New Year Island

by Paul Draker

  “Tell your bosses that, vor v zakony,” Brent said.

  Dmitry’s face blanched. “Shto?”

  Brent spoke past him, addressing them all. “There was some truth to what I said earlier about the gambling.”

  “Ignore him.” Juan turned away.

  “I dug myself a deep hole with my debts,” Brent said. “The kind of mob people I was dealing with, they were the worst sort of lowlifes. They had a sideline distributing rather unique films.” He rolled his neck, looking at the ceiling. “Believe me, they loved having a doctor at their beck and call. I had access to human tissue. I had keys to the morgue…”

  “Don’t listen to this sick fuck,” JT said.

  “…and I helped them make some movies.” Brent grinned. “I had to. They owned me. When the hospital administrators eventually caught on, I lost my medical license. But they had no idea of the full extent of it, and of course they didn’t want publicity.”

  Dmitry stepped close, his face angry. “Vor v zakony—means ‘criminal.’ Thief. Mafia. Why do you say this to me?”

  “These were bad people, and they owned me. When the video we’re shooting here is delivered, all my debts will be cleared.”

  Brent pulled his face away from Dmitry’s angry glare.

  “Bad people,” he said, aiming his voice toward Juan. “They made your daddy’s little cocaine cartel look like a third-grade milk-money racket.”

  Juan ignored him.

  Brent chuckled. “You see, it was the Russian mob I was in debt to. Dmitry’s bosses.”

  “Yob tvoyu mat.” Red faced, Dmitry grabbed the front of Brent’s wet suit. “Why do you say this lie?”

  “No, Dmitry!” Camilla shouted.

  Juan also realized what was about to happen, and lunged for them, sending a spike of pain through his chest. But he was too late to stop it.

  Brent snapped his head forward, driving his forehead into Dmitry’s bandage-wrapped temple, dropping him at his neoprene-booted feet.

  He looked down at Dmitry’s prone form with eerie, calm eyes. “Durak.”

  CHAPTER 187

  The fog whistle glistened in the sun, still wet from the power washing that had blasted the muck and rust from its metal sides. A four-foot-tall cylinder of steel, three feet in diameter and seamed with welds along one side, it stood upright once again on its concrete base. The surrounding area was now clear of rubble. The end of the wide steam pipe emerged from the ground to fit snugly into the base of the whistle. Camilla’s eyes followed the path of the half-buried steam pipe, now a clean, straight line running down the hill to disappear into the wall of the fog signal building.

  She thought of Dmitry, unconscious in the same room where Brent was chained.

  “I don’t like leaving those two alone for too long,” she said.

  “We’re ready, anyway,” JT said. “Pumps wired, boilers filled, and finally, this…” He slapped the whistle with a palm. “Let’s go make some noise.”

  She turned a half-circle, looking at the stretch of California coast across the channel. Less than a mile away, just out of sight behind the dunes, a continuous flow of cars streamed up and down scenic Highway 1. What would people think when the steam whistle, silent for 140 years, split the afternoon air?

  She did her best to push aside the awful turmoil that churned inside her, but it wasn’t easy. Did she remember a younger Brent, his hair dark instead of silver, wearing scrubs, holding her hand, speaking gently to her? How she’d clung to that voice twenty-three years ago, pulling herself up out of the darkness that had claimed her then—the darkness that threatened to reclaim her even now.

  She looked at the whistle and felt hope blossom in her chest.

  Juan squatted in front of the whistle, reaching inside the narrowed section at the bottom, where a small steel door opened into the whistle’s body. He frowned, and the expression on his face made Camilla’s gut roll with tension.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A part is missing,” he said. “A piece of the valve throat. In here, there should be a lever, with a half-gear on one side.”

  “Can we improvise something?” JT asked.

  Juan shook his head. “Not without a machine shop.” He turned to look toward the fog signal building, and his eyes narrowed.

  Camilla stared at the whistle. They were missing a lever with a half-gear on one side. She felt the hope that was blossoming inside her curdle and die.

