by Keri Lake
By the narrowing of Jonah’s eyes, I know I’m in trouble for not saying anything. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because Harv is an asshole. That’s relatively mild compared to what he’s said to other women, believe me. Anyway, Voss scared him off tonight.”
“Voss was at your work?”
“Yeah.”
“What for?”
I recall the comment he made about not being able to stop thinking about me. “Nothing I care to go into with you, especially when you’re looking at me like that. You don’t have to worry about me, Jonah. I’m an adult.”
“Yeah, except that another woman was found this morning. A hiker stumbled upon her in the woods.”
“I heard that. How’d she die?” While the idea of a woman being found in the woods, dead, is terrifying, with a few women having gone missing lately, how has become a common question.
“She had bruises on her neck, and her carbon dioxide levels were high. Coroner thinks she was strangled to death. There were signs of sexual assault, as well. So you need to be careful. Vigilant. Do you have the note Harvey gave you?”
“No. I tossed it.”
“Don’t toss shit like that. Might be evidence.”
“Please don’t turn me into another crime scene, Jonah.” Harvey Bennington is undoubtedly the biggest prick I’ve ever met, but he doesn’t give me the serial killer, dump-a-body-in-the-woods vibe. Particularly if he’s stumped someone as smart as my brother, because Harv is a tool. A tool who can barely figure out how to run a washing machine, let alone think to scrub a crime scene for evidence, and I refuse to believe anything else. “I’m trying, desperately trying, not to live my life as a victim every day. I’m trying to give people the benefit of doubt and not view every male I come into contact with as a potential murderer. You know what, though? It’s hard. Every day, I’m looking over my shoulder, wondering if the right man is behind bars.”
“You think we were wrong. With Denny’s murderer.”
“No. I want to believe you were absolutely right, because I’ve had enough bullshit in my life. We both have. It’d be nice to lay something to rest for once.”
He stares off, thoughtful, and I don’t have to wonder what he’s thinking about. Our family is cursed by lack of closure, which has sent Jonah into a tailspin with these missing girl cases. They’re too personal for him. “I want to know if this Harvey gets in touch again. If he leaves a note, or tries to contact you, call me immediately.”
I nod, but run my fingers through my hair, anxious about one other thing relating to Harvey. “Can you check on Beth? I mean, she didn’t come to work today. I’m a little nervous.”
“You got an address?”
Rifling through my purse, I tug my phone and text him Dale’s number. “My boss should know it. Just tell him I asked you to check on her. He knows my brother is a cop.”
Lips pressed to a hard line, he pulls me in for a hug. “Just be careful, okay? This Voss could be anything. Clean record, or not, I wouldn’t put too much faith in anyone right now.”
“Fair deal. Thanks for dropping Oli off.”
“See if you can work some early shifts. This guy targets women at night. Party girls, mostly.”
“Well, then, I have nothing to fear. Last I checked they were rich party girls, which means, I’m definitely not the killers soup du jour.”
“Perhaps not. Doesn’t hurt to be careful, though.”
“You’re right. I’d be foolish to assume anything,” I concede.
Offering a pat on my shoulder as he passes, Jonah heads toward his car, and when he drives off, out of view, I glance around one more time at the quiet neighborhood before making my way inside.
Upstairs, I stop at Oliver’s room where the door stands cracked, and peek inside. He’s already in bed. Considering it’s after nine, I’m thankful for that.
I tiptoe across the floor to beside his bed and peel back the blankets covering his face. The streetlamp outside his room offers just enough light to see the black plum around his eye, the sight of which makes me flinch.
Like a slap in the face, I remember this morning, when Oli woke up for school in tears. He didn’t want to tell me what was troubling him, and if I had to guess, he didn’t want to go to school.
It makes me wonder if he’s been silently dealing with the cruelty of others in the last six months. Here I am, so preoccupied with bringing back the past and trying to restore his innocence that I’m failing to see the present.
