Silenced Girls

by Roger Stelljes

  “She didn’t want you. She wanted nothing to do with you. You weren’t good enough for her. She thought you were so arrogant and full of yourself.”

  “That bitch!” Warner screamed as he leapt off the stool and slapped her with the back of his right hand, knocking her flying off the stool and careening face-first into the cinder block wall.

  “Ooh,” she groaned. Her right cheek seared in pain and her head ached as she looked up through blurred vision to see Warner standing over her, enraged, his body quaking, the tip of the knife shuddering mere inches away from her face. With the rage seething out of him Tori thought this was the end, steeling herself for what was next. But he just stood over her and slowly his breathing eased, though the viciousness of his expression lingered. He pushed her hard onto her stomach and then yanked her up off the floor by her bound wrists before shoving her back down on the stool.

  The right side of her face throbbing, Tori closed her eyes and tried to get her own breathing under control. Warner sat back down on his stool, still a ball of wrath. She needed to keep him talking. “My sister fought back, didn’t she?” she asked through gritted teeth, feeling the salty taste of blood in her mouth.

  Warner burped out a sadistic laugh. “She slapped me, then punched me. Can you believe that shit? Little Jessie punched me.”

  “She fought,” Tori replied, while spitting out blood to the floor. “I’d love to have the same chance. I dare you to give me the same chance.”

  “Oh, she fought alright. She reached for the car door handle to try and get out, to get away. That was her big mistake. I couldn’t let her go then.”

  “You hit her.”

  “I had to subdue her, and you know what?”

  “Oh, I know. You liked it, Jeff. I’ve seen your handiwork.”

  Warner nodded. “Oh yeah—I got off on it.” he added, the savagery returning to his eyes, the deep wrath to his voice. “It was the power of it. I owned her, I could do whatever I wanted. Jessie wasn’t dictating the terms anymore. I was. I hit her again and then I got on top of her and ripped her blouse open and yanked off her shorts and undies.” Warner was suddenly euphoric, reliving it, back in the moment. “Your sister was so hot. Just like you are now, her body was perfect, her little round firm B-cup tits, the flat stomach and that tiny, tight little athletic ass.”

  “No!” Tori howled. “How could you?”

  “And Jessie fought back, which made it all the better. The fury of it all. I hit her again, and then again and then I flipped her over on her stomach, and then…” He leaned forward, getting in Tori’s face. “I…fucked your sister. I fucked her so hard.”

  “You sick fucking piece of shit,” Tori growled before spitting in his face.

  Warner burst off the stool and punched Tori in the face, just below her left eye, knocking her backward onto the top of the old desk before her momentum carried her over the top of it and she tumbled hard to the floor on the other side, scraping her face along the wall on the way down.

  As she laid on the floor, her face aching and head throbbing, she could hear his unhurried footsteps. He slowly came around the desk and once again stood towering over her.

  “That’s how I hit her, Tori. You’re just like your sister, you never learned to submit.”

  Tori spit out blood, looking back up from the cold cement floor through blurred vision, breathing hard, yet grimacing out a bloody smile. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  Warner croaked out a sick laugh as he reached down and hoisted her up again and dragged back around the front of the desk. He leaned down and picked up her stool and pushed her back down on it before turning his back to go sit down. Tori closed her eyes and tried calming her breathing while her face and forehead ached, the stinging pain pulsating through her head.

  “Hurts, don’t it?”

  Tori just kept breathing through her nose, long breaths, her eyes closed, re-steeling herself. There was more pain to come.

  “Come on now, Tori,” he teased, snapping his fingers in her face. “Pay attention.”

  She slowly opened her eyes and bored in on Warner. She spit blood out of her mouth as if to say bring it.

  Braddock and Mannion moved up into the home office, the map of all the women still taped up on the wall. Mannion was transfixed by it, shaking his head at the detail and dead women tied to his business. “What have I allowed to happen?” he murmured in dismay.

