Killman Creek

by Rachel Caine

  "Uh-huh," Lustig says. "And?"

  "Absalom sold me the video. I sold stuff to them, they sold stuff to me. You know. A market exchange."

  "How?"

  Suffolk lifts one shoulder and lets it fall, like a sulky kid. "I paid in Bitcoin. That got me a link."

  "So you're not part of Absalom. You're just a customer."

  "And a supplier." He gives Lustig a sudden, unsettling grin. "I get discounts."

  "What do you supply?"

  "You know." He shrugs again. "Retouched photos. Edited videos. Commission stuff."

  "We'll have a long talk about that in a bit, but let's keep moving. So who do you know in Absalom, then?" Another shrug. No answer. "How about the name Merritt Van Der Wal? You know him?"

  "Nope."

  "Napier Jenkins?" I've never heard either of these names, but I can only assume that he's making them up . . . or he already uncovered more Absalom members without us. That's probable.

  "No."

  "How about Lancel Graham?"

  The hesitation gives Suffolk away. He hadn't expected that name, and of course he knows it. We all know it. I flinch all over at the name, but I keep my focus on Suffolk. "Don't know him, either."

  He should. That name, of all of them, absolutely ought to ring a very loud bell for him.

  "Carl, I'm disappointed in you. I know you know Lancel Graham, because you didn't buy that damn video with Bitcoin from Absalom. You got it straight from Lancel Graham, copied right off his hard drive. You know we can track that digital footprint, right? You're not stupid. So now you're going down for a federal slam dunk of criminal conspiracy, and possession and distribution of child porn, plus you'll be enjoying the great state of Kansas's tour of its legal system for conspiracy to murder."

  "I never murdered anybody!"

  "Roll the other one," Mike says, then looks up at the camera. The tech in the room with me presses buttons, and a new video begins. Same set, but subtly different simply because of the proportions of the room it's crowded into. This one, I realize, was filmed in the cabin basement up above Stillhouse Lake. Lancel Graham's place. It's his re-creation of Melvin's torture chamber . . . and there's a girl shown in this one, too.

  The girl with the butterfly tattoo, the first one Graham killed and dumped in the lake to implicate me in her murder. I catch my breath, because I remember her from around town in Norton. She sat across the restaurant from me and Lanny as we ate cake, and she'd been a normal, smiling, sweet young lady.

  I'm seeing her last, awful minutes on earth in this video.

  The tech shuts it down once it's made an impression, and I realize I'm shaking. I turn away so I don't have to look at the freeze-frame of her face.

  Mike Lustig is saying, in the same calm voice, "That video is Lancel Graham murdering his first victim, and the time stamp tells me you had it on the same thumb drive before the second young woman was killed. So yeah. Conspiracy to murder, Carl. I don't think you're going to see a computer screen again before we're all jacked into the net by our brains. Unless you want to talk to me."

  Suffolk is shaking, I can see it. He's a sadist and a coward, and he knows damn well that all of those charges could be leveled at him, and possibly more.

  He's also dangerous. The way he went after me, the unhesitating way he choked me, tells me it isn't the first time he's tried to kill someone. It might actually be the first time he's failed.

  "I don't know anything about Absalom," Suffolk finally says, and Lustig sighs and starts to kick his chair back. "Except a couple of names, that's all! Just some names. Screen names, not even real ones. You know. Graham made some side deals with me, that's all. He and I had . . . common interests. We swapped videos. I didn't know he was the one killing those girls! I thought he got 'em from somebody else."

  "Sure you didn't. Let's start with screen names," Lustig says, shoving a pad of paper and a felt-tip marker across to him. "And throw in anything else you can come up with that might save your ass from twenty-five to life in a federal penitentiary, too. Because I can predict with a fine degree of certainty how pleasant that vacation stay's going to be for you. Bet you can, too."

  It takes half an hour for Lustig to get a full picture of the things Suffolk collected, beyond the photos and videos he supplied to Absalom's marketplace. He enjoyed a very special kind of horror: graphic videos of torture and murder. Snuff films. The official FBI position has always been that they don't exist, but it comes as no surprise to me that they do, and that there's a marketplace for them on the dark web.

