Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) (11 page)

19

The basement needed to be cleaned. Wolfgram cleaned it with undiluted bleach that he bought at a store a hundred miles from his home. It was unlikely that someone buying large quantities of bleach would be on law enforcement’s radar, but you never knew.

He wore overalls and a
breather mask as he mopped the floor. The mop, once white, now was a dull brown from soaking up blood. Though, eventually, the bleach would take the brown out.

As he go
t to the corner, he saw something on the floor. Wolfgram bent down and picked it up. It was a tooth.

He smiled to himself and placed the tooth in his pocket.

The cleaning took a good two hours because he liked to go over everything at least three times. The chains and cuffs were detachable from the pipe, and he took them off now. A ventilation shaft on the wall opened up, and just to the side he’d built a small storage area. He placed the bleach and his cleaning equipment inside. The bloodied mop, the cuffs, and the rags would be thrown away.

Once the basement was clean, he stood in the center of the room and looked around. When he’d bought this house, the basement had actually been finished and carpeted. I
t took almost six months and twenty thousand dollars to make it what it was now: a soundproof chamber.

Wolfgram checked the clock on his phone. It was nearly time for George and Debra’s party.
He headed upstairs.

The cloth
ing he chose, though not expensive, was immaculately clean. He lay it all on the bed and showered before putting everything on. Then he slipped on a sports jacket and stared at himself in the mirror. He needed a haircut, but it wasn’t something he enjoyed, so he always put it off until he couldn’t put it off anymore. Other people touching him sent quivers of anxiety through him.

On the wall of his bedroom were several firearms. He debated taking a pistol with him to the party but then thought that was too obvious. He checked his hair one more time in the mirror and then left the house.

George and Debra Katz’s home was one of the largest ones on the block. Something Wolfgram had heard one of the other neighbors refer to as a “McMansion.” Several cars were out front, and the front door was open. He could hear music coming from the backyard.

A slight shiver went through him. Social situations weren’t his specialty. Though he could get by with a few comments and witty stories he’d memorized, on a fundamental level
, he didn’t relate to people in any meaningful way. When they were stretched out nude in his basement, he thought they just looked like skinny pigs. No more, no less.

Putting on his best smile, he strolled into the home. Voices and laughter were coming from the backyard. The home was well decorated
, and everything was clean. They had an eclectic style, made up of all the trinkets and artwork they’d bought on their twice-yearly vacations to exotic spots around the world.

Wolfgram rounded the island in the kitchen and looked outside. At least twenty people were there, lounging in lawn chairs or the clean wooden benches the
Katzes had set up. Debra came over and smiled. “So glad you made it, Daniel.”

“Thanks for the invite. Smells great.”

“Barbecue’s roaring, so go grab whatever you like.” She took a step closer to him and said, “My sister Dara’s the one in that chair right over there.”

Wolfgram looked where she was pointing. A woman in checkered shorts and a blue blouse sat in a chair nursing a beer. Her legs were long and brown
, and her hair went past her shoulders. She was quite lovely, and it stirred something in him that he didn’t want awakened right now. He looked away, searching the faces of the other guests to see if he recognized anyone. The only person he knew was another neighbor from across the street, an older man Wolfgram knew as Kim.

Wolfgram grinned and nodded as he walked past the guests to the table laid out before them. He eyed the various foods but found almost nothing edible. He ate only organic vegetarian food
, and the only thing even remotely close was the salad. He placed a few leaves on a plate, got a bottled water, and turned to find someplace to sit.

George motioned for him to come sit next to the sister. Reluctantly, he did so. The woman was speaking to someone else, relaying a story about something that had happened to her in graduate school. Once the story was over, George said, “So Dara, this is Daniel
Davies. He’s our neighbor up there just to the west.”

“Hi,” she said with a wide smile.

Though Davies was not his real surname, he had stuck with Daniel and now regretted it. It would have been better to have a completely fictitious name.

