Snuff (12 page)

What if all we are is all we’re meant to be?

Do you remember when I posed that question?

You must have stared for a full minute.  The seconds rolled by, but you never blinked.  I wondered how you did it for so long. How it didn’t hurt, with all those bright lights.

“If all we are is all we’re meant to be,” you said, the corner of your eyes straying to your wrists, “then I wish I’d been successful all those times.”

I’m glad you weren’t.

Something inside me recognized you.  We’d never met, but I knew you.  I hadn’t realized how truly hollow I’d been until that night.

On that stage, surrounded by girls so young and desperate for attention, you were the only one I saw.  The only thing I ever see, now.  The whole place smelled of cheap perfume.  It’s fitting for the other women.

You made my teeth set on edge.

All the years before bled together.  Strings of days and nights passed, and they meant nothing.  I may as well have been dead.  I went through all the motions of normalcy. My accounts grew; so did the company.  The years wore on, and until that minute, I never knew I was capable of this.  It’s like a lamp that’s always been here.  And now it’s suddenly turned on.

Putting stock in fate, faith, or soul mates is foolish, but love is one of those intangibles.  I can’t quanti
fy or explain this with science, research or statistics.

It begs the question: is there Someone out there, pulling the strings?  I can only assume the answer is y
es.  He saved you from yourself because he knew we’d meet one day.

Saturday at 12:50 p
.m.

IP Address: 75.84.67.69

Sent via contact form by an anonymous viewer on your website

THIRTY-FIVE

Lisette is still annoyed when she returns to my room after presumably ripping Agent Maxwell a new one.  I doubt he’s the type to be easily intimidated, especially because Lisette looks like an elf princess with all that blonde hair,
delicately feminine features, big eyes and tiny ears. Her swearing, while initially surprising, gets amusing the more I hear it.  

She flops into the visitor’s chair.  The badge hanging
on a chain from her neck sways as she digs through the leather purse on her lap.  Her hands unearth a crumpled photograph and a cell phone. 

She hands me the blown-up image of a California driver’s license.  “Do you recognize this ugly mug?”

I sit up against the pillows and study the man’s comb-over and beady brown eyes.  He seems frightened, not pissed-off, the way my driver’s license photo looks. “No.  This is the first time I’ve seen him.”

She leans forward, resting her elbows on the knees of her jeans.  “You didn’t get a good look since it was dark and when it wasn’t, you were blindfolded. Maybe if you take a minute some part of him might seem familiar.
  Maybe when he took you out of the back of the car you saw a glimpse of his face.”

I read Stanley Heckles’s stats off to the right side of his image and shake my head.  “I never saw much of his face, but this
man is six feet.  The man who was in that place with Abby seemed a lot shorter.  Maybe 5’7.  He was thinner too, I could tell, even though he wore baggy clothes.  Who’s this guy?”

She takes the photo back and stuffs it into her bag.  “Nobody, apparently.  You think it was a van
he put you in before he dropped you on the side of the road? A van, not an SUV?” 

“It was white and big.  That’s all I know.”  My eyes had been blurry with tears.  He’d blindfolded me on our way out of wherever the hell he’d stashed us, and there were no nearby streetlights to help me get my bearings. 
“Whoever it was smelled like soil.  I remember that.  Not dirty, really…like potting soil.”

“That’s good, Brooke.  Knowing stuff like that really helps.  If you think of anything else like that, call me immediately.” 
She fiddles with her cell phone until voices issue from the speaker.  “Tell me if this is the voice you heard.”

Two of them I immediately recognize.  One is barked colorful swears that I know to be Lisette, and the second is composed and deep, the one that spoke softly in the morgue over Abby’s burned body.  The third is male and panicked.

I’m the most useless witness on earth.  “The only voices I know are yours and Agent Maxwell’s.  I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve heard him, but I always come up with nothing.  Do you think I imagined hearing him before?”

She tucks her cell phone into her back pocket and zips her purse shut.  “It’s possible, but I don’t
think so.  Maybe we can turn on the television or the radio to try jogging your memory.  If you’re certain he’s not a customer or a coworker, you might have heard him through one of those channels.” 

