Snuff

by Simonson, Melissa

  “I need a little longer to find similar cases. For the internet thing, I have a few leads, but I’ll need at least another day to get anything solid. Illegal websites have all sorts of protection and layers of encryption in place. I shut down a rape site that pissed me off, but before you ask, no, none of your dead girls cropped up in the videos from, and I’m serious—fightmebitch.com. I can cut time and give some of the work to another analyst—”

  “Don’t do that.” Another analyst was code for Alana.

  “—but I figure you’d say no. Sometimes I’m not sure whether I’m happy about being your favorite. Sending you the information now, and expect an update call in a few hours.”

  He disconnected and stopped to lean against the hallway wall and accessed his Bureau email. Stacy’s latest messages and a few nasty notes from Bob sat in his inbox.

  The panel van had been driven by a man name Stanley Heckles, and his face was as unattractive as his name. Sparse brown hair styled into a comb-over. Piggy, deep-set eyes beneath a unibrow. No neck, as if his head sat solely upon his torso.

  Wouldn’t it be very convenient if we find overwhelming evidence pointing to Mr. Heckles’ guilt? the voice inquired. Though he does look the part, eh?

  It had been in John’s experience that looking the part was a notion that didn’t exist. More often, the nastiest monsters looked excessively, aggressively normal. The best ones molded their appearances into polar opposites of their innards.

  He chewed his bottom lip. Those eyes looked shifty, nervous. And it was an image captured at the DMV. What would make a person nervous in there? If anything, it made John homicidal. Heckles’s were lips pressed together, the unibrow forced up in the center—surprise? Fear? Either way it was odd.

  Odd unless a woman took the picture.

  Brianna and Emily were the only girls proven to be sexually assaulted after death; the second and third dead girls at the dump sites. How far a stretch would it be to assume Heckles had a minor necrophilia problem? Necrophiles could scarcely look a woman in the eye—would he drive around town with a living girl in the back of his van if he was?

  Probably not, but perhaps it’s time to find out, he thought, turning on his heel and dialing Sergeant Jennings’s cell.

  THIRTY

  He taps at his keyboard across the room from where Abby and I huddle. I can’t touch her without inciting a painful gasp, but I know she’d rather have my hands on her than his.

  I don’t think she’s bothered by her nakedness anymore. I know I’m not. We’re far beyond minor discomforts.

  As the screen reflects against his face, I see his eyes clearly for the very first time behind a pair of goggles, though it only lasts a fraction of a second.

  They’re the same eyes I’ve seen on patients in a mental institution my favorite cousin has been locked up in since his schizophrenia got the best of him. An aid in that facility told me one of those patients killed his mother with a pair of garden clippers, and even if I hadn’t known, his eyes would have scared the bejesus out of me. Empty. No mercy, no life, no nothing. They were savage. Feral, almost.

  I’ve seen those eyes on dogs in shelters. I feel bad for them—it’s not their fault. They’re like that for a reason. They’re collections of learned responses; conditioned to be vicious because all they’ve ever known is cruelty. And by the time someone comes along to be nice, it’s too late.

  The only person I’ve ever hit with real passion is Jack, when he won’t stop tickling me. I used to think it was torture. I was stupid and naïve.

  I don’t want to hit this man right now. Right now, I want to use that knife he keeps in his back pocket and rip through him groin to sternum and laugh while he bleeds out, taking care to catch it all on tape to blast over the internet so this friend can watch and whack off to his death instead of Abby’s.

  My arms grow tenser and tighter around her with each passing second, long after the man stretches and heads up the stairs, slamming the door behind him.

  Her skinny fingers snarl around my elbow. “You don’t have to protect me.”

  I shush her. What she’s suggesting is ridiculous, she knows it as well as I do.

  “It’s okay. I’m ready.”

  I’m not. So I shush her again.

  “It’s my time.”

