Chapter 13
Some say Alan Morrow lacked empathy. I can tell you right now they were mistaken. Morrow may have lacked emotional empathy, but he had sufficient cognitive empathy to design a trial around each victim pair. He understood exactly what would break them.
—Wheels Upside-Down: My Time with the FBI, a memoir by Donald Dellman
In the living room, I sink into an open spot on the couch next to DJ, who’s already there with the biggest bag of Peach Rings I’ve ever seen balanced on her knees.
“Do you know anything about this case?” I ask her.
DJ shakes her head, popping an orange gummy into her mouth. “Whenever one of us finds a potential case, the person who found it presents it to the team. Nico’ll walk everyone through what he’s found. Then we’ll decide whether we’re going to investigate.”
I nod and shift on the couch, settling deeper into the cushions.
Benji glances up from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor on DJ’s other side.
Griffin has dragged in a chair from the kitchen and positioned it on the far side of the couch.
I’m about to say hi to him when a person sitting in the corner catches my attention.
A girl sits hunched over a silver laptop, frowning at the screen as she types.
I’m temporarily stunned by how gorgeous she is, in this intimidating, don’t-even-think-about-trying-to-talk-to-me way.
Her tawny skin is flawless except for a scar cutting through her left eyebrow, and streaks of teal run through her dark curls.
She’s wearing a boxy oversized sports jersey over baggy wide-leg jeans.
Her brown eyes flick up to mine. I give her a small smile, but she goes back to her computer.
So that must be Zoey. She looks cool as hell, honestly.
I glance at Nico, who’s standing next to the TV at the front of the room with his feet planted square and holding a laptop.
He holds his shoulders back with this calm confidence that tells me he’s done this hundreds of times before.
Every inch a leader. My eyes linger on him, maybe a second too long, before DJ shakes the bag of Peach Rings in front of me.
I grab two. I freaking love gummy candy.
“I’m guessing Nico finds most cases,” I say, keeping my voice low.
“We all keep an eye on the news, but nobody reads more than Nico,” she says. “He’s like a bloodhound.”
Donny enters the room and lowers himself into a leather armchair. The energy shifts. Even Griffin straightens.
“Everyone here?” Donny glances around, taking inventory of us. “Good. Nico.” He waves Nico forward.
“Two days ago,” Nico says, his voice steady and clinical, “a garbage man in Pittsburgh found a body in a dumpster behind a strip mall.”
He clicks something on his laptop, and a body appears on the TV. Male. White. Probably in his mid-thirties and lying on a pile of trash bags. There’s blood crusted around his mouth. I swallow the rubbery Peach Ring.
I’ve seen crime scene photos before, but only ever on my phone.
I used to look at them a lot in high school—I’d scroll through leaked images of my family’s crime scene any time I wanted to punish myself—but I’ve never looked at any blown up on a TV, or while surrounded by other people.
Benji is chewing on his thumbnail nervously.
“This is Greg Gomez-Peterson,” Nico continues. “Thirty-six. Married to Rafael Gomez-Peterson for three years. Both men were last seen leaving a friend’s birthday party at the Gilded Lily bar at eleven-thirty PM on Thursday, January fifteenth. They never arrived home.”
Hearing someone else say the date January fifteenth is enough to make me need to pay attention to my breathing. Popular day for serial murder, I guess.
Greg’s eyes have that empty stare that says whoever he was is gone. I saw that emptiness in Dad’s eyes, through the plastic bag. I didn’t see Mom or Rosie’s eyes that day. Mom was on her bed when she died—I was tied up on the floor, couldn’t see her face—and Rosie—
I shove the memory back in the box. Slam the lid.
I saw their eyes when I found the photos, but there’s something about seeing it in person that makes you feel the emptiness in your bones.
“Greg was found dead with his throat cut.” Nico clicks to another photo, and DJ’s hand flies to her mouth. Greg’s lips have turned grayish purple, and his gums are riddled with gaping, bloody holes. “He was also missing seven teeth.”
