where I’ve been, who I’ve been doing it with, or why I’m even awake at such a late hour.
Though I don’t feel like Red Bull at present. More like liquid Valium—slow and stupid.
“What happened, baby? You weren’t—?”
“No.” I wish all that happened was rape.
“Thank God.”
Is that who I should thank?
Jack sees all kinds of living, breathing horror stories of rape during his intern rotations in the hospital. Girls with necklaces of bruises are in and out of the ER day and night. They leave with wet eyes and white paper bags full of preventative STD meds and Plan B.
He runs a hand through his black hair. It’s grown out in the weeks I haven’t seen him. “I love you so much. God. I always knew I loved you, but it never hit as hard as it did when you were gone.”
My heart twists like the spines of his old med school books. I try to tell him I love him too, but the words strangle on my tongue. I’m not worthy of his affection. I haven’t seen myself in weeks but I’m betting my outer layers match my hideous insides.
“I was pissed when you didn’t come home. I thought you’d decided to work a double and didn’t tell me.” His eyes snap shut, and his forehead seals against mine. “I was going to propose when you got home. I had that rosé you like. My grandma gave me her engagement ring.”
Abby’s wedding ring needles my knuckle. I can feel it riding loose on her skinny finger when I clamp my hand around hers.
“Five years is a long time,” I say, for lack of anything better. My longest relationship before Jack was zero days. “I’ve never had a boyfriend that long. People get tattoos, and I think that’s too big of a commitment.”
A laugh that she can’t fully execute gurgles in her throat. “Getting married was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Vomit rushes my throat.
SEVENTEEN
“Let’s get this over with.” Sergeant Jennings slammed herself into a swivel chair in a conference room the hospital set up.
John slid into the seat beside her. “Go through everything in chronological order.”
“No shit, Boss.”
“It’s John.”
Her scowl slipped a little before she slapped it back into place. “Lisette,” she grudgingly offered, and turned to tap at the keyboard of a laptop. Four side-by-side photographs popped up.
“This is Beth Grant and Rebecca Adams. They were reported missing two days apart, a little over three months ago. Their phones and purses were found at the abduction sites, but we think he took their wallets; we couldn’t find them anywhere. No signs of a large struggle. We found Rebecca on the side of the road in Boyle Heights. She was holding Beth’s body and a cell phone. It wasn’t hers—it was a burner he bought for her to use. Came up with jack shit tracing where he bought it, so it had to be cash. Rebecca was catatonic and didn’t use the phone. Taxi passing by called it in a little after three a.m. She never spoke, and a few hours later she hung herself in the hospital bathroom. Beth’s official COD was strangulation, but she had multiple stab wounds. A lot of them were too shallow to kill, but the deeper ones centered around the genitals. Beth’s parents say they can’t find a necklace she always wore, so he might have taken it as a trophy.”
Rebecca must have fit his needs—her appearance hadn’t been altered. Deep brown complexion, almond-shaped eyes, tall, lanky body type. She squinted into the sun in the photograph, wearing track shorts and a tank top. In the image beside it she had a collar of violet bruising from where she’d hung herself.
Beth had thick limbs and sandy brown hair. She wore dark clothes and a sullen expression in the first photo. In the second her hair was pitch black, a stark contrast to her pale, mottled skin, with near-identical bruising from strangulation.
“This is Vienna Lockhart and Brianna Weaver. Same shit. Kidnapped in parking lots, cell phones and purses left at the scene, but no wallets. Three weeks later Vienna turns up at three a.m. on the side of the road with Brianna’s body. Brianna was killed with a nine millimeter. Killer had terrible aim, took three tries to get a kill shot. Vienna dialed 9-1-1 and the recording gave me the motherfucking creeps. She sounded like a robot. Same kind of burner cell. When we got there she was already bleeding out. Picked up a rock and dug into her wrists and arms, across the river and over the bridge. In the morgue we realized he’d dyed her hair from brown to red. Someone had, and I’m quoting ME Ward, ‘vigorous sex’ with Brianna after she was dead. Brianna’s promise ring was missing, her mother said.”
