by Alex Barclay
‘Well, they won’t be putting that in the brochure,’ said Seth. ‘“Lots of hanging space”, “sturdy closet rails to take the weight of your abandoned loved one”.’
Shannon’s eyes widened. ‘Seth, that’s not very nice – Mr Lyle was always very good to you.’
Seth nodded. ‘He was.’
‘You won so many medals.’
‘I did,’ said Seth. ‘What a champ.’
‘Where are your medals?’ said Shannon.
‘I have no idea,’ said Seth. ‘They weren’t anywhere when we were moving here.’
‘Really?’ said Shannon. ‘That’s a shame. They would have looked great on the wall.’
Seth looked at her with a patient expression. ‘You’d want to be pretty desperate to rely on glory dating back over ten years. Child swimming champ …’
Shannon smiled. ‘I have no doubt you will go on to great glory in the future, so I guess you won’t need your medals to fall back on.’
‘Jeez. I hope not.’
‘The memorial service is on Thursday,’ said Shannon, ‘they’re waiting for some family members to arrive from overseas. Do you want to come with me, pay your respects?’
Seth nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Poor Jimmy—’ said Shannon.
‘Yeah,’ said Seth. ‘Poor weird Jimmy.’ He paused. ‘Well, at least a space has opened up in the retirement home. Pay it forward.’
Shannon was frowning. ‘I think you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.’
‘The cold side,’ said Seth. He stood up, stretched his arms. ‘I’m going to go take a walk.’
He grabbed a hoodie and pulled it on.
‘Walk?’ said Shannon. ‘At midnight? Where?’
‘Just into the woods,’ said Seth. ‘I thought maybe I could check the cabins, see what kind of mess the cops made of them. I feel people are stepping all over our lives.’
‘Aw, Seth, sweetheart,’ said Shannon. ‘We’re going to be OK.’ She hugged him tight.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Seth kept the beam on the flashlight low as he walked the path down to the cabins. The air was freezing, he had forgotten his jacket, his eyes were streaming. His hands were stuffed into his pockets for warmth. There was a bunch of keys in the right one, two single keys in the left.
As he walked, his shoulders were tight, he was hunching, holding his breath again.
‘Breathe,’ he said to himself. ‘Breathe.’
He tried to relax his body. He was tired of having to keep reminding himself to. It didn’t come naturally. He couldn’t remember a time when it had. But he guessed it was before his eighth birthday. He remembered his eighth birthday. It was the last one he spent with his mama – she was dead before the year was out. It was the best birthday he ever had.
His eyes were streaming now, not from the cold, but from the tears. He was aware of every sound in the woods, the leaves as the breeze blew through them, whatever critters were scurrying about, the lapping of the water. The crunch of his boots on the path felt loud and almost unbearable. But he loved all these sounds, because they weren’t prison sounds. They weren’t the sounds of caged men, desperate to avoid silence. Twenty-four seven the noise went on and sometimes he thought his head would blow.
He stopped at the farthest cabin. Instead of going left down to it, toward the water, he went right, up a slope with no path, no trail, no evidence that there was anything up there. There was certainly nothing that made it on to any map, nothing that would have appeared on an aerial view of the property.
It was a small hut, no bigger than eight by ten. The roof was covered over by earth, ivy grew around it, and it was sheltered by trees. It had thin windows with wooden shutters, and strong locks. Clyde Brimmer had built it back in the late eighties, and spent a little time every spring maintaining it as best he could.
Seth had just taken the key from his pocket when he heard footsteps coming toward him. He froze. He turned around. A woman was standing in the shadows, close enough that he could smell the liquor on her breath. She was swaying back and forth.
A cloud shifted in the sky, and she was illuminated by the moon. Seth squinted into the hazy light.
‘Isabella?’ he said.
‘I can’t stand this any more,’ she replied.
48
Deb McLean was leaning against the table at the top of the Tate PD conference room, her legs crossed at the ankles, her arms folded. Ren was studying her from the front row. Her blonde hair had been cut stylishly short since Ren last saw her. She was dressed in a smart black suit, white shirt, and heels that were hidden under bootleg pants that hit the ground.