  “I know where it is,” she said. “I’ll be right back. But don’t touch that whistle again. Don’t do anything.”

  She turned away and ran down the hill, headed for the seal barricade and the houses beyond.

  “Be careful,” JT shouted after her. “Veronica may still be around. Brent killed Jacob, but she might have taken the missing women.”

  Camilla raised a hand in acknowledgment but didn’t slow or turn around.

  She had bigger worries right now.

  • • •

  Seals crowded the foyer of the Greek Revival house. Camilla nudged past them and into the living room. The big-screen monitor had been pulled off the wall. It lay in the corner, the frame twisted, the screen shattered.

  Seals roamed freely through the rooms and hallways. On her way up, she passed a sea lion sliding down the stairs.

  Déjà vu. Just like their first day here—the first contest. They would have to clear the houses again, she thought, and fought a hysterical giggle that wanted to turn into a sob. But only half of them were left alive now. And everybody was hurt.

  She closed her eyes, fighting tears. Jordan, Lauren, Natalie, Veronica, even Travis—all dead now. The two scientists, Heather and Jacob. Dead.

  Passing another seal in the upstairs hallway, she entered the room that had been hers. A moment later, she held the odd-shaped piece of metal in her hands. She remembered finding it, wrapped in newspaper, nestled in her luggage that first day on the island.

  Brent had known, even then, that they would eventually repair the fog whistle.

  They couldn’t sound the distress signal now. They didn’t dare.

  Something terrible would happen if they tried.

  Something else troubled her, too, itching at the back of her thoughts as she turned the valve lever in her hands. It was JT’s shouted warning a few minutes ago.

  “…the missing women…”

  Camilla repeated his words. An ominous phrase, but familiar from somewhere. She associated it with the metal shape she held. She looked at the valve lever again. Her eye was drawn irresistibly toward something grey-white which lay crumpled in the other corner: the paper she had found the lever wrapped in.

  A moment later, she was kneeling and smoothing the wrinkled newspaper pages on the floor. The headlines leaped up at her:

  POLICE CONTINUE SEARCH FOR MISSING WOMEN

  FAMILY OF MISSING SAN JOSE WOMAN HOLDS VIGIL

  ARE WOMEN SAFE IN THE PARK?

  LIVERMORE MOTHER DISAPPEARS

  MAYOR CONVENES TASK FORCE

  FEMALE HIKER MISSING, FEARED DEAD

  IS A SERIAL KILLER STALKING THE BAY AREA?

  The pages were from a variety of Bay Area newspapers: San Francisco Tribune, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury Times…

  Heart pounding, Camilla checked the dates. Most were within the past four years. But one article was older than the others. “ARE WOMEN SAFE IN THE PARK?” was from seven years ago.

  Which park? Golden Gate Park?

  She scanned the article, and her brows knitted.

  Central Park? That couldn’t be right.

  Camilla looked at the bottom of the newspaper and froze.

  All the other articles were from San Francisco Bay Area papers. But that particular page had come from the New York Times.

  New York, and then California. Oh god.

  The goose bumps started on her forearms, ran right up her shoulders, and met at her spine. Her hands shook, rattling the papers she held.

  She could sense someone standing sile
ntly in the doorway behind her.

  CHAPTER 188

  “Well, this is a little awkward,” Mason said. “I guess I don’t really need to ask what those are about.” He pointed at the articles.

  Camilla stared at him. He leaned against the doorway, wearing the same familiar easy smile. Familiar, but a complete stranger.

  “This whole time…” She started to rise but couldn’t, and settled back to her knees. Instead of terror, she felt only the sick, bitter disappointment of betrayal. “You’ve been working with Brent. You’re a… a…” She couldn’t say the words. “Mason, how could you?”

  He raised his hands in protest. “Camilla, you’ve got this wrong. I was never working with Brent. I’m just another innocent victim in this scheme of his. I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “Oh god, how can you say that? How can you stand there talking to me, like you’re some kind of normal person?”

