Snuff (16 page)

Our first night together, we traded childhood stories, but I’ve never told you about my first.  I’d been full of youthful arrogance, though I didn’t realize at the time.  It’s a fond memory—being young and reckless and brimming with all the potential in the world.

Her name was Radomila.  What’s amusing is, translated to English, it means happy favor.

She looked something like you.  Or perhaps a twisted, ugly caricature of you.  Same coloring, but where your skin is smooth, hers was lumpy with old acne scars.  Quite unsightly.

She gave me such sweet release. 

Occasionally I come across a woman who reminds me of her, and I can’t help myself.  Not long before we met I had such an experience. 

I visit
Radomila whenever work brings me back.  The bones, wrapped in old sheets, are likely dust by now, but her memory lives on.

Two more days seem a lifetime from now.

Sunday at 3:20 a.m.

IP Address: 75.84.67.69

Sent via contact form by an anonymous viewer on your website

FORTY-EIGHT

A warbling moan of bone-chilling agony abruptly cut off when Lisette stabbed the pause button on the computer inside her office.  “Well this isn’t what I’d planned to do when I got up this morning,” she griped, swilling the remaining inch of her long-cold latte.  “I thought I’d be taking another run at Stan.” 

Inspired by her coffee cup, John took a sip from his own.  “Mr. Heckles won’t have much to add unless he’s confronted with irrefutable evidence
.”

“Sex Crimes doesn’t have much on
the unidentified prostitute.  Room was paid for in cash by the victim.  Someone cleaned up afterward, before the maids did too, so the forensic evidence wasn’t there.  Got a vague description of the man from some cracked-out junkie in the next room.  Tall white guy with dark hair and expensive shoes.  So that narrows it down to half the men in LA.”  She backed the video up to the beginning. “Listen to the way he speaks.  It’s weirdly formal.  I hate polite psychopaths.”

The way he spoke was something John’s brain had been toying with
since the moment he’d heard it.  Something was off, something unusual—and also something he couldn’t identify immediately. 

She folded her arms over the zipper of her hooded sweatshirt, a grimace twisting her face as she looked at the still-frame on her flat-screen monitor.  “Why is he only hurting one?  I mean, he went out of his way to kidnap two.  Why bother?”  She pointed at Brooke, who looked thoroughly terrified though unharmed.  “I can only assume he’s doing it for a specific reason, but I’m coming up dry. 
Seems like wasted effort.  If he wants to torture someone psychologically, he could have just mailed Abby’s husband a DVD of this shit.  He has her driver’s license.  Couldn’t be that hard to do.”

But he needs to
see
the terror on their faces, doesn’t he?

John had several ideas why there were two, none of which he could be sure about.  Perhaps the man was bent on
recreating a scenario, or some twisted fantasy.  “Whatever his reasons, they make perfect sense to him.”

Maybe there’s a set of rules he has to abide by. 

Lisette rubbed her makeup-less face.  “What I mean is, why not just take one girl, torture her or whatever, and broadcast that?  He’s taking enough risks with the kidnapping.  What gives?”

“It’s a game.”

More like a ritual
, the voice piped up.

She blinked, red veins splicing through the whites of her eyes.  “Not any I’d want to play.”

Nor him.  He pressed his lips together, gazing at the black-and-green images of a spread-eagled Abigail with open glistening burns blotching her thighs.  John leaned forward to rewind the tape.  “Did you notice he never speaks when he’s in the room with them?”

“Maybe he’s shy.  Lots of these jackoffs have low self-esteem.  A stutter, a lisp.  A big nose, a huge birthmark on his face.  Maybe he was teased mercilessly when he was a kid and it fucked
him up, like our pal Stan.  Maybe they were best friends in elementary school and sat together at the reject table.”

Speaking to the victims, broadcasting his voice on the internet
—though only on an encrypted personal blog—was already stupid.  What if someone ID’d him by voice?  If anything he was delaying the inevitable, but in the grand scheme of things, speaking so often was as bad as revealing his face. Either way it could land him in hot water. 

He looked back at Lisette as sunlight trickled through the blinds and set her irises on fire. “It’s odd, is what it is.  Sadists need to interact with their victims, which is what he’s doing, but he’s only chatty when he’s a voice above them.  You’d think the same would apply tenfold when he’s right next to them.  His face is covered—he wouldn’t be embarrassed about his
theoretical big nose when he’s got a ski mask on.”

She shrugged.  “Maybe Abby and Brooke didn’t inspire chattiness.  Girls next door might not be his preference.  He did a number on Brianna
; only Abby endured worse.  Maybe Brianna’s tape will give us more to work with.”

His brows dark eyebrows knit together.  “Brooke said he was short.  She’s right.
He looks to be your height, 5’5 or so.”

“Fucker’s definitely got a Napoleon Complex.  Just another thing he’d be self-conscious about.”  She peered into her empty coffee cup.  “I need a goddamned coffee cart to follow me around.  Caffeine runs are inconvenient and the coffee here sucks balls.”

“I think he’s edited his voice.”

