Robert Browne: Kill Her Again

Not that he needed any.

When she joined them, he said, “What took you?”

She ignored the question and stared down at the corpse, feeling a sudden sense of sadness wash through her. She didn’t know this poor woman, didn’t know anything about her, but nobody deserved to be displayed like this to a room full of strangers.

Anna looked at Worthington. “Who is she?”

“Rita Fairweather. Twenty-seven-year-old single mother of two.”

Christ, Anna thought. Only a year younger than me.

“She worked at a bar in town, place called The Well. Was there until about eleven p.m.” He gestured to the blood on the walls. “Near as we can figure it, it was pretty much a blitzkrieg attack. They never saw it coming.”

“They?” Royer said, raising his eyebrows.

Worthington hitched a finger and they followed him across the room through a doorway that led to a small, dingy kitchen. Lying on the faded linoleum in a sticky pool of blood was a man of indeterminate age, multiple stab wounds to his chest. An unopened can of Colt 45 lay at his feet.

“One of her boyfriends from the bar,” Worthington said. “John Meacham. Poor sonofabitch picked the wrong night to get horny.”

Anna noticed something on his neck and crouched down for a closer look. The flesh was slightly pink, with two fresh, reddish marks about half an inch apart.

“Looks like he used a stun gun on this one,” she said.

Worthington nodded. “That’s what we’re thinking. We’ll know for sure once the M.E. gets him on the table.”

Anna stood up. “You say Fairweather has kids. Where are they?”

“Ahh,” Worthington said. “The reason you two are here.”

He turned again, crossing through the living room to a narrow hallway. As Anna and Royer followed, she began to get a vague feeling of deja vu.

There was a bathroom at the far end of the hall, and two bedroom doors on either side, facing each other. Worthington led them to the one on the left, to yet another body-a teenage girl, her mouth taped shut, her wrists and ankles bound, more stab wounds.

An image flashed through Anna’s mind — the little girl, bound and gagged in the backseat of a car Anna blinked it away, forcing herself to concentrate on the room, which was largely occupied by two twin beds and a parade of stuffed animals and action figures. One of the beds sported Los Angeles Dodgers bedsheets, while the other carried a pastel pink comforter covered with a throwback to Anna’s own childhood: My Little Ponies.

A bookshelf to her right held dozens of children’s books, including some of Anna’s own favorites. Little House on the Prairie. Through the Looking-Glass. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

She remembered many a night, her mother perched on the edge of her bed, reading aloud to her, and she wondered if Rita Fairweather had ever had the chance to do the same.

Worthington gestured to the body on the floor.

“Tammy Garrett. The family babysitter. She looked after the kids three nights a week.”

She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, sixteen years old. Plump. Baby faced.

“And the kids?” Anna asked, already knowing the answer.

“Like I said, the reason you two are here.”

Worthington moved to the nightstand between the two beds and with his gloved right hand picked up a small digital camera, pressed a button, and handed it to Anna.

“Evan and Kimberly.”

Anna looked down at the photograph on the tiny LCD screen. A woman whom she assumed was Rita Fairweather stood with her two young children, a boy and girl, on the grounds of what looked like a carnival. There was a Ferris wheel in the distance, and directly behind them the black hole of a doorway led to what a gaudily painted sign said was DR. DEMON’S HOUSE OF A THOUSAND MIRRORS.

Something stirred at the periphery of Anna’s brain-another image flash, too fast to decipher, accompanied by a sudden unexplained rush of vertigo.

Acutely aware that the deterioration of her mind was still in progress, and that the distraction of blood and feces and dead bodies had been temporary at best, she waited for the dizziness to pass.

“You all right?” Worthington asked.

She knew her face must be showing her distress. “Fine,” she said. “Just a little touch of nausea.”

He nodded, offering her a grim smile. “Like you said, the minute it stops bothering you, you’d better start thinking about a change of careers.”

Anna managed a smile in return, but Royer was having none of it. Giving her an impatient scowl, he snatched the camera out of her hands and stared down at the image of Rita Fairweather and her kids.

“Where was this shot?”

“High school football field. Carnival comes through town every year. Still here, as a matter of fact, so the photo is recent.”

“I take it they’re missing?”

Nothing like stating the obvious.

“No sign of ’em,” Worthington said. “And being so close to Nevada and all, we figure there’s a fairly good chance they were taken across the state line.”

There was no guarantee that this had happened, of course, but Worthington had been smart enough to hedge his bets and call in the FBI. Crossing state lines automatically made it a federal case, and the Ludlow County Sheriff’s Department was undoubtedly ill prepared for a crime of this magnitude-which explained the complete lack of hostility toward a couple of federal outsiders. They were anxious to hand it off.

“What about the father?” Royer asked. “He still in the picture?”

“Dead two years, according to the neighbors.”

“Is there a ransom note?” Anna asked.

It seemed like a ridiculous question. Who was left to pay ransom? And even if she were still alive, Rita Fairweather obviously wouldn’t be able to afford one.

But you never knew whether there was a rich relative somewhere in the picture, and for all of her faults, Anna believed in being thorough.

“No notes, nothing,” Worthington said. “I figure we’re dealing with a predator-and not just any predator at that.”

“What do you mean?”

“This’ll sound a little crazy, but you work a crime scene long enough, the victims start to talk to you.”

“And what are they telling you?”

“That whoever did this, it wasn’t his first time. He’s had practice, and a lot of it.”

Anna thought about the serial perps she’d studied back at Quantico. Sociopathic savages who brutalized and tortured their victims, treating them with less sympathy, less mercy, than they would a bug on a wall. It was true that many of them had been victimized themselves, but this was a reason for their behavior, not an excuse, and she knew that should she ever encounter one in the wild, she wouldn’t hesitate to blow him away.

Just as this thought entered Anna’s mind, her gaze fell to the camera in Royer’s hand, to the photograph still on-screen. But it wasn’t the children she saw; it was the Ferris wheel, the house of mirrors.

Then, all at once, a rush of images came at her as if they were being poured from a box full of puzzle pieces, flickering past her mind’s eye so rapidly that she was once again overcome by vertigo, a dizziness so strong she had to grab onto Worthington’s arm for support.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

But the onslaught was so overpowering that her brain couldn’t form the words to answer him, the images continuing to assault her — a spray of blood — the bound little girl — the man in the red baseball cap — tree shadows flickering across a tattered car ceiling — an ornate locket swinging from a rearview mirror Anna stumbled back, nearly losing her footing as she turned and hurried through the doorway. Stepping quickly down the hall, she crossed the living room and went outside, pulling her coat off as she moved, trying to get some air, trying desperately to purge her brain of these terrible images — a dark corridor of trees — a remote clearing — a suitcase full of bloody knives Then finally, thankfully, the last of them flitted by as she leaned a hand against the wall and closed her eyes, wondering what the hell was happening to her, wondering if she was indeed going mad.