The Antagonist (A Sarah Roberts Thriller, Book 10)

by Jonas Saul

  “That’s what I’m hoping for.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Hiding.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “Does it matter? You’re not here. You’re not coming over for coffee. Telling you makes no difference. Unless you’re coming to help, which I don’t want.”

  During the silence that followed, an idea came to her.

  “Aaron, who was it that said the axiom, ‘Knowledge is power’?”

  “I think that was Francis Bacon.”

  “Isn’t knowledge just having information? It’s intelligence when you have the ability to use that knowledge. It’s wisdom when you keep true to yourself while using it.”

  “Sounds good. What’s your point?”

  “I think I just figured out who killed the cop. I already had the information, but I wasn’t using it right and I wasn’t being me. I was lost for a bit. I’m not used to antagonizing people without knowing why. Standing up for what’s right and fighting for the underdog, that’s me. But outright going after someone without provocation was hard.”

  “You’re losing me. And scaring me. What’s that about being lost?”

  “Nothing. I have to go.”

  “Wait. What are you going to do?”

  “Clear this up.”

  “How?”

  “Watch the news.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I’m sorry, Aaron. But I need to handle this.” For a moment she only caught his breathing on the phone. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “Aaron?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll come home when this is over.” She paused for a second. “If you still want me after what I did to Parkman.”

  “Want you? I would die for you, as would Parkman. When are you going to get it? Are you fucked?”

  “Then I’ll come home.”

  “That’s what I called to hear. Those are nice words. And Sarah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make sure you come home in one piece.”

  “I’ll do my best. Gotta go.”

  She clicked off before she broke down again. She powered down her computer and moved into the basement where she lay on the sofa in the dark.

  She fell asleep sometime after three in the morning, her eyes wet with tears, her mind on Aaron, when it wasn’t on the one person who had keys to the Rankins’ house when they were away. The same person who had keys to the house Sarah rented. The same person who checked on the previous tenants for Sarah’s landlords when they mysteriously disappeared.

  Deborah Ashford.

  She was the only person with access. There had been no sign of forced entry at Sarah’s house. No one broke in. Someone had used a key and walked downstairs and shot Barry and cut him up. A certain someone who probably hated all the women he had sex with regularly. The woman who benefitted financially from his death.

  And she had the perfect scapegoat: Sarah Roberts, the stranger from the States who had been seen around town antagonizing Barry and who had recently kidnapped him.

  Funny how it was the nosy neighbor who saw Sarah take Barry into the house.

  Deborah had waited until Sarah left the house to make her move.

  So Sarah would wait until everyone was gone before she made her move.

  And this time she wouldn’t play nice.

  The DVR in the basement would reveal who killed Barry, but Sarah would also get a confession from Deborah Ashford.

  She fell asleep with newfound hope.

  Within days, she would be vindicated and she didn’t need Aaron or Parkman to come to her aid.

  She had also discovered the mother lode.

  Deborah Ashford, a cop’s wife, was a murderer.

  Barry was the barnacle and Deborah was the mother ship.

  Chapter 27

  Something tugged on Sarah’s feet. The stress and exhaustion of the past few days had caused her to have dreams of violence. Twice she woke in the darkness unaware of her surroundings. But no flashlights pointed in her face and nothing moved outside the curtains by the sliding door, so she fell back to sleep.

  The tugging on her feet became persistent. There was a burning at the base of her neck, too. She woke up fully and opened her eyes. The sun bore down on her. She had to close her eyes again and cover her face with her arms.

  The realization that someone had pulled the curtains back made her snap her eyes open and looked around.

  A thick rope had been wrapped around each ankle. When she pulled on them and tried to get up, something choked her. Her hands were still free. She used them to examine the rope around her neck. It had no play and as long as she remained lying still, with her head on the arm rest of the couch, the rope didn’t choke her.

  Who had done this? How did I sleep through it?

  Deborah Ashford stepped into view and looked down at her. “Ah, she wakes.”

  “What have you done to me?” Sarah asked.

  “Actually, I’m surprised the drugs wore off as fast as they did.”

  “Drugs?”

  Deborah pulled a capped syringe from her pants pocket. “A little something to keep you sleeping while I tied up loose ends.”

  Sarah struggled for a moment, then lay back on the couch, stared at the ceiling, and breathed deeply.

  “I do wonder, though.” Deborah walked to a small window at the side of the room and pulled the curtains back. Since the Rankins’ house was the last one on the street and their lot pied out, this side window had a view of Sarah’s and Deborah’s house. “Why the fixation with my husband?”

  “What are we doing here?” Sarah asked. “The police think I killed your husband. You’ve drugged me and tied me up. When should we expect them to come running through the front door?”

