“Good, we’ll need it,” Test said.
75
An hour north of the border, Rath drove slowly through the fog, down a dirt road that ran through harrowed fields. Test had thought her car stank, but this old rig of Rath’s needed an olfactory exorcism, the stench ungodly. She’d had her window cranked down most of the way, despite rain coming in and the raw temperature.
At the end of the road, a Chevy Blazer sat parked out front of an old log cabin. Rath nearly hit a horse that trotted out of the fog toward a barn that looked about to keel over in a pile of timber.
Kids’ plastic riding toys, wagons, and bikes sat in the slush of the yard, apparently left where they’d been last used in the summer.
Chickens and guinea fowl scattered as Rath and Test headed to the steps of the cabin.
Before Rath could knock, a woman opened the door and stood out on the steps, wiping her hands on a blue apron cinched around wide hips. Her purple dress fell to her ankles and had a high collar, like a doily, reminding Rath of Quakers, or the Amish. Of the Gihon River Inn. She squinted as if unsure of what she was seeing.
“Charlotte Collins?” Test said.
“Oui,” the woman said.
“Detective Sonja Test and Frank Rath from the States.”
“It’s Vicky, isn’t it?” Charlotte Collins said. “Is she dead?”
“Nothing like that,” Test said.
“Then, what’s she done?”
Is she dead? What’s she done?
“We’d just like to speak to you,” Test said.
Charlotte Collins looked at the Scout, then at Rath and Test. “I’d like to see identification first.”
The house smelled wonderful, of freshly baked bread. It was warm, toasty, too; tidy, open, and spacious. Test had envisioned small rooms as cluttered as the yard.
A braided rug lay on the living room floor in front of a fireplace where a fire roared.
In the kitchen the woman picked up a bread pan and turned it over and tapped it so a perfectly golden loaf tumbled out onto a cooling rack.
Test bet this woman cooked a moist Thanksgiving turkey, though Canadians had celebrated their Thanksgiving a month earlier.
“What’s Vicky done?” Charlotte said as she washed a plate at the sink.
“We don’t know,” Test said.
“Her husband hurt her?”
“Why would you think that?” Test said.
“People don’t change. Not for good. None I’ve known, anyway.”
“He hurt her?” Rath said. “When?”
She set the plate in the dish rack, paused as if unsure how to begin, or if she should begin at all. “Back when he first got his hooks into her, and hers into him, too. To be fair. I’d see bruises and be terrified. She was only fourteen. I was eighteen. We shared a bedroom, so not much privacy. She told me he’d done it, but that she’d wanted him to, she liked it. I didn’t believe her. Not for a second. This wasn’t the sister I knew. And. No one likes that, to be hurt. At least that’s what I believed then. I know I sure didn’t, and don’t. That much I do know. He worried me. Worried us. He was more than twice her age. My father, he was homicidal about it for a good spell.”
“Where did they meet?” Test said.
“A club.”
“A strip club?” Rath said.
“I wish.” She sighed. A sigh, it seemed, not of pain or disappointment but of longtime sorrowful resignation.
“It was worse than a strip club,” she said. “It was of a, as Vicky described it, more private, upscale nature. Club Pègre Imaginaire. Underworld Fantasy. It was like the club for, um, swappers, but, much, much more. That was only a small, innocent slice. She would tell me stories, stories she had to know I never, ever wanted to hear, even if they didn’t involve her, my baby sister. And she’d smile when I’d tell her to stop; she’d laugh, tell me I should join a nunnery. The things, if she did half of what she said she did, if she was subjected to even a fraction of that ugliness, that darkness. It was like a cult, a sick, brainwashing cult, except the religion was sex, or so-called sex, more like dehumanization. Torture.”
Rath and Test exchanged looks at the word torture.
