Prey (Jefferson Winter)

by James Carol

  ‘Well there’s your proof that she kept her father alive. No way would she eat crap like this. If she did she’d be twice the size she is.’

  ‘So where was he kept?’

  ‘Good question.’

  Winter spun through a full three hundred and sixty degrees. The cellar was large but it wasn’t as big as the footprint of the house. He walked over to the nearest wall and tapped it with his knuckle. It seemed solid enough. He followed the wall, moving counterclockwise, tapping at random intervals.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Winter?’

  ‘Rooms within rooms. Serial killers love them.’

  It took a couple of minutes to do a full circuit of the room. All the walls were solid. He stopped by the freezer. ‘Okay, let’s take a look upstairs.’

  They headed back up to the kitchen. At the top of the stairs Mendoza turned off the light, closed the door, then they retraced their steps to the hall and climbed the stairs. The first door they tried opened on to a bathroom that was as clean and tidy as the kitchen. The porcelain and fixtures sparkled, the floor tiles were scrubbed. There was plenty of evidence that a woman lived here, and no evidence of a man. No shaving stuff, no cologne, and lots of female-friendly labels on the bottles. The toothbrush was pink. Like Clarke had told them, she lived here alone.

  The next two doors led to Amelia’s and Nelson’s bedrooms. These appeared to have been abandoned long ago as well. They were coated with an accumulation of dust that was best measured in years rather than months. Cobwebs dangled in the high places, dancing in the gentle currents blowing through the doorway.

  The rooms were devoid of personality, which, in a weird kind of way, created its own personality. There was nothing to indicate that they’d once been inhabited by a couple of teenagers. No posters, no TV, no games consoles. No CDs, no DVDs, no books. There were no diaries or personal touches of any kind, either. The walls had been painted an off-white that had faded to an unpleasant yellow that reminded Winter of curdled cream.

  Thin, scrappy floral drapes hung on the windows in both rooms. The hems were uneven, the hooks were spaced unevenly, and the material looked like it had been given away rather than bought. The bed linen in both rooms was identical: plain cheap white cotton that had faded to grey. There was little life or colour left in the rugs. They were so worn that the brown woven jute backing was showing through.

  The only way to tell the rooms apart was by looking in the closets and drawers. The clothes were hand-me-down thrift-store rejects. Cheap and functional, rather than fashionable. Even six years ago these clothes would have been well out of date.

  ‘I can’t be sure about this,’ said Mendoza, ‘but I think Amelia’s room was abandoned long before Nelson’s. If I’m right about that then there’s a good chance she stopped using it when her mother committed suicide.’

  ‘You’re thinking that this is another example of her playing mother, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s not how I’d put it, but yeah, I’m thinking along those lines.’

  Winter nodded. ‘You could be right.’

  ‘Unfortunately. It’s like I said earlier, I could almost feel sorry for Amelia.’

  They left Nelson’s room and walked along the corridor to the door at the far end. It was the last room left to search, so by a process of elimination it had to be the master bedroom. Based on what they’d seen so far, Winter was expecting this room to be as clean and tidy as the kitchen and bathroom. This house was an exercise in compartmentalisation. Six years ago, Amelia had closed the doors on the rooms she no longer needed. When those doors had closed, it was as though she was drawing a line in the sand. That was then and this is now.

  Winter opened the door.

  38

  The main bedroom was twenty feet by fifteen feet, and larger than both Amelia’s and Nelson’s put together. Sharp October sunlight spilled through the windows, cutting bright angles on the wooden floorboards and the bed. There were no drapes, just an empty pole fixed to the wall above the window. The room was nothing like Winter had expected, but at the same time there were no real surprises. He’d expected a functional space, much like the bathroom and the kitchen, and this space definitely ticked that box. Where it differed was the way in which it was functional.

  Mendoza stepped into the room, but Winter held back. He needed a moment to get his head around what he was seeing. He’d witnessed his share of the bizarre over the years, and this was definitely bizarre.

