Die for Me

Chapter Twelve

Tuesday, January 16, 5:00

P.M.

Sober-faced, they’d reassembled to debrief. Vito sat at the head of the table, Liz on his right, Jen on his left. Next to Jen were Bev and Tim. Katherine sat next to Liz, her expression drawn. Vito thought about her having to do autopsies on all those bodies. She probably had the worst job of them all.

Although informing a family that their nineteen-year-old daughter was dead had been no picnic either. “Nick’s on his way from court,” he told Liz. “They just adjourned.”

“Did he testify?”

“Not yet. ADA Lopez thinks it’ll be tomorrow.”

“Let’s hope so. Well, bring me up to speed so we can get out of here.”

Vito checked his watch. “I’m also expecting Thomas Scarborough.”

Jen McFain’s brows went up. “Nice. Scarborough’s a great profiler. But how did you get him so quickly? Last I heard he had a client list months long.”

“You can thank Nick Lawrence for that.” A tall man with linebacker’s shoulders and wavy chestnut hair came into the room and from the corner of his eye Vito saw both Beverly and Jen sit a little straighter. Dr. Thomas Scarborough wasn’t what Vito thought most women called movie-star handsome, but he had a presence that filled the room. He leaned over and shook Vito’s hand. “You must be Chick. I’m Scarborough.”

Vito shook his hand. “Thanks for coming, Dr. Scarborough.”

“Thomas,” he said and took a seat. “ADA Lopez introduced me to your partner outside court this morning. We were waiting to testify. Nick asked me about perps who use torture, and I was intrigued.”

Vito introduced everyone, then went to the whiteboard where he’d drawn the grave matrix that morning. “We’ve confirmed that the woman with the folded hands is Brittany Bellamy. We compared prints from her bedroom to the vic’s. They’re hers.”

“So we’ve identified three of the nine,” Liz said. “What do they have in common?”

Vito shook his head. “We don’t know. Warren and Brittany were on the modeling website, but Claire was not. Warren and Brittany were tortured. The killer broke Claire’s neck, but did no more. There was at least a year between their murders.”

“The one thing they do have in common is that they were all buried in that field,” Jen said. “I didn’t think the fill dirt was from the field and I was right. The field is mostly clay. The fill dirt used in all the graves is sandier. It probably came from a quarry.”

Tim Riker sighed. “And Pennsylvania is full of quarries.”

Liz frowned. “But why use fill dirt from somewhere else? Why not use the dirt he dug from the hole in the first place?”

“That’s actually an easy question to answer,” Jen said. “The soil from the field gets clumpy when it gets wet. The quarry soil is sandy, so it doesn’t absorb water the same way. It flows. It would be easier to pack a body in sand rather than clumpy clay.”

“Can we identify where exactly the soil came from?” Beverly asked her.

“I’ve called in a geologist. His team is looking at the breakdown of the minerals to give us an idea of where that soil naturally occurs. But it’s going to take a few days.”

“Can we get them to move any faster?” Liz asked. “Get them to up their resources?”

Jen lifted her hands. “I tried to push it, but so far everyone is telling me that is the fastest they can work, and that is with the maximum resources. But I can try again.”

Liz nodded. “Then do. The nature of his burial pattern indicates he’s not finished. He could be working on a new victim right now. Two days could make a big difference.”

“Especially since we’ve disrupted his routine,” Thomas said quietly. “This killer is incredibly obsessive-compulsive. He’s left one open space at the end of the third row, and if his current pattern holds, he’ll be looking for a new victim any time now. When he finds you’ve discovered his carefully planned burial site… It’s going to throw him. He’s going to be angry, maybe disoriented.”

“Maybe he’ll make a mistake,” Beverly said.

Thomas nodded. “It’s possible. It’s also possible that he’ll retreat, go under and regroup. He went almost a year between the first murders and these recent ones. He could wait another year. Or more.”

“Or he could find another field and dig another matrix of graves,” Jen said flatly.

“That, too,” Thomas acknowledged. “What he does next may depend on why he’s doing this at all. Why he kills. What got him started? And why a year between sprees?”

“We were kind of hoping you could help us with that,” Vito said dryly.

Thomas’s smile was equally dry. “I’ll do my best. One of the things we need to establish is how he chooses his victims. The last two came from the modeling website.”

“Maybe the last three,” Tim Riker said. “I ran a search on all the male models at UCanModel that have the same height and weight as Flail Guy.”

