The Vigilantes Collection

by Lake, Keri

  The younger voice I’d heard earlier spoke from behind the wall. “I’ll let the boys at the station know. Keep an eye out for calls.”

  “You find her.” The raspy voice slid down my spine, sounding closer than the first. “Bring her back to the club. We’ll have some fun with her first.”

  I squinted my eyes, willing them away in a silent prayer.

  An erratic bounce of light, followed by the sound of their boots twisting on gravel, signaled their retreat.

  Expelling a long, shaky breath, my muscles sagging, I ran a trembling hand across my damp forehead.

  I’d gotten away.

  Swinging my pack around to the front, I searched for the small change purse I kept clipped to the zipper and held my bus fare back.

  It’d gone. Fallen off. Maybe when I’d thrown the pack out the window. Maybe inside the building.

  Tendrils of fear crawled beneath my skin, as it occurred to me that my student identification was inside it.

  I’d never felt an ice-cold grip squeeze the breath out of my lungs, until I turned around, and actually contemplated going back for it.

  2

  Lucy

  “Craig! Open up!” Thank God Craig lived alone, or I’d have felt like shit for the racket I made, as I stood on his front porch, pounding on his door, too rattled to go home. With my body shivering, only shifting on my feet kept me from breaking into a full-fledged panic attack.

  Whether the man I'd seen with the badge was really a cop, or not, I couldn’t risk doing the right thing and reporting the body, not while his words played over and over in my head.

  I’ll let the boys at the station know. Keep an eye out for calls.

  At the narrow crack in the door, I pushed through, storming past Craig into his small living room, with its single couch, sheets for curtains, and a boxy television propped in the corner.

  “What the hell, Lucy? Is everything okay?”

  I'd met Craig on campus a few years back, both of us having taken a religious studies class, of all things. My mother would’ve called it an act of God that he’d come into my life, and probably would’ve convinced me to marry him, a tune she’d have changed real quick, though, had I mentioned he was gay. Bisexual, actually, but mostly attracted to men. He happened to be the only friend, the only person on the planet, I could possibly sit down with to confess what I’d seen.

  The only one I knew who wouldn’t hand my ass over to the cops.

  Shaking my head frantically, I stood with my hands on my hips. “No. Definitely not okay. No.”

  “What happened?” He grabbed my hand and guided me to the couch. “Sit. Tell me what happened.” The softness of his hand trailing down my face brought my eyes to his. “Fuck, you look pale.”

  Falling onto the worn cushions, I rubbed a shaky hand across my forehead. How would I start? How could I tell him what I’d seen, when I still didn’t believe any of it to be real. “Craig … when you …” Jesus, I couldn’t keep my hands from trembling. Nausea gurgled inside my gut. “Oh, God. Do you have—” Slapping my hand over my mouth had me breathing hard through my nose, and his eyes widened for one second before he leapt from the couch and snatched the waste basket from beside his desk. Before I could stop it, I bent forward and threw up all over crumpled bits of paper and a Pop Tart wrapper.

  Craig’s hand stroked the back of my head, and I swore, at that moment, I’d make it up to him and be a better friend. All the one-sided dump-buddy crap I’d been pulling, bitching about my shit life, not returning his calls would end. “I swear, Craig. From now on, I’m here for you. Whether its boyfriends, or cock-rings, or whatever else you need to talk about, I’m here.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  I took a deep breath and pushed away the wastebasket. “I saw something.”

  “While shooting?”

  I gave a nod, forcing down the dry swallow in my throat.

  As if it was nothing, he lifted the bag up from the basket and crossed over to the kitchen, where he chucked it into the bigger trash bin. Adjacent to the trashcan stood the small refrigerator, from where he grabbed a bottle of water, which he handed off to me as he returned to my side.

  Cracking the cap, I turned it left, right, left. Damn quirks wouldn’t leave me alone even when my whole system had been thrown off kilter. I sipped the water to get the nasty taste of vomit out of my mouth, then took a deep breath. “A group of four or five. I thought they were scrappers, at first, so I stayed low. But they … they dumped a body.” I flinched at the replay as it blasted through my head, and a quick glance at his coffee table had the pack of smokes there calling out to me. “Can I steal one of these?” I didn’t smoke regularly. Only when my nerves were so fucking rattled I didn’t know what else to do with my hands.