Charlotte sat on a stool at the kitchen counter, as if suddenly too tired to stand. “As she told me, the club catered to extreme, uh, tastes. Everything from . . . well . . . Extreme. I don’t even want to say. It upsets me and makes me so sad to think about it. Something happened to her. When she met him. It was like her brain changed. Like he’d stirred up the chemicals in her brain. She was not the same. She’d been a good girl. Not perfect. By a long shot. But decent.”
“She told you about this, torture?” Test said.
“She’d come home nearly catatonic and manic all at once, like she was high on all kinds of stuff, though she swore she wasn’t, that she didn’t need drugs. And she’d just start in on her stories. She saw nothing wrong with it. She said she wasn’t taking money, wasn’t being forced or drugged, it wasn’t prostitution or pornography. It was fun. It was pleasure. It was love. I told her I was going to tell our father all about it. He’d put a stop to it. And she laughed at me again. Like she’d been waiting for me to threaten to tell and could not wait to spring the cold facts on me, that the age of consent was fourteen. She told me this like she was repeating it, like she’d been told it by someone else, by him, to use as an excuse, to justify it. I didn’t believe her. I thought what was being done to her, it had to be rape. Had to be. I called the local police, while she sat there and watched me, right from the chair in that living room, rocking, rocking. The police officer I ended up finally getting an answer from probably thought I was loony, a teenage girl calling to ask what the legal age of consent was. But Vicky was right. The age of sexual consent was fourteen. Back then. It was raised all the way to sixteen a year or two ago,” she said bitterly.
Test’s stomach churned.
“So you didn’t tell your father?” Test said.
“Nothing my father would have said or done, short of killing Boyd, would have stopped her. And she’d just keep at it and I feared she’d taunt him, too, or my mom. I was scared my father would kick her out and she’d be at even greater risk. And it would have broken his heart, and my mom’s. At least she came home afterward, had a home, a safe bed. Me.”
“Does the place still exist?” Test said.
“It was raided not long after she told me, luckily. I thought that would be the end of it. A sad dark phase.”
“Raided for prostitution?” Test said, “Or pornography, or—”
“Tax evasion or laundering money, something like that, but the other stuff, it was all legal, no prostitution or criminal forced behavior or abuse or sex slaves, no unwanted abuse or unwilling slavery at least.” She did not look at Rath or Test while she spoke. She’d opened a recipe box and arranged and rearranged recipe cards. “I don’t doubt my sister participated of her own free will. It’s always made me far more sad. That she did it willingly. Or believed she did.”
“I still don’t see how no charges were ever filed for sex with . . . a child?” Test said.
“Like I said. The age of sexual consent in Quebec was fourteen. Believe me, I researched. I followed her a few times and I saw Pratt, the monster. Twice her age. All his money, pomp and filthy ways. The way he talked to her. To my father. Mocked his being nothing but a fur peddler and a dirt farmer.”
“You met Pratt?” Test said.
“Of course. Eventually. She married him. After he got her pregnant. I got to say, it shocked me.”
“What did?” Test said.
“Everything. The marriage. The baby. And how they seemed to genuinely love each other, in a perverted, abnormal way. And then there was the change.”
“How so?” Test said.
