by L E Fraser
“Oh my God,” Sam whispered.
Reece took a breath. He had to finish. “Angel’s pants were down around her ankles and she was making these awful noises. Like a wounded animal. I kept telling her how sorry I was. Meanwhile, Sarah just strolled to the kitchen sink and washed her hands.”
“Please tell me you broke up with her,” she said.
“No, I was afraid to leave Angel alone.”
You’re lying to yourself and to Sam, he thought.
“I was stupid and in lust and…” He trailed off. His shame was a sour ball of burning acid in his gut. “A few weeks later, doctors diagnosed Sarah with breast cancer. It was aggressive and metastasized. I couldn’t leave.” When he reached for the wine again, the bottle was empty.
Sam was silent for a long time. Reece expected her to go upstairs, pack his belongings, and kick him out.
“Did anything like that happen again?” she finally asked.
“Not to my knowledge. Angel promised she’d tell me if her sister hurt her again.”
“When was the last time you spoke with Angel?”
Fresh shame flowed over him. “Sarah’s funeral. Angel had just turned sixteen.”
“Did she try to contact you over the years?”
“I ignored all her calls and emails. I abandoned her, just like everyone else.” Reece ran his fingers through his hair, struggling to control his emotions. “With everything that happened in that family, I should have realized Angel was at risk of mental illness. If I’d bothered to stay in touch, I would have been able to help her.” He paused before admitting the ugly truth. “If she’s doing these terrible things, I’m partially responsible.”
“Can you reach her?” Sam asked. “Is she on Facebook or any other social media site?”
He shook his head. “I checked after Margaret told us her brother was dating her, but I couldn’t find her. Social media would be a constant reminder of her unpopularity. She never had friends. Before Sarah’s death, Angel had become withdrawn. She acted like a beaten dog, always prepared for the next attack but incapable of defending herself.”
“Do you believe she’s calculating enough to abduct and murder multiple victims?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Anger changes people.”
“Her reaction to the abuse could have reached a breaking point in the past eight years.” She sounded dubious. “You’re describing severe psychological abuse at the hands of people who should have loved her. Psychopaths are born. Sociopaths are made.” She sighed.
Reece wanted Sam—his fiancée, not the psychologist—to yell at him. He needed her to tell him his actions were disgusting and shameful. He yearned for someone to hold him accountable and punish him for what he’d done to an innocent child.
“Are you going to say anything about what I did?”
She stood beside his chair and put her arm around his shoulders, tilting his chin so he met her eyes. “Good people do shitty things. It doesn’t define who we are at our core. You told me that once,” she said.
“But I was a cop and Angel was a child,” he whispered.
“A rookie cop who had just lost his whole family,” she said with compassion. “You made bad choices. I know who you are. You aren’t a bad person.”
“She targeted Bart because I know him. If he dies…” He choked up.
Sam wiped a tear from his cheek with the tip of her finger. “You don’t know that’s why she took Bart. Guilt amplifies everything. The fact you moved to Uthisca after her sister’s death doesn’t mean Angel hunted a boy from there to taunt you.”
Reece didn’t believe in coincidence. In his heart, he knew that Angel had chosen Bart because of him.
“Did Sarah’s parents like you? Would they speak with you? They might have some idea of where Angel would take the men.”
“I’m certain police have already interviewed them,” he said.
Sam stood and put the empty bottle in a return bin. “Since they aren’t releasing Angel’s name to the press, police wouldn’t disclose to her parents that she’s a key suspect in the murders. They’d take an indirect approach, perhaps suggesting she was a material witness to a crime.” She studied him with a solemn expression. “You had a relationship with them. There’s a good chance they’ll be more open with you than they would be with police.”
When he didn’t say anything, she crossed the large room and scooped Brandy into her arms.
He put their glasses into the dishwasher and followed her up the ladder staircase to the bedroom loft.
“Something feels wrong about this.” She put Brandy on the bed. “Why would Angel charge materials she planned to use in a murder to her credit card and use a mailbox in her name for delivery?”