“Stop calling him that,” Katherine snapped, then pursed her lips hard. “Please.”

There was a raw desperation in her voice that made everyone turn to look at her.

“I’m sorry, Katherine,” Tim said. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

She nodded unsteadily. “It’s okay. Let’s just call him three-one, for his grave. I just finished that man’s autopsy. Brittany Bellamy and Warren Keyes suffered horribly, but there’s every indication their ordeal was no longer than a few hours. Three-one was tortured over a period of days. His fingers and thumbs were broken. His legs and arms were broken, his back flayed open.” She swallowed. “And his feet were burned.”

“The soles of his feet?” Liz asked gently.

“No, his whole foot. The scarring is total and has a clear delineation. Like a sock.”

“Or a boot,” Nick said grimly, coming in the door. He squeezed Katherine’s shoulder reassuringly before taking the seat next to Scarborough. “It was one of the torture devices on the websites I found. The inquisitors would pour hot oil down into a boot, usually one foot at a time. It was a very effective method of getting people to say anything they wanted them to say.”

“But what could our killer have possibly wanted these people to say?” Beverly asked, frustration in her voice. “They were models, actors.”

“Maybe he didn’t want them to say anything. Maybe he just wanted to see them suffer,” Tim said quietly.

“Well, they suffered,” Katherine said bitterly.

Vito closed his eyes and forced himself to visualize the scene, horrible as it was. “But Katherine, something doesn’t make sense. The way his head had sheared off, he had to have been sitting up. If he’d been lying down, I would think the skull would crush, not shear. If this guy was in such horrible shape before he was hit with a flail-or whatever-how did he even sit up to receive the blow?”

Katherine’s lips thinned. “I found rope fibers in the skin of his torso. I think he was tied so that he was vertical. The pattern of circular bruising was on top of the fibers.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested this latest horror. Vito cleared his throat. “What did you find when you searched the UCanModel database, Tim?”

“A hundred names, roughly, but knowing about his feet being burned helps. Brittany Bellamy had been a hand model and the killer posed her hands. Warren had the tattoo of Oscar holding the sword and his hands were posed the same way.” Tim pulled a sheaf of papers from his folder and began scanning the list. “There are three that were foot models.” He looked up at Katherine. “What size were the victim’s feet?”

“Ten and a half.”

Rapidly Tim thumbed through the pages, then stopped and focused. “Yes.” He looked up again, triumphant. “But only one has size-ten-and-a-half feet. William Melville. Goes by Bill. He did a shoot for a foot spray ad last year.”

Vito’s pulse picked up some speed. “Good work, Tim. Really good work.”

Tim nodded soberly, then looked at Katherine. “Now he has a name.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. “That means a lot.”

“When we break, we’ll need to confirm it,” Vito said briskly. “Nick and I will take finding an address for Bill Melville and checking him out. Tim, I’d like you and Beverly to keep working that database. I still want to know who our killer attempted to hire and couldn’t. I also want to know who he’s contacted lately. We need to find him and stop him before he finishes out that row.”

“We’re meeting Brent Yelton from IT when we’re done here,” Beverly said. “He said he’d try working through the user side but that he’ll probably need help from the website hosts themselves.” She grimaced. “And for that we’ll need a warrant.”

“You get me the details,” Liz said, “and I’ll get a warrant.”

“So each of the last three victims was chosen based on a physical attribute,” Thomas said, musingly. “Using the modeling database, he could search for the attributes he wanted. There’s also a certain drama about posing hands, et cetera. Models are accustomed to playing roles in front of a camera.”

Nick frowned. “Could this guy be filming all this?”

“It’s a thought.” Vito jotted it on the whiteboard. “Let’s leave it as a thought for now and go on. Computers. Warren’s hard drive was fried. The Bellamy family’s was also fried. But Claire didn’t have a computer.”

“So he didn’t meet her through the website.” Tim said. “Unless she used a public computer. She did work at a library.”

Vito sighed. “An Internet session on a public computer fifteen months ago will be hard to trace. That could be a dead end.”

“What did you find out about where he could have gotten his tools?” Nick asked. “Were Sophie’s contacts any help?”

“Not much.” Vito sat back down. “The chain mail was high quality. A mail shirt with links that small runs over a thousand bucks.”

“Whoa,” Nick said. “So our boy has some funds.”

