Chapter 26 #2
I try to move faster, but there isn’t much in the way of ‘faster’ when you’re dragging two hundred and twenty-five pounds of dead weight across wet grass in the dark.
Another minute goes by before my heels hit the base of the doorstep, and I momentarily fight to keep my balance.
When I release the tarp to pick up the tranquilizer dart and the takeout bag Rhys dropped, my forearms are on fire.
I toss them onto Rhys’s motionless body and shake out my arms before grabbing the corners of the tarp and stepping onto the doorstep.
The step is only six inches higher than the ground I’ve been dragging Rhys across, but getting him onto it takes at least a full minute, and I’m panting by the time I manage it.
I pause long enough to slip some shoe covers over my boots.
And then I’m dragging the tarp into the house.
Once we’re all the way through the door, I shut it behind us.
I’ll need to go back for my duffel bag, but I’d like to let the actual food delivery person come and go prior to that. I don’t want to risk running into them.
In the meantime, I leave Rhys’s body lying on the tarp and survey the room.
It’s a formal living room that looks like it was decorated by a woman in her fifties.
I wonder if his mom did his interior design.
Weight settles on my chest, and I hope not.
That would suck for her. But considering the fact that he’s been walking around the world, raping women and getting away with it for at least a couple of years…
Well, he’s only getting what he deserves.
I know that won’t make the loss any less painful for his family, though.
I push the thought away with a sigh.
I need to find a chair. A nice sturdy dining room chair.
Preferably one with arms. The formal living room opens onto a large kitchen, and there’s a formal dining room to the left of the kitchen.
The dining room is dominated by a large table surrounded by eight sturdy-looking wooden chairs.
I drag the closest one to the living room and lay it on its side next to Rhys’s body.
The doorbell rings as I’m turning to go back to the kitchen.
I freeze, hoping Rhys left instructions for the driver to leave the food at the door.
I count to two hundred before I approach it to peer out of the peephole.
There’s no one visible on the doorstep, and there’s no car parked in the driveway.
I breathe a sigh of relief and return to the kitchen, figuring it won’t hurt to give it a bit of extra time, just in case.
That way, if the security detail noticed something amiss, and this is them checking up on things, they’ll grow so concerned when no one answers the door that they’ll bust it down, and I can make a run out the back.
I open drawers until I find the plastic wrap.
There are boxes of it in my duffel bag outside, but I may as well start with what Rhys has in the house.
When I return to his body, I roll him off the tarp until he’s lying on his side next to the dining room chair.
I position his body so that if the chair were upright, he’d be sitting in it.
Then I pull the roll of plastic wrap from the box and wrap his lower right leg to the right chair leg.
I do the same thing with his right arm. By the time I’m finished, the roll is almost empty.
I leave him lying there, partially restrained but fully unconscious, and return to the yard to retrieve my duffel bag.
The car hasn’t moved, and it looks like one of the guys is napping while the other watches the street.
I bring the recently delivered takeout bag in, stopping long enough to wrap Rhys’s hands around the bag before setting it in the kitchen.
Maybe it’ll help confuse the timeline a little and make it look like he wasn’t attacked until after the food was delivered.
I bet Rhys told them the delivery driver was coming when he stopped to talk to them, and they waved the person right past.
When I return to the living room, I finish wrapping him to the chair.
Once I’m done, almost every inch of him is covered in plastic wrap.
I even slid a long, thin breadboard I found in the kitchen between his back and the chair and made sure his head was affixed to it.
He shouldn’t be able to so much as rock the chair since I also locked his feet into a flexed position.
He looks like a cling-film-wrapped mummy.
I slap a strip of duct tape over his mouth and set up the tripod from my bag with the camera I purchased in cash from a pawnshop earlier this week.
After that, I go to his garage and find a screwdriver and a hammer.
Then, I return to sit down on the floor with my back against the front door.
There’s no reversal agent for Telazol. All I can do is wait for Rhys to wake up.
It’s three-fifty-eight when he begins to stir.