  “Yeah, sure, I need one, too.” He lifted the Zippo and lit the end of the cigarette that shook with my trembling fingers, before lighting one for himself and crossing his legs. “A body? Are you shitting me? Anyone you know, or had seen before?”

  “No. I was going to call the cops, but one of the men had a badge. I saw it on his belt clip. He said he’d tell his boys to look out for calls.” Pressing my hands to my temples, I rocked forward then back, fingers of my free hand threaded through my hair. “I wanted to call the police. I wanted to do the right thing.” I squeezed the handful of hair and squinted. “I think they have my ID, Craig. They might know my face.”

  “Hey, hey. Listen to me. You can’t call the police, okay? This body … you’re sure it was dead?”

  “Um … pretty sure, yeah. It was … in parts.” I choked out the last word on panting breaths and grimaced at the cold and callous way they’d just dumped her into the drain. “They … cut her up.” Staring off transported me to what I imagined were final moments of the woman’s life, with the four men threatening to cut her—with what? A knife? Chainsaw? Jesus, did she die first? Maybe they’d strangled her. “She must’ve been so scared.” I dug my fingers into my hair, blinking back the visuals. “They saw me.” Bile crept up my throat again, and I swallowed it back. “They saw me taking pictures, and they know I saw them. I don’t know what to do, Craig.”

  “Look, I have a contact for the Detroit Police. I know a guy, who knows a guy, kind of thing. Where did you say this was?”

  “Please don’t give out any information on me. I’m already on the DPD’s shit-list for that last run at Packard.”

  His lip quirked. “Yeah, but those were some pretty damn good shots.”

  Ignoring his comment, I took another shaky drag. “I have video. Of it.” I raised my hand as intrigue lit his eyes. “Don’t ask me to show it to you.” No way I’d watch it again. I wanted to strip my camera of it, but I owed it to the woman on film to save it.

  “I can pass, it along if you want.”

  “What if they … detect that it's mine? The meta data.”

  “We can change the meta data, if you want.” Smoke curled from his mouth, and he waved the plume away. “Now, where did you say this was?”

  “It was the old Slaughterhouse. Boiler room. In the basement.”

  “Holy shit, you’re a bold woman.” He shook his head. “Can’t believe you took on the Slaughterhouse on your own.”

  “They dumped the body in the … drain.” Like being punched in the gut, I grimaced, holding my hand across my stomach in case I hurled again.

  “I should’ve never asked you to do this. I knew I shouldn’t have asked.” His rub to my back helped settle my stomach. “I’ll take care of this. Don’t worry.”

  I took a deep breath. “Thank you.” I frowned as something else came to mind. “Craig … you ever see the tattoos with a seven in a circle?”

  The warmth in his eyes dissipated into something stark and cold, as his brow furrowed and a mask of seriousness crossed his face. “Where did you see it?”

  “The men … two of them had the same tattoo. Just something I found odd. I thought maybe it was Seven Mile’s gang sign, or something.” I’d have m
entioned that I’d seen the same tattoo on the cop, as well, but the dilating of Craig's pupils and the crimp of his lip had my hairs standing.

  “It’s a club. Seventh Circle is an underground club for people who like some pretty dark and twisted shit.” He lodged both hands into his hair, giving me a momentary spaz of tension while watching the cigarette stick up from his fingers. “Jesus, Lucy. You only saw one body dumped there?”

  At my nod, he shot up off the couch. “You’re fucking lucky to be alive!” His pacing had the churning in my stomach going again. Craig never paced. Never looked nervous, but, right then, he did both. He grabbed his laptop from the desk and plopped beside me once again. “I just did an editorial piece on this for the Muckraker last summer.”

  “I never saw it.”

  “I never published it. I’ve investigated some crazy shit, as you know, but nothing like this.”

  “So, what is it?”

