Blood Indulgence: a serial killer thriller (Phineas and Liam Book 3)

by V. J. Chambers

  “You didn’t tell her you had a boyfriend?”

  “It didn’t come up,” said Liam.

  “You are such a jackass, do you know that?”

  “Yeah, I’m aware,” Liam muttered.

  LIAM stood in the opening to Dawson’s cubicle at her office at the CCPD station. “So,” he said, “this does have to do with the case, but it’s also a little weird and personal and awkward, and can we go somewhere to talk?”

  She squared her shoulders. “Yeah, okay, we should talk.”

  “It’s about the case,” said Liam. “I wouldn’t be pushing otherwise. I’d respect your wishes. I swear.”

  She motioned for him to back up. “Let’s go on a walk.”

  Yeah, he remembered she’d suggested that before, once, when he’d come to talk to her. Walking was casual, and it didn’t have to be recorded. Everything in an interrogation room was recorded. If it wasn’t, that was considered extremely suspicious. And her cubicle was close to a lot of other cubicles, so they could be overheard. There wasn’t a lot of privacy in a police station.

  He backed up.

  She exited the cubicle, pulling on a jacket. It was one of those chilly September days that heralded the coming of fall.

  They were wordless as they walked out of the station together.

  Outside, the sun was burning down, but it was a cold sun, and there was a cold breeze blowing as well.

  Liam shoved his hands into his pockets.

  Dawson zipped up her jacket and pulled the hood up over her ears.

  They set off down the sidewalk.

  They began speaking at the same time.

  “So, I guess I do need to tell you one thing,” said Dawson.

  “You remember when I said that being with you complicated things for me?” he said.

  They glanced at each other.

  Dawson took a deep breath. “We didn’t use a condom.”

  “The thing is, I’ve been seeing Ricky Hernandez for the past four or five months.”

  “And I don’t know how that didn’t happen. I’ll be honest, though, I don’t even have condoms. I should, I guess. I know that it would be a responsible thing to do, but I never think about that.”

  “It’s not serious,” he said. “Well, it’s kind of serious. I mean, I met his family and stuff, but I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, because it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is just that you know that things are going to be weird with the three of us, and that we need to try to keep it professional.”

  “But if you got me pregnant, I need you to understand that I’m keeping it.”

  He stopped walking. Wait, what?

  She’d been speaking, and he had only half been listening. It took him several seconds for the words she’d said to sink in.

  He immediately started walking again.

  She’d stopped, too. She waited.

  He caught up.

  They fell into step again.

  “What are you saying about Ricky?” she said.

  “Fuck,” he said. “I’m a piece of shit, aren’t I?” Why hadn’t he thought about condoms? “I’m sorry. I do have condoms. I should have… I just… I swear, for some reason I didn’t think about it.” It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Even though he hadn’t been divorced for an entire year, he and Belinda had stopped having sex a long time before the marriage broke up. But they hadn’t used condoms, anyway, because they were married, and they hadn’t been opposed to the idea of pregnancy, at least not at the beginning.

  And with Ricky, well, he knew that you were supposed to use condoms for oral sex, but no one ever did, and while they’d wrapped it up anytime there was penetration, that was a big production what with the lube and the stretching and everything else, and they didn’t do it super regularly.

  “You’re dating Ricky?” She turned to him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in a relationship when I came over?”

  Liam hunched into his jacket. “That was a big deal for you in why you detransitioned, wasn’t it? Having kids? So, yeah, of course you’d want… and I’m totally in support of whatever you decide, I mean, obviously. It’s your decision.”

  “Is Ricky really pissed at me?”

  “Can I… would you… I mean, would I be allowed to be part of this baby’s life? Because I know I’m a fuck-up, but I’m doing better. And I might have been a shitty stepfather to Madison when I was actually married to her mom, but since the divorce, we’ve really bonded, and I see her at least once a week, and I’m helping her with a project, and I think I could do it. Like, be a dad.” He paused. “Maybe.” He took his hands out of his pockets. “No, definitely. Very definitely.”

