by Rachel Caine
Our security guard leads us forward through a grand double-doored entrance, into another room that I suspect only exists for circumstances like this: meetings with strangers. It's built to impress. There's no desk, but there's a vast view of the city, obscured today by low, wispy clouds. Three grand sofas are set in a triangle, with a table in the middle. The security man takes up a post near the wall and crosses his hands in front, looking like he can stand there for the next ten thousand years, and Sam and I wait, not sure where, or if, we should sit.
Ballantine Rivard rolls in exactly on time. His wheelchair is a marvel of aesthetic design, and it moves almost silently, except for the slight hiss of tires on the thick carpeting. In person, he looks younger than his pictures, and he's changed out the black-rimmed glasses for a pair with a slightly blue tint to the lenses. Frameless. They make him look like he's about to go Formula One racing.
Ironically--or not--he's wearing the exact same tracksuit we are.
"Sit, sit," he says, giving us an impartial smile. "Gwen Proctor. Samuel Cade. Don't stand on ceremony." His honeyed tones don't fool me. This man didn't get to the top of this tower by being charming.
Sam and I sink down on the sofa, which feels brand-new. Not many people get to sit here, I think. We're rare exceptions, coming here at all.
"Can I offer you a drink?" He doesn't look behind him, but as if on cue, an impeccably dressed man in a tailored blue business suit walks in, carrying a silver tray loaded down with drink choices. Every one of them is alcoholic, and above my wildest dream budget.
"Scotch would be fine," Sam says, and I nod. Rivard wants to be hospitable, and we'll sip for courtesy.
The Scotch, of course, is heaven in a glass. I try to keep the sips shallow.
"Now," Rivard says, as he's given his own glass, which the man in the suit has mixed with expert ease from three different liquors. "You have news of this investigator."
"I'll tell you what we know, but it needs to be private."
Rivard's eyes lock on me through the blue-tinted glasses. "Mr. Chivari. Mr. Dougherty. Please leave us."
The man in the blue suit does it without hesitation or question, but the security man says, "Sir, wouldn't you rather I stay--"
"Out, Mr. Dougherty. You may wait just beyond the door. I will be fine." There's a set to Rivard's jaw now, and a faint flush working up through the pallid skin of his neck, though his voice remains calm and slow. Dougherty gives us both a last, unhappy look, and then closes up the door after himself. "All right. We're alone now. And I can answer you without filters. Now. Tell me how you happened to find this man."
"You mean, Mr. Sauer?"
His eyes flicker just a little, but what it means, I don't know. "Yes. Where did you find him?"
"In a deserted warehouse," I say. I'm willing to let Sam take the lead, but he's laying back, watching. Absorbing information. "Why did you hire him?"
"You said the name Absalom," Rivard counters. "Explain how you know that name, please."
I force a smile. "Sure. But first you tell me how you know it."
"I've had some . . . issues. I'd rather not go into the details."
"Did it have to do with your son?" Sam asks, and I ease back to let him take the conversation.
I think for a few seconds that we've lost the old man, that he's going to summon his men to see us out . . . but Rivard heaves a sigh and looks off into the distance, out at the serene Atlanta skyline. "Yes. It had to do with my son," he says. His voice has a ring of sadness, and also frustration. "Very much to do with him. I lost him to suicide a few months ago, you know. My fault. It's not easy, raising wealthy children with a good sense of right and wrong. I should have done better, but that's my sin, not his. He had drug problems through the years, as I suppose you're aware; the tabloids covered it with a great deal of glee. He was in and out of treatment facilities . . . not unlike you, Mr. Cade. You also have some hospitalization in your past, don't you?"
Sam closes up. I've seen it before, this change, but it's still alarming, as if he's turned to glass, and only his eyes are still alive. Then the shell breaks, and he says, "I was hospitalized after Afghanistan."
"No shame in it, son. A lot of good men come back damaged from war."
Sam's not having Rivard's honey-coated condescension. His eyes have gone flat and cold. "I was treated for severe depression, and since you're only discussing it to demonstrate you dug into both our histories, why don't you just skip to the main course and talk about Melvin Royal?"