  “Seventh Circle is a website on the darknet,” he explained as he typed. “The owner is completely anonymous. He goes by the name of Pasák, which translates into Pimp.”

  I knew that. My mother was Slovak, and I’d grown up speaking it as a second language in my house.

  “Feds can’t bust it because their levels of security are insane.” The intensity in his voice tugged the hairs on the back of my neck. “But they seem to be torture porn and gang rape enthusiasts.”

  My body went cold as crystals of ice branched from my spine. “What?”

  “They post videos of men breaking into women’s homes, then torturing and raping them for hours on end.”

  “It’s real? I mean, it’s not staged?”

  “It doesn’t appear to be.” He twisted his computer toward me.

  The homepage of the website was fairly benign—no previews of the videos, thank God. My stomach had already had enough of that. On the screen, though, was the symbol, the tattoo I’d seen on the men, smack in the center of the page.

  My muscles slackened, and I swallowed a gulp.

  “It’s horrible shit, Lucy. Stay away from this. Got me? Stay away.” After rubbing a hand down his face, he shook his head. “Ordinarily, I’d be thrilled with the kind of evidence you scored. You know I’m not one to back down from a story. But we’re not talking about some dirty texts between the mayor and his Chief of Staff, here. This is some crazy shit.”

  “All of them?” The numb sensation persisted, and I nearly dropped my still-burning cigarette. “I mean, all the ones with the tattoos, they’re in this club?”

  “Possibly. It’s very exclusive. Not much is known about how, exactly, they operate, or who’s involved.” He waved in my periphery, interrupting my intense study of the symbol on the screen. “Again, you’re lucky to be alive. Leave this shit alone. Stay out of the ruins for a bit, okay?”

  How could I? Craig had just unlocked a whole new level of curiosity. I had to know more about the site. Who was involved? Why did they do it?

  A few years back, my best friend had died in a similar fashion. Men had broken into her home and raped her. Had she been a victim of the same brutal club?

  For months after her death, I'd put myself on a quest to find answers—talking to the investigator, DeMarcus Corley, until they'd slammed the case shut with no explanation or resolution. The case had turned cold, and my hopes of ever knowing the truth crumbled. My nosey digging around had been how I came to work gigs for the Muckraker.

  “You still look a little shaken. You wanna crash here?”

  “Do you mind? Maybe just tonight. I don’t want to go back to my place alone.”

  “You bet. As long as you need.” His brow crinkled. “One thing … when did I ever talk about cock-rings?”

  “Two months ago. You called me, high on something. Or drunk. I hung up on you.” I grinned at the memory, a little sheepish considering he’d just watched last night’s dinner spew from my mouth. “To be fair, it was later than it is now. And I think you told me you wanted to try a threesome with me.”

  “Ah. Well, in that case, I’ll try to keep the drunk dialing to a minimum.”

  Reaching out, I gave him a hug, taking in his spicy scent of incense under notes of cigarette smoke. “Thank you.”

  3

  Jase

  Eleven months earlier …

  I hated Devil’s Night.

  Maybe turning twenty-five had dulled my sense of mischief, but the days of setting fire to shit just seemed dumb. I’d moved on to bigger and better feats of adventure, so it bothered me that I still had to deal with the little bastards who liked to wreak havoc in my grandma’s neighborhood.

  Reed sat in the passenger seat beside me, as I drove down the side street in my beat-up Grand Prix. I’d done time for theft, so I kept myself low key, by driving cars that didn’t do much for my game—not that I planned to pick up a woman for the night.

  Particularly on Devil’s Night.

  For years, my paternal grandmother, Maria, had lived in a rundown part of Detroit’s upper east side. It wasn’t that she happened to be the only white-skinned old lady in the neighborhood that bothered me, because the area had always been mostly black, made up of decent folk who watched out for her. It was that, in the last decade, with the shift in housing, it’d become overrun by thugs and gangsta-types, riddled with drug dealers and crack addicts. The homes that'd once belonged to factory workers, like my grandpop, decent middleclass families had, over time, gone to hell with their overgrown lawns and boarded-up windows. In between the houses stood wide plots of open space, littered with burnt remains that’d been set on fire, and tall weeds hiding the garbage that’d been dumped there.