Griffin turns his head away from the screen. “Dude, I hate dental shit.”
I run my tongue over my own teeth. There’s something uniquely nauseating about dental trauma. Maybe because we all know exactly how much that would hurt.
The blood blurs into patches of red. I dig my nails into my palm, using the bite of pain to anchor myself here, in this living room, not back in that house, not tied up on the floor.
When I look up, Nico’s eyes are on me.
He probably thinks I can’t handle this. That I’m going to fall apart the first time I see something scary, which is what he expects from me, isn’t it? It’ll be just another reason I don’t belong here.
I have to belong here. I have to be able to handle this, because if I can’t, and Donny sends me back out to my car, I’ll be just as defenseless as before.
So I make myself look at the screen. At Greg. Nico nods, and I get a tiny twinge of satisfaction. I even take another Peach Ring.
“Greg wasn’t alone in the dumpster,” Nico says, turning back to the TV. “Rafael was found under him.”
The image changes. Another body lies curled in a fetal position, surrounded by trash bags.
Also male. Also in his mid-thirties, with black hair and light brown skin gone dull and ashen.
His mouth is bloody, too, and at first I think he’s wearing a red shirt, but then I notice tiny patches of white near the collar that somehow escaped the blood.
“Rafael was missing eight teeth,” Nico says. “He was alive when they found him, but he died en route to the hospital from exposure. He was left unconscious in the dumpster overnight.”
The clinical way Nico presents this information should make it easier to digest, but it doesn’t. Rafael died cold and alone in a pile of garbage, and I can’t stop picturing what his last moments must have been like. Did he know his husband was already dead above him? Did he try to call for help?
I raise my hand.
Griffin makes this snorting sound, and I feel my face getting warm. Raising my hand might have been the wrong call, but who cares? I’m committed.
Nico’s eyes go to mine. I force myself to sit tall.
“Yes, Eden?”
“How did you get these photos?” I ask, motioning at the screen.
“Zoey retrieved the crime scene photos and notes for us, as well as the paramedic reports.”
I glance over at Zoey, who doesn’t look up from her laptop. Hacking into police databases probably doesn’t even register as interesting to her anymore. Why would it? Committing felonies is her job.
Nico advances to the next slide. “This case showed a strong match for one killer in our database.”
Griffin leans forward. “Who?”
“Alan Morrow.”
DJ freezes mid-chew. Benji pulls his knees to his chest, and Griffin presses a fist to his mouth. Even the air feels heavier, like someone just said Voldemort’s name out loud.
“The Game Master?” Benji asks, his voice pitching up. “I thought he was still alive.”
“He was until a month ago,” Donny says. “He died of heart failure.”
“Who’s Alan Morrow?” I ask, glancing around them.
Nico clicks ahead a couple of slides to a mugshot of an older man with silver-gray hair and eyes so deep set they might as well be holes carved into his face. I immediately hate looking at him.
“A serial killer who murdered eight people between 1974 and 1979.” Nico addresses the room.
“He targeted emotionally bonded pairs. Couples. Siblings. Close friends. He’d force these pairs into what he called ‘trials,’ which were engineered scenarios designed to make each person turn against the other to prove that love can be broken.
He presented each pair with a choice. Cut off your fingers or die.
Eat pieces of the other person or starve to death. ”
The gummies I ate threaten to make a reappearance.
I press my lips together, forcing myself to breathe through my nose because I will not run out of the room to throw up.
I don’t know why this is getting to me so badly, when I had no problem eating my chicken parm through the chop suey conversation.
Forcing someone to cut off their own fingers? What kind of sick freak even thinks of that?
“Each trial had a winner and a loser,” Benji tells me, rubbing one eye as he talks. “Morrow killed the loser and let the winner go. He stayed anonymous during the trials. He talked to the players through a camera. Nobody could ever identify him.”
“Could you remind me of his background?” DJ asks, putting the bag of Peach Rings on the table.
“His mother physically abused his father,” Benji says.