I'm glad he's countermoved. Hearing him say my ex-husband's name is a shock, but a bracing one. We've just controlled the pacing. And I see Rivard doesn't care for that much, from the slight tightening of his thin lips.
"All right," he says. "Let's do discuss the invisible serial killer in the room. Melvin Royal is on the loose, everyone is running in terror, and yet you, Gina, you aren't hiding. If anyone has cause, one would suppose it's you . . . unless you have a good reason not to be afraid of him. Which makes me believe that is how you know about Absalom."
"Fuck you," I say, which makes him wince from the incivility of it all. "You think I'm working with my ex? Sincerely, fuck you." I stand up, set my glass with a thump, and head for the door. Rivard smoothly angles his chair forward to cut me off, and I'm not quite angry enough to punch a rich old man who's wheelchair-bound. "Move."
"I was only seeing your reaction," he tells me calmly. "I do apologize if you were offended."
I'm staring straight into his eyes. "If I was offended? Fuck you and your Ivory Tower power-play bullshit. That sick bastard is hunting me. He's hunting my children. Either help, or get out of my way. Is that direct enough for you?"
Behind me, Sam stands, too. I hear his glass hit the table. "We don't need you," he tells Rivard. "Go to hell."
It's not quite Fuck you, but I'll take it. He's probably thinking about Mike Lustig, and not completely destroying this back channel, but I don't have any kind of patience. I am incandescent with rage. Melvin's Little Helper had her day in court, and I'll be damned if I'll let anyone say this to my face again.
Rivard blinks first. "All right," he says, then moves his chair out of my way. "You're welcome to leave if you like, I won't stop you. But I do apologize, Ms. Proctor. That was rude. But I had to be certain you weren't . . . one of them."
"Absalom, you mean," I say, and he nods. "It was Absalom you were after? That's who Sauer was looking into?"
"Yes." He takes a long breath. "My son suffered from, as they term it these days, affluenza. I would simply call him spoiled. It led to drug and alcohol addiction, which resulted in a variety of problems. All tiresomely predictable. A cliche." He waves that away. "Absalom targeted him, and they were unspeakably cruel in how they tormented him online. No reason at all. Simply because he was an easy target. Amusement, I suppose."
"How did they attack him?" I ask, but I think I already know. He takes another drink, then puts his glass down on the table to join ours. It means he's surrendering his last defense, I think.
"It started as postings. What do they call them on the Internet? Memes. One day he woke up and discovered he was the butt of a thousand jokes, and I can only imagine it devastated him; he never told me about it. He tried to handle it himself, and that only put fuel on the fire. They came after him like a pack of wild dogs. Put his personal details online. Posted stolen therapy records. They went further every day. My son had a three-year-old daughter. They first claimed he molested her, then forged paperwork that purported to prove it. Pictures. They posted these--horrible videos of--" Rivard's voice fails him, and for the first time, I feel sorry for him. I know this story. I've lived it.
He clears his throat. "The worst was, people believed it. There were websites formed around hounding him. Police investigated the claims of molestation. There was no truth to it, the case was dismissed, but that didn't stop the crusade. There were avalanches of vile letters. Faxes. Phone calls. He couldn't--he couldn't get away from it. After a while, I su
ppose he didn't even see the point of trying." Rivard's watery eyes suddenly shift to lock on mine. "You understand. I know you do, given what was done to you."
I slowly nod. From the day that Melvin's horror chamber was broken open, my kids and I have been targets. You never understand how vulnerable you are in this age of social media until something breaks against you, and then . . . then it's too late. You can shut down Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; you can change your phone number and your e-mail. Move to new places. But for dedicated tormentors, that isn't a barrier. It's a challenge. They enjoy hitting. They don't particularly care if the blows ever land, and it becomes a contest of who can post the most shocking, degrading material. The torrent comes from nowhere, and everywhere, and the hatred . . . it's like poison, seeping from the screen into your brain.
It doesn't take much of Absalom's brand of abuse to erode your sense of balance, your confidence, your trust in those around you. When your enemies are faceless, they are everywhere. Paranoia becomes reality. At any given moment, even now, I can log on and find a firehose of hatred directed at me, and at my kids. I can watch it happen in real time. It's a self-perpetuating engine of outrage.
