Snuff

by Simonson, Melissa

  “Not everything. Bianca didn’t tell me much. Just that their aunt was keeping Reagan in the cellar.”

  “Did you ever meet Reagan?” He slid her photograph over, and Heckles accepted it with the tips of his trembling fingers.

  He bit his lower lip back, gazing into the flat, glossy depths of Reagan’s blue eyes. “Bianca said her aunt didn’t approve of Reagan having a boyfriend. It meant she wasn’t clean. Nobody would want to marry a woman who wasn’t clean.”

  Lisette rolled her wrist in circles. “Is that what you believe, Stan?”

  “No.” He studied at the photo of Bianca John slid across the table, and ran his index finger over the contours of her face. “I tried to help her. Both of them. They didn’t have anyone else.” His brown eyes were wet when he looked up at John. “They were just little girls. I only wanted them to be safe. Melinda was so mean to them.”

  “How did you try to help?”

  “I tried to get them out of that house. We were going to do it after their aunt went to sleep. They were supposed to meet me around the corner. I was going to drive them to the train station. But they never showed.”

  “Is that when you called CPS?”

  He nodded. The movement made a tear spill over a pudgy cheek. “I didn’t see them again until the ambulance came. Reagan was dead. I thought Bianca was too, until my mother told me differently.”

  “You should have called the police if you knew what was happening next door,” Lisette barked, revulsion twisting her plump lips. “You’re just as bad as Melinda. You could have helped them. Could have told somebody before Reagan died.”

  “There was nothing I could have done.” Heckles pushed the photographs of the Cartwrights away. “My mother wouldn’t have let me use the phone to call anyone.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  John put a hand on Lisette’s elbow. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her give his fingers a dirty look. “So you had to wait until she was asleep to make that anonymous call to Child Protective Services?”

  “Mother found out anyway.” He showed John the tips of his withered fingers. “She made me stick my fingers in lye to teach me not to make unapproved phone calls.”

  “How did your mother die?”

  “Heart attack. It happened when she was in the back garden cleaning the birdbath. I found her when I got home from work that night.”

  Seems like there’ve been an awful lot of heart attacks going on recently.

  SEVENTY

  “Why would you want to do this? I’ve never hurt you. Neither did Abby.”

  She laughs without amusement, pecking at keys on her laptop. “You don’t want to know what goes on inside my head. It’s a prison.” Her lips spread into a horribly unhappy smile, eyes darting as she reads something from the screen. “I guess that makes this a conjugal visit.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  She snaps the laptop shut and runs an appraising blue eye from my feet, to my face. “People dissect motives and means until they don’t mean anything anymore. It’s not going to change your circumstance. And it won’t change the fact that you didn’t do your job.”

  My head thuds against the granite. I speak more to the latched door on the ceiling than to her. “My job is waitressing. I’m a waitress. I bring people coffee and refills of Coke.”

  It looks almost painful to smile as wide as she does. “You’re a whore,” she says with great satisfaction, as if I’ve inadvertently proved her point. “You come when called. I’m not judging, not really—I’m a whore, too.”

  I never appreciate being called a whore. Specifically because it isn’t true, and for crying out loud, I’ve only had sex with three men in my life.

  One of whom is married to my mother, but that’s a story for another time.

  “I’m not a whore. Whores have multiple partners and sexually transmitted diseases.” Maybe some track marks and clear heels. “I don’t advertise myself in the yellow pages, or work in a brothel. I work at Norm’s. But you know that, because you smacked me over the head in the parking lot. I was wearing a work uniform, not a G-string.”

  “You’re still a whore.” She moves her small hands like she’s balancing scales. “On the one hand, it’s admirable. Whores are the conquerors of men; we hold a lot of power. But on the other hand, we lose lots of things along the way. Pieces of our character. Dignity. Self-respect. It’s too late for me, but not for you. Maybe we can burn it out like we did for Abigail.”

