Abandoned

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“I’ve set up some software that lets you log in to our computer,” Leo says. “You’ll be able to watch what we’re doing as though you were the user. That’s how you can follow along with the chats and so on. I’ve also got a webcam on so we can talk over the microphone.”

Leo and Alan have taken their places in “Robert Long’s” apartment. Marjorie is ensconced in the house as Cynthia.

“Cynthia’s not working yet,” Callie had briefed us. “Since we needed the cover-up and running so quickly, I decided that we would go a similar direction with the ex-Mrs. Long as we did with Robert. She’s trying to decide what to do with her life. In the meantime, she’ll go to the gym, get her hair done, read, all those activities the well-kept woman engages in.”

I peer at the image on my own computer. “It’s like being right there,” I say, impressed.

“This technology has come a long way,” Leo agrees. “You should be able to read everything as we type it. I’ll be keeping logs as well, so you can catch up on anything you miss, as needed.”

“Have you registered with the website yet?” I ask.

Alan’s voice comes through the microphone. It’s odd to be having conversations while staring at a monitor. “Yep: Hurting2105. Hurting 1 through 2104 were taken.”

“That’s a lot of pain.”

“Or whining,” Alan says. “Anyway, we’re ready to get started.”

“Go ahead.”

Law-enforcement undercover work is not that exciting, unless you’re a narcotics officer. Most of it is not about the moment of the criminal act but the day-to-day living that surrounds your cover identity. You have to eat, and sleep, and make bank deposits, and pay bills. You have to see movies and decide between popcorn and licorice. You have to buy toilet paper. All of it done under the assumption that every move you make is being watched. You play your part and hope that the moment of action comes.

I watch as Leo surfs to the beamanagain website.

“Should I log in to chat?” he asks.

“Take it slow,” Alan counsels. “Let’s see what’s happening on the forums first. What’s the hot topic of the day?”

Leo navigates to the General Discussion section of the forums. “This is a new one,” he says.

I lean forward, squinting a little to read what he’s talking about.

“You’ll need to use the software connection if you want to follow the chat,” Leo says. “But you should just read the forums yourself, in your own browser, since everyone reads at different speeds.”

“Good point,” I allow.

I open the other browser window and get myself onto the website. I navigate to the forum. The top posting Leo had pointed out is entitled More housework, better sex?

“That sounds interesting,” I murmur.

I click on the topic and begin to read.

A recent study found that when men and women feel the housework is divided evenly, the couple’s sex life is better. The study noted that it wasn’t important that the housework was factually divided evenly. Only that the parties involved felt that it was. Discuss.

The next posting:

PUH-leeeze. Who did that study? A woman, right?

LOL.

The next, from the poster who started the thread:

Heh. Yeah, I thought the same, but it turns out the study was done by a man.

The responses continue.

Well, hell, I’ll vacuum if it will get my knob polished. Small price to pay.

Another poster jokes:

Fine, but I don’t do windows unless my salad gets tossed.

Ick. That’s gay. You want your turdhole polished, go find a fag forum.

Up yours!

The original poster steps in again, attempting to mediate.

Guys. We fight enough with women. Let’s not use this site to fight with each other. Back on topic, please.

I read through the back-and-forth of the thread. Much of it is harmless banter, some of it is more thoughtful. There is only the occasional venomous remark.

The cunt I live with wouldn’t fuck me if I hired a live-in maid.

Or perhaps the most disturbing:

All I know is she won’t have sex with me and hasn’t for four years. I’ve tried everything. I finally had enough of her shit. The other day I jacked off into her shampoo bottle. Then I went and got her a hamburger and added some “extra mayo” of my own. I almost laughed when I asked her how it was and she said, “It’s delicious!” She’s gonna swallow my cum and have it running down her face whether she likes it or not.

“I’m going to post a response,” Leo says. “Something I read yesterday would be appropriate here, and it would start to fill out my profile and give me some credibility with other members of the site.”

“Go ahead,” Alan says, “but let me read it before you post it.”

I peruse other threads as he types. A few minutes pass.

“I’m done.”

“Let me see,” Alan says. I wait as he reads it. “That’s pretty good, Leo. Where’d you get that?”

“I picked up some books. I also ordered a few from the site’s online bookstore, in case the perpetrator has a way of watching that.”

“Good thinking,” I chime in.

“Go ahead and post it.”

