After a while, it became second nature to pretend. To display anger like a bright peacock spreads his feathers to camouflage the fear.
Only in the weeks after his release had he realized how terrified he had been, how completely the experience had worn through his strength.
Inside those walls, he had been unable to control his fate. He might have died. Or worse.
And Bella had done that to him.
Willingly. No. More than willingly. She had done it on purpose. As a medical examiner, Bella knew what evidence would put him behind bars. And then she had planted it his garage, setting up his arrest.
She had betrayed him before, by leaving. But the loss of the fetus had a profound effect on her. He had understood that. After all that had gone wrong between them, he’d thought it was best that Bella was gone. He would do it differently next time. And why shouldn’t there be a next time? He was an attractive, successful man. Surely, someone else would take her place.
And there had been offers. Women were not shy with him. And he had taken a few out over the years, but he always came back to Bella.
But not just to Bella.
He fantasized about the way Bella was with her father, the way she watched him when he spoke. Spencer imagined being the one to receive all that love. It had stirred light into the darkness he’d suffered for so long, until he’d had to admit to himself that she had a power that he did not. But he might be able to capture it. She could develop that love for him, a love he’d never experienced.
Until Bella, the loves of his life had been for money, for power. Greedy loves. But the love she gave was selfless, pure.
He wanted that.
And if Bella wouldn’t give it to him, then she would give him a child who would. That was what he’d told himself.
Before she’d framed him.
He had covered his every base. And still he had ended up in prison.
Not for long, but he had been there. At first, it was fear that rose to the surface, fear that woke him in the darkest parts of night to his own choking sobs. His heart became a taut balloon that popped at every noise, at every movement, while his anger had gone deep and quiet, a rampant disease that bred quietly inside him.
His release should have ended the torture, but getting out of prison only unleashed the fear to breed in free air. And it spread, as though through wind and fire, consuming him. It was months before he slept through the night, months before he didn’t jump out of his skin around every corner. All the while, he pretended he was fine, that the experience hadn’t impacted him.
That he was better. Stronger.
As he worked the fear away, what had risen in him was a rage like he’d never known. The time he’d thrown Bella across the room, the incident she’d blamed for losing their child, had been a flash of frustration. A bit of alcohol mixed with exasperation at her stupid forgetfulness.
What pumped through him now was nuclear. It was a holocaust. It hummed like a power plant, seared like the flames of a hundred forest fires, and beat like a herd of a thousand wild beasts.
He had not fought it. Instead, he had let it come, so grateful for how it banished the fear. But soon, the anger required management, lest he kill someone before it was time.
To control the surging anger, he worked out. Daily. Sometimes more than once. He had never been interested in being one of those meatheads—that’s how he thought of them. Guys whose necks were as thick as thighs, whose arms splayed, wing-like, because of bulky triceps and overdeveloped lats.
He focused his routines on cardio rather than strength.
For almost a year, he had trained. He’d started with a coach and soon found he hated the man’s voice. Wanted to throttle him. Had almost swung a kettlebell in his face before he calmly, politely quit.
He was better on his own. No one pushed him harder than he pushed himself. He was alone almost all the time.
In his evenings, he researched the right location. When he found that, he began studying the languages his plan required. French first, because it was relatively easy. Then German. These had to be flawless. He had to sound as though he’d spoken them since birth. He kept crazy hours, working at a frenetic pace, but the efforts kept the rage in check.
Occasionally, he was even calm.
As he studied and researched, contacts emerged. When it was right, he reached out to them. Cautiously. Everything in cash and through three or four middlemen.
No direct lines.
And he worked. He spent twelve, fourteen hours in the office, and then he came home to work out and do more research. He scanned his important documents and shredded hard copies. No more than a bag in each week’s trash. If someone noticed, they’d think it was a normal purging of old files.
He spent only what he had to, which was more than he would have liked. The country club, for instance. He would have happily let that expense go, but appearances mattered. He stayed in touch with Bella’s mother, Georgia. He accepted every invitation to her home, the countless fund-raisers, the imbecilic garden parties. He always arrived with a bouquet of flowers and champagne. And when she brought up Bella—which she always did—he was doting and sad, the husband heartbroken by his wife’s abandonment.
The appearances were everything. No one could suspect a thing. When he disappeared, it would be a complete shock.
Originally, he’d imagined he would be gone by now. But the markets were volatile with the new presidency, and he’d experienced some unexpected bumps. Once he acquired another $700,000 to top off his $4.3 million, he would go get his wife. The word he’d once savored in his mouth was a hot acid on his tongue. Wife.
His wife, his property.
He curled and uncurled his fists. Blew out a breath and reminded himself that tomorrow was Thursday. Thursdays never came soon enough, and he was ready for release. All week, he worked and planned, but tomorrow was his night.
Keep focused.
He wrapped the towel over his neck and went into the kitchen, where he made a vegetable smoothie and drank it down, holding his breath. Kale tasted foul.
The kitchen hadn’t changed in the last eight years. For the last ten years. He was forty years old. Most men didn’t get to retire at forty. But most men had a family, a wife. He deserved that. He was due.