  My grandfather had kept his lawn pristine, and would bitch at the neighborhood kids—particularly my friend, Dejuan Harvey, who always crossed the yard to the front door when he’d come over to play ball. I later found out that a stray bullet had killed Dejuan in a drive-by shooting about six years back.

  Still, despite the drive-by’s and police raids, Maria refused to leave, which left my younger brother Reed and I forced to stay with her every Devil’s Night, when all the hood-rats came out of their holes to raise some hell.

  As I pulled into the driveway, Reed flicked his cigarette butt out the window, onto the adjacent lawn. “Watch that shit, man. Don’t need the weeds catching fire.”

  “Maybe Maria’d move the fuck out of here if shit burned down next door.” Reed’s deep, somber voice always carried like an ominous cloud. Didn’t help that the kid wore the dark and disturbed look, with his lip piercing and tattoos on his face. His sandy brown hair came from our mother, cut into a crazy mop of waves that always reminded me of Heath Ledger.

  I took after our dad, with dark hair and a much bigger build.

  “Relax. It’s only one night.” I glanced to side, catching the jerk of Reed’s head and the bob of his neck as he popped a couple of pills. Oxycontin, no doubt. His drug of choice. “It’s the least we can do.”

  Reed and I had come to live with our grandmother about nine years back, when my mom had lost custody of us, and if not for her, we’d have followed our father’s footsteps and died in prison. We wouldn't have been able to help it.

  Everyone had a story, but ours was carved in bone and written in blood. Born to a cop killer, we'd never stood a chance of becoming anything in life. First time I’d ever stolen and gotten caught, I should’ve received a warning, gotten fined, maybe paid restitution, or some shit, but instead the court sent me to weekend detention on a first offense, for stealing a bottle of fucking cologne at a department store.

  At some point, shit got tight, and the bank began its relentless pursuit of late payments from Maria. Something'd had to be done.

  Maria had done her best to watch out for us, so we decided to watch out for her in return, by giving her cash that, as far as she knew, we’d earned while working on cars. We managed to get by, until the law finally caught up with me at the ripe age of twenty, and I was sent to prison on felony charges of grand theft.


  “I’m not saying I’m not grateful for what she’s done.” Reed sniffed, his hand already on the door handle. “Just saying I hate coming back to this place.”

  “Why?” I swore the kid would never be settled anywhere he lived. About the only time in our lives we’d ever experienced a state of ‘normal’ was when living with Maria.

  “Nothin’,” he said, opening the door

  As he slid out of the seat, I gripped his wrist. “'The fuck’s your problem, man? You’ve been acting weird the last couple of weeks.”

  Twisting his wrist, he broke from my grasp, and without saying a word, he exited the vehicle.

  I cut the engine and followed after him, and before I'd spent even a second on the front porch, the door flew open to Maria, standing in jeans and a black sweater. Thick black hair, cut to a bob just below her ears, and stern brown eyes made her look tough enough, but the soft smile, with perfect white teeth, that stretched across her face gave away her greatest talent—making me feel at home. Though she was pushing sixty-five, she didn’t look a day over fifty.

  “My boys,” she said, cupping our faces as she planted kisses on our cheeks. “What the hell took so long? I’ve had dinner cooked and ready for a half hour.”

  “You know Reed. Always trying to look fancy, and shit.” I trailed after my brother into the house, past the small, boxy living room on the left, chuckling when he shot a glare over his shoulder.

  The house always smelled like something baking, and my stomach growled at the savory meat and spice scent drifting from the kitchen.

  “All right, I didn’t know what kind of beer to get you, so I got the good stuff.” Maria scurried ahead of us and pulled two Sam Adams from the refrigerator.

  Plopping into his chair, Reed’s eyelids hung low like the pills had kicked in already. “She went all out.”

  “You didn’t have to make us dinner.” I took my seat next to Reed, and twisted the bottle of beer around. “Octoberfest?”