  She stopped walking again.

  He did too.

  She looked up at him. “I’m probably not pregnant.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Ricky. And he’s not really angry with you. I think he wants to castrate me, though. Which I deserve. Obviously, I deserve it. Don’t take that as proof that I haven’t changed. I’m not drinking anymore, and my production on my channel is way up. I really am doing better.”

  “I don’t think you’re a fuck-up, Liam.”

  He scratched the top of his head. “Well, that’s nice of you to say, but—”

  “It would be hypocritical of me,” she said. She started walking again. “I’m eating for him.”

  He fell into step with her. “What?”

  “I have to go see him, because I need him to help me find Destiny Worth, and he gets in my head. He tells me to buy food and then I…” Her voice lost strength. “I eat it and… describe it to him, and I can’t seem to stop.”

  Rage suddenly went through him. He felt a rush of something primal towards her, like he had to protect her. Which was funny, because she was the cop, and she was the one with the gun, and he had never protected her. He’d always needed her protection.

  She’s probably not pregnant, he reminded himself.

  “He wants to see me, right?” said Liam.

  Even if she is pregnant, she did not agree to allow you to be part of it, and she’d be stupid to trust you.

  “Would he tell you about Destiny if I come with you? If I see him?”

  She turned to look at him. “What? You said you never wanted to see him again.”

  “I’d do it for…for you,” he said. For our hypothetical unborn child, which you are sheltering with your body, which I don’t want anywhere near Phineas Slater.

  “Why? Because we fucked?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She shook her head at him, flummoxed.

  “That’s not weird. People get, you know, tender feelings developing after intimacy,” he said.

  “You feel tender towards me?”

  “Sure.” Why had the bottom gone out of his voice? Why was he thinking about the way her body had jerked against his fingers when he’d had them between her legs?

  She sucked in a shuddering breath and started walking again.

  He let her get several steps ahead of him before he started walking quick enough to catch up to her.

  Her voice was unsteady. “I thought you would hate me for… for violating your privacy with that video and for… taking advantage of you.”

  “You didn’t go seeking out that video,” he said. “You told me you shut it off. If I got a video of Finn like that coming to my inbox, I don’t know what I’d do. So, it’s shitty of me to blame you for that.”

  “But you must feel violated.”

  “You trying to talk me out of this or something? I thought you wanted to close this case.”

  “Oh, God, I want that more than anything, but…” She glanced at him. “What’s it going to do to you?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Will you?” Her voice was small. “I just… it might be in my best interest if I don’t screw your head up again, you know?”

  He swallowed. Wow, okay, that was a really weird feeling, some
idea that a woman—that a person—might depend on him? That two people might…?

  He liked it. It made his chest feel tight, and it made him feel good. He slung his arm around Dawson and pulled her body against his. “I will be fine,” he said firmly. “When can we go?”

  She relaxed against him. “Fuck, Liam.”

  They walked, bodies touching, and they were silent for a long time.

  But then, finally, she said, “You said that this had something to do with the case?”

  “THIS is Worth,” Dawson was saying. She was watching the video that Hernandez had found. They were all in an interrogation room at the station. “She made this.”

  “She’s not very good at video editing,” muttered Liam. “It’s all very choppy, and I don’t know why she keeps fading to black for so long. Probably made on Windows Movie Maker or something crappy.”

  “Yes, definitely,” said Hernandez sarcastically, “that’s the takeaway here.”

  “I’ll be quiet,” said Liam, shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “Well, what does it mean?” said Dawson. “I see that she’s using the Lola name, but instead of being LolaRose or LolaGem, she’s LolaDust. Why the change?”

  “Dust is grimmer,” said Hernandez.

  “Or it’s final,” said Dawson. “Maybe this is her big finale.”

  “Maybe it’s wishful thinking to assume she’s even close to done,” said Hernandez.

