What Happened to Lori

by J. A. Konrath

  Grim stepped away, concerned he’d start punching Fabler and wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

 
 
 

  “Fabler…”

  Fabler’s shoulders began to quiver. Tears, then snot, dribbled down his face.

  “You did it. You really did it.”

  “I couldn’t stop it. I tried, Grim, but I wasn’t strong enough.”

  Grim felt Presley’s hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. “You’re admitting you killed her.”

  Fabler shook, even harder than when he’d been tased. “It’s my fault. It really is my fault.”

  Rage replaced shock, and every muscle in Grim’s body tensed up.

  “Where’s her body, you son of a bitch? I covered every inch of this property with a thermal probe. Where’d you put her?”

  “I was weak, Grim. I was too weak.”

  “TELL ME WHERE MY SISTER IS!”

  Fabler moaned.

  Grim zapped him.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again—

  —until Presley tore the shock weapon away and shoved Grim back.

  “Enough!”

  Grim reached for the taser, and Presley slapped him hard enough to be heard in the next county.

  Surprised, Grim stared at her.

  Presley stuck a finger in his face. “You. Me. The hallway. Now.”

  KADIR ○ 8:14am

  He stood at the window, peeking through a slit in the blinds, able to see and hear everything happening in the kitchen.

 

  Kadir enjoyed the scene playing out before him more than he liked his Usher House 2.0 app.

  There was pain and suffering.

  Some warped plot about cops and frames and murder and revenge.

  Presley, getting sexier and sexier the more disgusted she looked.

  And, perhaps best of all, mention of six hundred grand in gold.

 

  While there’s no equivalent to being made, like in the Italian Mafia, if Kadir paid off the right people, he could become a crime boss and get assigned his own area.

 

  Exciting stuff.

  “What do we do?”

  That idiot, Doruk, whispered loud enough for the deaf to hear him.

  “Shh. We keep waiting, see what happens.”

  “You think the money is real?”

  Rather than get quieter, Doruk spoke in a lower baritone.

  “We’ll see. Now shut up.”

  “If it’s real, I’m buying one of those mail order brides. One that can’t speak English and has to suck my dick all the time.”

  Kadir made a face and pressed his index finger to his lips.

  Doruk’s fat face drooped, like a child who’d been scolded.

  Kadir turned his full attention back to the window, trying to hear Presley and the ex-cop’s conversation.

  PRESLEY ○ 8:15am

  Nothing felt right. Nothing at all.

 
 
 

  As she led Grim into the hallway, Presley’s righteous indignation began to erode.

 
 

  Presley knew that’s how evil won. People weren’t born bad. They only slipped into it, inch by inch.

  Grim needed to be reeled in.

  “You made this personal.”

  Frustration creased Grim’s face. “Were you listening to him? He confessed.”

  “We’re here for the money, Grim. Not to get a confession.”

  “I can make him talk.”

  “You’re going to kill him.”

  “He killed my sister.”

  “This isn’t about your sister.”

  He stood taller, puffing up his chest and looming over Presley. “Of course it’s about my sister. The past three years of my life, it’s all been about my sister. You can’t tell me it’s okay for us to use a taser on a man to steal from him—which is two crimes—but it isn’t okay to actually solve a crime that has literally destroyed my life? Why, Presley? Because your needs are more important than mine?”

  “That money will save my daughter’s life, Grim. And my life. Your sister…”

  Presley knew she’d gone the wrong route when the fire died in Grim’s eyes.

  He shrank away from her. “I get it. Brooklyn is alive. You have to pay back the Turks. But Lori doesn’t matter, because she’s dead.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

 
 
 
 

  She placed a hand on his forearm.

  “Look, I understand how important Lori is to you. And I know it’s been horrible, not knowing. You want to know so badly that you didn’t even shoot Fabler when he plugged me in the chest.”

  Grim’s face switched from sullen to guilty.

 

  “Fabler is a broken man. Let me talk to him. I bet I can get him to tell us where the gold is. And maybe I can also get him to talk about Lori.”

  The guilt in his eyes flickered to hope.

  “You think you can?”

  “Let me try. Tasing him until his heart stops won’t get us anywhere.”

  Grim continued to sag until he almost came down to Presley’s height. “Okay. So what’s the play?”

  “I’ll go in there. Alone. See what he’ll tell me.”

  “Alone?”

  “You can stand behind him and watch. I don’t want you to interfere. I don’t want him to see you. Give me a chance to see what I can do.”

  Grim leaned forward, apparently wanting a hug.

 

  She reached out, held him for a moment.

 
 

  When Grim pulled away, he had some edge back. “I’ll give you ten minutes. Then we’re going back to my way.”

  Presley didn’t protest. She slipped past him, heading back to the kitchen.

  Fabler was trying to take his underwear off again, not as successful this time, only getting it partway down his ass. His eyes had a glaze to them, and drool ran down his chin. Ugly, red burn marks surrounded the probes still stuck in his side.

  She pulled up a chair and sat in front of him. “Fabler. Look at me.”

  Fabler gradually focused on her face.

  “Grim is ready to kill you. I think he’s gone too far. I’m going to let you go. But I need to know where the gold is.”

  Fabler’s reply was faint. “Name.”

  “Name?”

  “Daughter’s… name.”

 
 

  “It’s Brooklyn.” Presley cleared her throat. “She’s seven. She has a heart defect. Tetralogy of Fallot. It was killing her, so I bought a black market heart in Mexico. But her body is rejecting the heart.”

  “Lori and I. We wanted kids.”

  Presley waited, not sure where this was going.

  “We tried. For years. Tried and tried and tried.”

  Presley didn’t see how that rang true, considering the jumbo box of condoms she found in Fabler’s dresser. But sh
e went with it.

