Killman Creek by Rachel Caine

  "So," Sam says, "why the hell would you give us any more leads? Great question, man. Do you want to know the answer?"

  "I might."

  "Because we're about to move your investigation along. We have a USB that came out of that cabin. And receipts. You've got ashes."

  I whip my head around to stare at him, but it's too late to stop him. He's not just let the cat out of the bag; he's set the bag on fire, and the cat's over the state line. I mouth, What the hell? at him, but he doesn't take his gaze from the phone.

  "Hmmm." Lustig draws that out, a rumble that rattles the phone on the table. "Don't suppose you plugged it in somewhere to take a look at what might be on that stick."

  "Might have."

  "Don't suppose you found anything interesting on it, then."

  "Might have done that, too. Look, Mike, I'll hand it to you, no strings, but you have got to share the rest of what you know. We can stop this bastard if we work together. If you keep us out--"

  "If I'd kept you out, as I should, then I'd have had that damn thumb drive, and the chain of evidence would be intact!"

  "Most likely," I say, leaning forward, "you or your guys would have opened that door downstairs and blown themselves up, all the evidence would be ashes, and not a damn thing useful would have come out of it. We didn't make that mistake because we understand who we're dealing with."

  His voice hardens just a touch, skimming off the charm. "And you think I don't?"

  "Have you met Melvin Royal?" I ask. I feel a cold ball forming in my stomach, heavy as lead, just from having his name on my tongue. "Interviewed him? Interrogated him? Even been in the same room with him?"

  "No."

  "I lived with the man for years. I slept next to him. I saw him when he was angry and happy and stressed. I know how he thinks."

  "Respectfully, ma'am, if you knew how he thought, you'd have known what was swinging in your own goddamn garage."

  It's sharp, but I've felt that piercing observation before. I don't let it stop me. "There's a difference. I have the knowledge of him now, and what I knew then. And each informs the other. I'm an asset, Agent Lustig. You're going to need me." I take in a slow breath. "Because Melvin Royal isn't like the other killers you hunt. If he was, you'd have already found him, wouldn't you? You caught all the others he escaped with."

  He's silent on that. I catch Sam's eye. We have a lot to talk about, but he just nods in agreement with me for now.

  "Hey, Mike?" Sam says, crouching down to a height nearer my chair. Like me, he still reeks of smoke and sweat. It's more suffocating in this clean, pleasant room. "Don't shut us out. You'd rather have us where you can see us. We make great bait. Right?"

  "You're killin' me," Lustig says, and then I hear him moving. I hear the crackle of wind in the speaker, and the sound of passing traffic. "Tell me where you are. I'll come pick up the USB, and we'll talk."

  I hit the button to mute the call instantly and say, "No way in hell--"

  "I wouldn't," Sam assures me, and unmutes. "Tomorrow, Mike. We'll meet wherever you want. Call in the morning."

  He hangs up before Lustig can answer. We both look at the phone, waiting for it to ring again, but it doesn't. After a full minute, Sam stands up. He looks as tired as I feel. "He could have traced it," I tell him.

  "Yeah, I know," he says. "But unless something shifts in a major way, he won't. I'm taking a shower. If SWAT's here when I come out, at least I'll be clean for jail."

  I have to laugh. He's right. We have to trust Lustig this far, if no farther. And now that Sam's said it, the idea of a hot shower sounds meltingly good. For a dizzying moment our gazes meet and hold, and I wonder what it would be like to stand in the shower with him, fully naked with another person for the first time since . . . since Melvin. It's an involuntary thing, the picture that comes into my head, and it makes my breath catch, my pulse trip.

  Then Sam looks away and says, "I'll go first."

  "Such a gentleman."

  "Damn right." He walks away to the bedroom on the left, the one nearest the stairs, and closes the door behind him--no, he almost does, and then it opens again, and he leans out. "Don't watch that fucking video without me, Gwen."

  He knows me too well. He knows that I'd force myself to do it, now that we know it was filmed somewhere other than that basement. I'd make myself watch it for clues, anything that might tell me where it was done, and by whom. Maybe familiarity would provide some kind of buffer from the human suffering captured on it.

