Chills (3 page)

They're human bones.
The certainty rooted and made itself known before she could discount it. That little voice in her brain and that unease in her gut weren't going to let her explain this away. They were real human bones, but from whom? Was Toby into grave digging now or something? Whose fingers could they possibly—

And then Kathy remembered the news articles, the ones about the murdered women. All those poor women, some of whose bodies were discovered not far from where she'd found that deer bone as a kid . . . all of them with fingers missing. And she felt sick.

A second later she had hastily dropped the bones back into the box, wiping her hands on her thighs with a vigorous distaste. Toby? A part of her resisted putting all the pieces together. It would mean Toby had done some horrible things, and well . . . he couldn't have. Sure, he was moody, and he certainly had a temper, but the person who was doing all those killings was some kind of monster. After all, these women in the paper had been raped, mutilated, carved, stabbed, and dumped like trash in the woods. And their fingers ...

And that probably wasn't the worst of it. She'd read somewhere that police always held back some of the details of the crime so that they could weed out the crazies who confessed to things they didn't do. So there was probably more. The Toby she knew, as much of a dick as he could be, just wasn't capable of such brutal things. Okay, so he was uncomfortably weird with her sometimes, the way he stared at her, at her body, with a kind of hungry, angry expression. But people had rough patches in life where they did things, maybe wanted things, that didn't really define them, per se, that they eventually outgrew. Toby had lived most of his life in a rough patch, really. Then there was that old dog he'd said he found dead, and he'd told her he was only cutting into it to see what it was like on the inside—no worse than hunting, really, because he'd found it already dead. But people experimented, didn't they? Dad said the boy needed an outlet for that temper of his....

He killed that dog, and you know it. You knew it then,
the voice told her.
He killed it like he killed those women.

No. Just no. No one related to her, with the same blood in his veins and the same DNA and the same formative childhood, could possibly do horrible things like that to other people.

So maybe Toby had
found
the box. Kathy picked it up gingerly, the tiny rattle of bones inside turning her stomach as she turned the box. Maybe he'd gone out on a long drive and then a walk in the woods and had come across it just lying there. Maybe.

Or maybe
, that little voice in her head, so sure of itself, suggested,
maybe he boiled the flesh off the finger bones of each of his murder victims and kept them as trophies so he could fantasize again and again about the kills
. Maybe that was why he had yanked her so violently away from the closet. He hadn't wanted her to find his little box of treasures.

She rose on unsteady legs, her shaking hands causing the contents of the box to knock around inside, and carefully made her way back to the closet. She'd put the box back where it had been, and . . . think. She'd think about what to do next. Maybe she could talk to Toby first and tell him what she'd seen. Maybe if she just asked, he could explain everything, and maybe that explanation had nothing at all to do with the local murders. Maybe there was a perfectly go—

A sharp pain at the back of her head made her cry out. Before she could register it as fingers tangled in her hair, pulling, the box had flown out of her hand, spilling the contents again, and she was on her back on the bedroom floor with Toby straddling her. The usual dead look in his eyes had been replaced by one of abject rage, not like fire but like an ice storm, a screaming, swirling maelstrom of hate.

It took her several moments longer to see the knife. It was shiny. Clean. It looked brand new. Its polished, silvery blade caught and froze time itself for what seemed like several long minutes before Toby's distorted voice finally broke through.

“What. The FUCK. Are you doing?” His words dropped like stones from his mouth, each segmented phrase punctuated by his hand on her throat picking her up and knocking her head against the floor. He reeked of cheap whiskey.

“I—I,” she croaked. She couldn't manage more than that. His hand was heavy, and she felt both words and breath forced back down inside her, causing the pounding of her heart to ache in her chest.

“Oh, Kat. Silly, stupid Kat.” He brought the point of the knife down very close to her widely staring eye. “You should have stayed out of my room.”

