by Layton Green
Whoever she was, she didn’t want to be there. Had they somehow forced her?
He flipped through a few more photos of that same woman having sex, first with Damian, then Elliott, then with the mayor. They moved on to the various contraptions in the basement, using them in increasingly novel ways.
Then he came to the last photo, which depicted the woman on all fours on the carpet, wearing nothing except a pair of fake canine ears, a large dog bowl positioned underneath her head. Damian was penetrating her from behind, Elliott was underneath her. Rebecca was also in the photo, sprawled naked on the bed while she watched the spectacle with hungry eyes.
The unknown woman had turned her head toward the photographer, whom Preach assumed was Farley. Her eyes had gone from sad to lifeless.
Good God. Preach had the gut feeling the woman in the photo was no prostitute, but some poor desperate woman they had paid to demean herself for their pleasure. Sushi, they were called on the street. One-offs. The perverted thrill derived from the loss of innocence.
He stood and, just before he stuffed the obscene photo back into the envelope, took one more look at the woman’s face. He knew her from somewhere, he was sure of it. Where had he seen her? Something was different; she was wearing more makeup and maybe the hair had been straightened . . . that curve in the nose . . . he finally realized who it was and took a step backward, stomach caving, a wave of nauseating heat flushing his skin.
God, oh God, not her. Please let me be wrong.
But he knew he wasn’t. He had never met the woman before, but he had seen a photo of her. At the police station. Sitting in a frame on his partner’s desk.
She was Kirby’s sister.
46
Ari heard the door open as she sprinted into the living room. Fear swallowed her whole. There was no time to fumble with her phone, no time to do anything but run for her life.
“Hello, gorgeous,” a familiar voice rasped behind her.
The primal part of her brain took over, ordering her to run as far and as fast as she could. She spun around the wall and past the couch. Threw a lamp to the floor as she careened past the kitchen and into the main hallway. No time to grab the mace.
Adrenaline amplified her hearing. Footsteps crunched on glass behind her, the man’s coat swishing as he ran.
Two doorways to pick from. The bedroom and the bathroom. Ari sensed she had one slim chance at escape: diving out a window before the man caught her and dragged to the ground, then gave her a scar like he had promised.
She chose the bedroom because the windows were larger. She had the presence of mind to fling open the bathroom door to try to fool him. When she raced into the bedroom she wasn’t sure whether he had seen her.
“No place to run,” he yelled. “I told you I’m coming for you.”
She stumbled from the surge of terrified adrenaline his words produced, clutching the bedspread to right herself as she lurched to the window. Her hands were shaky as she flipped the latch and shoved it open.
“There you are,” he said from behind her.
She dove right through the screen, ending up with her stomach straddling the sill. Footsteps pounded toward her as she scrambled to get through. She heard the rasp of his breath as he approached, and he grabbed her sweatpants before she could pull herself over.
She kicked as hard as she could, twice in a row. Her foot connected with something soft. He grunted and released her long enough for her to finish crawling through.
A clump of azaleas broke her fall, scratching her cheeks and arms. She pushed to her feet and stumbled out of the bushes. From the corner of her eye, she saw Officer Haskins lying prone on the ground behind a tree.
Her assailant was climbing out of the window behind her. “Help!” she screamed, then turned and fled toward the street.
Before she had taken three steps, two more figures stepped out of the shadows near the front of the complex. One was a burly man in a vest holding a canvas bag. The other was leaner, with a red beard and studded leather wristbands.
As terrified as she was, Ari wasn’t about to willingly let them stuff a canvas bag over her head and drag her away. Still gripping her cell phone, she veered to the left, toward the parking lot. The smaller man was closest. He was grinning as he came for her. When he was five feet away, she reared back and threw her phone straight into his face, as hard as she could.
He wasn’t expecting the maneuver, and didn’t have time to put his hands up. The phone caught him square in the nose. Blood sprayed outward, and he clutched his face, bellowing in pain.
She had a small opening to reach the street. “Help!” she screamed again, as the boots of the other men thudded behind her. There were no cars, no pedestrians. She cursed the lack of nightlife in Creekville. She had thought she was living in a safe place, a provincial little town, but now she was trapped in a nightmare.
“Stop, bitch, or I swear it’ll be worse!”
She risked a glance backward. They were gaining ground. Ari could run, but these men were faster.
When she turned back to the street, she saw her stalker standing twenty feet down the road in the direction she was trying to flee, blocking her escape. He was wearing the same outfit as always, bowler hat and overcoat, and this time he was holding a gun.
Ari’s scream never left her throat. Her fear choked it off. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Somehow she realized the greenway was to her right, and she fled down it, knowing she was about to get shot in the back or tackled by one of the men. The leaves covering the blacktop glowed orange in the moonlight, transforming the narrow walkway into the tongue of some monstrous beast.
Two gunshots shattered the quiet of the night, so loud and close they reverberated in her ears. She flinched but hadn’t been hit. She kept running, forcing her legs to churn faster, her body electric from adrenaline, the darkness cold and full, her breath leaping out of her in terrified gasps.
