by L E Fraser
“You lied about knowing Angelina Stuart,” she stated. “Should I take a pre-emptive strike and eliminate you from my life because you might lie again?”
“That’s not the same thing. We’re in a serious relationship.” They were going in circles. “You didn’t want to hire Eli in the first place.”
“But I trusted your judgement. Extend the same respect,” she said.
The new murders had dredged up painful memories for Sam. She wasn’t sleeping and Reece wondered if sleep deprivation was impairing her judgement. The other explanation for her staunch defence of a liar was because she’d bonded with Eli. That was out of character for Sam, but Reece knew he hadn’t been around for her. With her defences lowered, their deceiving intern had wormed his way into Sam’s circle of trust. And when it came to her friends, she was loyal to a fault.
Trying a different direction, he said, “Give me one good reason to keep him on.”
“Behoo.”
He didn’t understand what their hacker had to do with the situation. “What about him?”
“Behoo is hard to reach and his attitude is poor,” she said. “We can’t function without a reliable hacker.”
“We’ll replace him.”
“How? Go online and search for illegal hackers?” She stomped to the sink and poured a glass of water. “Eli has outstanding computer skills and helped me out with a hacking job. We need those skills. He even found a picture of Angel.”
Reece twisted in his seat. “What? Where is it?”
She rummaged in her laptop bag and slapped a five-by-seven photo into his open hand.
“That’s not Angelina Stuart.” He dropped it on the kitchen table.
“Yes, it is. I sent it to Margaret Walsh. She confirmed that it’s Bart’s girlfriend.”
Reece frowned and picked up the photograph. A girl’s appearance changed over the course of eight years, but bone structure didn’t.
“This woman has long, thin fingers.” Reece pointed. “Angel’s fingers are short and stubby.” He tapped the image. “Angel has a heart-shaped face and a widow’s peak. This girl’s face is square and her hairline is straight. The nose is too large. The chin and jawline are wrong, and the mouth is too wide. I’m telling you, this isn’t Angelina Stuart.”
“But it is,” she insisted.
Reece took a photo with his phone. “I’m sending it to Dr. Stuart.” After putting his cell on speaker, he called Angel’s father and asked him to review the picture.
“That’s not my daughter,” the man said.
“Are you sure?” Sam asked. “You haven’t seen her in a few years.”
“I would recognize my own flesh and blood,” he replied tersely. “Reece, what has this woman got to do with my daughter?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Can you give me Angel’s last known address?”
“I told you, she isn’t there. The superintendent said Angel left three months ago.” He sighed. “This isn’t the first time my daughter has absconded and expected me to pay the penalties to break the lease.”
“I’d like to talk to the superintendent,” Reece said without thinking. He couldn’t interfere in an ongoing homicide investigation, he told himself again. A charge of obstruction of justice would seal his fate and the Crown Attorney’s office would never offer him an articling position.
Dr. Stuart recited an address. “What’s this all about?”
“Someone used your daughter’s name in the commission of a crime,” Reece said.
“The police didn’t say anything about a crime.” Panic flooded the professor’s voice.
Reece quickly said, “Please keep this conversation private.”
“You don’t want me to contact the detectives?” Dr. Stuart asked in confusion.
“No, I don’t. Give me a day or two, okay?”
Dr. Stuart reluctantly agreed and Reece disconnected.
Sam’s expression was skeptical. “The police must know about this woman, so why do they suspect Angel?”
He sighed. “They don’t. My guess is they figured this out after Bryce told us Angel was their suspect. I doubt he’ll share new evidence, but I’ll try.” Reece dialled homicide, but Bryce wasn’t in the office. He didn’t have the staff inspector’s cell number and had no option but to leave a message.
When he finished his call, Sam was putting on her coat.
“Where are you going?”
“Following your thread. Maybe the superintendent will recognize this photo.” Her hand hovered over their alarm pad. “Are you coming or not?”