She struggled beneath his weight. “Toby, stop,” she gasped, trying to keep what little of her voice she could rasp out from rising an octave in panic.

He glanced back at the little box, its spilled insides vomited all over the bedroom floor, and eased his grip on her throat, just a little. When he looked back at her, his face wore a strange expression of disappointment and excitement. “I'm afraid I can't do that.”

“Toby, get off me.” She coughed. “Get off me, come on! Get off or Dad will—”

Her head was rocked to the side by a blow that stung her cheek. He'd hit her. Holy fuck, he'd actually hit her. He'd taken his hand off her throat and slapped her hard in the face. She lay silent, too stunned to struggle or attempt to speak again. Her cheek throbbed, and hot tears blurred her vision.

“You know, I could do you right here. I've thought about it, you know. I could fuck you and stab you to pieces and drag whatever's left of you out into the woods. I'd hide you better than the others. Dad would neeeever find you. No one would ever find you.“ His voice was soft, very soft, and kind of singsongy as he drew out the word “never.” He stroked the side of her breast through her bra with his free hand and grazed her bare stomach with the knife. “I could do that, Kat. I could make sure you keep quiet, so, so quiet, about the box and the finger bones and the Hand of the Black Stars—all of that. But you're my sister. I don't want to kill you—really, I don't.”

He leaned down until he was lying on top of her, his groin grinding painfully against her hips, his lips close to her ear. She felt the knife point digging into her cheek, and she winced, fresh tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes.

“But damn,” he said, his breathing getting heavier, “do I ever want to cut you.” His erection pressed painfully hard into her hip.

“Toby, please. Please get off of me.”

He sat up again and raised the knife.

“Toby, don't!”

He pressed the blade into her skin just above her left eyebrow. She could feel the sting of it, a spark of horrific bright pain, and she screamed.

He pulled the blade down, skipping over her eye and landing on her cheek just below the eye socket, a new sting that spread its venomous agony out across her face. She screamed again, all the panicked desperation inside her welling up in that one loud wail of terror and hurt.

He dragged the blade down farther, all the way to her jawbone, and now she could feel the wet heat of her own blood dripping down into her ear, her eye, her hair. Her tongue darted against the inside of her cheek and she felt it give a little, the skin there so thin, so dangerously close to tearing straight through, and she screamed again.

She barely heard the rapid footsteps on the stairs or her father and Officer Kempton shouting at Toby. She felt a weight being lifted off her and a coolness where it had been, and she began to tremble all over. She closed her eyes, bawling, and heard more shouting, but couldn't make out the words. The pain throbbing across her face had a heartbeat of its own, and she had blood in her ear, and besides, her own sobs filled her from the inside out. So she cried on the floor, cried until she couldn't hear the shouting or even her own sobs, just the furious pounding of her wound's own heartbeat, until that, too, faded, and the darkness behind her eyelids spread to her whole body.

* * *

Kathy turned up Silver Street and followed it through acres of white flatland to the visitor parking lot just outside of Parker Hall. A red brick building with narrow, barred windows and a mansard roof, it had always struck Kathy as a stern, unwelcoming place, looming in the vertical and nearly suffocating in its lengths and turns. Unlike other mental hospitals in which Kathy had found occasion to visit in order to interview staff or patients, Connecticut-Newlyn Hospital, formerly Newlyn Hospital for the Criminally Insane, was one large building with wards, dubbed “halls,” extending out from Parker Hall's administrative offices in broad slants.

She parked and sat for several minutes, watching the snow gather on her windshield and slowly blot out her view of the hospital. It took every ounce of willpower inside her to make herself get out of the car. Once the cold hit her face, she found it a little easier to trudge through the snow to the front door.

Kathy pressed the intercom button and gave her full name, then flashed her credentials at the CCTV camera mounted above the front door. There was a click and a crackle on the other end, followed by a soul-jarring buzz as the front door was unlocked. Kathy left the blindingly bright cold behind and stepped into the main lobby.