“But the mail is available through a number of Web stores.” Vito shrugged. “As were the sword or the flail. It’ll be hard to trace a single purchase, but that’s what we’ll need to do. Sophie did tell me that one of her professors heard that a collection of torture artifacts had gone missing. I’ll follow up on that tomorrow. It was in Europe, so I’ll have to involve Interpol.”

“Which will add time,” Liz grumbled. “Can’t your archeologist dig some more?”

Jen winced. “No pun intended.”

“I’ll ask her,” Vito said. If she meets me tonight. If she didn’t… He supposed he’d have to walk away, but he wasn’t sure he could. She drew him in a way no woman had in a very long time. Maybe ever. Please, Sophie. Please come. “Jen, what more have you found at the crime scene?”

“Nothing.” She lifted a brow. “But that’s something, in a way. We’re still sifting fill dirt and will be for days, but something is missing from the site.”

“The dirt he took from the graves initially,” Beverly said and Jen touched her nose.

“We’ve combed those woods and haven’t found any evidence of dirt he removed.”

“He could have spread it out,” Tim said doubtfully.

“Could have, and he might have, but that would have required a lot of work. Sixteen graves is a lot of dirt. It would have been easier for him to just pile it off to one side.”

“Or remove it. He has to have a truck,” Vito said.

“Or access to one. We might be able to tell what kind. We got a tire print from the access road leading to the field. It’s at the lab.” Jen bent her lips down as she thought. “That resignation letter Claire’s parents gave Bev and Tim was just a copy. We need to get the original. Who has it?”

A cell phone rang and everyone instantly checked their own phones. Katherine held hers up. “Mine,” she said. “Excuse me.” She got up and moved to the window.

“The library where Claire worked had the letter,” Tim said. “We requested it today, but they said they had to ‘go through channels.’ They hoped to have it tomorrow.”

Jen’s smile was sharp. “Good. Let’s see if we can get some decent prints.”

Katherine slapped her phone shut, then turned to the group, her eyes bright again. “That silicone lubricant you found with Claire’s things?”

“The lubricant for her prosthetic leg,” Vito said warily. “What about it?”

“It matches the sample I took from the wire on Brittany’s hands.”

Vito pounded his hand on the table. “Excellent.”

“But,” Katherine nearly sang, “it doesn’t match the sample we took from Warren. The lubricant found on Warren’s hands was close in formula, but not exact. The lab called the manufacturer, and they said they had two main formulas but often create custom blends for clients with allergies.”

Vito looked at the table, processing. “So the sample found on Warren’s hands is a custom blend.” He looked up. “Did Claire buy a custom blend, too?”

Katherine lifted her brows. “Not in the manufacturer’s records.”

“So it belonged to somebody else?” Beverly asked.

“She could have bought it somewhere else, or somebody may have bought it for her,” Liz cautioned. “Don’t assume until you know.”

Katherine nodded. “True. The manufacturer said her orders came through a Dr. Pfeiffer. You can ask him if she bought anything special. But if she didn’t, either she got it from somebody else or the killer did.”

Vito rubbed his hands together. “We’re starting to get somewhere. Thomas, after all you’ve heard, what are your thoughts on this killer?”

“And are we talking just one?” Nick added.

“Very good point.” Thomas leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “But my gut says he works alone. He’s younger, almost certainly male. Intelligent. He has a dispassionate capacity for cruelty. It’s… mechanical. He is obsessive, obviously. This would spill into other areas of his life-occupation, relationships. His knack with creating computer viruses is consistent. He’d be more comfortable with a machine than with people. I’d bet he lives alone. He will have some record of violence in his adolescence, anything from being a schoolyard bully to abusing animals. He’s… process oriented. And he’s efficient. He could have just killed two people to use for his effigies, but he combined them with whatever torture experiments he needed to do first.”

“So an anal, obsessed, cold loner who measures twice and cuts once,” Jen said sourly and Thomas chuckled.

“Nicely summarized, Sergeant. Add dramatic to it and you’ve got it covered.”

Vito stood up. “Well, Nick and I and Bev and Tim have things to do. Thomas, can we bring you in as needed?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we reconvene tomorrow at eight,” Vito said. “Be careful and stay safe.”

Tuesday, January 16, 5:45

P.M.

Nick sank into his chair and propped his feet on his desk. “I swear, waiting outside court makes me more ragged-out than if I’d worked a whole damn day.”

