Thirteen #2
On board with the idea, I handed her the maul. “You okay with keeping him there for now?” I asked Owen.
He shoved Dustin down again when he tried to rise. “For as long as I need to—but I can’t predict what I’ll do to him when this is over.”
“Understandable.”
The sound of a woman letting out all her frustration filled the room. Smashing and kicking. Cursing. Dustin was lucky she’d taken it out on inanimate objects instead of focusing her anger where it truly belonged.
As thunder boomed above us and rain hammered the windows, I scanned the too-neat lounge room.
No key hooks beside the door. None on the kitchen wall, either.
With another check on Owen to make sure he had Dustin under control, I strode toward the only bedroom.
“Stay out of there! You do not have my permission to enter.”
"We didn’t have permission to enter your apartment either, but here we are, shitbag.
" Ignoring Kerger’s protests, I stepped into a room exactly like the rest of his house.
No warmth or heart. No life. I hadn't seen a single framed photo of a family member or friend.
Just white walls and a plain grey cover on a queen-size bed.
Scratch that. When I turned and faced the opposite wall, all the breath left me.
A collection of A4 printouts had been taped in rows above a chest of drawers—newspaper articles featuring black and white photos of young, long-haired women.
I moved closer, my pulse thudding as I examined the pages.
They’d all gone missing under mysterious circumstances, cold cases from around the world still waiting to be solved.
Dustin had to be in his late thirties at most. The dates were too far back and too widespread for him to be responsible—but I doubted he had plans to solve the cases and become a hero.
These printouts were inspiration. Motivation.
One woman even looked like an older version of Sadie, and the thought of her photo up there among all the others spurred me into action.
I ripped them off the wall, but it wasn’t enough. My stomach clenched as I tore each page to shreds, scattering the paper like confetti over his pristine carpet.
Laura kept working away in the other room while Dustin went suspiciously quiet, as if waiting for a reaction from me.
For that reason alone, I kept quiet and dragged out the top drawer, expecting to find folded shirts or ironed socks. My fingers slid over a scrap of silky material, and I paused, frowning.
Pinks, florals, lace, and stripes. He had dozens of women’s panties, in every colour and pattern imaginable. I lifted a black pair and dangled them from my forefinger. “What the fuck?”
“What’s going on?” Tim said from the lounge room.
“Come here,” I called back, breathing harder against my mask.
Maybe he bought the panties online and liked to wear them under his stuffy, buttoned-up exterior.
Or maybe—and I could have pulled a muscle with this stretch—he brought women home and saved their panties like some weird souvenir.
But then Jeanette and Clive’s apartment came to mind.
If he’d been sneaking around and rummaging through residents’ underwear drawers, he’d just become a whole new level of dangerous.
“No!” Dustin suddenly sounded like he was fighting for his life.
The smashing of equipment continued, but going by the pace, Laura had either run out of steam or objects to obliterate.
I dropped the panties and found another pair of underwear, smaller this time. My hand stilled, and a wave of awareness stole my breath.
I remembered the images of Sadie on the monitor. The girls too. Add that to the pictures on his wall, and we were dealing with some apprentice serial killer bullshit here.
And he’d been doing this for years.
My insides plummeted, and I wanted to kick myself for not catching on to it sooner.
They’d never been safe—and they never would be again while Kerger was still living here.
Tim appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on?”
“You tell me.” I nodded at what I’d found.
I left the underwear on top of the chest and went over to the bedside table, determined to find the keys.
Kerger had been coming and going from our apartments whenever he saw someone leave.
Daily. Maybe multiple times a day. He could have been lurking in our rooms while we were sleeping, and I’d joked about it like it was too farfetched to be real.
I heard Tim rummaging behind me. “What in the Norman Bates is going on here?” he asked. “Are they... did he buy them or steal them?”
“No clue.” My fingers nudged a metal ring, and my heart thudded.
“They’re kid size,” Tim said, his voice filled with disgust. “Willow size.”
“I know.” I turned with the keys in hand and watched the same emotions I’d experienced play over his face, too.
“This is… deranged.” He stared as if convincing himself it was real, then disappeared into the walk-in closet and emerged with an empty backpack.
Ramming the underwear into the main compartment, he pulled out every piece from Dustin’s collection.
“I’m throwing it all out,” he said, leaving the top drawer bare. “Or burning it. I’ll talk to Laura.”
“Whatever you think’s best.” I pulled my keys from my pocket and flicked through Dustin’s set until I found the one with my apartment number, checking to ensure they were a match. Satisfied I had the masters, I dropped both bunches in my pocket. “Got ’em,” I said. “We’re good.”
“Not yet.” Tim slammed the drawer. “I’m checking every hiding place to see what else he’s got here. What’s this?” he asked, nodding at the scattered pieces of paper.