  “And using Emerson and Slater as the surname?”

  “Hyphenated, like they’re married,” said Hernandez.

  “She’s got some kind of thing with them,” said Dawson. “She calls them her ‘boys,’ when she emails me, and she seems to have made an assumption that I’ve filled some kind of role between them, you know? Her role?”

  “Fuck,” whispered Liam, looking pale.

  “I haven’t,” said Dawson, looking up at him.

  “Well, you two are fucking now,” said Hernandez. “Um, sorry, sleeping together.”

  “It was once,” said Dawson.

  “But it did happen after she sent you that video,” said Liam. “Like she pushed you into my arms.”

  “She’s not controlling me,” said Dawson, feeling panicked. She could not be under the influence of two psychopaths at once. She simply couldn’t.

  “Speaking of the video,” said Hernandez, taking his phone screen back from Dawson and moving through it. He handed it back.

  She uttered a little cry. “That’s…”

  “Yeah,” said Hernandez.

  “She published that on YouTube?”

  “It’s a threat,” said Hernandez. “She couldn’t put up the video in its entirety on YouTube, because it’s sexually explicit, and it would get taken down immediately. But YouTube is not the be-all, end-all of the internet.”

  “She can’t post a video of me and Finn together,” said Liam, and now he sounded panicked. “I can’t… we have to find her.”

  Dawson nodded at him. “We will. When we go see Slater this evening, he’ll give us what we need, and we’ll take her out.”

  “Wait a second, what?” said Hernandez, rounding on Liam. “Are you insane? You can’t go back to see that asshole.”

  “If it ends this—”

  “He’ll screw with your head again,” said Hernandez. “He knows all your weaknesses, Liam. You always said that you had to stay away from him. You always said he was like… an addiction or something. If you go back to him, it’ll open the door to all that temptation. You can’t see him.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Liam.

  Hernandez fixed a stony expression on Dawson. “You put him up to this. Did you seduce him so that you could destroy him?”

  “It was his idea to go,” said Dawson in a quiet voice.

  “Dawson needs me,” Liam said to Hernandez, his voice even. “She can’t fight him alone, and I’m not going to make her do that anymore. She and I, we’ll be strong together.” He gave her a reassuring nod.

  Dawson swallowed.

  “Look, we’re going to make a deal with him,” said Liam. “I go to see him, and he gives us information about Destiny.”

  “He’s not going to give you shit,” said Hernandez. “He’s going to play games with your head, and you’re going to end up at the bottom of a bottle before sunrise.”

  “No,” whispered Dawson. She shook her head. “I won’t let him, Ricky, I swear.”

  Hernandez looked back and forth between them. “You two ever think that maybe there’s a reason you stayed away from each other for so long? Even though you were both into each other, you knew it wasn’t smart to be together. But by all means, do the dumb thing. As long as we catch the psychos, anything goes, right? The highest form of success is sacrifice.” Then he grimaced. “Shit. Did I just say Destiny Worth’s catch phrase?”

  “Maybe we’re all a little screwed up by this case,” said Liam in a quiet voice. “All the more reason to end it, Ricky. It has to end.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  DAWSON felt powerful for the first time in a long time as she gazed at Slater across the small room at the prison. She didn’t sit down at the table with him. She stood at the door, across the room, her arms folded over her chest, and she stared him down.

  “You said you were bringing Liam.” Slater’s voice was rough.

  “He’s right outside the door,” she said.

  “Bullshit. You’re lying to me.”

  She leaned against the door, raising her voice. “Say, hi, Liam.”

  “Hello, Finn,” came the sound of Liam’s voice, muffled behind the door.

  Slater sat up straight, his entire body stiffening.

  Dawson smiled. “I’ll let him in, but first, you tell me where I can find Destiny Worth.”

  “He’s not out there,” said Slater. “You brought, like, a recording of his voice or something.”