“I hardly watch TV.  Only the news in the morning and regular shows I record.  If he was a news an
chor or someone I hear often, wouldn’t I have known who he was right away?”

“You’d think so, but witness testimony is the least accurate type of evidence.  Maybe you only heard him speak once.”  She pauses.  “What radio station do you listen to?” 

“KROQ.”

“They have a talk radio show from five to ten a.m.  Do you listen to it when you’re heading to work in the mornings?”

“Whenever I have early shifts.  The DJ’s are funny.  But it’s not one of their voices.  I’ve been listening to them for years, ever since I moved from Michigan.  I know their voices as well as Jack’s.”

“Okay.  Keep thinking on it, and I’ll be back later.”  She slings her purse over her shoulder and heads for the door, pausing with one hand curled around the handle.  “Make sure they’re feeding you properly.  You’re eating for two now.”

THIRTY-SIX

“Alana just asked about you,” Stacy said in greeting when John’s call went through.  “Should I tell her you send your love?”

“Not unless you want me to tell Damian how you dug through his background when you first started dating, and how you bothered me for weeks on end asking if there was a such thing as truth serum and where you could buy
it.”

She made the sounds of indignation John heard from all types of women whenever someone dared disagree with them.  “Can you blame me?  A thirty-six-year-old man who’d never been in a serious relationship?  He was in a frat, for the love of God.  Frats are well-known hotbeds of latent homosexuality.  I had to make sure he wasn’t using me as a means to stop questions from his mother.  That happens more often than you’d think, sir.  Read a couple Cosmo articles and tell me it doesn’t.  I’ll wait.”

John could think of at least a thousand better ways to occupy his time than reading articles about latent homosexuality penned by scorned women.  “I’m going to need you to pull anything you can on Stanley Heckles,” he said, shielding sun rays from his eyes as he watched Lisette march Heckles into booking. Prisons weren’t known for stellar cell service, so he opted to mill around the parking lot until she was finished.

Stacy’s typing broke off.  “The name I just gave you?  The guy who looks like a mouse?  Crappy driver, Stanley Heckles?”

“That would be him.”

“Huh.”  John heard her chair creak in the background and knew she was leaning back, nursing a cup of coffee and wearing a puzzled expression.  “I always get suspicious when you catch them this quickly.”

“You’re not the only one.”  John wound a path through the prison parking lot, back toward Lisette’s car.  “Heckles couldn’t organize a bake sale, let alone double kidnappings.  He knows something though, I can feel it.”

“Your spidey sense?”  Stacy didn’t know about low latent inhibition, let alone that John had it—though he was surprised she hadn’t hacked his medical records out of sheer nosiness a long time ago. 

A few years prior, when they’d been paired on their very first case together, she’d been baffled by his quantum leaps in logic, his inability to find prolonged eye contact uncomfortable, and how he didn’t know or care who Johnny Depp was—but mainly his quantum leaps in logic.  Unable to find a suitable word to describe it, she dubbed it spidey sense.

“I don’t know why you insist on calling it that.”

“I don’t know why you don’t care who Johnny Depp is.”  She pounded a key on her end with a type of finality.  “I’ll get back to you.  Seriously, don’t tell Damian about the truth serum.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

I’m dizzy with the heady scent of Abby’s sweat.  Or maybe I’m just dizzy, period.  My tongue feels like a crusty sock.  Ears stuffed with wet sand, like I don’t even have a brain anymore.  Heart crammed in my throat.

The world seems lighter behind my closed lids, so I crack them open.  Dust motes sparkle before me in a filter of weak light.  My dry eyeballs follow the path up to the man’s stupid camera-headband, some five feet above my head. I look away quickly, back down at Abby.  The blue glare bleeds across her bare, burned abdomen, setting fire to beads perspiration collecting in the gulley of her navel.

She has an innie.

Her ribs strain so hard against her black-tinged skin with those fitful, labored breaths, I’m surprised they don’t burst clean through.