A pause. “Done,” Leo says. “Smoky, if you refresh the last page of the thread, my posting should be visible now.”

I hit refresh and watch as the page loads. I scroll down to the bottom and see a posting by Hurting2105.

I read a book recently that discussed the differences between men and women and their desire for sex. It said that, by and large, it’s true: Men want sex more often than women do. Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s nothing new. But there was one thing the author said, an observation that I thought was really insightful. He said: Men tend to want sex when they are under stress, while women tend to lose interest in sex when they are under stress.

I think that’s true and might explain a little bit of what that study found.

Anyway, is that God’s idea of a joke or what?

“Very good, Leo,” I say.

“Thanks.”

“I have to agree with the writer of that book,” Alan says. “That is pretty insightful.”

“Speaking from personal experience, Alan?” I tease.

“No comment.”

I refresh the page. “Hey, you got a reply.”

It says:

Good contribution, newbie. I read the same book, and I agree, it’s an excellent observation.

“How can he tell you’re a new guy?” Alan asks.

“Check out the line under my handle. See?”

I look for and find what he’s talking about.

“Post count,” I say. “One.”

“The guy who replied—IronJohn2220—he’s got a post count of over five thousand,” Alan says, and whistles. “Too much time on someone’s hands.”

“What’s next?” Leo asks.

“Let’s post your story,” Alan replies. “Smoky, we’re going to go with the Brother side of the website and stay out of the Bitch sections for now. Leo is going to be a reluctant hater, rage on simmer.”

“More sad than angry,” Leo supplies.

“I assume you already have the story drafted?”

“Just cut and paste,” Leo says.

“Go ahead.”

A moment later, he tells me I can find the story online.

My name is … actually, let’s hold off on telling you my name for now. Just call me John or Jim or Joe. I’m no one special, that’s the point. I’ve been reading through all of your stories, and I see that now.

I met a girl that I thought would be mine forever. I’m twenty-nine, and I met her when I was twenty-two. Young love. I thought she was everything you could possibly want in a woman. She was attractive without being model-beautiful, she was quiet but not weak, she had her own mind but was interested in what I thought too.

Good melding of the traits of the real-life Marjorie, I think.

We didn’t tumble right into our wedding either. We took our time. Kept separate places at first. Made sure we were sexually compatible—which we were then. She wasn’t slutty, but she was up for trying anything once. She wouldn’t let me finish in her mouth, for example, but she’d use her mouth to get me up to that point. Compromise a guy could live with, you understand? I’ve always thought I have a healthy sex drive, as much as the next guy, but I don’t have any particular fetishes. I guess that’s not the case for some men, but it’s the case for me.

We finally moved in together, again taking it slow. We were both aware of the statistics on divorce. She grew up in a single-parent home, raised by her mom because her dad was a loser who was never around. I grew up with two parents, but in name only. My mom was a mean drunk who used to hit me when my dad wasn’t around. We were in no hurry to screw things up by getting married. We took our time.

We lived together for almost a year before I proposed, and she agreed. I thought, Why not? We were really compatible. We shared the housework, we pooled our money and paid our bills, we had similar tastes in furniture and drapes—which is to say, I didn’t care and she did. We were happy, and we felt good about having taken it slow, about being sure we were making the right choice.

Even our wedding was a careful affair. We kept it simple and cheap but still made it special. We got married by the ocean, on a spring day. She looked beautiful, and I didn’t look half bad myself. Her mom came, and so did my dad. My mother did me the favor of staying away. We liked to joke that nothing changed except that we were both wearing rings now. We didn’t have a honeymoon. I guess we were both a little superstitious, not wanting to jinx it. We got married, spent the weekend at home, screwing our brains out, and went back to work on Monday.

I want to share a moment from that weekend. I know a lot of guys on this site are really angry, and I see a lot of talk about women being “bitches” and “cunts” and stuff like that. And I understand it, I really do. But I’m just not there right now. I can feel that anger, deep down inside (or maybe not so deep), but I’m still not comfortable calling her those names. In spite of everything she did to me.

It’s still too fresh, you know? It still hurts too much. Anyway, maybe that moment I mentioned will explain a little.

It was Sunday morning. Early, like, 5:00 or 6:00 A.M. I woke up for some reason, I don’t know why. The TV in the bedroom was on, and the whole place smelled of sex and sweat. I remember coming out of my fog and hearing an infomercial playing in the background. Something about getting rich in real estate. I opened my eyes and turned my head, and she was lying on her side, cheek against the sheets, watching me.