  “Ask him something and see if he can respond spontaneously,” she said.

  Slater licked his lips, casting his gaze down as he considered. Then he looked up. “Uh, tell me about that pizza I made you eat freshman year.”

  A pause from the other side. “The one with the habanero peppers on it?”

  “Yeah,” said Slater, smiling.

  “It was hell. You’re a sadist.” But Liam sounded like he was smiling too.

  Slater chuckled.

  “Satisfied?” said Dawson.

  He turned back to her. “Uh, okay, fine. She has a place in Maryland. It’s in downtown Baltimore.”

  “Baltimore? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, it’s, um, on Bank Street,” he said.

  “She’s conducting her weird cult in the middle of one of the most populous cities in the United States and we haven’t been able to find her?” Actually, she wasn’t sure how closely they’d looked at the properties that the Worth family owned in cities. Maybe that had been an oversight on her part.

  “I don’t remember the number,” said Slater. “But you should be able to check that against your list, right? You can find it.”

  “You remember nothing about the street number?”

  “I think it started with a one. Let Liam in.”

  She took a deep breath. All right. She had what she’d come for. She turned and banged on the door.

  Outside, the waiting guard opened the door to let Liam in.

  He stepped into the doorway and locked eyes with Slater.

  There was a pause, and the air felt electric somehow.

  Liam stepped inside, never taking his eyes from Slater.

  The door shut behind them.

  Dawson felt cold all over.

  Liam was now drawn towards Slater like a magnet. She remembered the first time she’d brought Liam to visit Slater in jail. Then he’d been drunk and drugged, and he’d been like a shuffling zombie. This was somehow worse, Liam bright-eyed and sure, still moving eagerly towards Slater.

  Liam yanked out the chair opposite Slater and sat down. He set his hands on the table in front of hi
m.

  Slater’s shackled hands lurched across the expanse of the table’s surface. They stopped just short of reaching Liam. The chain wasn’t long enough.

  Liam licked his lips. Then he put his hands in Slater’s.

  Dawson jerked forward.

  She put a hand on Liam’s shoulder, standing behind him.

  Liam glanced up at her.

  “Liam,” said Slater in an urgent voice. “You have to help me.”

  Liam turned back to him. He entwined his fingers with Slater’s. “Fuck you, Finn,” he breathed.

  “I didn’t do this,” said Slater. “I never killed anyone until Destiny made me do it. You know me. You know that I was fine with having them be alive.”

  “With just rape, then,” said Liam quietly. “That’s your defense, Finn? You’re a rapist, not a murderer?”

  “It wasn’t really like rape,” said Slater. “They never even knew what happened to them. They weren’t even conscious when it happened, and they never got hurt.”

  Liam shook his head at the other man. “You have no grasp of what it is that you’ve done, do you? You can’t even fathom the massive amount of pain you’ve caused.”

  “Exactly,” said Slater. “Exactly, I’m not right in the head. I’m crazy. Certifiable. I need to be getting treatment. I told Haysle to help me, but she couldn’t, so you have to help me.”

  Liam just laughed, but he didn’t let go of Slater’s hands. “Why would I do anything for you?”

  “Because you feel it,” said Slater, lifting their entwined fingers. “Come on, Liam, tell me that you don’t miss me.”

  “Touching you makes something inside me feel soothed,” murmured Liam.

  “You see?”

  “No,” said Liam, pulling his hands back. “I don’t miss you.”

  “Liar,” said Slater.

  Liam stood up from the table. “Listen to me, Finn. Leave Haysle out of this, all right? No more with the food, okay? You need someone for that, I’m here.”

  Slater slowly lifted his gaze to Dawson, and then he looked back at Liam. “Well, well,” he breathed. “What’s going on between you two?”

  “Nothing,” said Dawson briskly, quite aware that this was all being recorded and that Captain Moore reviewed the footage. “And I’m fine, Liam. I definitely don’t need a knight in shining armor.”