47
It was well after midnight by the time Preach returned to Creekville. He had just texted Ari but she hadn’t answered. He assumed she was asleep. Just as he pulled onto her street, ready to relieve Officer Haskins, he heard the crack crack of two gunshots.
The sound was incongruous in Creekville, not a nightly occurrence like on the mean streets of Atlanta. But it was unmistakable.
And he was on Ari’s street.
His foot slammed the accelerator down, jerking the car forward. The vehicle’s high beams swallowed the blacktop. As he reached for the siren, he saw two men in dark jackets sprinting out of the darkness toward his car, less than a hundred feet away.
Preach screeched to a stop just before Ari’s parking lot. He jumped out of the car, both hands squeezing the grip of his gun. “Stand down!” he shouted at the two men. “Police!”
The men were caught in the headlights. The burly one with the vest he recognized from the back room of the Rabbit Hole, and from the Gorgon.
The other had a cleft-lip scar.
Preach felt a surge of rage, and then panic for Ari. He had no idea why these men were running, but he had to assume the worst.
The two men slowed and then stopped, breathing hard and glaring at Preach.
“Hands behind your head! Now!”
They exchanged a glance but complied. Preach advanced, switching to a one-handed grip on his gun so he could call the station and demand immediate backup and an ambulance. His plan was to march these men to Ari’s apartment. He had to know if she was okay.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, managed to speed-dial the station, and then caught a glimpse, in the periphery of his vision, of someone with a bloody face rushing toward him.
Preach whirled to his right, but the man tackled him before he could get a shot off. The gun went flying. His attacker was much smaller, and Preach managed to keep his footing by throwing his legs back in a wrestling stance. His assailant tried to pull away, and Preach kneed him hard in the face, shattering whatever semblance of a nose the man had left.
The attacker screamed and dropped.
The other two thugs sprinted for the gun. Preach dove onto the pavement for the weapon, crashing into the man with the scar. Preach’s hand reached the gun and gripped it. A hand closed on his wrist. He threw an elbow into his opponent’s jaw, feeling bone crunch when he connected. The man with the scar bellowed in pain. Preach threw two more elbows in rapid succession, fast and hard as a jackhammer. One connected with the smaller man’s temple, and he slumped.
Preach tried to rise, but the third man kicked him in the hand, sending the gun flying and snapping his wrist back. Preach rose with a grunt and threw an uppercut straight into the burly man’s solar plexus. His opponent doubled over, his breath leaving him with a whoosh.
Sirens whirred in the distance. Preach scrambled to retrieve his gun as blue lights rounded the corner, flashing in his eyes. Emergency vehicles pulled onto the street, disgorging police officers and medics.
As the other officers dealt with Mac’s men, Preach dashed toward Ari’s apartment. Just before he arrived, Terry stumbled into view, holding his head and looking panicked.
Preach barked as he ran. “Where’s Ari?”
“I don’t know. Someone jumped me while I was taking a piss. I—”
From behind, another voice shouted, “Detective Everson!”
Preach kept racing toward Ari’s door. Those men had been running away from her apartment.
“Detective!” The shouting voice belonged to Officer Wright. Preach finally turned.
“Ari just called the station,” Wright continued. “She’s down the street at Philip’s Tavern.”
Preach put his hands on hips, breathing hard. All three assailants were in handcuffs, and the man with the cleft-lip scar was unconscious, his face so bloody and swollen it was almost unrecognizable. Mac was smart. He relied on intimidation and sent his men out without guns, to lessen the potential charges.
But this time they’d gone way, way too far.
“Read them their rights,” Preach said, striding toward his cruiser, “and get them out of my sight.”
He caught up with Ari as she was leaving the tavern in the company of two officers that Preach barely knew. Damp leaves littered the parking lot. Cold moist air filled his nostrils. The bar was next door to the Wandering Muse, and he noticed that it was the closest establishment to the greenway that led to Ari’s apartment.
“I’ll take it from here,” he said to the two officers. They nodded and peeled away, and he turned to Ari, forcing himself not to embrace her. The tavern had emptied to observe the spectacle. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he said.
She flashed a brave but guarded smile. “You can’t be my babysitter.”
Her face was still flushed with shock and fear, but there was heat in her eyes. Anger.
He felt a rush of respect for her bravery. He also realized, now that the adrenaline had faded, that his left wrist was purple, throbbing, and swollen. A jolt of pain shot through him when he tried to make a fist.
“Come with me downtown,” he said. “After I wrap up, we’ll stay at my place.”
“No one chased me,” she said.
“What?”
“When I got away from those men and ran into the road, my stalker appeared out of nowhere, right in front of me. He had a gun. I ran into the greenway and heard shots, but I wasn’t hit. They could have easily caught or shot me, but when I reached the street and looked back . . . there was no one coming.”
She turned toward the entrance to the greenway, shivering in the night air. In the shadow of a streetlight, a family of deer, sleek and gray, slipped into the forest with their fluid rocking motion.
When Ari turned back there was confusion, as well as a dawning awareness, in her eyes. “I think my stalker saved my life,” she said.