“Yeah, that bugs me too,” he admitted.
“And why force Bart to switch to business if she was studying biochemistry?”
“A power-play to prove she controls him?” he suggested.
“I suppose,” Sam said dubiously. “But why steal potassium cyanide from a university lab? Don’t you have to sign out hazardous materials?”
“I don’t know. I assume so.” He didn’t see how any of this mattered. Angel was the Frozen Statue Killer and she had Bart. Reece went into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
She followed him, pulling off her T-shirt and jeans in the large walk-in closet. “This feels too neat.”
“Maybe she wants to get caught,” he mumbled through a mouthful of toothpaste.
Sam picked up her toothbrush. “In which case the forensic team would have found evidence at the scene and they didn’t. You can’t have it both ways.”
Reece finished getting ready for bed, wishing she’d drop it.
In the bedroom, she rubbed cream into the scars on her hands. “Emotional deprivation disorder typically doesn’t manifest into homicidal ideation,” she said. “We need to speak with her parents.” She nudged him toward his laptop, which sat on the top of his bureau.
With a sigh, he opened the computer and sent Dr. Stuart an email, adding his cell number at the end. The second he hit send, Reece regretted it. An obstruction of justice charge would destroy his law career before it even started. Everything he had worked so hard for was a heartbeat from blowing up in his face. Feeling resentful and a bit angry, he got into bed.
Sam cuddled against his chest. “You have to believe Bart’s still alive,” she said. “There’s time.”
Her words had a familiar ring. That was what Bryce had told Sam when Joyce vanished.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three Years Earlier
Sam
INSISTENT RINGING startles me awake. Exhaling sharply, I bolt upright in my sleeping bag. Sourness coats my dry tongue, and I gag from a phantom odour of decay.
In a cinematic nightmare, someone had restrained me spread-eagled on a steel table in a damp cellar. A high-pitched whining ricocheted inside the room. Suspended above me was a blinding light. The pain defied description.
“A dream,” I mumble.
Brandy licks my cheek and presses her furry body against my shivering arm. I rub my wrist, expecting the slickness of blood against ligature wounds.
Taking deep breaths, I concentrate on the aroma of fresh-cut lumber and the silver moonlight shimmering across the polished hemlock floor. My heartbeat slows, but it takes three tries before my shaking finger succeeds in swiping accept on my ringing cell.
“It’s Leo. Is Joyce with you?”
Tossing aside the sleeping bag, I fumble to find a lamp I plugged in beside my makeshift bed.
“It’s three-thirty,” I croak.
“She went out to mail a letter and grab groceries on Danforth Avenue,” he says. “That was at ten-thirty. She isn’t answering her phone.”
Joyce and Leo live in the Upper Beaches. A twenty-four-hour grocery store is just west of Main Street in Greektown. My sister suffers from insomnia and likes to do her shopping late. I’ve gone with her a few times. In addition to being a f
ood Nazi, Joyce inspects best-before dates and packs her groceries in a cooler she keeps in her trunk. Worried as she is about spoilage, she wouldn’t take a drive with food stored in the car. She’d pop into the market on her way home. Chances are she’s there now.
“Her cell probably died.” As soon as I say it, I realize it’s outlandish. Joyce views her phone as a vital appendage. She’d never let the battery die.
“Did you two have a disagreement?” My charming sister is an Olympic pouter. Disappearing would make her protective husband worry.
There’s a beat of silence before he says, “We argued about the cottage. But she agreed to apologize to you.”
She had called twice before I went to bed. I deleted the voice messages. But I doubt she apologized because my sister is sanctimonious. Regardless, Harvey and Leo are stuck in the middle of our petty disagreement. I need to quit avoiding her.
Reaching for my sneakers, I say, “I’ll check the market.”
“I’m so stupid. I never thought of that,” he says. “Thanks. I’ll meet you there.”
