Snuff (31 page)

ONE HUNDRED TWO

Being loaded into an ambulance for the second time in three days turns out to be just as annoying as the first time.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Lisette snaps, when she sees I’m about to argue. “Not one word.”

This seems unfair, but I don’t push my luck, and allow the paramedics to perform their tasks in peace.  Lisette fidgets behind
them, alternatively throwing dirty looks at the headstones and worried glances at me.

“You don’t like cemeteries,” I say, after she climbs into the back with me. 

“Does anyone?”

“
I guess not.”

“I need you to li
e down,” the man in the back says. He doesn’t wait for me to comply and pulls me backward.

“Would an insulin
injection harm a baby?” Lisette asks.  “That bitch was a diabetic.  It might have been insulin she injected Brooke with.”

He tilts my chin up, prodding the injection site with a latexed finger. 
“A little hard to say.  We don’t know what it was, or how much was delivered.  Any nausea or cramping?”

I shake my head when he releases my chin. 
“Just a headache.”

“Common with sedatives.  We’ll see at the hospital.”  He claps me on the shoulder and does the same to Lisette, possibly because he doesn’t want her to feel left out
, and shuts the double doors behind him.   

The two of us settle into a contemplative silence.  Me, thinking of Jack.  Lisette, thinking thoughts that make her angry, because I don’t know any other reason she’d be frowning
.

A few minutes pass before
she smacks the glass partition separating us from the driver.  “Can we get going? What the hell’s the problem?”

He doesn’t answer, so she shakes her head and looks back at me.

“Is your fiancé buried here?” I ask on a whim, gazing at the underside of her chin.  “Is that why you don’t like this place?”

I can’t decide whether she looks like she wants to hug or hit me, but she does neither.  “Yeah.  I don’t visit.  I know that might make me seem cruel, but I can’t do it.” She lets loose a long sigh and blinks a couple times.  “She didn’t do anything physical
to you?”

Not for lack of trying. 
“Smashed my hand a little.  She talked a lot.”

She shakes out sheets of hair,
a paler blonde beneath florescent lights.  “About anything specific or was it just the ravings of a fucking freak?”

“
A little of both.  She mentioned some woman who hurt her.  And a fiancé, but not really, since, you know.  She won’t be marrying anyone anymore.”

The ambulance lurches forward
, and then slams on the brakes. Lisette stretches out an automatic hand to steady me.  “Did you play along with her little speeches?”

The ambulance idles, engine rumbling. 
“I don’t know.  Maybe.”

“Must have.”  She fingers the stud in her earlobe
.  “You’re still here.  Thank God.  I didn’t want to have to make next-of-kin notification again.  Not that that’s the only reason.”  She rubs the circles under her eyes.  “A brick, huh?  You did a number on her.  Bashed the teeth right out of her head.”

“I’m not going to get in trouble for that, right?”

She rolls her eyes.  “Did she inject you with a rock of crack?  No.  I’m not going to charge you.  Jesus.”  She leans over to slap the partition again.  “Can you step on it? For fuck’s sake, hurry it up.”

“Lady—”

“Sergeant.”

“
Sergeant, in order not to take out a couple headstones, I have to drive carefully.  It’d be a hell of a lot easier without you yapping in my ear.”  

ONE HUNDRED THREE

Isn’t that sweet,
that cold voice marveled as John tabbed through the internet history on Leoš Ivashkov’s laptop. 
Sounds like someone’s in love.  And there was you, thinking psychopaths are incapable.

John didn’t like to argue with his hallucination, but he’d never thought psychopaths
incapable
of love; it just wasn’t an emotion many of them entertained, not when they bulldozed through life finessing and manipulating, lacking remorse or any kind of empathy.  Love made people vulnerable—what psychopath wanted that?  Being in love essentially handed someone all the weapons and tools necessary to be destroyed.

What
beautiful parodies of love notes.  He writes winding monologues of life and work, and instead of
Thinking of You
postcards she sends him
Wish You Were Here
snuff films.

He pulled out his phone and texted Stacy the IP address.  She called him back after a few minutes.  “
This is the same IP I found earlier, bro.  I’m way ahead of you.  You should see his browsing history.  What a freak.”

They disconnected, and John tucked the laptop under his arm.  He’d gotten to the office door when Holmes poked his head into the room.  “Get what you need?”

“I did.”

“Want a ride?  I’m headed back to the precinct.  Uniform already picked up Lisette’s patrol unit from the airport.  She’s still in the hospital.”