Through a blur of tears, I stare down at him, brushing his hair behind his ear. I bend forward and kiss his temple, careful to avoid his eye. “I love you,” I whisper, before slinking quietly back through the room.
In the morning, I’ll be sure to have a chat with Oliver’s school counselor about this, and see about a meeting with this kid’s parents, since it happened at the bus stop, but in the meantime, I’m glad Voss was there today.
Wiping my eyes, I pad back down the hall to my bedroom and peer out the window to see Voss’s car isn’t parked in the driveway, and the lights in the apartment are off. Every instinct inside of me says he’s not a bad man, but what if everything I once knew, all the natural inclinations I’ve spent my entire life paying attention to, have suddenly become mis-wired with Denny’s death? What if I no longer recognize the difference between a good and bad man?
Here, I thought Harv was nothing but an annoying asshole with some weird kinks, but what if he’s more than that?
What if he’s a killer who removes the eyeballs of his victims and stuffs the sockets with sand?
18
Voss
I glance down at the address Jackson gave me, then back to the shithole bungalow, located on the shady side of town. The white van is nowhere in sight, so I slide out of my vehicle, parked two houses down, and make my way across the street. I should be watching the house where Nola is, but I need to check out Harv and Beth’s place first.
Something about this couple just isn’t sitting right with me. For whatever reason, Carl has targeted Nola, and although Beth is a more likely target than my landlord, from what I remember of Carl’s tastes, I’m guessing she’s simply a means to get to Nola. A vehicle he’s used to give him a way in.
Whether that’s unwitting, or intentional, is still a mystery to me. Carl doesn’t take up with accomplices. Even the few times he tried to drag me along on his little escapades when we were kids, he found me to be a nuisance—always getting in his way.
Consequently, I learned to get in his way as much as possible.
From what I’ve gathered, Beth and Harv are two personalities who would surely bug the shit out of him, so their involvement is likely inadvertent.
Perhaps even deadly, at this point.
The knob on the front door turns easily, and with a gloved hand, I enter the quiet house, gun leading the way. An arc of light cuts through the room when I click on the flashlight and sweep it over the surrounding darkness. Fast food bags and dirty dishes litter the living room, creating a stench of French fries that makes me want to gag. I keep on toward the kitchen, noting the same unkempt condition as the living room, with dishes cluttering the counter, food scattered about. It’s a wonder the mice haven’t taken over this shithole.
Down the hallway, two rooms stand at either side of the corridor—a bathroom to the left and a bedroom to the right. Entering the one on the right, I take careful steps, so as not to disturb anything, always scanning for movement. Clothes lay about the floor and the bed, but most notable to me are the two pills lying on the mattress, and a glass lying on the floor beside the bed.
Feels hasty and unfinished.
I angle my flashlight up to a chair beside the bed, and when I swing to the right, I see a mirror propped directly across from it.
Must be where Harv sits watching himself jack off, while some dude fucks his wife. I try to imagine my uncle having any part of that, but the idea he’d do anything for the gratification of someone else isn’t fitt
ing. He’d only allow someone to watch, if he thought it’d bring them mental anguish. Torment was always his main objective. That’s how sadists operate.
The half-opened closet draws my curiosity, and I approach carefully, expecting to find what happened to the couple hanging from the ceiling inside. Instead, I find a collection of BDSM props and gadgets. Some, I recognize from my own arsenal at home—cat-o-nines, paddle, riding crop. I lift a latex suit from where it’s crumpled on the floor beside it’s packaging, which looks like something sold in a Halloween store, and find an uneven cut along the neck of it.
Weird.
When shadows move across the wall, I flick off the flashlight, dropping the garment to the floor. Slinking along the wall, I duck low and move toward the front of the house, where I peer through the front window.
A car’s parked in the driveway. A guy clambers out of the unfamiliar vehicle, a Ford pickup truck, from the looks of it, gun at his hip. I don’t recognize him, but then, it’s been almost twenty years since I’ve seen Carl.
Not sure I could point him out from a lineup these days.