  The focal point was the wall of tall mirrors. They were attached to the room’s longest wall, stretching from one end to the other, twenty feet of glass. The two large spotlights set up in the corners opposite the mirror wouldn’t have looked out of place on a fashion shoot or a film set. They were positioned so they shone down on the middle of the room.

  A small bookcase sat next to the head of the single bed and a freestanding clothes rail had been positioned near the foot. The placement of the bookcase was odd. Rather than being pushed flat against the wall, it was side-on to the bed so it jutted out into the room. There was no dresser, no closet, none of the things you’d expect to find in a bedroom. Seven naked plastic mannequins stood like sentries in a careful semicircle around the bed. Bald heads, closed mouth, blank staring eyes.

  Mendoza walked up to one of the mannequins and started examining it, her eyes moving from its head to its toes. She turned to Winter, a baffled expression on her face. ‘How do you even begin to make sense of this?’

  ‘Let’s start with the bed.’

  She gestured towards the mannequin. ‘But these are more interesting.’

  ‘And I’m betting that as a little girl you always ate your meat before your vegetables.’

  Mendoza flashed him a brief smile.

  ‘You define a bedroom with the bed,’ he went on. ‘A big double bed for mom and dad, singles for the kids, and bunks for the twins. Now, a room this big and this bright, surrounded with all of this wood, it makes sense to have a big king-sized bed. Something substantial built from pine or oak. Something that makes a statement and works the space.’ He gestured towards the single bed. ‘You’re not going to have something like that.’

  ‘Amelia slept alone so she didn’t need the space. There’s no mystery here. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.’

  ‘No I’m not. The big deal is that she doesn’t view this as a bedroom. You do, because it’s on the second floor, and it’s in a room next to the other two bedrooms, and it has a bed in it. Ergo, a bedroom.’

  ‘Okay, so what does she view it as?’

  Winter circled the room twice, then walked up to the mirrored wall and put his gloved hand on the glass. He tilted his head to the left and looked along the surface of the mirror, tilted it to the right. The mirror was perfectly flat, the joins as good as you were going to get. There wasn’t a single smudge, which meant that it had been cleaned recently. And it was probably cleaned regularly, too.

  ‘This was installed professionally, and I’m betting it cost ten times as much as the bed.’

  Mendoza came over and stood next to him. She studied her reflection for a moment, then straightened the sunglasses on top of her head and tightened her ponytail.

  ‘This defines the room,’ he said. ‘So, if Amelia doesn’t view this as a bedroom what does she view it as? Or let me put it another way. Where have you seen a mirror like this before? The wood floor? Good lighting?’

  Mendoza turned in a tight circle, studying the room. ‘A dance studio?’ Winter nodded and she added, ‘Why?’

  ‘Dancing is movement elevated to an art form. She’s practising moving.’

  ‘But why would she do that?’

  Winter looked at the mannequins, then looked back at the mirror. Mannequins, mirror, mannequins, mirror. He shut his eyes and imagined Amelia was in here. Perhaps she was wearing the platinum-blonde wig, or maybe the black pixie wig she’d worn when she checked in to Myrtle House. The one thing he was certain of was that she wouldn’t have her own hair show
ing. He imagined her parading up and down in front of the mirrors, and asked himself why she’d do that. What was she trying to achieve? The reason wasn’t vanity. She wasn’t parading for gratification, she was parading for a purpose. But what was that purpose?

  Because the room was so sparse, it held little in the way of clues. This was Amelia’s sanctuary, the place she felt safe, yet there was no real sense of her personality here. The spartan feel of the room reminded Winter of the bedrooms further along the hall. It also reminded him of a monk’s cell. This was somewhere you came to reflect and think and get away from the distractions of the world. It was a place where the ego had been stripped completely away and left at the door.

  But when the ego was erased, what did that leave?

  Winter glanced over at the nearest mannequin and had a partial answer. Strip away the ego and you were left with a blank canvas. Like a mannequin. And what did you do with mannequins? You dressed them up and created snapshot personalities for them, and you posed them in shop windows in order to tell a story.