  “Kyle, think. Come on. You know Warner, where would he take her?”

  “Uh, I…don’t know, Will. I…I…I…just don’t know,” Mannion stammered. “God, if anything happens to her…”

  “We just have to find them,” Braddock replied as he looked at the map up on the wall, focusing on the dots for Jessie and Lash around Manchester. “If he has her, he’d need privacy. And he couldn’t be on the road long with her. Too risky. He’d have a place to take her.”

  “What’s he going to do with her?” Kyle asked.

  Braddock turned and shook his head.

  “Oh God,” Kyle croaked out.

  “So where would he go?” Braddock muttered. “Where would he go?” Does he own any other property?”

  “Umm…” Kyle’s eyes brightened. “Well, there his mother’s old house. Out on County Road 48.”

  “County Road 48?”

  “Yeah. Jeff’s parents were divorced when we were kids. His dad lived here in town. His mom had an old family place out on 48. The property had a family cemetery on it, so Jeff has kept it.”

  Braddock spun around.

  On the wall behind his desk was another map. It was a framed map of Manchester and Steamboat Lake and the surrounding area. It was a touristy map he liked. He had it matted and framed for the office. The map included all the roads and the smaller nearby lakes on the Steamboat chain. The eastern shore of Steamboat ran at a rough angle to the northeast. The new H-4 bypass ran at roughly the same northeast angle until it reached the northeastern corner, where the bypass bowed out at least another mile before eventually looping back another two miles to the north and straightened out on its way up to Holmestrand. County Road 48 snaked its way east northeast through the area of the bow.

  “Where is Warner’s place?”

  “Right here,” Kyle pointed to land on the northside of the road, a mile short of the H-4.

  “Is that why Katy Anderson went missing?” Braddock asked, tapping the place on the map.

  “Katy Anderson?” Kyle asked. “What…”

  “That bulge in the bypass,” Braddock pointed it. “That was all because you and Jeff Warner led a group that raised holy hell about the bypass, so it would go by your land for your corporate campus.”

  “Well…that wasn’t the only reason…”

  “I don’t care about that now, but the original H-4 bypass path was a more direct northern route that would have gone right through…”

  “Warner’s property,” Kyle replied, getting what Braddock was driving at. “But what’s the significance of Katy?”

  “Katy was last seen there by two witnesses who drove by her. She was there a few nights after Genevieve Lash went missing. She went there after Tori and I went out to see her. Katy went there, and Warner’s property is there and…” He looked over to Kyle Mannion. “Let’s go.”

  Warner was so satisfied with himself he was rolling now. It was like with Eddie, he wanted to talk, she just had to lead him.

  “After I did Jessie, I realized how much I liked it and it wasn’t the sex, Tori, it was the…”

  “Power.”

  “Oh yeah, you understand, I knew you would. You get it Tori, you get it. I always knew you would.”

  “I understand the mind. I’ve spent years chasing child predators. You’re not much different.”

  “Then you’ll understand that after a while I realized sex was…boring compared to this. I mean sex was something to get, to pursue, to have but I didn’t need it. It didn’t satisfy me, not like this does. This? What I have right now, right here I
need.”

  “I know.”

  “After I did Jessie I eventually needed to do it again, and then again, and then again. I mean, not weekly or monthly but every so often I needed that fix and those out-of-town trips to open those God-awful sports bars in all those college towns were perfect. I could get out of town, find a girl at the bar or at a nearby business, bring her back here and have my way with her for as long as I wanted, to do whatever I wanted.”

  “Let me ask, were there girls when you were in college? Did you kill then? After Jessie.”

  Warner grinned. “You’re smart, Tori. And to answer your question, after I did Jessie, you can’t possibly think I could have stopped when I was in Arizona.”

  Tori shook her head in disgust.

  “There were two in Mesa, right by school and then one down in Tucson. Buried them all way out in the desert. Then I came back home and well, I had this,” Warner stated, waving to the room. “Grandma was dead. Mom eventually died of the cancer. I had a…playroom.”