Deb had her cell phone in her hand and was typing. Every now and then, she looked up from her screen to watch the investigators filing into the room. Ren’s phone beeped with a text. From Deb.
OK – have spotted three potential future husbands. ;-)
Ren looked up. Deb smiled and winked at her then put her cell phone down on the table.
‘Hello, Tate,’ she said, when Ruddock gave her the nod. ‘Happy Sunday. My name is Deb McLean, I’m a court-certified expert in aquatic deaths and homicidal drownings. I also train divers, water rescue and recovery teams, and I carry out ongoing research in the field.’
She stood up.
She has to be four ten, max. I know she has sneaked at least three-inch heels under there. She’s never going to be ready to ditch the bootlegs.
‘I’m happy to help you in any way I can on your investigation,’ said Deb. ‘I read through the details of the case on the flight here. So we know: the death of Aaron Fuller was no tragic accident, the death of Luke Monroe was no tragic accident. Lake Verny is innocent, the peanut butter sandwich is innocent. Ladies and gentlemen, the only tragic accident here was the birth of their killer.’ She paused. ‘It may or may not be one and the same person, but, nevertheless, there are people out there who get their kicks from drowning or near-drowning their victims. There is no evidence of a sexual nature to the crimes you are dealing with, but, very often that evidence will no longer be present on the body. I’ll explain more about the sexual element later.’ She looked around the room. ‘I’m here today to talk to you about ASSes.’ She smiled. ‘That would be Aquatic Sexual Sadists. My term.
‘An ASS tortures his victims for his own sexual gratification, using water as his weapon,’ said Deb. ‘I’m saying “his” because it’s easier, and because it’s more likely it’s going to be a man. OK – an Aquatic Sexual Sadist doesn’t just want to torture and cause pain. He wants to bring you, his victim, to the brink of death and show you that he – and only he – can give you your life back. Your torturer is also your savior. This is the most powerful feeling an ASS can have.’
There were some chuckles around the room.
‘He wants to be god,’ said Deb. ‘He wants to be your god.’
Clever lady, bringing us directly into the story. You. You. You. You. You.
‘If you think of a domestic violence situation,’ said Deb, ‘where your partner strangles you until you pass out, then releases the neck pressure to allow blood flow to return to your brain. Well, he or she uses this behavior – and the ongoing, oppressive threat of this behavior – to have control over you in all areas of your life. ASSes, however, only need the near-death-to-life, near-death-to-life experience. That is their thrill.’ She paused. ‘Some ASSes concurrently commit rape as they’re drowning their victims, though we’ve established that this is not the case here. What we’re dealing with is a killer who wants to drown his/her victim entirely, who no longer wants to be a savior, or who maybe never did; someone who simply wants to end lives. This category of killer falls under the subcategory of lust killer. These type of Aquatic Sexual Sadists may torture their victims with repeated near-drowning sessions prior to killing them.’
I wonder what it feels like to almost drown.
‘There is no greater urge than the urge to breathe,’ said Deb, ‘so wh
en you are preventing someone from doing so, it’s torture in the most horrific form. Unlike other tortures where the victim can pass out – like, as I mentioned, in strangulation – with drowning, you don’t pass out, plus you suffer the excruciating pain of inhaling water.’
I no longer wonder what it feels like to almost drown.
‘Drowning is a silent death,’ said Deb. ‘There is none of the flailing and shouting and arm-waving you see in movies. Drowning does not happen the way you might think it does.’
‘Sorry, Deb,’ said Ren, ‘back to what you said a minute ago: are you saying there could be victims out there who were near-drowned by this guy, but are still alive, that he let them go?’
