My Pretties

by Jeff Strand

  Breakfast sounds great, she typed. Give me a time/place and I'll be there! Thanks!

  After Lugens approved her message, she sent it off.

  "You have to be at work at 10:45, you said?" Lugens asked.

  "Yes. My boss will give me the day off if I need it."

  "No, stick to your regular schedule as much as possible. Don't leave the restaurant. Do they make you carry trash outside?"

  Charlene shook her head. "The dishwashers take stuff to the Dumpster."

  "Okay, good. Don't go out for smoke breaks or anything like that."

  "I don't smoke."

  "Perfect. No fresh air or sunshine for you today. I'll drop you off and pick you up. We'll evaluate where things are tonight, but with your permission you may have a cop crashing on your sofa tonight."

  "That would be wonderful. Thank you."

  "I wish we could do more," said Lugens. "We don't have the resources to give you full-time protection, but we'll keep you safe, I promise."

  * * *

  Lugens drove her to work in an unmarked car, reminded her again not to leave the restaurant for any reason, and told her to give him a call when she was done with her shift.

  During the drive, she'd made the mistake of asking him if he thought Gertie was still alive. He asked if she wanted him to be completely honest. She'd hesitated, thinking it might be nice to live in a fantasy world for a bit longer, then said yes.

  "There's still a good chance that she did indeed willingly go home with somebody," he said. "The married waiter, maybe. Or somebody she didn't want to admit to you. That's our perfect scenario. But if these disappearances are indeed the work of one guy, and he's got your friend...well, that's not good news."

  Charlene went inside and punched in. The restaurant opened in fifteen minutes, so right now everybody was just doing prep work. She walked over to the chef's station, where Marco was busy dicing green peppers.

  "Where's Travis?" she asked.

  "Gonna be late. Got errands to run."

  "He's coming in late because he needs to run errands?"

  "That's what he said."

  "That doesn't sound like him. Did he say what he was doing?"

  "Nope," said Marco. "I didn't ask. Not in the habit of interrogating my boss."

  "Okay, thanks." Charlene returned to the back room, took out her cell phone, and gave Travis a call. It went straight to voice mail.

  She typed in a text: Hey, call me ASAP, okay? Gertie's gone missing.

  No, wait. Charlene was probably far overreaching the scope of the problem, but if Travis was in danger, the culprit might have access to his phone. She deleted the message and retyped it.

  Hey, give me a call when you get a chance. Might need to come in late tomorrow.

  She sent it off, hoping there'd be an immediate response, and then she could call him to hear his voice.

  No response.

  No reason to freak out yet, but she did call Lugens to let him know.

  The day was maddening. Charlene wanted to do something to help, yet there was nothing she could do on her own that wouldn't put Gertie (and Travis?) at more risk. She absolutely would not ignore Lugens' orders about staying in the restaurant. That would be stupid. Which meant that all she could do was wait tables and helplessly hope that Gertie or Travis would return her message.

  Neither of them returned her message.

  She tried to think of some clue she could've missed, but the situation seemed pretty straightforward: Gertie had gone to dinner with "Warren," and he kidnapped her. The mystery was whether she was still alive.

  Charlene believed that she was.

  She also believed that she might be deluding herself.

  Though she didn't dump lasagna on anybody, she didn't provide very good customer service for the first few hours of her shift, and her tips suffered accordingly. She also had to go into the walk-in freezer, shut the door, press her apron against her mouth, and muffle a frustrated scream.

  * * *

  Everything hurt.

  Gertie's fingers hurt the worst, of course, followed by her stabbed legs. The rest of her body was in agony from having so little room to move in the cage. She couldn't imagine what it would be like if she wasn't so thin. Plus she had a pounding headache and was sick to her stomach.

  She wasn't ready to die, though.

  Her body was in terrible shape, but she had a lot of fight left in her. If Ken or Vivian got too close and dropped their guard for just a second, she'd tear their face off with her teeth. She was not going to die in this goddamn cage.

  Though she was at a loss for how to avoid dying in the cage.

  Swinging it hadn't worked. She'd hoped that it would eventually pop free of the ceiling, but it never happened and eventually she was too exhausted to continue. Bouncing around in the cage—not that she had much room to do so—hadn't worked either. Her captivity was not a flimsy setup.

  She'd screamed for help for a while, but of course nobody came to investigate, and she was only hurting her throat.

  Since screaming and swinging didn't work, that left her options to escape as...none.

  Nothing unless Ken or Vivian discovered the kindness in their hearts.

  Or got too close.

  * * *

  Vivian's car wasn't in the driveway when Ken got home. He went inside and upstairs to Jared's room. His son, not so shockingly, was staring at a video game in progress.

  "Where's your mom?" Ken asked.

  Jared shrugged.

  "You wanna pause that and acknowledge me?"

  Jared paused the game. "I said I don't know where she is."

  "She didn't text you or anything?"

  "She left a note on the table."

  "What did it say?"

  "Something like 'Went out. Be back soon.'"

  "So you could have started there instead of pretending like you didn't know what I was talking about."

  "You asked if I knew where she was," Jared said.