  I think I’ve been scared enough for a lifetime. I know she won’t touch me. It’s like she can’t; an invisible force holds her back. She could have done to me everything she’d done to Abby, but she hadn’t.

  She hops off the overturned bucket and dusts off the thighs of her jeans. “It’ll all be over soon, so long as you follow the plan.”

  “What plan? You keep going on and on about it, but you haven’t spelled anything out. How am I supposed to give you what you want, when you’ve never told me what the hell it is?” And I flat-out refuse to kill someone else. Killing Abby damn near killed me.

  “You didn’t end it all.”

  “That’s what you want? Suicide?”

  The scar tissue on her wrist shines white when she flicks a lock of hair out of her eyes. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

  SEVENTY-ONE

  John stepped outside the interview room to put in another call to Stacy, leaving Lisette to her staring contest with Stanley Heckles. Predictably, she was winning.

  “I’m busy hacking this email account,” was Stacy’s annoyed greeting. “What is it?”

  John gazed through the one-way glass. “I was wondering if you could find the death certificates for Melinda Bass and Bridgette Heckles.”

  “California residents?”

  “Yes, both of them.”

  “Let’s see.” Keys slapped in the background, and John leaned against the hallway wall. “Both died of heart attacks. Coronary failure. Melinda had a history of it in her family, plus hardening arteries. Bridgette’s family didn’t have a history, but sometimes shit happens, huh?”

  Truer words, John thought, had never been spoken. “They died in close succession, didn’t they?”

  “Within a week of each other.”

  “Were they given autopsies?”

  “I doubt it. Aren’t autopsies only performed if a death is the result of foul play, or really sudden? Give me a second to access ME reports.” She needed thirty-nine to find the answer. “No, no autopsies. Didn’t need to, cause of death was apparent. Microaneurisms in the retinas. Common sign of seizures during heart attacks.”

  Or a sign of diabetic retinopathy. Either way, no luck finding hypothetical injection sites.

  Was it possible Stanley and Bianca had thought of such a marvelous plan together, or had she acted alone? How hard would it be to sneak up on a frail old lady and plunge a hypodermic needle in her neck while she tended to her birdbath? John hadn’t detected deception in Heckles’s voice when he’d inquired about his mother’s death. Just a nervous sort of surprise—no different than his normal tone.

  Her typing revved up again. “I’ve tried finding a cell phone under Bianca’s name, but there isn’t one. So, either she’s the one person in the US without one, or it’s under a fake name, or someone else is paying her bill. Could be a burner, like the one given to the girls at the dump scenes. She must be smarter than we thought, using an untraceable phone.”

  Unless she’s had some help, he thought. Maybe someone was there, whispering advice in her ear.

  He thanked Stacy and disconnected. Behind the one-way glass, Lisette appeared to be giving Heckles a thorough tongue-lashing. His face had flushed tomato-red, eyes trained on the tabletop.

  John decided to grant Mr. Heckles a reprieve. One more turn as Good Cop might earn some goodwill. It really was amazing, the obligation one small favor could glean. A car salesman would act as though he’d gone out of his way to lower a sticker price, and potential clients felt for
ced to reciprocate by making a purchase.

  He shot off a text to Lisette, and watched her hair swing forward as she dug for her cell phone. She took it out, read the message, and left.

  “What’s up?” she asked, once she’d pulled the interview room door shut.

  “I need you to stay out here when I’m talking to him.”

  One corner of those swollen lips pulled into a half of a smile. “Cashing in the Good Cop card?”

  “Something like that.”

  She gave him the other half of her smile. “You really think he knows anything? If he does, it won’t be much. He’s a tool. She’s been playing him like a fiddle. You know the anonymous Good Samaritan drunk driver alert was her, covering her own ass. Implicating him to get him back for being too late to save Reagan or something.”

  “Tools get used, but it doesn’t mean they’re brainless. He still sees her as a helpless, scared teenager. She might have told him a few things we don’t know.” He handed her his iPhone. “If you hear a Barbie Girl ringtone, answer.”