“He did an about-face. When my sister told me she was pregnant, I thought it was going to wreck her, all her good fun ruined, all her adventures, and I thought Boyd was going to force her to get an abortion. But she wasn’
t upset, she was over the moon. She said this was all she ever wanted, to have his child. She loved him, that’s why she did all the things she did, she loved him, didn’t I get that, how did I miss that, that what I saw as depraved and filthy was beautiful to her, a show of love, a show of what she would do to please him, anything, everything. To get his love in return. It scared me. This talk. It was so strange, radical. Desperate. And she was so young. To hear her say those things. I didn’t even have a boyfriend. She said she would do anything for him, to keep him. He was tall and handsome and rich. She sounded mad, imbalanced, more manic than ever. But happy. And he came around. He seemed different when he visited with her later to announce their engagement. Promising to take care of her and love her and the child they were expecting. Yet I didn’t trust it. Him. He was wealthy, yes, but jobless. He lived off the family money, as far as I could see, and had no real ambition or goals. No reason to grow up. I hoped the child would make him grow up. It did, I guess, as little as I have seen him since. He seemed to change from being the selfish deviant who tricked my sister into being a husband of sorts. He took her to the States and I’ve only seen her and her daughter a few times, and the last time I saw her was for her daughter’s funeral, a year ago. It crushed her. Just shattered her. All she wanted was another chance, another baby. That’s all she talked about. She’s only thirty-one, but he’s fifty. I got the sense that the baby was the glue that kept her marriage together, kept her together. And him. It’s that case with other people, other, normal marriages, besides hers, of course. Children holding the couple together. But without a child between her and her husband, their world together, and her world and his world separately, would fly apart. The baby kept him on the straight and narrow; however straight and narrow that was compared to other people, I don’t know. But I’m afraid, and I think she’s afraid, he’ll return to his old ways. Go off the rails. With someone else. That’s why I thought something had happened to her when you showed up, that he’d done something to Vicky. Started up again with his old wickedness. Hurt her in ways he did when she was fourteen, a child, but can’t any longer now that she’s a woman.”
“When did she become pregnant?” Rath asked.
“Ninety-five.”
“All this time,” Rath said as he and Test sat in the Scout, “we thought the CRVK stopped because he died. Went to prison. Moved. Grew ill. No. He stopped because he got married.”
“No,” Test said. “Because he had a child. A daughter. That kept him at bay. Kept his urges in check. Far as we know. His daughter dies, the adoption didn’t work out. He’s free again. Except, he has an airtight alibi for Jamie Drake. And for Lucille Forte. Which leaves—”
“Victoria. You think a fourteen-year-old girl was the CRVK?”
“You heard the sister. Victoria would do anything for his love. Everything,” Test said.
“They did it together? Psychosexual homicidal kink?”
“There’s precedent. Some of the most heinous crimes are committed by couples that would never have so much as shoplifted as individuals. But. I don’t know. What do you think? Could she be our girl for Jamie Drake.?”
“It’s a stretch,” Rath said.
“It is. But if she did it, she may be worth a look for the Quebec murders, too.”
“What about Dana Clark?”
“Sheldon’s our guy for her. The Polaroids lock it. But he and Preacher are hooked up with something sinister, somehow, with Preacher owning Sheldon’s truck. Either the Pratts or Sheldon or Preacher are the CRVK. But I couldn’t say which.”
“It takes someone strong to hang Jamie,” Rath said. “Someone like Preacher or Sheldon.”
“Victoria’s fit. And, if she and her husband did it together . . .”
“Her sister mentioned the father peddling furs. That means a familiarity with traps, and snares.”
“We need to find her,” Test said.
“Call in an APB. Get someone to their estate. I want to go drag Preacher in, tell him we know about the truck and his link to Sheldon. Hold him as a material witness.”
“Let’s go get the bastard.”
76
Before the evening lecture, with Felix at his lab, Rachel browsed the third-floor stacks and found the three books she’d wanted: Interviews with Violent Criminals, Criminal Sociopaths, and, The Criminally Deviant.
As she emerged from the stacks, she saw the man at a Xerox machine.
He peered up to see her as he snatched sheets of paper the machine spat into the paper tray.
He lifted the top of the copier and yanked a book from under it, tucked the book under his arm.
Rachel walked over to him.
“Research?” she said.
He nodded, secreted the book in a canvas bag at his feet. She’d startled him; his breath was short. She made him nervous. Is that why he was so quiet? Was he not confident and assured after all, but shy? She could not figure him out.
“You too?” he said. He nodded at her books in her arms.
“Killing time in the stacks before a lecture.”
“An art lost to the iPhone. What do you have there?”
“It’s of no real consequence to anyone but me,” she said in a rush of sarcasm that immediately made her blush.
The man did not seem to notice Rachel had parroted his earlier words.
