CAUSE TO DREAD

by Blake Pierce

  “Because I was trying to protect someone I care a great deal about.”

  “You mean to tell me you knew Lawnbrook outside of the museum?”

  “No,” Johansson said. Avery could see that there were tears welling up in his eyes, a clear indication that some kind of revelation was on the way. “But I did know someone that got to know him well. A former museum employee by the same of Stefon Scott. He was released last month. I knew Stefon well because I mentored him as he was coming up in the museum.”

  “And what was his affiliation with Alfred Lawnbrook?” Avery asked.

  “It depends on who you ask,” Johansson said. “Some would say they had something of a blossoming friendship. But I knew the truth…and I learned it by accident. The truth of the matter was that Alfred and Stefon met in the butterfly garden about a year ago and really hit it off. It developed into a romantic relationship that they tried to hide. They did a good job, except I walked in on Stefon speaking on the phone to Alfred one day. I heard enough to know what was going on so Stefon confided in me. Told me how happy he was but how weird it was, too. He had no idea he was gay until Alfred showed up in his life, apparently. But he also asked me to keep it a secret. And because he had come to be like a secondary son to me here at the museum, I decided to keep that promise when you were here earlier. I do apologize for any inconvenience.”

  Putting aside her irritation of having been lied to, Avery continued forward. “You said Mr. Scott was released from the hospital last month. Why was he fired?”

  At this point, Johansson was finding it hard to look at her. She could see the mess of conflict on his face—the battle between knowing he needed to tell what he knew battling with a promise made to a friend. Finally, still not looking at Avery or Kellaway, he answered. His voice was thick as he tried to hold back a bout of weeping.

  “I knew Stefon very well,” he said. “I can tell you on my heart, on my life, that he did not have it in him to do the sort of things that were done to Alfred Lawnbrook.”

  “What did he do?” Kellaway asked. “Why was he let go?”

  “He was obsessed with spiders…so much so that he started taking some home with him. When the museum found out, they fined and fired him. We still don’t think he returned all of them.”

  Avery got to her feet and slammed her hand down on the desk. “You knew someone obsessed with spiders was involved with Alfred Lawnbrook…and you thought that information did not need to be shared when I was here two hours ago?”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Officer Kellaway, please cuff this bastard and read him his rights.”

  “But I—” Johansson started.

  “Very talkative now, I see,” Avery said, turning away from him while Kellaway dutifully did as she was asked.

  Avery pulled out her phone and called up Connelly. She figured if she could get an address for Stefon Scott, this entire case could potentially be wrapped up within the hour. The pleading cries of Johansson from behind her as Kellaway applied the handcuffs seemed to only cement this notion.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Avery parked in front of Stefon Scott’s one-story house forty minutes later. He lived in one of the many small brick row houses in the Bay Village area. When she had called the A1 to get an address and any information on him, she also learned that he was currently unemployed, still not having found another job in the month he’d been gone from the museum.

  The timing is almost too perfect, she thought as she and Kellaway climbed the slight staircase to his front door. He was released a month ago for stealing spiders…and Lawnbrook is killed via spiders a little more than a week ago. It’s a cookie cutter timeline that seems almost too perfect.

  The door was answered not by Stefon Scott, but by a woman dressed in a black band T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Her hair was dyed a nearly neon red color and she wore a bull ring in her nose and a lip ring in her bottom lip. A tattoo of a large spider adorned her right forearm.

  “We’re looking for Stefon Scott,” Avery said.

  The woman—barely a woman at all from the looks of it, maybe twenty-one at most—rolled her eyes. “Who’s asking?”

  “Detective Avery Black and Officer Courtney Kellaway. Is he home?”

  The girl nodded and took a slow step back. “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “For your sake,” Avery said, “I hope it’s none of your business. Now, where is he?”

  “Still asleep,” the girl said.

  “It’s three in the afternoon,” Kellaway pointed out.

  “We were out really late,” the girl said. “And Stefon has been depressed as hell ever since he lost his job. He sleeps a lot.”

  “I need you to wake him up,” Avery said sternly.

  “Yeah, okay. Go on and have a seat in the living room,” the girl said as she closed the door behind them.

  As the girl walked down the small hallway to a bedroom in the back of the house, Avery and Kellaway moved to the living room. It sat right off of the tiny foyer, not quite in a shambles but in need of straightening up. There were books scattered everywhere, as well as printed sheets of paper all over the small coffee table. Avery checked a few of the sheets. Some were for guitar tablature; a few looked to be the beginnings of articles about spiders that Stefon had been trying to write.

  “Detective Black,” Kellaway said.

  Avery looked to the other side of the room where Kellaway was observing something sitting by the side of the couch. As she joined Kellaway, she saw that it was a large glass case, most of which was covered by a black sheet. Kellaway slowly lifted the portion of the sheet that was covering the side facing them.

  Three spiders sat inside the case. Avery was by no means a spider expert but she thought they were tarantulas—and if not tarantulas, then some variety that very closely resembled them. Two of the spiders were motionless while the third was scurrying away from the sudden movement of the sheet.