She’s out cold.  She’d give my hand
a return squeeze if she weren’t.

The light doesn’t hit her face.  It seems like a cruel practical joke.  But why do I want to see her anyway?  To make sure she
’s real? Mental illness runs in my family—maybe I’ve imagined this whole charade; become schizophrenic without realizing.  Or maybe I’ll wake up next to Jack with a hangover and a sick stomach.

When
I feel her slack thighs roll outward, it hits me like a U-Haul trailer:  why the hell am I slumping here, helpless, her head in my lap, waiting for it to happen again?

I scramble backward one-handed, gripping a fistful of Abby’s hair in the other to keep her head from smacking the floor—after all she’s been through, she doesn’t need a concussion, too—and manage to make it to the wall.  It doesn’t matter.  He’s faster, and isn’t weak from hunger or a million other little things.  I brace myself for a blow that won’t come—he hasn’t hit me yet. 

A flashbulb explodes in my face. 

I don’t need to see his face or hear him speak to know what he’s saying.

Smile
.

***

I do as Lisette instructs and think in her absence, but no earth-shattering realization strikes. 

My eyes close as I sink into the flattened hospital pillows.  Everyone keeps saying I should sleep, but it’s impossible. I’ve grown too accustomed to
dozing for fifteen minute stretches.  Abby never slept long, and whenever I’d managed to, her whimpers would drag me out of unconsciousness.  She’d apologize each time it happened.  Eventually I couldn’t handle listening to her
I’m sorry’s
so I quit sleeping.  

Something tells me the guilt will never go away.  Abby assuaged her own by saving my life, but all she did was pass the Guilt Torch to me. A vicious cycle. Catch-22.  Whatever.

I don’t bother looking up when someone knocks on the door.  It’s not as if anyone would leave if I shout
go away
, so I turn my back and press my face into the pillows. If they think I’m sleeping, they’ll be in and out quickly.

The door creaks open
.  I hold my breath during the moments that pass.  No footsteps, but slow breathing.

“You’ve never been good at faking it.”

I want to smile, but I don’t think I know how anymore.  I roll over.  Jack’s leaning against the doorframe, and it doesn’t seem like he remembers how to smile, either.  His hair appears to have been styled with an eggbeater, but he still looks good.  It’s impossible for him to look awful, even when he’s sick, or first thing in the morning.

He doesn’t move from
the doorway.  “Sergeant Jennings called.” 

I
stare for a few silent seconds.  He probably expects an answer. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about it.”

“It’s not an
it
, baby.  It’s our kid.”  He slouches over to the chair.  “I understand why it wasn’t on your mind when you first got here, but you had to have known before any of this happened.  She said you’re about nine weeks.  You weren’t planning on keeping it?”

I know he won’t give ultimatums or tell me what to do.  He’s never been like that, but he won’t be happy if I terminate.

“We have no money.  I’m a waitress.  You’re an intern.  I don’t think we’re prime parent material.  We bust our asses to make ends meet, and it’s barely enough.  What would your mother say to you for knocking someone up outside of wedlock?” 

And, not that it matters anymore, but t
here goes my chance at minor sitcom stardom.  Unless they write a pregnancy into the slutty best friend role, but that hardly seems reasonable. I think sluts of all people would remember to take birth control.

He runs his hands over deeply circled eyes.  He loves me enough to lose sleep.  I don’t deserve him. “You’re not
someone
.  You’re my girlfriend.  I don’t know what my mom has to do with anything, but she knows I planned on proposing.  Her and my grandmother were happy about it.”

Everyone knew but me.

“When are you having the procedure?”

“What procedure?”

His brows knit.  “The abortion.”

I stare
into the ceiling lights.  Maybe if I look long enough, I’ll go blind.  Though I don’t think being blind would be enough to erase those memories of Abby.  “I’m not having an abortion.  We’re keeping it.”

He looks more confused than ever, but rolls with it. His relief is obvious, streaming from his pores, palpable in the air.

I’ve never loved anyone like I love him.

