“Because that would be a fairy tale, and we live in harsh reality land.” Andi ate his last pancake, thinking it would be nice to have a fairy tale case now and then. Or none at all, come to think of it.
AFTER THEYarrived at the precinct, they went directly to Shireen. The resident hacker greeted them with gleaming eyes, her countless pendants clinking as she moved about excitedly.
“I’m the best,” she said by way of greeting.
“We never doubted it,” Andi answered. “Tell us something good.”
“Oooh, you’re going tolovethis!” Shireen started tapping at her tablet, motioning with her chin to the flat-screen on the wall. “It wasn’t easy to find. They hid it well, and don’t get me started on digital security in the nineties and how much hacking I had to do.” She made a face. “Prepare to be thoroughly disgusted.”
Andi and George shared a look. So far, nobody in this case—victims and suspects alike—had been especially endearing to them. “We can’t wait.” George’s tone was dry as a desert. Shireen opened a window on the flat-screen showing the pictures of the victims’ three sons in their early twenties. “These charming young men you already met were accused of drugging and raping two female students during one of their fraternity’s parties. I had a hard time finding the names of the women because the fathers did a damn good job of erasing everything from public records.” She looked at them, her expression unreadable all of a sudden. “The names of the victims are Josephine Garr and Tabitha Clemént.”
George whistled, expressing Andi’s thoughts exactly. “That puts a new spin on things. Damn bastards! Let me guess, they were never convicted for their crimes?”
“The whole thing didn’t even make it into the courtroom.” Shireen’s eyes were murderous. “Guess who saw to that.”
“Portius, Dyson & Partners.” Andi spat the names like they were a curse. It wasn’t hard to figure out.
“Exactly. They did their best not to leave the slightest trail, but something like that can never be completely contained. I’m currently searching the databases of all hospitals in the vicinity for two female victims matching the age, date, and, of course, crime to get a more substantial background for you to work with.” Shireen blew a strand of hair out of her face. She looked serious. “I have to admit, I’m not a hundred percent comfortable with digging for details, even though I know it’s necessary, but perhaps there is a chance they’ll get a late kind of justice?”
The look of hopefulness in her eyes made Andi wince. Justice wasn’t the most dependable of mistresses, as he knew only too well. When it came to cases of rape, justice was a downright whore who favored the person with the deepest pockets, which, sadly, were rarely the victims. Why Shireen was still so naïve after everything she had gone through and all the years she had spent in law enforcement remained a mystery to Andi. He suspected it might be due to a certain stubbornness that refused to accept reality.
“We’ll see what happens once we’ve talked to them. Thank you, Shireen. This is very helpful.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll contact you as soon as I know more.”
Andi followed George out of Shireen’s lair to their own desks. The two whiteboards with their countless names and lines seemed to mock them. Instead of going straight for a pen and adding the next lines to the complicated web, George let himself fall heavily into his chair.
“Fuck.”
That about summed it up as far as Andi was concerned. “How do we proceed? Do we pay them another visit, or do we invite them to the precinct?”
“I think we might fare better if we went to their home. Judging from our last encounter, I’ll bet they clam up if we apply too much pressure. Besides, we already know they weren’t the ones at the lake.”
“No, they weren’t. But they were at the cabin, and now we know they had every reason to hate both the victims and their sons.”
George got up to step to the whiteboard. “The same question applies as with the other suspects. Why did they wait until now? Especially if they had hired a contract killer. Or killers. And why would they go for the fathers? No, that’s obvious. They were the ones who got their sons out of trouble. Of course they would hate them.” He started drawing red lines from Tabitha and Josephine’s names to the triangle of the victims. The web grew another spoke, making it look more like the blotchy sheets some caterpillars wove to hide themselves from hungry birds. Andi sighed. It was a successful strategy and much harder to dissect than a spider’s web.
“I’m going to call them.”
Getting Tabitha Clemént to agree to a meeting in the afternoon took forever, and she only relented when Andi told her point-blank that they had found out about the rape. There had been a long silence at the other end of the line, then a dejected “Fine, at five,” before Tabitha hung up. Andi wasn’t happy about using the most traumatic experience of her life to threaten her into talking to them, and he felt disgusted with himself. The only reason he went through with it was because he hoped they could strike them from their list of suspects. In view of the circumstantial evidence they had so far—the pictures from the wildlife cameras and the shared ugly history with the victims, not to mention Josephine’s chemistry degree—they were among the top contenders. Tabitha and Josephine could count themselves lucky that one of the detectives working their case already knew they were at least partly innocent. And unless they had substantial sums of money stashed somewhere Shireen hadn’t been able to find it, it was unlikely they were the ones who had hired the killers.
The time until they would meet with Tabitha Clemént and Josephine Garr was spent updating their reports and staring at the whiteboard, willing it to impart some clues they had missed until now. At 3:00 p.m. they got an email from CSI telling them they found traces of silk matching the one used in the products sold by Natural Beauty on the beer crates. It was good news because it meant they now technically had reason to arrest the two women. Practically, Andi and George both knew what a good lawyer would have to say to their evidence, and applying pressure when a gentler approach would potentially garner them more information was simply stupid. Andi also felt unease pushing the two women who were victims themselves.
Their arrival in East Cooper and the ringing of the bell was accompanied by the plethora of images coming from the arthropods inside the house. They were in uproar, mirroring the anxiety of the blobs living with them—
Up and down, up and down, back and forth, back and forth, round and round and round, muttering and crying, so many tears, old and worn and tired and angry, crashing, crunching of glass, more crying, the tears heavy in the air, saturating it with salt and bitterness and why were they here, causing so much distress and pain, it wasn’t right, never would be, they had to find the killers, it was important, why, they were crying, it was wrong, everything was wrong—
Andi shook his head, trying to focus himself back into reality where George was waving his badge in front of the camera of the intercom. After a moment, the door opened, revealing Tabitha Clemént. She was an impressive woman, almost as tall as George, her hair was cut short, and she was wearing a white A-line dress and bright red lipstick. Her gaze was sharp, her face all hard lines, her entire body language screaming defense.
—so lost, so angry, the pain was like a knife in the air, cutting through everything else, even the salt from the tears—
“Good day, Ms. Clemént, and thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”
Tabitha’s mouth twitched angrily. “It’s not like you left us much of a choice, Detective Donovan.”
She stepped aside to let them in, and judging from the tension emanating from her in waves, Andi felt reminded of running the gauntlet, waiting for her to stab them with something sharp. She didn’t do it, instead leading them into a cozy living room with huge sliding doors leading into the garden. Josephine Garr stood next to a dark blue sofa with fluffy-looking pillows in shades of turquoise and sea green. She was a curvy woman, a little smaller than Andi, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face, devoid of all makeup, showed lines around her eyes and mouth that seemed to be too deep for a woman her age.
—sad, anxious, silk, so much silk and no cocoons, no caterpillars, just the silk, how was that possible, it was there, and not, he could sense it but not find it, all wrong, all wrong—
