by Spencer Kope
“So, she never actually swam out into the sound, she just talked about it,” he summarizes. “Did she ever try anything else? Pills, cutting, anything like that?”
Kristin purses her lips and shakes her head.
“Was she ever in counseling?”
“Off and on, I think, but only when it was court-ordered.”
“Do you remember who she saw?”
“It was a long time ago,” she replies in a weary voice.
Jimmy nods his understanding, and I can tell he’s disappointed at the lack of concrete information. He wraps up the interview and we say our goodbyes, leaving Kristin standing on the porch with a sad, troubled expression on her face, perhaps wondering what, if anything, she should tell her husband.
* * *
As Jimmy and I make our way south, going from neighborhood to neighborhood, from house to house, it becomes clear that the women we seek all suffered the same fate because they suffered the same symptoms: addiction, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, despair. How much of this can be blamed on them, or on their circumstances, or on the abuse they endured at the hands of others is now irrelevant. To Murphy, they were broken, and he had a fix; to the Onion King they were vulnerable and easily lost to the world.
The only thing I’m certain of at the moment is that more victims will follow. The only way to stop it is to find the Onion King.
Jimmy says that Murphy was just as much a victim of the Onion King as Charice and the others, but it’s hard to see him in that part, at least not the way most view victims. His fate was determined by his decisions, even though those decisions were tainted by mental illness and twisted by the cunning manipulations of a psychopath. He was a true believer, but his faith was misplaced.
Murphy used the word transmogrified in his manifesto.
If you’d asked me the meaning I could only say that it had something to do with change or transition. It turns out that transmogrified refers to someone or something that’s been transformed, especially in a surprising or magical manner.
The fact that Murphy underlined the word several times is downright chilling. He had transmogrified seven living and breathing women into plastic and plaster representations of themselves. And despite his use of the word, there was nothing magical about their transmogrification, no frogs turning into princes or pumpkins blossoming into coaches.
With sudden realization—stained by dark humor—it occurs to me how ironic it is that Murphy died as he did. The man who reveled in the glory of transmogrification had himself been transformed into a limp bag of skin filled with dead tissue. The magic was provided by chemistry: the rapid combustion of nitrocellulose pushing a copper-lined chunk of lead through Murphy’s forehead at eighteen hundred feet per second.
There was no spoken spell, just the sudden clap of thunder and the aftertaste of burnt air as the three-dimensional Murphy crumbled to the forest floor.
In a few years he’ll be rendered to bone, and eventually nothing; the three-dimensional will become non-dimensional.
Just like magic.
* * *
We’re southbound on I-5, moving away from downtown Seattle and toward the suburban sprawl of Beacon Hill, when Jimmy’s phone rings. He answers and puts it on speaker.
“Hey, Jimmy. It’s me,” Haiden Webber announces.
“Haiden,” Jimmy says, “please tell me you’ve got something for us.”
“Yes and no,” the computer forensics expert replies. “I’ve run everything I have against the hard drive, but Murphy’s shredder program was used on every file he’s deleted in the last two years, so those are gone for good. That said, I was able to find some old files from before he started using the shredder. These were also deleted, but fortunately Murphy doesn’t use a lot of disk space, so they were never overwritten—well, mostly. I lost a few chunks of data, but the documents are mostly complete.”
“Please tell me they’re not poems or letters to the editor,” Jimmy says.
“No—well, yeah, most of it was garbage, but I found several documents that make for good reading. One is a download from Silk Road 2.0, from a vendor known only as Trash Can Mike. It’s a how-to guide on body disposal, including step-by-step instructions on how to dissolve human remains in lye. Murphy paid for it with bitcoin.”
The look I give Jimmy is one of bewilderment, and he stares at me a moment before turning his eyes back to the road. “Haiden, I think Steps has a question for you.”
“Shoot,” the computer tech replies.
Leaning closer to the in-vehicle speaker, I say, “Isn’t the dark web supposed to be anonymous? I mean, that’s the whole point, right? So how do you know this document is from this Trash Can Mike and that it was sold on Silk Road 2.0?”
Haiden chuckles. “Well, the cover page says Trash Can Mike, Silk Road 2.0 Edition. I’m not a tracker-slash-investigator, but isn’t that what you guys call a clue?”
Haiden then gives us the rundown on the other documents, which are less nefarious than the guide to body disposal. One describes various ways to enter and hot-wire a car, another is a guide to mold-making.
“I don’t think we’re going to find much more,” the computer scientist says. “I know you were hoping for an address or some kind of smoking gun, but we both know that was wishful thinking.”
“I suppose so,” Jimmy concedes. They chat another minute, and before going, Haiden promises to forward the dark web reports to Diane.
After Jimmy disconnects the call, we ride in silence, the road noise rumbling beneath us like some primordial asphalt beast. “So,” I finally say, “I guess wishful thinking is no longer approved law enforcement policy?”