  Like hell it is. It’s not her time until she’s old and gray, sitting on a rocking chair next to Jerry. It’s not her time because I’m not willing to let her go. Vaguely I realize this is selfish, but it’s not easy for me either, sitting here listening, holding her and cringing when her skin splits and oozes pus under my fingertips.

  “No it’s not. You’re still here. Right here with me. It’s not your time yet.”

  We sigh at the same time—hers one of resignation, mine colored with every indescribable emotion pulsing through me: anger, fear, helplessness, love. I haven’t known her more than two weeks, but I love her. I know it as sure as anything.

  Something passes between us then, something paradoxically calm and electric. It makes me wonder for a moment if she’s tougher than me and the man who kidnapped us, just for living so long through this unending hell.

  “I love you, Abby.” It comes out louder than I intend, but I want—need—her to know. “I think you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.”

  I feel her smile, and though I’ve never seen it, I know it’s got to be the most beautiful thing in the world. “I think the same about you.”

  I can’t see how she draws that conclusion. My only achievement is that I’m not dead yet.

  ***

  I stare into the ceiling light until my eyes burn, but still can’t place where I’ve heard the man’s voice. It rings a small bell of recognition, but tracing back then whens and wheres is useless. He could be anything, anyone. A voice-over on an infomercial, an MTV VJ. A talk-show host, or a figment of my imagination.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Lisette terrified Stanley Heckles. John could sympathize to some extent, but he was beginning to find that her bark was far worse than her bite.

  But then John wasn’t a pudgy necrophile who’d had an overzealous, God-fearing mother.

  She slammed her fist on the table in the interrogation room, and Heckles jerked back as if she were a Rottweiler foaming at the mouth.

  “Tell me why a traffic signal camera caught your nasty ass blowing through a red light on November ninth, half a mile away from a crime scene, and weaving in and out of freeway lanes on the thirtieth, two miles away from another crime scene.”

  He stared at his fists, a vein throbbing in his temple. “I guess I was in a hurry to get home. I do the grocery shopping late at night, when stores are less busy.”

  “You were in a fucking hurry dumping bodies.” Lisette slid back into the seat beside John’s, crossing one long leg over the other. “So which did you like best? I’m putting money on the teenage girl. Little girls aren’t as scary as a fully-grown woman.”

  “I didn’t do that,” he said, stuttering over each word. “I could never.”

  She threw up her hands. “So this is all some giant motherfucker of a coincidence? You’re half a mile away from a pair of bodies the night they’re dumped, and two miles away from a second pair three weeks later? What the fuck would you call that?” She turned to John. “Ironic?”

  John shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s unfortunate and suspicious, but not ironic.”

  Lisette glanced back at Heckles, who resolutely refused to look her in the face. “Unfortunate and suspicious, then. Why do you a drive a panel van, Stan? You don’t have a load of kids to shuttle around. You don’t deliver furniture or pizzas or floral arrangements. Your records say you’re unemployed. What do you need a big-ass van for?”

  Heckles spoke to his twitchy hands. “It was my mother’s. I’ve driven it for years.”

  Lisette threw a golden curtain over her shoulder, and John caught a whiff of blended vanilla and cigarette smoke lingering in her hair. “Do you
like to fuck dead girls, Stanley?”

  “What?” He squeaked. “No!”

  She tapped an oval, unpolished finger on the file in front of John. “That’s not what the funeral home you used to work for said. Caught you on top of a dead Mrs. Roberts when you were supposed to be plunging toilets. He didn’t report you because he didn’t want to embarrass his own company, but he told me what happened.” She looked sideways at John. “Would you enjoy fucking a dead old woman?”

  He flicked his ring finger against his thumb, gazing at Heckles. If it were different circumstances, John might have felt sorry for him, and while he didn’t necessarily believe Heckles had been involved in torturing any of the girls, he knew he was involved somehow.

  Designated dump driver, perhaps. And it was awfully convenient a man with a history of assaulting corpses would be out and about at three in the morning on the same days the molested corpses were dumped. Doubly convenient considering the concerned citizen call mentioning the plates of his van.