  Behind them, Stefon Scott slowly walked into the room, clearly still half-asleep. “Those are tarantula wolf spiders,” he said. “Also known as the lycosa tarantula.”

  “And why do you have them?” Avery asked.

  He gave a shrug that, for reasons Avery couldn’t quite figure out, pissed her off. “I’ve just always liked spiders. I have a few more in my bedroom. I’ve had at least two as pets since I was twelve years old.”

  He sat down on the couch and looked up at both of them. Avery could tell he was aware that things were probably going to get tense. He was trying his best to convince them that he wasn’t bothered by their visit.

  “We heard all about your interest in spiders from Donald Johansson,” Avery said.

  Stefon nodded slowly, looking to the glass case. “If you’re here with me right now,” he said, “I suppose that’s not all you heard about me.”

  “That’s right,” Avery said. “He told us about your relationship with Alfred Lawnbrook. Can I assume you’ve heard what happened to him?”

  “Yes,” he said, nearly spitting the word out. “So I guess you’re here to find out why he and I were together, right? I wasn’t…I’m not…shit. I don’t even know. I mean, we weren’t ever really seeing one another, you know. It was just…physical.”

  “So then who was the girl that answered the door?” Kellaway asked.

  “Just some girl I’ve been seeing the last few weeks. Met her online…a forum for arachnid lovers.”

  “Is that how you met Alfred?” Avery asked. She knew this was not how they met based on what Johansson had revealed but she wanted to see how Stefon would respond.

  “No. I met him at the butterfly garden at the museum when I was still working there. We hung out once and I found out then and there that he was terrified of spiders. Like terrified. I found that interesting. So we chatted and one thing led to another and within a week or so, he was coming over and spending the night.”

  “You said you weren’t seeing one another when he died,” Avery said. “What happen
ed between you?”

  “It was a love-hate thing. He hated my spiders, thought I was weird. It freaked him out but I think something about his fear sort of attracted him to me. I think maybe he wanted to get over it or explore it. Or…and not to speak ill of the dead, but I was starting to wonder if his fear of spiders helped things along with he and I. I think knowing there were spiders on my bureau when we were in bed together turned him on. I don’t know.”

  “And you were fired from the museum for stealing spiders, correct?”

  “Yeah. Not my finest moment.”

  Avery was done beating around the bush. She’d already been jerked around by Johansson and she did not intend to let Stefon Scott do the same thing.

  “You seem very relaxed and calm,” Avery said. “Do you honestly not understand why we are here?”

  “To get information about what happened to Alfred, I guess. But like I said…I hadn’t seen him for a while before he died.”

  “You can’t be this naïve,” Avery said. “You have a fascination with spiders. You even stole them from the museum. You also had a sexual relationship with a recently deceased man who was tortured and killed with spiders…”

  “Hold on,” Stefon said. “Wait. You think I killed him?”

  “It’s where all the signs are pointing right now,” Avery said. “Look at the situation from where we’re standing. It’s almost paint-by-numbers simple. So I’m going to ask you to come to the precinct with us for some questioning.”

  “So because I stole something from work, you think that also puts me in cold-blooded murderer territory?”

  “I’m making no such claims at the moment. I just need you to come with us. You can come willingly or we can make it harder than it has to be.”

  “First of all,” Stefon said, getting to his feet, “I would have never purposefully hurt Alfred. He had some emotional problems, which I suppose is why he engaged in a gay relationship when he had never even really been in a straight one—even though he swears he’s straight. He just wanted companionship. He was a good guy. I would never have hurt him. Secondly…there’s no way you have any proof that I did it. And without hard proof…really, what can you do?”

  “Quite a bit actually,” Avery said.

  On cue, Kellaway stepped forward. “Hands behind your back,” she said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “That was the worst response you could have given,” Avery said. She joined Kellaway and together, they wrestled Stefon to the floor. He fought against them for a few seconds before giving in completely. By the time the cuffs were on him and they had him back to his feet, he was openly crying.

  “Clarissa!” Stefon screamed. “Clarissa…they’re taking me! Call someone to help! And feed the spiders!”

  Something about the last comment seemed hilarious to Avery but she kept her composure. She and Kellaway hauled Stefon out of the front door and down to the car. As Avery reached back to close the door, she saw the woman who had answered the door—Clarissa, presumably—hurrying toward the commotion. Something about closing the door on her, leaving her there with Stefon’s pet spiders, seemed wrong. It felt like shutting her in her own tomb and Avery could not get the images of Alfred Lawnbrook’s body out of her mind.

  The image was still there as they drove toward the precinct with Stefon Scott screaming and crying in the back seat.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As they came upon the precinct, Avery saw the flurry of activity in the parking lot and around the front of the building. New anger rose up in her stomach and she let out a curse under her breath.

  “What?” Kellaway asked. “What’s going on?”

  “The media,” Avery said. “They’re onto the case. And that’s just going to make it harder from here on out.”

  “Oh,” Kellaway said, staring closer at the craziness as Avery pulled the car closer.

