Chapter 28 #2
The horrific refrain echoes in my mind, nearly bringing me to my knees. Doesn’t matter that I didn’t push the trigger. Doesn’t matter that I never meant to.
I’m responsible. I made a series of decisions that led to her dying.
Logan gave her some money and told her to disappear. And she did a really good job of it. Too good of a job. She literally became invisible.
By the time Vincent managed to pick up her trace again, all he found was a puddle of blood.
“Where’s the guy who killed her?” I ask Logan. “The fucking cockroach?”
“In the room next door to the cell. Igor’s got him.”
“Good,” I nod, my jaw clenched.
Of course, we didn’t tell Igor why we’d brought the cockroach in. Can’t be sure of that sadist’s loyalty. But he doesn’t need a reason to make the insect suffer.
I grab my gun, leave Logan’s office and call the elevator. The cockroach has been with Igor all night. He’s probably completely broken by now. But I want him awake enough to look me in the eye when I kill him.
The fucking insect. I’m going to stamp him out with my foot.
My anger is all-encompassing. It terrifies me. I’m two steps away from bombing this building, and killing the cockroach, Devil and myself in one fell swoop.
Especially Devil.
They made me kill my pet.
I lean against the metal wall of the elevator, cursing Devil’s name. Cursing the name of the cockroach who’s being tortured right now as we speak. Cursing myself, because deep down, I know I’m the one to blame.
My body literally aches with the need of her.
I never showed her how much I cared. She never had an inkling of my obsession.
She was right there, in my building, held captive in an apartment that belonged to me, and yet I never truly made her mine.
I merely fucked her up from the beginning till the end, always withholding, always cruel, never showing her just how much she meant to me. And then I killed her.
I fucking killed her.
The doors open and I enter the room where the cockroach is suspended by a hook from the ceiling, naked.
Igor knew I was coming down, and he’s been busy dousing him with buckets of water.
But the guy is pretty gone. Every one of his fingernails has been pulled off, and he’s like a slice of Swiss cheese with all the stab wounds carefully inflicted to areas that won’t kill him.
Many of his teeth have been pulled, his skin has been cleanly flailed off in various places, and his face is a pattern of bruises, burns and oozing cuts.
But he’s conscious, and his eyes stare at me from beneath his matted hair, crusted with blood.
“I’ll take it from here,” I tell Igor, and he leaves, shrugging.
I have my reasons for wanting to be alone with the cockroach. I want to try once more to wrangle information out of him, and of course, I can’t have the others knowing.
“Benjamin Duncan,” I start, as I draw nearer.
He mouths a word.
“What?” I ask, stepping closer.
“Ben.”
The word comes out feeble. I snort.
“Fine. Ben. I’m going to give you one last chance. Where is she?”
He doesn’t answer. I lift my gun and point it at his head. He doesn’t cringe. Bad sign.
“Where is she? Did you kill her?”
He mouths a few more words, and I put my ear to his face so I can hear.
“Whaddya want with that whore anyway?”
I drive a fist into his stomach, but he doesn’t even grunt. He just widens his mouth into a toothless, bloody smile. Fuck him.
Then he mumbles something that I manage to catch.
“You’ll never find her. She’s gone.”
My blood runs cold as his words seem to confirm my worst fears. But I push through the terror. I need to find her. I need to find whatever’s left of her.
“Where’s her body, then? Did you bury it? Burn it? Cut… cut it into pieces?”
I can barely get those words out. But all he does is stare at me with that bloody toothless grin of his.
So, I lift my gun up and pull the trigger.
-
“I’ve looked everywhere. Haven’t found her, but I did find out some more about her past. Maybe there’s a clue there.”
I have to give it to Vincent, he came back. It’s probably the biggest show of loyalty he’s given me so far. He came back after finding the blood in her old boyfriend’s apartment, knowing I might kill him. Knowing I probably would.
I didn’t. Logan convinced me not to. He didn’t appeal to any sense of mercy, unlike Everest did when I brought him into the situation. Logan knows me too well for that. I don’t do mercy.
“Vincent is useful,” Logan had said. “There’s no doubt about it. Maybe not so good at keeping an eye on people. But very good at finding out information.”
Vincent has more than confirmed his assessment. He’s sitting before us, Everest and me, with a binder full of notes.
Logan’s not here. He’s been obsessively searching for her, even though I’m convinced it won’t do any good. She’s dead. I saw it, clear as day, in the cockroach’s eye, before I killed him.
“She lived with her parents, Maisie and Thomas Connor, until she was about fourteen,” says Vincent.
“Then, her parents separated, and her mother went off with a new guy named Alfie Jones. A month later, both Maisie and Thomas were found dead at Thomas’ place.
It was labeled a murder-suicide, even though some unidentified DNA from a close relative was also found on his body.
They were never able to identify it, but the Feds recently figured it out, and I got the information.
I already told you Seraphina killed her father.
Well, what happened is that Maisie was beaten to death by Thomas, and then Seraphina killed him in retaliation. ”
I lean in, my eyes wide. It had already been a shock to hear that my girl had it in her to kill a man. But to find out she did it to avenge someone that she loved shows me a new side of her. She was brave, very brave.
My thoughts return once more to that time when she kneed me in the crotch and cursed at me. That was pure courage. And I rewarded her for it by beating the shit out of her.
I close my eyes bitterly.
“Tell me about this Alfie Jones,” I request, trying to force my thoughts away from our last moments together.
The gun pointed at her head. My sick enjoyment of her fear when she thought I was about to kill her.
I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I thought she was taking it seriously, I think lamely to myself.
No, doesn’t matter, another internal voice cuts in.
I didn’t care to find out what she thought.
