The cigar box was where he kept his most treasured possessions: his pocketknife, the cigarettes he had stolen from his mother, a lighter, the dried-out head of a rattlesnake he had watched a gardener kill, and his newest, most prized addition.
It was squishy and had started to smell, but that only added to the wonderful grossness of it. This was what the corpse would smell like if they had left it in the ground. It excited him to think about it.
He smiled as he carefully lifted the treasure out of the box and held it under the light.
The severed finger of a dead woman.
22
Thursday, October 10, 1985
Karly Vickers lay in absolute darkness, in absolute silence, in absolute pain, in absolute terror.
Most people would never in their lives know what true terror really is. There were no adjectives to describe it. It was like the hottest, whit est light and the fiercest, highest-pitched sound imaginable put together to assault every part of the brain and nervous system. And even that was an inadequate description.
She remembered very little about her abduction—a moment of recognition, but no memory of a face; a blast of panic, like a bomb going off inside her, then nothing. What had followed was both surreal and too real. Nothing made sense except the pain.
She had no idea when the pain would come, or from where. She had no concept of time, of day or night. She couldn’t always tell up from down. Sometimes she felt like she was falling only to realize with a start that she was lying flat. She could see nothing. She could hear nothing. She couldn’t open her mouth to speak.
She had no idea how long she had been in this place, or where or what this place was. It was cold. The thing she lay on was hard. She was in too much pain to feel hunger. Periodically, a straw was inserted in the smallest of gaps between her lips, and she was given water, just enough to keep her alive.
The fear would come on her in waves, huge waves that crashed over her, leaving her struggling for air, struggling against her bonds. She had no idea when her tormentor would come, what he would do to her, when he would leave. Because she couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him, the only way she knew he was there was to have him inflict pain on her.
When the panic exhausted her, sometimes she would think about the job she was supposed to have started. Had they told anyone she hadn’t come to work? Had anyone gone to the cottage to check on her? Had her mother begun to wonder why she hadn’t called Sunday night? Was anyone taking care of Petal?
Then she would start to cry, but her eyes produced no tears, nor could she open her eyelids to let them escape if they had come. She could feel the sobs wrack her chest, but if any sound came out at all, she couldn’t hear it.
Why would anyone do this to her?
Early on, before her hearing had been destroyed, she had heard another woman struggle, had heard a single, blood-curdling scream that had cut through her like a knife. But that had been what seemed long ago. She had no way of knowing if that woman was still here. She thought not. She felt so alone.
That was the worst thing: the isolation, the sense of being trapped inside her own body, inside her own mind.
She began to pray that the next time her tormentor came he would kill her.
He sat on a stool at the foot of the metal table, watching his victim, wondering what must be going through her mind. Was she still sane? Had she tried to imagine who her tormentor was?
This was his other life, his release from the so-called normal world where pressures built inside him on a daily basis; where the demands on his time, on his energy, on his sense of self came from other people with their own expectations of who he was and who he should be. A husband, a father, a professional, an upstanding citizen.
With his victim, he was in control, he could let loose the self that existed in the innermost part of him.
It excited him that his victim didn’t know and would never have suspected who he really was. She had believed him to be trustworthy and deserving of respect. Respect had taken on a whole new meaning in the face of his absolute control of her.
Absolute control. Absolute power.
Absolutely thrilling.
23
Thursday, October 10, 1985
Mendez and Hicks took the first pass through Karly Vickers’s, wanting to see it pristine, exactly as she had left it. It was a small place, neat as a pin. They went carefully through drawers and closets, looking for anything that might have pointed to Vickers having a current boyfriend or a current connection to her past boyfriend, the Simi Valley thug.
She had crossed Greg Usher’s entry out of her address book. If she was still in contact with him, the contact probably wasn’t being initiated by her. Mendez held the book open for Jane Thomas to see.
“I told you she was through with him,” she said.
“People don’t always turn out to be as strong as we would like for them to be, ma’am,” he said. “That’s part of my job.”
“Disillusionment?”
“Sometimes. Doubt, always.”
He would have preferred not to have her there. He knew she was anxious, and she was undoubtedly feeling violated on behalf of her client as she watched them go through Karly Vickers’s things.
That was how he had felt when he was a teenager, and the cops had come to search his family home: violated. They had been looking for evidence against his older brother, a gang member accused of dealing drugs. They had gone through the house like a human tornado, with no regard for personal property or personal feelings. He remembered his mother crying as they riffled through her dresser, touching her clothing, her undergarments, her mementos.
He had never forgotten that when he searched through the homes of victims and perps alike. A little respect went a long way.
Hicks turned the bedding down and pulled the shades. Mendez turned off the lamp then went over the sheets with a black light, looking for bodily fluids—specifically semen—to fluoresce. There was nothing.
“She isn’t seeing anyone,” Jane Thomas said. “She’s been completely focused on getting her life on track.”
“Is she always this neat?” Hicks asked.
“She always was at the center. She’s very respectful of the chances she’s been given.”
“Does she have any close friends that you know of?” Mendez asked. “Any of the other women at the center? Someone she might confide in if she was interested in someone or if someone was bothering her?”
“Maybe Brandy Henson. I saw them together a lot.”
