“You’re strong. Jo is a great support system. You can beat this.”
She nodded. “We all have demons chasing us in one way or another.” She sipped from her glass. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
Megan smiled. “I don’t mean to be intrusive; don’t feel you need to answer this question, I’m just curious. When you first found out, what went through your mind?” Megan hoped she hadn’t crossed any boundaries.
Leigh answered without hesitation. “I wanted to run away. Get as far away from it as I could, but …”
“But?”
“But I knew I couldn’t do that. I’m a fighter, and also there’s Jo. I didn’t want to let her down. I knew what I was supposed to do. Step up to the plate and march on. Otherwise, what is it for?”
Megan was hesitant to continue, but Leigh seemed relaxed and open to talking about what she’d been enduring. “Well, what—” Megan sighed, trying to figure out how to phrase the question. “What has it done to your faith, or beliefs? Aren’t you angry?”
Leigh nodded. “There are times, yes, I yell and cry and get frustrated. But then I get up, brush myself off. When you first find out, it’s like a set of elephant tusks just rammed through every ounce of faith and trust and hope you had for a good, comfortable life. But good and easy are moments we make. They’re earned. I’m not a religious woman—at least, I don’t consider myself one. I’d say I’m more of a spiritual person without the organized religion part.”
“With everything you’re going through, you still have faith?” Megan shook her head and raised her glass. “Leigh, you’re an amazing woman.”
“Not so amazing, just exercising free will.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have a choice as to how we react to the meteorites hitting us in life. This is just my way, most of the time. Hey”—she tapped Megan’s glass again to gain eye contact—“I have my bad days. The moments when I’m so sad and angry I just want to hide under my blanket. And I do. The trick is knowing when it’s time to get up, and just keep going.” Leigh studied Megan as she took in her words.
Megan trailed her finger around the rim of the wineglass. “I’m not ready to come out from under the covers yet,” Megan whispered with a crooked smile.
“You’re closer than you think.” Leigh gave her a warm smile. “Sweetie, it’s either faith or fear.”
Megan sat for a moment, remembering when fear won. It was now time for faith.
Twenty
Megan closed the gate to the deck behind her and Clyde did his last jaunt in the yard for the evening. She fumbled for her keys, dropping them in the snow. Thankfully the sensor lights gave her direction as to where they landed. She was wiping them off when once again a light in Judge Campbell’s house caught her eye.
“Come on, Clyde, we’re going for a ride.” She opened the back door to the truck and Clyde more than willingly jumped in. She was on the judge’s street in less than two minutes. As Megan approached, she doused the lights. Vivian’s gatehouse was pitch black. Megan assumed that whatever happened earlier, Vivian was probably still at the police station. She waited ten minutes. There was no light, no movement she could discern. She turned the engine over, and the high beams automatically turned on.
Megan was about to put Arnold in reverse when a man ran from the back of Judge Campbell’s house into the woods. Megan jumped out of the truck and jogged up the driveway. He was out of sight in seconds. The only light she had came from the truck, so the limitations of running in the dark through the woods proved senseless. The saving grace in Megan’s mind was that she trusted her gut, something she thought she’d lost faith in. Even if she was grabbing at straws, that gave her a hint of hope.
“Who are you and what are you looking for?” she whispered.
Megan dialed her cell. She was more surprised at her lack of hesitation than she was that her call went directly to voicemail. “Callie, it’s me. I’ve changed my mind. Call me.” She felt a tinge of the old Megan stirring within. The Megan McGinn who was never afraid, not of anyone or anything.
Faith, not fear, she reminded herself.
Megan’s phone rang as soon as she returned to the lake house. “Hey,” Megan said. “You got my message?”
“Yes,” Callie said. “What changed your mind?”
She ignored his question. “Listen, I’m going to do what I can to help, but—and this is the most important part, so you better be listening—I will only help on the down-low.” Megan was adamant with her demand. “No one is to know I have any role in this.” Her demand was met with silence. “Callie, it’s that or nothing.”
“Who the hell would I tell?”
“Wrong answer.”
“Okay, okay,” he rushed to appease her.
“I have one more question, and I want an honest answer.”
“What, Trouble?”
“Why are you so invested in this? There’s more to it than she’s a deaf girl who works for you. Why are you getting involved?”
“Vivian doesn’t have anyone. It just seems like the right thing to do. My father was a dick too. Everyone deserves better.”
Megan didn’t have the experience of a terrible father growing up, so she let it alone. “So, what’s the latest? Where are you?”
“At the station. She’s basically just sitting in a room.”
“They’re holding her while they run the knife for prints and blood. Did you find a lawyer?” she asked.
“I’ve put a few feelers out. Do you really think it’s at that point? And shouldn’t you be down here?”
“You’re sitting in the police station after a knife was found in her car, after her father—bastard or not—was found dead. I think it’s far beyond that point. And what about ‘down-low’ did you not get? Detective Krause will do anything to nail someone for this, and she hates me. How do you think that will help Vivian?”