  It's a nasty surprise, though, that Absalom deals in those, as well as child pornography. Their sideline in blackmail and Internet tormenting is just that: a hobby, though it helps them attract and identify potential customers. Psychopaths recognizing psychopaths and then catering to their particular pleasures. Layers and levels to all this evil, and at its core, a heartless, soulless greed.

  Melvin Royal, Suffolk said, was a gold-level supplier. When he was still active, he'd filmed his crimes, and Absalom found a market for them after the fact. I'm sickened, but not surprised. Only his still pictures were found and presented at trial, but a video camera was in the garage. Just no tapes or digital files.

  What really frightens me is that if Melvin's real video cache surfaces now, the fake one that links me to his crimes will only have more credibility. There'd certainly be an official investigation--Mike might even head it--and I'd be exonerated, eventually.

  But as I already knew, being found innocent of a crime doesn't mean much to most people . . . and it means even less if they have something tangible to convince them differently.

  "Yeah, Melvin Royal sold his shit directly to Absalom," Suffolk tells Mike. "They ran a pay-per-view event for every new video, and then sold downloads. Thousands of 'em. If it works like my deal with them, the money they paid him is in a Bitcoin account he can access from anywhere. But I don't know for sure. I told you. I'm just on the fringes. A customer."

  A customer who collects the murder and torture of innocent victims. I want to throw up, remembering those hands around my neck.

  Mike finishes writing his notes. "Anything else?"

  On the screen, Suffolk leans back in his chair and says, "One more thing." Then he looks up at the camera and smiles. Just smiles. It's eerie, and chilling, made more so because then he actually winks. "Make sure you watch the whole recording of that first video you showed me, the Royal one. There's a treat for you right at the end."

  Lustig gets up from the chair and slides it neatly in at the table.

  "Oh, I'll be sure to do that," he says. "But if you think you're going to get a last good-time jolly watching it with me right now, dream on. You get used to being alone in a locked room for a while. Call it a preview of the rest of your life."

  He's in the monitoring room in another minute, nods to us, and goes straight to the tech. "Raj? You got me a seat?"

  "You can watch in the back; I'm queuing it up now," the tech says. He looks up and past us and gives Lustig a concerned look. "You sure you want to see it?"

  "Wouldn't be doing my due diligence if I didn't. Have you seen the whole thing?"

  The tech looks away. "I haven't finished yet."

  "Tough work, I know," Lustig says, almost gently. "I'll finish it up. I'll log the time codes as I go."

  Raj looks unspeakably relieved--this, I realize, must be part of his job. Watching horror after horror reduced to pixels, to light and shadow and sound. "I'll queue it up to where I stopped logging. Headphones are next to the monitor, sir. Thanks."

  Sam catches Lustig's arm as he passes. "Hey. Are you seriously going to play his game--"

  "I have to," Lustig says. "Believe me, I wish to hell I didn't. Wait here."

  We wait. I glance over at Lustig every once in a while. It takes a long time, and there's no movement in the room except for the creak of our chairs and the sound of Lustig's pen scratching on paper, and after nearly half an hour, the sudden, sharp sound of Lustig's cha
ir rolling back from the small, gray desk. I look up. So does Sam. Lustig's gotten to his feet, headphones still on. His face is, for just that moment, completely overcome with surprise. He'd have steeled himself against the horror, the anguish, the brutality, so what surprised him enough to bring him right to his feet?

  Lustig hits a key on the computer, rips off the headphones, and charges over. To me. He takes my arm and tows me back, fingers digging in painfully, and when I try to resist, I get dragged. All my instincts put me on alert, and I have to fight the urge to hit him hard, fast, and with brutal force. I don't let people handle me like this.

  But this is an FBI agent, and I know resisting will only make it worse.

  "Hey!" Sam shouts, but Lustig ignores him. Sam follows as I'm pulled toward the computer. "Mike, what the hell are you doing? You--"

  His voice fades as we both see what's on the screen.

  A hot, needle-pricking sensation of unreality washes through me. I feel dizzy again, and I'm suddenly glad for Lustig's hard grip holding me in place, because on the screen, frozen in time, is the bleeding, screaming victim. In front of her, Melvin reaches for an evil-looking knife.

  Someone is handing the blade to him.