“Did you make any progress finding Kyle Lombard?”

“No. I must’ve called seventy-five Kyle Lombards while I was waiting outside the courtroom today. I got nothin’ but a dead cell phone battery. No dice.”

“You can try again tomorrow.” Vito picked a note on his desk. “Tino was here. He went to the morgue to sketch the old couple from the second row.”

“Hopefully he can work another miracle,” Nick said.

“He sure hit the nail on the head with Brittany Bellamy.” Vito sat down at his computer and pulled up the UCanModel website and found Bill Melville’s résumé and photo. “Come over here and meet Mr. Melville.”

Nick came around their desks to stand behind him. “Big, brawny guy like Warren.”

“But other than size, no resemblance.” Warren had been fair, while Bill was dark and forbidding looking. “He has martial arts experience.” Vito looked up at Nick. “Why the hell would the killer purposely choose a victim that could beat the shit out him?”

“Doesn’t seem too smart,” Nick agreed. “Unless he thought he’d need those skills. Warren searched fencing sites and was posed with a sword. Bill was killed with a flail.” Nick sat on the edge of Vito’s desk. “I didn’t get lunch. Let’s grab some chow before we check out Melville’s last known address.”

Vito checked his watch. “I have dinner plans.” I hope.

Nick face broke into a slow grin. “Dinner plans?”

He felt his cheeks heat. “Shut up, Nick.”

Nick’s grin just broadened. “No way. I want details.”

Vito glared up at him. “There are no details.” Not yet, anyway.

“This is even better than I thought.” He snorted a laugh when Vito rolled his eyes. “You’re no fun, Chick. Okay then, what did you find out from that Brewster guy?”

“That he’s an asshole who likes tall blonde girls and cheats on his wife.”

“Oh. Well, now Sophie’s reactions to the flowers make sense. You said he gave you some names of potential collectors.”

“All pillars of society and every one of them over sixty years old. Hardly able to dig sixteen graves and move around big men like Keyes and Melville. I checked financials as much as I could without a warrant and came up with nothing suspicious.”

“What about Brewster himself?”

“Young enough, I guess. His office looks like a museum, but it’s all out in the open.”

“He could have a stash.”

“He could, but he was out of the country the week Warren went missing.” Vito shot Nick a rueful look. “I Googled him when I got back from the Bellamys’. The first thing that popped up was a conference he’d spoken at in Amsterdam on January 4. Airline records show Dr. and Mrs. Alan Brewster flew first class from Philly to Amsterdam.”

“First class is pricey. Professors don’t make that much. He could be dealing.”

“Wife’s loaded,” Vito grumbled. “Gramps was a coal baron. I checked that, too.”

Nick’s lips twitched in sympathy. “You really wanted it to be him.”

“A whole hell of a lot. But unless he’s an accomplice, Brewster’s only guilty of being an asshole.” Vito brought up the DMV database on his computer. “Melville was twenty-two years old, last known address was up in North Philly. I’ll drive.”

Tuesday, January 16, 5:30

P.M.

Sophie was up to her butt in sawdust in the old warehouse that sat at the back of the factory area they’d converted to the museum’s main hall. Ted was right, the warehouse wasn’t perfect, but Sophie could see the potential. And, there were still some places she could smell chocolate if she sniffed hard enough. It had to be fate.

She looked around the future site of her hands-on “dig.” She hadn’t been so content in a long time. Well, maybe content was the wrong word. She was energized and aware, thinking of all the wonderful things she could do with this huge empty space with its thirty-foot ceilings. Her brain was firing like a machine gun.

And her nerve endings were firing, too. She was meeting Vito Ciccotelli tonight. She was keyed. Needy. And feeling the edge of her self-imposed sexual suppression all too keenly. She’d never allowed another relationship with a colleague, which meant finding a man outside the dig, in the city. By nature those relationships were surface only, really no more than a way to scratch her itch when it got too hard to handle. But “one night stand” always came to her mind afterward and she hated herself. Vito would be different. She just had a feeling. Maybe the drought would soon end.

All in good time. For now, she was anxious to explore the contents of the crates she’d dragged from her office. She’d already uncovered some incredible treasures.

Working in her dark little office, she’d been surrounded by medieval reliquaries and hadn’t even known it. Using a crowbar, she opened a crate and scooped more sawdust onto the floor until she got down to the smaller box inside.

