Why couldn’t you just stay dead?
Dunbar cleared his throat.
“But I’ll tell you one thing, Drake. I can’t—I can’t protect you, now that he’s awake. That whole sting operation that you—”
“I don’t need your protection,” Drake shot back.
Didn’t Hanna say that? Didn’t she utter those exact words?
While their histories couldn’t have been more different, their presents, and futures, appeared to be merging onto the same path.
And Drake feared that there was nothing he could do to stop his friend from descending into Hell alongside him.
As they neared Tobin’s room, the two police officers stationed outside stood and nodded at Dunbar. They didn’t even acknowledge Drake, which was all the same to him.
“Lewis and Trevor, go take a break,” Dunbar suggested.
“But I was told—” the younger officer began.
“You were told to take a break.”
“But—”
“Come on, let’s go,” the older cop interjected. He grabbed his partner’s arm and together they left their post.
“Full-time surveillance?” Drake remarked. “Bit much for a man in a coma.”
Dunbar shrugged.
“You saw what he did to that poor exchange student.”
Drake’s upper lip curled into a sneer, and he reached for the door. Dunbar was right behind him, and Drake hesitated.
“Give me ten minutes,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the detective.
“Drake…”
“Ten minutes. I won’t touch him. I promise.”
Dunbar grimaced. Drake knew that he was putting the detective in a bad spot, but it was best if the man stayed out of earshot. If Dunbar overheard Tobin’s account of what had happened, there might be a time when the detective would be called to testify.
“Please.”
Dunbar took two steps back.
“Ten minutes,” he reluctantly agreed. “Just don’t do anything… aw, fuck… just don’t hurt him, okay?”
Drake nodded and then stepped inside the room of the man he’d tried to murder.
Chapter 67
The moment the door closed behind Drake, Hanna snapped out of her stupor. She still couldn’t believe that the picture in her hand was the man who had killed her friend all those years ago.
The same man who would’ve killed her if she hadn’t gotten away.
But it was just a picture.
A picture, like the one she’d found in the cold case room.
Hanna clenched her jaw.
“I’m going with you.” Her mouth was so tight that the words came out as little more than a whisper. “I’m going with you,” Hanna repeated, louder this time.
Yasiv turned to face her.
“Fine by me.”
“Wait, w-w-wait,” Screech interjected. “Maybe you should stay here with me—” the man stopped speaking when Hanna glared at him. “Okay, fine. Whatever. Go with them, then.”
“I can stay with you,” Leroy suggested. “Help you dig deeper into Lisa Fairchild’s past.”
“There, that settles it. Let’s go,” Hanna said, gesturing toward Yasiv.
“Can we at least see the picture of the guy we’re chasing?” Leroy asked.
Hanna flipped the sketch over and flashed it to both Screech and Leroy.
“There’s a copy in every single beat cop’s car in the city. If this guy gets so much as a speeding ticket, he’s going to be brought in.”
If only it were that easy, Hanna thought.
“I’ll get you a copy,” the sergeant said. “And I’ll keep you guys updated. Who knows, maybe this guy works at the campsite.”
Once outside, Hanna instinctively started toward her car, but then changed her mind. She wanted to drive but thought that in her current state, she was apt to mow someone down.
And then she would never find him.
“I’ll ride along with you,” Hanna said, following Yasiv to his civilian vehicle.
The man remained silent until they were on the road.
“You really think this is our guy?” Yasiv asked, casting a glance at the sketch that Hanna still held in her hands, the one that she couldn’t bring herself to put away.
“It’s him,” she replied instantly. “There’s no question in my mind that it’s him.”
“Really? What if Robert is lying? What if he just made this guy up?” Yasiv hesitated. “What the fuck does it all mean, anyway? If this guy is real, why did he want Robert to sleep with Lisa? What’s with the skinsuits? What does any of it mean?”
It was clear that the sergeant was just thinking out loud at this point, but Hanna couldn’t help herself.
Tell me you love me.
“Why do any of these sick bastards do what they do? Why did Tobin Tomlin chop his roommate up? To get famous? Really? Why did Marcus Slasinsky kill all those people? What about Craig Sloan? Boris Brackovich? That cunt, Ryanne Elliot? To sell books? Gimme a break. No one reads anymore.”
Sergeant Yasiv chewed the inside of his lip and spent the next ten minutes mulling over her words.
“You think they’re born this way?” he said at last. “The people you mentioned, as well as thousands of others. I’m not talking about the guy who gets wasted and punches someone at the bar too hard, puts them in the hospital, maybe the morgue. And I don’t mean the gang banger who mows down his competition. I’m talking about the ones who premeditate, who seem to get a thrill out of taking another person’s life. The psychos who do things that make others, normal people, vomit just thinking about. The absolute crazies. Are they just born this way? Do they even have a choice? A chance at a normal life?”
Hanna’s thoughts turned to Beckett and the doctor’s extracurricular activities.