So Angelina Stuart wasn’t Bart’s girlfriend, Reece thought with relief. She hadn’t met the missing freshmen on Bumble, and she hadn’t abducted them. No, Angel was a victim. Again. A vision of her cowering outside the bathroom, her face covered in tears and blood, rose up in Reece’s guilt-ridden mind.
He reached for his coat and followed Sam down the back stairs to the parking lot. They drove in silence to a three-storey walk-up on the outskirts of campus. The brick building was a box with a few windows and no balconies. Inside a small lobby that reeked of ammonia, they found a call button for the superintendent. Rather than letting them in, a middle-aged woman met them in the lobby.
“I’ve spoken to detectives about the Stuart girl multiple times,” she said irritably. “Don’t see what I can tell a couple of PIs.”
“Angelina’s parents are worried,” Reece said.
She snorted. “They didn’t strike me as worried. Her father was furious that he had to pony up some dollars to put things right. Tried to tell me it wasn’t his responsibility, even though he’d co-signed the lease.”
“She didn’t pay her rent?” Reece asked.
The woman shrugged her broad shoulders. “Did until she didn’t. Up and disappeared. Left all her stuff. Cost me a fortune to have it hauled away.”
“You threw out everything?” Sam asked.
“Had to rent the space,” the woman declared.
“Do you recognise this girl?” Reece showed her the picture.
She dug a pair of glasses out of a pocket in her pink hoodie and peered at the picture. “Looks like Angel’s friend. She didn’t have any others. Lived here two years. Never saw her with anyone until this girl came along.” She jabbed the picture with a pointed fingernail covered in streaky pink polish. “They were inseparable. I think they were lovers.” She chortled.
“Do you know her name?” Reece asked.
She shook her head. “Nope. Told the police all of this.”
“Do you recall when you noticed her hanging around with Angel?” Sam asked.
“Start of school. We had the units painted. The painters couldn’t get in because Angel changed her locks. Went up to talk to her but she wouldn’t say a word. Let her friend do all the yakking. Rude bitch,” she muttered. “Told them they could get the hell out since they wouldn’t follow the rules. The bitch laughed in my face.”
“You evicted Angel?” Reece asked.
“In my books, she skipped. Didn’t pay the gas or hydro, either.”
“When was the last time you saw either of them?” Sam asked.
“October,” she said. “Before Halloween. Can’t say for sure when they left but they were gone by November. Had a locksmith break in.”
“And nothing was missing?”
The woman scowled. “How should I know? I don’t snoop around my tenants’ apartments. A toothbrush was in the bathroom. There was a suitcase in the closet.”
“What about a computer?” Reece asked.
Her scowl deepened. “I got the right to confiscate what I can to cover back rent.”
“You sold it,” Reece guessed.
“Laptop and phone. Nice one, too. One of those new iPhones. Told the cops. They didn’t treat me like a common thief so there’s no reason you should. I got food on the stove.” She disappeared back through the door, yanking on it once to ensure it locked behind her.
“Angel wouldn’t leave without her phone,”
Sam said.
He agreed. “Not by choice.”
“The Frozen Statue Killer abducted your best friend’s son,” she said. “She stole the identity of your ex-girlfriend’s sister. That can’t be a coincidence.”
She was right. They had a link to the serial killer. It was Reece.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In the Cellar
Angel
MARTIN IS DEAD. Two nights ago, she dragged him from his cage. When she visits in the dark, the one she takes doesn’t come back. Martin never talked to me, but I’ve grown to care for Bart. Our cages are close and we’ve learned how to whisper without our voices activating the torturous music and strobe lights.
In addition to Bart, there is a musician named Gavin. He rarely speaks to us, and I don’t like the way he engages with the monster when she visits. It’s as if he believes he can befriend her so her feelings of fondness will prevent his death. Gavin’s desperation to gain her favour terrifies me because he might tell her about the whispered conversations Bart and I share. The last time she came in the dark, it shamed me to hope she would take Gavin. This morning, when she turned on the lights to feed and water her captives, Gavin stood blinking in his pen. The open door of Martin’s cage attested to the fact that he is gone.
