Speak No Evil

He remembered the exact day Jodi had cut her hair. At the time, he didn’t think she was flirting, just proud of her pretty style, but now he knew better. Now he knew the truth.

Fucking whore.

He closed down the browser, unable to read the journal anymore, though he knew he’d be back online later. To read it again, to see the truth about the girl he never expected to kiss and tell.

So, she likes her tits sucked? Maybe she’d like them sucked right off her fucking body.

Pulse racing, he slammed a tape into the VCR. It was by far the most vicious of the five, and usually he couldn’t watch it. He didn’t like the blood. But this time he needed it, this time he would force himself to watch the whole thing.

The slut was thrown onto the cement floor. Fucked in the ass while her head banged against the wall. Blood, black in the grainy, colorless film, trickled from her mouth. Then, chained against the wall, arms and legs spread wide. Discoloration covered her body. He watched her mouth open, her vocal cords stretch. A whip came out, the dark stripes dripped down, down.

She stayed like that for a minute, crying, hanging against the wall. She was taken again, by a different man. Then another. Three men. They shared.

Disgusting. He would never share.

Then the worst part. Except for the first time, he always turned off the tape after the third guy screwed her.

But not now. Both repelled and fascinated, he forced himself to watch.

The first man came back, and he could see his profile. Hard. He brought the woman down off the wall and threw her on a mattress in the corner. The angle of the camera changed. A close-up of him pinning her down with his body. Entering her.

Then the knife. It came out fast, from under the mattress. He pulled her head back by her hair and with one swift, deep stroke across her neck blood sprayed everywhere. The walls. The mattress. All over the killer as he arched his back and orgasmed.

His stomach churned at the sight, but still he watched as the woman bucked in her last response to inevitable death; as the blood spurted, a drop fell across the video camera’s lens.

Drip, drip, drip.

Blackness.

He wiped his face, surprised that sweat poured off his skin. His body shook and he looked down, saw that he had come in his pants.

He hid the films, went to the bathroom, and showered in icy water. Soon, his blood cooled, his heart slowed, his body returned to normal.

And he came up with a plan to deal with whores who kiss and tell.

ELEVEN

CARINA ARRIVED AT THE STATION early Wednesday morning, having barely slept the night before. Every time she dozed off she pictured Angie dead on the beach, wrapped in three garbage bags. The longer this case went unsolved, the edgier she got. Though it had only been forty-eight hours, she kept waiting for something to break.

It was the manner of death. Restraining the victim. Gluing on a gag. Raping her. Washing her body, then suffocating her. Definitely weird. And for all the lack of evidence, the ritualistic act, it still seemed sloppy. Did Angie’s killer put her body on the beach for a specific reason? Or out of convenience? Why so public? Because he didn’t fear discovery, or because he was thumbing his nose at the police? Or some bizarre reason only the killer would know?

Her few sleeping hours were dominated by disturbing dreams about Angie; in her waking hours she thought about her conversation with Nick Thomas.

Would she turn in her own brother?

First, she couldn’t imagine any of her four brothers raping and killing a woman. Nick seemed certain Steve Thomas was innocent. Wouldn’t she immediately defend her brothers, then ask them what happened? She couldn’t blame Nick for his loyalty.

Besides, though nearly everything Carina knew about the case pointed to Steve Thomas, Masterson and his disappearing act definitely cast doubt on her initial suspicion that Thomas was guilty. But Thomas had repeatedly lied, not only about what time he went to the Shack, but about how much time he’d spent reading Angie’s not-so- anonymous online journal.

The cursory examination from Patrick the day before showed that Thomas had spent forty-one hours on the MyJournal website in the last month, averaging more than an hour a day, but Patrick needed more time to extract exactly what he’d been reading. As he pointed out, a good defense attorney could argue that while the window browser may have been up, there’s no proof Thomas was sitting at the computer. They needed to make a correlation between the time his browser was open to a MyJournal page and any e-mails or interaction between Thomas and other MyJournal members.

In addition, Patrick was investigating every individual who commented on Angie’s journal, which amounted to hundreds of online identities to match with real people, determine who was a potential threat, and uncover their physical location. Thomas’s online identity was SThomasSgt, which was his name and rank in the military. But if he had been harassing Angie, he may have used another login, so Patrick had to verify every one.

And if Thomas really was innocent, Angie’s killer might be one of the other MyJournal members.

Already, Carina was developing a headache.

Will came over and rubbed her shoulders. “Not enough coffee or too much?” he asked.

“Ugh,” she answered and held out her mug. He grinned and poured her more inky-black coffee from the pot against the wall of the bullpen.

“Did Dillon ever call back?”

“Yes. Finally. You’d think he was this hotshot or something.” Which he was, and Carina was proud of him. Though he didn’t work directly for the San Diego Police Department, he was often retained on criminal cases to interview suspects in custody and present a psychiatric report to the court. She didn’t always agree with his assessments-the cop in her said killers should go to prison for hard time, not to a padded jail cell in the desert-but Dillon backed up his recommendations with facts and solid analysis.

“And?” Will asked.

“He’s meeting us for lunch at Bob’s.” Bob’s Burgers was across from the police station and a regular hangout for Homicide. If Carina didn’t get a Bob’s Ultimate Cheeseburger at least once a week, she became irritable. Will insisted the fries there cured any foul mood.

“So we have a couple hours. Any word on Masterson?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“By the way, I did a little research last night on Sheriff Nick Thomas.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“Do you remember hearing about the Bozeman Butcher?”

“Who hasn’t? The sick bastard was responsible for more than a dozen murders up in Montana.” Her eyes widened. “And Bozeman is in Gallatin County.” She hit her head. “Why didn’t I make the connection last night?”

“We were preoccupied. It’s been a couple long days.”

“So Nick Thomas was responsible for taking the killer down?”

“In part. But what wasn’t widely reported was that Thomas was held captive by the Butcher, and afterward was hospitalized for more than a week.”

Carina nodded. “I thought he was walking a little stiffly yesterday when he followed his brother down to the beach.”

“If anyone knows about serial killers, it would be Sheriff Thomas. He’d been building the case against the