I remember looking into her eyes and seeing, really seeing, that she loved me. It was there, as naked as we were. It took my breath away.

“What is it?” I managed to ask her.

She reached over and stroked my cheek. She didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I was thinking about us fifty years from now,” she said. “Thinking about you with white hair and wrinkles.”

“Nice,” I joked.

“No,” she said. “I mean it. Life is short and long, both together. We’ve made a choice, driven by the hope that we’ll be better than our parents were. A leap of faith. I woke up next to you and I was looking at you and I realized, yes, I made the right choice. We’re going to make it.” She came to me then, snuggled under my arm, put her head on my chest. “I’m so happy,” she said.

We didn’t talk any more, but, God, I remember how good I felt at that moment. She drifted away while I lay there with my heart bursting in my chest. I was twenty-five, and my life had begun. Corny, I know, but that’s how I felt. It was like I could see the future, you know? A thousand moments like this one, years and years of sharing the same bed, waking up to say things to each other that no one else would ever hear or know. I had a partner, a second self, someone who’d always be on my side.

It was the first time in my life that I can remember not feeling alone. She gave me that. She took it away later, that and a whole lot more, but she gave it to me first.

Those first two years were probably the best years of my life. We had our fights, but that was expected. We fought about money, and chores, and sometimes we just fought because we were rubbing up against each other and that makes you bark. I remember one time, I went out and bought a new set of drinking glasses. We’d seen them at the store together, and I really liked them but she didn’t. I went ahead and got them anyway, and, man, was she pissed! We were screaming to high heaven, and she ended up smashing one of the glasses in the sink, so then I took her favorite coffee cup and broke it against the wall. We were both shocked at ourselves and ended up kind of standing there, hands to our mouths, going “Oh my God …” and then laughing ’til we cried at our own silliness.

We always made up, made love, and learned from our fights. It was something we’d actually do—sit down and talk once we were calm and try to understand the other person’s viewpoint. We’d admit where we were wrong and the other was right, and then we’d come up with a compromise.

Neither of us had an awesome job, but we were making enough money between us to buy a house. It was a lucky purchase too. It’s worth more now than what we paid, in spite of the market. We set up that house together. We were frugal, and that was part of the fun of it. We went to secondhand stores and garage sales, buying bookshelves that didn’t match the coffee table that we’d bought somewhere else. We had three or four different kinds of silverware, none of them a full set. Sometimes we’d make a weekend of it. We’d pack a picnic lunch and a thermos of coffee and we’d spend two days driving through the San Fernando Valley searching for treasures in other people’s castoffs. We’d find a park when we were hungry and spread a blanket and just … stop. Look. Take in the sun and the sky and the grass. Sometimes we’d talk about the future, about the kids we wanted to have. We agreed that a son and two daughters would be ideal, but a son was on the agenda, period, and then on other days we’d talk about grandchildren, or whether we’d get a Lab or a collie, and all of our other zillion plans. It took us some time, but we built the inside of that house together. We made it a home. It wasn’t the prettiest, and nothing matched, but it was ours.

It was an adventure. I felt good. I felt like I’d found my place in this life. I was set.

One day, without warning, everything changed.

I came home and she said we needed to talk. She was so calm, so reasonable, I remember that clearly. Not a sign of grief. She talked to me like an adult would talk to a difficult child, and she proceeded to destroy my life in what was almost a monotone. She’d fallen out of love with me, she said. It wasn’t my fault, she said. It was a gradual thing, but she was sure of it now, she said. She wanted a divorce. She wanted the house. She also said—and this is the worst of all of it—that she’d gotten pregnant a few months back but got an abortion. Because she knew then, already, that she was going to want to get divorced, and she didn’t think it was a “good idea” to have a baby if we were no longer going to be together. She said all of these things, one after the other, cool as a cucumber, just stating the facts with no embroidery. It was as if she was reading from a list that she needed to get through.

I should have said something then. Something smart, or cutting, or deep. But I couldn’t talk. It’s not that I couldn’t think of anything to say—I couldn’t speak. The pathways from my brain to my vocal cords had shorted out.

Looking at her, I felt like I was staring at a monster. Which was part of the problem. Because she couldn’t be a monster. This was the woman I loved, the one who’d told me, in the middle of a sunrise, that we were going to make it. This was the woman I’d built a home with. I had trusted her absolutely, with every single tiny part of me. And now here she was, sitting across from me, calm, collected, almost mechanically cold, telling me it was over.

