by Keri Lake
My mother lies on her back across grandfather’s desk, each of her bare legs bent up at either side of him. With every thrust of his hips, he grunts and flinches, and she turns her head in my direction. I can see the glisten of tears running down her temples, but she doesn’t cry aloud.
Her eyes flip open, and she must see me peering in, because she lifts her head, brows furrowed.
“Stop! Stop!” She kicks her legs, pushing her knees into his chest. “Stop it! He’s watching!”
Instead of stopping, he grits his teeth and yanks her to the edge of the desk, jabbing his hips faster. “Like hell, I’m going to stop now,” he growls. “Hold still, girl!”
“Stop! I can’t let him see this!”
I back away from the door, my heart beating inside my chest. Disgust and panic battle inside my guts. Her father? Her own father! Pushing to my feet, I set to run back down the hall, but a scream, cut short by gurgling, urges me to spin back toward the door.
I peer through the keyhole again, to find grandfather’s hands at my mother’s throat, his face red, head tipped back, his hips still crashing into her legs.
My mother’s face is red, too, her tongue sticking out a bit.
I slam through the door and see that he’s strangling her. “Stop it! You’re killing her!”
Eyes wide, he directs his attention down toward my mother, and his whole body shakes. When he pulls out of her, his manhood is sticking up, fluids squirting out the tip of it, which he cups with his hand.
“Analiese, wake up! Ana!” One rough hand jostles her jaw in a way that angers me, as I watch him try to shake her awake. “Analiese, you wake up right now!”
Barreling toward him, I knock into his side, and he stumbles, catching himself on the desk.
A hard whack against my cheek sends a ringing noise through my ears, and my jaw slips like it’s unhinged itself.
“You ever touch me again, Boy, and I’ll kill you!” His whole body is shaking, eyes red and hostile, burning, as if he would send me off to death beside her.
I wish he would.
I twist back around to my mother, who lies motionless, staring up at the ceiling. Mouth wide, lips blue. Even at my age, there’s no denying she’s dead.
“You killed her.” The watery shield across my eyes softens her angelic face even more. “My mother.”
“She was my Analiese. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Please wake up, Momma.” Resting my head against her chest, I listen for her heartbeat, the one that’s put me at ease on nights that she’d held me when the headaches set in.
Only silence.
I lay against her for a few more minutes, replaying the last moments of her life inside my head. I want to go back to playing the piano, back to the soothing sounds of the metronome.
Dread burrows in my gut at the thought of what’s to come. With my mother gone, life in this house will be rife with misery. Subject to the torment of both my grandfather and uncle.
“You’ll not say a word about this, or I will string you up in the shed and watch you bleed out.”
“What will you do with her?”
“Bury her. In the back woods. That’s where she’d want to be.”
As I lay against my dead mother, I stare toward the doorway and see Carl peeking in.
Smiling back at me.
At the time, I wished I’d stayed playing the piano, entranced by that hypnotic sound, oblivious to everything around me. Breaking from those thoughts, I roll my head against my shoulders and slouch down in my seat. For hours, I’ve sat watching this neighborhood, with no sign of the white van.
Jonah and Nola exit the house, likely conducting another one of their sweeps. They head out every day, a couple times a day, searching the neighborhood. I want to tell them their efforts are futile, a waste, because they’ll never find Oliver here, but I can’t say a word. The moment I do, the opportunity to find the kid will be lost, and who knows how Carl will react.
The two head off in the opposite direction from where I’m sitting. A few times, I could’ve sworn they’ve seen me sitting in the car, but the preoccupation with Oliver seems to have blinded them to anything else. Even the sleek black Audi parked a few houses down from Nola’s.
The house stands dark and quiet.
I change the settings on the security cam app to Motion Detect, as I usually do when they leave, and lean my seat back a bit. Minutes pass, and I yawn, stretching in what little bit of movement I can muster in the seat.
Then my phone beeps.
With a frown, I lift it from the passenger seat and click on the app.
