The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and turned his head away from her to collect himself. “Yeah, well, that’s how all that really went down. Look, you work this case as you see fit. Do what you can. But if there’s any more bodies or missing people, I’m going to have to hand it off. If your friend and her daughter are in trouble, I can’t risk us not doing everything we can to save them.”

  Carrie wrapped her arms around Waylon and squeezed. “Thank you, I won’t let you down.”

  He watched her jump out of the car and run toward the station’s front door, silhouetted by the dim glow of the POLICE sign. She popped the door open and disappeared inside the station, letting the door slam shut behind her. The metal door frame rattled, and something inside the sign sizzled and popped. Waylon watched as the POLICE sign faded, and kept on watching it until it went dark.

  16

  THE LAWSON’S HOME SEEMED CLEAN AND WELL KEPT, AT LEAST FROM the living room. Family portraits lined the walls, the people in them smiling. There were five photos in all: two parents and their daughter, sometimes with a dog, sometimes without. The daughter was a baby in the first one—a smiling, tiny thing with thick black hair—and by the last, she’d developed into a bored-looking teenager with a shaved head and piercings.

  Mrs. Lawson saw Carrie looking at the last photograph. “She went through a phase, that’s all.”

  “I understand,” Carrie said. “She wasn’t the only one.”

  Gary Lawson sat next to his wife, keeping silent. Every so often, his eyes flicked up toward Carrie, then fell back down to the cup of coffee between his hands. He had something to say, she could tell, it just hadn’t bubbled up yet.

  “What sorts of things were you looking to find out about Denise?” the mother asked.

  Carrie picked up her pen. “I’m guessing there has been no contact since the time you came to the police station?”

  “No, none,” she said.

  “And her phone?”

  “I called the phone company, and they said it’s shut off. We asked if they could ping it, you know, send it a signal and tell us what tower it bounces off of, but they couldn’t. It was already off.”

  “That was a good idea, though,” Carrie said, writing.

  “My husband watches a lot of those CSI shows,” Mrs. Lawson said.

  Carrie looked up at the husband, smiling, and he stared back at her. “Did you speak to any of her friends? Anyone who might have seen her last?”

  “I checked with everyone I could think of, and they checked with all their friends. No one has seen her.”

  “And what kind of crowd did she hang out with?” Carrie said. “Did you not like any of them? Did she have any trouble with ex-boyfriends?”

  “No,” Mrs. Lawson said. “Not anymore. Not living out here.”

  The father let out a grunt as his wife spoke, and she turned her head sharply at him. “Don’t start, Gary,” she said.

  Carrie leaned forward to get their attention. “Listen, I know it’s not easy, but I need you to be very, very specific with me about Denise. If there’s anyone you can think of who might have something to do with this, or anything, please tell me.”

  “How about all the people in the rehabs I sent her to down in Florida?” Lawson said. “How about all the inpatient facilities and outpatient programs and AA meetings and NA meetings? How about all the pieces of shit who go to those meetings, just looking for people to hook up and get high with? How about them?”

  Mrs. Lawson pressed the back of her fist against her mouth. Carrie looked at the husband and said, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Was Denise into drugs? What kind of drugs?”

  “What kind?” Lawson said. “Jesus, I thought you people at least had half a clue. She got kicked out of so many schools we had to homeschool her. The Easton cops came to our house so often to tell us they’d found her at a party or in the back of some dealer’s car that I knew them by their first names. So we come out here, thinking it was going to be better for her. And guess what?”

  “It was better for her!” Mrs. Lawson shouted. “She was doing good! She worked. She had friends. She was going back to school in the summer.”

  “Yeah, right,” Lawson said. “We thought she was doing good, but we’ve had that trick played on us before. You ever known a junkie?”

  “Of course, sir. I see them all the time.”

  “I mean, really known one. You got any in your family?”

  “I’m more interested in your daughter, sir.”

  “Well, you go get one for a child, then tell me how it feels. Watch her change right before your very eyes. Watch all the light go out of her and leave nothing behind but some kind of shell you don’t recognize. You do that, and you give her chance after chance after chance, praying to God Almighty that this time she means it. This time, she’s gonna get better. And you watch your marriage fall apart so bad you and your wife can’t even stand to be in the same room as each other.”

  “Gary,” Mrs. Lawson begged. “Please, she’s here trying to help us.”

  “I don’t need help,” Lawson said. “I’m beyond needing help. You know when my daughter died, Officer? She died the first second she put a needle full of heroin into her arm. Everything after that has just been a long funeral. You had the right idea back when you told my wife there was nothing you could do. Why don’t you just keep on doing that, and we’ll sit here and wait for someone to tell us where to go identify the body.”

  Carrie looked at the mother, who had lowered her head into her hands, and waited. It was clear the conversation was over. She stood up and gathered her things before placing a business card down on the table. “Thank you for your time. If you can think of anything else, please contact me.”

  She moved toward the door, her legs moving of their own accord. A thousand responses to the man’s words raced through her mind, but nothing that would matter. She pulled the front door open, desperate to be away from those people and their despair. She’d come to them intent on helping to solve a crime, and the old man had done everything but chase her off the property with a stick.