Once I find my wallet and keys, I trudge down the back stairs to the tenants’ parking. Outside, it’s unseasonably warm for mid-November and the full moon is high in the night sky. The streets are deserted and I reach the store in less than fifteen minutes. As soon as I pull into the east parking lot, I spot Joyce’s Lexus parked outside the front doors.
I imagine her glee when we race in with worried expressions. My sister adores being the centre of attention. Sitting in my Grand Am, I wait for Leo and try to figure out how to make Joyce understand why I won’t give her the cottage.
When Leo arrives, he gazes at Joyce’s Lexus with a bemused expression and meets me beside my car. “I feel terrible for dragging you out.”
“It’s okay. Let’s go find her.”
We enter and blink in the bright fluorescent light. One cashier is working and she glances up from an anatomy textbook she’s reading. She ignores me but smiles at Leo.
“You start on the left side and I’ll take the right,” I say to Leo. He trots over to the baskets of fresh produce.
In the cereal aisle, I meet a haggard woman with a baby in her arms. The infant’s face is crimson and her tiny features crinkle with rage as she wails. The exhausted mother juggles her flailing baby and reaches for a box of cereal. Two rows over, in the baby needs aisle, a lone man examines a tube of teething gel. No one else is in my section. At baking and spices, I run into Leo.
“Where is she?” I ask.
His confused gaze scans the store. “I didn’t see her.”
For the first time, I feel a pull of worry and go to the cashier. Her lips are moving mutely as she reads.
I hold my PI license and cellphone in front of the textbook. “Have you seen this woman tonight?”
She inspects the digital picture. “Why, did she do something?”
“She’s my wife,” Leo says.
“Oh, well, I haven’t seen her.”
“What time did you start?” I ask.
“Twelve.” Her eyes drift between Leo and me and her frown deepens. “Do you want me to get the manager?”
“Yes.”
We wait off to the side of the cash register. The man with the tube of teething gel joins the woman and baby. The mother is bouncing the howling infant while the father gestures toward the produce department.
“Help you?” a man asks to my right.
“Was this woman here tonight?”
His eyes widen as he ogles the picture. “No way. I’d remember her.”
My sister is gorgeous. There isn’t a man in the world who wouldn’t remember her.
“What time did you start?”
“Midnight.”
“There are security cameras, right?”
He nods.
I hold out my PI license. “I need to look at the footage between ten-thirty and now.”
“What? No. I can’t let you do that.”
“She’s my wife.” A ring of hysteria has crept into Leo’s voice. “Her car is outside.”
The manager licks his lips. His eyes dart to the right and left as if he hopes she’ll pop out from behind the candy rack.
Leo pulls out his wallet and removes all the bills. “I’ll pay you for your trouble.” A couple of twenties flutter to the ground.
The money intensifies the manager’s nervousness, and he glances up at a camera suspended from an overhead beam. “Come to my office.” He plucks the loose bills off the floor. They vanish into his pocket and he leads us to the back of the store.
The tiny office reeks of onions. On a cluttered desk is a half-eaten sandwich beside a white coffee mug with dark brown dribbles down the sides. Lining a wall is a bank of monitors that show different angles of the store’s interior and exterior. I home in on the view of the parking lot. Grocery carts block the front of Joyce’s Lexus and the camera angle doesn’t show beyond the rear of her vehicle, but at least the image is clear.
A uniformed security guard enters. “Sasha called me. What’s going on?”
“These people say a woman is missing,” the manager tells him. “That one’s a PI. She wants to look at security footage.”
I show the guard my badge and the digital photo of my sister. Something clouds his eyes and his jaw tightens. From his age and the way he holds himself, I suspect he’s a retired cop.
“My name is Dimitri. The monitors show real-time,” he states brusquely. “Saved data won’t have the same clarity. Low quality recording takes less disc space but the pixelation makes it blurry.” He sits and taps at a computer keyboard.
I lean over his shoulder and point at the exterior image that depicts the Lexus. “Start with that camera and go back to ten-thirty.”