In Nola’s room.
I stare down at the image on my phone, the camera’s view, where a shadowy figure moves about her room. My gaze shoots to her bedroom window, where the hallway light gives a small bit of illumination. Attention flipping from the phone to the real thing, I watch as the figure enters her room, the camera panning with his movement. He strides over to her bed, brushes his hand across the bedspread, and lifts her pillow to his face.
Snaking out of the car, I keep my eyes glued on the camera, waiting for him to step in front of the dresser, where I’ll see his face in the mirror’s reflection.
“C’mon, asshole, a little more.” I blindly cross the street, unwilling to divide my attention with anything else. He moves deeper into the room, but when he finally stands before the mirror, his face is hidden behind a black mask, shiny, as though made from latex. As I get closer to the house, a flash of headlights beam up ahead, and I duck behind a nearby row of bushes, while Jonah and Nola creep up the drive.
Fuck.
The two exit the vehicle, talking about another sweep of the woods Jonah is planning for the following day.
“Shouldn’t we be looking for someone?” Nola asks, sliding out of the passenger side of his truck.
“I’ve canvassed this entire neighborhood. Not a single person saw anyone coming, or going. We have no witnesses, no suspect.”
“Any chance it might be the same guy who murdered those women?”
“That’s not his MO. There are no male victims.”
He’s wrong, though. Jonah just hasn’t stumbled upon the one male victim I’m certain Carl’s eliminated, just because he got in his way.
I glance down at the phone app again and watch as the shadowy figure peers out the window. An upward glance shows him staring down at Nola and Jonah, who seem to remain totally oblivious to his presence.
My heart is racing. I want to bust into that house and tackle the little bastard to the ground.
Taking my eyes off him only long enough to catch the two of them entering the house, I glance back up to the bedroom and see he’s gone. I scroll through the cams, to see where he might’ve disappeared. The motion detectors sense Jonah and Nola, throwing me off as they alert their location instead of the other.
I scroll back to the upper part. He’s nowhere.
The lower part, where I catch Nola and Jonah, as she makes her way up the staircase.
Jonah stops abruptly.
I turn up the volume and watch him lean over the bannister, looking toward the kitchen. Swapping the living room for the kitchen view, I zoom in on the backdoor, which stands wide open.
Tucking the phone in my pocket, I make a dead run toward Nola’s backyard, passing the open backdoor. A figure ahead of me scales the fence to the neighbors.
“Hey! Stop! Police!” Jonah calls out behind me, but I’m already scaling the fence after the stranger.
Through the yard, he races toward another fence, which he scales with ease, and he’s on the next block. A dog barks somewhere, and it’s not until I hop the fence, I notice the Rottweiler chained to a tree. As I sprint after the figure, the dog barrels toward me and nips at my coat, just out of reach.
Through the front yard, I pound pavement after the guy, who’s about a block ahead of me, dashing up the sidewalk. Just a few feet beyond him sits the white van.
He hops into the driver’s seat
, and I push speed from my legs. The squeal of tires signals his retreat, and I just make it to slam my hand against the side panel of the van, catching his masked stare in the sideview mirror, as he takes off down the street.
“Fuck! Fuck!” Out of air, I lean forward, resting my palms against my thighs to catch my breath. Even if I raced back toward my car, at this point, the bastard is long gone.
The sound of a siren signals Jonah’s approach, and with a groan, I duck out behind the adjacent house. The bright beam of a spotlight misses my hiding spot behind a bush, and the moment it’s gone, I book it over the fence, and the next, until I’m back in Nola’s yard.
She stands outside the door, arms crossed, blindly searching, until her eyes find mine. “Voss! Was that you in the house? Jonah heard something, and I thought it was you, so I told him to ignore it. Of course, he wouldn’t.”
“And good thing he didn’t. Wasn’t me.”
“He was in my house?”
“I’m guessing he entered after you and Jonah left.”
“You stayed?”