  She could feel tears running down her face, and she wiped them away.

  “I even liked you, Mason. I thought you were my friend.”

  He took off his glasses, then straightened up, rolling his shoulders back, and suddenly looked taller. Menacing. She realized with horror that the glasses and the hunched posture were simply a part of his camouflage.

  “Like a cat with a mouse,” she said. “Having fun. Pretending.”

  Mason shook his head. “No, this is the real me…” He paused. “Well, okay, fine—I’m not really gay.”

  “Mason!”

  Strangely, she found this the worst betrayal of all. But it made the perfect disguise, didn’t it? The gay friend—safe, nonthreatening, trustworthy…

  “You were stalking me,” she said.

  “Maybe at first. But now I don’t think of you that way anymore.”

  “You killed Heather! You killed Natalie!”

  “No, not Natalie. That wasn’t me.” He hesitated. “Well, actually, I did take Natalie the first time, but Juan found her and brought her back.”

  “Oh god. You conked Dmitry and freed Travis just so we’d blame him. You smeared his paint color on Natalie’s sweatshirt and waved it in front of Veronica like a red cape in front of a bull.”

  “But I didn’t take Natalie the second time. I have no idea who did. It must have been Brent.”

  “And Veronica?”

  Mason laughed—a sound of nervous relief.

  “That was one scary, scary woman. She very nearly killed me, Camilla.” He held two fingers an inch apart. “It was that close. She broke my knee like a toothpick.”

  He grinned. “But I got her in the end. I hope I never have to face someone like that—a survivor—again. I have a fairly limited capacity for fear, but Veronica was truly terrifying.”

  “How can you be like this?” Camilla asked. “So casual about it. Acting the same as always: laughing, joking, friendly. Oh god, this really is the real you, isn’t it? But you’re a serial killer…”

  “Stereotyping? Camilla, I’m disappointed in you. That’s just a meaningless label.”

  He shrugged. “I’m human just like anybody else. Ed Gein, a fellow sort of like me back in the fifties, used to say that every time he saw a pretty girl he thought two things at the same time. One part of him wanted to take her out and talk to her and be real sweet and treat her right. The other part of him wondered what her head would look like on a stick.”

  Spreading his hands, he leaned back against the door frame.

  “To some extent, that’s how everyone is. I’m just in better touch with the duality of my own nature than most people are. I guess it’s one of those contradictory, biphasic survivor traits that psychologists love to talk about.”

  Camilla’s knees hurt from kneeling. Letting herself slump to the side, she rested her weight on one hand and looked down at the floor.

  “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “Look at me, Camilla,” he said. “I’m still the same person you met on the yacht. We’ve been through a lot together here. We know each other pretty well by now.”

  “I can’t have this conversation right now, Mason. I just can’t.” Her breath hitched. “It’s been a bad day for me.”

  “Okay, I’ll stop talking.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think of you that way—not anymore.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Brent I’ll kill for sure. The rest, I don’t know.” He grinned. “I’m making this up as I go along.”

  Camilla thought of Juan: wounded, vulnerable.

  “You’ll have to kill me first,” she said.

  “I won’t do that,” he said. “When Brent described how you got out of that car, I realized something about you. You’re a girl after my own heart…”

  “Don’t!”

  “…and I’d like my heart to stay inside my body, where it belongs. So I don’t dare try anything with you. If you could do what you did to survive when you were only a kid, I’d hate to find out what you’re capable of now as an adult. Veronica was bad enough.”

  He was afraid of her. Mason was frightened of her. Camilla choked back the horror that made her want to curl up and make the world go away. What kind of monster was she, that a serial killer was scared of her?

  “So what happens now?” she asked.

  He put his glasses back on. “Look, I may have my little hobbies, but I’m not the one you need to be worrying about right now. Brent’s planning something else. He let us catch him, Camilla. It was just too easy.”

  Her heart sped up, thinking of the whistle part that Brent had hidden in her luggage. Mason was right.