John followed Holmes to the front door.  “Bad news?”

“I didn’t speak with her.  Can’t be too bad, otherwise she wouldn’t still be there, right?”

ONE HUNDRED FOUR

Jack flings the hospital room door open just as a nurse is setting up an ultrasound machine.  I’m not sure what I expect him to say, but he surprises me by saying nothing.

He finds his way to an empty chair by the silver railing of the hospital bed.  I hold my hand out, and he takes it in his automatically.

“I was injected with something.  I don’t know if it hurt the baby.  She’s going to check to see if it’s still there.”

He prods the cotton ball taped to the inside of my wrist.  “They’ll run a blood panel and find out what it was.”  He runs an appraising eye down my entire body.  The bits he can see thro
ugh the hospital gown, anyway.  “You’re not hurt?”

“
Only my hand.”

The nurse pushes the gown above my navel and spreads icy gel across my skin.  Jack’s fingernails are between his teeth, and he doesn’t seem to know
what to look at.  His eyes dart from me, to the screen, and back again. He’ll make himself dizzy if he keeps it up.

He gnaws off the edge of a
second nail.  “It looks normal, for nine weeks.”

“It does.  But time will tell,” she says with nursely bravado as she turns to coil the cord, leaving a gleaming strip of jelly on my stomach. 

Jack gets a wad of paper towels and wipes it up as she trundles out the door.  “This woman.  She’s dead?”

“Yeah.”

His face is an inch from my skin, and when he locks his pale blue eyes on mine, the subtext within them says he already knows how it happened, and it doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters as long as I’m here, and she’s not. 

“Good.”  He throws the used wad into the trash can stuffed in the corner of the room.  “I didn’t want to have to attach us together with zip ties to fend off another kidnapping.”

I’m able to muster half a smile, but he fails to return it, since a growl of hunger rips through my stomach. 

Unlike me, he doesn’t pretend not to notice things of that sort. “I’ve got a loaf of cinnamon bread at home with your name on it.” 

“When can we leave?”

“Let’s give it a few hours before you try to charge out of here.”  He pushes back and digs in his pocket.  “I brought something for you.”

I sit up, ridiculously hoping it’s a stick of gum, because my mouth tastes like nothing I’ve ever experienced.  Even morning breath is better. “Is it gum?”

His eyes cut to mine, searching for the punch line.  He doesn’t find one.  “No, baby.  It’s not gum.”  He puts the little velvet box on my stomach, and all thoughts of
Ice Breakers flee at the sight.

“Is that?—right now?—here?”

Jack speaks fluent Flustered Brooke, so he nods.  “Is there a better time?  If I put it off any longer, who knows what’ll happen.  A circus might kidnap you.”

“Yes.”

He raises one dark eyebrow.  “When is this more appropriate time?”

“No, I mean, not a time, but—” I feel myself flush as I point at the box.  It really might be a hundred pounds, the way it’s knocked the air from my lungs.   “I mean, yes.”

He’s enjoying watching me flounder.  “Yes what?”

“Don’t be stupid.”  I lean over to smack him, but he rolls out of reach with
an infuriating smile.  “You know what I meant.”

ONE HUNDRED FIVE

Lisette’s office door
crashed open in a flurry of muttered curses mingled with anatomical impossibilities, and even if it wasn’t Sergeant Jennings’s office, John would have known it was her.

“You arrested Uncle Ivashkov?
” she demanded, stopping short of her desk.  “I got a call from Foster.  He was practically crying, he was so happy.  What’s your cause to hold him?”

“His wife was in possession of Emily’s stolen engagement ring.”
  He tossed a stack of blown-up photographs on her desk.  “Searched his house, found the rest of the missing jewelry, and Stacy matched an email sent through the
contact me
form on the blog to his laptop.”

She snapped up a picture of a coiled silver necklace on which miniature four-leaf-clovers cut from em
eralds were suspended—the item Beth Grant’s mother reported missing.  “Isn’t that an amateur mistake?”

“Even the smartest people screw up.
  Men like him love their trophies.  Arrest warrant’s on the way for a Paul Rison.  He worked for Clearwater Security up till three months ago, when he mysteriously quit and made a few pricey purchases.  Case will be stronger if you’re able to turn him out.”

“Some nerd who installs security cameras?  No problem.” 
She inspected another photograph—a shot of a small platinum band with a tiny diamond impaled in the center.  A slender silver chain looped through the hole.  A child’s promise ring, the one Brianna Weaver wore around her neck.  “Brooke’s fine.”

