What Happened To Lori - The Complete Epic (The Konrath Dark Thriller Collective Book 9)
Page 3
Living room. Empty.
Kitchen. Empty.
Bedroom. Empty.
Front porch.
Grim watched as Fabler talked to a woman. The view was distorted; Grim had opted for wide-angle fisheye lenses rather than cameras that could zoom, pan, and tilt, to avoid the mechanical noise. When the real heat started coming down, and it looked like Fabler would have his conviction overturned, Grim had installed six hidden cameras and microphones in and around the house, wirelessly connected to a brand new computer enclosed in the wall.
This particular camera was concealed in one of Lori’s hanging baskets, covered by a brown, dead fern. Grim activated the microphone and turned up the volume.
The woman appeared confused. She was holding something black, about the size of a soccer ball. “What is it?”
“A welding helmet.”
“What the hell is this for?”
“Welding.”
“The job requires welding?”
“No.”
“So what do you want me to do with it?”
“Put on the helmet. Strike the flare. Run around the house, using the light as a guide.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s part of the interview.”
“You’re insane.” She handed the helmet back and walked off.
Grim frowned at the screen. “Lady, you have no idea.”
This was the fifth or sixth woman that Grim had seen in the house. By listening in, Grim learned that Fabler had taken out a Craigslist ad. It had been easy to find online.
Live-in assistant wanted. $600 a week plus room and board. Female, between 30 and 35, 5’4” to 5’6”, 120 to 130 pounds, athletic, redhead, blue eyes, no exceptions. No sex or escorts or anything kinky. No nursing or homecare. No nanny or babysitting. Job involves manual labor, following directions, odd hours, and learning new skills. Military background a plus. Serious inquiries only. Text picture and qualifications.
Reading the ad made Grim’s stomach sour. He didn’t know for sure what Fabler was after, but he had a hunch. And it wasn’t good.
After the woman left, Grim watched Fabler walk back into the house, go into the bedroom, and do pull-ups off an overhead beam in the vaulted ceiling, made of logs like the rest of the cabin.
Fabler cranked out reps like a machine. Twenty. Thirty. Forty.
At one time, Grim would have been able to match him, pull-up for pull-up.
Memories of ten years ago pecked away at the edges of Grim’s psyche. Grim pushed back at the thoughts, keeping the pain at bay, focusing on Lori’s face so he could continue to nurse the hate.
He switched off the app, looked around his apartment. It was modest compared to the house he and Lori had grown up in. The house that her murderer, Fabler, now owned. Fabler had inherited two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a living room with fireplace, two baths, ten acres of wooded land.
Grim rented a single bedroom, single bath, with barely enough room in the kitchen to slice a loaf of French bread. The building sat in the ass-end of Wichita, where scenery consisted of strip malls and other similarly ugly apartment buildings.
The neighborhood lacked pleasing aesthetics, but inside Grim’s domicile the ugly got worse. The mess had piled up everywhere; fast food wrappers, empty beer cans, dirty clothing.
He glanced at Donny. Donny stared back, probably still wondering where his brothers went.
“I get it. You’re lonely. It’s on my to-do list.”
Grim almost straightened up the apartment. But couldn’t motivate.
Then he almost went to his closet to grab his barbells and do a few sets of lifts. But couldn’t motivate.
Besides, he reeked. It had been days since his last shower.
A weird chill overcame Grim. Like someone was staring at him. He almost looked around the room, but dismissed the feeling as paranoia.
Grim glanced at his aquarium again. Thirty gallons, only one lonely occupant.
“I’ll go to the pet store tomorrow, get more catfish.”
Donny didn’t answer. He slowly turned over, flipping upside-down; the fish equivalent of the middle finger.
Grim stretched, yawned, swatted away a fly, and hunted around to see if he had any booze left.
FABLER ○ July 20, 2017 ○ 10:33am
The local sporting goods store sold first aid kits, which would be serviceable if your medical emergency was limited to a bee sting, poison oak exposure, or a fish hook in the finger.
Fabler needed something more substantial.
Kits online were beefier, but still lacked some essential triage components. Separately, he had to purchase chest seals, clotting gauze, compression bandages, and combat tourniquets.