When I did manage to finally engage my mouth, I didn’t say anything worthwhile. It was pathetic. I cringe when I think about it now. The whining, desperate sound of my own voice. I asked her if there was someone else, and she assured me that there wasn’t. I asked her why, what I had done, and I remember what she said, because I could really tell that it was true. As much of a stranger as she’d just become, as hard as she’d blindsided me, I still knew her enough to know that she believed what she was saying.

“I woke up one day and what I felt for you had gone flat. I waited for that to change.” She shrugged. “It didn’t. I realized it never would. I can’t live the rest of my life feeling that way, and you shouldn’t either.”

I begged her on my knees to go for marriage counseling. She refused. Nothing I said or did could get through to her. She was closed off to me. I guess that’s the final point of all this, why it hurts so much for all of us. When a woman gives herself to us completely, when she lets us inside, it brings us to life like nothing else. When that’s taken away, we’re somehow lonelier than we were before we met her.

I came to this site because, quite frankly, I’m a mess. I have trouble sleeping. I go through times when I miss her and times when I wish she was dead. I’ve had feelings of rage that frighten me. Mostly, I’m just in pain. Right, wrong, indifferent, I’m just in pain. I’m not ready to call her a bitch, not yet. But I’m getting there.

That’s it. Sorry to ramble, but I feel safe here, and I needed to say it all.

I finish reading and sit back in my chair. “Wow,” I say. “I’m impressed. That’s going to make an impact.”

“We spent a lot of time crafting it,” Leo says. “It’s a little long, but we wanted something that would resonate with the men on this site and that would be sure to get a lot of attention. It’s already generating discussion.”

“Where?”

“There’s a place below each story where members can post their comments. Reload the page and you’ll see the ones that have already been posted.”

I refresh the post, and I see four. The top one begins:

Great first story. Honest sharing. You really spoke to me with that one, buddy. Really and truly. I loved my wife too, before she kicked me in the balls. It’s always easier getting hurt by a stranger. Just hang in there. It will get better, I promise.

Then:

Don’t let anyone make you use the word bitch until you’re ready, brother. This is about you, not other people. You work through it the way that’s best for you, period.

Next:

Good first post. Strong stuff.

And finally:

You won’t say it, so I’ll say it for you, brother. She’s a bitch. A fucking cunt. I’m sorry if that offends you. That’s not my intent. But I’m more sorry that you went through that. People say that men have commitment problems, like it’s a male-only condition. Bullshit. Women are just as wired to be twisted as we are. It’s not a “man condition.” It’s a human condition. A man who did to a woman what your wife did to you would be called a bastard, or a motherfucker. So I’ll say it again: She’s a bitch. A cold, fucking cunt.

“I think we left our mark,” Alan observes.

“Good job. Now what?”

“Chat room?” Leo asks.

“Go ahead,” Alan replies.

I switch views now, watching in real time as Leo clicks on and logs in to the Brother Chat room.

“We’ll lurk for a bit,” Leo says.

“Lurk?” I ask.

“Just like it sounds. We watch but don’t take part. It’s pretty common for newbies. Good manners, even. You sit back and observe and try to learn the rules. Every group has its standards by which you’re judged and its own rules of etiquette. Violate the first one, and nobody will take you seriously. Violate the other, and no one is going to talk to you. I already see a rule for this chat room that’s unusual for chats in general.”

“Which is?”

“Most chat rooms are quick back and forths. Just like real conversations. This chat room has a lot of soapboxing. That’s strange enough in and of itself, but the real shocker is that the others in the chat room actually shut up while that’s going on. There’s no heckling, no stepping on each other’s conversations.”

I watch the screen. It takes me a moment, but I see what he’s talking about. Right now a member who calls himself KingEnergy12 is preaching.