  Denise Lawson is still out there, Carrie told herself. And so is Molly, and so is Nubs. Fuck anybody that says otherwise.

  An argument was brewing in the living room, Gary yelling at his wife, “I told you, it’s nothing!” but someone was coming toward the door and turning the knob. Carrie turned around and waited as Mrs. Lawson came to her.

  “I know it’s probably nothing, but I wanted you to hear this,” Mrs. Lawson said.

  Carrie watched her pull her cell phone from her pocket and locate the app. “I’ll take anything at this point, to be honest.”

  “That’s what I thought. It came in a few days after Denise went missing, on a blocked number. I don’t recognize the voice, but the whole thing sounded so bizarre that I saved it.”

  Carrie bent her head forward to listen as Mrs. Lawson raised the phone and pressed the play button. A disturbingly high-pitched, childlike voice came on: “Hi, Mom. Just wanted to let you know, I got myself a new lampshade. It’s so beautiful! And I also got this new bowl, and a lovely Halloween mask. I can’t wait to wear it. If you ever see it, you’ll scream.”

  “What the hell was that?” Carrie said, looking down at the phone. “Play it again.”

  Mrs. Lawson pressed play, and both of them leaned close to listen. When it was finished, Mrs. Lawson said, “Gary’s convinced it’s a prank caller.”

  “Probably,” Carrie said. “Some burnout who got high and started calling different numbers, saying random crap.”

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Lawson said. She touched her phone’s screen until it went black and slid it back into her pocket. “Just a bizarre coincidence, I guess.”

  Carrie thanked her and reminded her about the information on the card and how to reach her if anything else came up. Mrs. Lawson thanked her for coming by and apologized for her husband. Carrie told her not to worry about it and headed down the front steps toward
her car as Mrs. Lawson stood on the porch, watching her go. It was late. She was tired. Emotionally and mentally drained. Ready for bed.

  She got into her car and sat down without starting it. Penny had left her a dozen voice mails and text messages, asking for constant updates. There was nothing she could say. How would poor Penny react to the photograph of Regina Kay Walters, dressed up by a sex torturer? How would she feel knowing Molly had been dressed, posed, and photographed in the exact same way?

  And Nubs, she thought weakly. Poor, sweet, little angel Nubs. Just where in the hell are you, baby girl?

  The most bitterly ironic part of all was that the only person who seemed to have even the slightest idea of what was going on was a convicted felon. She pictured the detective she’d seen in the videos, compared him to the bearded landscaper she’d met that day, and could not reconcile that they were the same person. Carrie thought about his dirty face and arms and sweat-stained T-shirt, the way his voice rumbled when he uttered deep and insightful bullshit like, “There’s no such thing as coincidences.” She uttered the phrase aloud, spitefully, and leaned forward to turn the key in the ignition, seeing the porch was empty. Mrs. Lawson had given up staring at her and was at last heading back inside.

  “Wait!” Carrie cried, throwing open the door. She ran up the sidewalk, shouting, “Hang on! Did you delete that message?”

  “What?” Mrs. Lawson said, turning around in surprise. “I think so.” She fished the phone back out of her pocket and checked, then said, “No, wait, it’s still here. Why?”

  “Something you said reminded me.” Carrie panted, trying to catch her breath as she ran up to the porch.

  * * *

  The landscaping parking lot was alive with activity at six A.M. The men arrived before the sun, loading up their trailers and work trucks with shovels and hedge trimmers. They looked up at Carrie’s car as she pulled into the lot, their dark faces already glistening with sweat. She jumped out of the car and ran from group to group, calling out, “Jacob? Jacob Rein?”

  The workers laughed at one another, calling out, “Inmigración!” Some of the workers saw her and ran away, making the others laugh.

  She spied a bearded man climbing onto the back of a stake-bodied truck at the far end of the lot. He slapped the side panel when he got seated, telling the driver to start moving.

  “Wait!” Carrie shouted, running after the truck as it pulled away, waving her hands. “Wait! Rein, wait!”

  The driver could see her in the mirror as he circled around, staring at her in confusion as she ran through the swirling dust from his tires. Carrie called out to Rein again, but he did not look up, and as the truck left the lot she did the only thing she could think of. She yanked her badge from her pocket, held it high, and shouted, “Immigration! Stop that truck, asshole!”

  The truck’s brake lights lit bright red as the front end squealed, stopping so hard the front end dipped, bouncing Rein a foot into the air from the truck bed. “What the hell are you doing, Marco?” he shouted through the window.

  Carrie raced through the dust and grabbed the back of the truck gate with both hands, then hoisted herself up. “I need you to listen to something.”

  He stared at her. “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “We’re leaving for a job right now. It will have to wait.” He smacked the truck’s back window and shouted, “Get moving. It’s nothing.”

  Sweat was running down the driver’s face, along with the two men crammed in beside him inside the truck’s cabin. Carrie held up her badge and pointed at him through the window and said, “Like hell. You move this truck and all of you are going right back across the border. Try me!”

  Rein’s eyes widened as the men inside the truck and the workers all around them chattered in Spanish. He stood up in the truck bed and said, “That is way, way out of line, young lady.”