“Some are bullied, some get their peckers fondled, some just can’t get laid and are pissed off at the shitty world we live in. Others have the perfect life, so much money that they’ve already seen and done everything. Nothing turns their crank except the visceral thrill of violence. Others happen upon it by accident, I suppose. Nature, nurture? Who knows? Both, I guess. Fucking lazy answer, sure, but the real question is, does it matter?” Hanna thought back to her psychology days, to her experience at the psychiatric institution. “Someone once told me that you can’t apply rational thought to irrational people or acts. Normal people don’t do these things, so a normal person couldn’t possibly understand their motivation. The only thing I know for sure is once you cross that line, you don’t go back. You never go back.” Hanna paused as her eyes focused on the image of the Straw Man in her hands. “You wanna know the truth? What I think? You do those things—you chop up a body and put it in a box, send it to people, you stuff fucking caterpillars in your victims’ mouths—you stop being human. You change into something else. Something nobody can understand.”
“Hmm,” Yasiv grunted. Hanna couldn’t tell if this was a grunt of agreement or of incredulity. Either way, it was a clear indication that the conversation had ended.
And Hanna was fine with that—there was no philosophical ground to gain with discussing any of this.
Her eyes remained locked on the sketch for the entire drive to the campsite but at some point, her free hand slipped into her pocket and found the suture.
You’re not fucking human.
Drake had been right to be worried about her. But his concerns about a trial were unfounded.
There would be no trial, Hanna would make sure of that.
Yasiv pulled off the main road, following the signs to the campsite. He flashed his badge to a security guard at the front gate and the man called ahead, announcing their arrival. He parked in front of a white clapboard building that had the words “Head Office” hand-painted on a sign above the door. Hanna was already halfway up the gravel walk before realizing that Yasiv was no longer with her. She turned and saw the sergeant standing half in and half out of his car.
“You going to be okay?” the
man asked.
Hanna hated when people asked her that.
Are you going to be okay, sweetie? Is the little girl going to be able to control her emotions? Can you keep it together? Or do you need a big man to protect you?
“The only thing I’m not okay with is how much time we’re wasting.”
Hanna didn’t wait for an answer or the man to follow. After all, this was her case, her investigation.
And she was going to be the one who found the Straw Man. What happened after that was still up in the air.
***
“They’re… they’re wiped. I mean, the tapes are blank. I-I—detective, I don’t know—”
“Sergeant,” Yasiv corrected.
“Yes, uhh, Sergeant, I-I don’t know what happened. We have the tapes, but they didn’t record for some reason.”
Hanna sighed. They should have seen this coming.
“But you have a record of the three girls?” Hanna asked. “Marjorie Wilson, Melissa Tanner, and Janice Brookfield were all here, correct?”
The man behind the desk, who still had acne on his cheeks and couldn’t grow a beard if his life depended on it, pulled his head back from his computer and grabbed a paper folder from the desk.
Video tapes and paper records… I know this is a camp and funding must be tight, but still… what decade are we in?
The camp manager opened the logbook and then used his shaky finger to trace three names.
“Yeah—yep, all three. Right here. Arrived two weeks ago.” His voice cracked. “Usually, we record everyone who enters this office on video. But like I said, the camera must have been broken or forgot to be turned on. I-I dunno. I’m sorry. If you want, you can try it yourself. The recording system is old, but I can show you—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Yasiv said, making no effort to hide his displeasure.
“What about check out?” Hanna asked. “You said that everyone has to check in, do they have to check out when they leave?”
The manager shook his head.
“Naw, you can just take off.”
Hanna considered this for a moment. If the Straw Man grabbed the girls from here, which was the most likely scenario, what happened to their gear? Their car?
“What about their campsite?”
“One sec.”
The manager went back to his computer and began typing away.
“A-33. Booked it for a full week.”
“Which means that their campsite reservation is already up.”
“Oh, yeah—actually A-33 has already been booked twice since.”
“So what happened to their stuff?” Hanna asked.
“I don’t do park maintenance.”
She sighed. This was starting to get frustrating.
“Okay, fine, but what happens if someone leaves their stuff here past their reservation date.”
“Lost and found.”
Hanna looked at Yasiv and raised an eyebrow. Maybe there would be some sort of evidence in the girls’ tents or amongst their clothes.
The manager’s next words dashed these hopes.
“Gotta warn you, though, we don’t catalogue which stuff comes from which campsite. And the room? The lost and found room?” he whistled. “We call it The Hoarder’s Den. Ten years of gear. Ha, I could probably sell it and I’d make more than my annual salary.”
“Fuck,” Hanna cursed.
“I’ll send an officer up here to take a look, comb through the stuff, see if they can find the girls’ equipment,” Yasiv suggested.
Hanna nodded. She wasn’t confident they would find anything, but it was worth a shot.
“What about their car?” she asked.
“You need to put your reservation ticket on the dash. A-33 isn’t far, I bet they just parked in the lot out front.”
“I’ll have a unit come and check that out, too,” Yasiv confirmed.
This was turning out to be a waste of time, Hanna realized. But she hadn’t given up all hope just yet.
“Have you—have you ever see this man before?” she asked, turning the police sketch around so that the manager could see it.