  Deborah let the curtain fall back into place but she didn’t turn around right away. “Oh, I don’t think we need the police.” When she turned around, her eyes held a gleam of madness. “Do you?”

  Deborah Ashford, a murderer who mutilated her husband in the house next door, walked over to Sarah and looked down at her, a definite insanity in her eyes.

  “You figured it out, didn’t you?” Deborah asked.

  “Figured what out?” Sarah tested the limits of the ropes again. Her feet were locked down, slightly spread apart. Deborah must have secured each ankle to the front and back leg of the couch. Unless Sarah had to strength to pull straight up hard enough to break the leg of the couch, her feet weren’t going anywhere.

  The same for her neck. The ends were probably tied to the legs and then looped around her neck. There wasn’t even enough play to lower her chin under it and slide the rope over her head. Her free hands could literally do nothing.

  “Figure out what?” Deborah mocked Sarah in a child’s voice. “You figured out what happened to Jacob and his girlfriend, the previous tenants in Joan and Mike’s house, that’s what.”

  Suddenly, as if knowledge was a surf board, the wave came in and Sarah rode it all the way to shore. Everything came together. Every piece, every detail.

  Jacob and his girlfriend were missing. The Rankins were not home, although normally they were at this time of year. Maxine Freeman was recently found with body parts missing. Deborah Ashford had been murdering people for quite some time and getting away with it. But where had she been storing the bodies?

  “I see you understand who I am and what I am capable of,” Deborah said. “But you only have half the story.”

  “Which half?”

  “The nicer half.”

  “Somehow I don’t think so.”

  Deborah moved closer, taking each step slowly like she walked to a wedding march. When she hovered over Sarah, she leaned down close enough for Sarah to smell her rank breath.

  “You may think there are things I’m incapable of.” Deborah’s mouth made wet sounds as she formed her words. She licked her lips, moistening them. “You would be wrong.” She stood and returned to the wi
ndow where she sat in a chair.

  The Rankins had turned their walk-out basement into a theater room with two chairs and the couch Sarah was on, placed in the main viewing area. Track lighting hung from the ceiling tiles and a gas fireplace was surrounded in rock under what looked like a 50-inch TV.

  But what happened to the Rankins?

  Last night’s call to Aaron ended without her allowing him to help. He would have no idea where she was and the trouble she was in. Parkman was in Santa Rosa, busy with his private investigation practice.

  She was completely on her own unless Vivian thought of some way to help. Although that would be tricky because Sarah wasn’t in a position to write anything down.

  To stall for time, she asked, “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?” Deborah whispered without turning around.

  “All the killings.”

  “I should be asking you a thing or two.” Deborah crossed her legs and faced Sarah, letting the curtain she was peeking through fall back into place.

  “What are you watching out there?” Sarah asked.

  “I told the police that I want to grieve in peace. I’m waiting for the last cruiser to leave.” She smiled wide. “Then we will truly be alone.”

  “What if I scream?”

  “Go ahead. They won’t hear you. I’m waiting until they leave so I can retrieve my husband’s legs and bring them here. The Rankins have two large freezers.” The crazy stare, one eye twitching, gave Sarah goose bumps. “Once you and I get started, I don’t want to have to watch what they’re up to. It’ll just be you and me at the end of this dead-end street, at least a dozen houses from the next person. We will be quite alone and you’ll be able to scream all you want.”

  Sarah’s stomach twitched. She had been through a lot in her young life, but when faced with someone so evil and calculating, someone with such lavish plans and gruesome ideas, and no obvious way for Sarah to escape, her body responded on a chemical level. Her stomach filled with adrenaline, her legs began to shake and her mouth dried up. She needed hope. Hope to get out of this in one piece. Hope to make things right with the authorities. Hope to stay alive and see Aaron again. Just hope.

  Normally it was her attitude that wore her opponent down, or her ability to fight and outthink her opponent, but Deborah didn’t look or act like the kind of person that Sarah could wear down easily.

  “You’re insane. I should have seen it the night we met.”

  “Yes,” Deborah giggled. “Quite.”

  “Why kill the previous tenants?”

  “They broke into this house.”

  “They did?”

  “Jacob followed me one day. I think he saw me come in with my key. The key the Rankins gave me, I might add. But Jacob had become suspicious of the Rankins’ whereabouts. He couldn’t get in the house, so he came around back here and broke in through the same door you used. When he saw what I had done to the Rankins, well, let’s just say, he got sick. Threw up over there.” She pointed to the side wall by the door, then threw her hands in the air in a dramatic flair. “My secret was out. That left me with no choice.” Her face changed to a dead stare.

  “So you kill people who discover who you are?”