Misandry is not just being legitimized psychologically. It’s being made law. The original intent of laws to protect women, as stated, was simply to raise the rights of women, not to lower the rights of men. But in practice, that’s exactly what’s occurred. We have created a society where a belief system about men has been inculcated as a collection of false facts. You see examples of it in every walk of life. Take a look at television sometimes. What kind of man do you see portrayed there? Let’s see. You have the silly daddy, a kindly fumbler with the best of intentions but a few brain cells missing. He’s guided through his own stupidity by his wiser wife, who is endlessly patient with his genetically programmed inabilities. You have the man’s man. He watches sports, farts and laughs about it, and lives to hog the remote and slam back those brewskies, baby! He’s trained young in all the ways to get the stripper glitter off his clothes, and he lives by the rules of look but don’t touch, or touch via lap dance but don’t fuck. His (again) wiser wife puts up with her Neanderthal because she knew what she was getting into when they got married, and, besides, he comes through in the clutch. Other luminaries include the wife-beater (Lifetime channel, anyone?) and the pedophile.

We’re inundated with stories about the deadbeat dad, the husband who raped his wife, the stepfather who sexually abused his stepchildren. Women, meanwhile, are celebrated everywhere. The female boss who is a cunt-on-wheels is defended with the phrase a driven and demanding woman is called a bitch, while a driven and demanding man is hailed as an example. Well, I’m sorry, but a bastard’s a bastard and a bitch is a bitch, ladies. No one likes to be treated poorly by anyone, regardless of the gender of the abuser.

A few seconds pass without him typing anything further.

“I think he’s done,” Leo says. “I’m going to type something.”

“Start simple,” Alan says. “Take it slow.”

Leo begins:

Hello, New here. I don’t have a lot to say yet, but I had to speak up briefly. I’m going through a lot just reading the things on this site and watching the conversation in this chat. It’s a strange feeling. I feel liberated on one hand and guilty on the other. Still, I’m glad to be here. That’s all I wanted to say.

KingEnergy 12 replies:

Welcome, brother. That guilt you feel? That’s been educated into you. Men have been trained to feel bad about asserting themselves as men. If we do, we’re sneered at, called “old-fashioned,” “misogynists,” or “woman haters.” A man who claims his masculinity is a knuckle-dragger by default. It’s all smoke and mirrors, brother. It’s conditioning, nothing more, nothing less, and it will fade in time.

Leo types:

I hope so. I could really do with feeling good about myself.

Another member types:

Hey, I read your story. You just put it up today, right?

Yeah.

Wow, man. That was a hell of an account. I really appreciated your honesty, and I definitely felt your pain.

Thanks. It was tough to write all that, but … I don’t know. I felt better after too. Not fixed, but better. Anyway, I have to go now, but I just wanted to say that I appreciate you guys being here, and the site, and what you have to say.

KingEnergy 12 types:

Come back anytime, brother. You’re welcome here, and you won’t be judged.

Leo leaves the chat without replying.

“Good touch,” Alan says. “Being a little bit nervous at the end.”

“It’s not like I’m totally clueless when it comes to online undercover work,” Leo says. “I’ve played a pedophile before. This is harder.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Being a pedophile was nothing like being me. It was an act from start to finish.”

“Whereas this …?”

“I don’t see things the way these guys do, I’m not saying that. But … it’s a little too easy to slip into this role.”

“Dance with the devil, son,” Alan says.

“Yeah.” Leo sighs. “I like computer work better.”

“You’re doing fine,” I say. “So what’s the plan now?”

“He needs to do some day trading,” Alan says. “Slow and easy.”

“Give me a call when you go back into chat.”

“You got it. Bye.”

The microphone clicks off. A moment later, the connection to Leo’s PC is severed.

I think about what I’ve read, what I’ve watched being typed in that chat room. Part of me feels for these men. I don’t sense rage in all of them. Some simply seem confused, hurt. My hand finds my belly and I wonder: What if I have a son? Should I think about these hurting men, worry about what role model my boy should look up to?

The only answer I can find is Tommy. Tommy is unassertive about being a man. He just is one. His masculinity is a part of him, as natural as breathing, unconfused. I could do worse than raising a son to emulate such a man.

My cell phone rings.

“Barrett,” I answer.

“Hey, boss woman.” Kirby’s cheerful voice—not much different from her killing voice, but comforting nonetheless. “Thought I’d report in, give you a little update on where your money’s going.”

“Tommy’s money, you mean.”

“It’s all one big green pile now that you’re married, right?”

I don’t bother asking her how she knows about the marriage. “What’s the briefing, Kirby?”

“So far, so nada. Nothing happening. No signs anyone is following her or even has eyes on her.”

“That’s good news.”

“But not really, right?”

When a threat is out there and we know it, we’d rather it come out to fight than hide. We can win a fight. All we can do about the other is worry.

“No, not really.”