  ‘So what story are you trying to tell me?’ he whispered, echoing the question Clarke had asked last night. He looked over at the mannequins, a quick glance for each one, and the question in his mind changed subtly, singular becoming plural. ‘What stories are you trying to tell?’

  He did another slow circuit of the room and stopped at the clothes rail. Empty hangers were interspersed amongst the ones that held clothes. They jagged out at odd angles, like someone had left in a hurry grabbing the first thing that came to hand. He ran a gloved hand across the clothes, rattling the hangers and making the fabric shift and shiver.

  There was a pale pink dress, a black leather skirt, low-cut tops, T-shirts, a couple of pairs of jeans. Female clothes. Feminine clothes. A rack beneath the rail held footwear: sandals, pumps, a pair of suede ankle boots. He couldn’t see the Converse sneakers she’d had on at the diner, but there was plenty of empty space on the bottom of the rack, so maybe that’s what she was currently wearing. The wire basket next to the shoe rack contained underwear that was practical rather than sexy. No lace, just cotton. Winter picked up a bra and read the label. He frowned. What was written there didn’t make sense. He picked up another one, read the label, frowned again.

  ‘This can’t be right. No way was Amelia a 34C. She was flat chested.’

  Mendoza took the bra from him and checked the label. She glanced down into the basket. ‘They’re all the same size,’ she confirmed. ‘So what? She strapped her breasts down?’

  Winter closed his eyes and pictured Amelia in the diner. Then he pictured her in his bedroom last night. He opened his eyes and glanced over at the clothes rail and another piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

  ‘I assumed she was flat chested because she’s so thin, but I was wrong. That’s the reason she was wearing a leather jacket that was a couple of sizes too big. She was disguising her real shape.’ He nodded towards the clothes rail. ‘She clearly likes to dress in feminine clothes, yet both times I’ve seen her she was dressed more like a man. And on both occasions she was wearing the exact same clothes. Same sneakers, same leather jacket, same jeans.’

  ‘And that’s significant?’

  Winter smiled for the first time since entering the house. ‘Damn right. She’s wearing fancy dress.’

  Mendoza moved next to him and pushed aside the clothes on the rail with a gloved finger. ‘What? Like Halloween?’

  ‘Exactly like Halloween. If you want to dress up as Dracula you go to a fancy-dress shop and they’ll give you a black cape with a red silk lining, a fancy waistcoat, and a set of pointy plastic teeth. You put those on, you become Dracula for the night. So Amelia puts on a wig and inserts her coloured contact lenses and puts on her jeans and sneakers and that baggy leather jacket, and she becomes a completely different person. I bet that if you looked under the jacket, you’d find that she was wearing the same jumper and top on both nights, because that’s how she designed the disguise.’

  Mendoza nodded slowly then walked over to the nearest mannequin. ‘Okay, moving on to these. There must be a reason why they’re arranged like this. They were the last thing she saw before she went to sleep, and the first thing she saw when she woke up. That means they’re important to her. The way they’re positioned around the bed, it’s almost like they’re guarding her while she’s asleep. Although, how that might work, I’ve got no idea. Any normal person trying to sleep here would end up having nightmares.’

  Winter walked over to the bed and sat down, looking for a different perspective. Finding it. He shook his head. ‘They’re not guarding her. If they were, their eyes would all be aimed towards the pillow. Three of them aren’t even looking at the bed.’ He did a slow sweep from left to right, taking in the mannequins one at a time, and saw something that made him smile. ‘Come over here a second. I want you to take another look at the mannequins and tell me what connects them.’

  Mendoza sat down next to him, her gaze falling on each mannequin in turn. Winter could tell by her expression that she just wasn’t getting it. And then she did.

  ‘The body shapes are identical,’ she said. ‘34C right?’

  Winter stood up and pointed a yellow glove finger at the nearest mannequin. ‘This is what Amelia looks like.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain why they’re arranged like this.’