Callie sighed. “Sorry, you’re right. I’m exhausted, I wasn’t thinking.”
“Get a lawyer down there, now. If Forensics finds even the smallest hair, fiber, print, whatever, they’ll work fast on this.”
“Okay. What are you going to do now?”
“I have a thought.” On that note she hung up on Callie, grabbed a flashlight from under the sink, and picked up her car keys. “Clyde, I’m flying solo on this one.”
Twenty-One
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Megan said to herself as she walked through the snow-covered woods about to break into a dead man’s mansion. She’d intentionally parked on a side street about a quarter-mile away. The snow came up to mid-calf, but there were animal tracks enough to mask her footprints. She could feel the cold through her boots and her feet felt like cement blocks, but there was no turning back now. As she approached the back of the house, she thought—actually, more hoped—that the man she witnessed running into the woods would not be there to greet her.
She crossed the cleared stone patio and used the end of her flashlight to knock out a window, which turned out to be in the kitchen area. Noise wasn’t an issue; the judge had exactly one neighbor and she was deaf. Megan climbed through and turned the flashlight on, keeping it low. Since she was able to see someone in the house the night she tumbled down the driveway, another person might spy her trespassing, especially given the judge’s death was now a high-profile case for the town. Megan walked to the front of the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary—unless you found it ordinary that every photo in every room of the judge’s home was of himself. Megan decided it most definitely was not ordinary. “Narcissistic bastard.”
She found herself in the great room eyeing the expensive furniture, television, and paintings. “Okay, that guy was obviously not a robber, or most of this would be gone. Every room has expensive items in it, all in tact. So why were you murdered, Judge Campbell? What were you up to?”
Megan walked down the stairs to see headlights coming up the driveway. “Shit!” It was a police car. She flipped the switch on her flashlight, throwing herself up against the wall in between two heavily draped windows.
Now there were two flashlights beaming into the house; she could hear bits and pieces of the policemen’s conversation. One asked why they had to do an hourly check on the property. The other complained about it as well, but added it was their job. Megan held her breath as they danced their light beams across the front of the house, then turned back to their squad car. Megan was glad the men did a half-assed job of their hourly inspection. If they had walked around the house, they would have found a broken window in the kitchen. Which would have prompted Megan to bolt out the front door so fast a cheetah would need to stop and use an inhaler in an attempt to keep up with her.
“Dumb asses,” she whispered.
She waited until they drove out of the driveway and were halfway down the street before she dared continue her search. She turned on the flashlight, checking her watch. One more hour. I have to pick up my speed, can’t be here when Dumb and Dumber come back.
Megan found the judge’s office and rummaged through his papers and drawers, her thin winter gloves making the work slower than she’d like. She came across nothing out of the ordinary. She stared at a photo on the desk, of him on a hunting trip holding his rifle and a dead turkey displaying his Chiclet smile. She shook her head in disgust.
The clock was working against her. Megan continued her search and reminded herself of the importance of this being an illegal pursuit. If she found anything, she wasn’t sure how she would get it into the right hands.
A problem for another time. It might not even matter.
Directly opposite the judge’s office was a door she thought was a closet until she noticed a broken latch on it, most likely from the team investigating after his bravura performance as the largest fish bait ever. Megan pulled open the door. One long stairwell led down to a finished basement. She found a light switch and the entire floor lit up.
With no windows anywhere in the lower level, Megan was safe from being caught, at least in the short term. The walls were painted in flat colors to depict stones. Tapestries with the judge’s monogram, MXC, sewn into each one covered the walls. The furnishings were decidedly different from the expensive, modern feel of the upper level. This room possessed a Gothic tone. Dark colors, rich reds and browns, and large oak chairs faced a movie screen. A home theater was at the rear of the room with a stacked bar and an additional full kitchen hidden behind a purple drape, also bearing the judge’s initials.
Down the hall Megan walked under exposed wooden beams, approaching a large cathedral-shaped door. She walked through it to find what was obviously the gun room, given there must have been at least forty rifles, shotguns, and pistols in sight. Hell, forty had to be a low-ball estimation. Every wall with the exception of one had more self-portraits, and frames from the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation.
It was the bare wall that intrigued Megan. It was too stark given the level of egomaniacal decor in the home. A small wooden coffee table holding gun magazines was the only item within several feet of the empty panel. The room looked unbalanced, like that wasn’t a wall at all. She pressed on the wall, felt up and down the sides, Nothing. Her gut feeling that something was off was volcanic now. She checked her watch: thirty-five minutes, tops, before the two policemen returned to perform their stellar mall-cop duty. When Megan looked at the time, her attention was drawn down to her dripping wet boots.
“Some fucking sneak I am.” Except the water didn’t pool around her feet; it seeped through the joints in the wood floor. “Fucking hell, something is under here.”