He leaned over the counter, cocked his head to one side, squinted, then said, “No, I don’t think so. Sorry. I mean, we get so many visitors—” he paused, then leaned so far forward that more of his body was on the counter than off of it. “Can I see that again?”
Hanna reluctantly let him have the paper, noting that it was crumpled and damp on the side where she’d been clutching it.
“Hmm.” The man inspected the image as if it were abstract art. “You know what? I think I do remember this guy. And he-he—yeah, yeah—he-he was here, around the time that these girls were here. Was wearing a faded Yankees cap, that’s why I didn’t recognize him. Had these eyes though. Gray or something.”
Hanna’s heart started to pound her chest.
“Did he put his name in the book?”
“Of course, everyone puts their name in the book. It’s mandatory.”
“What about ID? Do they have to show ID?”
The man nodded again.
“Yeah, you gotta show ID.” He sounded excited and reached for the logbook, but Yasiv got to it first and started to scan the list of names.
“You wouldn’t happen to remember his name, would you?” Yasiv asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“No, sorry. Just so many people, you know?”
Hanna frowned, and turned her attention to the book, and read along with Yasiv. The problem was, they didn’t know what they were looking for. Still, she thought that something might jump out at them. Wishful thinking, but that’s all they had right now.
“Hey, this isn’t about that—”
“Shh,” Hanna hushed the manager.
After flipping through the first two pages—the day the girls had arrived was a particularly busy one—Yasiv looked as if he were about to give up.
“We can take this back to the station, get—”
“There,” Hanna gasped.
“What?”
She dropped a finger onto the page, indicating a familiar name.
“Look right… there.”
Chapter 68
The man lying in the hospital bed wasn’t Tobin Tomlin. It wasn’t Chad, it wasn’t Lucas Lionelle, it wasn’t any of these people.
The man in the bed was a sickly creature whose face was nearly unrecognizable. Apparently, murderers didn’t get New York City’s best plastics surgeons when it came to reconstructive surgery.
Even Dr. Alex Cratom, the corrupt veterinarian, could have done a better job, Drake surmised.
The patient’s forehead where his scalp had been reattached had been sutured too low and the skin sagged, giving Tobin an almost Neanderthal appearance. This was offset by the sunken area that housed his eyes—they appeared to be set back at least an inch compared to how Drake remembered them.
The doctors had had to shave Tobin’s head prior to surgery and while his hair had started to grow in now, it was patchy and completely bald in some places. Whatever excess skin bunched on Tobin’s brow had evidently been borrowed from the back of the man’s head and neck. The flesh there was so taut that Drake thought that if the man turned his head too quickly, it would snap like deep-fried pork skins.
Something must’ve happened to Tobin’s ears as well, as while they looked relatively normal from the outside, the man didn’t seem to hear Drake enter the room despite him making a considerable amount of noise.
Drake cleared his throat and continued toward the bed. As he did, Tobin finally turned to look at him.
The sight was even more horrific head on.
The outer corners of Tobin’s eyes were pulled downward revealing far too much empty space to be considered anything even close to normal. His jaw, previously strong and defined, now looked like raw pizza dough.
“Drake,” the man said. His voice matched his appearance: tight, deranged, and broken.
Drake couldn’t even look at him, his
features were simply too unnerving. He focused on the myriad of hospital equipment that surrounded the bed instead.
“What do you want?”
On the drive over, Drake could only come up with one possible reason why the man wanted to talk to him: to get on TV again, to have his face plastered all over the news. Although, seeing him now, Drake wasn’t sure if the media channels could post Tobin’s image, at least not without an NC-17 rating.
“I know who you’re looking for,” Tobin croaked.
Drake fixated on an IV bag.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not looking—”
“The man with the stuffed animals.”
Drake froze.
Stuffed animals?
“The taxidermist… the Straw Man. I know who you’re looking for.”
Drake held his breath for a moment.
How the hell could he know about that?
Then Drake remembered the cops stationed outside the door. They were probably the only two officers not at 62nd precinct and they likely weren’t happy about it. Drake could almost hear them griping about not having a chance to see Robert Tiedeman in the flesh.
“If you think this is some sort of game, if you think you can leverage me to get your face on TV again—”
A series of strange noises came out of Tobin’s throat and Drake’s first thought was that the man was choking. His second was, good, and the third, that this sound was actually a laugh.
“You think this is funny?”
Drake was suddenly struck with a strong sense of déjà vu. He was back in the alley, mounting Tobin, his thumbs pushing down on the man’s rotten skull.
Tobin wheezed and coughed, putting an end to the horrible laughter.
“You think I want to be on TV looking like this?”
Drake didn’t answer.
“No way. I just want to help.”
If Drake had been suspicious before, he was downright flabbergasted now. So much so that he was unable to contain his disbelief.
“Help? And what do you want in return? A shorter sentence? Access to your Instagram profile? What?”
Tobin shook his head from side to side in a movement that looked painful enough to make Drake cringe.
Straw Man Page 28