And he would get what he was due.
He looked down at the empty glass, the bits of green stuck to its sides. Letting out a growl, he slammed it against the row of cabinets, watching the explosion of glass and bits of spinach and kale and protein powder.
He walked from the room, anger rocking through his limbs like an earthquake. He wasn’t going to make it until tomorrow.
He found his cell phone on the entry table and texted the number.
I need to see you sooner.
A few beats passed. His breath came like a steam engine through his teeth.
Tomorrow, 8:00 p.m. You can wait.
That bitch.
He drew deep, slow breaths and went into his study. Made his way to the wall safe for his laptop. More and more, he used the websites as a bridge between Thursdays.
It’s not weakness. It’s maintaining control.
Waiting for the laptop to boot, he paced the room. Desire hummed through him. Like water off a cliff, pounding into the rocks below. Pounding, pounding.
The site was bookmarked. He would never allow this to be traced to his laptop. Not that an expert couldn’t track it. But he had the IP address bouncing off a dozen towers, and it was all paid for by an offshore account. Not a perfect solution but a good one.
The alternative was to live without.
He launched the website and scanned the titles, the thumbnail images of the women. Bound and trussed, duct-taped and chained. He adjusted his pants. He’d seen most of them more than once. He scanned for the woman who looked like Bella. The dark, wavy hair, the blue eyes.
A thin banner across one read “New.” He clicked.
Daphne was her name. The camera panned the room
and closed in on her, lying across the bed. Her ankles and hands were roped. This was no kiddie channel. The red burns circling her wrists were bloody. The whip came from off camera and cracked over her pelvis. She arched her back and cried out. Tears formed in her eyes. The camera zoomed in on the wound on her skin, raised and angry. A stripe of blood on the screen.
He increased the volume as the whip struck her again, landing exactly on the raised mound of dark hair between her legs.
She let out a cry, her head lolling to expose her long, creamy neck to the camera.
He pulled out the leather desk chair and sat, refusing to blink, his gaze homed in on her skin, his ears tuned to every cry, every moan, every breath until that moment when everything released, and his eyes fell shut.
His head tipped back. The waves of anger retreated. The tension in his body vanished. He stayed that way, imagining when he would be with Bella.
Beautiful Bella.
He had never wanted to hurt her. Control her, yes. But not hurt her. On the contrary, he had wanted her to love him. He had given her everything.
And she had betrayed him.
Her betrayal had changed everything. Now, he would watch her expression as she suffered at his hands, the way he had suffered at hers.
He no longer wanted Bella back, not exactly. He wanted to capture her, to keep her.
Until she bore him a son.
And to show her how much she’d hurt him. How deeply.
Her life would belong to him. As it should have from day one. He would decide when it was over. He’d make her suffer for what she’d done, and he planned to take his time with it.
When he had his beautiful boy, then he would kill her.
14
Schwartzman arrived home just before six p.m. She might have stayed to perform the autopsy on Malik Washington. She had been tempted. In the end, it was the thought of Buster, inside all day, that sent her home. That and the missing girl. The sensation of the boy’s pulse beneath her fingers had brought such a wave of relief—relief that crashed right back into panic when she learned of the missing eight-month-old.
Guilt had gnawed at her on the drive home—the sensation that she should be doing something, that the autopsy on Washington might yield some evidence that would help the police find the culprit. And maybe find the infant. But she’d had two long nights with little sleep. She was no good to anyone if she wasn’t sharp.
At home, Buster greeted her by wagging his entire backside. The sight of him made her smile. She pocketed her phone and her pepper spray, checked that she had a bag in case Buster did his business on the street, and armed the house. With Buster on his leash, the two walked to the end of the block and turned down Clipper Street in the direction of Twin Peaks.
Though the rain had stopped, the fog had also descended. The gray rolled down the streets and flowed among the buildings like a flood in slow motion. There had been plenty of rain during her years in Seattle, but fog unsettled her. Tonight, it gave the city an eerie, otherworldly feel. The mood was consistent with the case—the strange weapon; a Muslim woman found naked, her burqa gone; a black man dead; the missing child. Not to mention the strange scar on the woman’s face.
And the dragonfly.
A dragonfly alive in her mouth.
Schwartzman hadn’t heard what Roger had made of that astonishing discovery. Over a brief break for lunch, she’d found herself Googling the life span of dragonflies. An hour vanished as she clicked from one site to another. The dragonfly had evolved 300 million years ago, and while experts had identified some 5,000 species of dragon and damselflies, there were likely close to 6,500 species in existence. She learned that the dragonfly got its name from the story of Saint George’s horse, who transformed into a giant flying insect after being cursed by the devil.
From there, she read up on symbolism of the dragonfly and was pulled into the internet vortex. The sites were consistent. Universally, the dragonfly symbolized change—in particular, change related to self-realization. One site said that the dragonfly symbolized a shift in mental and emotional maturity as the subject reached for a deeper understanding of the meaning of life.
But what did that mean for Aleena Laughlin? Was her killer saying she had reached some level of emotional maturity? Or that he had?
