Killer Instinct, page 16
As Daisy and I climb into my keyed Wrangler, I look up and see Dr. Issa across the church parking lot. He’s looking right at me.
I give him an acknowledging wave, and he returns that with a nod before climbing in his Juke and pulling away. I wonder if he knew the preschool teacher and that’s why he’s here.
• • •
Later that night I go into Daisy’s room to see how she’s doing—something I haven’t done in a very long time—and she’s not there.
I look around upstairs and then head down. “Justin, seen Daisy?”
He doesn’t even bother glancing up from his coloring books. “Nope.”
I try her phone next. Its musical ring echoes from upstairs. I head up and into her room just as it stops playing. I dial again and locate it under the dress she wore to the memorial service.
Daisy never goes anywhere without her cell.
A chilly breeze races across my skin, and I glance over to her open window. A tiny slit is the only sign it’s been opened and not reclosed all the way.
I walk over, lift it up, and stick my head out. The rolled fire escape ladder Victor makes us keep in our rooms dangles down the side of the house.
Unbelievable. This is not the time for her to take off with one of her many guys.
West was the last one’s name, and so I find him in our student directory and dial his number. “This is Lane, Daisy’s sister.”
“Oh, hey, Slim.”
I don’t even know this guy. “Is she with you?”
“No, she’s at that girl’s funeral.”
No, she’s not. “You guys are still together, right?” I never know with her. “She wouldn’t be with someone else?”
“She better not be with someone else,” he fires back.
I take a patient breath. “Don’t worry about it. I’m looking for her. That’s all.”
“Try her phone.”
A real genius, this one. “Thanks, I’ll do that. Tell her to call me if you two talk.”
I click off and start going through the student directory, calling all her cheerleading friends.
An hour later I’ve gotten nowhere.
“Be back in a sec,” I tell Justin as I head to the front door.
Across the street sits our FBI guy. He’s staring right at me, like he thinks I’m going to run or something. He should’ve been staring this way at Daisy while she shimmied out the back.
I take a few steps toward him, and my phone vibrates. Sliding my hand across the screen, I unlock it and a video pops up.
Zach. Strapped to a table. Shaking. Naked. Gagged. Eyes wide with fear. The message below says:
TELL ANYONE AND HE DIES.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I HEAD BACK INSIDE THE house and straight up to my room. I take a seat at my desk and pull up the fifteen-second video of Zach on my phone. Like the other one, there is no sound.
I stare at his shaking body and my muscles tense. Watching the other video had mesmerized me. Watching this one terrifies me. Zach means a lot to me. More than I ever realized.
Closing my eyes, I inhale one long, cleansing breath and let it out slow.
My eyes reopen and I focus on the room he is in. I’m absolutely sure it’s not 4 Buchold Place.
On my laptop I try to bring up the other video, but the link is still expired. From my memory it is the identical room. Wherever my uncle killed that woman, he is now holding Zach. And the fact he’s allowing me to watch Zach’s video more than once—it’s like he’s toying with me.
I dial Reggie. “Other than Four Buchold Place, did my real father or uncle own anything else?”
“Just a sec.” I hear her clicking her keyboard. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“How about did they live anyplace else near here?”
“No, that’s the only address that shows up for them in your area.”
I sit back. Focus. Think. In my area . . . “How about outside the area? Like Maryland?”
She click, click, clicks. “Sorry, no.”
“Okay.”
A knock sounds on my door, and my mom sticks her head in. “Wanted you to know I’m home. But only for a minute.”
“Hang on,” I tell Reggie, and focus back on my mom.
“Dad’s still at the office, and I’m heading back there, actually.”
“I thought you got pulled off the case?”
“I did. But there are other investigations I’m manning.”
“Were you all ever able to open that video?”
Her expression softens. “I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
My pulse quickens. “You were able to pull it up?”
“Yes, and I’m so sorry you had to see it,” she repeats.
I’m dying to ask her how they got the video to relaunch but of course can’t. “Did it help?” I ask instead.
“It has. They’ve been able to figure out a lot of things we were unsure of.”
Like what—where the kill room is? Where Zach is? “Mom—”
Tell anyone and he dies.
“Yes?”
I want to tell her about Zach. I want to get her help. But I know I can’t. Zach will die if I don’t do what the Decapitator wants. “Nothing,” I mumble.
Some awkward seconds pass.
“Thank you”—she breaks the awkwardness—“for listening to me. For not keeping more information from me. I should’ve told you that earlier.”
“Sure.” At least I’ve earned back a teeny bit of her trust. Which will all be gone again as soon as she realizes I’m keeping Zach a secret.
“Okay, I have to go back. I only came home to grab some files.” She nods to my phone. “And you have a conversation to finish.” She gives me a slight wave and closes my door behind her.
I go back to Reggie. “Sorry about that. So what did you find?”
“Well, when you said Maryland, a bell dinged in my head. I remember your mom talking about Gaithersburg, Maryland, and how you all lived there before moving to McLean.”
