37
“You said you can prove he’s the Judge.” Julia eyes me speculatively. “How? He was only twenty-five back then, and in the five years prior to that, the Judge murdered twelve victims. So you’re saying he became a serial killer at twenty?”
After all that’s happened, Julia still isn’t convinced. I get it. She was obsessed with the guy. She doesn’t want to let go of that lifelong fantasy. Dreaming about him probably helped her get through all the nights in that cage. The thought makes me want to gag.
Perhaps all those years in captivity caused her to go backward in her emotional development. Nah, I’m not giving her that kind of credit. Not when I know what I know.
“Actually,” I counter, “he started before that.”
“How can you possibly know any such thing?” Julia is pacing again, no doubt aggravating her bad leg since her limp is noticeably worse.
No sympathy. I have lingering side effects from a TBI that damaged my brain and left me in a coma. I win.
“That day,” I begin, “after we did what we did, he smoked a cigarette and went to the kitchen to make coffee. I thought about going to sleep since I’d had zero, but I wanted to find any dirt I could on him.
That was the whole point of me going with him that morning.
So I did some poking around. His wallet was on the bedside table.
I listened to ensure he wasn’t coming back while I had a look.
His driver’s license was from Maine. I assumed the name on the license, Casey Denton, was his real name. ”
“Maybe it was a fake license. He may have had other ones. Did you search his room?” Julia stops her pacing long enough to wait for my answer.
“Course I did. I found a bag, like a backpack. He had two passports—Casey Denton and Casey Duval. There was a Casey Duval license, too—from Connecticut.”
“Then you don’t know which was his real name.” Alicia scrutinizes me. “How did you make a determination?”
“I didn’t then. I put everything back like I found it when I heard your voice,” I say to Julia. “You know the rest.”
The old ache I used to feel nudges me now even after two damned decades. I knew how hurt Julia would be, but I really had good intentions when I went with Casey that day. At least as good as a seventeen-year-old foster kid who’d been abused by nearly everyone she had ever known could.
“When did you determine which was his real name?” Julia prompts me as she settles on the sofa once more.
“It was much later. After my escape. I pulled myself together, settled the score with you, and moved on. After I left you with the Monster, I was determined not to look back. But then Casey contacted me, and I had no choice. Then I had Olivia, and I started to think about those men—the keepers—and the women they would hurt and maybe kill in the future. I knew I had to do something. Since taking the steps I did were likely going to garner Casey’s attention again, I felt it was best if I knew all I could about him. Leverage is an important tool.”
Honestly, I had hoped he was dead. But I wasn’t so lucky. Not then, anyway.
“More than ten years after he took me to that bastard,” I say, tension throttling through me, “the private investigator I hired found all kinds of information on him just like that.” I snap my fingers.
Alicia casts an accusing glare in my direction. “You said you never went to a private investigator.”
“I lied.” So sue me.
She shakes her head. “Nothing about you is on the up and up.”
Not much anyway. But she doesn’t have any room to talk.
“The PI found Casey’s hometown,” I continue. “He was born in Beaver Cove, Maine. A small rural community north of Greenville, almost in Canada. His family lived there in a run-down place basically in the middle of nowhere. The PI spoke to his mother. She was still alive at the time.”
Alicia appears engrossed as I tell the story. But the real surprise is Julia. She listens, her face unchanging, as if she expects exactly what I’m saying.
She knows. The realization sits like a rock on my chest. She fucking knew . . . maybe even all those years ago.
“His mother,” I go on, my voice a little tighter, “said he was a quiet child. Odd, really. He watched everyone so closely but kept to himself like an outcast. He never had friends that she knew of. Just a loner. His father was a janitor at the hospital in Greenville. He was an alcoholic, abusive bastard who beat his wife and kid.”
“So his childhood was even worse than yours,” Julia suggests, obviously enjoying the point.
I nod. No need to deny it. I’m not the one with the psych degrees, but I wonder if she’s one of those people who likes collecting friends well beneath her. Those kind are always easier to manipulate . . . to make you feel self-important. Oh yeah, I can see that. Just another of her nasty traits.