  There were three news vans parked bumper to bumper in front of the building. Several people were standing along the sidewalk that led to the front doors, reporters and cameramen just waiting for their chance to score something big for the six o’clock news. Another news van came screeching into the parking lot from the opposite direction, pulling in alongside the others.

  Somehow, the media knows I’m on this case, Avery thought to herself. Not that she thought she was worthy of the attention. But she knew how the media worked. Victimized Detective Returns to Work on Creepy Spider Case. That or Howard Randall-obsessed Detective Back in Action on Creepy Case.

  Something like that. Hell, she didn’t even blame them. If they could spin it a certain way, it was front page news for sure.

  Avery sped around to the back of the building but it did no good. There was a news crew there, too. And by the time she had parked and started to get out of the car with Stefon Scott, several of the people who had been angling for position out front had managed to race around the building. As she walked quickly to the building with Kellaway racing to keep up and pushing Stefon along, cameras started flashing and about eight people started talking at once. Avery put her head down and carried on, refusing to give in to the pandemonium.

  “Detective Black, why have you come back for this case?”

  “Have you come back to respect the memory of Detective Ramirez?”

  “Why is this man in custody, Detective? Is he a suspect in this case?”

  “Do you feel that Howard Randall is dead even though his body was not discovered?”

  “Are there any leads on the spider case?”

  Mercifully, she reached the doors. She hauled Stefon Scott through them but Kellaway was nowhere to be seen. She looked over the shoulders of the assembled crowd and saw her wrapped up in their midst. She looked scared and out of her element. It did not piss Avery off, though; rather, she felt for Kellaway. The media could be vultures and they could smell fresh blood when it was around.

  She pushed Stefon toward the first officer she saw in the hallway and then stormed back through the doors, back outside. She had to shoulder her way past a cameraman and nearly knock down a svelte reporter before she reached Kellaway. Thankfully, she was not offering up any information but all the same, the reporters had managed to snare her with confusion.

  “How did you manage to partner with Detective Black?”

  “How long have you been on the force?”

  “Is the man in handcuffs the killer?”

  “Can I get your name, please?”

  Avery grabbed Kellaway’s arm and hauled her through the crowd. Some of them seemed outraged, especially when she had to nearly body-check the same tiny reporter she had collided with on the way out. She got Kellaway inside without any further trouble and let out a tremendous sigh of relief when the doors closed behind them.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kellaway said. “I had no idea it could be like that and…what the hell?”

  “It’s okay,” Avery said. “You handled yourself well. They can be monsters if you let them. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Just shake it off and refocus.”

  “Hey, Detective Black?”

  Avery looked back to the officer that she had practically thrown Stefon Scott toward. He looked confused, securing a man who had just now started to get a hold of himself and stop crying.

  “Sorry,” Avery said. “Can you please get him to interrogation?”

  The officer nodded and started down the hallway. Avery followed behind him, headed for Connelly’s office. Kellaway went with her and they both found the office empty.

  “Get on the phone and get Connelly and O’Malley,” Avery said. “Let them know who we have and what he’s done. Tell them I intend to start interrogation in fifteen minutes if they want to be here for it.”

  Kellaway did as she was asked but as she pulled up the first number, it was clear that she thought it was all a bit unorthodox. Avery supposed it was; she should certainly wait until everyone was present and accounted for before she started grilling Stefon. But she had come onto this case late and felt like she was makin
g up for lost time.

  She looked back toward the end of the hall where, through the glass doors, she could still see the media swarming like a nest of hornets. This case was just too good—too sweet for them not to be salivating over. Avery understood it and it made her start to wonder if the absurdity and graphic nature of the case was, in some way, behind the killer’s motive.

  With that thought in her head, she started down toward interrogation. She thought of the spiders in the glass case in Stefon’s house and the way he had reacted to the mere insinuation that he had killed Lawnbrook. She let it all settle in her head as she gave O’Malley and Connelly time to join her.

  Whether it was the thrill of the hunt or just the comfort of something familiar, Avery wasn’t sure—but she found herself bouncing back and forth on the heels of her feet to get started. She wondered if she, too, was sort of like an angry hornet, swarming around its nest with its stinger primed and ready to bite.

  ***

  Stefon was no longer crying when Avery joined him in the interrogation room. In the end, she’d made him wait for nearly an hour. It wasn’t just to give O’Malley and Connelly a chance to arrive but to let Stefon stew in the events of the afternoon. She watched him through a monitor in the neighboring room, watching his expression go from thoughtful to sad, from pensive to worried.

  Now, sitting across the table from him, Avery gave him a moment to get used to her being in the room. She’d easily bested him in conversation and physical ability at his house so he needed to be reminded of that by her silence. She knew that O’Malley, Connelly, and Kellaway were watching from the same spot she had been sitting less than five minutes ago. She thought of Kellaway and how she could best direct the interrogation so that the young officer might learn a thing or two.

  “Do you have an account of everywhere you have been this week or week and a half?” Avery asked. Her tone was gentle and conversational, clearly not what Stefon had been expecting.

  “I didn’t do much of anything,” he said. “I spent most of it at the house with Clarissa.”