  That someone is me. I can see my profile. I'm standing just in front of the camera, next to a wall full of knives and hammers. Melvin's tools.

  And I'm smiling.

  "I'd arrest you right fucking now," Lustig tells me, "except that I don't have jurisdiction, and Kansas already acquitted your sorry ass. Now you sit down and tell me everything you know about Melvin Royal. Right now."

  I'm numb. I'm just . . . empty. I sit down, still staring at the screen. At my face--Gina Royal's face. It hurts to talk, but I force the words out anyway. "It's a fake," I tell him. "I wasn't there. I was never there. Absalom faked--"

  "Shut up with that bullshit," Lustig says, then rolls my chair around so he's leaning his weight on the arms, shoving his face close to mine. "You were there. All this, this victim act? I've had my doubts all along, and believe me, I'm very done being played. You tell me what you know!"

  "That's not me!" I scream it in his face, out of sheer panic and desperation--it's a raw, rough, broken sound, and it hurts. God, it hurts. "I don't know! I am not part of this!"

  He shoves my chair, and it rolls back and smashes against the wall with such force I'm almost pitched out of it. I get up, ready to fight, but Lustig doesn't come closer. He stares, and then he turns and walks away. Raj is turned toward us, mouth half-open in astonishment.

  Sam hasn't moved toward me, either. He looks calm and blank, right up until he picks up the monitor and throws it against the wall. It smashes into sparks and broken plastic, and Raj lets out a yell of protest, coming up out of his chair.

  "Sam!" I cry that out, and wish I hadn't, because the look he gives me flays me to the spine. It destroys me. I wonder if he's about to finish the job that Suffolk started.

  Lustig pauses at the office door to say to Raj, "You don't let her leave this room until I come back. Understand?" He charges through. Raj nods and gets himself together. He blocks the way out.

  I feel trapped. Hunted. My throat is on fire, and when I swallow, I taste blood.

  Sam heads for the door, too. I want to call after him, but I'm afraid to do it now. Raj is in his path, until Sam says, in a voice that I don't even recognize, "He said she had to stay. I don't."

  Raj reluctantly edges out of the way, and then Sam is gone. I'm alone with the tech agent and the smashed monitor. The room smells like ozone. Raj won't look at me. I can see he's nervous; his throat is working, and he's tracking me out of the corner of his eye in case I make a move. But I don't. I just stand there, numbly. I don't know what else I can do.

  Mike Lustig opens the door. He looks grim and furious, and Raj gratefully sinks back into his tech chair. "You can go, Gina," he says. He bites the words off in chunks. I'm no longer Gwen Proctor to him. "But don't you get comfortable. You won't be out walking free for long. Now get the fuck out of my building before I do something I'm going to regret."

  There's another agent standing next to him, stone-faced, and I can tell that he's my escort out of the building. Everything feels unreal now. I wonder what they'll do if I just lose control and start screaming. Probably drag me out anyway. I don't make a conscious decision to leave; I just do it. I'm suddenly out of the darkness of the monitoring room, and into a hallway. The agent has a grip on my arm--firm, not abusive.

  He escorts me out, unclips my badge, and walks me to the lobby, where the FBI receptionist takes the identification from him. Both of them look at me expectantly.

  I don't know where I'm supposed to go now. What I'm supposed to do.

  I finally realize that I'm expected to leave, so I walk out the front doors, which automatically lock behind me. It's dark, the sun long down, and the wind's cold. I stand there in bewilderment, thinking I've fallen out of time. Out of space. This is Wichita. I've driven these streets. Walked in that shopping center visible in the distance. Gotten gas at the station on the corner.

  I shouldn't be here.

  The enormity of everything that's just happened rolls over me, and I stagger to one of the broad concrete blocks that guards the approach to the ground-floor lobby of the building. It's not low enough to sit on, but I lean against it, trembling, gasping for breath. The past is cascading down on me now, in smells and colors and tastes and horror, and could it be right, could it possibly be right that I was ever part of what Melvin did, that I'd been in that garage prior to the day it all cracked apart? That I helped him, and I've forgotten all of it?

  Am I insane?