The memory hits me. “That’s right. I’d forgotten all about that. I think I was in second grade when we moved.”
“Anyway, your stepdad still owns the house.”
“What? Why?”
“He rents it out.”
“Who’s in it right now?”
“No one. It’s been empty for a few months.”
I grab a pen and paper and notice my hands are shaking. I ignore them and focus. “Give me the address.”
We hang up, and someone knocks on my door. “Lane?”
Daisy? I swing the door open and pull my sister into a hug. “Where the hell have you been?”
It takes her a second to realize we’re hugging. “The tree house.”
I pull back. “Do not leave this house. Got me?”
“Sorry,” she mumbles, and it occurs to me that a week ago she would’ve cussed me out over that demand. “I’m going to be in my room,” she says, and shuffles off.
I watch her for a second, completely elated and overcome by the fact she’s fine. After she closes her bedroom door, I close my own, open my window, and go out the same way Daisy did—down the retractable ladder.
I sprint through our side yard to where my Jeep is parked along the curb and plug the Maryland address into my GPS. Hang on, Zach. Hang on. . . .
I jump on 495, and forty-five minutes later I arrive at my childhood house. I park several blocks down and sit for a second, surveying the area. Memories rush back and I reel at their onslaught. Pedaling my bike. Playing in the leaves. Making brownies for a block party.
It’s a cute neighborhood—what my parents would call starter homes. A bike rests against a tree in one yard. A plastic toddler wagon sits upside down on a porch. Halloween lights and decorations blink through front windows.
Kid friendly. Safe. Great place to raise a family. Great place to hide Zach.
No one would guess the Decapitator has him just a few blocks down.
Quickly I slip my cargo pants on over my skinny jeans and pack the pockets with my supplies. I don’t bother with my ski mask—the Decapitator knows what I look like.
The street is well lit, but it’s getting late and no one’s out. Still, there’s no hiding in shadows as I race for my old house and Zach. If someone was to drive by, they’d assume I was out for a late run.
The small Cape Cod is dark, making it seem as if no one lives here. Laughter echoes through my memories, and I have a flash of Daisy racing across the yard, her blond braids flying, Mom chasing her.
This is the house I lived in when I was taken at three years old.
My thoughts trail off as my brain makes connections between Victor and this house—he’s been in all the states where the decapitations occurred, he has the ability to cover up records. He could be in on this whole thing.
I stop for a second and glance around the small yard, tended bushes, tiny porch, rolled-up water hose, and decorative brick walkway. How did the Decapitator get Zach past all this and inside? Surely a neighbor would have seen someone carrying a body indoors. Then again, probably not. The Decapitator’s good. He would know how to get a body inside without stirring suspicion.
I take in the stone birdbath to the left and suddenly, very distinctly, recall our neighbor building it.
Beyond the birdbath and around the corner of the house sits the kitchen door off the driveway. I automatically move toward it, instinct directing me, in the way a person does out of habit.
The front door always got jammed, I remember now, and so we would use the side kitchen door.
I reach for the knob and turn it, not surprised at all to find it unlocked. It swings open, and I stand staring into the dark kitchen.
He’s here. I can feel him.
I step over the threshold, close the door behind me, and stand reorienting myself to the place.
A combination of moonlight and light from the streetlamps filters through the blinds and casts an intermittent glow here and there.
I experience a quick flash of Victor standing by the stove, flipping pancakes. This place seems full of nothing but good and happy memories. Now it’ll be full of anything but.
Beyond the kitchen spans the living room and past that the master bedroom. Two smaller ones lie to the left, separated by a bathroom.
Daisy and I shared the farthest one away, and so I head straight there.
A light flickers from the crack beneath the door. The Decapitator’s in there. Zach’s in there, strapped to a table, scared, fighting for what seconds of life he has left.
Zach’s presence, the Decapitator’s presence, they both fill me, overwhelm me in an intense single-mindedness that I welcome. The Decapitator will die for this. I will kill him and end his life of terror.
I unbutton my cargo pockets, ready to grab whatever I need, and reach for the doorknob.
With a twist I give it a slight push, and it slowly swings inward.
Large sheets of black plastic cover every inch of the ceiling, walls, and floor. On an examining table in the center lies Zach, unconscious and strapped down.
No one else is in the room. A small lamp sitting on the floor provides the only light.
Crossing the plastic, I go to him and test the canvas straps. I’ll have to cut them off. I take in his slack face, shallow breaths, and pale skin. What has he been drugged with? I glance around the table and underneath it, where the black plastic disappears through a cutout portion of the flooring. This must be the drain I saw on the video. I don’t understand. Did the Decapitator burrow a hole right through the house’s floor? And where does it go to—a drain line of some sort, the septic tank, dirt beneath the house?
In my peripheral vision I catch movement and automatically reach for my Taser. I yank it from my pocket, turn, and freeze.