H
er gaze snapped from the inside bottom of her empty cup to John’s face.  “How can you tell?  He sounds normal to me.”

“I’ve heard that voice before.”

“You’ve heard the same perp?”

“No.  The voice.”

She nodded as comprehension dawned.  “He’s using voice modifying technology.  Maybe he’s got a really shrill voice, for a man.  Maybe he sounds like he’s going through puberty.  Doesn’t want to crack on camera.  Might be embarrassing when he’s got an audience.  I’ll have someone look into voice modifiers.  With any luck we can get a list of buyers, unless he purchased it online.”

But of course he made the purchase online.  He wouldn’t make such an amateur mistake.

“You see how he keeps stopping to look up at the cameras?”  Lisette rewound the tape and squinted.  “Like he’s trying to impress someone.  He looks back like he needs instruction.”

More like a friendly greeting.  Hey!  Look what I can do!
 

John tapped an index finger against his mouth. 
“The speech pattern is odd.  He uses hedging devices.  Men don’t do that.”

“What the hell’s a hedging device
?”

“Phrases like, ‘you know’, and ‘I think.”

She tucked her legs beneath her on her swivel chair and cradled her chin in her hand.  “I don’t use them, and I didn’t have a penis when I checked last.”

“Probably because you were raised by a man.  Was your father a cop?”

Her eyes went slitty with amusing annoyance, and John swallowed a laugh. “Probation officer.”

Suddenly Sergeant Jennings’s bizarre personality made much more sense.  “Women use hedging devices because they don’t want to imply their feelings apply to others.
  By saying “I think it’s because” instead of “it’s because”, they devalue their thoughts and opinions.  It’s instinctive.  Something most women can’t help.  Men are more assertive.  They use ‘you know’ when there’s a presumption of shared knowledge, not to glean some sort of indicator they’re right from the recipient.”

One blonde eyebrow arched.  “Seems to me you’re splitting hairs.”

“It only seems that way to you?”

She made a face and lifted a stiff middle finger. “You made your point, Agent Buzzkill.”

“He deflects often.  Uses ‘you’ to pin the blame on Abigail and Brooke, deflecting culpability.  ‘I think you both know why you’re here.’ Men have a lot of pride.  They want credit for their work.  A man’s more likely to say ‘you’re here because I made it happen.”

He rewound the tape and played back the words.

“That doesn’t sound like something a man would say when he’s the one who kidnapped them at random.  How the hell should they know why they’re there, when he blitzed them in a parking lot?”

Lisette gestured at her office door, behind which the rest of the Boy’s Club homicide men milled around.  “Those idiots out there are constantly blaming each other for drinking the last of the coffee or using the last of the filters.  Men deflect just as much as women.”

“All right.  Another thing.  On average, women take longer pronouncing vowels.  Eleven percent longer, one study said.  This man lingers on vowels. Pauses between words, wants to make sure they sink in.  Men don’t worry about things like that, making sure their messages are clear.  They just assume they are.  They’re not as talkative.  Don’t care much for details.  All they want is the bottom line.” He tapped the screen.  “For a man, he doesn’t speak much like one.”

Her lips squished into a skeptical frown.
  “I don’t think I’m buying him being a her.  Women don’t get off on stuff like this.  I mean, yeah, some are complete psychopaths, but murder is a means to an end for them.  It’s a goal, not a thrill.  They use poisons or guns, not blowtorches.  They don’t achieve sexual release from torture or pain.  And they don’t take trophies or leave signatures.”

“You’re not wrong.  Usually that’s the case
.  Whoever this is, they’re trying very hard to sound manly, but it’s not fooling me.” 

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the back of her chair.  “A female computer whiz is an unnatural thing.  At least in LA.”

John smiled, thinking of Stacy and the horrified expression she’d be wearing if she’d heard that.  “It doesn’t take a computer genius to run a blog.  I’m not saying it’s a female beyond all doubt, but it’s a viable possibility.  Whoever dyed Brooke’s hair was thorough.  I’m sure it’s not a difficult thing to get right, but I’d expect a man to be more careless, since typically they have little to no experience hair-dyeing.”

“I
guess a woman would explain the lack of sexual elements.”  She still looked unconvinced.  “Apart from Stan the Man’s molestation.  I don’t know.  Still seems like a stretch.  Not many would buy that a woman could get off on doing things like this.”

“She
probably wasn’t always this way.  And we don’t know if she’s getting off on it.  If it’s some sort of ritual, she might not be able to help it.  It’s a desire that won’t go away.”  John paused the video and panned closer to the ski-masked perpetrator in bulky black clothing.  “This is a very specific scenario.  Despite the differences between all the women, they’re still in this same room, with another girl, locked up for weeks in the dark.  Only one woman is harmed.  The others are so consumed with guilt or horror, they commit suicide.  What do you think happened, from looking at all these puzzle pieces?”

Lisette
looked into the Day-Glo yellow glare radiating from morning sun out the windows of her office.  “Victims turning into abusers are common, but in my experience it applies to children who’ve been molested or abused.  Their love map is fucked up; they attribute violence to love and carry that with them as they grow.”