“It is in my book,” Jimmy replies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Melinda Gaines woke disoriented that morning when the overhead lights burst to life abruptly and without the subtleties of dawn. The light surrounded her and filled her small world with the warm yellow glow of five incandescent bulbs. It was a familiar feeling, waking and not knowing where she was, how she got there, or what time of night or day it was, despite the silent pronouncements of the light. Hers was the morning grogginess of an accomplished drinker—and then she remembered: she hadn’t had a drink in six months. So, what was this?
Her eyes found the clock.
It was sitting on the small nightstand next to the bed, and as she picked it up and stared incomprehensibly at the glowing numbers it finally came to her: eight o’clock. She was going to be late for work.
As she sprang from bed, she glanced around … and froze. She couldn’t have been more frozen if she were lying naked on a lake of ice. A cold finger of fear traced its way along her bony spine, spreading to every nerve and pore. Her breath caught in her throat. And then she stopped breathing altogether.
Time stood still.
Only when her body screamed for oxygen did she finally take the air of the room into her lungs, pulling it down in great staggering gulps. With trembling legs, she sat back on the edge of the bed, a bed that wasn’t hers, in a room she’d never seen, in a place she feared she’d never leave.
The wall of heavy prison bars opposite the bed told her she was in trouble. This was no county jail or state prison. And so, she sat; she sat for the better part of an hour trying to remember the night before and the circumstances that landed her here … wherever here was.
She fought for every recollection, every scrap of remembrance: a table with three barstools pulled around; Trish and Alice; a grungy bathroom smelling of beer and perfume. Eventually she remembered Biscuits Bar & Grill. She remembered dancing sober with Trish and Alice, a threesome on the dance floor, shaking and singing along to Elle King as she bellowed out “Ex’s & Oh’s.”
And then an image came rushing back to her, as if the winds of her mind had lifted it off a poster and flung it against her face. It was the man from the bar: James—no, Jeff! The guy who smelled her when she wasn’t looking and then offered to walk her home after what was supposed to be a chan
ce encounter on the sidewalk.
But she’d said no, thank you, and good night and left him behind. He hadn’t followed her, at least not as far as she could tell. Or had he?
Was he responsible for this?
She strained to remember, striking her forehead with the palm of her hand, as if self-abuse were going to knock the rust from her mental gears. It didn’t. Instead, her brain began to throb as a headache took root and began to strobe behind her left eye.
She should have memories of arriving home, petting her cat, reading several chapters of All the Light We Cannot See, and perhaps eating some ice cream before finally tucking in for the night, but there was nothing.
Her mind was a void.
Yet voids exist in shadow, and as she let herself wander into this darkness, embracing it, something finally came to her, flitting like a bat just beyond reach. It started as a nebulous haze, wispy puffs of smoke resembling distant, dirty clouds; an abstract of an abstract.
As she continued to probe her memory, the abstract became suddenly concrete, and there it was before her, where it had been all along. The blackness remained but peering from behind this veil were two eyes and a mouth.
The black ski mask!
And then she remembered the prick in her neck and the soft fall into nothing. With renewed vigor, fear coursed through her and she heard the desperate beat of her own heart drumming in her ears.
She spent the rest of the morning waiting for the inevitable sound of approaching footsteps. The sudden eruption of light that woke her at eight that morning should have heralded the arrival of her captor, perhaps to gloat or appraise or partake, but she soon spotted the small box mounted next to the light switch on the wall beyond the bars. The lights were on a timer, and as she would learn in the coming days, they came on at eight A.M. and went off at ten P.M.
The wall beyond the bars was artificially three-dimensional, an effect produced by a floor-to-ceiling mural of trees—a rich green forest made mysterious by morning mist. It stretched twelve feet along the opposite wall, a picture of tranquility meant to—what? Calm her? Put her at ease?
The idea was laughable.
Yet the same sentiment was displayed in the warmly painted walls of the cell, the plush carpet on the floor, and the scattered furnishings, which included a small but comfortable twin bed with a thick quilt and high-end sheets, a recliner, an elegant nightstand, and a diminutive bookshelf that held dozens of the latest paperback titles, their spines facing out and ordered alphabetically. Among these is All the Light We Cannot See, the same book that sits half read on her nightstand at home.
Had he known?
Had he been in her house and seen the book next to her bed, or followed her through the bookstore when she bought it a week earlier? The possibilities sent a chill through her.
The comfort of the cell was interrupted only by stark necessity. Opposite the bed and tucked into the corner of the eight-by-twelve-foot space, looking like prison surplus, was a small curtained shower, a toilet, and a sink.
There is no beauty in these items, just utilitarian simplicity, and yet Melinda takes comfort in their presence.
The passage outside her cell goes to the right and to the left, with destinations that couldn’t be more different. To the right, just a few feet beyond the end of her cell, was a steel door painted in the same warm, earthy tones as her cell. The handle was thick and overbuilt, part of an extensive latching system that probably included a built-in cipher lock. She’d seen such locks at the various hospitals and treatment centers where she’d been a guest, both voluntarily and involuntarily. She had no doubt that the passage door would be difficult to breach without special equipment, even if she could get out of the cell.
That was the other problem.
The cell door had a large, heavily reinforced lockbox with no keyhole. One of the first things she’d done was to feel around all six surfaces of the box looking for a hole, a button, a lever—anything that might allow her to pick the lock or access the box.