  John wasn’t looking at the mastermind; he was looking at the fall guy.

  “No. I appreciate responses. Dead women can’t do that.” John flipped through the thick file in front of him. “Your mother was a domineering woman, wasn’t she? Yelled at you often, said you were useless; could never do anything right. I suppose if my mother was as overbearing and frightening as yours I might like a woman who can’t speak or insult me or shout instructions when I’m on top of her.”

  Lisette leaned over the table, ducking her head to meet Heckles’s eyes. “Do I make you nervous? You flinch every time I say a word. Would you like me better if I was cold and embalmed and in a fucking coffin?”

  Heckles gave him an anxious save me expression.

  It wasn’t often John took up the role of Good Cop. He cleared his throat and propped his elbow on the table, cupping his chin in his palm. “Mr. Heckles, we’ve seized your van. CSU’s going through it as we speak. Will they find any hairs or DNA from the four girls?”

  “I—I think I’d like a lawyer now.”

  “What will you do if the court appoints a female public defender? How will you assist in your defense?” Lisette rose, pressing her hands into the table. “I wonder what the other inmates will think when they find out a corpse-fucker is on their cellblock. I’ll make sure I book you with a friendly guy.”

  “You can’t hold me more than forty-eight hours. You won’t have time to get me into general population.”

  “Look at me when you speak to me, Stanley. I can hold you however fucking long I want. I’m not holding you as a suspect. I’m going to hold you as a material witness, which means I can keep you till a quarter to forever.”

  John stood, cracking his neck as he headed for the door. No use hanging around, not when Heckles was invoking and CSU had orders to rush forensics.

  Lisette followed him out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind herself. “That guy’s too much of a pussy to kidnap fully-grown women and torture them for three weeks. If he’s involved, he’s nothing more than the driver.”

  John leaned against the one-way glass and nodded. Pussy, indeed. “I’ll have someone look through his bank statements. See if we can find a paper trail for payment history matching dates with each disposal, but if he’s getting sex with dead bodies in lieu of payment we may not find much.”

  She pulled out her cell phone and turned her back on him. “I’ll check in with CSU and light a fire under their asses,” she called over her shoulder.

  THIRY-TWO

  “He says you’re still winning,” Abby whispers, her cheek pressed into my shoulder. A groan punctuates every word she utters.

  The man’s been gone for hours by my best guess, but we still whisper to keep what this guy’s alleged fan will hear to a minimum.

  “He’s just trying to scare us,” I whisper back, rolling my head back and forth over the tiles in the wall.

  “He’s not.”

  “He isn’t the epitome of sane, Abby. Psychopaths lie all the time.”

  We lapse into silence, and predictably, my stomach growls. I pretend not to hear it, but she doesn’t.

  “You should drink one of those shakes,” she says, voice like sandpaper.

  I shake my head for no reason at all. It’s not like anyone can see it. “They make me nauseous.”

  “You should still try.”

  I reach to crack one of the aluminum cans open. I can’t ignore her suggestions. It would be cruel after all that’s happened. “If I have one, you have to have one too.”

  She accepts the can when I wrap her hot fingers around it. She’s felt too warm for days, getting hotter with every minute. A fever she’ll never be able to sweat out.

  The metallic mineral tang the artificial chocolate leaves on my tongue makes my stomach rebel.

  “I want you to stop trying to protect me. All it’ll do is make things worse for you.”

  He won’t hurt me. He gets off on my helplessness, how I can’t stop what he does. “If he wanted to hurt me he’d have done it already. What he wants to do is mess with my head.”

  Sometimes it feels like he’s in there, fingering my brain. I wonder if that makes me weak for letting him take up residence in my mind.

  “You need to keep it that way. I’m not letting you risk that baby.”

  “Stop bringing it up. You act like it’s more important than you.”

  “Babies are innocent. I’m not.”

  “Who’s to say it’s still there?”

  “You would have felt a miscarriage if it happened.”