The images of Vienna dead bore no resemblance to the photos taken in life. She had a face full of makeup, a Birkin bag, and a fuzzy dog on the lap of her miniskirt. At autopsy she wore filthy boxers and the red of her hair matched the bloody moats caked with dirt tunneled into her forearms.
Brianna’s photos made John grimace. She was only a child, barely fifteen, leaning on a spiral staircase in a blue formal dress. She had one shot to the upper abdominal cavity in crime scene photos, a dying grimace distorting her features, and eyeballs torn from the sockets. A slow death, he knew. She could have survived hours with a belly wound.
Lisette made to tab to another set of pictures, but he put his palm on her wrist to stop her. “She was the only one with eyes missing?”
“Yeah. ME said it happened post mortem. Since her body was in the worst shape, I figured she might have reminded him of somebody, or been a surrogate.”
“Or maybe something traumatic happened to him at Brianna’s age.”
She brought up another set of pictures. “Next were Reiko Takahashi and Paula Bennet. Paula was kidnapped in the lot she parked in to pick up her son from karate. Reiko—her American name was Emily—was taken after work at one a.m. Her mother and father own a sushi restaurant, and she was closing up. Same dump job, three a.m., random road, burner cell, dead girl. There was extensive sexual assault on Emily, and he’d dressed her up like a geisha. Electrocution burns on her clitoris. If I ever find this jizzbucket I’m going to hack his schlong off and feed it to him. Ward says Emily was smothered, petechiae in her eyes. Cotton fibers in her nose, so she thinks it was a pillow. Paula kept saying the same thing over and over; oh God, but what about my son? Didn’t get another word out of her, and she hung herself in the bathroom while a uniform left to get her husband from the waiting room.”
Degradation of Asian women in the media was something John had been long disgusted by. In films they were mainly depicted as sexually subservient playthings or concubines. The sexual acts, the geisha costume, and violation of Emily’s corpse proved the jizzbucket, as Lisette so eloquently stated, bought into that portrayal.
His fear was they were dealing with multiple jizzbuckets.
“Abby Black and Brooke Dutton, abducted in parking lots. Brooke right after work at Norm’s; she’d gotten off the dinner shift, and Abby the day before from a church parking lot. Brooke wouldn’t let go of Abby. She’s still asking to see her. We’ve been lucky. Cognitive interviews are going well. I don’t care if I have to crack myself out on espresso and work around t
he clock, I’m not letting Brooke lose her mind. We’ve had literally nothing to go on for months except untraceable burner cells and a bunch of dead girls. She’ll be able to confirm…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Confirm what I’ve been thinking.”
John hadn’t seen a cop look so angry in quite some time. The last time had been eighteen years ago when clutching the sides of a sink, looking in the mirror of the Sex Crimes Unit’s bathroom after a technicality had set a rapist free. She cared—possibly a little too much. Her fingers wouldn’t have bitten so hard into the insides of her elbows if she didn’t, but he had a feeling she’d never admit it. She seemed the type to be embarrassed she had emotions in the first place.
“Well I’m sure you don’t need me to point out that he doesn’t have a type.”
“Great observation, Nancy Drew.”
John wondered if the Nancy Drew barb insulted him. Ultimately he decided it didn’t. After all, Nancy Drew solved every case. “The range in age and appearance is telling. Normally it would mean he’s an opportunistic offender, not preferential, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Seems he’s a mixture of both.”
“He’s dyed the hair of three girls, including Brooke. So those kidnappings seem opportunistic.”
“That he’s gone so far as to dye hair and dress some in costume tells me he’s looking to fit a scenario, which makes him preferential. But it’s hard to find women who perfectly match fantasies. If he’s doing snatch and grabs it says he hasn’t put time into stalking, though he may have staked out parking lots that don’t have security cameras as a countermeasure.”
“What are you getting at? You’re contradicting yourself.”
“I’m not buying that this is the work of an individual.” He took control of the laptop and flipped through the photographs of each dead woman. “We’ve got an African-American track star, a slightly heavy quasi-Goth, a trophy wife, an adolescent girl, an Asian-American woman, a soccer mom, and two girls next door. No one man has this wide a variety of types. I mean, I suppose it’s possible, but it’s very unlikely.”
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