‘It’s a possibility, yes,’ said Deb. ‘But, if that is the case, we don’t know yet when near-drowning became “not enough” for the killer. We don’t know when drowning to death became his thing.’ She paused. ‘So you’ll want to know, what kind of person your killer is. ASSes are smart: what they do to their victims happens silently, and, usually, leaves no marks. If I electrocute you, if I beat you, if I stab you, there will be clear evidence of this on your body. If your head is being held under water and, like I said, breathing is your greatest urge, that is what your body will put all its strength into: you will not be able to reach back and prize someone’s fingers off you, you will not be able to claw at them. You’ll be too busy fighting for your life. There are parents who use near-drowning to torture their children because it leaves no marks. In a domestic setting, the perpetrator is “lucky” to have a private area in which to do it: a bathroom. They’re locked in, they have control, privacy is automatically given by others. But even outside of that, not a lot is required to carry out this punishment – I could drown you in a bucket of water if I wanted to. I could drown you in a busy lake on a summer’s day and no one might notice.’
It’s really not safe to go back in the water.
‘Any fetishistic behavior, like aquatic sadism, develops when something causes you a pleasant sensation, when something arouses you. It might be an image, an object, an event, an item of clothing. It stays with you and you are compelled to return to it – you recreate the circumstances of whatever that was in order to feel that sensation again. So your killer is likely to have been near-drowned himself, or has certainly connected drowning or water with feelings of arousal. Maybe he or she witnessed a drowning—’
‘If this is sexual, why have none of the victims been raped?’ said Wiley.
‘Because, for this killer,’ said Deb, ‘the power and the rush comes from the drowning.’
‘So it’s not a sexually motivated crime,’ said Wiley.
Not as simple as that, Wiley.
‘It’s possible that there is a masturbatory element,’ said Deb, ‘though, obviously, like I said, there will no longer be evidence of that on the bodies of Aaron Fuller and Luke Monroe.
‘“Tragic accident”,’ said Deb, and she had the full attention of the room again. ‘We hear those words paired together a lot, we read about them in news reports. They’re powerful words, with an unspoken story behind them. We immediately think of innocent, weeping relatives. But what saddens me the most about the words “tragic accident” is that they’re often the first words that people will attribute to a drowning death. We’re programmed to think that way, to be afraid of water, to be afraid of what water can do to us. But we’re not made aware of how someone could use water to do something to us.’
Good point.
‘You have patrol officers going to a six-year-old child lying dead in a field,’ said Deb. ‘En route, they’re thinking “why is the child in the field and why is it dead?” They arrive, they secure the scene, there’s no question about it. Take that child out of the field, put it into a pond, without realizing it, the officers are thinking “tragic accident” before they even get to the scene: child in a bathtub, teen at a pool party, woman in a hot tub …’ She looked around the room. ‘So, while I have you all here, hanging on my every word, I will shamelessly use this opportunity to implore you all not to jump to “accident”. Instead, I ask you to wait, to observe, to process, to look around you, to look all over the home, or all around the pool, or around whatever body of water holds the body of your victim. It is a crime scene like any other. It should be preserved. And, like any other crime scene, you can’t be told by the witness or witnesses what went down and take that at face value: “I turned my back for thirty seconds”, “I didn’t know he was in the bathroom”, “he must have filled the tub himself”, “he had been depressed for weeks”, “she had always threatened to do something like this” …’
I love listening to you, Deb McLean.
‘I’m sure you’re all aware now about how the diatoms in the water showed that Aaron Fuller was not killed in Lake Verny,’ said Deb. ‘Once you have a five-hundred-milliliter sample of water from other possible sources, you can test it against the water from his sphenoid sinus to see if there’s a match. There is also a way of linking the UNSUB to the body of water: diatoms have a shell called a frustule. It’s made of silica, is really durable, and withstands all kinds of conditions. These little shells can hang around a long time. I worked a case where a guy was caught because he had drowned a victim in a lake, put her body in the trunk of his car, and driven two hundred miles away to dump it in woodland. We found silica shells in the trunk of his car that matched the ones found in the water from the victim’s sphenoid sinus. So you might find them in the UNSUB’s vehicle, on his clothing, his sneakers, etc.’ She paused. ‘And hopefully, you will stop him before he takes another life.’
Caleb Veir, please be alive.
49
Ren sat in the kitchen having coffee with Deb when she was finished.