So I can sympathize with the hopelessness Ballantine Rivard's son felt. I had days where ending things felt like the only way out of the trap. I'd survived, just barely. He hadn't. It isn't fair, or right, but it's dreadfully human, the way we tear each other apart.
"I'm sorry for what he went through," I tell Rivard. I let a beat go by before I come back to the topic. "How did he kill himself?"
Rivard's eyes go distant and blind. "He jumped from this tower. He had an apartment here. The glass was thick; he had to make a dedicated effort to break it. I believe he used a marble bust. Then he jumped. Twenty-eight stories."
I give that a respectful moment of silence before I continue, "And, after he died . . . you hired this investigator to track down the people who went after him?"
"No. I hired Mr. Sauer to investigate who was driving him to the brink of madness well before that. But Mr. Sauer disappeared just prior to my son's death." His hands tap restlessly on the armrests of his chair. Grip them tightly, until I can almost hear his knuckles crack.
Now we are getting to it. "Did he give you regular reports? Information?"
"Some," he says. "Not as much as I'd hoped. He was due back to me with more details on the day he vanished. And now it's time for you to explain to me how exactly you located my missing man."
We do. We leave Lustig out of it, but we tell him about the video we recovered--though not where we found it. Mike Lustig has the thumb drive, but Sam has taken the precaution of uploading it to the cloud, and he offers to play it for Rivard. Rivard provides a laptop, and Sam gives him the link. I don't watch. I try not to listen, but I hear when Sauer gives up the name Rivard.
Rivard stops the video. We are all silent for a moment, and then Sam says, "Do you recognize anyone? Any voices?"
"No," Rivard says. He sounds subdued and thoughtful. "And you found his body there?"
"Yes."
"Did you find anything else? Any clues?"
"Just his wallet. The police will have it all now." I consider mentioning the FBI, but I decide not to.
"Would you be willing to give us what you have on Absalom?" Sam asks. My impulse would have been to demand it, but Sam's right. Rivard's sense of entitlement responds better to what he considers politeness. Whatever works. My ego isn't at stake. "Mr. Rivard, I know you can hire a hundred investigators to go at this, but we're here. We're invested. And we're going forward with or without you, so you might as well join with us, don't you think?"
"You're proposing an alliance." He glances at me, then back to Sam. "You realize that I'm a very public figure. I would have to ask you to withhold any mention of my involvement. I can, however, offer you resources to help you along. You'll keep me informed of what you discover?"
"Yes," Sam says. "At every step." He sounds completely trustworthy. But then, he lied to me successfully, too, for quite a while. He's good at deception when he needs to be.
Rivard seems to accept that at face value. "All right. He gave me a few names. Most of who Absalom seems to recruit are just kids, fifteen and sixteen years old. Sociopaths, yes, but too young to be held criminally responsible, and followers, definitely not leaders. Of the adults Mr. Sauer was able to track down, two were already dead when he located their identities." Rivard takes in a raw breath. "He'd called that information in the morning he vanished, but I was hoping for more. He said he'd be back in touch. He wasn't."
I try to keep my voice quieter. Softer. More feminine, which is what Rivard seems to favor. "Will you give us the last name that Mr. Sauer reported to you?" I ask it carefully. Quietly. I don't look at him directly, for fear of raising his hackles again.
Rivard considers. He does it a long time. There's a knock--a discreet one--at the door, and it opens a small amount for the man in the blue suit to lean in. "Sir," he says. "It's almost time for treatments."
"So it is," Rivard says. "A moment, Mr. Chivari."
Chivari waits inside by the door. Rivard works in silence for a moment on the laptop. As he punches keys, he says, almost absently, "The last name I was given by Mr. Sauer is Carl David Suffolk. He lives in Wichita, Kansas. Your old home, I believe, Ms. Proctor. I leave locating him up to you. Ah. Here. I believe that there is one last thing that you should see."
He faces the computer out toward us. I glance at his face, then down at the screen, and Sam leans forward. I'm expecting to see something about Carl David Suffolk, but he's sucker punching me, and I don't even see it coming.