  There really is no arguing with her. She’s going to quietly accept her fate all because of a fetus. I thought martyrs only existed in fables.

  I should be grateful, but I’m not. I’m angry she refuses to give surviving the old college try. “I’m not giving up on you.”

  “You have to. It’s the only way you’ll see Jack again. That baby deserves a good life. It doesn’t even hurt anymore, the burns. You’d think I’d feel nothing but pain, but it isn’t there.”

  “So you’re perfectly okay with never seeing Jerry again? That’s what you mean?”

  I instantly regret saying it when she sniffles. “He’ll know why. You’ll tell him. I’ve had three miscarriages. They were hard on him, too.”

  I chug the rest of the protein shake and chuck it across the room. It hits the wall and bounces off the floor a few times.

  She’d make a better parent than me.

  I wipe a sludgy trail of artificial chocolate off my chin. “This isn’t over yet. You still have a chance.”

  “No I don’t. Even if we get out of here tomorrow I’ll die.” She coughs. “It’s going to get worse for me, but it doesn’t have to for you.”

  ***

  Abby must have been a prophet. It got much worse for her.

  Over the years I’ve had plenty of time to wonder about how the forging of a monster takes only a moment.

  Though in our cases, it was much longer than moments, wasn’t it?

  Perhaps it was inevitable. In the chess game of life, enough moves were made, and the end was preordained.

  Does anyone stand a chance after a Disturbing Event? Does anyone learn to fill that hollowness? Drugs and alcohol might fit well in that hole; I wouldn’t be an authority, as I haven’t sampled much stronger than vodka. Possibly, quite likely, many people breeze through those trials unscathed. The others come out more like victims—I’m glad that wasn’t the hand I was dealt. There is very nice perk of my Disturbing Event, which is that when it was over, and when They left, they took all my feelings with them.

  How much more productive people would be without feelings. I wonder this, but have never voiced the question. I ought to have thanked Them for their kind service when our paths crossed many years later, but that meeting ended with blood, a great deal of it, and none of it was mine.

  Carrying on through life without being bothered by things like joy and love and sorrow was wonderful, but those wheels grou
nd to the most abrupt and sharp halt the night we met.

  Should I thank you for this awakening? I wonder about that, too.

  Saturday at 10:12 a.m.

  IP Address: 75.84.67.69

  Sent via contact form by an anonymous viewer on your website

  THIRTY-THREE

  John knocked on Brooke’s hospital room door at eleven a.m. once he’d left the precinct. He knew Lisette would be angry if he tried to speak to the girl without her permission or approval, but as she was tied up overseeing CSU’s examination of Heckles’s van, he figured she’d make allowances.

  Nobody answered, so he cracked the door open. Brooke was awake, blinking blonde-tipped lashes at the ceiling lights. He knew, without being sure how, that she’d been staring into its glare for some time.

  “Hi, Brooke.”

  She lowered her chin to look at him.

  He shut the door behind himself, dropped his briefcase on the ground, and leaned against the counter opposite her bed. She stared at her hands, no longer restrained, but her wrists bore tattoos of red chafe marks.

  He crossed his arms over his lapels as he studied her. Something’s wrong. The last time he’d had a glimpse of her, she hadn’t looked to be in especially happy spirits, but she seemed even more dejected now. “You’re not feeling much better, are you?”

  She didn’t say a word, just gazed into his eyes with her watery mint-green ones. They were more round than almond, too childlike against the planes of her angular features. Her hair was tied into a messy knot at the back of her head, tendrils of loose faux-brunette wisps falling about the contours of her elegantly long neck.

  Girls next door—one blonde, one brunette. Cute in a normal kind of way but not beautiful—more wholesome and fresh-looking. Abigail had been taken first—she’d already filled the blonde quotient.

  His gaze brushed the roots of her hair, and he barely made out the beginnings of strawberry blonde follicles. She’d been taken three weeks ago; the overgrow confirmed it. “Do you want to talk about it?”