  I don't know how much time passes. Minutes, but it feels like hours, and there's the scrape of footsteps, and someone's coming toward me. For an instant, I think it's Melvin. I think, this is how it ends.

  But then he passes beneath a streetlight, and I make out Sam's face. He isn't reaching out, but he's here. His gaze is fixed on the offices behind me.

  "Get up," he tells me. "I talked to Rivard. The plane's waiting. It'll drop us in Knoxville. I'll drive you back to Javier's."

  "And then?" I ask. It comes out in a rough whisper.

  He doesn't answer. And he doesn't wait for me. I'm left to scramble along in his wake, lost, but grateful to have a path out of this nightmare.

  I will never come back to this place.

  I realize that the way I whisper the words, it's become a prayer.

  15

  LANNY

  When we hear the crunch of gravel outside, I grip my brother's hand tighter. I haven't let go for the past hour, and neither has he; we're back to our little-kid days, after Mom and Dad went away--both arrested, the same day. I still remember that more vividly than anything else: me and my brother sitting in the backseat of a police car. It felt like being in a cage, and it smelled like sweat and feet, and we held hands the whole way. We didn't talk. I don't think either of us knew what to say. I remember not being so much terrified as dazed. I kept expecting it to be over, that Mom would come get us, and we'd get ice cream and go home. Brady--now Connor--had been the one who'd cried, and I remember being impatient with him being such a baby. I kept telling myself it was nothing. We would be home soon.

  But there was no home by then.

  It had been Brady, not me, who'd asked endless, anxious questions once we were at the police station. Where's my mom? When can we see her? Can we go home? Where's my dad? It had been clear to me, in all my older-child wisdom, that the police officers weren't going to answer any of those things, and I kept telling myself it didn't matter because it was all a big, stupid mistake.

  The police gave us drinks and snacks and put us in a room with some toys and games that were all too broken or too young for us. I had a book I'd been reading that day, I remember, but I never finished it. Brady--no, stop thinking of him as Brady, his name is Connor, it's Connor now--took the book out of the trash when I threw it away; I don't even remember the name of it. I think that was the
first book he read, really. He started reading the day our lives went down in flames.

  That's the one book I know I can never bear to finish. Maybe that's why I can't remember what it's called, or anything about it.

  Grandma came for us, after flying all night to get there, and took us back to her house. She'd been the one who'd had to explain to us about Dad being a murderer, and Mom being arrested for helping him. Your mom didn't do anything wrong, she'd told us over and over, and it had seemed true then. They'd let her out of jail. She'd been found innocent, and when she came back, I was so glad, so glad I finally cried.

  Everything's broken inside me now, and I can't cry. I can't feel anything except pure, drowning anger.

  She lied to us. All this time. She's a damn liar.

  I look up when Javier, standing at the window with a cup of coffee in his hand, says, "She's here." He turns to look at Kezia, who's in the kitchen. She's dressed for her job, which means a jacket and nice pants and a gun and badge, and it makes me remember that she's a detective, like her boss, Prester. Good. Maybe she can arrest Mom and take her away again, for good this time. "Sam's with her."

  "Keep it low," Kezia tells him. "Let's hear Gwen's side of it."

  I look at Connor. I'm holding his hand, but it's lying still and limp in mine. I wonder if he's even heard, but then he takes my hand from mine, slides a bookmark into place in the book he's reading, and puts the story aside. When he stands, I do, too.

  Boot barks, low and threatening chesty sounds, and it makes me feel safe. My hands are cold. I put them in my pockets. Everything seems very clear to me right now, and at the same time, everything's destroyed. I know I can't trust her. I can't trust anybody, ever again, because I believed her, and my mother lied to us.

  I just want this to be over with, and at the same time, I can feel part of me wanting to cry, punch something, run away, collapse, and curl up into a ball. It's like all the pieces of me are shattered, and I don't know how to put anything back together again.

  Connor seems calm. Way, way too calm.

  Javier steps out, and Boot goes quiet. There's some low conversation, and then the door opens. It's Mom.

  My first thought is, She looks tired. My second thought is, Why is she wearing a scarf like that? She doesn't like scarves. I'd bought her one, once. She'd been nice about it, but had only worn it once. This one is a dull, gunmetal gray, and she's wrapped it close around her throat.