I recognize the house in the video. It's . . . it's mine. It takes me just an instant before that creeping sense of familiarity clicks in, and I feel like I'm drifting out of my body. For a second I think, Someone must have fixed our garage, but that's stupid; the garage was never fixed after the wreck that broke open that brick wall and poured out my husband's secrets. The house was torn down instead. There's a park there now. I've been to it.
But this video is of our old house, before. Before the world knew who we were, what Melvin was.
I don't know what I'm looking at, and I quickly glance up at Rivard's face.
"Wait for it," he says.
The video's a little rough, but perfectly clear. It's night, and the security lights fixed around the roof of our house--Melvin's insistence--are all dark just now. They were motion sensitive, I remember. There's a streetlight right at the curb that casts an unrelenting glow over the side of the house, and the one next door, and I remember how much trouble I went to, to find blackout curtains that Melvin liked because he hated sleeping in a room that wasn't dark, and . . .
I see an SUV come into the video frame. Its lights turn off, and it glides quietly into the driveway of our house.
That's our old minivan. I have a visceral memory of being in that vehicle, of driving it on the day that everything went wrong. That feeling of the world turning over sweeps through me again. I don't know why Rivard is showing me this, but I'm afraid.
The minivan triggers the motion light at the back of the house. Whoever's filming moves jerkily and gets an angle on the driveway as the vehicle pulls beneath the carport at the end. It's dark under the canopy. Brake lights flash, then go dark, and when the door opens, the video zooms forward and jumps around before fixing on the person getting out of the driver's side.
It's Melvin. Younger than the last time I saw him. Eerily present. He glances around, and as he does, I think, He looks so normal. Just a normal man in a checked shirt and dad jeans. Just a normal monster.
Then I realize that someone is getting out of the other side of the truck, and that someone is me.
No. It's Gina Royal.
She looks different than I do. Her hair is longer, curled, and styled. She's wearing a dress (he always liked me in dresses) that looks pale blue in the dim light. Heels. I don't remember the dress, but I feel sick to my stomach, looking at Gina, at a
person I used to be. Her head is down. Her shoulders are rounded. I never, ever thought I was an abused wife; I never even saw the way he controlled me, bullied me, manipulated my life. But it's clear to me now as I look at the woman I used to be. Like seeing a ghost.
Melvin opens the rear door of the van and says something. Gina moves to the back, and I'm struck by a weird sense--the strangest yet--of unreality.
What am I seeing? I don't remember this. Any of it.
Melvin reaches in and slides something out.
It's a woman. A limp, unconscious woman. Her long hair sways as he lifts her under the arms, and Gina Royal picks up her feet. The young woman is wearing a gray top and blue shorts and running shoes, and Gina's grip fastens around the girl's ankles. She almost drops the weight as she fumbles to get the minivan's door closed.
I am numb. Silent. Stunned by a sense of utter wrongness.
Because I didn't do this.
It never happened.
And yet, I recognize the house. The vehicle. Melvin. Myself. The motion lights that snap on as I help Melvin Royal carry a victim into our house.
The numbness shatters as the light falls full on the face of the woman not-me is helping to carry in, and I hear Sam's groan, a deep, low sound like someone has reached inside and torn it out of him. It's his sister. Callie.
This isn't right, I think. My head feels odd and weightless, and the world is wrong; everything is wrong. I am not this. I have never been this.
The video goes dark.
Rivard closes the laptop and hands it back to his assistant with a calm nod of thanks.
I want to scream. Choke the bastard. Vomit. But instead I just sit, numb and frozen, waiting for the world to make sense again. Could I have? No. No, I would remember. I would know. I don't remember this.
I am not Melvin's Little Helper.
I finally lick my dry lips and say, "That isn't me." My voice sounds faint and weak and not my own. "It's not me." I feel cold and alone. I feel like I'm falling to the center of the earth.
"That was my sister," Sam says. "That was Callie--" Unlike me, Sam doesn't sound cold. He sounds hot, boiling, barely in control. I feel the sofa shift as he launches to his feet and stalks away. I don't turn to look, because I can't. I can't see the horror and revulsion in him right now. Rivard's pale eyes follow his progress. "Is that real?"