“Well, don’t fret about it, boss woman. We’re on the job. Raymond’s not much for company, but he’s a good listener.”

“You’re not taking shifts?”

“I decided to add a few people. Raymond and I are on the evening watch, and a couple of my other buddies are there during the day. Nighttime is the right time when it comes to killing people, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” I consider asking her about her “buddies” but realize maybe I don’t want to know. Raymond was creepy enough. “I appreciate you taking the night shift, Kirby. You’re right, it’s the time of greatest threat.”

And it’ll let me sleep, knowing you’re out there, watching us.

“No problema. Well, not no problema—it’s cutting into my sex life, I have to be honest, but that’s what friends are for, right? The guys’ll just have to come in the daytime and get some afternoon delight. Law of supply and demand.”

“You being the supply, I take it.”

“Of course! Hey, did you see how I did that, a little intentional pun? ‘Come’ in the daytime?” She giggles.

“Good-bye, Kirby.”

“Later, alligator!”

I hang up, shaking my head.

“Have we heard anything from Earl Cooper?” I ask James.

“He said he’ll have something for us by late afternoon. He also said not to expect very much.”

“Reassuring.”

“Collecting facts,” he replies, either missing the light humor or ignoring it.

“On that note: Tell me about the other victims.”

“All women,” Callie says, picking up a file from her desk and opening it. “Eight years ago, on June thirteenth, Elizabeth Harris was found on the steps of the Chatsworth police station, prefrontal lobes mutilated in the same way as our current victims. She’d been abducted a little more than seven years earlier, and her husband was the prime suspect.”

“But the investigation stalled because a body was never found.” I deliver it as a statement.

“That’s correct. Her husband, one Marcus Harris, killed himself a few days after the discovery of his wife. He left a note, saying that he was ‘sorry.’ It was assumed that he was responsible for the mutilation as well as the abduction, and the case was closed.”

“Strange.” I frown. “If he was willing to kill himself, why didn’t he say anything about Dali? What did he have to lose?”

“He had a daughter. She was twenty at the time. She went missing the day after her mother was found.”

Something inside my stomach plummets into an icy abyss. “Was she ever recovered?”

Callie consults the file. “No.”

“Dali probably gave him a choice,” James says. “Keep your mouth shut about me and take the blame, or your daughter suffers the same fate as your ex-wife.”

“He would have killed her after Marcus’s suicide,” I say. “She was no longer ‘necessary.’” I exhale. “Well, we have an answer to the question of how Dali ensured Marcus would take the fall. What happened to Elizabeth?”

“She never came out of it. She died of a blood clot to the brain three years ago.”

“Nothing came up when Elizabeth was found about Dali? He didn’t text the cops or drop off a stray greeting card?”

“Not a word. The police assumed, understandably, that Marcus Harris had been keeping her somewhere all that time. They chalked the mutilation and suicide up to an unbalanced mind. The disappearance of the daughter confirmed, more than disproved, this.”

“I’m assuming he had an insurance policy?”

“Four hundred thousand dollars. He’d recently collected, and all the money was accounted for. He hadn’t sent any of it away.”

“No notes,” James muses. “Dali took care to remain hidden. The current circumstances remain a significant anomaly.”

“Tell me about the next victim.”

“Oregon, four years ago. November twelfth. Two patrolmen were on a coffee break. They came back out to find Kimberly Jensen in a body bag, which had been left in front of their cruiser.”

“Bold,” James says.

“Kimberly had been abducted from a supermarket parking lot—you guessed it—more than seven years earlier. She was thirty-five at the time. Her husband, Andrew, was—surprise—the prime suspect. She’d been having an affair and was seeing a divorce lawyer.”

“I guess he’d collected on life insurance and kept the loot?”

“Greed is a bitch.”

“Kimberly?”

“Inhaled her own saliva and developed pneumonia. She died.”

“What about the husband?”

“Evidence fell from the heavens. Very fortuitous.”

“What?”

“An electronic diary on his computer, filled with seven years of monthly entries, all about Kimberly and how he’d kept her confined. A storage space in his name complete with chains in the floor and Kimberly’s DNA. Things like that.” She smiles. “Andrew killed himself before the cops could pick him up.”

“Starting to see a pattern here with the suicides.”

She shrugs. “Cowards are cowards, the whole day long.”

“No notes left behind, I assume?” James asks.

“Not a one.”

I sigh. “Two for two on Dali staying off the radar. Next?”

