Snuff (3 page)

SEVEN

That the other girls killed themselve
s doesn’t surprise me.  I might consider it too if I didn’t have some very complicated reasons to live.

I promised Abby I would.

“Your hair wasn’t always brown, was it?”

I shake my head. 

“In your driver’s license it was strawberry blonde.  So he dyed it.”

“I didn’t know he dyed it till he turned the lights on.  It was always dark.”

She nods over her clasped hands.  “I’m going to level with you.  I won’t be in charge much longer.  The FBI’s going to take over, and I don’t know how they’ll handle this.  I’ll hold them off as long as I can but in order to do that we need to make headway.”  She gestures between us.

I haven’t the foggiest idea what
making headway
means in this context.  

“What I mean is
, I don’t want these Fucking Bunch of Imbeciles bombarding you with questions, Brooke.  They’re not going to wear kid gloves, and you’re very important.  The only one who can help.”

I’ve never been important.  I’m not sure I want to start now.

“We’re going to do a cognitive interview.  Like the questions from when we first met.  Do you think you’re up for it?”

I glance at my immobile wrists.  I don’t appear to have much choice.

“Close your eyes.”  She waits to make sure I do.  “I know this is hard, but we need to go back to that point.  The first thing you remember, onward.  I’ve got to know everything—it’s the only way I can catch this frankenfucker.  So he blitzed you in the parking lot?”

I nod, newly-brunette hair tumbling over one shoulder of my hospital gown.

“Form a mental picture of what you saw when you came to.”

That’ll be difficult, I tell her.  When I woke, I couldn’t even tell I had.  Everything was just as black as the inside of my eyelids. “He blindfolded me.  I couldn’t take it off until I was in the room.  Even then I didn’t see anything.”

Not until it was time for Abby to die. 

“So it’s black.  If you couldn’t see anything, it means the rest of your senses were heightened.  Does he say anything when you wake up?”

“Not much in the beginning. He talks through a speaker.  I think from the ceiling.”

“I need you to tell me about when you first met Abby.”

Her name inspires clashing emotions.  I’m so angry with her, but I can’t be.  She was my only way through it.  I’m so mad she’s not with me, strapped to the bed next to mine, but I’m here sucking in all this sterilized air because of her. 

Abby deserves more than silence
or suicide.

***

I grope the walls for balance as the door slams.  Faint noises upstairs are sealed out.  My clumsy fingers tear the blindfold off.

“Hello?”

I blink a million times.  It doesn’t help me see any better.  “What’s going on?”

She sniffles.  It’s magnified, bouncing off the walls.  Such a feeble, defeated sound. A universe of grief lives within it.  It inspires sympathy, which is new.  I’ve never felt sorry for anybody except myself. “What’s your name?”

I tell her, stuttering over the R. 

“Brooke.”  She says it carefully, like it’s a foreign word s
he wants to pronounce properly. “Brooke, I’m Abby.”

I follow her voice.  A dent in the floor makes me stumble.  When I crash to the ground, a clammy palm finds my shoulder.  Her fingers feel like shale.  So brittle, like they’ll crumble to pieces at any second. 

“Are you okay?”

I nod.  Then I remember she can’t see me.  “What is this?”

“I’m not sure, Brooke.”  Somehow I think she keeps repeating my name so she can make sure I’m not a mirage, that I won’t disappear as soon as she gets used to having me around. “He says a decision needs to be made.  Which one of us gets to live.”

It takes me awhile to find words.  “Who’s
going to decide?  Us?  Nobody’s here.” Suddenly I’m angry.  Nobody’s made me do anything since I was eighteen.  And over my dead body will it start up again today.

Then I wonder how foretelling that thought might be.

“I don’t know.”  It must be her head
thudding
against the wall.  “I haven’t been here long, but he hasn’t given me anything.  Not even water.  Maybe that’s how he’ll do it.  We’re going to get desperate eventually.” 

She already sounds desperate.

Static coughs above our heads.  It’s instinct; I search for the source.  Abby’s hand twists over mine.  I don’t know how she finds it through the enveloping blackness, but I’m glad she does.

“And then there were two.”

Abby chokes back another sniffle.  Her fingers lace through mine.  They fit like they’re designed as pairs, and the stone in her wedding band pricks my knuckle.

“I think you both know why you’re here.”

I don’t know why.  All I did was get off the dinner shift at Norm’s. I got fifty bucks in tips, and I had a nightmarish talk with Jack waiting for me when I made it home.  I’d told God—if there was one—I’d do anything to avoid it.

God has a sick sense of humor.

“To our newest addition, I’m sure Abigail’s explained everything.  We have three weeks to reach a decision.”

EIGHT

LAPD chief Eric Foster rose as John entered his office. “Thank you for coming so quickly.  We’re in over our heads with this shit.”

They shook briefly and John sat in the chair across from the desk. “They’ve all killed themselves before speaking much?”

Foster nodded as he slid a file across his desk.
  “Brooke Dutton’s in the hospital.  They’ve restrained her so she can’t attempt, but Sergeant Jennings says she’s shown no suicidal tendencies.  She’s asking for one of the dead girls.”

John flipped through photos of seven dead girls. 
“Where did you find her?  I wasn’t given much information.  I came back from vacation and was put on a plane almost immediately.”

“Dropped off on the side of the road.  Abigail Black’s body was beside her.  He gave her a cell phone.  Burner pre-paid, like the others.”

“Three days after the survivors kill themselves, two more are abducted?”

“Yep.”

“What’s the manner of death for the girls who didn’t make it?”

“Varied. One strangled, one shot, one smothered, one bludgeoned.”

He snapped the folder shut.  “How did the survivors commit suicide?”