‘I was thinking, after what you said, that we should take a look at any previous drownings in the area,’ said Ren, ‘or any unusual water-based incidents, if the UNSUB has a history.’
‘Definitely,’ said Deb.
‘And in terms of previous victims of near-drownings, apart from hospital admissions …’
‘See, that’s the problem,’ said Deb. ‘What I said before – it’s a sinister crime. It leaves very little trace. And, you know what, it’s the type of thing that people don’t seem to take seriously. Child victims have tried to report these things before and people just don’t believe them. I think if a child said he was being molested, he would be believed quicker.’
‘I guess it seems so unreal,’ said Ren. ‘Or just, I don’t know – someone could construe it as “of course your mother/father/brother, etc. wouldn’t do that to you”. Like, what a screwed-up thing to do. As if all the other shit that people do to each other isn’t.’
‘I know,’ said Deb.
‘Are ASSes drawn to water in general?’ said Ren. ‘Like, John Veir is an ex-military diver, Seth Fuller was a child swimming champ.’
‘Not really, no,’ said Deb. ‘That in itself wouldn’t ring my alarm bells. But if the victims are children, well, we all know UNSUBS will put themselves where they’ll be around them.’
‘Are there any other signs that someone is or was a victim of near-drowning?’ said Ren.
Deb let out a breath. ‘Depending on how long-term the abuse is, maybe lung issues, recurring pneumonia …’
‘OK,’ said Ren.
Deb checked the time on her phone. ‘OK – I better go or I’ll miss my flight.’ She took a printout from her bag and handed it to Ren. ‘My parting gift to you is this – a list of aqua erotic and drowning fetish sites.’
Ren scanned the list. ‘You do know I’ll be exploring these on my own in my hotel room tonight …’
‘Would you rather watch them with that adorable police chief? Or his angry lieutenant?’
‘You spotted that too,’ said Ren.
‘Issues …’ said Deb. ‘Now, when you are checking those out, you might want to have another screen open beside it with cartoons on.’ She paused. ‘Not The Little Mermaid, though.’
; ‘Or Finding Nemo …’
Gary walked in after Deb had left.
‘Your friend is good,’ said Gary.
‘Really good,’ said Ren. She slid the printout over to him. ‘Fancy a late-night aqua erotic porn screening? My treat.’
That evening, Ren sat at Ruddock’s dining room table after a dinner of roast chicken that was mercifully perfectly cooked. He lived in one of the homiest homes she had ever been in. Ruddock was easy company, a man who lit up when he talked about his late wife. He told Ren she’d been heavily involved in life at Tate PD – organizing the community photo displays in the foyer, tending to the plants. She would bring in cakes and cookies during the day, and casseroles when the team was working late. It was clear Ruddock missed her terribly.
He didn’t ask Ren about her own relationship situation, but she knew at this stage he was bound to have googled her and found out what happened in Safe Streets.
Were you sent to me, Ruddock, you gentle soul? My inadvertent healer.
She could hear him in the kitchen, putting the dinner plates in the dishwasher.
‘Are you sure I can’t help?’ she called in.
Please say yes.
‘Positive,’ said Ruddock. ‘You relax out there.’
‘OK!’ Yay.
She heard the oven door open, and she could smell cinnamon.
Life brings wonderful surprises.
People die.
Surprise!
Good people.
Surprise!
Ruddock’s wife. Robbie. Everett. Ben.
Surprise!
Aaron Fuller. Luke Monroe. Caleb Veir?
No.
She could feel her chest tighten.
No, not here. This is a nice fucking night. Give me a break.
Ruddock walked in. She took a deep breath, then looked up with a smile. Ruddock had his hands in his wife’s floral oven gloves, and he was carrying a steaming apple and cinnamon pie.
Jesus Christ, he is so fucking adorable.
She burst into tears.
Without saying a word, Ruddock set the dish down on a trivet at the other side of the table, slipped his hands out of the oven gloves. He sat down beside Ren, reached out and squeezed her hand, held it there, didn’t let go.