  I nod, but I don't promise, and he disappears. I hear the shower start. I don't open the video, but I do grab a pair of blue nitrile gloves from a pack I carry in my bag, then take a handful of papers and move them back to the coffee table. Preserving fingerprints is probably useless; whatever evidentiary value these had ended when we stole them from the cabin. But being careful wouldn't hurt anything, either.

  The papers look like the normal life of just about every person on earth--receipts for supplies, an online order for electronic games and gadgets, bills for electricity and propane. They're all billed to a bland corporate name that the FBI can track, if that leads anywhere at all. I assume, due to the lack of a bill, that the water and septic were his own. Some clothing orders, all male, in sizes I note down on a sheet of rose-pink paper from the desk, though I am certain that finding the owner of that cabin is going to be difficult, if not impossible. A job for the FBI, for sure, now that he's alert and on the run. This man, I think, is quite the record keeper; he not only buys in bulk, but he tracks every single purchase. There doesn't seem to be any differentiation between the trivial--like bulk orders of toilet paper and paper towels--and what might be important, like the purchase of sets of steel chain in varying lengths. I start separating the pages out into what is likely nothing, and what might be something. The distant, steady drum of the water in Sam's shower calms me, and by the time it shuts off, I almost feel centered again.

  When he opens the door and comes out, he's wearing what must be a hotel-provided bathrobe and slippers, and his sandy-blond hair has been toweled dry but is still slick at the ends. He looks warm and at ease. "Sorry," he says, indicating the clothes with a sweep of his hand. "Mine need a wash. They reek."

  "Mine do, too," I say. "Don't suppose they have a laundry service . . . ?" We have extra clothes in our backpacks, but I don't know when we'll next have a shot at cleaning things. So he goes to call the front desk while I head to the shower.

  It's magnificent, and I linger in the water, letting the pounding spray on the top of my head drive out the images I glimpsed on that video. I want to call the kids again. I want to make sure they're okay, even though I've already done that, even though I know that they'd look at it as half-crazy behavior. I get out of the shower and dry off, find the robe--lush and fluffy--and slide my feet into the clean, new slippers. This feels like a kind of luxury I've never really known before. I can see how someone could get used to it.

  I hear my phone buzz, and I grab it. I check the number, which at a glance seems familiar--Mike Lustig's, from before?--and I click on and say, "Hello?"

  I get dead air, and a rattle of static after, and my defenses come up fast. "Mike?"

  "Mike?" says a voice on the other end, and I freeze. I forget to move, though I have a sudden urge to throw the phone away like I've grabbed a spider. "Who's Mike? Are you cheating on me again, Gina? That's disappointing."

  I close my eyes, and then I open them again, because I don't want to be trapped in the dark with him: Melvin Royal, serial killer, ex-husband, father of my children. I've sunk down on the edge of the bed without knowing it; my legs have lost their strength. I stare blindly at the cheerful pale-yellow wall, the framed print of a peaceful Monet garden, but all I can see is shattered bricks, a gaping dark maw where a wall had been. The cracked egg of the two-car garage that Melvin used as a workshop.

  The odor of death and rot, metal and terror.

  The swaying body hanging from the wire noose of a winch.

>   I have the sudden, horrible sensation that Sam's dead sister is right behind me, looming close. Melvin's conjured that ghost, but I'm the one who's haunted.

  The icy stillness in my chest releases, and I'm suddenly flooded with heat, blood, rage. My hand shakes, and I take a firmer grip on the phone now. "Where are you, Melvin? Come on, tell me. You're not afraid of me, are you?"

  I know instinctively how much he'll loathe that idea, and sure enough, it sparks an immediate reply. Not as controlled as the first. "You?" The barked word, and laugh, has so much contempt in it that it's like a knife across my skin. But my skin's thicker now, and the edge doesn't draw blood. "No, Gina. I'm not afraid of you. How's the weather in Georgia, by the way?" Gina, not Gwen. He'll always call me that.

  "Cozy," I say calmly. "How's hiding like a cornered rat?"

  "Oh, I'm not hiding, sweetheart." His tone drops into a range that feels wrong. A little frightening. "I'm looking up at that warm square of light where you are. If you turn out all the lights, you'll see me. Pull back the curtains, Gina. Take a good look."

