Speak No Evil

by Allison Brennan

  They were all better off dead.

  His laptop computer beeped that an e-mail had arrived. Elizabeth.

  Heart pounding, he turned his gaze from Becca working the desk and opened the message. It wasn’t from Elizabeth. It was an automatic e-mail alert.

  MyJournal tracker has found a recent update on your track list. Click the link below to be taken directly to the updated content.

  MyJournal.iloverealmen.com

  Angie’s journal.

  For a brief moment, a split second, he felt every eye in the library looking at him. Of course they weren’t. They didn’t know what he’d done, they didn’t know who he was. Becca didn’t even know his real name.

  He almost clicked on the link. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. Instead he packed up his laptop, avoiding eye contact with anyone. He rushed out, heard Becca ask behind him, “Is something wrong?” He just shook his head at her and left the building. Ran to his car, heart pounding. Drove home. Fast. Too fast.

  Slow down. Slow down or you’ll get a ticket.

  He eased up on the accelerator a bit, but his head ran through every possible scenario.

  That Angie wasn’t dead, that she was alive and the police would be waiting for him at home.

  That she was dead and writing from Hell.

  That she was alive but didn’t remember anything.

  You’re dead! You’re dead!

  In the glare of headlights, he saw her ghostly body, her bloody mouth open, accusing him. You raped me.

  You’re dead. You can’t tell anyone what happened. You can’t say a word. You’re dead, you slut!

  His heart continued to vibrate between his ears, a loud ringing, and he couldn’t hear anything but his internal organs working, working. Heart pumping blood through his veins, his head swelling, filling with certain knowledge that he would be discovered.

  He escaped home. Locked, bolted the door. Ran into his bedroom, slammed the door as he tossed his laptop onto his bed. Angie’s soundless scream vibrated in his head and he sank to the floor.

  You’re dead. You’re dead.

  Several minutes later, he rose unsteady and walked to his desktop computer. Booted the hard drive. The ritual of the computer checking files, the fast zip-zip of the hard drive spinning, soothed him. A few deep breaths later and he almost stopped shaking.

  He logged onto his e-mail and clicked on the MyJournal link.

  Tribute to our friend Mirage.

  Angie’s page, Angie’s online name. But not Angie. A sigh of relief whistled through his lips, and he focused on the “Tribute.” He quickly realized that the author of the journal entry was one or more of Angie’s friends.

  I remember a day last month when Mirage went to work. I stopped by to visit, even though it was raining hard. It rarely rains here, but that day it poured.

  He thought. That was…late January. Had to be. There were only a couple days last month that it rained.

  Mirage got off early because it was so slow, and we sat in the corner talking about our first time…you know, the first time we had sex.

  Eager and anxious and horrified, he read on.

  I was a late bloomer. My first time was only three months ago, shortly after I started classes at the same university where Mirage and our other friends go. His name was, oops! Can’t say his name. Okay, his “name” was S. and he’s a junior. Plays water polo. Fabulous body.

  The first time was icky, but S. told me the second would be better. It was…Mirage promised me my first “real” orgasm would be wonderful (you know, the kind that isn’t self-induced) and she was right. S. went down and licked me until I orgasmed and I swear I saw fireworks….

  Fists clenched, he read on. Each of Angie’s friends wrote about their first time, and as the stories went on they became more lewd and detailed, just like Angie used to write.

  I broke up with S. when I started seeing S…. whoops! Same initials, different guys, hahaha. S2 was really experienced. You know, an older man. And he did things to me that made my head spin….

  One night on the beach behind his apartment we made love in a sleeping bag. The possibility of being caught in the act was such a turn-on. I never thought having a guy suck my tits would be so sexy, but when S2 did it I felt hot from the inside out….

  At the end, he had the three whores figured out.

  Abby wrote about her first time, first and only boyfriend. She was in high school, it was in the back of his car, and she was still dating him though he went to college out of state.

  Kayla was a dyke. Well, “bisexual” was probably the politically correct term, since she screwed both men and women. Whore.

  It was Jodi he was shocked about. Jodi who had dated the two S’s. Jodi who he’d thought was the nicest of Angie’s three friends. The one he least expected this bad behavior from.

  He knew it was her because of the last line she wrote.

  Mirage was the best friend I could ever have. She convinced me to cut my hair, which I had barely even trimmed in forever. I cut it to my shoulders, added some highlights, and haven’t been without a date since. She brought out the best in me, inside and outside, and I’ll miss her forever.

  He remembered the exact day Jodi had cut her hair. At the time, he didn’t think she was flirting, just proud of her pretty style, but now he knew better. Now he knew the truth.

  Fucking whore.

  He closed down the browser, unable to read the journal anymore, though he knew he’d be back online later. To read it again, to see the truth about the girl he never expected to kiss and tell.

  So, she likes her tits sucked? Maybe she’d like them sucked right off her fucking body.

  Pulse racing, he slammed a tape into the VCR. It was by far the most vicious of the five, and usually he couldn’t watch it. He didn’t like the blood. But this time he needed it, this time he would force himself to watch the whole thing.