Wolfgram grinned and thrust out his hand. She shook it
, and he said hello, focusing on the sensation of touch. It was an odd thing to be touching her willingly, to feel her skin against his without her recoiling. He didn’t know if he enjoyed it or not, but it certainly wasn’t unpleasant.

“So Debra told me you’re a
math professor?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Wow. That’s amazing. What drew you to that field?”

He glanced away but knew that eye contact was appropriate
, so he forced himself to look at her. “Numbers are simple.”

“Really? I couldn’t think of a harder subject for me.”

“Not simple that way. They’re simple because they don’t have any motivations. They are purely themselves. Honest. And they’re consistent. They never change just because they want to or because you want them to.”

“
Hm, I guess I never thought of it that way.”

George chimed in, “Dara’s a nurse.”

Wolfgram turned to his plate of lettuce and took a bite. The lettuce tasted like chemicals, and it sickened him, though he didn’t show any reaction. A long silence had passed, and no one said anything. Wolfgram knew it was getting uncomfortable, so he said, “That must be interesting.”

“It has its moments. As a whole, people are on their worst behavior when they’re sick
, so there’s that to deal with. But you get to do some good.”

“Mommy, can I go play with
Tom?”

A young boy had run up to Dara. Perhaps no more than nine years old. Daniel watched him, surprise showing on his face for only a moment before he forced it away. She seemed much too young to have a child this old.

“Where’s Tom’s?”

“Next door,” George said. “They’re good people.”

“Okay, but you come back and check in with me every fifteen minutes, Jake, okay?”

“Okay,” the young boy said, scampering off.

Dara, for some reason, seemed embarrassed, and Wolfgram couldn’t guess as to why.

“He’s cute,” he said.

“He’s my life. His dad ran off before he was born, so it’s just been me and him ever since. Do you have any kids?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I never married.”

“It’s the best part of life, but it’s hard. It sometimes feels like if anything happens to him, I would just die. It’s like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff every day hoping I don’t fall over.”

Wolfgram watched the boy run around the house and to the neighbor’s.
“That’s a poetic way to put it.”

She shrugged. “It’s just hard sometimes. You know, trying to raise a child in this world. It seems like the culture wants to make everyone shallow, promiscuous alcoholics. Like that’s cool somehow.”

“Gibbon said that every empire rots from within before it falls. We attribute their demise to outside forces, but it’s always internal.”

He looked
sheepishly at her, not knowing how she’d respond. Most women he had seen romantically, when he spoke of Gibbon or Rousseau or his myriad of other influences, immediately lost interest.

“Didn’t he say that morality, not culture, is what determines if a civilization falls?”

He grinned. He was about to reply when George said, “I’ll leave you two nerds alone.”

When he had left and Wolfgram was alone with her, she said, “I think they’re trying to set us up.”

“Yes. Is it working?”

She smiled. “It is.”

20

Evening fell quickly
, but Sarah didn’t feel like going in to work. She called Trevor and told him that she wasn’t feeling well. The last place she wanted to be right now was in a crowd of drunken twentysomethings with music so loud it made her ears hurt.

Instead, she showered and decided to have a nice dinner by herself. There was a sushi place nearby that had some of the
best J-rolls she’d ever had. The thought put a grin on her face, considering they were the only J-rolls she had ever had.

Even now, years after leaving her community, she felt like an ant exploring the world for the first time. Though she’d left her father’s farm, she hadn’t left Pennsylvania. The sliver of world she knew had grown, but it was still just a sliver.

As she headed out the door, she debated calling Giovanni. He was amiable to be around. He had a softness to him that a lot of men didn’t have. She didn’t feel threatened with him and felt that he wouldn’t deceive her just to get into her pants.

Sarah took a deep breath and then dialed the number
. Giovanni answered on the third ring.

“I’m glad you called,” he said.

“Oh, you have me programed into your phone?”

“It says ‘M
iss Cleo’.”

She laughed and then snorted and felt like she was ten years old. “Sorry.”

He chuckled. “What’re you doing right now?”

“I was about to go get some sushi.”

“Oh, yeah? Hot date?”