  My free hand fists itself in the bedclothes, a violence the lovely room doesn't deserve, and I take in a deep, slow breath tinted with the faint scent of lavender. "The hell I will," I say. "Because you're a goddamn liar. You're not here. You have no idea where I am."

  "Prove it. Go and look."

  "Fuck off with your mind games, Melvin. You're not there. If you were, you'd be knocking on the door."

  I bolt to my feet, because at that very moment, there's a knock. Brisk. Three taps on the main entrance.

  I hang up the call, drop the phone, and lunge to open my bedroom door. "Sam! Don't!" I grab my handgun from the shoulder holster slung over the chair, and he pauses, already in the act of unlocking. I rush to put my back to the wall. My heart's pounding, and although I do not believe Melvin is the boogeyman he wants me to think, the timing is too eerie. I calm myself, then nod to Sam. I'm ready, but I hold the gun at my side, pointed down.

  He opens the door and steps quickly back, and I see our nice hostess standing there in her blue sari, smiling. There's another advantage of having the gun down; I can quickly slip it into a pocket of the robe before she turns her gaze toward me. "Please excuse me, I came for your clothes . . . ?"

  I'd forgotten all about the laundry, and I feel incredibly stupid. Hot and cold at once. I go and grab mine. Sam stuffs them in with his and hands her the crinkling plastic bag, and she gives us a nod and a smile and moves away. She turns back as he begins to close it. "Oh, wait, sir," she says, stepping back. Behind her is her daughter, with a silver tray. "Your scones."

  "Sorry it took so long," the daughter says. "I hope you like them."

  They look delicious, and I say so and thank her. I wince as Sam closes and locks the door again. "Sorry," I say. "I'm jumpy." My heart's racing. My hands are shaking. Melvin has put poison in my veins, like the call was a snakebite.

  "Yeah, got that," he says as he grabs a treat from the tray I'm holding in both hands. He doesn't miss the tremors. "What is it?"

  I don't want to tell him, not yet, so I slide the tray onto the other, empty table, shake my head, and go back to the bedroom. I put my gun back in its holster. I turn the light off in the bedroom, and after a second of hesitation, I walk to the window and slide the closed curtain aside, just enough to look.

  There's a deck down on the first floor, with round wooden tables and chairs arranged in precise formation around them. The shade umbrellas are tightly folded. Beyond the deck, the lawn rolls down a hill and into underbrush, and beyond that, a forest and climbing hills. It's a pretty place.

  There's no one down there. Not a soul stirring.

  I turn back to the bed as the phone buzzes for attention. This time, I accept the call and say nothing. Just wait. The silence stretches, and finally, Melvin says, "Made you look." I can hear the smile in his voice. Smug. Relentless.

  "I'm not afraid of you, you murderous shit," I tell him. "Fuck off."

  He hangs up. I sense that Sam's hovering near my doorway, not quite asking, and without raising my head I say, "That was him. I'm sorry. I let him gaslight me. Won't happen again."

  "Hey." I do look up, finally, and his face is tense, but there's compassion there, too. Concern. "None of this is your fault, Gwen. It never was. Remember that."

  I nod, but my heart isn't in it. I was uniquely situated to stop a monster, for years. It's impossible not to feel that. To know in my bones that I bear part of that blame, if only in my own mind. "He said he was here," I say. "Outside. And then I heard the knock--"

  "Bad timing," Sam says. "Story of our lives. How the hell did he get your number?"

  I take a deep breath and shake my head. I don't know, but I can guess. Absalom. The Georgia cops demanded our cell numbers. That info got entered somewhere in a system, and Absalom would have been looking for those reports. He knows we're in Georgia, I think, and my pulse jumps again. We shouldn't stay here. We should run.

  But that's the old Gina, whispering to me. I'm done running. I'm hunting.

  I tell Sam that Melvin knows we're in the state, because I can't not tell him that, and I feel a little weight come off me when he shrugs. "Have to expect that. We did send up a nice big flare at that cabin. He doesn't know we're here. You're right. He was gaslighting you."