I don’t have time to explain that I’ve watched her house every night since I left. That my habits of stalking probably rival the serial killer’s at this point, in my efforts to catch the slick bastard. “I have to go before he notices my car. Get back in the house. Lock the doors, windows, everything, you hear?”
She nods, and I lean forward to kiss her.
Before Jonah can make his sweep of her block, I hustle toward my car and leave, catching sight of his bouncing spotlight two streets over.
* * *
Back in my hotel room, I pull up the security cam website on my computer, on a much bigger screen, and review the footage. Bastard entered the house much the same way I did, climbing up the roof of the porch. Only, instead of entering Nola’s bedroom, like I had, he must’ve gone in through the bathroom window. Ten minutes later, the footage shows me leaving through her bedroom window.
Nola enters the bathroom, and I gotta believe he’s hiding behind the shower curtain in that scene. She leaves soon after, but instead of following after her, he stays in the room. It’s not until she’s out of sight that he exits to the hallway, perhaps confirming she’s left the house, and enters the room again. There’s something in his hand I didn’t noticed the first time I viewed the footage, and I zoom in on what appears to be glasses dangling from his fingertips.
Oliver’s glasses?
It’s hard to tell.
In a few steps, he stands beside her made bed and runs a gloved hand over the bedspread. Picking up a pillow, he holds it against his face, as though breathing in the scent of her.
Then, just as before, he moves toward the mirror, but instead of focusing on his face, I take note of a logo etched into his shirt. Rewinding the footage back a couple seconds, I study his movements as he enters the room. The subtle draw of his coat that brings the logo into view.
It’s then I realize it’s not sloppy on his part or happenstance.
He wanted me to see it.
Lincoln Park Conservatory.
9
Nola
A chill carries on the air, even though I’ve made a point to close and lock all the windows. My senses are heightened, tuned in to the smallest sounds throughout the house. Jonah’s footsteps downstairs. The incessant drip of the bathroom sink, counting off my slowly unraveling calm. The wind against the panes like the cold breath of darkness waiting to drag me under any moment.
The way the shadows of passing cars outside move across the wall feels like a quiet watcher in the room.
I try not to think about the victims too much, but knowing their killer was in my house without my awareness, I can’t help it. What they must’ve felt, while he mutilated them. How alone. Cold. Helpless.
Perhaps what my son is feeling right now.
Clutching the edges of the bathroom sink, I squeeze my eyes and shake my head in a poor effort to dislodge the image of him lying without those pale blue eyes I’ve spent hours staring into.
I fear for Oliver to the extent that I’ve become numb to my own possible demise. A butcher was in my house. Looking to make me the next sacrifice in his sick and twisted game.
And yet, I hope he returns. I hope that son of a bitch is crazy enough to return back here, and maybe I’ll be one step closer to finding my son.
The sooner he comes for me, the faster this nightmare will come to an end.
As crazy as that sounds, I’m willing to be reckless for my son. I’m willing to throw myself into the hands of a killer to spare my son’s life.
In the meantime, I have to tell Jonah what I know, but not in a way that puts Oliver, or Voss, at risk. Perhaps making him see a possible connection between Oliver’s kidnapping and the other abductions.
But how?
My whole body shakes as I stand before the mirror, noting the dark circles beneath my eyes, the blotchy tone of my skin from hours of crying, new lines on my face where I’ve worried more than I ever have in my entire life.
Along with another police officer, Jonah has swept the house and the backyard twice, looking for any evidence of the trespasser from earlier. They’ve found nothing, so far.
I relieve myself quickly and flush the toilet, eyeing the closed shower curtain beside me. Hairs stand on the back of my neck, imagining an intruder standing on the other side of it, and I reach for the first object in sight. A toilet plunger.
Weapon in hand, I throw back the curtain, but find no one there, and blow out a long-held breath. An object on the floor steals my attention, though, and I reach down to lift a Ziploc bag from beside the shower drain. Contained within the bag is a phone. Just like Denny’s, with a black case protector and a small chip in the corner like the one he used to bitch about all the time.