“No, by myself.” She waited a moment
, and he didn’t say anything. “You’re not making this easy.”

“I
’d love to,” he said.

The sushi restaurant was called
Ginza’s and sat between a hotel and an office building. Across the street were cheap motel rooms with their weekly rates listed on the marquee. Sarah parked at the curb and waited a few minutes to give Giovanni time to show up. She watched a couple walking into the restaurant holding hands. The man was smiling and leaving soft kisses on her cheek.

Sarah saw the man at a table
somewhere at night. He was sitting with another woman, holding hands in much the same way, leaving kisses on her fingers. They both had wedding rings on, but they weren’t married to each other.

She looked away from them and tried to focus on something else, a tree or the sidewalk or the building itself. Closing your mind was like a muscle that needed to be flexed, but it seemed to grow
more difficult over time rather than easier.

After a few minutes, she saw Giovanni sauntering up the sidewalk. Only then
did she realize she hadn’t seen him in normal clothing. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, nothing fancy, but something had changed in how she perceived him. He seemed more vulnerable somehow.

As she
got out of the car, he came over with a grin on his face.

“Hope I’m not intruding,” he said.

“Nope.”

He held the door open for her. “I was just gonna make a grilled cheese at home
, so I’m pretty psyched for some good sushi.”

“This place is great, but I couldn’t tell you if it’s good compared to anywhere else. I’ve never
had
sushi anywhere else.”

“The little dives always have the best food.”

A woman who didn’t speak English sat them, and a waitress came over a bit later. They ordered a few dishes to share.

Sarah asked him about his college years, about his time in the army, and how he ended up joining the FBI. The one topic she stayed away from was his childhood and his mother. The wound, no matter what age, would never heal for him. She could see it in his eyes
, and it amazed her that what a parent did thirty years ago could still affect someone so profoundly.

“
Tell me more about how you left the community,” he asked as the waitress brought their food.

“It wasn’t exactly my choice. I was forced out.”

Giovanni dipped some tempura in a brown sauce and wolfed it down. “How?”

She felt a gnawing anxiety in her gut. She had never told anyone this story before
and wasn’t sure she should share it. But looking up at him, she knew he wouldn’t judge her for it.

“When I was seventeen, our preacher was giving a sermon about sin. He was talking about the evils of lust. And I saw something when he was talking. It was a young girl. I knew her
, actually. We were almost neighbors. I knew her family. I saw her in his bedroom when his wife wasn’t home. He would rape her and then tell her that if she told anybody, she would be cast into hellfire. The girl was only like ten.

“I went to my father and told him what I saw, but he said I was wrong. Our preacher was a good man and couldn’t possi
bly be doing something like that. But I knew I was right. I talked to other people about it, and everyone said the same thing. They told me to leave it alone. But whenever the preacher spoke, I saw into his bedroom. Saw the girl crying and begging for him to stop. So I did the unforgivable sin in that community. I went to the government for help. I walked to a police station and told them about it.”

He was silent a moment, his eyes not moving from hers. “What happened?”

“They came down to interview the preacher at his house. They found some child pornography under his mattress and put him under arrest. He confessed to the rapes later. There were other girls, too. None of them came forward until later.”

“But how did you get kicked out?”

“The preacher was a well-respected man. One of the most powerful in the community. His wife was furious with me. She said I was a whore of the devil. I think that’s actually what she called me. People felt betrayed, and they needed someone to blame. So they blamed me, and said I had worked with the devil to set him up. They told my father either the whole family could leave or I could leave.” Her mouth felt dry, and she took a sip of water. “My own father told me to leave and never come back. My family didn’t want anything to do with me.”

He chewed a moment before saying, “Whoa.”

She exhaled. “Yeah. So anyway, that’s my sad story. But it could be worse. If I hadn’t been forced out, I never would have seen
Breaking Bad
.”

He grinned. “That’s a good way to look at it
.”

Despite the subject matter, she smiled. It came easily around him. The waitress came by and asked if they needed anything. She considered ordering some beers or sake but changed her mind. Around him, she realized, she wanted to be sober.