He also visited several veterinarian websites to find injectable lidocaine, syringes, sutures, and some broad-spectrum antibiotics: ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin, doxycycline, and cephalexin.
It was as good of a battlefield triage kit as he could make on his own.
Fabler compiled two of them.
FABLER ○ July 21, 2017 ○ 11:14am
This one seemed promising. Right look. Easily jogged around the house with the fifty pound backpack. Served in the Navy.
Fabler allowed some cautious optimism.
“Do you have a family?”
The applicant’s eyes narrowed. “How is that your business?”
“This job requires extreme focus. No distractions. Close family, significant others, children; they can get in the way.”
“I have… an elderly mother.”
“You’re close?”
“We talk every day.”
“You’re not what I’m looking for.” Fabler folded his arms. “Thank you for your time.”
The applicant folded her arms across her chest. “You know, I understand the push-ups and the running around the house. You want to make sure I’m fit. The flare thing with the welding mask was weird, but I’m guessing you have a reason. But these personal questions… you sound like a serial killer. I think I should go to the police, but I don’t even know your name.”
“My name is Fabler.” He stared, hard. “And the police already know about me.”
“What the hell is this job, anyway?”
“It’s a job that involves no attachments, and a lot more personal questions.”
She snorted. “Like what? You gonna ask me about my period next?”
Fabler didn’t answer.
The applicant waved Fabler off, then headed to her Jeep.
11:21pm
In the dream, Lori’s voice echoed with ethereal sadness. “I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you.”
She touched the side of her head, fingers dabbing at the blood. “So why did you kill me?”
Then Fabler awoke to a pillow damp with tears and a jaw clenched with an imprisoned scream.
GRIM ○ July 22, 2017 ○ 12:28pm
He no longer had access to police records, and Google yielded no hits. So Grim got on Facebook.
Social media confused him. Lots of people seeking validation from strangers by talking about themselves. He did some searches, couldn’t find what he needed, and similarly failed on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Made sense. People who had a shady past didn’t want that past to come looking for them on the World Wide Web.
Grim pushed away from his computer, swatted at a fly circling his head, and walked over to the thirty gallon aquarium set up next to the kitchen.
Alan, Wayne, Merrill, and Jay were gone. Only Donny remained. Four inches long, orange with brown spots, a tear-shaped body, long whiskers.
The catfish hovered above his little stone castle, staring at the plastic treasure chest that opened every few seconds, releasing oxygen bubbles.
Lori and Fabler had bought Grim the aquarium, and five fish, shortly before she disappeared. A birthday present. But even though Grim fed them on schedule, and the tank was the only thing in the house he routinely cleaned, the Osmonds began to die weeks after they arrived.
He tested his water regularly. Changed the filters. Even bought a snail to eat the algae.
But Marie the snail kicked the bucket, like Alan, Wayne, Merrill, and Jay.
Grim’s mind, uncomfortably sober, drifted back to his 11 Bravo days, to something Fabler had told him.
“When your best isn’t good enough, get better.”
Good advice, from an awful human being. But being reminded of the Army gave Grim an idea. He’d been trying to track down an old acquaintance with some special skills.
Grim picked up his cell phone, aware that Donny looked on. Silently judging.
PRESLEY ○ July 24, 2017 ○ 5:22pm ○ 1500916974
Live-in assistant wanted. $600 a week plus room and board. Female, between 30 and 35, 5’4” to 5’6”, 120 to 130 pounds, athletic, redhead, blue eyes. No sex or escorts or anything kinky. No nursing or homecare. No nanny or babysitting. Job involves manual labor, following directions, odd hours, and learning new skills. Extreme focus required, so no close family, significant others, or children. Military background a plus. Serious inquiries only. Text picture and qualifications.
Marna Presley read the ad three times, and it got creepier each time she read it.
The job didn’t fit her, and she didn’t fit the job. Presley logged in at 37 years old, 5’7”, weighed 142, with brown eyes and hair. And those were just the physical requirements. There was plenty more in the ad that didn’t match up.
But a job was a job.
She thought:
Plus, she needed to lay low for a while. And out-of-state was the best way to do that.
