Chapter 8 #3
“No,” Lina said. “The water in their lungs tested positive for trace amounts of chlorine.”
“So we’re looking for someone with a pool?” Olivia asked.
“Maybe?” Lina said. “The chlorine wasn’t strong, so maybe a poorly kept pool or a small body of water that the killer was trying to keep somewhat bacteria-free.”
“We didn’t see signs of bruising during the autopsy,” Barry said. “How did he drown them if he didn’t hold them underwater?”
“Filled a tank they couldn’t climb out of.” Bel shrugged, trying yet failing to stop the memories of six floating Anne Blaubarts from pushing to the front of her mind.
“These poor girls.” Olivia’s face paled. “What a terrifying way to leave this world… were they…?” She met Lina’s gaze with the unspoken question they all feared the answer to.
“No,” Lina confirmed, and the entire room collectively exhaled.
“They were not sexually or physically assaulted, and the tox screenings came back negative. They weren’t drugged, or at least they weren’t drugged immediately before death.
However, he coerced them into sitting for these tattoos, so the healing process would’ve made sure all traces of sedatives burned from their bloodstreams.”
“So he could’ve drugged them to force their compliance while he worked, and then he let them heal before drowning them in something like a pool with a lid?” Olivia recapped.
“Unless he found other ways to keep them still,” Barry said. “Fear is a powerful agent. Find their fear’s pressure point, and every human alive will eventually cave.”
“Drugs or fear, it doesn’t matter; both are paralyzing,” Lina said.
“You know what else is paralyzing?” Bel said, suddenly back in Abel’s basement, her bruised ankle changed to the bed.
“Hope. If someone hopes they’ll survive, if they hope they’ll be set free, they’ll fall into compliance.
Or if they hope they can con their captor into a false sense of security, they might be convinced to do anything.
It’s what I did.” She lowered her gaze to avoid meeting the three pairs of pity-filled eyes boring into her.
“When Abel took me, I woke up wearing different clothes with a chain locked around my ankle. He drugged me. He violated my privacy. I was a chained animal for him to play with, and despite my training, he had the upper hand. I couldn’t bulldoze my way out of that basement, so I tried another tactic.
I played along. I didn’t fight. I let him keep me like a pet.
I smiled. I ate his food. I looked him in the eye.
I held his hand, and then I choked him until he fell unconscious enough for me to grab the keys.
Hope that I would find my opening to escape, that Eamon was looking for me kept me going, but it kept me compliant.
These girls could’ve been praying they’d survive captivity. ”
She fell silent, forcing herself to meet her colleague’s gaze, and while she expected sympathy, Olivia’s expression made her pause. The women remained locked together, as if Olivia were seeing Bel for the first time.
“Or it was resignation.” Bel shrugged, breaking the spell trapping her and her partner. “Sometimes when people give up, they stop fighting. Maybe these girls gave up. Maybe they knew they were never getting out alive.”
“I’m sorry.” Olivia broke the long silence as they pulled into Neptune’s Ink’s parking lot.
She hadn’t uttered a single word the entire drive, refusing to even look at Bel, but now that they’d arrived at their destination, it seemed she’d found her voice.
“I didn’t know. I mean, of course, I knew.
I saw the chain in Abel’s basement, but you’ve never talked about it.
I never knew what those weeks were really like for you. ”
Bel turned off the ignition and leaned back in her seat to stare at the shop waiting for them.
“How was I supposed to tell you about it?” she finally asked.
“How was I supposed to tell you that some man cut the clothes from my body and dressed me in his dead mother’s nightgowns?
It didn’t matter that he never physically assaulted me.
He saw me. He drugged me. I was a pet forced to acknowledge him, so I played his game.
I pretended to care. I held his hand, all the while praying that the man I was actually falling in love with would find me in time.
And then when I got free, Eamon was there within seconds.
He caught me as I fled the house. If I had just waited ten minutes, he would’ve ripped that solid door off its hinges and snapped Abel’s neck, but how was I supposed to tell you that the only reason I feel safe these days is because I sleep with a monster?
A monster you blame me for.” She finally met her partner’s gaze.
“I wasn’t ready to talk to you about it right away.
You were still a stranger when that kidnapping happened, and by the time we grew close enough to share our traumas, yet another crazed man took me, and you decided I wasn’t worth the forgiveness.
So tell me, how was I supposed to tell you that, to escape Blaubart, I pretended to be Eamon?
That I sank my teeth into another human’s flesh to get him off me?
I had to run down a frozen mountain with his blood dried to my chin.
How was I supposed to share the darkest times in my life with you when you hate the person I need to survive them?
When you hate me for choosing the man who always stands between me and death?
I’ve had nightmares ever since I got these scars.
The monsters in my dreams change, but the pain is real.
I wake up terrified all the time. The cold scares me.
This case scares me. Everything scares me, but how could I tell you when you made it clear that you didn’t have my back?
I couldn’t trust you with the hell I endured because you wouldn’t trust me.
So of course, I didn’t share what happened with you. I couldn’t.”
The women fell silent, and Olivia stared out the window for so long that Bel gave up hope she’d answer and reached for the door handle.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia whispered again. “I really am.”
“Yeah.” Bel swiped a tear from her eye before her partner spotted it. “We should get going. It’s not a quick drive home.”
Olivia nodded, and the detectives locked the SUV behind them and strode through the doors of the tattoo shop.
Gothic décor greeted them, the elegance and extravagance a stark contrast to Thing-A-Ma Bob’s, and it reminded Bel of the style she’d expected her ancient boyfriend to fill his crumbling mansion with had he not been designing the home for her.
“Welcome to Neptune’s Ink,” an incredibly tattooed version of their friend Violet said from the front desk. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, I’m Detective Isobel—” she froze, her name dying on her tongue, and by the rigid stance of the woman beside her, Olivia saw it too. It hung prominently on display, impossible to miss in its morbidity, and its lifelike appearance was so realistic that Bel recoiled from the evil wafting off it.
For there, hanging in Neptune ‘sInk’s reception for the world to see, was an incredibly detailed skeleton of a mermaid that bore an eerie resemblance to the killer’s chicken wire victims.