We can’t tell time here because of the impenetrable darkness. I don’t know when she trapped me, but it was long before she brought the first male. She gives me water but minimal food, although she feeds her male pets well. For some reason, it’s important to her that they maintain a certain level of health. They have warm clothing, while I have only the jeans and sweater I was wearing when she tricked me. The jeans hang from my hips now, and the yarn in my sweater is unravelling. Dampness seeps into my bare feet, and my bones ache from the constant chill.
I’m filthy, but she doesn’t allow me to wash. However, she removes the men one at a time to shower. Bart told me she inspects their bodies and slathers ointment onto any break in the skin. The wound on Bart’s face is barely noticeable now. Last time she took him from his cell, he returned with a haircut. He could be next.
Bart studies everything during feeding, when fluorescent light illuminates the cellar. Sympathy filled his wide eyes when he first saw me huddled in the corner of my cage, shivering. That expression of selfless, human compassion made me fall in love with him. He memorized the distance between our confinements so he can flick food to me in the dark through the metal links of his cage. I’ve grown skilled at snagging the morsels and dragging them through the filth. Without those rations, I would have starved by now.
She never hits the male captives, but she abuses me. She screams at me that I ruined everything when I lied to her. She berates me for being loathsome and unworthy. When she works herself into a frenzied rage, she unlocks the cage and flies at me. I’m too weak to defend myself. The only dignity I can salvage is to refuse to cry out in pain. My leg is broken and splintered bone protrudes from a gash across my shin. It smells putrid but the swelling has stretched the fabric of my jeans so tight that I have no sensation below my knee. A tooth broke last time she attacked me. That pain is unbearable. Whether I die of infection or she kills me, what difference does it make? No one will mourn my death. But for as long as I can cling to life, I will because of Bart. In a macabre twist of fate, I’m the reason he’s here.
She told Bart her name was Angelina Stuart. She pretended to be my friend so she could steal my identity. How odd is that she seduced all these men and made them fall in love with her. Every man I ever met wanted just one thing before he discarded me.
Bart believes she’s waiting for Reece Hash. Reece and Sam McNamara are friends of his family. I’ve never met Sam McNamara, but a long time ago, Reece was kind to me. After my sister died, though, he never spoke to me again. By then, I understood that the people I loved would always leave.
A month after she broke up with my rapist, my sister introduced us to a new boyfriend. Dad liked him right away. Reece was a kind man with a heart of gold. He protected me from my sister’s torture once. Under his watchful eye, she stopped assaulting me. Not because she felt remorse but because Reece was a cop. But there is no law against psychological cruelty, so her mental torment grew more vicious.
When I was fourteen, Dad gave Mama a pair of diamond studs for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. My fascination with shiny baubles persisted, and those earrings were a Siren’s call. I snuck into my parents’ bathroom to try on the earrings. I wanted to watch the kaleidoscope of colours bouncing across the stones.
As I fumbled to affix the backing to the second earring, it slipped. I watched in stark horror as it skidded across the porcelain side of the sink and vanished down the drain. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and I ran into the hallway, bumping into Reece as he headed to the upstairs bathroom.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did Sarah do something?”
His voice was so gentle and his concern seemed genuine. I blurted out how I had taken the earrings without permission and lost one down the drain.
“Hush now,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “Stay here and don’t run the water.” He ran downstairs and I heard him asking my sister where Dad kept his tools.
My heart sank. She would tell. If there were a way she could make my life more miserable, she’d grab it. But she didn’t say a word as her boyfriend crawled under the bathroom sink and removed the elbow pipe to retrieve the earring. Reece tucked the diamond stud into my palm and closed my fingers around it.