  “What about the four you killed, left them in the trunks of cars? Why treat them so different? Why deny them this room?”

  “So, I could use someone like Sarah Craig to fuck over the Mannions.”

  Tori shook her head in amazement. “You just want to destroy everybody here, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I wanted to use you to do that for me. I wanted you to tear down Kyle and Eddie and their town. I mean, who better to do it than you? The person whose life was forever changed, damaged by the tragedy of Manchester? And you’ve done it for me.”

  Tori shook her head in anger. She’d been lured and then played.

  “Eddie is going to be arrested, and from there it’s just a matter of time before Kyle goes down, too.”

  “You’re going to go down for all of this. Maybe not now but you will.”

  Warner was unfazed. “No, Tori, I’m not. I’m playing chess and the rest of the world is playing checkers,” he replied with a demented grin, twirling the knife in his hand, all impressed with himself. “I’m winning and I’m about to achieve ultimate victory.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “Two things. I’ve really wanted to fuck over Kyle, Eddie, this whole damn town that worships at the Mannion altar, and thanks to you and Braddock, I’m getting it. But I’ve also long wondered what it might be like to have you in this room. I’ve thought time and again about what it would be like to get the great Tori Hunter down here. And you know what? It’s better than I could have ever imagined. You’re fighting, you’re defiant, I love it. You’re so different from the others.”

  “Different? How am I different, Jeff? How am I any less a victim?”

  “Because you’re not pleading and whimpering for your life, at least yet.”

  “In your dreams, asshole.”

  “We’ll see,” Warner snickered. “We’ll see. It’s amazing what a woman will say when she’s sitting there on that stool, just like you are now. After she’s suffered how you’re going to suffer.”

  “Here? You sat here and talked to them just like this?”

  “Sure, although you and I are old friends and we have so much to discuss. As for all those other women, they’re sitting there desperately thinking that if they can say just the right thing, in just the right tone, I’ll spare them.” Warner laughed, shaking his head. “It’s such a waste of time. I can’t let them go and you, more than anyone else who has ever been in this room, understands that. I learned that with Jessie. After I finished with her, after I’d had my way with her, I couldn’t very well let her go home to her father, to the sheriff. I mean, what would have happened to me?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Jessie?” Warner glanced to his right. “Oh, she’s probably about seventy-five feet to your left from here. She’s been there since about two weeks after I killed her. Until things calmed down, I hid her body up on the Mannion hunting property, not far from where you found Katy’s car. Then when it was safe, I brought her body out here to bury it.”

  Tori glanced to the left.

  “That’s right, Tori,” Warner replied, getting off his stool, moving into her line of vision. “Jessie is right out there. They’re all out there. All those missing women you and Braddock identified. They’re out there in that cemetery.”

  Tori just looked to the wall, envisioning Jessie out there. Now she knew what happened to her, what happened to them all. And now she knew the fate that awaited.

  Warner shook his head and snorted. “I must say, I kind of underestimated you and Braddock.”

  Tori turned her eyes back to him. “How so?”

  “I thought this would take a lot longer to all play out. A lot longer. I figured I’d have to leave out this long trail of breadcrumbs. But then to my great surprise, I learned you and Braddock were onto all these other women. I thought that would take a lot longer and then I realized in watching the two of you that you tied it all to the restaurants. I was surprised. That was impressive.”

  Tori shook her head. “Whatever, Jeff.”

  “No, it was extraordinary. How’d you do that?”

  Tori didn’t respond.

  “Seriously, how did you do that?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m serious. How did you do that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Tori sneered.

  Warner stood up, took a step forward and slapped her with the back of his right hand. It was a hard smack, not so hard as to knock her off the chair, but the strike stung. “I won’t be so gentle again, Tori. Answer my question, please.”

  Tori glared back at Warner and then snorted a bloody laugh. “Would you believe the Mannion’s pizza box covers?”

