Chapter 30
“Really now. All that crying can’t be good for your sinuses. You sound stuffed up.” Victor shook his head.
Louis Miller stared at what remained of his biological family. Casimir had pulled up information on Louis’s sister, brother-in-law, and bonus, two young children and a three-year-old dog.
Since Victor had been so good about not killing Stephen Harte or any of his brood—Sabrina didn’t count—Casimir had given him Louis Miller’s family.
And what a relief it had been to send the children to a better place. Though Victor had wanted to make the punishments last, he’d killed the children quickly, painlessly. They hadn’t been bad, after all. Just in an unfortunate situation.
The husband and wife had gone soon after, though he had toyed with Louis’s sister just a little. Nothing untoward, though. Defiling her would serve no purpose. The death of her entire family had broken Louis easily enough.
He’d told Victor everything Casimir had wanted to know. And now, with Louis on the chopping block, Victor once more felt at ease.
Back to normal.
His work with that maid, chopping her into evenly formed pieces, had taken a while but been supremely satisfying. But he had no need for an art piece now.
He simply dismembered Louis’s limbs, deciding to keep the head with the torso for ease of identification.
Best to let the Scotts know where their man had turned up.
The dog whined next to him.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Lassie. Are you hungry?”
She licked his hand.
He loved that the family had named their dog after a beloved television show, one where a dog and her boy saved the day, time and time again.
Victor treasured happy memories of childhood. Always someone else’s, but still.
After he finished with Louis, he sat him at his sister’s table to partake with the rest of the family. Then he put all four of Louis’s limbs on the four plates set out. Legs for Mom and Dad, arms for the boys.
He poured some kibble for Lassie, pleased she ate with only a few whines at the family, whom she could sense had died.
Most people didn’t give animals the respect they deserved. A dog would always be a faithful companion. It was people who messed them up, turning them into killers with their abuse and bullying.
Victor sat on the floor and stroked the dog, lost in thoughts about the past.
Growing up hadn’t been easy. His father had been a mechanic, his mother a homemaker who detested her only son. She’d constantly criticized him for everything.
His first memory consisted of her slapping him for some infraction he couldn’t recall. She’d been incensed when he wouldn’t cry.
Most of his days had been spent with her abusing him.
Until they sat down to dinner. When the family would share a meal and Mother pretended she didn’t hate him so much.
The dog would lick him under the table, nibbling at table scraps.
Father would smile and feign interest before he left again right after the meal to get back to work.
Poor yet humble, the family did their best to make ends meet. Mother’s abuse and Father’s neglect should have bothered him. If he were normal, he might have cried about it or tried to run away.
But Victor didn’t feel the same things others did. Plus, he had Casimir’s mother. Aunt Halina. Victor smiled as he continued to pet the dog, remembering her clear green eyes, like sea glass he’d once found on a beach.
He’d loved Aunt Halina more than anyone, with the exception of Casimir. His cousin had inherited his empathy from Halina. Casimir had never treated Victor as anything but family. Never made fun of him for not being as smart or for looking like a scraggly troll, as Victor’s mother used to say.
Unfortunately, Victor hadn’t cared much for Casimir’s father. Victor’s uncle acted and appeared too much like Victor’s own father for him to ever love the man.
Once he’d turned nine years old, he’d had enough. After killing his parents, so carefully and craftily no one had ever suspected the fire he’d set hadn’t been an accident, he’d moved in with Casimir and his parents.
Only to find, to his surprise, that they weren’t the perfect family either.
Casimir was special. Everyone knew it. The smartest boy in the village, he had been reading since he could hold a book. Numbers always made perfect sense to him, and he remembered everything he was told.
Unlike Victor, Casimir instilled awe in those who knew him, not fear.
With the exception of his lower-class father, who didn’t understand the attention his son deserved. Uncle Marek used to tease that Casimir couldn’t be his. The boy never wanted to hold a wrench or fix a gasket. He didn’t like sports. Instead, Casimir wanted to read all day.
So Victor helped his uncle with manual labor. Victor played sports so his uncle had someone to brag about at the garage. And Victor commiserated when Uncle Marek flew into one of his many rages about the rich keeping the poor, hardworking people of Poland down.
Casimir studied and read. Never complained. And studied some more.
Victor hadn’t known it for a while because Casimir hid what his father did to him.
But when Victor wasn’t around, Uncle Marek often did his best to beat sense into Casimir.
