Snuff (5 page)

FIFTEEN

The hallway leading to Brooke Dutton’s hospital room teemed with hospital staff and uniformed officers when John burst through the double doors with Chief Foster
in tow.

“Where’s Sergeant Jennings?” John
led a winding path through the throng.  “I’d like her to brief me.”

“She’s with Brooke.  I have a feeling getting her to leave the room is going to be like taking a squeaky toy from a Rottweiler.  Lisette doesn’t look scary, but w
ait until she opens her mouth.”

“I understand she wants to shield Brooke, but I can’t do my job without hearing every scrap of information.  Which room number?”

Foster nodded at a door on the right. 

John
rapped on it, pressing his one hundred and eighty-five pounds into his hand as he leaned against the doorjamb.

A frustrated grunt erupted behind the door before it swung open.  “Who the hell are you?” A woman with both blonde eyes and hair barked, scanning him from his feet to the tie at his throat.  “You look like a Fed.”  She spat the last word like it was a nasty, flesh-eating virus.

“That’s because I am.”  He offered his hand, which she ignored. “It’s imperative I speak with you.”

“I’m not finished.  You’re going to have to take a fucking number like the other douche canoes.”  She jammed her thumb toward the hallway.

Taking a fucking number
wasn’t a viable option.  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s urgent, and not a request.”

Their eyes snapped together. A
nger made hers swirl like they were comprised of molten gold. “I can’t leave Brooke.”  Her voice dropped to a hair above a whisper.  “You know what the other girls did.  I won’t risk leaving her on her own, even for a minute.  I don’t trust anyone else to watch her.”

“I’ve heard her boyfriend wants to see her.  That’s the best I can offer.
  It won’t take long.”

She crossed her arms over the LAPD logo on her hooded navy sweatshirt, lips mashed together, a muscle working in her slender jaw.  The curve of her face was surprisingly feminine, more so when it belonged to a woman who had the foulest mouth he’d heard on anyone outside the armed forces.

“She says she doesn’t want to see him.  You know how fragile her psyche is because of this fuckface.  I don’t want her breaking down when I’ve just started making progress.”

“Look.”  John pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I wish I didn’t have to do this.  But you know—and probably better than me—what’s going to happen in three days.  Two more are going to disappear, and in three weeks we’ll have another Brooke.” He glanced beyond Sergeant Jennings to the nervous-eyed brunette strapped to the hospital bed, her pale, skinny wrists twisting in restraints.

She sighed and turned to Brooke.  “I have to update Mr. Federal Agent, but I’ll be back.  Maybe while I’m gone you can see Jack.”

“I can’t. I can’t see him like this.”

“Yes, you can.”  Sergeant Jennings walked over and clasped her hand around Brooke’s belted one.  “You’re strong, and you can do it.  He’s your boyfriend, not an alien.  I’ll be back soon.  Right?” She turned a challenging gaze on John.

“Right.”

She stomped past him and yelled through the open door.  “Someone get Jack Callahan from the lobby.”

A uniform scuttled off, and she turned to John.  “If that girl freaks the fuck out and goes batshit when I’m gone, I’m blaming you.”  She pushed past him and stalked down the hallway, long blonde ponytail swaying as she shoved through her fellow brothers in blue.

John let the door shut behind him. “Noted.”

SIXTEEN

The door flings open, and Jack
fills the threshold.  It’s good to know I was right in thinking the threats the man made against Jack were empty.

He stands
there staring like his eyes are deceiving him.  I wonder why until I remember my hair’s not strawberry blonde anymore, the only shade he’s seen it. “Oh, God, Brooke.”

I struggle to sit up, but he’s already in Lisette’s chair, wrapping his arms around me.  My face crumbles—I can’t help it.  It’s hard staying strong when
he’s around. 

He kisses my forehead, stroking my hair.  I did the same for Abby before she died, and my stomach revolts at the recollection.