  The slut was thrown onto the cement floor. Fucked in the ass while her head banged against the wall. Blood, black in the grainy, colorless film, trickled from her mouth. Then, chained against the wall, arms and legs spread wide. Discoloration covered her body. He watched her mouth open, her vocal cords stretch. A whip came out, the dark stripes dripped down, down.

  She stayed like that for a minute, crying, hanging against the wall. She was taken again, by a different man. Then another. Three men. They shared.

  Disgusting. He would never share.

  Then the worst part. Except for the first time, he always turned off the tape after the third guy screwed her.

  But not now. Both repelled and fascinated, he forced himself to watch.

  The first man came back, and he could see his profile. Hard. He brought the woman down off the wall and threw her on a mattress in the corner. The angle of the camera changed. A close-up of him pinning her down with his body. Entering her.

  Then the knife. It came out fast, from under the mattress. He pulled her head back by her hair and with one swift, deep stroke across her neck blood sprayed everywhere. The walls. The mattress. All over the killer as he arched his back and orgasmed.

  His stomach churned at the sight, but still he watched as the woman bucked in her last response to inevitable death; as the blood spurted, a drop fell across the video camera’s lens.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Blackness.

  He wiped his face, surprised that sweat poured off his skin. His body shook and he looked down, saw that he had come in his pants.

  He hid the films, went to the bathroom, and showered in icy water. Soon, his blood cooled, his heart slowed, his body returned to normal.

  And he came up with a plan to deal with whores who kiss and tell.

  ELEVEN

  CARINA ARRIVED AT THE STATION early Wednesday morning, having barely slept the night before. Every time she dozed off she pictured Angie dead on the beach, wrapped in three garbage bags. The longer this case went unsolved, the edgier she got. Though it had only been forty-eight hours, she kept waiting for
something to break.

  It was the manner of death. Restraining the victim. Gluing on a gag. Raping her. Washing her body, then suffocating her. Definitely weird. And for all the lack of evidence, the ritualistic act, it still seemed sloppy. Did Angie’s killer put her body on the beach for a specific reason? Or out of convenience? Why so public? Because he didn’t fear discovery, or because he was thumbing his nose at the police? Or some bizarre reason only the killer would know?

  Her few sleeping hours were dominated by disturbing dreams about Angie; in her waking hours she thought about her conversation with Nick Thomas.

  Would she turn in her own brother?

  First, she couldn’t imagine any of her four brothers raping and killing a woman. Nick seemed certain Steve Thomas was innocent. Wouldn’t she immediately defend her brothers, then ask them what happened? She couldn’t blame Nick for his loyalty.

  Besides, though nearly everything Carina knew about the case pointed to Steve Thomas, Masterson and his disappearing act definitely cast doubt on her initial suspicion that Thomas was guilty. But Thomas had repeatedly lied, not only about what time he went to the Shack, but about how much time he’d spent reading Angie’s not-so-anonymous online journal.

  The cursory examination from Patrick the day before showed that Thomas had spent forty-one hours on the MyJournal website in the last month, averaging more than an hour a day, but Patrick needed more time to extract exactly what he’d been reading. As he pointed out, a good defense attorney could argue that while the window browser may have been up, there’s no proof Thomas was sitting at the computer. They needed to make a correlation between the time his browser was open to a MyJournal page and any e-mails or interaction between Thomas and other MyJournal members.

  In addition, Patrick was investigating every individual who commented on Angie’s journal, which amounted to hundreds of online identities to match with real people, determine who was a potential threat, and uncover their physical location. Thomas’s online identity was SThomasSgt, which was his name and rank in the military. But if he had been harassing Angie, he may have used another login, so Patrick had to verify every one.

  And if Thomas really was innocent, Angie’s killer might be one of the other MyJournal members.

  Already, Carina was developing a headache.

  Will came over and rubbed her shoulders. “Not enough coffee or too much?” he asked.

  “Ugh,” she answered and held out her mug. He grinned and poured her more inky-black coffee from the pot against the wall of the bullpen.

  “Did Dillon ever call back?”

  “Yes. Finally. You’d think he was this hotshot or something.” Which he was, and Carina was proud of him. Though he didn’t work directly for the San Diego Police Department, he was often retained on criminal cases to interview suspects in custody and present a psychiatric report to the court. She didn’t always agree with his assessments—the cop in her said killers should go to prison for hard time, not to a padded jail cell in the desert—but Dillon backed up his recommendations with facts and solid analysis.

  “And?” Will asked.

  “He’s meeting us for lunch at Bob’s.” Bob’s Burgers was across from the police station and a regular hangout for Homicide. If Carina didn’t get a Bob’s Ultimate Cheeseburger at least once a week, she became irritable. Will insisted the fries there cured any foul mood.

  “So we have a couple hours. Any word on Masterson?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “By the way, I did a little research last night on Sheriff Nick Thomas.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  “Do you remember hearing about the Bozeman Butcher?”

  “Who hasn’t? The sick bastard was responsible for more than a dozen murders up in Montana.” Her eyes widened. “And Bozeman is in Gallatin County.” She hit her head. “Why didn’t I make the connection last night?”