“Hillary Weber, forty-five, found by tourists on a side street leading off the Vegas strip three years ago. Hillary had been taken like the others, and the husband, Donald, was in the cross hairs. He’d been in the middle of a contentious divorce and had a very busy little penis.”

“Tell me one or both is still living.”

“I wish I could. Donald crept into the hospital three days after she’d been discovered and finished Hillary off with a pillow. Then he hopped into a car and crossed the border into Mexico. There was no contact until last year.”

“And?”

“They found what was left of Donald in the desert. His eyelids had been cut off and he’d been staked out nude, in the middle of the Mexican summer. There was no sign of the money.”

“So,” James murmurs, “kill yourself or go to jail, but if you run, he finds you.”

“Did Dali plant any evidence?” I ask.

“Doesn’t appear that way, but then, Donald moved very quickly, didn’t he? I suppose he saved Dali the effort. And before you ask—no, Dali didn’t leave behind any clues to his existence that time either.”

“Three for three,” I murmur. “The notes telling us he exists are the first.” I glance at Callie. “Circumstances on these three victims seem to contradict your ‘evolving paradigm’ theory about why he let Heather go with her brain in working order. Somehow, I think death would be a sufficient deterrent for most of these men.”

James shakes his head. “Strange. He’s succeeded so far due to the simple elegance of what he does. Why change it now?”

“You sound like you admire him.” Callie’s tone is disapproving.

“Facts are facts, not admiration. Dali’s brilliance is in the complete simplicity of his plan and his actions.” He counts off on his fingers. “His clients never meet him. He makes them into coconspirators. He offers financial incentive. He limits his contact with the victims, so they can’t describe him even if they did somehow get away. Look at Heather Hollister. He let her go, and she’s unable to provide us with anything truly probative.

“The time element is crucial and also brilliant. A lot changes in seven years. People move, people die. Cops retire, move on, die. By the time the insurance money is collected, who’s likely to be watching? Even in the instances where he’s been forced to punish for nonpayment, it’s low risk, high reward, and, as you said, we can be sure that he lets his existing client base know what’s happened, as insurance against similar actions on their part. Simple. Brilliant. Why change all that?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I agree. “What are we missing?”

“I have no idea. I do have another anomaly, though. I spent time hunting through the Internet, looking for sites that cater to symphorophiliacs. There aren’t many out there, and it took some looking. I didn’t find anything—no still photos, no video footage—from any of the locations where we think he engineered car crashes.”

“Perhaps he pervs in private,” Callie says.

“Maybe,” James allows, “but unusual. A paraphilia like that requires regular fulfillment. Sharing is a way of reliving. Something that unique … it’s odd. How does he feed it?”

“So, no good news, then,” I mutter.

“Not entirely true. I did a search for hotels nearby the crash sites—there was only one in a relevant mile radius. A room was rented there under the name of a Heather Hollister on the night of her abduction.”

A thrill runs through me, picks up speed, then dies and blows away. “Seven years in a hotel room? There’s not going to be any evidence to find. Even if there was, it would be tainted.”

“Still,” James insists, “it continues to confirm the profile. There’s no reason for him to rent that room—and more, to use Heather’s name—except to satisfy a desire.”

“How does that help us?” Callie asks.

“It will help with his prosecution, when we catch him. If his need was that strong, there’s no way he’ll get rid of the evidence. He can’t. Find him, and we’ll find the photographs and video footage too. It’s a fairly unique paraphilia, not something you’d find in the average household. It will tie him to the scene, and thus to Heather Hollister.”

It’s a thin bit of optimism, hardly helpful in the moment, but it’s true nonetheless. As a prosecutor once told me, Catching the guy is only half the battle. Keeping him caught is the other half.

“I have another bit of news,” Callie says. “We found a fingerprint on Dana Hollister’s body bag, on the inside. I ran it through AFIS, and it doesn’t match anyone known to be associated with this case.” She grimaces. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t match anyone else on file either.”

“More strangeness,” James says. “Strange that he’d be that careless, if it’s him.”

He and I stare at each other, more troubled than enlightened by this turn of events.

“Maybe he’s decompensating?” I offer. “That makes no sense.”

“Oh pish. What a bunch of wet blankets you two are,” Callie chides. “Maybe he’s finally grown too big for his britches. Sometimes they get stupid.”

“Maybe,” I agree.

But I don’t think so.