“You just rest now,” I croon foolishly, brushing my lips across her hairline.  They’re wet when I pull away.  I don’t even want to know what from.  Blood, sweat, pus?  A cocktail of all three? 

“I thought I’d never see you again.  I didn’t know what I’d do without you.”
  His hands cup my face when he presses his lips against my chapped ones.  I peek into his light blue eyes for a second, but I have to look away.  It’s like staring into the sun.  “How are you feeling?”  He prods the restraints.  “Why’ve they tied you down?”

I want to lie, but he’d see through it.  He usually can.  “They think I’m going to kill myself.”  I catch sight of his horrified expression.  “I’m not going to.” Abby martyred herself for a good reason.  I can’t up and kill myself because then all this would be for nothing. 

“I know you won’t.”

It’s funny.  As I stare at his hand clenching mine, I realize I can tell when he’s lying, too.  I must know him as well as he knows me. 

He says I’m like Red Bull with a splash of crack cocaine, a rush of blood that makes his head swirl.  In contrast to my supposed eccentricities, he’s predictable and safe, like a quilt my now-dead grandmother made.  He keeps me warm and doesn’t ask where I’ve been, who I’ve been doing it with, or why I’m even awake at such a late hour.

Though I don’t feel like Red Bull at present.  More like liquid Valium—slow and stupid.

“What happened, baby?  You weren’t—?”

“No.”  I wish all that happened was rape. 

“Thank God.” 

Is that who I should thank? 

Jack sees all kinds of living, breathing horror stories of rape during his intern rotations in the hospital.  Girls with necklaces of bruises are in and out of the ER day and night.  They leave with wet eyes and white paper bags full of preventative STD meds and Plan B. 

He runs a hand through his black hair.  It’s grown out in the weeks I haven’t seen him
. “I love you so much.  God.  I always knew I loved you, but it never hit as hard as it did when you were gone.”

My heart twists like the spines of his old med school books.  I try to tell him I love him too, but the words strangle on my tongue.  I’m not worthy of his affection.  I haven’t seen myself in weeks but I’m betting my outer layers match my hideous insides. 

“I was pissed when you didn’t come home.  I thought you’d decided to work a double and didn’t tell me.”  His eyes snap shut, and his forehead seals against mine.  “I was going to propose when you got home. I had that rosé you like.  My grandma gave me her engagement ring.”

Abby’s wedding ring needles my knuckle.  I can feel it riding loose on her skinny finger when I
clamp my hand around hers. 

“Five years is a long time,” I say, for lack of anything better.  My longest relationship before Jack was zero days. “
I’ve never had a boyfriend that long.  People get tattoos, and I think that’s too big of a commitment.”

A laugh that
she can’t fully execute gurgles in her throat.  “Getting married was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Vomit rushes my throat.    

SEVENTEEN

“Let’s get this over with.” Sergeant Jennings slammed herself into a swivel chair in a conference room the hospital set up. 

John slid into the seat beside her.  “
Go through everything in chronological order.”

“No shit, Boss.” 

“It’s John.”

Her scowl
slipped a little before she slapped it back into place.  “Lisette,” she grudgingly offered, and turned to tap at the keyboard of a laptop. Four side-by-side photographs popped up. 

“This is Beth Grant and Rebecca Adams.  They were reported missing two days apart, a little over three months ago.  Their phones and purses were found at the abduction sites, but we think he took their wallets; we couldn’t find them anywhere.  No signs of a large struggle. We found Rebecca on the side of the road in Boyle Heights.  She was holding Beth’s body and a cell phone.  It wasn’t
hers—it was a burner he bought for her to use.  Came up with jack shit tracing where he bought it, so it had to be cash. Rebecca was catatonic and didn’t use the phone. Taxi passing by called it in a little after three a.m.  She never spoke, and a few hours later she hung herself in the hospital bathroom.  Beth’s official COD was strangulation, but she had multiple stab wounds.  A lot of them were too shallow to kill, but the deeper ones centered around the genitals.  Beth’s parents say they can’t find a necklace she always wore, so he might have taken it as a trophy.”