She passed a young couple. The woman led a chocolate Lab who walked her more than she walked it. The man wore a sling on his front—a BABYBJÖRN, Schwartzman thought it was called. A head bobbled slightly in a pink hat. Thick, dark hair fringed the bottom of the hat.
Both parents were brown-haired and fair. What determined whether infants were born with hair? She’d never considered it before, though when she pictured the missing eight-month-old girl, she had imagined her with a head of thick, dark hair like her mother and brother.
Schwartzman said hello while Buster and the Lab sniffed. After a brief exchange, she gave the leash a gentle tug to urge Buster on again. Though she didn’t know many names, she recognized many of the faces in the neighborhood. The family who lived next door had been especially welcoming. The mother, an artist named Helen, worked in a small studio space in the back of the house while their daughter, Amelia, was at school. Helen had signed for several of Schwartzman’s packages while she was at work, and Amelia often came out of the house to dote on Buster when Schwartzman and he were in the front yard or leaving for a walk. It was a family-friendly neighborhood, and she felt safe, even as she ventured a little farther from the house.
Some evenings, she liked to walk down Clipper Street to Portola. At the intersection, she’d skirt Douglass Playground, where they didn’t allow dogs, and make her way up the hill to a large field and the wooded area beyond where she walked Buster on his leash.
Her mind circled back to Aleena Laughlin. Nothing in her reading turned up anything menacing about the dragonfly. It wasn’t a talisman of danger or dread but of potential and optimism. How did that relate to Aleena Laughlin’s death?
Had transformation been looming on the horizon of Laughlin’s life? Had some promising future gotten her killed? But why?
Her phone buzzed, and Schwartzman stopped at the edge of the field to pull it from her pocket. The nightly text message from the private investigator in Greenville read AC. All clear.
Spencer was in Greenville.
She was safe. For now.
Pocketing the phone, she peered into the night. A small patch of the grassy surface was visible. Beyond that lay a thick blanket of fog. On a clear night, she liked to take Buster back into the woods and sit at the base of one of the trees to look up at the night sky. It was the closest she ever felt to being in South Carolina again, although the world smelled different here. Eucalyptus wasn’t common in South Carolina, and the mixture of pine and eucalyptus was, in her mind, the fragrance of San Francisco.
But when she and Buster sat on the ground in the woods, gazing up through the canopy of branches, she sometimes saw a sprinkling of stars.
And the stars reminded her of home.
A home, she had come to realize, that was no longer home. And one she likely wouldn’t visit again. The only piece of her that remained in South Carolina was her mother. When she died . . . what? She would be expected to hold a funeral, to bury her.
Of course she would bury her mother.
But with whom? Her mother’s friends, certainly. Maybe a few close ones and certainly lots of acquaintances, people she’d known over the years. But there would be no one there to console Schwartzman, not like Ava had when her father had passed and, to some small extent, her mother had when Ava was killed.
Her mother was the final thread that bound her to South Carolina. The space between them had only grown in the year since she’d gone through the mastectomy and chemotherapy. How many times had she asked her mother to come? Or waited to be asked to come home?
She couldn’t return to South Carolina. Not with Spencer there. Her mother would’ve known that if she had listened to her daughter. But her mother kept in t
ouch with Spencer. They saw each other. That fact made the absence of an invitation sting worse. Schwartzman wasn’t sure she would see her mother again.
She remembered the sensation she’d had being pregnant, the overwhelming love she’d had for something that was no more than a bundle of cells. It was immediate. All-consuming. Could her daughter have ever disappointed her in a way that would mean Schwartzman wouldn’t travel to the ends of the earth to visit her?
Impossible.
By the time she reached her mother’s body, her mother would be gone. Schwartzman didn’t believe that the soul remained or hovered. Yes, she would be expected to bury her mother. A good Southern girl would never shirk that responsibility.
That would mean going to South Carolina.
But at what danger to herself?
Surely, Spencer wouldn’t let her spend time in South Carolina without finding a way to . . . what would he do? Perhaps he’d pick up where they’d left off, in that dark closet, surrounded by images of her, huddled and afraid.
Or would he move right to the conclusion and kill her?
15
Buster barked, sending a chill across her scalp. Schwartzman glanced over her shoulder and headed back toward home. The streets had gone quiet, and the rain started up in slow, heavy drops. She felt the last part of the walk in the small of her back. The three scenes back-to-back-to-back had worn on her. She was ready to put her feet up, pour a glass of wine. She had no idea what she’d do for dinner.
She turned into her walkway through the small jungle that was her front yard. Though she had cleared out some of the shrubs, she had left the large bougainvillea and the two red maples on either side of the walkway. The trees shrouded the small front porch and helped block the light from the streetlamp directly in front of her house on the opposite side of the street. Plus, she enjoyed the privacy afforded by the dense foliage.
“Hey.”
She jumped at the voice. Buster yanked the leash from her hand and ran toward the corner of the porch.
“Sorry. Hey, buddy,” Hal said, dropping to a knee to scratch Buster.
Expose (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 3) Page 8