Megan knelt down, pounding each board under the table. Nothing. She hurled the magazines to the floor and tried moving the table. “You’re bolted down? What is going on here?” Megan felt each leg of the table. On all four were silver horseshoe symbols, small, hardly noticeable. She ran her fingers over them and pressed into the end legs until she heard a click. The hardwood floor in front of the empty wall slowly lifted. As Megan raised the end of the table, the sound of hinges opening followed. In one motion the table was on its side and the section of floor underneath now was perpendicular to the ceiling. Another stairwell, another room.
“I think I found your secret, Campbell.”
Megan used her flashlight. The small puddle from her boots had dripped down onto the first step. Before she began her descent, she double-checked the holster attached to her hip, though she knew her gun was intact—it was second nature. The memory of the ambush on the dock quickly returned, and she pulled her gun out. The moment she reached the last stair, she felt the urge to gag. “Jesus Christ.”
The air fresheners plugged into the wall weren’t strong enough to cover the stink of old cigars, booze, and sex that filled the room, not to mention the smell of old blood. She found a light switch and was, even for her, surprised when she lit the room. A king-size bed with red silk sheets was positioned in the center of the room. Chairs similar to those in the home theater circled the bed. The sheets were mussed. Megan used her gun to move the top sheet aside. There were multiple stains underneath. Hanging on the wall were five black satin robes with hoods. All of them had a crest of some sort sewn onto the back. The table at the back of the room was filled with what could only be thought of as the Disney World of sex toys: vibrators, leather bed restraints, anal power beads, a strap-on, bondage kits, nipple clamps, sex-slave kits.
“Jesus.” Megan looked over at the wall, where a leather whip was hanging. “No home should be without one.” She noticed three medicine bottles on the table. The prescription was scratched off, but it was obvious the little blue pills were Viagra. A podium stood in the corner holding a leather-bound book. She flipped through the pages. It read more like a ledger than the sex diary it obviously was.
The boy struggled at first, I overpowered him quickly. The men enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game I played in the beginning. I need to remember it for next time. Note to self, our delayed member deserves two experiences on our next meeting.
“Boy?” Megan looked back to the table. “Oh my God.” Now she did feel as though she would retch. “Oh my God.”
She didn’t know why, but she began taking photos of the room, the robes, the toys, and the leather book. When she took a picture of the podium, she saw two wooden boxes resembling large humidors underneath. One held cigars; the other, DVDs.
“You fuckers videotaped this? Big mistake, assholes.” She grabbed three, as she couldn’t carry the whole box with her, and she didn’t have the time. Her hour was nearly up. She turned off the lights and was about to close off the hidden sex room and then had a better thought. She left the entrance open. “I barely found this. I need to make sure the mall cops find it.”
She sprinted up the stairs, grabbed the phone in the kitchen, and dialed 911. She heard the operator ask, “What’s your emergency?” then placed the receiver on the counter.
They would trace the call to Judge Campbell’s line, see it was broken into, and hopefully be smart enough to search the house.
Megan went back out through the window, DVDs in hand, knowing it was not going to be a popcorn-and-rom-com night when she arrived back at the house.
Twenty-Two
Megan sat in front of her computer holding the DVDs she’d confiscated from Campbell’s home. She hedged on viewing them. She knew what she’d find. Willingly going back into the pit, bearing witness to the most appalling, cruel acts by human beings—monsters, really—made her take pause. She needed to remind herself of the many crime scenes when she had to disconnect at a certain point, disengage her feelings from the victim’s and their family’s. The personal note Nappa brought from her last case was a sore reminder of her failings, which was the very reason it remained unopened. She needed to admit, if only to her
self, that emotional compartmentalization was not her strong suit after all.
She loaded the first DVD into the computer.
Four men sat in chairs facing the bed. The hooded robes veiled their faces. There was one chair not spoken for. It was on a step, meant to be higher, more important than the rest.
That has to be Judge Campbell’s.
The room was filled with candles. The chandelier above the bed was lit. Megan heard the boy before she was able to see him on screen. He was crying. He looked to be twelve, maybe thirteen, but his whimpers made him sound like a toddler. He swayed back and forth, as if he were drugged or drunk. The leader of the group returned to his seat and removed his hood. His face was covered in a gothic-style black metal mask. The leader ordered the boy to his knees, and in front of each member seated, he was commanded to perform fellatio.
“Jesus Christ!” Megan put her hands up to her head. “You fucking bastards.” She had to stand up and look away. Then a scream in the video made her turn back. The boy was being raped now, attacked by the leader while the camera closed in on his face. When his assault was complete, the leader took a candle and lit something. Megan couldn’t tell what the object was. The footage was far too dark. The leader ordered the boy to go back on the bed, face down, while two other members held him still. The leader’s actions were now in full sight. He was holding a metal rod, glowingly hot. He pressed it to the boy’s lower back, just above his tailbone. The young boy wailed in agony.
“Fucking hell.” Megan knew those screams would not leave her memory for a very long time, if ever.
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