  Warner looked at her, perplexed. “Really?”

  “We matched the map on the front of the pizza box to the map we had of all of the killings. Matched up almost perfectly. Once we saw that we put it all together, the restaurants and the women, all in about an hour.”

  “The pizza box covers. Huh,” Warner shook his head, still stunned. “I never even thought of that.” He snorted. “Doesn’t happen often.”

  “You set up Gunther, didn’t you?”

  “And you found everything I wanted you to find, including the cigarette butts, right?” Warner answered. “And you ran those through DNA, figuring you’d match up to Gunther and then…they didn’t, right?”

  Tori nodded. “How do you know all of this?”

  “A little from Cal Lund, but Backstrom for most of it. He is very good at staying informed himself. He likes to be the big shot, to talk, to sound important, to keep in Kyle’s and my good graces. I’d just go to lunch with him and get everything I needed.”

  “Politicians,” Tori replied bitterly. “They’re always such inveterate ass kissers for money.”

  “That’s what makes them useful. I’d get information from him, and I was watching you and Braddock, so I knew where you two were going in the investigation. All it needed was a little nudge here and there.”

  “Such as killing Braddock and I?”

  Warner nodded. “I missed you, intentionally so, but I wanted Braddock dead to turn up the heat. That fucker should be dead. Using his remote starter in the middle of summer, who’d have thunk that?”

  “You missed me? Intentionally?”

  “Come on, Tori, you were standing still. It was an easy shot to hit the water bottle. That I nicked your hand was a nice touch, I thought. And for the record, I could have had you on any of the other shots I took as you ran through that field and then dove into the trees. Bet I scared the shit out of you, didn’t I?”

  Tori closed her eyes and shook her head.

  “Of course, then it only took you guys a few hours to get onto Gunther. His van, reputation and the fact he pinched Lash on the ass all made him useful. And, if the case was about all those missing women, I expected anyone who investigated that to have doubts about Gunther in time. That dumbass slyly picking up those women without a trace? Come on, it d
oesn’t stand up to logic or thought when you really work through it. I mean, that’s what you and Braddock thought, right?”

  Tori slowly nodded her head.

  “Which is why Braddock got his attendance records from Kyle and they showed he couldn’t have done those women.”

  “It was you who was driving the van.”

  “I spiked Gunther’s bourbon when we were at Eddie’s. God, he was a puddle at the end of the night. Eddie carried him back to the bedroom and while he did, I made a clay impression of the van key. Came out later that night and took the van. I knew Gunther wouldn’t be up until noon at least. Plenty of time to get the van back. And it worked perfectly, of course.”

  “And then you killed him, didn’t you?”

  “You could always count on Gunther to drink his sorrows away,” Jeff replied flatly. “Eddie called me and said you two were all over Gunther such that he thought he needed a lawyer and asked if I could help him find one. He also said that Gunther was going up to his cabin. From there it was easy. I knew what the dumbass redneck was doing. Sure enough, I get to the cabin and he’s drunk. He made it so easy. I just had to wait for him to pass out, pop him with that .38 of his and then leave. It was all part of the plan.”

  “To lead us to Eddie.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t Gunther, he clearly was setup by someone. Who set him up and why? And the setup had to be just a tiny bit sloppy, so it looked like Eddie did it. So, I laid out just a few crumbs to Eddie, and you and Braddock brilliantly yet dutifully followed them.”

  “This is all just a game to you, you narcissistic piece of shit.”

  Warner just shrugged. “You two did a good job of playing it. I had plenty more little clues or threads I could have put out there, but I didn’t need to. You two were on Eddie just like that and if things broke right, you might even sweep up Kyle in the process. I mean, think about it. Who’d ever think of a double setup? It’s fucking brilliant.”

  “I thought Eddie was your friend. He’s been your friend since we were kids, Jeff. We were all friends—you, me, Jessie, Eddie, Steak, Corinne, Mickey, Lizzy.”