“We won’t tell,” he promised, glancing meaningfully at Sarah.
Reece meant well, but he clearly didn’t know my sister. It wasn’t enough that our parents had shunned me. It didn’t satisfy her that I was homely and unpopular while she was gorgeous and revered. Around my parents, she would feign love. Poor Sarah, she was so generous and tried so hard to be a good sister. Angel was so greedy and such a jealous, dramatic liar. The traitorous duplicity my sister exhibited around our parents stung more than the cruelty she perpetrated behind their backs.
My sister should have been my best friend, a person I entrusted with my secrets. Her death should have devastated me. But when they lowered the flower-covered casket into the ground, I felt only relief. Regret and pain came hard on their heels, though, as I watched Reece walk to his car. In a blink of an eye, my saviour was gone.
“He and Sam will come for us,” Bart whispers through the darkness. “I promise.”
“It’s too late,” I say.
“Help is coming. Dig deep and hang on.”
“My tooth hurts,” I whisper, ashamed that I’m complaining but unable to staunch my selfish need for empathy.
“Can you pull it out?”
I wiggle it and lancing pain engulfs the side of my puffy face. “No.”
“Try.” His voice is low and intense. “If you can remove it, maybe you can shove it into the lock so the cage doesn’t latch. Next time she comes for you, you’ll have to position your body near the door. If you can get the tooth in place, hold the door tight against your body after she closes it so she thinks the lock engaged. It could work.”
Even if I could jam the lock, I can’t walk. How will I get up the steep stairs or through the wilderness to find help? “But she takes the keys with her. How will I get you out?” I ask.
“If you can escape, we stand a chance.”
It breaks my heart that he has faith in me. How will I save him, when I’ve never been able to save myself?
“When we get out of here, you’ll live with me at my parents’ farm.” His voice catches and he pauses. When he continues, he forgets to whisper. “Please try. I need you.”
As merciless flashes of blinding light pulse through the dank cellar and music blares at an ear-shattering volume, the knowledge that I have a friend in death is bittersweet.
I wiggle the throbbing molar.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sam
SAM HAD LAIN awake all night again, terrified to dream of Joyce beseeching
her to take the blood-soaked lily from her hand. Dreams were subliminal fragments from your psyche, she knew. She was certain that her sister’s haunting words, “It’s his lily now,” were a muddled reflection of her need to understand what the flower symbolized to Incubus. When she learned the meaning, the dream would stop. It had to.
The second Reece left for his morning class, she opened her laptop and set to work creating what she needed. Satisfied with the printed result, she shoved it into her handbag, gathered her coat and keys, gave Brandy a kiss on her shiny head, and headed down to the parking lot.
As she drove eastbound through the slush-covered streets, she called Incubus’s lawyer. The federal institution required forty-eight hours’ notice to pre-book a visit with a maximum-security unit prisoner, but she assumed that the psychopath’s slimy defence attorney could have her cleared. She explained that Incubus had written and requested that she visit. Then she waited on hold for fifteen minutes. At last, the man returned to the line, grousing about the official hoops he had to jump. She murmured her thanks, but her patience waned when he began to lecture her on visitation procedure.
“I’ve been there before. Thanks for your help.” She hung up and continued the two-and-a-half-hour drive to the federal penitentiary on the western outskirts of Kingston.
Low buildings, set well away from the road, sprawled across a vast property adjacent to Lake Ontario. Millhaven Institute shared six hundred and fifty acres with Bath Institution, a lower-security prison. Sam followed a single access road and drove to a diamond-shaped loop that bordered the maximum-security prison. Acres of isolated woodland surrounded the compound, and twenty metres northwest of the parking area Sam was surprised to see a doe peacefully grazing.
Two thirty-foot razor barriers circled the radial-designed compound and armed guards occupied observation towers at the corners. High poles with strong lights affixed to the top marched along the exterior of the perimeter fence. Between the light posts was taut wire strung with additional spotlights.