  “You know my boss. Call him and complain if you want.”

  “You think that’s funny?” Rein stepped over the back of the truck and lowered himself down. “These men work sixteen-hour days and sleep ten to a room just to send enough money back home for their families to eat. Not cool, whatever your name is. Not cool at all.”

  He walked around the side of the truck and tapped on the window with his finger, talking to the driver in Spanish. “No, no,” he said repeatedly. “No Inmigración. Es bueno.” He patted himself on the chest and explained he would handle it, then he pointed at the road and told them to go do their work.

  The truck pulled away, the driver’s eyes glued to Carrie. When he was sure she wasn’t going to chase them, he slammed his foot on the gas pedal and took off down the dirt road, sending columns of dust flying in his wake.

  Rein ran his fingers through his long hair before he turned around. “This had better be important, Officer,” he said.

  “Carrie.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Carrie. Carrie Santero, to be exact.”

  “Santero? Really? And you come down here threatening these people with deportation?”

  “I’d threaten Mother Teresa if it meant getting somewhere on this case.”

  He leaned in, “Mother Teresa exploited the poor and glorified people’s suffering instead of actually helping them, so that doesn’t impress me.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Then I don’t give a shit what you have to say about Mother Teresa.”

  “What do you want, Officer Santero?”

  “A few days after my first girl went missing, the mother received an odd voice mail. She thought it was a misdial, just a coincidence,” she said, trying not to sound self-satisfied but failing. Rein only stood there, hands tucked in his rear pants pockets, waiting for her to get on with it. “I listened to it a few times, and I think the caller is digitally altering his voice to sound like a little kid. I want you to hear what he says. See if it means anything to you.”

  Trucks were driving past them, one at a time now, everyone eager to get away from the lot as soon as possible. Rein watched them leave. “If I don’t work today, I don’t get paid,” he said. “The rent is due.”

  “I will drive you to the job site, for God’s sake,” Carrie said. “Can you just listen to this?”

  Rein let Carrie hold the cell phone up to his ear, waiting as she pressed the play button. She leaned close to Rein to listen too, so close that his beard blew against her face, tickling her with its lengths. He smelled different than she’d expected. A mixture of lime oil and cloves, like bay rum.

  She heard the message begin to play, the same one she’d listened to over and over in the car on the way there. “Hi, Mom. Just wanted to let you know, I got myself a new lampshade. It’s so beautiful! And I also got this new bowl, and a lovely Halloween mask. I can’t wait to wear it. If you ever see it, you’ll scream.” In every police show, there would be a clue of some sort in that audio recording. The sound of a speed bump that the team of elite forensic investigators could use their technological wizardry to pinpoint the exact location of a road, or the screech of an owl indigenous to one part of the country that told them where to look for the killer. The shows made it look so easy. No matter what the crime, it got solved in less than sixty minutes.

  She looked at Rein, ready for him to dazzle her with investigative wizardry. Instead he stepped back and scratched his beard. “Play it again.”

  Carrie did as he asked, letting him take the phone and cup it with both hands to hear. He handed the phone back to her, then closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his temples, rubbing them.

  “What is it?” Carrie said. “Is it bad? It’s bad, isn’t it? Will it help us find the killer?”

  Rein needed time to process what he’d heard. Carrie continued talking, pressing him for information, so he held up his hand and said, “Please. Be quiet. Just for five seconds.”

  “All right,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Rein turned an
d looked at the empty lot, running both hands through his hair to get it out of his face. He was the only worker left. He lowered his head and started for the large foreman’s trailer with Carrie following close behind, staying quiet.

  He climbed up the wooden stairs to the trailer’s door and knocked, stepping back as it came open. The foreman looked down at Carrie, then over at him and said, “Why ain’t you on your truck?”

  “Something came up,” Rein said.

  “I needed four men at that site.”

  “I know,” Rein said. “I talked to Marco, and he can handle it. If I can catch up to them, I will help them finish it out.”

  The foreman’s eyes narrowed on Rein. “No work, no pay. You know the rules.”

  “I know.”

  The trailer’s door slammed shut in Rein’s face, and he lowered himself back down the stairs, walking past Carrie toward her car. “Can I talk now? What’s going on?” she asked, hurrying after him.

  “Ed Gein killed a woman in Wisconsin in 1957,” he said over his shoulder. “When the cops tracked him down, he’d done things with her body.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Made artwork out her. Lampshade out of her torso, used her skull as a soup bowl, and wore her peeled-off face as a mask.”

  “Oh my God—”

  Rein ignored her and grabbed the passenger-side door. “We have to get moving. Now.”

  “Okay,” she said, fishing her keys from her pocket. “Where are we going?”

  “Robert Ben Rhoades and Ed Gein,” Rein said. “Two serial killers with very specific methodologies, and someone is referencing them. Where does any young lunatic interested in killing people go first?”

  Carrie thought it over. “The butcher shop?”

  Rein rolled his eyes. “Just keep driving. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

  “The video game store?” When Rein didn’t respond, she added, “You know, getting conditioned to all that killing. I heard the military is using those first-person shooter games to train young soldiers to be killing machines.”