48
The medics told Preach he had a severely sprained wrist, gave him a handful of ibuprofen, and set it with a splint. It was four a.m. by the time he took Ari back to his house. She collapsed on the couch, and he covered her with a blanket.
She took his hand and said, hesitantly, “Can I ask you something about your therapy?”
He looked away.
“Did something happen to someone you love? A wife or a girlfriend?”
He shook his head, eyes sad and distant. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
Her head relaxed on the pillow. She had just wanted to know if there had been someone else, and if so how deep the wound went.
“If you really want to know, I’ll tell you someday.”
“It can wait,” she said. “As long as it doesn’t involve a woman you can’t get over.”
He managed a faint smile. Just before she fell asleep, she whispered, “Don’t you dare back down from them.”
His good hand curled into a fist at his side.
The next morning, Preach took Ari to Jimmy’s Corner Store. She perched over a law book with her cappuccino while he drummed his thumbs on his coffee mug, turning the case over in his mind. He hadn’t decided what to do about her long-term safety, and he couldn’t explain what had happened with her stalker. His immediate solution was to finish his coffee.
Every time he thought about the photos with Kirby’s sister, a rush of empathy overwhelmed him. He knew he had to tell Kirby, but he didn’t know how. Not yet, was all he knew. Not right now.
Damn this world.
He pushed his other thoughts aside and focused on the observer in the photos who was still alive, and who clearly didn’t want anyone else to bear witness to her participation.
Rebecca Worthington.
The picture was getting clearer. The mayor had hired Mac Dobbins to murder Farley and keep her secrets safe. But they hadn’t found the blackmail stash. That explained Mac’s brazen behavior. He had to ensure that the mayor, who was indebted to Mac for an untold sum and greased the wheels for his growing business empire, stayed in office.
So Farley’s murder Preach understood. But why Damian and Elliott?
Preach had to figure out the final angle. His goal wasn’t to force Rebecca Worthington to resign in disgrace—he wanted her for murder.
His eyes roved the café, noticing the usual assortment of college students and hipsters. But he also saw a nervous young mother dressed in thrift-shop clothes, a trio of unwashed musicians who had rolled up in a rusted-out camper van, and a fresh-faced country kid wearing an old porkpie hat and scanning the message board for a room to rent. These were the people, he knew, who had moved to Creekville to find work, because it was the closest town of any size. The sons and daughters of tobacco workers and struggling artists and gas station attendants, the people from poverty-stricken homes and forgotten towns with no stop lights, hidden deep in the forests of the Piedmont. Sometimes they came to Creekville and made a life, sometimes they returned home, sometimes they moved on to bigger and better things.
And sometimes they ended up like Kirby’s sister.
“Joe,” Ari said.
“Yeah?”
“You’ve been staring at the wall for the last five minutes.”
“Just thinking,” he said.
“It’s not adding up, is it? The murders and the books?”
Preach ran his uninjured hand through his hair. He had showered, but he felt stale, worn out by his failures in life. “No.”
She closed her book. “I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like you need a fresh angle.”
She was right, of course she was right, but easier said than done. He had turned everything around a hundred times and kept reaching the same limited conclusions.
What was he missing?
He kept coming back to the novels. The crime scenes were so deliberate, so thematic. So literary.
He remembered a line he had read in Five Little Pigs, talking about the five suspects:
Until you see what sort of people they were, you cannot begin to see clearly.
It was the embodiment of his own philosophy. When a case stalled, often the best w
ay to move forward was to peer through the eyes of the victims. He’d been doing that on an individual basis, but what if he did it collectively?
Three victims, all from Creekville. All friends since high school and reputedly members of a secret literary society. All three complicit in modern-day perversions.
The voices in the café faded out. What if this wasn’t about blackmail at all, or if the blackmail had sparked an old feud? Something terrible in the past that had spilled into the present? What if the three victims had wronged the mayor in some way . . . or even someone else?
He blinked and turned to Ari. “Maybe each book represents a piece of the puzzle. Five Little Pigs gives us the framework: a past crime that’s never been brought to light.”
She twisted one of her thumb rings and continued his theme. “Crime and Punishment could represent the cleverness and mindset of the murderer,” she said, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue the animalistic nature of the crime and those who committed it.”
He rose and swept his coffee cup off the table. He was probably grasping, but he was desperate for a solution.
“Let’s go. I need to pick up something at the house.”
“What?”
“An old yearbook.”
When they arrived at his house, he strode into the living room and grabbed the yearbook from the victims’ senior year. He sat on the couch, Ari hovering beside him.
If something in the past had led to three murders in the present, then it had to be something powerful. He found the dedication to Deirdre Hollings, the student who had committed suicide. She was an elfin girl with long dark hair, innocent eyes, and elegant bone structure. In fact, except for the purple birthmark on her neck and the more rounded nose, she looked a lot like—Preach swallowed and stared down at the photo of the girl.
She looked a lot like Ari.
He hadn’t looked closely at her face before. A chill coursed down his spine, and by the uneasy expression on Ari’s face, he knew she had come to the same conclusion.