“Articles about missing women from the past few decades.”
Tim didn’t say a word. He paused and released an audible breath through his nose, then focused on the next task.
I helped him search the entire room while Laura and Owen kept Kerger contained on the other side of the wall.
We opened bedside drawers, dragged all his crap off the shelves in the walk-in closet.
Took a couple of suitcases out from under the bed.
After rifling through every nook and cranny, nothing else triggered concern.
The underwear, articles, and CCTV appeared to be the worst of it, which was saying something.
“Almost done?” Owen called out.
“Nearly there.” I straightened and blew out a breath, satisfied we’d achieved all we could in here. With his belongings strewn across the floor, Dustin’s once perfect room had been tossed so fully, it would take him hours to clean.
Laura popped her head around the doorway. “I’m finished smashing up the place,” she said, still breathing hard. “He can’t monitor anyone other than with his own eyes—and I’m more than willing to take care of that, too.”
“What about his phone, just in case there’s an app?”
“All sorted.” She gave the room, then me, a once-over. “What’s going on?”
“Might want to check out what Tim has over there. See if you recognise anything.”
I left the two of them and joined Owen and Kerger, immediately taken aback by how much damage Laura had done.
Broken bits of plastic and glass littered the wood floor.
The desk had been flipped on its side and belted until the wood splintered.
Power points were kicked in, so he couldn’t plug anything else in. No wonder she was breathless.
“We found your stash,” I said to Dustin.
Rain pounded against the windows, and the sky had darkened to almost black.
He looked wildly from me to his bedroom door. “You’re making assumptions. It’s not—”
“What?” I lifted my brows, tempted to stomp him in the same way Laura had his belongings. “It’s not what we think? Someone planted them? What about the articles? Someone broke in and taped them to your fucking wall?”
“What are you talking about?” Owen demanded.
“He’s got women’s underwear in there,” I said. “Girls’, too. A drawer full of them. And some disturbing shit plastered on his wall.”
“These are Willow’s undies.” Laura’s voice rose from the bedroom. She came storming back into the lounge room, backpack in one hand and underwear in the other. “She thought she’d lost them.”
“You little fucking weasel.” Owen’s expression darkened, and he grabbed Dustin by the scruff of the neck, dragging him out of the chair one-handed. “You were watching us—watching my girls—and you were in our apartment?”
“You’ve got it wrong,” he said, his eyes darting from one person to another. “They belonged to dead residents. I’m not hurting anyone.”
When he tried to pull away from Owen again, Laura emptied her hands and stormed over to him, ramming her forearm against his chest.
“Stay there until we’ve figured out what to do with you,” she said. “You’re lucky you never touched them, or I’d castrate you on the spot.”
Dustin’s laugh bordered on hysterical. “Who do you think you are? You have no authority here whatsoever.”
“How about I call the cops?” I suggested, crossing my arms. “And if they don’t come in the next fifteen minutes, we play judge and jury?”
“You can’t touch me!” His eyes went wide with fear, and he was right to be scared. While the world collapsed around us, no one was watching. Varesh was right on the money. Here, now, we could do anything we wanted. “You can’t do a thing, you imbecile,” he shouted, his voice shaking.
My pocket pinged with one message after the other, the rapid fire pace taking my attention off Dustin.
As Tim returned from the bedroom, I pulled out my phone and found a string of texts from Sadie.
You can’t come home
You know why
Stay at my place. It’s probs not contaminated
A flash of lightning lit up the room, and rolling thunder followed.
I closed my eyes and dread washed over me.
Whenever someone brought the virus into the building, they quarantined in their apartment and kept the rest of us safe. During all these months, not a single person had caught it from another in the common areas.
This was Sadie, though, and it wasn’t the type of illness you could suffer through alone and come out alive the other end.
“I’ve gotta go.” I opened my eyes and knew exactly what to do.
Picturing the days and weeks ahead had a preemptive exhaustion washing over me, and the issues with Kerger no longer seemed so important.
“Whatever you end up deciding with this asshole, if you’re looking for majority rules, count me as a yes. ”
Renewed energy had Dustin screeching and prying Owen’s hands off him.
Tim caught the fear in my eyes and snapped to attention. “What’s wrong?”
I adjusted the elastic on my mask and puffed out a sigh. “It’s Sadie.”
“What?” His eyes drilled into me. “Tell me.”
Laura gripped a fistful of Dustin’s shirt and froze.
Owen went quiet, shifting all his focus to me.
Thunder cracked so loudly, it rattled the windows.
Ten percent chance of survival, wasn’t that what Laura said?
My limbs trembled, and I struggled to comprehend the truth even as I said it out loud.
“Sadie has Ultimus.”