  Ken decided that continuing this conversation would lead to mental illness. He was very interested in Vivian's whereabouts, so he wasn't sure if he wanted to waste time by pointing out the faint marijuana scent or not. But he didn't want Jared to think that he was oblivious. "Can you at least try to hide the pot smell, instead of assuming that I won't notice?"

  "I wasn't smoking pot," said Jared. "I just say no to drugs."

  "Okay, smartass, then why does your room smell like weed?"

  Jared shrugged.

  "Let me answer that for you. It smells like weed because you were smoking a joint in here before I got home, and then you did a bad job of getting rid of the smell because you're either lazy or figured I wouldn't give a shit."

  "If I was smoking weed, how come I'm not stoned?"

  "How do I know you're not stoned right now? You think you're being such a brilliant conversationalist that there's no way you could be high?"

  "Ask me to count backwards or something."

  Ken sighed and left the room. He'd search it later. He hated to admit such a thing about his own offspring, but Jared was probably dumb enough to leave evidence in his room even after this conversation.

  He went downstairs and texted Vivian to ask where she was. She texted back and said she was at the house.

  No, you're not. I'm at the house.

  You know which house I mean. Come over.

  Why the hell was she at the other house? Ken cursed under his breath and called out to Jared: "Hey, I'm heading out for a while! You're on your own for dinner!"

  "Can I have money for pizza?" Jared called down.

  "No. There are leftovers in the fridge."

  Jared didn't say anything, at least not that Ken could hear. Ken left the house and went back to his car. He called Vivian as he started the engine.

  "Hi," she said, quietly.

  "Why are you over there?"

  "We should talk in person." Her voice was a monotone.

  "Give me a hint."

  A moment o
f silence. "We should talk in person."

  "Am I going to be unhappy?"

  "You're wasting time. Just come over here."

  "No, I'm not wasting time. My talking doesn't make the car move slower. I'd like some sort of idea of what's going on."

  She hung up on him.

  Ken didn't call her back. If she'd decided that she wasn't going to explain anything over the phone, no amount of screaming at her would change her mind. He'd find out what happened when he got there. He didn't know it was bad. Maybe he'd arrive and find Charlene in the living room, gift wrapped and ready to be caged.

  He tried to focus on that possibility as he drove, rather than the possibility that she'd done something horrible.

  He arrived at the house twenty minutes later. Vivian was seated on the couch, hands in her lap, her face blank. This was definitely not a "Hey, I've got a present for you!" scenario. He closed the front door and waited for her to speak. When he realized that she wasn't going to speak without prompting, he asked her what was going on.

  Vivian patted the couch cushion next to her. Ken sat down.

  "You're creeping me out," he said.

  Vivian took a deep breath. "I did something I regret."

  "I kind of figured that. What did you do?"

  "You have to promise me you won't get mad."

  "No."

  "It's not as bad as what you did."

  "For fuck's sake, Vivian, just tell me what you did! Did you kill Gertie?"

  Vivian shook her head.

  "So talk! Spit it out! You're driving me insane!"

  "Now I'm not sure you're ready to handle it."

  Ken stood up and resisted the urge to kick the couch. He stormed out of the living room and walked into the hallway. He entered two digits of the code to open the basement door before he noticed the smell of ammonia. The carpet was damp.

  He went into Darrell's bedroom. The smell of cleaning supplies was even thicker in here. In addition to the damp carpet, the bed had been completely stripped of sheets and blankets, and the mattress itself was wet, as if it had been scrubbed down.

  Things were getting further and further away from "gift wrapped victim."

  He went back into the living room.

  "Okay," he said, straining to keep his voice calm, "I swear I won't get mad. Just tell me what you did. We'll work through this together."

  "You know the girl you're after? The one on the news? The one whose friend is in the basement?"

  "Yes, I know who you're talking about. Her name is Charlene. Did you kill her?"

  "No. I killed her boss."

  "How?"

  "I brought him back here and stabbed him to death."

  "Did you have sex with him?"

  "No. Of course not."

  Ken's face felt like it was on fire. He wanted to go over there and smack the shit out of her, though of course he'd never lay a hand on her. He tried to figure out what to say, but couldn't formulate a response that wasn't simply a string of expletives, so he settled for pacing around the room for a few moments.

  "This was your fault," said Vivian.

  "How the hell was it my fault?"

  "You betrayed my trust. And it made me want to have my fun, too."

  "You couldn't have talked to me about it?"

  "You didn't talk to me."

  "Actually, I did."

  "No, you withheld the worst parts. You told me the women were already dead. You didn't tell me about the depraved stuff in the basement. You didn't tell me about this place. Don't you dare pretend that you were honest with me."

  Ken continued to pace. "Fine. Fine. You murdered her boss. Should I expect the cops to break down this door at any minute?"

  "Of course not. I was careful."

  "How careful? You're twenty years out of practice."

  "Nobody knows."

  "All right. Shit. How far did it go?"

  "What do you mean? I told you I stabbed him to death. That's pretty fucking far."

  "You stabbed him to death on the bed. How far did it go? Were you rolling around naked? Did you go down on him? Did you make out? What happened?"

