“What ho’s,” Hugh had said in a voice that gave Amanda goose bumps. “I’d like to be that bar of soap.”
“Wrap those legs around me like that. Fucking A,” Barry said.
Only Timothy hadn’t spoken. It was a small thing but it had meant something to her.
So what? Then, at sixteen, Amanda had already seen stuff. She wasn’t too freaked out about it. When you’re a teenager and you have a brother eighteen months older than you, there’s not that much you don’t know about. Her parents had lectured her about going online and giving out her real name, and she’d heard them fighting with Les over what he was looking at on the Net. She’d even wound up on smutty sites by accident, but she’d never watched any porn before. She’d never seen anything that was as down and dirty as what the boys were watching that night.
She and Simone sneaked out before the guys caught them, but a few months later, when Simone was at Amanda’s for a sleepover, they’d asked Les if he’d show them what sites he went to. He said no about a hundred times and then Simone had offered to give him a blowjob in exchange for some of the URLs. He said yes.
Amanda was dumbfounded and sat there without moving the whole time that Simone and Les were out of the room.
“Why did you do it?” she asked her friend later.
“I like him. I thought maybe it would make him like me,” Simone said. Her voice was flat. “The worst part was he kept watching the Web the whole time I was doing it.”
After that, she and Simone became obsessed with figuring out what was so special about the online girls, and what was wrong with themselves.
No. She wouldn’t start thinking about it. It would just make her cry. And that wasn’t the point. She needed to figure it out. She needed to understand what was happening. It was too creepy. There was no way that what she and Simone had done had anything to do with the girls who were getting killed.
But what if it had?
Forty-Six
The message light was blinking when I walked in the door that night. I dropped my coat on the couch, but before I had a chance to hit the play button, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Dulcie’s gone to bed,” Mitch said. “I thought we could talk.”
“Did she say anything?” I unwound my scarf from around my neck and walked into the kitchen. There was a bottle of wine in the fridge; I poured myself a glass.
“No. She asked me if I’d pick up some things for her from your place. I told her that I wouldn’t. That she needed to ask you herself.”
“I’m not going to force the issue with her,” I replied. “I need some time to figure it out, to try to come up with a way to reach her.”
“While you’re thinking about that, I want you to think about us, too.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all? Okay?”
“Yes. That’s all. I’m tired. I’m angry with Dulcie. I can’t think about us, too. Not tonight.”
The apartment was so stuffy. With the phone up to my ear, I took my wine back into the den and walked over to the window, put the glass down on the floor, reached up, opened the window, felt the quick rush of cold and took a gulp of sharp air.
“What’s that noise?”
“I just opened the window.”
“It’s freezing outside, Morgan.”
“I know, but it’s hot in here. I left the heat on too high. Mitch, I’m tired. Let me go, we can talk tomorrow.”
I sat on the couch, thinking about the words I’d used when I’d said goodbye to him. Nothing was an accident. I’d said let me go but I’d really meant I want to go.
I didn’t want to think about Mitch.
I wanted to work out what to do about Dulcie.
What could I say to her to make her understand that everything I do, I do for her?
The red light was still blinking. I hadn’t listened to my messages. Over at the desk, I looked down at the machine. The flashing LED light showed fifteen calls. It had to be a patient in crisis. I hit the play button.
“Morgan? Are you there?” It was Noah, his voice low and soft and just a little concerned. “I’m at work. Can you give me a call when you get home?”
I felt the tug of wanting to pick up the phone and call him right away, but the next message had already started and was so loud it startled me.
“Dr. Snow. It’s Bob. Call me as soon as you get this message.”
The mechanical voice on the answering machine told me that he’d made that call at 11:40 p.m.
The next twelve messages, only minutes apart, were all from him, and in each he sounded more disturbed and agitated than the one before.
And then the last message. “Christ, where are you? You have to help me figure out how to deal with this. I have to see you. I have to tell you what a mess this is. I have to tell you who I really am.”
Forty-Seven
At one-thirty in the morning, Yasmine pulled down the blinds and shut out the building across the courtyard. At night, it was so easy to look into someone else’s apartment. Even though all the lights were out, someone could wake up. Someone could look in when she wasn’t paying attention.
That task accomplished, she walked over to the table where everything she needed was waiting for her. Her pulse quickened. The anticipation felt good. And not much else did. She savored it.
The pain was so bad. Had been bad all day and kept getting worse. But soon she’d chase it away with the silver savior.
She got undressed down to her bra and thong and inspected the scars on her thighs. She wanted to pick at the scabs, but that wouldn’t hurt enough. She needed a big jolt. Today had been that bad a day.
Yasmine switched on the Web cam.
Sitting on the floor, she unwrapped a new razor blade, smiling at herself in its reflection. She was aware that while she was alone in her apartment, she was being watched, and that mattered to her because being watched meant getting paid, and getting paid for something she was going to do, anyway, was just great.
Damn easy.
Easy? Are you nuts?
Nothing is ever easy.
It’s easy enough, though.
Compared to everything else, it was easy enough.
The voices were always in her head, talking about how wrong she was, how bad she was, how messed up. Sometimes an old voice came back and let loose with a familiar litany: Get up, clean up this mess, feed your little brother, stop at the store and buy food for dinner, and don’t forget beer for your father. And beer for your father. And beer for your father. The man in the grocery store knew her and her father and even though she wasn’t old enough he let her take a six pack home. All that matters is the beer so he can fucking drown himself in the beer and then give you orders. Lie down. Open your mouth, bitch.
He’d hit her when she refused. The back of his hand against her cheek. His belt on her back. Over and over.
Sometimes she thought it would be easier to do what he wanted than it was to take the beatings. Other times she thought the beatings were easier because they took away the real pain. The deeper pain. The screaming for mommy pain that got swallowed up in the craziness of the beer-driven nightmare.
She didn’t even remember anymore when she got the idea to cut herself. Maybe it was something she read about online. Probably was. It was so long ago. Now the shiny little razor blade was winking at her in the light and she lifted it up.
The sharpness would sting and the sting would take away all the voices and all the worries and all the real fucking pain.
Tonight was special.
He was watching tonight.
He’d even sent her a present.
And she had promised him that she would use them when she was done.