“You’ve had a lot of experience with children of abuse?”

She twisted the silver chain around her neck that her gold sergeant’s badge hung from.  “I had a stint in Sex Crimes after I got my shield.  I’ve seen my share of kids.” She rubbed her eyelid with the slender curve of her wrist and sighed, before she stood and headed for the door. “I’ll have a few desk jockeys tear through old case files.  See if there’s something similar to this shit.”

FORTY-NINE

I’m picking over the cereal when
the landline rings.

We stare at each other for a second before
Jack snaps the phone up.  He passes it over just as I’ve shoved a spoonful of Cap’n Crunch into my mouth.  “It’s Sergeant Jennings.”

The cereal’s hard corners rip across the roof
of my mouth when I swallow.  The tang of rust on my tongue startles me.

So much blood
, I can taste the metal. Splashed on my thighs, freckled on my forearms, crusting in a perfect handprint on my ankle.  What an idiot I was, believing he’d let me go after she was dead.

But then I decide I’m only getting what I deserve.

I press the handset to my ear.

“He
y,” Lisette says.  “I need you to listen to something.  I don’t want you to freak out, though.  Promise me you won’t freak.”

“Why would I
?”

She sighs static
.  “Just listen.  Okay?”

I nod.  Then I remember she can’t see me.  “Yeah.  Sure.”  I accept the glass Jack slides into my hand and take a big gulp to make him happy.

“Do I sound familiar?”

I spit out the mouthful.  It spreads into a wobbly white puddle across the island.  Jack snatches the glass I’m about to drop
, and dumps it in the sink.

“So what happens now, Brooke?  Where can we go from here?” 

I have no idea why he’s laughing, but then shell-shocked waitresses and dead bodies probably amuse him. 

What doesn’t amuse me is when he blasts
Time of My Life
through the P.A.  The movie theater within my mind explodes behind my eyelids.  Patrick Swayze swinging a green-and-black skinned Abby around by her slack arms. 

“What the hell is going on?” I say, once I’ve found words.  That wasn’t Lisette, it was the voice of my monster.

“I’m sorry, did it scare you?” Something rustles on her end.  “I should have come over for this experiment, but I didn’t want you to know what I was doing.”

“Who was that?”

“Me.  Using voice modifying technology.  Is that the voice you heard?”

I wipe my lips with the napkin Jack presses into my hand.  “Yes.”

“All right.”  It sounds like she’s covering the phone with her palm to speak to someone beside her before she continues talking to me.  “You probably
have
heard the voice before.  Companies are trying to make those fucking GPS robots sound more human.  This is one of the newish voices.  They have a female one and a lady who speaks in a goddamned British accent, too.  Even Morgan Freeman and Keanu Reeves.  I’d never be able to keep a straight face if it was Keanu Reeves telling me to take the next left.”

Elena’s GPS.  It all makes sense.

My eyes flick to the microwave clock.  It’s nine a.m., and I already want to hide back in bed with the covers up to
my ears.  “So, everything I’ve told you is useless.  The only helpful thing I said was his voice is familiar.  And now it’s not even
his
voice.”

“For God’s sake, you’ve been plenty helpful.  You’ve probably heard this voice on someone’s GPS.  You didn’t have a face to attach to the voice, so you couldn’t make
a connection.  Either way you’ve been a very good witness.”  I hear her name called in the background.  “I’ve got to go, but I’ll call later, okay?”

We say our goodbyes and disconnect.  I slap the handheld into Jack’s outstretched hand and answer his silent question.  “She
found out why I recognized the voice.  It’s not his.  He’s using some voice changing thing.”

He walks around the island and slides onto the barstool beside mine.  We sit there for a while, staring at our bare white cupboards across the kitchen, before Jack shatters the silence. 

“They’re making progress.  This is a good thing.  She’s going to find this asshole.”

So
what
if she finds him? It won’t bring Abby or the string of dead girls before her back to life.  He’ll sit in jail with cable television, waiting for a trial that will make him famous.  He’ll perfect his creepy smile to flash at the courtroom cameras, practice his manifesto, and when it’s over, his is the only face the media will remember. It’ll be like Abby never happened. 

“This is a death penalty state, baby.”  Jack slips his arm around my waist and kisses my shoulder.  “He’s going to get a lethal injection.  And you can watch.  We’ll get front row seats.  Something I’d love to see.”

“What’s it like?” 

“What?”

I stab floating pieces of Cap’n Crunch with my spoon. “Lethal injection.  Does it hurt?”

“
I doubt it.  The needle is probably the only part that pinches, though the catheter can’t be much fun.  But that’s not the point.”

I push the bowl away,
milk sloshing over the side. “Okay, well enlighten me.  What’s the fucking point?”

He picks the bowl up and circles back to the sink.  “The fucking point,” he says over the stream of the tap, “is that he’ll be dead.  Never coming back.  Goodbye, psycho.  It’s the ultimate payment, isn’t it?”

No.  The ultimate payment would be sentencing him to a slow death by torture.  The same courtesy he paid Abby. 

But the bleeding heart liberals would never allow that sort of thing to happen.