It’s four-seventeen when his eyes open and he blinks a few times.
It’s four-thirty-five when his eyes focus on mine and he seems to realize his predicament.
His muscles strain against the plastic wrap, but aside from his face changing to a deep purply-red color, nothing happens.
I wait until his muscles slacken. He’s breathing loudly through his nose, and I want to make sure he’s not going to pass out again.
Once his face returns to a more normal color, I rise to my feet and hit the record button on the camera, being sure to stay out of frame—despite the ski mask I’m wearing—as I pull a stack of preprinted pages from the duffel bag.
This part of the plan was Katie’s. She thought it would help to muddy the waters. I’m sure she’s right.
I hold the first page up, facing the camera, then turn it to face Rhys. It says, Hi Rhys. When I’m confident he’s read it, I let it fall to the floor. It drifts down in lazy, swooping arcs, landing next to his feet. I show the next page to the camera and then to Rhys.
You’re going to answer my questions. If you’re honest, I’ll let you live. I move to the next page. Blink once for yes, twice for no. Understand? He blinks once. Good. I let the page flutter to the floor with the others.
Did you have an address book that went missing recently?
He blinks once. Do you recognize the name Nina Capper?
One blink. I let the page fall to the floor.
Was her name in your address book? One blink.
Did you rape her? He doesn’t respond, and I shake the page in front of him.
Eventually, he blinks once. I shuffle through the pages, looking for a woman Vaughn wasn’t sure about.
Do you recognize the name Janelle Hayes?
One blink. Was her name in your address book?
He blinks once. Did you rape her? He blinks twice in quick succession.
I sort through the stack until I find the page that says, Are you sure?
He blinks once. Interesting. Maybe someone else was living with her.
Do you recognize the name Katie Stanton?
One blink. Was her name in your address book?
One blink. Did you rape her? Another single blink.
I continue working through the names. Rhys blinks yes, admitting to raping each of the remaining seven women.
Every person Vaughn had on the list except for Janelle Hayes.
I turn off the camera, stopping the recording.
I remove it from the tripod and set it on the floor next to Rhys’s chair.
Then, I gather the pages scattered across the floor.
There’s nothing on the video that the police can use to identify the type of printer that printed the pages I showed Rhys.
But if I leave the pages, they’ll definitely be able to figure that out.
I pack the tripod away next and set the bag of takeout food I brought with me, as well as the tranquilizer dart I shot Rhys with, on top of the duffel bag.
Everything else is already neatly packed.
It’s five-eighteen. Sunrise will be shortly after seven this morning, but people are going to start waking up for work soon, and I need to get out of here.
Part of me would like to remove every tooth from Rhys Steichen’s mouth like I promised myself I would in the courtroom all those months ago, but I don’t have the time.
And if I’m being honest, I don’t have the stomach for it either.
I don’t need to cause them pain. Not really.
I just need to make sure they aren’t alive to fuck up anyone else’s life.
I pick up the screwdriver and the hammer I took from his garage and step toward him.
Once more, he strains against the plastic wrap binding him to the chair, but it has no effect.
I place the tip of the screwdriver on his forehead and drag it down his face.
His eyelids automatically shut to protect his eyes.
I rest the tip on his eyelid and drive the hammer into the base of the screwdriver’s handle, plunging it through his eye, into his brain, fighting down the bile churning in my stomach.
He makes a strangled gurgle, and there’s a wet sucking noise as I pull the screwdriver out and repeat the process with his other eye.
Let them decide it’s some weird ritualistic thing with not wanting to be seen or whatever. It’s not. It’s merely that the trauma from a single strike probably wouldn’t be enough to kill him—and certainly not quickly. Look at Phineas Gage.
This time, I leave the screwdriver impaled in his brain and grab the stethoscope I brought with me.
I place it against his chest, wanting to be sure he’s dead.
And he is. There’s no heartbeat. No respiratory sounds.
I put the stethoscope away, pick up the bag, and walk out the backdoor of Rhys Steichen’s house, leaving only the camera and its recording behind.