  “We were preoccupied. It’s been a couple long days.”

  “So Nick Thomas was responsible for taking the killer down?”

  “In part. But what wasn’t widely reported was that Thomas was held captive by the Butcher, and afterward was hospitalized for more than a week.”

  Carina nodded. “I thought he was walking a little stiffly yesterday when he followed his brother down to the beach.”

  “If anyone knows about serial killers, it would be Sheriff Thomas. He’d been building the case against the Butcher for years. Maybe we should talk to him and get his perspective, see if he thinks we have a serial killer here.”

  “You’re right, he has the experience, but he’s the brother of our primary suspect. And besides,” argued Carina, “the definition of a serial killer is three or more like crimes with an established MO and—”

  Will interrupted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen signs in Angie’s murder that point to something more than a crime of passion.”

  She couldn’t argue with him. She’d been wrestling with it all night. “Point taken. But what if it is Steve Thomas? What if he’s the killer?”

  “Then having Nick Thomas on our side might help stop another murder.”

  “Has anything come back from the feds’ database on like crimes?”

  Will shook his head. “The system is haphazard at best. And I read an article last year that serial killers often change and refine their method of killing. So our killer might have started with a different MO. In another state, maybe he strangled previous victims, or stabbed them—”

  “Or maybe Angie is the first. Something about her set him off.”

  “Like her sex diary.”

  Carina’s phone rang. “Kincaid,” she answered.

  “It’s Jim. I’ve typed the glue.”

  “And?”

  “Commonly used industrial-strength adhesive, available at most major hardware stores.”

  “Match anything we found at Thomas’s apartment?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Will was on the phone when she got off, so Carina cleared paperwork from her desk, her least favorite part of the job, until he hung up.

  “Patrick has a printout of all of Thomas’s e-mails, Internet travels, and chat room logs for us,” Will told her. “He skimmed them, didn’t find anything big, but they’re worth a closer look. He has to run some computer program,” he waved his hand in the air, “to decipher exactly how many times Thomas went to the site and get an approximate amount of time he spent there. Since we haven’t arrested the guy yet, and Patrick’s preparing for a trial next week, he doesn’t have the time to thoroughly go through the reports, but he thinks by early next week he’ll have answers.”

  “Such is our lives.” Carina frowned. “Will, why do I feel like this isn’t a priority to the department?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We have a dead girl. Eighteen years old. We have a suspect. True, only circumstantial evidence, but damn good circumstantial evidence. But Jim has priorities, Patrick has priorities, and this case isn’t it. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like Angie’s death has been relegated to the bottom of the list. That because she was a promiscuous young woman who posed in pornographic positions on her Web page, no one cares what happened to her.”

  “That’s not true, Carina. You know that.”

  But she was fired up. “Really? I know what? You heard the guys around the bullpen when they saw her MyJournal page. Reading her descriptions of having sex and masturbating. And the pictures! I have four brothers. I know what guys think about nudie shots.

  “She’s dead. Just because a woman has sex with a lot of guys doesn’t mean she deserves to be raped and murdered. Suffocated. She was terrified when she died. She was tortured. It’s not fair that no one cares!”

  Will pushed Carina back down in her chair and leaned over her. “Listen here, Detective Kincaid. Don’t ever imply that I don’t care about a victim, or that I think anyone deserves to be raped and murdered. You’re walking a thin line here. Angie Va
nce deserves justice as much as any other victim in the city, and I’ll do everything I can to bring her some. So get off your high horse and let’s do the job right. Get some evidence against Thomas—or anyone else who might want her dead. Hell, we have at least nine other men she kissed and blabbed about on the Internet who could have been embarrassed enough to kill.”

  Carina took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t aiming that at you, Will. I guess…I don’t know. I’m just frustrated.”

  He gave her a curt nod and leaned back against her desk, arms crossed. “We thought we had an easy case, open and shut, and it’s turned out to be anything but.”

  Carina felt sheepish. Will cared as much about the victims as she did. She had to remember that he was not only her partner but her best friend. “Did Patrick say he had anything from Angie’s computer?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Oh, yeah. We have our work cut out for us. A lot of legwork, but maybe we’ll get a break.”

  Will’s phone rang and he reached across Carina’s desk to answer it.

  “Will Hooper.”

  “It’s Patrick. Are you at your computer?”

  “Two feet away.”

  “Log on to Angie’s MyJournal page ASAP. Seems Angie’s friends have paid a tribute to their dead friend, and you’re not going to like it. I’m on hold with MyJournal security because Angie’s journal needs to be taken down. Immediately.”

  He walked down the street, around the corner, and down two blocks to the Quik-Stop. He bought a newspaper, a thirty-two-ounce Coke, and a breakfast burrito, using the store’s microwave to heat it.

  He sat at a picnic table at the park across the street, eating as he turned to the obituaries.

  There it was. Angie’s memorial service: Thursday. Six p.m.

  He’d learned a lot from his mistakes with Angie. She was the first, and of course it wasn’t perfect. That’s why the end wasn’t satisfying. He’d kept her too long, for one. The excitement of that first night gave way to fear of being caught, an urgency that he couldn’t fulfill.