She heard footsteps behind her a heartbeat before the voice. “You can’t have it.”

With a gasp she whirled, swinging the crowbar high above her head. Then she exhaled. “Theo, I swear to God, I’m going to hurt you one of these days.”

Theodore Albright the Fourth stood looking at her from the shadows, his jaw stern. Stiffly he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You can’t have these things. Children will come in here. They’ll break them.”

“I don’t plan to put anything valuable out in the open. I’m going to have plastic copies made, and break the copies in pieces-to hide in the dirt for people to find. The way we’d find broken pottery in a dig.”

Theo looked around the room. “You’re going to make it look like an authentic dig?”

“That’s my plan. I know your grandfather’s treasures are precious. I won’t let anything happen to them.”

His wide shoulders relaxed. “I’m sorry I scared you.” His eyes dropped to her hand and she realized she still held the crowbar. Bending at the knees, she laid it on the floor.

“It’s okay.” Amanda Brewster’s little gift and phone call had left her shakier than she’d thought. “So… did you need something?”

He nodded. “You have a phone call. It’s some old guy from Paris.”

Maurice. “Paris?” She was already taking him by the arm and guiding him out the door. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded as she locked the room behind them.

In her office, she shut the door, grabbed the phone and let her mind relax back into French. “Maurice? It’s Sophie.”

“Sophie, my dear. Your grandmother. How is she?”

She heard the fear in his voice and realized he thought she was calling with bad news about Anna. “She’s holding her own. That’s actually not why I called. I’m sorry, I should have told you so you didn’t worry.”

He let out a breath. “Yes, you should have, but I can’t be angry that you’re not calling with bad news, I suppose. So why did you call?”

“I’m doing some research and was hoping you could give me information.”

“Ah.” His voice perked up and Sophie smiled. Maurice had always been one of the biggest gossips of her father’s crowd. “What kind of information?”

“Well, it’s like this…”

Tuesday, January 16, 8:10

P.M.

“So the victim is Bill Melville?” Liz asked on the phone as Vito turned his truck onto his street.

“His prints match the ones Latent lifted from his apartment. Nobody had seen him since Halloween. Kids in his building said he always dressed up and handed out candy.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.”

“I don’t know about that. He dressed like a ninja. The kids thought he did it to let them know he could handle weapons. Nunchucks, staffs. It was his way of maintaining security. But he did give out good candy, so everybody seemed happy.”

“Why hadn’t someone gone in his apartment before?”

“Melville’s landlord did but didn’t find anything. We got lucky. The landlord already filed an eviction notice. Another two days and all of Melville’s stuff would have been in the Dumpster.”

“Was his computer fried?”

“Yep. But,” Vito smiled grimly. “Bill printed out a few of the e-mails. Left them on the printer. He was contacted by a guy named Munch to do a history documentary.”

“Did you get his e-mail address?”

“No. The printed e-mail only said ‘E. Munch.’ If we had the actual e-mail on his machine we could have clicked on the name to get his e-mail address, but the files are wiped. The good thing is, we have a name to use when we question all the models on the UCanModel website who got hits on their résumés the days around our victims.”

“So Beverly and Tim were able to get into the website’s records?”

“Yeah. The owners of the site are cooperating fully. They don’t want all their clients pulling off the site because of a killer. They haven’t handed over any blanket lists, but they will work with Bev and Tim on a person-by-person basis. Bev and Tim are going to start contacting the models who were contacted by Munch tomorrow.”

“Although it’s not likely to be his real name. Are you headed back to the office?”

“No, I’m home.” He’d parked behind Tess’s rental and beside a car he’d never seen before. “My nephews are staying with me and I’ve hardly spent five minutes with them. I’m going to help my sister get everyone tucked in, then go grab some dinner.” And if he was lucky… His mind wandered to that single kiss. It had tormented him all day, distracting him, derailing his thoughts. What if she didn’t come? What if he had to walk away? What if he never got to taste her full lips again? Sophie, please come.

Vito got out of his truck and looked in the window of the strange car and saw the back floorboards strewn with McDonald’s trash and ratty old sneakers. Teenager, he guessed. When he opened his front door, he saw he was partially right.

Multiple teens were gathered around a computer someone had set up in his living room. One kid sat in Vito’s easy chair, feet up as he faced the monitor, a keyboard on his lap. Dominic stood behind the chair, a frown on his handsome face as he looked on.