  “Barbie Girl?” She grimaced as if the words tasted sour.

  “Don’t ask.”

  When he pushed the door open, two sets of eyes followed as he took a seat in the empty chair.

  He said nothing for a minute, until the public defender sighed. “Quit the theatrics. Do you have a question or not?”

  John ignored her, and spoke to Heckles. “Do you mind if I speak to you alone?”

  “He minds,” the attorney snapped.

  “Why don’t you let him answer? The decision is his.” The prisoner stared into John’s eyes, and eventually nodded. “I need you to say you waive your right to have an attorney present, Mr. Heckles.”

  When he choked out the words, his attorney gave an exasperated grunt, collected her briefcase, and swung out the door. Heckles sagged with visible relief.

  Anything to get rid of the female presence.

  “I have a few sensitive questions, and I didn’t want an audience.”

  “Questions about what?”

  “Do you feel like you owed Bianca? Maybe you felt culpable for her sister’s death. Didn’t think you did enough to help them out of such a horrible situation.”

  “I tried—”

  John held up a hand. “No, I know you tried. The point is, you failed. I’m not implying it’s your fault. It isn’t. But that doesn’t erase guilt over not being able to stop it. Guilt and remorse are ever-evolving. They never really go away.” He kept his eyes on Stanley’s weepy ones. “I could understand why you’d help her, if she asked. I’d do the same.”

  “Help…with what?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.”

  Heckles’s shifted uncomfortably, but remained silent.

  “Maybe she came to visit after a long absence, sometime when your mother was out.” John tapped a finger on the table to catch Stanley’s attention. “It was probably a shock to see her after all that time. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.”

  Heckles cleared his throat as he twined his fingers together. “Mother was at the club, playing bridge. I’m not supposed to answer the door when she’s gone, but I saw Bianca through the peephole.”

  “You just wanted to talk to her. Tell her how sorry you were.”

  He nodded, sitting up straighter. “She looked so sad. She asked if I wanted to visit Reagan with her.”

  “And did you?”

  He traced spirals into the metal and wouldn’t meet John’s stare. “Well, I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere without Mother, except for work, when I had a job.”

  John settled back into the chair and gazed into the ceiling lights. “So…you went at night? When your mother was sleeping?”

  “She came by early in the morning. She waited in her car, in the same spot I was going to pick her and Reagan up that night.”

  “Did you go to the cemetery?” John asked, cataloguing the various fingerprints on the bulb above his head.

  Heckles nodded, cheeks wobbling. “Yes. Bianca said she goes there a lot. I couldn’t go to Reagan’s funeral, but I saw the obituary in the newspaper when I took out the trash. It was only two lines. Like the life she lived hardly counted because it was so short.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple undulating.

  “What else did she tell you?”

  Stanley shook his head. “I—I shouldn’t say. It’s private.”

  John looked away from the lights, his vision tinged with red. “I know. But I want to help you help her. And I can only do that if I know what she said. Did she tell you she could free you from your mother?” John interpreted Stanley’s puckered brow as proof he’d been correct in his assumption. “And she did, didn’t she? She helped you—”

  “She didn’t tell me she was going to do it,” Stanley interrupted. “She asked if Mother was still treating me badly. I didn’t know her plans. Not until I came home, and Mother was dead in the garden. She did it while I was out running errands.”

  “She wanted to make sure you had an alibi, should the police look into your mother’s death.” John tented his hands on the table. “She must care about you, if she took measures like that.”

  The voice in his head laughed. More like she wanted to get Stan under her thumb only. She couldn’t have done that with Mother alive.

  He closed his eyes as the beginnings of a headache pounded behind his eyeballs. “Did Bianca tell what happened to those girls?”

  “She said she was trying to help them. Like she helped me. Only it didn’t work.”

  John massaged a throbbing temple. “And she did this by killing them? That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Stanley. She tried to help them, it didn’t work, so she killed them?”