  "He thought he was going to get laid, obviously," said Vivian, "but nothing happened. I told him I was going to give him a backrub to relax him. All he got was a knife."

  Ken wasn't entirely convinced that Vivian was telling the truth, though she wasn't avoiding eye contact or fidgeting or giving off any of the other nonverbal clues that somebody was lying. If she'd kissed the guy to lure him onto the bed...well, he wouldn't think about that.

  "I wish you hadn't done this," Ken told her.

  "So do I," Vivian admitted.

  Ken sighed. "Well, what's done is done, I guess. We obviously can't bring him back to life. We'll just have to make sure we've covered your tracks completely."

  "I covered them," said Vivian. "Nobody will ever find out."

  "All right. Is there anything else I should know?"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Vivian did not answer right away.

  In fact, now she was avoiding eye contact.

  Ken was not happy about this. "What happened?" he asked.

  "There were complications."

  "What kind of complications?"

  "You swore you wouldn't get mad."

  "Right. I'll stick to that. Just tell me about these complications."

  "Your gross friend showed up with a gross woman and I had no other choice."

  Ken suddenly felt like he needed the flask of whiskey that he kept in the glove compartment. His legs went numb and for a moment he thought he might keel over right there. "Had no other choice but to do what?"

  "What do you think? You can't put the pieces together?"

  "Please tell me you're just messing with me."

  "You're the one who rented a house with a sleaze bucket. I'm sorry I had to do it, but it's not like the world has lost a fine human being. He was a sweaty pig who brought some slut over for a lunchtime fuck session. Boo-hoo. Society will cope."

  "I'm not saying that he was an upstanding citizen. I don't give a shit that he's dead. I give a shit that you murdered three people in a day! I chose my victims carefully. I spaced them out. You went on a killing spree!"

  "What was I supposed to do? Tell them to ignore all of the gore; the maid would take care of it?"

  "Make up an excuse! Send them away! Tell him that you found out I was renting the place and you were pissed!"

  "I was covered in blood. I can't help but think they might have suspected that something was amiss."

  "He's got a wife!"

  "So? I'm guessing that he didn't tell her where he was going or who he was with. He was here to bang his mistress. He covered his own tracks."

  Ken couldn't believe they were having this conversation. It was difficult for him to not just start smashing his head against the wall until his skull shattered. This was absolute madness.

  "Shit," he said. "Shit, shit, shit."

  "Why are you so upset?"

  "You knew I'd done this kind of thing before."

  "Yeah, and you said you'd gotten it out of your system before we met."

  "Well, apparently you brought it right back. I thought you might be happy. This opens the door to us doing it together."

  "You seriously thought I'd say, 'Good job, honey!' For real?"

  "No," said Vivian. "But maybe we could discuss the idea that this isn't necessarily such a bad thing."

  "It is a bad thing. You better have gotten it out of your system this time, because you're done! It's over. Where are the bodies?"

  "In the trunk of my car."

  "How'd you get them in there by yourself?"

  "I made them easier to carry."

  "Jesus."

  "There were tools in the garage."

  "And where exactly did you plan to get rid of them?" Ken asked.

  "I don't know. You're the one with corpses in cages. Where did you plan to get rid of yours?"

  "I was going to bury them
in the forest."

  "Good. That's what we'll do with mine."

  Ken was feeling a bit dizzy. "I need to sit down," he said, plopping down on the couch.

  Vivian scooted closer to him. "Maybe this gives us a reason to get out of here. Leave and start over. You hate your job. We've got some savings."

  "What about Jared's school?"

  "So he does his senior year at a new school. It's not like he's leaving behind many friends. It might be better for him to be someplace where nobody knows about the cat."

  "I'm sure nobody remembers the cat."

  "Would you forget if it was one of your classmates? He's lucky they thought it only happened once. What I'm saying is that he'll be fine. We could move him to the North Pole and he wouldn't care as long as he had his video games."

  "We can't just—"

  "I know what you're going to say," said Vivian. "Obviously we aren't going to pack up and leave right after these people have gone missing. We'll wait it out a little bit. But not too long. Go somewhere with a really cheap cost of living."

  "You mean where life is cheap?"

  Vivian shrugged. "Maybe."

  "I don't kill crack whores or homeless people."

  "That's not what I was saying at all. You need to chill out."

  "Chill out? After what you did?"

  "We'd already agreed that I got to do it."

  "No!" Ken vigorously shook his head. "We absolutely did not agree on that. You said you got to kill somebody, but we did not come to any kind of decision. I never would have allowed that. Never."

  "My mistake."

  "It's great that you can be oh-so-very casual about this. Sorry if I'm not feeling quite as safe."

  Vivian got up off the couch. "What you did is worse. Despite that, we're going to call it even. Starting right now, what you did doesn't matter and what I did doesn't matter."

  "Of course it fucking matters!"

  "I meant in terms of our relationship. Yes, we have work to do, but you got your women in cages, I got my victim and the collateral damage, and we're done fighting about it."

  "I don't know that I am."

  "I'll give you another one. The other girl. Charlene."

  "What the hell are you saying? She's here?"