Ahead and to the right, a middle-aged woman with coiffed blond hair, a tired mouth, and cool eyes magnified by thick glasses sat behind a glass wall in a small office. She waved Kathy over.

“Hey, Margaret,” Kathy said with a small smile as she approached. She held up her ID against the glass between them, then slid it beneath through a narrow opening above the wooden desk. Margaret was a stickler for visitor log-in protocol despite their familiarity, and Kathy had no issue with making sure the video recordings showed Margaret doing her job to the letter. Going through the familiar motions after so long, though, brought back a surprising surge of heavy old feelings.

Margaret smiled back, or rather, offered a curl of the mouth that passed for her smile, and returned Kathy's ID, then handed her a laminated visitor's pass on a lanyard with a clip. “Hello, Katherine. Long time no see. Are you here to see our new Mrs. Dorsey?”

“No, uh . . . actually, I'm here to, um, to see Toby.”

Margaret's face remained professionally placid. She nodded, scribbling something on a clipboarded form, which she then handed to Kathy to sign. After Kathy had returned it, the older woman spoke again, softly. “You'll find him in three-oh-five.”

Kathy tried to smile, but it slipped awkwardly off her face.

“Want an orderly to go with you?”

“Won't be necessary,” Kathy said with a tone lighter than she felt. “Won't be there long.”

Margaret seemed to think on that for a moment, perhaps considering Kathy's scar. “Be careful, Katherine.”

“I will.”

Kathy turned before Margaret could see the pain in her eyes and made her way down the hall. There were three more doors, two that her visitor's pass unlocked electronically and the last, which was opened for her by a guard armed with a Taser, before she reached the visiting area. She sat at the end of a long table that reminded her of high school lunchrooms and waited. A few minutes later, the same armed guard brought Toby in.

It had been a while since she had seen her brother. He looked smaller somehow, smaller than when he had loomed over her, smaller than he had when he had cut her—

She swallowed hard, avoiding his eyes, which she could feel fixed on her even from across the room. His blond hair had been cut short, almost military-style, and it bristled as he tilted his head. His arms and chest, once a well-built, worked-out source of pride beneath his tattoos, looked less bulky than she remembered. She didn't suppose they let him have weights at the hospital, which probably drove him nuts. His wrists were handcuffed to each other and to a chain around his waist that also extended to cuffs around his ankles. Kathy made herself look at the youngish, good-looking face. Its pleasantness, and its resemblance to her own, were offset by a sneer of a mouth and cold blue shark's eyes. Dead eyes, she thought, behind which the blackness that had entangled itself there had swallowed whatever had been her brother. The only spark of life or passion, of connectivity to the world, was when he hurt people. Like when he had hurt her.

He sat down across from her with a careless flop and a smirk and stared down at his fingers for several seconds—just long enough to make things uncomfortable—before finally speaking.

“So, little sister. After all this time, what brings you all the way out here to see me?”

Kathy leaned back in her chair. Her movements were slow, deliberate. Her wary gaze was fixed on him, while the rest of her face remained smooth and emotionless. “The Hand of the Black Stars.”

Toby's eyes shot up to meet hers, his smirk suddenly gone. “Why do you want to know about them?” Before she could answer, a look of understanding bloomed in his eyes, and he nodded. “A case. So, this is a business call. They causing trouble for you somewhere?”

“Right here in Connecticut, as a matter of fact.”

“Colby?”

Kathy tilted her head, surprised. “How did you know?”

Toby smiled, but the look in those dead eyes reflected nothing but black. “The snow.”

“The snow? What does that have to do with anything?”

He stood and slid around the corner of the table, and she was reminded of how frightening he could be when he stood over her. Toby had been quick and very, very strong. She didn't much like him being that close to her.

He reached out to touch her face and she flinched. He paused momentarily, giving her a small smile that could have meant a hundred different things, and gingerly traced the line of her scar with his pinkie finger.