  Winter did a slow circuit of the room. As he walked, he tried to imagine himself into Amelia’s shoes. He could see her in the baggy leather jacket, jeans and sneakers, posing in front of the mirror, examining the way she moved, the way she carried herself, the way she gestured, imagining that she had become another person.

  ‘The outfit she wore at the diner doesn’t belong on the clothes rail,’ he said finally. ‘It’s too precious for that. Too special. She puts it on display where she can see it. That’s why the mannequins are positioned this way. They’re not watching her. She’s watching them. She dresses them up in her special clothes then lies in bed admiring them.’

  ‘And the reason she has seven mannequins is because the outfit you saw her in last night isn’t her only disguise. She actually has seven of them.’

  ‘Something else we need to bear in mind here is that these are more than just disguises, Mendoza, they’re personalities for her to inhabit. It’s like a little girl playing dressing-up, but taken to its ultimate conclusion. She’s not just trying to look the part, she wants to own that part. To be that person.’

  ‘Like a method actor?’

  ‘Yeah, just like a method actor.’

  Winter crouched down in front of the empty bookcase. There were a number of odd things about the picture being presented here, but this was perhaps the most incongruous. In its own way, it was even odder than the mannequins. At least with those, he could see a reason for them being here. This bookcase he couldn’t see any reason for whatsoever.

  He leaned in closer to get a better look. It was three feet high and made from pine. Solid wood rather than laminate. This wasn’t a cheap flat-pack piece of furniture, it had been handmade. Someone had spent time building this. They’d cut the wood, sanded it and assembled it. And they’d taken pride in how the end result turned out. He ran a finger over the shelves. No dust. The small dark rectangular patch on the top was roughly six inches by four inches. Over the years the sun had faded the wood, but it hadn’t touched this part. Clearly something had been covering it, but what?

  ‘What’s this bookcase all about?’ Winter asked. ‘Because it sure as hell wasn’t used for keeping books on.’

  ‘Maybe there was nothing on it.’

  ‘No way. Everything in this room is here for a reason. If it wasn’t being used, it wouldn’t be here.’

  Winter took a step back and studied the bookcase for a moment. Then he moved to the bed and lay down. From this angle the top shelf was at eye level. The bookcase was close enough to reach out and touch. Whatever this was for, it was important enough for Amelia to want to keep it close. And, like
the mannequins, it was important enough for it to be the last thing she saw before she went to sleep. Mendoza came over to join him. She batted his feet away to make a space and sat down at the end of the bed. She studied the bookcase for a moment, eyes moving from top to bottom.

  ‘This looks old. It also looks more like the sort of thing you’d find in a kids’ room.’ She pointed to the dark patch of wood on the top of the bookcase. ‘What do you think caused this?’

  ‘No idea, but whatever it was, it was important enough to have pride of place.’

  Winter stood up, went back over to the rail and ran a gloved hand over the clothes. The house was cool but his hands were sweating inside the rubber. He glanced around the room, his eyes moving from the mirror to the mannequins, then back to the free-standing clothes rail.

  ‘So who exactly are we looking for here?’ Mendoza asked him. ‘We’ve come across two versions of her so far. The blonde, and the black-haired woman who checked in to the guesthouse. But what about the other five? Because that’s the problem here, isn’t it? We’re hunting a chameleon.’ She paused. ‘You know something? It’s a shame that your inner psychopath can’t just tell us where she is. That would make life a whole lot easier.’

  Winter laughed. ‘It would.’

  ‘Well, if he does come up with anything, I want to know about it.’

  ‘I’m hearing you.’

  Winter got up and walked over to the window. He looked out at the back yard, and his inner psychopath started shouting.

  39

  ‘Mendoza!’

  Winter stood staring out the window, not daring to move in case what he was seeing suddenly disappeared. He heard Mendoza’s shoes clomping over the wood, then she was standing beside him.

  ‘Do you see it?’

  He didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to turn around in case it somehow changed things. Not until he had confirmation that she was seeing this, too.