With concentrated effort, I carefully place the phone into the sink and slide the bag open to remove it. There’s a notification on the screen, which I click on, and it takes me to an email app I don’t recognize and the accompanying message:
Let’s play a game of trust, Nola. Keep this phone nearby and wait for a text.
In the meantime, enjoy the video.
There is no attached video, and I click out of the app and open the phone’s files. My pulse hammers out a dizzying pace, and I feel the need to sit down.
Please don’t be Oliver, please don’t be Oliver.
Stumbling out of the bathroom, I make my way to the bed and plop down on the edge, clamping my eyes to settle the spinning of the room. My heart feels three sizes too big inside my chest, as if it’s expanding, using up all the air.
I click on a video saved in his photo library.
A woman’s ass jiggles to the sound of slapping flesh and moans. Red hair is draped across her back, as she looks behind at the cameraman and smiles, her eyes hooded with lust. Even from this angle, I recognize her. Beth. Beyond her, and off to the side, Harv sits on a nearby chair, his fist furiously pumping his cock as he watches what I presume is his wife getting fucked.
By the killer?
In spite of the nauseating nature of the video, like watching amateur porn, I’m relieved to find it isn’t some terrorist-style plea from my son. I blow out a shaky breath and drag my trembling had across my forehead.
“Bet your wife never lets you fuck her in the ass, does she?” Beth asks, and both she and Harv chuckle.
My finger hovers over the button to click out of this shit, but I pause when a hand reaches out and spreads her cheeks, giving the perfect view of a cock entering her. And a familiar watch strapped to his wrist.
Coldness seeps into my chest.
The cameraman groans, squeezing her ass. “Fuck, no, she doesn’t. Think she’s afraid of my dick.”
Denny’s voice skates down my spine, and I slap a hand over my mouth as both anger and disgust move through me in equal measure.
He moans again, the sound of his pleasure churning my stomach. “Fuuuuck. I’m about ready to come all over this hole.”
Beth�
�s breathy laugh is a sickening sound as she squirms with Denny’s assault. “Do it. Give me your cum, baby.”
“I love that dirty shit. Nola never talks to me like that.”
“You bring Nola over sometime,” Harv says between broken breaths. “She’ll be talking dirty and taking it up the ass in no time.”
All three of them laugh, and the camera shifts toward the mirror, giving me a clear shot of my husband fucking Beth in its reflection. “Hear that, Nola? Look how fun it is to take it up the ass.”
“Mmmm! Yes, baby!” Bethany reaches beneath her body to squeeze her tits. “Feels so good.”
I cut out of the video, tossing the phone onto the bed beside me. The urge to throw up has me racing back into the bathroom, and I just make it in time to expel the small bit of food I ate earlier in the night. Another torrent pumps up my throat and splashes into the toilet water. I flush quickly and pull myself up to the sink to rinse my mouth.
Bastard didn’t even wear a fucking condom.
The sound of moaning echoes through the room once more, and with a beat of panic slamming into my bones, I scramble from the bathroom to find Jonah, holding the phone.
“What is this?” he asks. “Denny?”
A split-second wave of embarrassment ripples through me, quickly trampled by revulsion and the reminder that everyone in that video is probably dead right now.
“Who sent this to you? And whose phone is this?”
“Looks like Denny’s.”
“When did you get it back?”
Scratching the back of my head, I contemplate whether to tell him the truth, or lie. I opt for the truth. The police never retrieved Denny’s phone the night of his murder, and in spite of trying to locate it on GPS, it was never found. For a moment, my thoughts drift to Voss, and the watch I found in his briefcase. I have to remind myself of what Voss told me—that he’s innocent. That his uncle has been orchestrating all of this in an effort to get revenge for Nora.
He could be lying.
That thought crossing my mind, too, tells me Voss isn’t yet entirely excluded as a possibility. At least as an accomplice, anyway.