The Soul Collectors

67

He played the video from the beginning.

A black screen followed by a low hiss from the speakers. Then a male voice said: 'Property of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, case number 489765, item number 86. This is a copy of the original video.'

On the TV screen Sarah Casey stumbled around her cell, her nine remaining fingers feeling their way through pitch-black darkness. The spiders, Darby noticed, weren't visible on camera — not yet — but she could hear their soft thumping sounds as they bumped into the walls of their cage. Casey's daughter had heard the sounds too. She paused every few seconds to glance up and listen carefully, alert to the danger waiting several feet above her head.

The camera lens didn't waver. Must be set up on a tripod, Darby thought, switching her attention past Sarah Casey to the stone walls beyond the young girl's clear cell. Ancient and craggy, they reminded Darby of the ones she had seen in historical churches in Paris — walls that had never seen sunlight, dusty and smooth. The colouring, though, was uneven. Splotches of black and lighter colours covered the walls.

Now the camera lens panned back and the spiders were visible to the viewer but not to Sarah Casey. She bumped into one of the smooth walls and screamed. Darby watched the grimy hand grip the lever for the bottom of the spider cage and the green glow of night vision disappeared, giving way to a steady bright spotlight shining from somewhere on top of the video camera.

Sarah Casey held her hand up to the sudden burst of light. Her cheeks were swollen and shiny with tears, her breathing so fast and sharp she seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. Her hand moved away from her face and, blinking, she saw whoever was standing behind the camera and screamed. She bumped into the back wall and heard the sounds above her head and looked up and saw what was up there and screamed again.

Now came the part Darby had already seen: the young girl pounding on the translucent barrier of her prison cell and screaming for her father. The girl sinking into a corner, wailing, her gaze darting between the spiders crawling above her head, the person holding the lever and the person or persons standing behind the video camera. A flapping sound came over the speakers and Sarah Casey turned to the camera. She blinked several times, wiping away the tears from her vision, and when her eyes focused they widened for a moment and she choked out a single word:

'Daddy.'

Sarah Casey disappeared as the camera cut to a new shot, this one also in night vision but from a different angle, the lens pointed down at another person, a middle-aged and almost model-perfect woman with prominent cheekbones, long blonde hair and long legs strapped down to a crude-looking operating table. Darby saw leather straps biting into the woman's ankles and wrists and thought about the abrasions she'd found on Mark Rizzo's body and wondered if he had been strapped down to the same table.

'My wife,' Casey said in a dead voice. 'Taylor.'

His wife's shoes and socks had been removed but not her shorts or tank top. A thick leather strap had been placed across her forehead to keep her head steady. Her eyes, wide and frightened, searched vainly through the darkness.

Seconds passed and nothing happened. Darby looked at these walls and found them to be nearly identical to the ones she'd seen surrounding Sarah Casey's cell — the same dry round stones, the same blotchy colouring, the same cracks and fissures in the mortar. Only here Darby found a black shadow to the far left. Maybe part of a doorway. Darby could see only the bottom quarter of it.

Then she saw a black-robed figure step over to the table. His head wasn't visible and the woman didn't seem to hear him, and she couldn't see the man's hand as it came up from underneath the table, the fingers gripping a long, slender metal instrument shaped like a nail.

Darby felt beads of sweat pop out along her hairline and from the corner of her eye she looked at Casey. The green light glowed across his weathered face, and his eyes were steady as they watched the screen, his lips parting not to speak but to take another drink.

The robed man on the screen moved to the top of the table. Taylor Casey didn't see him. The camera zoomed in on her face and then she screamed and bucked against her restraints as the man's thumb shoved back her upper eyelid.

Darby's stomach dropped and she forced herself to watch but the screen went black. Then the woman's screams exploded over the speakers.

She wasn't aware that a phone was ringing until she saw Casey leaping out of his chair.

Darby rewound the DVD to the black spot she'd seen on the far left of the screen. She still couldn't see anything, then rewound the DVD again, this time pausing on the black spot. She stood, feeling cold and more than a little shaken, and moved closer to the TV screen.

She couldn't make out much, just the faint outlines of several shapes that could be nothing more than grainy marks left over from the DVD transfer.

'Sergey wants to talk to us,' Casey said. 'He told me you think I should be removed from this case.'

Darby opened her mouth to speak but Casey cut her off.

'I don't blame you for thinking it,' he said. 'You're right. I'm too close to this, obviously.'

'If you find one or more of these people, what are you planning on doing?'

'Arresting them, of course.'

'That's too bad.'

'Why's that?'

'Because I plan on killing them,' Darby said. 'Every last one.'