As the stranger makes his way toward the front door, I sneak toward the back, looking for a way out. Through the laundry room, there’s a backdoor, but it’s got so much shit packed against it, there’s no way I’d get through without making a bunch of noise. At the first knock, I slip across the hallway back toward the bedroom and attempt to open the window. The window that’s been painted shut.
Fuck.
“Hello? Beth? Harv?”
The stranger is inside the house.
As I didn’t plan on killing anyone here, I use the butt of my gun to bust out the window.
“Hey!” the stranger shouts from the other room.
I slip through the bashed-out glass, but a streak of pain across my arm leaves me gritting my teeth as I hit the dirt in the backyard. Pushing to my feet, I just make it around the corner, when I see the guy peeking through the busted hole. Hand clamped over my arm, from where blood trails down toward my wrist, I hobble off.
“Stop! Police!”
I don’t stop for anything, not even police, and I book it down the street to my vehicle. Once inside, I fire it up and hit the gas, taking off past the house. A quick glance shows the guy dashing out the front door to his truck, but I’m already to the end of the block before I see him hop in the driver’s seat through the rearview mirror. After squealing around the corner, I take off up two blocks to the next street and pull into the first empty driveway. I back the car up to the garage and cut the engine, along with the headlights, before ducking down into my seat.
The truck whizzes past me.
With a shaky breath, I exhale and twist my arm, find a nasty gash there that’ll undoubtedly need stitches. Hopefully, I didn’t leave my fucking DNA all over the glass back there.
Once minutes tick by and the truck seems to be long gone, I drive back out on the street, careful to follow the speed limit, and head back home.
When I arrive, I cut the lights, so as not to draw Nola’s attention, and creep up the driveway, slipping past the Explorer, and park in front of the garage. Via the stairs, I enter my apartment, petting Vince on the way to the sink.
From the drawer beside me, I lift a black leather case, one I’ve learned never to leave home without, filled with first aid items. The sting intensifies when I scrub the wound on the back of my bicep with soap, and I fish through my first-aid bag for a suture kit. Wish I could say this was my first rodeo, sewing up a nasty wound, but it’s become something akin to sewing on a goddamn button a few times a year.
I twist the cap off a fifth of whiskey and kick back a nice swill of it, before pouring it over the wound. Teeth grinding inside my skull, I wait for the alcohol to work its magic, then nab a pre-threaded suture. Using the mirror, I try for straight lines with every thread of the needle, but the reflection adds just enough confusion to space them wrong. Thirty minutes later, I’m closing the last stitch, and I snip off the thread and run an alcohol swab over the sutures. A square of gauze fits perfectly over the length of the gash, and I tape it in place.
I’ve, personally, sewed half the scars on my body. Easier than messing with docs, who ask too many questions.
Bottle in hand, I walk over to the window and kick back another swig, staring down at the breezeway, below where Nola goes to work at her potter’s wheel. With the back of my hand, I wipe the excess whiskey from my lips, keeping my eyes locked on her.
Vince brushes past my pants, and I bend down and lift him with one hand, letting him nuzzle himself into my neck. He purrs, when I brush my stubbled face against him and kiss the top of his head.
But my stare remains fixed on the woman.
The longer I spend here, the more I can understand Carl’s obsession with her.
With each passing day, I’m finding it harder and harder to look away.
19
The Sandman
Face hidden behind a latex mask, The Sandman tipped his head, chewing his gum while watching a vacuum suck the air from the bed, on which Harvey lay passed out. Only a small black breathing tube stuck up out of the black latex sheet, one that covered him entirely, without a hole for his head.
At his feet, Beth hung suspended from an upright frame he’d hooked to cables attached to the rafters. Like a latex sculpture, standing vertical, her body completely immobile and vacuum-sealed. Unlike Harvey, though, the latex sheet that covered her was blood red and had a hole for the head, the edges of it digging into her neck to maintain the tight seal that held her in place. She wore a mask with holes cut out for the eyes and tiny breathing holes at the nose, her mouth completely covered by the latex.