“By the time Casey was seventeen,” I say, continuing the biography on our old friend the psychopath, “his father was in prison for raping a young girl. His mother fell into her own issues with painkillers, and Casey disappeared. At the time my PI interviewed the mother, she hadn’t heard from him since just before he turned eighteen. ”
“That is a tragic history,” Julia rebuts, “but it doesn’t tell us that he is the Judge.”
“I was just getting to the good part,” I offer with a knowing smile. “Casey’s father used to do this thing to his mother when he was in an alcoholic rage. He would beat her and then write the word failure across her forehead before locking her in the basement.”
There’s nothing but silence in the peanut gallery now.
“He did the same to Casey until Casey got big enough to fight back. His mom believed he was the one who turned his father in for raping that girl. The father swore until the day he died in prison that he didn’t do it, but the DNA said otherwise.”
“Is his mother still alive?” Alicia asks.
“No. I saw her obit on the internet a couple of years after the PI spoke to her.”
Julia says nothing, she won’t look at me.
“All that said,” I cut in, “I don’t think he is or was a serial killer.” Just a piece of shit with a twisted childhood.
Julia stares at me in confusion. “You just said you can prove he’s the Judge.”
Alicia shakes her head. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Just hear me out,” I insist. “I’ve thought about this a lot.” They both glare at me but say nothing more. “During those five years, there were twelve victims murdered and attributed to a killer the FBI dubbed the Judge. But what if there never was a serial killer?”
Alicia waves off the idea. “The FBI made that determination based on evidence that connected the murders.”
“I’m not saying there wasn’t a connection. I’m saying the connection was a ploy. A decoy of sorts.”
“That’s a big leap. How did you get there?” Julia isn’t ready to agree, but she is still listening.
At least she didn’t immediately insist I had to be wrong. But that may be more about curiosity as to what I actually know than belief on any level.
“The PI was able to determine that when Casey left Maine, he showed up in New York. He held a number of menial jobs. Eventually he ended up working for a man who supplied certain powerful men with playthings. Think The Girlfriend Experience gone wrong.”
They wait for me to go on, both fully immersed now rather than tossing out alternative scenarios or snide remarks.
“A year after going to work for this sick perv, the perv ends up dead. Beaten to death with the word greedy written across his forehead.”
Casey would have been twenty by then.
“A few months later, the first victim of the killer the FBI called the Judge was found. Based on the torture marks and the way she was killed, I believe Casey took over the dead guy’s business, and these victims were his way of disposing of the ones who were killed or rejected by his clients.
He created this fake serial killer MO to cover up their mishaps.
The FBI was thrown off any trail that might lead to him or to one of his customers.
Eventually he moved on to a higher-class clientele, and the, let’s say loss related to consumer consumption diminished.
Therefore the Judge cover was no longer needed, and those murders stopped. ”
I have to hand it to him, it was a brilliant cover.
“This is a very interesting and detailed story,” Julia admits, her expression closed, “but you’ve always been a very good liar, Wendy. How do we know you’re telling the truth now.”
I look to Alicia. “The private safe in my closet.” I give her the combination. “You’ll find the file there. The ten thousand bucks I mentioned is there too. Take it.”
Alicia rushes from the room. I badly need to stretch my legs and go to the bathroom.
I stand.
Julia does the same. “What’re you doing?” She glances toward the stairs as if she might have to shout for Alicia.
“I need to use the bathroom. You want to go with me?”
I don’t know how long we’ve been talking, but it feels like hours.
I head for the entry hall and the powder room there.
I hear Julia’s uneven gait behind me. When I go inside I wait to see what she plans to do.
It’s not like I can pull down my jeans with her watching.
She stands in the doorway but turns her back.
Thank God. I grab the handgun and lay it carefully on the floor between the toilet and the wall.
Then I lower my jeans and settle onto the seat.
I sigh as the urine starts to flow. I watch as she leans into the doorframe as if standing in one place is difficult or maybe she isn’t strong enough to stand for a long period.
Too soon to tell.
I grab the gun and yank up my jeans. Eyes on her, I zip and tuck the gun before flushing.
She turns to watch as I wash my hands. “What?” I demand.
“Alicia said you have scars.”
“Mostly on my back.” That was his preferred place to leave marks.
She remains in the doorway as I turn, ready to exit.