He thought that by pounding the merits of the working class into his son, that somehow Casimir would be convinced books didn’t matter.
A real man worked with his hands. Frail flowers and women stayed inside and read books.
For a while, after Victor had learned the truth about Uncle Marek, he’d watched, curious to see how his cousin might respond.
Casimir continued to read, continued to be beaten on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Aunt Halina knew. She tried to help him, but Marek didn’t like that much. He’d beat her for interfering.
The only one who never got in trouble was a dog given to the family by a happy customer at Marek’s garage. Azor, that lovely little beast, brought joy to everyone in the family. Even Uncle Marek treated him like a divine creature.
Azor adored Victor and followed him everywhere.
For a short time, life was good.
Then Uncle Marek lost his job. Aunt Halina was forced to work for a wealthy family, cooking and cleaning and mending.
Until the master of the grand house decided she should do other chores to earn her keep. The fool woman got pregnant. The rich man’s wife labeled her the village whore and encouraged those in town to do the same.
As Aunt Halina’s belly swelled with child, the town’s hatred toward her grew.
With so much anger and abuse aimed at her, it had to go somewhere, he supposed.
He just hadn’t expected Aunt Halina to turn her pain on Casimir.
Casimir’s heart broke.
As did Victor’s.
Disappointed in the one person aside from Casimir he could count on, Victor did what he had to do to protect his cousin.
Only this time, he let himself experiment. And with each knife stroke, with every plunge of a blade into flesh, he felt better. Happy. The way he used to when he played with Azor or watched his aunt bake Casimir’s favorite cookies.
Instead of being upset that Victor had ended their life in the village, Casimir made a plan. So that when they left the village and moved to Warsaw, leaving beloved Azor behind with a good family who would take care of him as they could not, Victor put his faith and trust in his cousin.
He hadn’t looked back since.
So if August Kaminski thought he could treat Casimir like common help, Victor would soon disabuse him of that notion.
Casimir had grand plans.
And Victor would do anything to make them happen.
* * *
It took Victor the better part of the evening and next day to stage the house properly. He made sure to leave no evidence of his presence behind. Though he had a feeling Agent Cannon would tie this murder to the others.
He smiled. Casimir liked her. She was smart. Not like so many others who had no idea August Kaminski even existed.
After leaving his most recent masterpiece behind, Victor glanced at the dog in the backseat. “Let’s find you somewhere to live, Lassie.”
The dog smiled at him, a sweet creature who only wanted a boy to love.
Thinking of the perfect person, Victor went back to the one boy he trusted to find Lassie a good home.
It didn’t take long. He found Christian wandering on the streets with two other boys his age. They played some odd game with sticks and rocks.
Though it was light out, Victor wore a ballcap to shield him from the sun, not to hide his features. Since Agent Cannon had seen his face, hiding didn’t matter much anymore.
Hmm. He had forgotten to mention to Casimir that she’d seen his face. Oh well. He’d tell his cousin later.
He parked his borrowed car on the side of the road, leashed the dog, and sought his quarry.
“Boy. Christian. Come here.” Victor motioned to Christian, who’d stopped with his friends, staring with suspicion at Victor.
Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days, Victor figured he blended in better this way. His long overcoat provided protection against identification, but it made him stand out too much. Especially in the awful August heat.
“Do I know you?” Christian asked as his buddies bolted, leaving him alone.
“Yes. I gave you Bandit.”
The boy smiled. “Oh yeah.” Then he had a blank moment, and Victor saw fear wash over his features before the boy pasted a fake smile on his face.
Ah. So the boy had talked to the police.
Steps might have to be taken after all.
Christian glanced at Lassie and her pink leash and smiled shyly. “Hey, girl. She is a girl, right?”
Victor sighed. Monster that he was, he knew what he needed to do. But he didn’t know if he had the heart to do it. Not in front of the dog.
“Lassie is a girl, yes.” He knelt by the dog, waiting.
Christian moved slowly, but he approached.
A cautious animal sensing a larger predator waiting to pounce.
Yet he moved closer all the same and reached out to pet Lassie, who licked him into a laugh.
“Man, she’s cute. She need a new home?”
“I cannot keep her.”
Christian sighed. “I get it. But it’s hard to let them go.”
Victor saw himself in the boy, saying goodbye to his dog so many years ago.
And yet, he had a job to do.
He rose to his feet.
Time to get to it.