by A B Whelan
“I understand. I can get you help. I know what happened to you when you were growing up. You were just a kid. It wasn’t your fault. You deserve justice.”
“You don’t know shit about what happened!” His voice, like a storm, fills the room. “That wasn’t me. That was a pathetic, weak, little boy who let those men do whatever they wanted to him. That boy died a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was my fault!” he shouts, and I almost drop my gun because it sounds as if he’s right behind me, but he isn’t.
“The system failed you. You were only a child. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I could have stolen a knife from the kitchen and killed those motherfuckers. Do you have any idea how helpless it is to grow up too scared to close your eyes every night because you never know which monster will visit you? I let them do those things to me.”
“Your aunt was supposed to protect you, look after you.”
“Well, she didn’t. My mother let me down too. She gave up on me and on her own life after my father died. I was worth living for, but she was too selfish to see it.” His voice is haunting me.
“I know, but … depression is a sickness. She didn’t give up on you, she was sick.”
“I’m tired of listening to women’s pathetic excuses for not doing their jobs. Oh, it’s so hard to raise a child. Oh, it’s so hard to be married. If everything is so fucking hard for you, why don’t you kill yourselves and save us the trouble!”
“Is that why you punished all those women, Blake? Because you hate women?”
“Stop calling me Blake!” I feel his breath on the back of my neck, but it’s too late for me to react. He has a knife against my throat. “Drop the gun!”
“Alright. Alright—look … I’m putting it on the floor right now. But you need to relax, okay? I know you don’t want to hurt your sister.”
He scoffs. “My sister, huh? My little princess sister who had everything she wanted in life?”
I need to establish trust between us, bring up a memory we share.
“You’re my friend, Ethan. You’ve known me for years. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Oh, and tell you what? That I’m your lost little brother who was raped by disgusting fat men with small limp dicks? Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a normal relationship after that? All I think about is what my girlfriend will say when she finds out about my childhood.”
“I wouldn’t have judged you.”
He pushes me against the wall and presses the knife against my chest. “You only just found out who you really are! You just met your real father. You’ve been living in a perfect little bubble,” he sneers through clenched teeth.
“I didn’t know. Nobody told me.”
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and smooths down his overgrown beard. He looks me dead in the eye. “I kissed you, sis. I slept with your boyfriend.”
“Why? Were you trying to hurt me?” I whisper.
“Were you trying to hurt me?” he repeats mockingly. “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have. All your education and training wasn’t enough to catch me. I knew you were onto me. I drugged you while we were watching fireworks on the fourth, then I searched your laptop. You were the one who found out about my little scheme, but you had no clue it was me.”
“I wish it wasn’t.”
He chuckles, stepping back from me. “But it was me. It is me.”
“I can get you help. You can still come out of this okay.”
I step toward him. A big mistake. He reads my move as an act of aggression, and jumps at me, tossing me to the ground. He sits on my stomach and pushes the knife against my chest.
“I don’t need your help. You are not my little sister. We are nothing!”
He’s heavy, and I’m struggling to breathe. Tears gather in my eyes from the strain.
“My father is your father. His rapist blood is in my veins too. I won’t let him or anything else from my past to ruin me. You can do the same. You have more strength than I do,” I say, wheezing.
“Well, aren’t you a perfect little sister!” He spits into my face, and his warm saliva trickles down on the bridge of my nose. “I guess you handled life better than I did. Or maybe you never had to experience true pain and humiliation like I did. The feeling of lying there, powerless, unable to move. Well, let’s see how you come back from this.”
He rips the buttons off my shirt and cuts off my bra.
I wriggle underneath him, trying to break free. He presses the blade of the knife against my throat, and this time, it cuts into my flesh.
“You don’t want to do this, Blake. I’m your sister. Your twin sister, dammit. We shared a womb.”
“Shut up! Shut the hell up!” He presses his fist against his forehead, then he shakes his head.
I scan the floor for my gun while Blake unfastens his belt and cuts off my mine.
“Stop, Ethan! I know you don’t want to do this.”
He leans close to my face. “You know nothing about me. Or what I want. Or what I do.”
As I look into his dark eyes, I realize that my brother died long ago. This man is a shell of a child he might have been once upon a time, reduced to an empty soul. He will rape and kill me. I’ve come to terms with it. I flex my body and roll my fingers in a ball. My stomach churns and twists, gathering my anger and fear into a source of willpower. I close my eyes and jerk my torso up, slamming my forehead into his nose. I hear a crack, followed by a painful bellowing. Blake touches his face. Blood is already flowing between his fingers and down his face.
“You bitch!” he screams and raises the knife in his hand. The fire burning outside reflects off the shiny blade. This is the end. My fingers fumble for the gun, brush against the warm metal. I can touch it, but it’s too far for me to get a firm hold.
I feel his warm blood dripping onto my face. I scratch his skin to get his DNA underneath my nails. I know I’m going to die at the hands of my own brother; I need to leave evidence for the police.