“Hey,” Vito called as he closed his front door. “What’s all this?”

Dominic’s eyes flickered. “We were working on a school project, but took a break.”

“What kind of project?” he asked.

“Science,” Dominic said. “Earth-space,” he clarified.

The kid with the keyboard looked up with a cynical sneer. “We had to create life,” he said drolly and the others snickered.

Except for Dom, who frowned. “Jesse, cut it out. Let’s get back to work.”

“In a minute, choir boy,” Jesse drawled.

Dom’s cheeks flushed a dark red and Vito realized his oldest nephew had been taking ribbing for his clean-cut ways. He moved to Dom’s side. “What’s the game?”

“Behind Enemy Lines,” Dom told him. “It’s a World War II fighting game.”

The screen was filled with the interior of an ammunitions bunker, in which eleven soldiers with swastikas on their armbands already lay dead. The camera looked out over the barrel of a rifle. “This guy is an American soldier,” Dom explained. “You can choose your character’s nationality and your weapon. It’s the newest rage.”

Vito studied the screen. “Really? The graphics look two or three years old.”

One of the boys eyed him warily. “You play?”

“Some.” He’d held the community record for Galaga when he was fifteen, but didn’t think divulging that fact would do more than make him look like a dinosaur. He lifted a brow. “Maybe I’ll learn a few things about taking out the bad guys or fast car chases.”

The boy who’d just spoken grinned good-naturedly. “Well, you won’t learn anything from this game. It’s just average.”

“That’s Ray,” Dom said. “He’s a gamer. So is Jesse.”

“So what’s the big deal with this game?” Vito asked.

Ray shrugged. “Everything in the game part’s a rehash from this company’s last five games. Game physics, environments, AI…”

“Artificial intelligence,” Dom murmured.

“I know,” Vito murmured back. “So I repeat, what’s the big deal? The characters are flat and the AI really sucks. I mean, Jesse here just took out a dozen bad boys with armbands and not one of them winged him. What’s the challenge in that?”

“We’re not playing it for the game,” Jesse said, apparently unoffended. “We’re playing it for the cut scenes.” He laughed softly. “Fuckin’ unbelievable, man.”

Dom looked around, frowning. “Jesse. My little brothers are here.”

“Like they don’t hear it from your old man,” Jesse said, bored.

Dom gritted his teeth. “They don’t. Look, let’s get back to work.”

“Just a minute,” Vito said softly, his eyes on the screen. He’d let this play out because he was curious, both about Dom’s classmates and what kids were playing these days. He never knew when knowing current kid-speak would come in handy in the interview room. He’d caught many a teen off guard pretending to share their interests. But as soon as Vito’s curiosity was sated, Jesse would be out on his ass.

On the screen, the American soldier reloaded his weapon and muttered, “This was a trap. She betrayed me, the whore.” He cocked the rifle. “She’ll come to regret that move.” The scene changed and the soldier was at the door of a small French cottage.

“So what’s the story here?” Vito asked Ray.

“This is… the cut scene.” He said it like it was the Sistine Chapel or something. When Vito frowned, Ray looked disappointed. “A cut scene is-”

“I know what a cut scene is,” Vito interrupted. The cut scene was the animated movie clip where the main character talked to people, learned secrets, or simply got free stuff. “Most of the ones I’ve seen have been boring and just kept you from the game. What I was asking was, what’s special about this one?”

Ray grinned. “You’ll see. This is Clothilde’s house. She claimed to be French Resistance, but she gave our soldier up. That’s why he was ambushed back there at the bunker. It’s payback time. Jesse’s right. This really is unbelievable.”

On the screen, the door opened to the inside of the cottage as the game flowed into the cut scene. The graphics abruptly changed. Gone were the grainy characters and choppy motion. When the American soldier walked through the door and began to search the cottage, it looked real. The solder finally found Clothilde hiding in a closet. He yanked her out of the closet and up against a wall. “You bitch,” he snarled. “You told them where to find me. What did they give you? Chocolate? Silk stockings?”

The busty Clothilde sneered up at him, although her eyes were wide with fear.

“Watch her eyes,” Ray whispered.

“Tell me.” The soldier shook the woman’s shoulders violently.

“My life,” Clothilde spat. “They said they would not kill me if I told. So I told.”

“Five of my buddies died back there. Because of you.” The American put his hands around her throat and Clothilde’s eyes grew wider. “You should have let those German bastards kill you. Now I will.”