“Bianca?”

“Dead.”

“How did that happen?”

“Brooke clubbed her with a brick about a thousand times.”

He looked up to find her wearing an expression of such fond pride that it rather scared him, though it shouldn’t have.  Why shouldn’t a pedophile-shooting Sergeant take pride in her only living witness’s achievements?  Though he could think of nothing to respond with except, “
that paperwork will take forever.”

“I won’t mind if I’m stuck doing paperwork for the next three
hundred years.” She dropped her purse on the visitor’s chair.  “I’m just glad I won’t have to do any next-of-kin notifications anytime soon.”

He glanced up from under an arched dark eyebrow, a small smile on his lips.
“You’ll be out of a job if people quit killing one another.”

She
first looked as though she’d like to say something nasty, her face running the entire gamut of human emotion, before her shoulders slumped a little.  “Oh, yeah.  Shit.”

ONE HUNDRED
SIX

“I called your mom as soon as I’d heard you’re all right,” Jack says.

I don’t look up from his grandmother’s ring.  It’s riding loose, and I imagine it’ll take time to get used to feeling it there.  It looks old, but
it’s beautiful.  It’s almost like channeling some part of history.  Jack’s grandparents were married for sixty years.

“She wants to visit
.  I told her I’d talk to you about it when you’re feeling better.”

I
toss him a sharp sideways glance.  “Who’d be coming on this visit?  Her?  Or her husband, too?”

“I got the impression it was both of them.”

I chew my bottom lip and stare at the blankets swathed around my hips.  “I’ll email later to say I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why?  We hang out with my mom.  If my dad was alive, we’d be hanging out with him, too.  Shouldn’t I meet your parents?”

“I don’t have
parents. 
I have one parent, and that is my mother.  If she wants to come, fine.  But not him.”

“You don’t like him much.”

I smile.  Then I wonder why I smile when I’m not happy.  “How could you guess?”

He’s staring at me.
I can feel it, though he’s silent for a long time, long enough for me to think the subject has been dropped.

“Why didn’t you ever report him?”

“For what?”  I ask carefully, counting the stitches in the blanket’s edge.

“For what he did to you.”

I count twenty-three stitches before I answer.  “What do you think he did?”

“Brooke.  Look at me.”  I don’t. 
“Do you remember how long it took you to get you to sleep with me?  It was like dating a born-again Christian.  All this waiting around.  I knew
something
happened to you.  I just wasn’t sure what.  But you always get this look on your face when I mention your mom.  Every time.  Like you don’t know whether you want to be mad or cry.”

I don’t feel any discernible expression on my face.  If anything it’
s too neutral.  “Isn’t that romantic.  I didn’t know you were such a horndog when we first starting seeing each other.”

“I still am.  You just don’t notice it as much.”  I hear a smile in his voice before he’s serious again.  “You could have told me.”

We look up when a short, wide nurse swings into the room, snatches a clipboard, and swishes out.

“How was I supposed to bring that up?” I fall back against the pillows and stare into the
overhead lights.  “Hey, by the way, my stepfather used to rape me about three times a week?” 

I regret my snark when Jack closes his eyes and hides half his face in his hands. “Yes,” he finally says.  “Yes, you could have said that.  You could have said anything, anytime.  Hey, can you pick up Honey Nut Cheerios
for me? Oh, and, I never said, but my stepfather used to rape me about three times a week.” His voice grates around that word,
rape.

“You would have thought I was damaged goods.”

“That isn’t true, and you know it.”

I don’t argue.  Partly because I want to put an end to this topic and partly because I know he wouldn’t have.

He chews his inner cheek, Adam’s apple bobbing behind a layer of skin that looks blue in this awful lighting.  “It doesn’t matter.  I know now.  And it’s not going to change us.  He’s not coming to the wedding, but I think that goes without saying.”  He rubs both hands over his eyes, lips stretching into an O as he yawns. 

I
frown when the O spreads into a smile.  “What are you so happy about?”

“You keep holding your stomach.”

I’d move my hand, but as he’s already caught me, I figure it’s too late to play dumb. “I’ve been wondering what it is.  I don’t think I have a preference, as long as it’s healthy.”

“Already thinking names?”

“I thought we should wait until we know the sex.”

He takes my hand
in both of his again and leans against the back of his chair.  “If it’s a girl, we should name her Abby.”

I order myself not to cry, but when has ordering myself around ever work
ed?  My eyes get hot and fill until they spill over when I nod.