For a moment I think she’s going to speak, then she does an about-face and walks away.
“I need water,” I say as I head to the kitchen.
By the time I reach the large room with its wall of windows that look out over the lake, she is right next to me.
“I always did love this view,” she says as she moves toward the windows.
I select a glass and set it on the counter.
There are knives in the drawer closest to me.
I could grab one and stab her to death before she could stop me.
I’m certain that even in my current out-of-shape condition I could take her.
But then I might miss where this big plan is headed.
I figure it’s going to be a hell of a finale.
Instead of running or injuring her, I fill my glass with chilled water from the refrigerator’s dispenser. I drink slowly, telling myself that the water will help. But it won’t. The pain that lingers even three months into healing doesn’t care if I’m hydrated.
Alicia bursts into the room, the file in her hand. “She’s telling the truth.” She spreads the papers and photos over the sleek marble island top. “It’s all here. All of it. If this Casey guy is coming, we’re in deep shit.”
Satisfaction almost makes me smile.
Julia scans the irrefutable evidence. She looks to me. “What do you suggest we do?”
How paradoxical that she’s seemingly ready to listen now. The answer is that I know exactly what we need to do, but I don’t really want to discuss it in front of Alicia. She has no skin in this game. She’s only here for the money. I can’t risk my words coming back to bite me in the ass.
A perfect excuse to send her out of the house occurs to me. “Helen has been tied up in her SUV for hours. Alicia, will you please bring her to the house. We’re going to need her. You can explain that you were only trying to protect the three of us. We’ll back you up.”
She may or may not believe that line of bullshit, but it’s the best I’ve got at the moment.
Alicia looks suspicious. “Don’t worry,” I assure her. “We’re all in this together now. If one goes down, we all do.”
“How are we going to explain this?” She gestures first to me and then to Julia.
“For now,” I say with a look toward Julia, “we should keep things as they have been. It’ll be easier.”
Julia hesitates a moment. “You can introduce me as Wendy,” she says to Alicia. “We’ll keep it simple.” She looks to me then. “For now.”
Alicia nods and heads out. Thank God. I walk to the sink and reach for the cabinet where aspirins and the like are stored. I pop two in my mouth and wash them down. When I turn around, Julia is watching me again.
“You should be worried,” I say. “You think you can trust her, but she and her boyfriend have already killed for this once.”
“She only wants the money. What happened to Eleanor was her boyfriend’s idea. It was a mistake I should have prevented, but I was in no condition to really control the situation at the time.”
I choose not to respond to this. Whether anyone meant for it to happen, it did. Julia is a fool to believe these two will walk away leaving two eyewitnesses to their exploits. The upside for now is that they are not going to kill me until they have their money.
Time to give Julia something to consider.
I set my glass aside and study her a moment. “If Casey shows up as I suspect he will, we can’t afford anyone going soft on us or failing to pay attention. He will kill us all to save himself.”
Julia nods. “I get it. I didn’t want to.
For years I dreamed of a life with him. But eventually I understood.
” She glances at the papers spread over the island.
“Considering all he has done, he needs to be put down.” Her gaze zeroes in on mine.
“He didn’t just do this to you, he did it to me as well. ”
As nice and convenient as it would be to believe she’s being honest, I know she’s lying. But I play along. “We need a good plan for when he gets here.”
“We do and we’ll need all the help we can get,” she suggests.
This makes me nervous. “There’s four of us,” I say. “I think we’ve got this covered.”
“I remember,” Julia says, “that Special Agent Howard really wanted to solve the case. He came back repeatedly and questioned me. He was desperate to be the one who got the job done.”
I can see where this is going. “I don’t trust him.”
Julia puts a hand on my arm. “We have to give him a chance. You have a daughter who needs you, and I would like to start living again. If we manage to kill Casey, we could end up in prison or fatally injured. Let’s try the right way first.”
Well now there’s a sudden about-face. What does she know that I don’t? Obviously something about the former special agent. Oh well, I never trusted him anyway.
Or maybe this is just a last-ditch effort to save her old lover. Way too late for that.
So I agree. “Good idea. We’ll do this the right way.”
The trouble is that the right way has never worked for me. I don’t see my luck changing now.