My life was an unanswered question before he came around.  I was spinning my wheels, waiting for something to happen, but
nothing ever did.  Until Jack. 

He wraps his arms around me, nestling his face into my neck. His lips brush my throat when he
tells me he loves me again.

“Are we going to talk about what happened?”  He twists a lock of my hair around his finger before tucking it behind my ear.  “I don’t think I’ll ever be used to seeing you with dark hair.”

If he can hardly handle a brunette Brooke he sure as hell can’t handle this.  “You’d be disgusted.”

“You know damn well that isn’t true.”
  He gives me the palest ghost of his normal smile.  The real one is better.  His teeth are so perfect they almost look fake.  “I hope the baby gets your eyes.  They’re prettier than mine.”

I swallow the boulder in my throat.

“This hasn’t been easy for me, either.  I’ve been out of my mind for three weeks.  Your mother called in tears every night, wondering if she should start memorial proceedings since we didn’t have your body.  The first time I’d ever spoken to her, and it was about you being dead.”

It’s amusing in a not-at-all funny way that my mother cared when she thought I was dead.  She’s never cared before.  We’ve only exchanged a few emails since I moved out, when I’d gotten sick of being an indentured servant slash housekeeper for her and that douchebag husband
of hers.

Wonders never cease
.

“Hey.”  He brushes off tears I don’t realize I’m crying. “I hate when you cry.”  He crushes my face into his polo
.  “You can tell me.  You know you can tell me anything.”

He ducks his head to look at me when we pull apart, running this thumbs beneath my eyes.

“I had to kill someone.  Abby.”

***

“We have a verdict, girls.”

Abby doesn’t move. Her head is still in my lap.  I can’t stroke her hair without inciting a gasp
of shock or surprise, so I just lean against the wall, as still as possible.  I know if I move I might shift her and slosh her overflowing bucket of Pain. She hasn’t spoken much lately. 

“Brooke Dutton, you are our winner. We thank you for your three weeks of service.  I knew this day would come, but I must admit I’m sad to see it pass.” 

I suppose I should feel a dull sense of accomplishment.

I didn’t know it was possible for things to get worse.  They have. I consider replying, but I’m so worn-out and tired of this—everything—and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing I could ever do. A part of me thinks he’s had it planned from the start, that
he chose to kill her immediately.  But does it matter now?  She’s still going to die.  At least I won’t have to watch. 

Though it’s been proven time and time again that hearing it is just as awful.

“Stand up, Brooke.  This is the important part.”

I lift Abby’s head and lay it as gently as I can on the floor before I follow his instructions. 

“What, no uppity speech for me?  No insults about my mother?”

The wall helps me catch my balance.  I haven’t had any of those protein shakes in days. Last time I did I vomited, and the sour stench still lingers. “I don’t want to know what kind of horrible things happened to make you this way.” 

“What an empty room your mind is.”  He laughs.  “This is for fun.”

Somehow he’s scarier now.  I might understand him a little better if he’d suffered a traumatic upbringing. It wouldn’t excuse everything, but it might
explain
it.

“Abigail here never had a chance.  You should let her go. Learn to accept that not all relationships are built to last.”

He can’t seriously be lecturing me on relationships after this debris field he’s left behind.

“Things like this happen all the time.  Two people weather storms and catastrophic events together, and it forges a deep bond.  You might even call it love.  Is that what you think’s going on?  You love her?”  He pauses.  “I really do want an answer, I’m not being rhetoric
al.”

“I…care about her.”

He snorts. 

“
If that makes you mad, you’ve only got yourself to blame.  You put us here.  I would have never met her if it weren’t for you.”

“What a wonderful caricature of love.  I’ve brought you so close only to
tear you apart.”  A buzz fills the background.  I assume from the creaking that he’s lifting the latched door on the ceiling.

Something flies through the air and hits the floor with a metallic
thud
.

“What is that?”  I seal myself against the wall.  I don’t think I want to know
what the hell it is.

For a moment I think the place is exploding.  Instead of the world being black, it’s white.  I cinch my eyes shut when they start burning.