“No. Please no!” As she struggled the screen filled with her face and his hands. The fear in her eyes…

“Amazing,” Ray whispered beside him. “The artist is truly amazing. It’s like watching a movie. It’s hard to believe somebody created this.”

But someone had. Disturbed, Vito felt his jaw tighten. Somebody had drawn this. And kids were watching it. He nudged Dom aside. “Go check on your brothers.”

From the corner of his eye, Vito could see Dom’s face relax in relief. “Okay.”

On the screen, Clothilde was sobbing and begging for her life. “Are you ready to die, Clothilde?” the soldier mocked and she screamed, loud and long. Desperate. Too real. Vito winced and looked at the kids’ faces as they watched transfixed. Eyes wide, mouths slightly open. Waiting.

The scream ended and there was a long moment of silence. Then the soldier laughed softly. “Go ahead and scream, Clothilde. No one can hear you. No one will save you. I killed them all.” His hands tightened, his thumbs moving to the hollow of her throat. “And now I’ll kill you.” His hands tightened further and Clothilde began to writhe.

Vito had seen enough. “That’s it.” He leaned forward and hit the power button on the monitor and the screen went dark. “Show’s over, kids.”

Jesse whipped the recliner down and stood up. “Hey. You can’t do that.”

Vito pulled the computer’s power cord from the wall. “Hey. Watch me. You can play that crap in your parents’ house, but you’re not playin’ it here. Pack it up, buddy.”

Jesse weighed his options. Finally he turned away in disgust. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Dude.” One of the boys winced. “Without Dom’s science project, we got nothin’.”

“We don’t need him.” Jesse tucked the computer under his arm. “Noel, get the monitor. Ray, get the CDs.”

Noel shook his head. “I can’t fail again. You might not need Dom’s project, but I do.”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “Fine.” The others followed, leaving Ray and Noel.

Ray grinned at Vito. “His parents wouldn’t let him play the game at home either.”

Vito looked over his shoulder. “Will Jesse cause any problems for Dominic?”

“Nah. Jesse’s no match for Dom. Dom’s the captain of the JV wrestling team.”

Vito bent his mouth, impressed. “Wow. He never told me that.”

“Dominic can take care of himself,” Ray said. “Sometimes he’s just too nice.”

Dominic came back down the hall, Pierce riding on his back. The five-year-old had just gotten out of the bath and his hair was wet, and his pj’s were Spiderman. Vito was glad he’d turned off that filth before the little ones had seen it.

Dom looked at the remaining two teenagers. “Jesse’s gone?”

Ray grinned again. “Sheriff here ran him out of town on a rail.”

“Thanks, Vito,” Dom said quietly. “I didn’t want him watching that stuff here.”

Vito presented his back to Pierce, who took a flying, screeching leap. “Next time, just tell him to leave.”

“I did tell him to leave.”

“Well, then… toss him out on his ass, if you have to.”

“Awwww,” Pierce said. “Uncle Vitoooooo. You said the donkey word, Uncle Vito.”

Vito winced. He’d forgotten “ass” was on the swear-word list. “Sorry, pal. You think Aunt Tess’ll wash my mouth out with soap?”

Pierce bounced. “Yes, yes!”

“Yes, yes,” Tess said from the hall. Her hair hung in damp waves. Obviously as much water had landed on her as on Pierce. “Vito, watch your mouth.”

“Okay, okay.” He gave a final nod to Dom. “You did fine, kid. Next time you’ll do even better.” He jogged back to Tess, giving Pierce a ride.

“Well? Did she get it?” She was referring to the present she’d left for Sophie.

“Don’t know. She gets out of class soon. I guess I’ll find out then. But thanks for picking it up. Where did you find a memory neutralizer toy anyway?”

“Party store on Broad Street. Guy advertises he’s got every Happy Meal toy ever sold. The neutralizer was a pretty popular one when the movie came out.” She lifted a brow. “You owe me two hundred bucks for the toy and the curtains.”

Vito nearly dropped Pierce. “What? What kind of curtains did you buy? Gold?”

She shrugged. “The curtains were only thirty bucks.”

“You paid a hundred and seventy dollars for a Happy Meal toy?”

“The toy was in its original wrapper.” Her lips twitched. “I hope she’s worth it.”

Vito blew out a breath. “Me, too.”