  “Kids make everything better. I didn’t really understand love until I had Brooklyn.”

  Fabler closed his eyes. “Lori couldn’t get pregnant. PCOS. Cysts. In her ovaries. She had really bad periods. Sometimes they’d last for weeks.”

  “I’m sorry.”

 

  She put her hand on Fabler’s knee and patted it. He opened his eyes and stared at her.

  “You weren’t supposed to have kids. No family. My ad was clear.”

  “I lied. I’m sorry about that. I needed the money.”

  “Grim. He hired you first. That’s how you found me.”

  She nodded.

  Fabler clenched his jaw, so tight the cords in his neck stood out. “Stupid. I should have guessed, when I found out you came from Texas. I figured all he’d do is watch me on his cameras and drink himself comatose. Or try to confront me himself. I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to endanger someone else.”

  “Endanger? How am I endangered, Fabler?”

  Fabler closed his eyes again. Presley gave his knee a shake.

  “All of this training I’ve been doing. What has it been for?”

  When he spoke, it was a mumble.

  “Can you say that again? I didn’t hear it.”

  “Fishing.”

  “Fishing? What does that mean?”

  “If you want to catch fish. You need bait.”

  Presley assumed as much. But hearing him say it gave her a chill.

  “I’m bait? For what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Is that why you wanted me to have red hair? And blue eyes?”

  He looked at her again. “You aren’t wearing the contacts. Are there any rules I set that you actually followed?”

  “Do you want me to put the contacts in now?”

  “No! Don’t ever wear them again. Maybe it’ll save you.”

 

  “You wanted me to look like Lori.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s why you had me imitate her. Follow her routine. Were you trying to convince yourself, I was Lori?”

  “You’re way off.”

  “You said I was bait. Bait for what, Fabler?”

  “You need to get out of here, Presley. It isn’t safe.”

  “I can’t go anywhere until I have the money. I have to get my daughter—I have to get Brooklyn a new heart. Where is your money, Fabler?”

  “Let me up. I’ll get it. You can take it and get far away from here. I’ll have to start over. With a new redhead. But you’ll be safe.”

  “Grim isn’t going to allow that. You need to tell me where it is.”

  “If I do, Grim’ll kill me.”

  “He won’t kill you, Fabler. I won’t let him.”

  “I can’t be tied up. If they come back…”

  “Who’s they, Fabler?”

  He didn’t answer. He had that thousand yard stare Presley had seen too many times on the battlefield.

 

  “Talk to me, Fabler.”

  “Sometimes I want to die, Presley.”

 

  He kept babbling. “But I need to stay strong. I’m weak. I was weak. That’s how I lost her. But I can start over. I can try again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Aren’t you listening? I’m talking about Lori. About getting her back.”

  “What do you mean, getting her back? Where is Lori, Fabler? What happened to Lori?”

  And then Grim was rushing into the kitchen, wrapping his hands around Fabler’s neck and shaking him.

  “Where is she, you son of a bitch?”

 
 
 

  Blinded by pain for so long, living with such myopic, singular purpose, Grim strangled Fabler while Presley watched, and she imagined what Brooklyn would think if her daughter saw what was happening.

  And for the first time in a long time, Presley found clarity. True clarity.

 

  GRIM ○ 8:18am

  He’d been holding on by a thread. And the thread finally snapped.

  Fabler’s neck in his hands felt like a tree trunk, rough and hard, but Grim’s rage had reached a point where he felt able to snap a tree trunk in half.

  “Grim. Stop it.”

  Presley spoke in a calm, almost reassuring, tone. Entirely inappropriate for the current situation, where pain and grief had reduced Grim to a mindless creature of action.

 
 
 
 
 

  Grim released Fabler’s neck. He turned to Presley, expecting to see disappointment. Or condemnation.

  Instead, he saw sympathy.

  “How does this end, Grim?”

  Grim glanced back to Fabler. His hand prints, red and angry, bloomed on his old buddy’s throat.

  “We’ve already taken this too far.”

  Grim’s eyes welled up. “I know.”

  “I want to save my daughter, Grim. More than anything. And I’ve done things I’m not proud of, in order to do that. But I have to be able to look my daughter in the eyes.”

  He understood. “Some things… even the most important things… aren’t worth the cost.”

  He cried. She cried. Their hands found each other’s, and it helped a little bit.

 

  “So… what do you want to do, Presley?”

  “I want to go home to Brooklyn, and hold her in my arms, and try to forgive myself.”

  “And… what if… she doesn’t make it?”

  “You know, if we steal his money, it won’t stop there. We’ll wind up killing him.”

  “He’s a murderer, Presley.”

  “It doesn’t matter what he is. It matters what we are.”

 
 

  Grim gave her hands a small squeeze, and released them. Then pulled the taser barbs out of Fabler’s side.

  Fabler coughed, cleared his throat, then spat on the kitchen floor. “You’ll never understand. Never never never never never. You’ll never find it. Never never never never.”

  Then Fabler sobbed.

 

  Presley took Grim’s hand. “Let’s walk away.”

 
 
 

  He put his hand on Presley’s cheek, wiped away a tear with his thumb. “You’re going to Texas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want some company?”

  Grim’s own question surprised him. Not because it was a bold, lay-it-all-on-the-line kind of question. But because the question conveyed hope.

 

  “Some company would be nice.”

 

  They hugged, and then walked out of the kitchen.

  “When we get to the airport, we’ll call the cops.” Grim squeezed her hand tighter. “Let them deal with his crazy ass.”

  “You’ll never find it.” Fabler’s voice cracked. “You’ll never find the secret room.”

  Grim stopped.

 
 
 
  enter so we’d have privacy. Five closets.

 
 
 
  “Grim?” Presley tugged on his hand.

  Grim didn’t budge.