“Two hung themselves, one slashed her wrists. They didn’t
talk much.  Doctors said they were traumatized. Lisette says Brooke seems lucid.  She hasn’t left her since we found her, and she won’t be happy if she’s shut out.”

“If she has rapport with Brooke, I won’t remove her.  All sets of were dumped in different locations?”

“Yes.  Dump sites haven’t helped us narrow down a comfort zone.  Lisette’s been saying she thinks it’s to throw off the investigation.  We’ll never know where to find the next batch.  She’s got some pretty crazy theories, actually.  I’m sure you’ll find them in her notes.”

Foster stood, and John followed suit.

“I need to start with the dead girl’s husband and Brooke’s boyfriend, then the coroner, and I’ll have to see Brooke eventually.”

NINE

Someone comes to take my blood.  I feel robbed when she slides the needle into a blue vein on the inside of my elbow.  All I have is my worthless life, and it’s being siphoned into a syringe.

Efficient fingers cover the dot of blood with a cotton ball and tape it into place.  The woman bustles out the door. 

Lisette looks at me as it slams. “So he didn’t say anything else at the time?”

I shake my head. 

She rubs her forehead with a fingertip.  “What happens next?”

***

Abby’s hand twitches. We don’t say anything for a few seconds after the man’s stopped speaking.

“Oh, God,” she breathes.  “What are we going to do? He’ll kill us both if we do nothing.”

I don’t know what to say or what to think.  I’ve been dropped into a Saw movie and have no idea why. I’m an actress, which means I wait tables.  I haven’t pissed anyone off lately.

“Brooke?” Her voice is stringy, climbing octaves.  “What should we do?”

I clear my throat. “We should wait it out as long as we can.  If we don’t give him what he wants he’ll have to come in here to kill us, right?  We can try to fight and get the hell out.”

“Clever schemes won’t save you, girls.”

He must have mikes inside.  Speakers, whatever.  Everything we say, he’ll hear. 

Reality crashes around me.  We’re fucked. 

TEN

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” John told Jerry Black, though he knew it wouldn’t help matters.  “I’ll find the person responsible.”

Jerry nodded mechanically.  John had a feeling he’d squandered his tears in the weeks his wife had been missing.  Now—when he really needed them—they wouldn’t come.

“Do you have any idea who’s done this?” The black-haired man beside Jerry said, a touch of indignation
creeping into his voice.  “I mean, for God’s sake, this is the
fourth
time.”

“It’s Jack
, isn’t it?” John waited for a nod.  “I realize this has happened before, but I haven’t been involved until about twelve hours ago.  I flew in from DC and headed straight here.”

Both men exchanged dark looks across from John on the scarred leather couch in the vacant hospital break room.

John pulled an iPad out of his briefcase and opened a blank Word doc.  “I need to get a few of the obvious questions out of the way.  Abigail never mentioned being followed or complained of odd things like hang-up phone calls?”

Jerry shook his head.

“Brooke didn’t either, nothing like that,” Jack said, slapping his knee.  “I’ve told Sergeant Jennings all this.  I still haven’t gotten to see her.” 

John held his pale blue gaze for a moment and tapped in a few notes.  “Abby had a regular routine, didn’t she?”  When he received another nod, he turned to Jack.  “And Brooke as well?”

Jack tore both hands through his hair.  “Brooke keeps odd hours.  She waits tables, but she’s an actress.  Filming for a new sitcom she’s been cast in starts in a few months, so until then she’s picking up as many extra shifts as she can.  We’ve both been so busy.  The only days I get to spend with her are Sundays.”

“Do you think someone was watching my wife?”  Jerry
stared vacantly through dry, subdued eyes.  “I can’t imagine why they’d want to do that to her.  She never hurt anyone in her life.  She was a Sunday school teacher.  The nicest woman I’ve ever met.”

“I’m sure she was,” John said.  Abigail may have been a sweetheart, but in his experiences being a good person didn’t
keep bad things at bay.  “I can’t say if someone had been watching her.  The way Abigail and Brooke were abducted appears random, not targeted.  Parking lot snatch and grabs are usually spur-of-the-moment affairs.”

Jack heaved himself back into the couch cushions, one anxious knee bouncing.  “If it’s so random, and he hasn’t been found yet, I doubt it’ll ever happen.  I want to see my girlfriend.”

“You can.  Soon.”  John flipped through a packet the Foster had given him.  A feminine hand had scrawled a plethora of notes into the margins of the case reports.  “Have either of you felt like you were being watched?”  The notes told him wallets as well as forms of identification had been swiped from each girl’s purse, though the bags had been left on-scene. 

“Yeah,” Jack snapped.  “I’ve been watched.  Because I’ve been in the police station every goddamned day asking about Brooke.  I’ve practically lived there.  I’ve been watched by patrol officers, homicide detectives, and the fucking LAPD receptionist.”

“All right.”  He looked at Jerry.  “What about you?”

“No.  I’ve been home waiting by the phone.  In case Abby called.  But she never did.”

If he’d been sequestered inside a stuffy house waiting for a call that would never happen, he probably hadn’t noticed if anyone was lurking around.  John annotated that into the Word doc. 

“Abigail and Brooke seem to have led low-risk lifestyles, which makes them difficult prey.  Is there anything else I should know
?  Any skeletons that might have made them vulnerable?”

“Brooke is the epitome of the girl next door,” Jack said with a sigh that made his shoulders sag.  “She moved from Michigan when she was eighteen, but she’s not stupid or naïve.  She knew
how to keep herself safe, and she doesn’t have any deep, dark secrets that would explain what happened to her.”

John’s gaze shifted to Jerry.  “And Abigail?”

Jerry pressed his lips together for a moment and shook his head. 

Well, he’s holding out.

Though John wasn’t inclined to force an answer when he could find out on his own.  “Thank you.  I’ll try to have some answers as soon as possible.”