‘Jesus Christ,’ said Joe, snapping his hand back. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
Danny walked over to the cell, his throat constricting as he closed in on the source of the smell. In the corner beside the bed lay a bucket of human waste, the liquid almost evaporated, the solids breaking down, covered with breeding maggots. Adult flies swarmed around it, landing along the rim, travelling back and forth to a plate of spoiled food on a tray by the door. Joe shone the light on the pale china and could see the tiny olive-green specks of excrement they left behind. Danny rushed out towards the ladder, but managed to ride out the nausea without throwing up.
‘Why would anyone live like this?’ said Danny, holding his handkerchief loosely over his face.
‘He’s a broken man,’ said Joe. ‘Probably came down here only after the first victim. The guy hates himself, probably thinks this is all he deserves.’
‘What he deserves is his head shoved into that bucket,’ said Danny. He choked back another wave of nausea.
‘You’re making yourself sick.’
‘I have got to get out of here.’
‘Look,’ said Joe. He pointed to the dull plaster models of teeth scattered from a box on the bed. He shone the flashlight across two shelves mounted above it with neat rows of tiny animal skulls, jewels glistening in the cavities.
Pinned to the wall above a small desk was a single cracked and yellowed handwritten note, the top of it ripped from a lined spiral notebook. Joe leaned in to read it: The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.
The rest of the industrial grey walls had been covered with photocopies of the same script, side by side, edges overlapping, layer upon layer.
‘I bet that’s the note,’ said Joe. ‘From Sonja Ruehling. That was his kiss-off.’
Danny shook his head. ‘It is so fucked up… Jesus Christ.’
Joe crouched down and looked under the bed. ‘Wallets,’ he said. He pulled some of them out, looking through them at the faces of the unchosen victims. ‘If they only fucking knew.’
‘And upstairs, you had this beautiful shiny home? Jesus Christ,’ said Danny.
‘You never know, do you?’ said Joe. ‘What shit people hide beneath the surface.’
‘Where are you, you fucking freak?’ shouted Danny.
Rufo sat at his office with his head in his hands. Joe and Danny knocked and went in.
‘I’m in shock here,’ said Rufo. ‘I can’t believe Bobby.’
‘I know,’ said Joe. He looked down. ‘He probably went there because I was giving him a hard time, wanted to check it out before he came to me with the information…’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Rufo gently. ‘Where we at now?’
‘We’ve found Blake’s fucking dungeon, but no-one in it,’ said Joe. ‘Stanley Frayte’s home has been searched and nothing’s come up so far. No sightings of Mary.’
‘All we can hope is that Blake does something to draw attention to himself,’ said Rufo. ‘Our first contact with him was because he reached out to us.’
‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘But I think that was his way of putting himself forward as the exact opposite of what he was, this pathological lying thing. He knew he was good at it. He could get close to us, get off on the whole victim role and maybe find some shit out at the same time.’
Rufo let out a breath.
‘You know Blake was the one who got in touch with Artie Blackwell about that article,’ said Joe.
‘Artie told you that?’ said Danny.
Joe nodded. ‘Yeah. Maybe our near-death experience brought something out in him…’
Cullen rushed into the room. ‘Guys. I’ve found something. I don’t really know what to make of it. But you might want to take a look.’
‘What’s this about?’ said Julia Embry, struggling to pull out the seat opposite Joe in a canteen reeking of disinfectant and vegetables.
Joe helped her with the seat. ‘It’s about your son, Robin.’
She held a hand to her chest. ‘Robin?’
‘I know you never got any answers from that night and the driver was never caught…’
‘Oh my God,’ she said, raising her hand to her mouth. ‘Did you find out who-’
Joe nodded. ‘Yes, I did. And if you want, I can let you know.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course I want to know. Why wouldn’t I-’
‘You could trust me that I know who it is, that this person is not an evil person, that they’re not a danger or-’
‘I’m sorry, detective, I do trust you, you seem like a good person. But you know I’ve never got closure and I need closure and if it’s right here staring me in the face, I’m going to take it. Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Because it’s going to come as a shock-’
‘Who?’ she said. ‘Who did this to Robin? Just tell me.’
‘Stanley Frayte.’
Her eyes registered shock, but her whole face seemed to collapse with sadness and disappointment. Joe could barely look at her. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket. He was going to hand it to her, but her head was slumped onto her folded arms on the table and she was sobbing so hard, he could barely move. He tapped her arm lightly and put the handkerchief in front of her.
‘I’m so sorry to have had to tell you,’ he said. ‘But I know you never got closure. I know how hard that is. He may have taken the opportunity to leave because of the police attention. He probably felt we’d figure it out sooner or later.’
Julia shook her head and managed to draw breath long enough to tell Joe it wasn’t his fault. She reached out and dragged the handkerchief towards her, covering her entire face with it, then wiping her eyes and blowing her nose before she looked up at him. She broke down again and it was several minutes before she could speak. Joe sat quietly, looking out the window, listening to the sounds in the parking lot outside.
‘The Christmas lights in the house,’ she said. ‘Were…’ she sobbed, ‘… Robin and I always put them up. Then when Robin died – my husband. But when he left me… it was Stan who helped. He could do that with me and not… how could he do that? Why am I even thinking of Christmas lights right now? That’s the first thing I thought of…’
‘Stanley must have made the decision never to come forward for whatever reason. And then he realized he couldn’t live with that guilt. It takes a split second to decide to keep on driving. And there’s no going back. The next best thing for him was to reach out to you in some other way. I guess that eased his mind. I’m just guessing.’
‘You see all kinds of things in your job. Do you think what he – did not coming forward – was wrong?’
Joe shrugged. ‘Stan made a huge mistake. He had worked hard to get where he was at that time. He was thinking of his own family. He wasn’t thinking-’
‘Of mine. Of me. But he is such a…’ she choked on the words, ‘… kind man.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
‘How did you know it was him?’
‘When we picked him up for mailing the letters for Mary, I thought we’d got our guy. He looked guilty. And when he was in the interview room, it was like he was relieved. But when we told him why we’d taken him in, he seemed surprised. We knew he wasn’t the killer, but after, I thought maybe there was something else going on with him. I thought it might have been some scam he was working… We checked him out… We reached out to the detectives on the case and they had the last few letters of the truck company’s name that a witness had seen leaving the crime. She’d got one of them wrong…’ He shrugged. ‘We put it together.’
‘Stan was here from the start of the building project – the Clinic,’ said Julia. ‘He offered us rates that I know were below his usual. He was never late. He was polite. He was loyal. He didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs. He had such a good heart.’ She shook her head. ‘How am I supposed to feel about this? What am I supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Joe.
‘How did I not see it from him? Nothing. I never got any sense…’