Rebecca must have fit his needs—her appearance hadn’t been altered.  Deep brown complexion, almond-shaped eyes, tall, lanky body type.  She squinted into the sun in the photograph, wearing track shorts and a tank top.  In the image beside it she had a collar of violet bruising from where she’d hung herself.  

Beth had thick limbs and sandy brown hair.  She wore dark clothes and a sullen expression in the first photo.  In the second her hair was pitch black, a stark contrast to her pale, mottled skin, with near-identical bruising from strangulation.

“This is Vienna Lockhart and Brianna Weaver.  Same shit.  Kidnapped in parking lots, cell phones and purses left at the scene, but no wallets.  Three weeks later Vienna turns up at three a.m. on the side of the road with Brianna’s body. Brianna was killed with a nine millimeter.  Killer had terrible aim, took three tries to get a kill shot. Vienna dialed 9-1-1 and the recording gave me the motherfucking creeps.  She sounded like a robot.  Same kind of burner cell.  When we got there she was already bleeding out.  Picked up a rock and dug into her wrists and arms, across the river and over the bridge.  In the morgue we realized he’d dyed her hair from brown to red.  Someone had, and I’m quoting ME Ward, ‘vigorous sex’ with Brianna after she was dead
.  Brianna’s promise ring was missing, her mother said.”

The images of Vienna dead bore no resemblance to the photos taken in life.  She had a face full of makeup, a Birkin bag, and a fuzzy dog on the lap of her miniskirt.  At auto
psy she wore filthy boxers and the red of her hair matched the bloody moats caked with dirt tunneled into her forearms.

Brianna’s photos made John grimace.  She was only a child, barely fifteen, leaning on a spiral staircase in a blue formal dress.  She had one shot to the upper abdominal cavity in crime scene photos, a dying grimace
distorting her features, and eyeballs torn from the sockets. A slow death, he knew.  She could have survived hours with a belly wound.

Lisette made to tab to another set of pictures, but he put his palm on her wrist to stop her.  “She was the only one with
eyes missing?”

“Yeah. 
ME said it happened post mortem.  Since her body was in the worst shape, I figured she might have reminded him of somebody, or been a surrogate.”

“Or maybe something traumatic happened to him at Brianna’s age
.”

She brought up another set of pictures. 
“Next were Reiko Takahashi and Paula Bennet.  Paula was kidnapped in the lot she parked in to pick up her son from karate. Reiko—her American name was Emily—was taken after work at one a.m.  Her mother and father own a sushi restaurant, and she was closing up.  Same dump job, three a.m., random road, burner cell, dead girl.  There was extensive sexual assault on Emily, and he’d dressed her up like a geisha.  Electrocution burns on her clitoris.  If I ever find this jizzbucket I’m going to hack his schlong off and feed it to him. Ward says Emily was smothered, petechiae in her eyes.  Cotton fibers in her nose, so she thinks it was a pillow.  Paula kept saying the same thing over and over;
oh God, but what about my son
?  Didn’t get another word out of her, and she hung herself in the bathroom while a uniform left to get her husband from the waiting room.”

Degradation of Asian women in the media was something John had been long disgusted by.  In films they were mainly depicted as sexually subse
rvient playthings or concubines. The sexual acts, the geisha costume, and violation of Emily’s corpse proved the jizzbucket, as Lisette so eloquently stated, bought into that portrayal.

His fear was they were dealing with multiple jizzbuckets.

“Abby Black and Brooke Dutton, abducted in parking lots.  Brooke right after work at Norm’s; she’d gotten off the dinner shift, and Abby the day before from a church parking lot.  Brooke wouldn’t let go of Abby.  She’s still asking to see her.  We’ve been lucky.  Cognitive interviews are going well.  I don’t care if I have to crack myself out on espresso and work around the clock, I’m not letting Brooke lose her mind.  We’ve had literally nothing to go on for months except untraceable burner cells and a bunch of dead girls.  She’ll be able to confirm…” she trailed off, shaking her head.  “Confirm what I’ve been thinking.”