I put a gun to her head and it brought me pleasure, because I’m a sick fuck.
Why couldn’t I have shown her kindness? Why couldn’t I have been the man she deserved?
I don’t care if she stole the nanochip. None of that matters anymore. I take a drag of my cigarette, practically willing the newly-resumed habit to give me cancer.
“Seraphina lived with him for just that one month,” continues Vincent.
“She never returned home after killing her father. She moved in with Ben Duncan. I don’t have much information on Alfie Jones.
All I know is she was fourteen when she moved out.
She lived with Ben in his mom’s basement apartment, and that’s where she was living when she was shoplifting at the Devil stores.
Makes sense that’s where she returned when you… we told her to disappear.”
I grunt. Typical Vincent, to try to tone things down so I don’t come off so bad. No one but me was behind the decision to make her disappear. He can’t tell me otherwise.
“She didn’t have anyone else to go to?” I ask.
“No friends, no family. No one but Ben Duncan.”
I close my eyes. My poor girl has had a rough life.
I feel an overwhelming pang of regret as I think of her time with me.
Images of her sweet upturned face, lighting up when she saw me, setting in resignation when I hurt her, always so needy and so willing to accept the worst from me if it meant I would stay for a bit, haunt me.
I could have made her so happy. Instead, I destroyed her.
“She also had Alfie Jones,” points out Everest. “But I guess if she preferred to return to a shitty abusive drug addict of a boyfriend, things must have been worse with him.”
I clench my jaw. It hurts to think how much the men in her life have failed her.
Maybe I can’t get her back. But at least, I can make them pay.
Thomas Connor is dead. I saw to it myself that Ben Duncan died a slow, painful death. That leaves Alfie Jones.
“Address?” I ask.
Vincent hands me a card on which is scrawled a location in the worst neighborhood of Oakley.
“It was pretty easy to find,” he says hesitatingly. Then he adds hurriedly, “He’s a registered sex offender.”
Well, fuck.
Guess I don’t have to wonder anymore why she didn’t return to him.
-
I’ve been leaning on the buzzer for a while when the door finally opens.
Good. I’d been about two steps away from kicking it in.
I look at the piece of shit who was responsible for fucking up a part of my sweet girl’s life.
Beady eyes, scrubby beard, a breath that stinks of alcohol and cigarettes, an old t-shirt with holes and two big damp spots under his arms, and paint-stained overalls, though I highly doubt he’s done any painting in a while.
“Yeah?” he asks guardedly.
“Alfie Jones, I presume? I’m Damien Wells. Nice to meet you.”
He eyes my lifted hand in distrust. And he’s right to be wary. When a Devil shows up, in person to some shitty Oakley dwelling, you know you’re fucked.
“May I come in?” I ask with a pretense of politeness, and push past him before he’s had time to reply.
I take in my surroundings at a glance. The house that my girl spent one month in.
A small living room with a sagging couch facing a television.
A threadbare carpet with a few suspicious stains.
At the back, visible through a cracked door, a tiny kitchen with piles of dirty dishes.
There’s a third door that opens onto an unmade bed with brown sheets.
“You’re Seraphina Connor’s stepfather,” I tell him.
“In a manner of speaking, yeah,” he mumbles.
“What manner of speaking?” I question sharply.
He runs a tongue slowly over his cracked lips.
“We’re not related by blood or by marriage, if you catch my drift,” he smirks.
I do catch his drift. And he’s a dead man. But I’m going to make him suffer before he goes.
Not yet, though.
I’ve just spotted a small box behind the TV, gathering dust. It’s got a pink flower pattern, and it looks out of place in this dumpy house.
“That hers?” I ask, gesturing toward it.
He shrugs. “Yeah. Some old keepsakes, or whatever. Never got around to chucking it.”
I head toward it, my heart pounding, and when I open it, a cloud of dust rises.
Inside is a pile of old photos. I flip through them, drinking her in throughout the years.
Sitting on a swing, standing in a tiny backyard, always sitting, or standing, staring quietly at the camera with her deep violet eyes.
Never playing, never smiling. There are pictures of her mother, too, and she looks a lot like her, except that her face is deeply lined, her eyes sunken in.
Then I come to another set of pictures. Reflections dancing on a small body of water, half-shielded by the shadows of over-hanging tree branches. There are dozens of pictures of that same body of water, as though she’s fascinated by this play of light and darkness.
Alfie’s voice reaches my ears, his tone slightly defensive. Perhaps he realizes his earlier comment didn’t quite sit right with me, to put it mildly.
“I did take care of her for the short time she was with me. She would’ve been out on the streets without me. I even gave her a camera. She wasted it all on those pictures.”
I take one of the photos and study it. This can’t be Oakley River. It’s far too clean.
“Where were these taken?”
“It’s that lake over in Astley,” he mutters. “But I told you guys that already.”
I freeze, my hand still crisped around the photo. I feel a little queasy, all of a sudden. “What guys?” I ask slowly. “I’ve never been here before.”
“That other Devil guy. What’s his fucking name? The one with the dark brown hair. Vale Jameson.”
I inhale sharply. Vale’s been here. Vale knows.
He found out we faked her death. Maybe he never believed we’d killed her to begin with. If so…
A tiny bubble of hope rises in my chest. Maybe Vale knows something more than me. If he’s been on her trail, he probably heard about the blood found at Ben Duncan’s. But he’s still looking. That means he might have reason to believe she’s alive.
“How long ago was he here?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“Oh, an hour or so. I don’t know. Maybe more.”
The bubble of hope bursts. One hour is long enough.
No time for the slow death, after all. I take the gun from my back pocket, aim it at his head, and before he’s even had time to register a thing, I shoot.