A different mask to the one Marnee had worn. For a different purpose.
The Sandman got both of them shit-faced drunk, after inviting them to a threesome at his place. His focus was Beth, an obnoxious little bitch he couldn’t wait to silence, and Harvey just came as a packaged deal. He didn’t like the added body—a risk in terms of breaking his patterns, a breach in keeping the evidence under control—but his torment might prove entertaining.
Rolling her head back and forth, Beth groaned as she slowly came to, and at the first wriggles, he chuckled.
Muffled moans lay trapped inside the covering over her mouth. Her legs squirmed beneath the latex sheet, but failed to get her loose. The moans morphed into little grunts and whispers, as lucidity crept into her voice, and her eyes popped open with panic.
The Sandman stood from his crouch beside Harvey and chomped his gum, studying her fear.
Tears filled her eyes, as she made a muffled plea behind the mask. Always the same routine. Panic. Negotiation. Acceptance. The first few moments were his favorite, though. When realization dawned on their faces and their nightmares came to life. Almost magical.
“Tell me something, Beth. If given the choice, would you choose to let me sodomize you, or watch Harvey suffocate to death?”
Her body shook with a sob, squeaking the latex, the sight of which, made his dick hard. Another imploration failed to break through the covering, but it stoked his anger just the same.
He reached up to slap at her face, watching her eyes blink, and the sounds of panic bled through the plastic. “That’s not what I fucking asked you, Beth. Let’s try again. Which would you prefer?” Working the gum over his tongue, he blew a bubble in her face, letting it pop.
She startled and fell forward, breathing hard as though hyperventilating in the mask. Even when he grabbed her by the jaw, angling her face back to his, she still gasped for air.
“Quit being dramatic, Beth. Answer the question. Or I’ll have to punish you, and believe me when I say, you will not like my punishment. Now, do you love Harvey?”
With tears streaming down her latex cheeks, she nodded emphatically.
“Do you want to watch him suffocate before your eyes?”
She shook her head back and forth, and made a moaning sound before breaking into another sob.
“Do you choose me, then?”
Gaze falling from his, she nodded and sniffled.
Digging his fingers into her cheeks, The Sandman forced her eyes back to his. “Are you lying to me, Beth? Because I fucking hate liars.”
Eyes pleading, she shook her head, and his heart felt light again.
“You truly want me.”
Another nod nearly had him bursting out of his suit.
“I can’t tell you how much this pleases me, Beth. Hang on a second, I want to tell Harvey.”
With a skip in his step, The Sandman made his way over to where Harvey lay immobile. He could see the poor bastard’s body jerk and spasm beneath the coating of latex that clung to him like a second skin. A vibrating, throaty noise erupted from the breathing tube.
“Listen, Harvey. I just asked Beth who she would choose. And she chose me. I’m sorry, but I guess this means you’re shit out of luck.” Tugging the wad of gum from his mouth, The Sandman stuck it over the top of the breathing tube, and a sharp scream skated down his spine.
He skipped back to where Beth writhed helplessly in her bindings. “I’m giving you the best of both worlds. But here’s the thing. I can’t share. I want to fill you with my precious seed, and know that you belong only to me. My little flower of the night. Does that sound okay to you?”
Eyes squinting out more tears, she turned away from him and whined. Whined! Here, he’d offered her the most wonderful gift. To belong to someone far more superior than her nothing husband. And the ungrateful bitch whined.
He whopped a hard smack to her face with his knuckles, and her crying lessened to broken sniffles. “You belong only to me. Can you appreciate how special that is? Can you even fathom what a gift it is to be mine?”
Blinking away more tears, she nodded and lifted her gaze to his. Creases beside her eyes offered the smile he couldn’t see.
“Don’t cry now, Beth. It’s time to consummate my possession. To pollinate my little flower, so that when you rest, you’ll take a piece of me in dreams. Do you understand? Will you accept me into your body?”