John hadn’t seen a cop look so angry in quite some time.  The last time had been
eighteen years ago when clutching the sides of a sink, looking in the mirror of the Sex Crimes Unit’s bathroom after a technicality had set a rapist free.  She cared—possibly a little too much.  Her fingers wouldn’t have bitten so hard into the insides of her elbows if she didn’t, but he had a feeling she’d never admit it.  She seemed the type to be embarrassed she had emotions in the first place.  

“Well I’m sure you don’t need me to point out that he doesn’t have a type.”

“Great observation, Nancy Drew.”

John wondered if the Nancy Drew barb insulted him.  Ultimately he decided it didn’t.  After all, Nancy Drew solved every case.  “The range in age and appearance is telling.  Normally it would mean he’s an opportunistic offender, not preferential, but I’m not sure that’s the case.  Seems he’s a mixture of both.”

“He’s dyed the hair of three girls, including Brooke.  So those kidnappings seem opportunistic.”

“That he’s gone so far as to dye hair and dress some in costume tells me he’s looking to fit a scenario, which makes him preferential.  But it’s hard to find women who perfectly match fantasies.  If he’s doing snatch and grabs it says he hasn’t put time into stalking
, though he may have staked out parking lots that don’t have security cameras as a countermeasure.”

“What are you getting at?  You’re contradicting yourself.”  

“I’m not buying that this is the work of an individual.”  He took control of the laptop and flipped through the photographs of each dead woman.  “We’ve got an African-American track star, a slightly heavy quasi-Goth, a trophy wife, an adolescent girl, an Asian-American woman, a soccer mom, and two girls next door.  No one man has this wide a variety of types.  I mean, I suppose it’s
possible,
but it’s very unlikely.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve never dreamed of banging the girl next door and a MILF and a goddamned geisha?”

He couldn’t hold back a laugh.  It had to be that way she had with swearing.  It really was fantastic; she must have had years of practice, careful refining of her craft, finding the perfect balance of
fucks
and
damns
, adding just enough wonderful inflection in all the right places. 

“No, I’ve never dreamt of banging the girl next door or MILF or a geisha.”  The woman who lived next door to John growing up was eighty years old.  No matter how the Girl Next Door was depicted in Playboy, he couldn’t help flashing back to old Mrs. Collins.
  “Such extensive damage to reproductive organs is the sole constant I can see, and only a woman could make a man hate women this much.  Or maybe he hates the fact he was ever born.  Is there any other constant you’ve noticed?”

“Dead girls were wrapped in blankets.”

“That points to—”

“Remorse, yeah, I know.  But there’s nothing remorseful about what happened.”

John’s chair creaked like the bones of an old woman as he leaned back.  “Which means two offenders, at the very least.”

“Yeah, I thought that, too.” 
Lisette ripped the elastic from her ponytail and shook her hair out.  “Brooke told me she and Abby were filmed by this asshat.  Fair to assume it happened to all the girls.  Filming torture porn doesn’t scream
remorse
, and from what Brooke’s said, there was only one perp present.  Blankets could have been to cover the bodies when he tossed them out of his van.  Keep them from being found sooner.”

“
Has anything similar happened a few months prior to these abductions?  Women reporting dressing room cameras or something?”

“
You know how many pervy voyeurs are in LA? A lot.  Sex Crimes found toilet cams in a bunch of Starbucks’s downtown.  They caught the guy.  Nasty fuck had a million notebooks filled with descriptions of urine.  Marigold yellow, clear, weak flow, lasts thirty-four seconds.  What the hell is wrong with people.”

John pulled out his iPhone,
punched in Stacy’s number, and stood.  “Go look in on Brooke.  I’m going to have my technical analyst do some digging.”