Presley went into her closet, digging out the make-up case. In it, she had over a dozen pairs of colored contact lenses. She found some in dark blue, then took them into the bathroom and set them on the sink. Underneath the basin, in the cabinet, were an assortment of hair dyes and bleaches. She picked out a color called Summer Orange, and held the box up to her face, squinting into the mirror. It was a tad light for her eyebrows, but if she did some thinning out maybe she could avoid coloring them.
No close family, significant others, or children…
Presley could think of one answer.
She opened up the box.
FABLER ○ July 25, 2017 ○ 11:46am
Fabler squinted at her.
The woman’s appearance wasn’t quite right. A little too tall. A little too thick. But the thickness wasn’t flab. Presley had circled the house with a fifty pound pack almost as fast as Fabler could do it, and she’d knocked out fifty push-ups like a machine.
“Family?”
“None.”
“When was the last time you had your period?”
Presley didn’t flinch. “I’m on it right now. Did you want to check?”
Fabler searched the woman’s face, trying to discern sarcasm from truth.
“Your height and weight.” He phrased the question like an order.
She hesitated. “Five-seven. One forty-two.”
A little out of range, but points for telling the truth.
“Hips, waist, chest?”
“Thirty-five, twenty-seven, thirty-seven.”
Not as curvy as Fabler wanted. Not as attractive as Lori.
“Dating anyone?”
“Not in over a year.”
“What happened?”
Presley blinked. “My last girlfriend cheated on me. I left her.”
“How long did you serve?”
“My enlistment was for five years. I didn’t re-up.”
“Did you happen to bring your DD-214?”
“Yes.”
“My Ready Reserve was over in 2006. Hooah.”
Hooah was an Army thing, basically meaning everything but no. Even if a civilian knew that, they didn’t say it right.
Presley said it right. She was a soldier, no need to check her bona fides.
“You’re how old?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“And your MOS?”
“12 Kilo. You know it?”
Fabler shook his head.
“Army plumber.”
“Was that your trade before enlisting?”
“My father’s. I worked for him when I was younger.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Dead.”
“Any health problems?”
“No.”
“Are you on any prescription medication?”
“No.”
Fabler made his decision.
“When can you start?”
PRESLEY ○ 11:46am
Presley kept eye contact with him as she did her push-ups. Fifty was no problem. They didn’t get difficult until eighty or ninety.
Fabler stared, his face expressionless. He wasn’t a bad looking guy; square-jawed, tall, fit. But his eyes were off. Like he was somewhere else, rather than in the moment.
She was used to that expression. Soldiers had it. Convicts had it. Survivors had it.
When she finished her fifty, he made her circle the house again. A ruck march with a fifty pound backpack. She passed a large section of dead grass that formed almost a perfect circle. Presley asked Fabler if a fire had caused the damage, and he’d cryptically answered, “No. Something worse.”
He didn’t elaborate. She didn’t push.
The third time around the house, Presley had to wear a welding mask and hold a road flare in front of her. The mask eliminated almost all light except the bright, magnesium flame, and she had to navigate more
by memory than sight.
It was disconcerting. Made even more so because Fabler jogged behind her, practically breathing down her neck.
Presley made it without tripping over anything, and they continued the interview on his back porch. He sat on a chainsawed section of log. Presley sat across from him, on the bench of a picnic table.
“Family?”
She lied without flinching. “None.”
“When was the last time you had your period?”
“Your height and weight.”
“Hips, waist, chest?”
Presley remained cool.
Fabler’s gaze changed. Less detached, more scrutiny. Presley preferred him detached. His attentiveness made her uncomfortable.
He lowered his voice. “Dating anyone?”
“Not in over a year.”
“What happened?”
Presley blinked. “My last girlfriend cheated on me. I left her.”
“How long did you serve?”
“My enlistment was for five years. I didn’t re-up.”
“Did you happen to bring your DD-214?”
“Yes.”
Presley waited for the order to show her discharge papers, but Fabler didn’t pursue it.
“When did your IRR end?”
“My Ready Reserve was over in 2006.”
“You’re how old?”
She kept up the honesty streak. “Thirty-seven.”
“And what was your MOS?”
Presley picked something harmless. She mixed the lie with truth, in case Fabler tested her by making her sweat a pipe. “12 Kilo. You know it?”
Fabler shook his head.