He opens the archived file and fast-forwards it, slowing when Joyce pulls into the spot. The video is so hazy it’s impossible to distinguish her facial features. She gets out of the Lexus and disappears behind her raised trunk. A moment later, she lowers the trunk lid and strolls to the well-lit entrance. She’s holding insulated shopping bags.
He switches cameras and we follow her as she meanders through the aisles, picking up items along her way. At the dairy counter, a girl in her late teens talks to my sister. Without audio, we can’t hear the conversation but Joyce selects a block of cheese and hands it to the girl, who smiles and walks away.
Joyce carries her basket to the checkout. After a young man rings through her items and she pays, he picks up her bags. The girl with the cheese arrives at the cash. Joyce, the cashier, and the girl engage in a short conversation. Joyce takes the four bags from the cashier’s hands. She exits the store. The time stamp is twenty past eleven.
“Stop the tape.” I study the outdoor image.
There’s a vehicle parked beside Joyce’s Lexus. Carts hide the front grill and license plate, but it’s a minivan. A figure in a wheelchair is in the space between the two cars. The person is wearing a black sweater with the hood pulled over a baseball cap. The brim of the hat shadows his face but my instinct tells me it’s a man. A bad feeling rolls over me. Why wouldn’t he park in the accessible parking space on the other side of the door?
“Go ahead,” I tell Dimitri and he starts the playback again.
Joyce carries her bags to her car. The angle of the camera and the raised trunk lid block what she’s doing, but I imagine her fastidiously tucking her purchases into her cooler. She closes the trunk and stares at the man in the wheelchair.
“Is he calling her over?” Dimitri scrutinizes the grainy image on the monitor.
Joyce circles the rear bumper and stands behind the wheelchair. The occupant twists around and speaks to my sister. She answers, and reaches over to unlatch the man’s driver’s side door.
“She’s helping him.” My heart is thumping and a bitter taste of acid fills my mouth. “Stop the tape. That man wasn’t inside. Where did he come from?”
Dimitri taps on the keyboard and the recording runs backwards. Mere seconds after
Joyce enters the store, the minivan arrives. It might be a grey or white Chrysler. The driver’s side door opens and blocks the camera. Several seconds tick past. The door closes to reveal a man sitting in a wheelchair. His head is bowed.
“He never went inside,” I say. A hard knot of fear cramps my stomach.
Dimitri fast-forwards to the place we left off. Helplessness flows over me as the scene unravels. My fingers clench the backrest of Dimitri’s chair.
The car door blocks the man in the wheelchair, but Joyce is visible over the top. My sister removes one of her gloves. She shows him her hands. He says something. Joyce laughs and tucks her long hair behind her ear. A few minutes later, the door closes and she backs the empty wheelchair between the two vehicles. There’s no sign of the man.
The minivan’s rear liftgate opens. It blocks Joyce’s motions but I figure she’s collapsing the chair and lifting it into the trunk.
“Wait! What’s that?” Leo peers at the screen. “Is that the handicapped driver?”
My breath catches. On the screen, the man jumps from the car and lunges out of sight behind the liftgate. A second later, the liftgate closes and he leaps into the van. The vehicle backs up and leaves the camera’s range.
Dimitri reverses the recording and stops it when the vehicle’s front grill enters the frame. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be. Can you get a partial on the plate?” He zooms in but the quality is so bad that the blob on the screen doesn’t even resemble an automobile.
“Where’s Joyce?” The colour blanches from my brother-in-law’s face, leaving his complexion grey.
“In the back,” I whisper.
“Jesus. I’ll call the cops.” Dimitri reaches into his pocket. “I used to be on the job. I’ll get detectives here.”
“No, this isn’t right,” Leo mutters. “She was helping him.”
The security guard speaks into his cell. The words woman, long black hair, and abducted punch me in the gut. Dimitri jogs out of the office to the market’s front doors.
“There must be a missing section on the tape,” Leo says. “It’s a technical glitch. Yeah, that’s it. She put away the chair and got into her car. Sure, she’s in her car.”