Allison Brennan - Speak No Evil

“Why did you lie to us about what time you were at the Sand Shack?” she asked Thomas.

“I didn’t really lie ,” he said. “I really did go there at ten when she got off to talk to her.” He paused. “I just didn’t mention that I came back.”

“Why?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“The manager says that he had to escort you from the premises because of the restraining order.”

“I told you I followed Angie.” He ran a hand through his short-cropped dark blond hair. “I was worried about her. I told you that,” he repeated.

“You followed her when she left the club,” Will said.

“Yes, yes, I told you that!” Thomas jumped off the couch and both Carina and Will had their hands on the butts of their firearms. She didn’t need to draw, Thomas simply paced. Agitated. Out of guilt? Remorse? Fear?

“Where?”

“I told you. I followed her home. I wanted to make sure she was safe.”

A tiny tickle about Angie’s mother hearing her late Friday night disturbed Carina. She asked, “Okay, so she got home safe. What time?”

“Nearly one in the morning.”

“Then what happened?”

“I left.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You left, but no one has seen Angie alive since.”

“That’s why I went to the police on Saturday. But the cop wouldn’t do anything about it!”

“We still don’t understand why you came in on Saturday-less than twenty-four hours after you allegedly watched Angie walk safely into her house when you weren’t supposed to be anywhere near her.”

“Because Angie posts to her journal every single day. Two, three times. She never went online Saturday. I was worried, so I went by her house. Her grandmother said she wasn’t there.”

“You knew about her online journal.”

Thomas had no comment.

“Mr. Thomas, we can get a warrant to seize your computer and ISP records. It would benefit you to tell us the truth.”

He leaned against the counter that separated the living area from the kitchen. “Yes, I knew about her journal. That’s the real reason she got the restraining order,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“She was afraid I’d be mad at her. Look, have you seen it? She’s calling attention to herself. I found out about it by accident. She was posting something at the college library and I walked up behind her. She flipped out, first scared and then angry. That’s what we’d been fighting about when that little bitch Kayla convinced her I was a threat. I wasn’t a threat to Angie. I care about her. A lot. I never wanted anything bad to happen to her, but she was playing with fire. First Doug, then the journal.”

“Was there anything embarrassing about your relationship with her in the journal?”

He paused, averted his eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t read everything.”

Lying again. Now Carina really wanted to read the journal.

“Would you object to a crime technician searching your apartment and borrowing your computer?”

“I’m a suspect.” He said it flatly.

Carina was treading on dangerous territory. She couldn’t admit he was a suspect without Mirandizing him. She didn’t want to go there, not yet. They wanted his cooperation first.

Then she’d nail him to the wall.

“All we want is to verify your story,” Will said. “If you’re not lying to us, we have no reason to suspect you. Do we?”

“Fine. Whatever you want. I didn’t kill Angie. You should be out there doing your job, finding Angie’s killer, not wasting time with me.”

He stared at Angie’s picture, his fingers caressing the screen. So beautiful…

Like all beautiful girls, she knew how to play the game, made all the right noises. But in the end, she was like all of them, nothing but a liar.

Angie was beautiful, but she was a fucking liar and she deserved everything she’d gotten. Everything .

He missed her. She’d been nice to him, sometimes. But other times she had shown her true self, just like every whore out there.

He could still hear his mother.

“My poor baby.”

He was far from a baby, but he could never contradict his mother.

Her speech had always been the same. “I know how hard it is for young men these days. Girls showing their tits to everyone, getting you all hard and aching and there’s nothing you can do. They do it on purpose, you know. To get you to do something stupid. They spread their legs and tell you to fuck them. Then they start crying and scream rape. Don’t fall into their trap. Don’t listen to their lies.”

“I don’t, Mama,” he always said. “I don’t even look.”

“Don’t lie to me. Men look. All of ’em want to fuck every bitch that crosses their path. Isn’t that why your daddy got into so much trouble? The whores. He was weak. He fell under their spell. Like those women of myth. What are they called?”

“The Sirens.”

“Exactly! Sexpots, luring men. Sirens.” She seemed proud of him somehow, in a way he never understood. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you? Smart enough to stay away from the Sirens. If only your father had listened to me.”

He ached. He wanted to talk to his father so bad. Dad would understand. The feelings. The darkness.

His father had been a great man. Great but weak, Mama said.

“Don’t you be a weak man. Don’t give in to those harlots. They only want to torment you with their titties and their twats. Don’t touch or they’ll cry rape so fast you’ll be in prison before you know it. Sluts, all of them.”

He would never be weak.

And when he touched them, they would never cry rape.

Angie would never say another word.

He locked the door, slid the deadbolt. Closed all the curtains. Double checked the doors and windows and curtains. Better safe. And then, only when he was certain no one could walk in, he brought the box of tapes to his bedroom. Shut and locked that door, too.

The tapes had been his father’s. He’d seen his father with them before, though he’d not known what was on them until after his father disappeared. Left without a good-bye. He’d only been a kid then, and he’d had a lot of time to think about it.

The Sirens.

They’d lured him away, made him desert his family, his sons.

He used to sit in his daddy’s closet just to smell him. Remember him and wish for something…more. He never knew exactly what, but he knew if his dad would come back everything would be different, better. Over time the Dad scent faded. Then they moved, and everything about his father was gone. He’d grown up and the memories became fuzzy, so he thought hard, trying to bring them back. He wasn’t certain all his memories were true, but they comforted him, so he kept them close.

The tapes had been in his daddy’s closet. Five of them in a shoe box, far in the corner, buried under boxes his mother had packed when his father hadn’t returned.

Each tape was fifteen to twenty minutes long. Dark and fuzzy, old, colorless. But he knew what was going on. He knew what the faceless man in the picture was doing.

Head buzzing, he turned off all the lights except the desk lamp, which cast long shadows across his immaculate room. Took off all his clothes. He was hard with anticipation, his penis quivering. He stared at himself, picturing how he’d looked in the mirror at the head of his bed when he slid into Angie’s body.

He’d come immediately, the excitement overtaking him.

The second time he’d forced himself in her he couldn’t come. Angry, he didn’t know why. But it wasn’t the same. So he took a beer bottle and shoved it up her cunt. Her body arched; her vocal cords strained in her neck. He watched her neck, enthralled, the faint scream deep in her chest turning him on like fucking her hadn’t.