“And to the professor who’ll read your paper, I imagine,” the man said. He cocked his head at the books. “Why the interest in violence?”
“It’s private,” Rachel said. She felt awkward now. The reason she’d picked these books was private, painful. “Why your interest in the criminally deviant?”
“My interests aren’t in the criminally deviant.”
“I got a glimpse of your book on the street and—”
“I’m interested in the sexually ‘deviant.’”
“Oh,” Rachel said.
“Your look is exactly why I didn’t share earlier, despite your prying.”
“I didn’t pry.”
“Of course you pried. Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought him back. Or her. It underpins my research. Curiosity. And lies. Denial of self truths. But. You don’t have to lie to me. I’m a stranger. Lie to family and friends, but no need to lie to me because I don’t care what your bent is. The premise of my research is that we lie about what we are most curious about, sexually and otherwise, to friends and families, ourselves. We let shame or fear or judgment keep us from being honest about our true nature. Our fantasies. Our desires. We don’t dare share them. We cling to them so tightly out of fear of judgment that they become anchors that prevent us from being our truest selves.”
Rachel’s blood warmed, both with uneasiness and a certain freedom. No one had ever spoken to her like this. She would have been repulsed if this man had pressed these views on her, but he hadn’t. She’d prodded him.
“In fact” he said, “what is called deviant is being revealed more and more as the norm. What adults do for pleasure that has long been labeled taboo is far more ‘normal’ than the prurient suppose.”
Rachel did have certain . . . scenarios she’d never shared with Felix. With anyone. She worried what he’d think, that he’d see her differently. So she forgot about them. Tried to.
“This liberation is due to what I call ready exposure to the possible. As a boy I had to hunt for my father’s Hustler issues to sneak a glimpse of what life offered. Now? Now, you can type in any taste and up comes video of whatever you want to see, acted out for your pleasure. No generation before has had that . . . luxury. Still, we view in private, ashamed. I bet you haven’t shared your deepest desire with your boyfriend out of fear of it driving wedge between you, convinced yourself your desires aren’t worth upsetting the status quo. Guess what? He’s doing the same. Keeping his secrets secret. Not sharing. Imagine if you two both just shared.”
Rachel swallowed. The stranger’s candor teased her curiosity, as if she were walking down a hotel hallway and heard certain hedonistic
sounds as she passed an open door. Did she walk past without a peek? Could she resist?
How could she fault him for telling her what she had asked to hear? Yet how could she have expected to hear this? No one spoke this way to strangers. The man was right. Once or twice, out of curiosity, Rachel had searched online to sate her curiosity, and not been disappointed. Fueled was more like it.
Again, as she had before, she had the sensation she was about to step out onto a high wire.
The stranger stuffed his printed copies into the canvas bag then slung the bag over his shoulder. “I’ve wasted your time,” he said. “Good luck with your research. Fascinating in its own right.”
“I’ll see you around,” Rachel said.
“I doubt that. I stopped in town on a whim. Though I may stay for dinner. Is there a place to get a bite, besides the coffee shop, in town?”
“The Wild Panther Inn,” Rachel said. “They have a pub thing going on. Great comfort food. I was going to grab a bite there later.” She actually had no such plans, but she was hungry for one of their burgers now that she thought about it.
“Join me,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“I understand.” He started to walk away again.
“I have a lecture I need to go to later,” Rachel said.
“I understand.”
“Maybe,” she said, “you could give me a lift? They’ve got great burgers and I’m starving. I’ll grab one to go, and shuttle back up.”
77
The front seat was just that: one seat. A bench. Black. Leather, she gathered by its odor. Chrome and wood trim. A pack of gum sat on the immense dash, and a few food wrappers and loose receipts littered the bench seat.
Rachel pulled the seat belt across her, a lap belt, not retractable. She pulled the extra length of belt through the buckle, snug. If the car stopped fast, she would slingshot forward and smash her face against the dash. She pulled her backpack tight to her side against the door, the weight of the handgun reassuring.
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