It was solid steel all the way around.
As far as she could tell, the only opening was the hole where the locking bolt engaged the doorframe, meaning it was remotely activated. She guessed it was wireless because without a keyhole or wires there was no other way to explain the operation of the mechanism.
Of all the places her eyes wandered that morning, and of all the things she studied and tried to make sense of, it was the long passage to the left of her cell that kept drawing her back. The mysterious corridor wandered away for twenty feet before it narrowed and continued on into unfathomable darkness. Where it went she couldn’t guess, but the dark maw troubled her, both from its blackness and from the small noises that occasionally issued from its depths—scraping and scuttering and, every once in a while, heavier sounds that were less defined.
* * *
She screams for the better part of an hour at noon, finally collapsing onto the bed and sobbing herself into exhausted, troubled sleep. It’s a tiny sound that wakes her some time later; a different sound.
She glances at the digital clock on the nightstand and sees that it’s exactly two o’clock in the afternoon. The sound in her ears is disorienting at first, but as she comes fully awake and gets her bearings, she recognizes that it doesn’t come from the black maw of the endless narrow passage to the left, but from beyond the steel door to her right. It’s the sound of hard-heeled shoes clicking against stone tile, and it’s growing louder, more pronounced. A moment later, the sound stops on the other side of the door. There’s the quiet rattle of something being set aside, perhaps on the floor or a low table, followed by the steady tink tink tink of … what?
Is it a spoon stirring the contents of a glass?
Is he poisoning her? Drugging her?
What other explanation could there be? It’s the same sound her glass makes when she stirs chocolate syrup into her milk, or vitamin C powder into water. Tink tink tink. He’s going to drug her; she’s sure of it now.
When the door finally opens and her captor enters, she’s disappointed to find his features hidden behind the same black ski mask that plays at the edge of her memory. With rising fury, she wants to scream at him, to call him a coward for hiding his face, but the words won’t form in her throat. Instead, she finds herself pressing against the back wall of the cell, trembling, despite her best efforts to hide the toxic mix of anger and fear.
Wordlessly, the mask takes the tray of food he carries and slides it through a horizontal slot welded into the bars of the makeshift prison. He holds it there silently, waiting for her to step forward and take it. When she doesn’t, he whispers, “Take it or starve.”
I’m already starving, she thinks.
Peeling herself from the wall, Melinda moves forward by inches, one shaking hand outstretched before her. When the tips of her fingers brush the edge of the tray, she quickly swings her other hand up and grabs hold, jerking the tray into the cell with enough force to spill some of the orange juice from the heavy glass mug.
Taking the juice, she walks to the sink and is about to pour it down the drain. Guessing correctly, the mask whispers, “It’s only vitamins.” Holding up an empty packet of vitamin powder, he waves it in front of her as proof. “I have a hundred ways to render you unconscious, and a thousand ways to kill you,” the mask continues. “I don’t need to play games by spiking your food or drink.”
Whether Melinda believes him or not, she slowly sets the glass back down and then shuffles over to the edge of the bed and sits with the tray on her knees. Picking up a wedge of avocado, she begins to raise it to her lips, but then drops her hand back to her lap. She wonders at the ambiguous nature of hunger, that she could be so famished and yet have no appetite. It’s as preposterous as matter and antimatter occupying the same space, but as long as the mask leers at her from the other side of the bars, she finds herself unable to eat. Even the thought of it churns her stomach, and she feels the bile rising unbidden.
The hole at the
bottom of the mask twists into a broad, toothy smile, as if he feels her discomfort, as if he were a kindly man smiling away her distrust.
The man stands at the bars a moment longer and Melinda hears a soft sniffing from under the mask, like someone with a cold who’s trying to hide it.
He’s doing it again, she realizes with growing dread.
He’s sniffing the air of the cell the same way one might a container of food from the fridge, checking for freshness. The snuffling and sniffing might have gone unnoticed if not for the memory of Jeff leaning in close to her in the bar and then again on the street, taking her in by clandestine whiffs and sniffs.
It’s him; she’s sure of it now.
Part of her wants to call him by name, to strip away the mask and the anonymity he so easily presumes. But for all she knows, Jeff isn’t even his name. She knows his face, though. Even if the name is a lie, the face is truth, and she swears to herself in that moment that she’ll spend her waking hours remembering his face, the shape of his body, the way he walks, even the nearly indecipherable whisper he uses to disguise his voice.
She vows to remember it; all of it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When we arrive in Beacon Hill at the last known address of Abitha Jones, the single-story home at the end of a forgotten cul-de-sac looks vacant and ill-used. Garbage lines the collapsing fence on the west side of the house, and most of the windows are boarded up.
The remnants of tape and paper hang from the front door where various notices had been repeatedly posted and torn down; perhaps eviction notices or foreclosure announcements or just ordinance violations issued by the county or city. It doesn’t really matter, since all were equally ignored.
Exiting the black Ford Expedition, I study the sidewalk and surrounding street. The shine is there, but it’s old, perhaps three years old, well before she went missing, and there’s no sign of the Onion King.