The Decapitator nods. “Hello, Lane. Welcome.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“MOM?”
She comes toward me, takes the Taser from my hand, and backs away. “You’re the daughter I was meant to have.”
I glance quickly to Zach, then right back to my mom. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
She props her shoulder in the doorway and folds her arms across her chest. “What don’t you understand, daughter?”
Is she for real? “How about everything?” I point to Zach. “Why haven’t you helped him?”
Mom spares him a quick glance. “I was saving him for you. For us. I want to do him together.”
Do him together?
“Oh, don’t act like you didn’t know.”
I didn’t!
“Do you realize how great we’ll be together?” Mom keeps going as if we’re having a normal conversation.
“Decapitating people?”
She smiles. “With my position in the FBI and your innate talents . . . We’ll be great. We’ll go down in history as the most infamous serial killers never caught. Besides, now that Seth is dead, I need another partner.”
This takes a second to sink in. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Well, you didn’t think I could pull all this off by myself. Honestly”—she chuckles—“I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
My brain spirals with questions, with memories, with facts, but I don’t have the time to give them space to unravel. I need to focus. “You two killed my preschool teacher?”
“She was fucking your dad. It pissed me off. I walked right in on them. We walked right in on them.”
I’ve never heard my mom drop the f-bomb. It comes across so foreign . . . and ridiculous. “But you were already married. . . . And what do you mean, we?”
“Seth was and always will be my one true love.”
I shake my head. She’s making no sense. “Then why get married?”
“Because Seth can be a real asshole, and I had to teach him a lesson. I like to hold my happy marriage over his head. But then I got pregnant with Daisy and my job at the FBI, and well, here I am, all these years later.”
“What do you mean, we?” I repeat. “Who took me? Who kidnapped me when I was three?”
“Nobody. It’s the story we made up. I took you to Four Buchold. Seth had no clue we were coming. We walked right in on him and that bitch. That’s when it all went down. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed her, then stabbed again, and then Seth joined in.” She huffs an unamused laugh. “You watched the whole thing.”
I get really still.
“You just stood there mesmerized by what we were doing.”
My whole body chills. “I was not,” I whisper.
She nods. “You were. You wouldn’t look away.”
Anger surges through my blood, turning my chilled body into a furnace. “I was in shock!”
“It was your idea that we cut off her head, arms, and legs.”
Bile swells into my throat, and I swallow the overwhelming desire to heave. “That’s a lie.”
Mom shakes her head. “No, it’s not.”
Yes it is! It has to be a lie!
“That first kill was our crime of passion, and—it did something to us. When you stood there and watched, we knew you were feeling it too.”
All the air in my lungs leaves me. “And all those other women?” I whisper.
Mom shrugs. “Yearly celebration of our first kill.” Her face brightens. “You don’t understand how thrilling it is for Seth and me. There’s nothing like it.”
I can’t hear any more.
She shakes her head. “Do you know how many hours, days, weeks, months, years the FBI has put into this? Trying to figure the Decapitator—us—out?” She laughs. “Ridiculous.”
I eye this woman, my mother, a person I don’t even know. “How’d you pick your victims?”
“Preschool teachers, blondes . . .”
I trusted you. I admired you. I respected you. I wanted to be like you. All these things pop into my mind, but I say none of them. “What about your husband? What about Justin? And Daisy?”
“Don’t you see? They’ll have each other. You and I will have each other. We’ll be the perfect family. Besides”—she nods to Zach—“now that Seth’s gone we need something new. New victims, new techniques. We need to make this us now.”
“He’s my friend,” I whisper.
“No. He’s not. If he were your friend, he wouldn’t have turned his back on you.”
“He didn’t.”
“I have an itch that needs scratching, and he’s going to do it.”
I don’t like that she’s used “itch.” That’s my word.
“He’s a present. For you.”
Who is this woman who has terrorized others for fourteen years? I barely recognize her. It’s like I’m meeting her for the first time tonight.
She moves finally, pushing away from the door, and my whole body tenses. “Be back in a sec,” she tells me.
Mom disappears, and I quickly look around, my brain in overdrive. How am I going to get me and Zach out of here?
Wait. My tranquilizer gun!
Mom reappears in that exact second holding something behind her back.
I’ve never once felt the urge to retreat from anything or anybody, but the need to back up, even one step, overcomes me.
Zach mumbles and stirs.
Don’t wake up, Zach. Don’t wake up.
With a smile, Mom pulls a long knife from behind her back. I recognize it from the video.
The video . . .
She and Seth sliced that woman and packaged her parts, and I watched with fascination, with sick curiosity, just as Mom claimed.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe this is my destiny. But . . . how can this be my destiny if they created it by allowing me to watch, by making me participate all those years ago?
They made me into this indescribable, abnormal, distorted person. If it weren’t for their twisted delight, I’d be a normal seventeen-year-old girl. Happy. Functional. Emotional at times. Bright. Adjusted.