Two bursts of thunder rip through the room. The loud bangs are deafening and my ears start to ring. Blake’s eyes are lifeless as he falls on top of me, his weight crushing me. I tuck in my arms, trying to roll him off me.
“Vicky!”
What …?
“Are you okay?” I hear Anaya’s voice again, then see her ebony hand pulling off my brother.
Brestler appears next to us with his gun drawn. He kicks the limp body over and onto its back. “Are you hurt?”
“N-no, I don’t think s-so,” I say in a mere whisper, touching my neck. My fingers return with blood on them. “Just a cut.”
Brestler puts his hand on my head. “Good. Very good.” Then he looks at Anaya. “Call it in.”
Anaya’s puppy eyes linger a second longer on me, then she lifts her phone to her ear and makes the call.
*****
Everything has happened so fast, and my mind is still catching up with reality. I feel cold and disoriented like I’m in a dream.
I put two fingers on Blake’s neck. No pulse. He’s gone. I don’t know how to feel about his death. I knew him as a friend, my boyfriend’s business partner and his lover. But he is, or was, my brother—my twin brother. We were both robbed of the truth, but he was the one who ultimately paid the price for it.
Anaya crouches down beside me. “I told you not to come here alone. You could have gotten yourself killed.”
I lick my lips, battling against emotions. “It’s not fair, you know. Adults can abuse children then leave them broken and beyond repair, and get away with it. Blake’s childhood wasn’t his fault—he’s a victim, too.”
“I know you’re confused and in shock right now, Vicky, but he had a choice, and he chose wrong. He killed people.”
I smooth my hair back and push myself to my feet. “I know he did. But now I see that the devil doesn’t walk among us, whispering in our ears. People are evil, Anaya, people. We create ou
r own monsters.”
The next hour passes in a blur. Flashing blue and red lights bounce off the walls of the house, competing for canvas space with the raging wildfire. The firefighters give us an hour to search the house for evidence before a mandatory evacuation.
Over a dozen sheriff deputies show up to tear apart Blake’s house inch by inch. The cadaver dogs find two skeletons in a shallow grave in the backyard by a eucalyptus tree. A male and a female, presumably in their early twenties. I assume they are Jenna Davis and her husband, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy report comes back. Based on the conditions of the decomposed bodies, it may take days or weeks.
In the attic, we find a shrine dedicated to the victims of the Piggyback Serial Killer, my twin brother, Blake Sullivan, also known as Ethan Davis. I never knew Ethan’s last name. If I did, I might have solved the mystery faster. But you never know. Everybody is smarter in hindsight.
Seeing all this evidence against him, I now understand why Blake returned to this house on the night of the fire.
As Brestler and Anaya pack up the photos Blake took of his victims and the trophy items he collected from everyone he killed and displayed in a glass vitrine, I count and log forty-seven victims. Mostly women and four men under age thirty. Many names I recognize from our special investigation. We were onto him. If only we had a little more time …
Blake must have been confused about his sexuality, which made him angry and violent. The sexual abuse he was a victim to at an early age is to blame.
As I ponder how unfair life is, a rage burns stronger deep inside me. I want justice for my brother, but I will never get it. I feel for his victims. I do. But it’s like a domino effect. One selfish and narcissist woman’s actions led to this tragedy. Then one domino after the other fell. If only his aunt had been a decent person …
The wind has changed direction, and despite the tremendous effort by the firefighters, the fire jumped the boundaries of the community. I watch Blake’s house be engulfed in flames from the backseat of Brestler’s car with a heavy heart.
The chief’s call comes in on my cellphone. He congratulates me on solving one of the most prominent murder cases this country has ever seen. He says he sees a bright future for me in the Bureau. I don’t feel glorious. How could I after getting my brother killed to solve the case?
I hold my phone in my hand until we reach San Diego, staring at my mother’s phone number on the screen. Then with a sudden change of heart, I call Doug instead.
“Hey, there,” he answers timidly. “I’m glad you called. I really need to talk to you. To apologize.”
“Yeah, let’s talk.”
“I’m home. I left the convention early. I couldn’t stay any longer. I can’t seem to pack up my stuff either. I don’t want to leave you, Vicky.”
I swallow my tears. “I don’t think I want you to leave either.”
“Do you think there’s any way we can work through this? I’m not attracted to men. Really. It was a mistake. I love you. What I did … what we did … That was stupid.”
“Let’s not discuss this over the phone. I’m not alone.”
“Oh, yeah, okay. Are you going to be home anytime soon?”
“We have a ton of paperwork to fill out at the office, but then I’m heading home.”
“Good. I mean, great. I bought a couple of steaks. Do you want to text me when you’re ten minutes out, and I’ll throw them on the grill?”
“You may want to grab a bottle of something strong too. Tequila? I won’t be coming home with good news.”
“Look, Vicky, at least let me explain. Please, give me another chance to prove to you how important you are to me.”
“It’s not about us, Doug. I’ll tell you everything when I get home,” I promise. I hang up the phone, knowing I will give Doug a second chance.
Everybody deserves a second chance. Don’t they?
THE END
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Titles by A. B. Whelan
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