  "So should we go?"

  "Do you want to go?" I silently shake my head. "Then we should get a decent night's rest."

  Sam comes into the room, but not far. Leans against the doorpost. We're so careful with distance, the two of us; we understand the minefield of memory and deceit and a bloody, sorrowful past.

  And it doesn't mean that the desire to step into that minefield isn't real, too. I can feel the pull between us, slow and steady, a constant tension that we keep dialed down to a low hum, for the sake of safety. We might sleep in the same space, but we don't sleep together. I know we're both thinking about it on some level, especially in this calm, lovely place, stripped down to robes that untie so easily.

  What dries my mouth and shakes my confidence is that I wonder if this powerful attraction I feel toward him right now is the rebound reaction of having heard Melvin's voice. I want comfort. I crave safety. And I know that seeking that in the arms of another man--even Sam--is dangerous. My safety has to be found within myself.

  Sam's probably not doing as much self-analysis, but then again, he isn't coming forward, either. He stays safely on his side of the line.

  "Could still be something in those receipts," Sam says, and I think it's just to say anything to break the silence. "Some of the supplies he bought don't look right. We didn't see any heavy chain in the house, did we? Saws?"

  Those aren't unusual purchases for a rural cabin, but still, he's right. We didn't, not inside the cabin, anyway. I'd think Mike Lustig would have mentioned if he'd found them down in the wreckage of the basement. "You're thinking he bought them for someone else . . . ?"

  "I'm thinking that this could be the beginning of a long thread we can follow. Don't you?"

  I nod. I suddenly flash on something, and I get up and walk back to the rolltop desk. Sam follows and stands near as I quickly thumb through receipts, looking for the most innocuous thing of all.

  Paper towels. Toilet paper. The bulk purchases are on the same online order for other household things, like air freshener and bleach, in quantities normally reserved for large businesses. I don't even know why it's attracted my attention.

  I stare at it for a second, not quite sure what it is that I'm seeing in it. Probably nothing. People buy things in bulk. Paper towels don't go bad. So why does it bother me?

  "Shit," I say out loud when I finally see it. I hold the page out to Sam and watch him go through the same exact process. It takes about the same amount of time. We're well matched, Sam Cade and I.

  "The address," he says. "This didn't get sent to the cabin."

  "No," I agree. And even though I'm reluctant, I say, "You'd better call Mike."

&nbs
p; Mike Lustig cheers up considerably when he hears our news. He wants a fax, but we compromise and send the address to him instead. Or rather, I do that. Sam is busy mapping the address from the invoice on the Internet; he's careful to launder our connections through anonymizers to disguise our IP address, and I don't even have to remind him to do it. Google Maps shows us the location. It's a nothing-much sort of industrial address in Atlanta. I've been half expecting a remailing place, but this looks like a warehouse, as anonymous as all the other ones squatting near it. No cars visible in the snapshot of time that the map vehicle passed by it. Concrete and metal, rusting and dented. Isolated, too, by tall barriers of weeds that have grown up, in, and through the sagging chain-link fence. NO TRESPASSING signs, buckshot-scarred into near illegibility.

  This place doesn't need volume-store levels of toilet paper.

  "Jesus," I say, staring over his shoulder at the still image. "What the hell is this?" But I'm afraid I already know. My voice goes soft. "Do you think that's where--"

  "Where they filmed? I don't know," he says.

  Mike calls back in five minutes. He doesn't sound happy. "I can go with you to check this place out, but there's not a hope in hell I can get a search warrant based on what you've got," he says. "Seeing as how you appropriated the evidence and any judge who isn't pass-out drunk can see I don't have a legal leg to stand on. Tell you what: tomorrow, you bring that goddamn drive and the paperwork, and you give it to me. We'll take a nice long walk around the perimeter of this place, and I'll put my people to work digging up ownership. Maybe we can come at this from a different direction that gets us into court."

  He's frustrated. I don't blame him. The FBI is overstretched, handling crime and terrorism at the same time, and he doesn't need the complication we've given him. Then again, he's probably aware that we've given him a tremendous gift, too. At least, I hope so.

  "Right," Sam says. "Where do you want us to meet you?"