  She nodded and checked a fingernail, now acting as if their discussion bored her.

  “Who exactly are you?” Sarah asked, already tiring of the histrionics.

  “Your worst nightmare.”

  Sarah giggled. “So you’re a cliché?” She clucked her tongue. “You’re nothing more than a kidnapper and a murderer. I’ve met worse.”

  Deborah stopped with the fingernail. She leaned forward and glared at Sarah.

  “No. You. Haven’t. Met. Worse.” Her lips didn’t move. The sounds emanated from her mouth like they were cast in marble, as hard as her soul. Her composure changed back to relative calm and her voice returned to normal when she said, “Ever heard of Rick Gibson?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  Sarah pulled and then pushed forward with each ankle, but neither one would budge. She couldn’t grab the rope around her neck and lift it over her head. With her knees bent the way they were, even if she somehow got to her feet, she would be too bent over and too far off balance to be able to hop away.

  “I’ll never forget the day Rick Gibson stood on the steps of the Vancouver Court House and ate that human testicle.”

  “What?” Sarah stopped moving. She wasn’t sure she heard her right. “Did you say human testicle?”

  Deborah looked up at nothing on the ceiling. “It was September 22, 1989. I remember it well. In July of that year, the Vancouver police had confiscated the testicle when Mr. Gibson tried to eat it at the Pitt International Gallery.” Deborah brought her attention down to Sarah. She looked at her with those glaring eyes. “You see, Rick was an artist and he was allowed to publicly eat a human testicle in London just a few months before that. Back in 1988 he ate human tonsils in London. But no, come to Canada and suddenly you can’t eat whatever you want.” She wagged a finger. “But the police in Vancouver had to give him back his testicle and he ate it on their court steps. I was there to cheer him on. I watched him eat it. I admired him. I wanted to be like him.” She waved her arms around, almost pinwheeling. “There’s no crime in that, now is there?”

  Sarah looked away, disgusted.

  Is cannibalism the mother lode, Vivian? A little advance notice would’ve helped. Kinda stuck here now. Warm meat held hostage by a cannibal. You gotta fix this, Vivian, or I’m going to get eaten for breakfast.

  “How about Lamia?” Deborah asked. She checked outside through the curtain, then let it fall back. “Ever read any Greek Mythology?”

  Sarah’s quick responses and usual wit dried up in the face of possibly becoming Deborah’s next meal.

  Deborah was talking again. “… Lamia was Zeus’ mistress. She was the beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating demon. Her name even came from the Greek word for gullet, laimos. Hera, Zeus’ wife, grew jealous and killed all of Lamia’s children and turned Lamia into a monster that devoured the children of others. Sad story.”

  “True,” Sarah admitted. “Sad story, but it’s a myth.”

  “John Keats composed a poem about her in 1819. He described Lamia as having the tale of a serpent. I’m sure Lamia’s story even inspired Hansel and Gretel. What about vampires? Isn’t that a cannibal story? Consuming one’s blood?”

  “Myths,” Sarah said. “Fables. Stories that are made up to scare people.”

  “Did you know that there are almost 80,000 dietary calories in the average human adult? There once was a website called the Cannibal Café that has since been taken down. I can tell you from experience that the thigh muscle is as good as any veal. Maybe a little older than veal, but definitely not a steak.”

  Sarah swiveled her head, the rope softly rubbing her skin. She hoped she wouldn’t throw up and then choke on it. “Why tell me all this?”

  “I like my food to know what will become of it.”

  That’s it. I’m going to throw up. Then I’m going to kill Deborah with my mouth. See how she likes to be torn apart with teeth. All I need is for her to get close enough.

  “We all do it,” Deborah added.

  Sarah breathed a short laugh out through her nose. “How so?”

  “Self-cannibalism is done by swallowing saliva. Also dead skin cells from your inner cheek and tongue. About every three months or so, you digest your own body weight of—you guessed it—you. But you see,” she raised a finger, “I’m not a murderer.”

  “How do you figure?” Sarah asked.

  “A homicidal cannibal is someone who kills for food.” She wagged that finger. “I don’t do that. I don’t mind hitting the grocery store once in a while just like the rest of the human race.”

  “Then what do you call killing Jacob and his girlfriend, the Rankins and your husband?”

  “Survival.” She got up from her chair. “But once they’re dead, I enjoy them a li
ttle longer. Like an airplane crash survivor in a snowy mountainous region. The Donner party. The movie, Alive. Getting the picture?” She moved closer. “I practice endocannibalism. This means I consume people from my community. I love me and I do what’s best for me. Always have.”

  “So you’re a narcissistic cannibal because you swallow your own body weight of yourself at least once every three months? Or are you an egotistical cannibal because of so much self-love?”