“They divorced when Morrow was eight, and they sent him to boarding school. Morrow felt abandoned by both of them. Then his fiancée left him three months before their wedding because he was too controlling, and that second abandonment triggered a pathological need to prove that all love is fake. He believed no one ever loved him.”
Mom probably would have felt sympathy after hearing this, but I search my chest for even a flicker of sympathy for Morrow and come up empty.
Plenty of people get abandoned and don’t decide to torture other people to prove a point about human nature.
I may be trying to be more like Mom, but there are limits.
Some things are just black and white, and feeling sorry for a serial killer is not something I can do.
“His last victim managed to escape when he was putting her in the dumpster, and a good Samaritan was able to capture a picture of his car before he could drive away,” Donny says, his voice heavy with memory.
“None of his surviving victims ever truly recovered. One woman scratched her arms so badly during the public trial that they were bleeding everywhere.”
“How do you know that?” DJ asks.
“I consulted on the original case in 1979,” Donny says.
Shit.
I can picture the woman so clearly, her arms torn up and scabbed over, wanting to punish herself because she was so ashamed of whatever choice she’d made to survive. Did she choose herself over someone she loved? Did she have to hurt them to save her own life?
I’d die ten times if it meant the person I loved would live.
Except I already failed that test, didn’t I? I might have been thinking I was going to get help, but that doesn’t change the fact that I left Rosie behind and ran, and she died alone because of it.
I snap the hair tie against my wrist, the sting pulling me back before anyone notices I’m spiraling. I grasp onto the first question I can think of.
“How do you know it’s not a copycat?” I ask.
“We don’t,” Nico says. “That’s why we have to go to the dump site. Scan for residual energy before the trail goes cold.”
I open my mouth to ask what residual energy means, but Benji’s already answering. “When an entity manifests enough to affect the real world, they create disruptions in the local magnetic field,” he says. “Those disruptions linger for days.”
I nod like I totally understand, but honestly, most of that went straight over my head. I’ll probably understand it better after I finish the stack of books waiting in my room.
Griffin stands up, stretching his arms over his head even though we’ve only been sitting for fifteen minutes. “Where’s this dump site?”
“Pittsburgh,” Nico says.
“A local case. Good.” Griffin nods. “Eden’s not ready for her first overnight road trip to some backwoods town where we all have to sleep in the van together and wake up accidentally spooning.”
My brain stutters over that image before I can re-focus on what he actually said: I’m going to the crime scene? I can feel my heart kick up, but I do a quick scan of the room and see Zoey yawning into her hand. I pretend to yawn into my own.
Nico’s voice deflates me like a balloon: “Eden’s not going.”
Griffin pulls a face. “She’s not?”
“She’s had no field training.” Nico turns to Donny, crossing his arms as he pulls his shoulders back. “Taking her puts everyone else at risk.” He says it deadpan, so sure that I’ll put his people in danger.
I curl my hand into a fist, and am glad when Griffin gives Donny an incredulous look. “Boss?”
Donny studies me. I’m sure he can see exactly how desperate I am to prove that I can do this.
“It’s unusual to find a case so soon after bringing someone new on board,” he says, “but this would be a unique opportunity to learn how we do things. Eden, you’ll come and observe.
Griffin and I will handle the investigation, and DJ will manage operations from the van. ”
DJ shakes my shoulder, encouraging me.
To say Nico looks unhappy would be an understatement. “You sure that’s advisable? I’ll remind you, she’s had no field training.”
“She won’t be doing any field work,” Donny says. “She’ll only observe.”
Anger flickers under Nico’s professional mask, but it’s gone so quickly I almost think I imagined it.
Why is he so against me coming? I’m only going to watch, and it’s not like I would do something stupid, like… I don’t know, run around screaming at the top of my lungs so the police come and arrest us. I’m not a moron.
“Come on, Eden, don’t leave me hanging,” Griffin says.
I turn my head to find him extending his fist to me. I bump my knuckles against his and try to push down the uneasy feeling, glancing between Donny and Griffin. “So, when do we leave?”