  “She didn’t kill anybody,” he protested. “It’s not murder if they’re in pain.”

  “Does she know about…” he trailed off, in search of a polite term for necrophilia. “Did she know about your sexual predilections?”

  Heckles’s blush returned, staining every exposed bit of skin red. “She understands. She knows it’s Mother’s fault.”

  Clearly. “So, in exchange for your help, she gave you access to the dead girls?” He waited for a nod. “Where did you have these encounters? In the same house she’s holding them?”

  He didn’t lift his red face from his hands. “No. In the back of my van. I wouldn’t do that in front of anybody. She’d bring them to me, but I had to get rid of them afterward. I felt bad, just leaving them, but…Bianca needed my help more than they did. Those girls were gone. Even the ones who were alive. You could see it in their eyes.” His own were earnest; desperate for agreement. “They were already dead.”

  “I need to know where she kept them before they died. It wasn’t in her Aunt Melinda’s house, and it wasn’t in her childhood home. She must have told you where, since you two are friends.”

  “She said someplace safe and quiet. Somewhere only she was allowed.” He peeked into John’s eyes. “She said it was where her heart lived.”

  But where would her heart live? She doesn’t have one anymore. It died in Aunt Melinda’s cellar.

  “Do you have any idea where she meant?”

  Stanley shrugged. “Maybe where her fiancé lives. She said he works for the same company she does.”

  SEVENTY-TWO

  “What’s your name?”

  Her eyes aren’t dreamy any longer, sharpening when they focus on my face. “What does that matter?”

  It doesn’t really matter, but in all those TV shows I’ve watched they make it pretty clear dialogue with your captor is good. If you get rapport going, they may start seeing you as a real person.

  “It matters to me.”

  “Bianca.”

  The name matches her face. Delicate in a gun-toting debutante way.

  Treading lightly is best, logic cautions. Antagonizing and waspish exchanges of words won’t get me far—they didn’t the first time. I watch an awful lot of Law & Order. Empathy, sympathy, and sharing
tidbits work best in hostage negotiation. All those hours loafing on the couch watching marathons don’t seem wasted anymore.

  “Who taught you about…whores?” I feel ridiculous asking, but it’s a theme she’s centered on, so it must be a hot-button.

  Her eyebrow arches.

  “I’m just wondering why you think all women are like that.” I drop my gaze to my hands. “I’m not a whore in the literal sense, but I’ve felt like one before. Used up and disgusting. Maybe you have, too.”

  She looks like she wants to snap at me again, but says nothing.

  “I was fifteen when my stepfather started having sex with me.” I’ve never told anyone, and why I’d tell her is a mystery. “It made me feel that way. I had insomnia.” Mainly because my mother took potent sleeping pills, and was practically comatose all those nights he spent in my room. “Problems concentrating. I know in my head it wasn’t my fault, but,” I shrug, “sometimes when I think about it, I have to take an hour-long shower. The last time I did, I scrubbed off a layer of skin. Raw and red for a week. Jack thought I was sunburned.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  I look up to find her gazing at me, heavily mascaraed lashes glittering. “No. Only you. He made my mother happy. I figured ignorance was bliss.” For her, anyway. “I just moved out as soon as I was eighteen.”

  She stares into my eyes, like she can’t summon the will to look away. “That wasn’t right.”

  “No. But maybe I brought it on myself. All I can hope is that he’s different now. I’m an only child. I wouldn’t have let it carry on if I had a little sister to worry about.”

  Her nostrils flare as she spins a ring she wears on her wedding finger. “Seasons change. People don’t.”

  I can’t argue with that. “It happened a long time ago, but that feeling is still there.”

  A weird look crosses her cherubic features, wrinkling her button nose. The diamond on her ring catches the light, reflections waltzing over the bullet holes and blood on the white walls. “Most men are pigs, but you know that. Only looking for another hole to plug, some new dirty thrill.”