  “So what do we do about this?” He pointed at the newspapers.

  She thought of Juan, wounded and grieving over Jordan. How could she dump this on him, too?

  “We can’t just pretend this didn’t happen here between us,” she said. “I’ve got to tell the others.”

  “If you do, I’ll kill Juan.”

  “No!” Camilla’s heart raced.

  Mason grinned. “I can promise you that.”

  CHAPTER 189

  Mason stood in the doorway, resting his leg, watching Camilla. She sat on the floor, surrounded by newspapers, thinking. She looked so vulnerable, but he knew it was misleading—camouflage, like his own. But hers was natural rather than deliberately cultivated.

  The room was silent for long minutes. Looking at her made him feel strange. He liked her. He liked being around her. The thought of her rejecting him made him feel empty and hollow inside. But she would never accept the things he did.

  “I could stop,” he said, surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth.

  Camilla looked up at him with exasperation on her face.

  “How do I explain this to someone like you? This isn’t a… a lifestyle choice, Mason. It’s what you are.”

  The silence that followed was uncomfortable.

  “Why did you come at all?” she asked him. “Why didn’t you just throw the Vita Brevis letter away? I would have thought someone like you would want to keep a low profile.”

  Mason grinned.

  He remembered standing inside his Brisbane warehouse two weeks earlier, holding the device in his hand, puzzled, his arm drenched in red to the elbow. He remembered ignoring the weakening gasps, moans, sobs, and pleas behind him as he turned the small bundle of electronics from side to side, thinking, artificial kidney? How could someone like her afford this? He remembered the trapped, panicky feeling that seized him when he realized that what he had dug out of that evening’s playmate and stood puzzling over was a GPS tracker. He remembered rubbing the blood away from the round glass bubble on the front of the device to find himself staring into the lens of a camera. He remembered watching, stunned, as the iris of the lens dilated to stare back at him. Recording him.

  “I don’t think the letter I got was exactly the same as yours,” he said to Camilla. “Mine really didn’t leave me too much choi
ce.”

  “We need your help,” she said.

  “You truly are a survivor, Camilla.”

  “Oh god, shut up.” She held up the missing piece of the steam whistle. “Brent’s got something nasty planned for all of us. We have to figure out what he’s hiding, and when it comes to thinking like him I’m afraid you’re our best bet.”

  She looked at him with an expression of reproach.

  “We need you, Mason. I need you.”

  “This stays our little secret, then?”

  “God help me, but yes,” Camilla said. “For now.”

  CHAPTER 190

  Camilla watched Juan squat in front of the steam whistle with the valve lever in his hands. He slid the lever inside the open compartment at the base and maneuvered it into place.

  “It fits.” He looked up at her. “You’re right. Brent’s taunting us with this.”

  Behind him, Mason craned forward as if peeking into the open compartment. But the way he leaned over Juan—the implicit threat in his posture—was unmistakable to Camilla. Mason held a fist over his mouth in a prissy gesture of concern. His eyes flicked up to catch hers almost playfully. She got the message all too well: if she let Juan suspect anything, he would die.

  But now Juan was staring at her, too. His eyes narrowed.

  He had caught something in her expression.

  She did her best to keep her face under control. “We’re all going to die if we sound this signal,” she said. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I’m sure of it.”

  Juan nodded. He put a hand on his knee and pushed himself slowly up to a standing position.

  “Let’s go talk to him.”

  • • •

  “What’s going to happen, Brent?” Juan asked. “What happens when we blow the fog signal?”

  Brent stared back at them, looking amused. Camilla caught the tic in his eye, though. He would need more drugs soon. Maybe they could use that to make him talk.

  “Shoot him in the gut.” JT sounded disgusted. “Or give me the gun. I’ll do it.”

  Juan leaned into Brent’s face. “Why Jordan, then? You didn’t discover her in any hospital. She wasn’t a survivor story. Why did you have to bring her here, Brent?”