Darknet (20 page)

The door creaked a bit as he entered, and he vaguely wondered if it had always done that.

“Getting paranoid,” he decided.

A bad feeling flooded through him, and he searched the whole barn before going to the trap door and heading down the stairs.

Avril was asleep, passed out, or possibly dead. He checked to be sure the video feed wasn’t broadcasting and then went to look. She was still breathing. His presence woke her, and she stared up at him without moving. She’d stopped asking to be freed, asking for food, asking for a bathroom, asking for anything. She hadn’t said a word to him since he’d removed her fingers.

“It’s almost over, sweetie.”

She blinked but still didn’t say anything.

He’d previously brought a box of large green garbage bags to the barn. He took one and double-bagged it inside another one. There was a lot of equipment here. He decided to start with the small stuff: blankets, the pruning shears, the bloody towels, leftover food and dishes, and the other items that he’d used. The bag filled up quickly and he tied it, and then took it outside the barn. He checked again to be sure there were no other cars nearby.

Tony felt a weird sense of loss. He’d planned the kidnapping ever since he’d realized he had that winning lottery ticket, and it’d been an all-encompassing project.

Now it was all coming to an end.

He stayed on the main floor and checked his equipment. He turned on the video feed and then flicked over to see through Cindy’s web cam.

“Ahh, there you are.”

She had been watching the monitor and had jumped a bit when the feed started up again.

He opened a chat box.

“You’ve broken the first rule I ever gave you. You weren’t to tell anybody.”

On the screen, she pursed her lips and blinked before typing, “I couldn’t find any other way to get you the money. It’ll come now.”

“But now it’s too late.”

“No! Please, just give me a couple more days. I’ll get you the money!”

But I’ll be under the nose of the police.

“I’ll be sure to tell Avril how you killed her.”

“NO! STOP!”

He closed the chat and stopped the video feed, then hit a few more predefined keys, causing her browser to close and the URL of his website to disappear forever.

He continued to watch her, as she frantically opened the browser again and ran the Tor software, finally typing the address to get to The Assassin’s Inc. site. He watched her confusion as she got the error he knew she’d hit:
Oops! We don’t seem to be able to find that site. Please try again later!

He smiled as she tried again and again, until she finally broke down and cried, giving up.

“Serves you right,” he said to her image. “You’ve ruined everything.”

He knew he could never remove every trace of him having been in the barn. His DNA would be all over the place, along with fingerprints, hair strands, and God knows how many other pieces of evidence.

None of that mattered if the police never came to search the place, which is exactly the way he planned it. No point making stupid mistakes, though. He washed the few water glasses he’d used and wiped them clean. Some empty beer bottles joined other random trash he’d accumulated, filling up another garbage bag.

Tony shut down all the computer equipment on the main floor and took it to store in the trunk of his car. He knew it would be filled by the time he drove away.

When he was done with the main floor, he walked around and as near as he could tell, the barn looked exactly like it had the first time he’d broken in.

Even the old farmer who owned the place wouldn’t know that somebody had been borrowing his property.

“It’s time, Avril.”

The cellar seemed somehow darker than it had before, which he knew was only his mind playing tricks on him.

The girl was still quiet.

“Avril?”

She didn’t answer but her eyes snapped open.

“Sometimes things happen that we don’t understand. I know you feel that way, but it’s over. I’m going to take you back to your mommy now.”

She blinked and frowned.

Don’t believe me, kid?

“It’s okay. I just need to give you a bit of medicine.”

He took out a new syringe and filled it completely with Desflurane. He had a large supply left and this would be the last time he needed it.

Avril flinched when he injected her, but she didn’t cry or whine.

“Good girl.”

Tony sat beside his daughter and patted her hair. He’d always loved that hair. It reminded him of how he’d been attracted to Cindy’s silky blonde hair when they first met.

“Did I ever tell you how much I loved your mother, sweetie? She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She really was. And she was funny and always laughing, and sometimes it just seemed like we had the perfect life.”

Avril closed her eyes.

“But then she just seemed to change. Or maybe I did. It doesn’t much matter. The only thing that matters is that we didn’t have that chemistry anymore. I just didn’t want to be near her a minute longer than I needed to be. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I hated her. And as a result, I started to hate you, too.”

Tony kept running his hand through her hair, waiting for her breathing to stop.

“Well, hate is too strong. I just needed to find a way to get away, to start fresh with my music and a new life. I’m not even forty yet.”

He lowered his head and tried to decide if she was still breathing.

“Good-bye, my little angel.”

* * *

The remaining computer equipment was all jammed into the trunk of the car, with Avril’s body squashed down behind the front seats. He’d hidden her beneath some blankets.

He drove to the far end of the farm, where once a proud man had spent fifty years working his fields, growing a rotation of soy beans and corn. The man loved his crops, and he was proud of how he treated his land.

Tony found a patch that was hidden from view, far from the farmhouse, and he dug a large hole. There, he buried all the computer equipment.

Part of him knew it would have been right to bury Avril there, too, but he surprised himself when he couldn’t just leave his daughter in an abandoned field to rot. He wanted her to have a proper burial.

Tacoma was an hour’s drive away from Seattle. He drove there, found a little-used but paved road in the middle of nowhere, and lay Avril in the middle of the road where somebody would be sure to find her soon. Just before he drove away, he leaned down and kissed her cheek.

August 30 was an overcast, blustery Tuesday. It wasn’t really autumn yet, but the summer was starting to slowly fade away. There wouldn’t be any more 100-plus temperatures and soon everyone would be thinking of packing up their shorts and swimming gear in favor of cardigans and jeans.

Seattle had mostly coniferous trees, with only a scattering of deciduous, so the residents didn’t get the amazing fall display of colors that their eastern cousins did. Autumn was more of a gray color than a rainbow, and everyone started to remember that it wouldn’t be long until the rain started.

It seemed that it rained for six months straight, but of course it was never actually like that. People had funny memories, and they laughed to their New York friends about how they never had to shovel the rain.

This Tuesday was still summertime, but the gray clouds mirrored Cindy’s mindset perfectly.

Her mind had been cloudy for the past 19 days, since Avril had died.

In those 19 days, Cindy had lived a foggy kind of existence, covered by a blanket of depression.

Avril’s body was discovered within six hours of it being spread out on the highway. Her arms had been positioned out like wings, and her legs were locked to each other. She looked like an angel, and although Cindy never saw the body there and refused to even look at the police photos, she liked the thought that her little girl was with the angels. She wanted to believe God had arranged her body that way as a message to her, to tell her, “Don’t worry, she’s with me now.”

A family travelling in an RV on their way to see Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park had found themselves lost due to mis-reading their GPS and almost ran over the dead girl. The father was driving, and the mom screamed “Look out!” just in time. Their two kids woke from the scream, but the mom kept them in the RV so they never saw the girl.

After the police arrived and took a statement, they turned around and went home, promising their kids they’d see the geyser another day.

The police called forensics and soon a couple of detectives arrived on the scene as well. They knew with a single glance who the girl was. The kidnapping was the talk of the city.

When Detective Suzanne McDermott knocked on Cindy’s door and introduced herself, Cindy started crying before she managed to say a word. She and her partner tried to console her but all she would do was let out long jagged cries punctuated with screams. She collapsed onto the couch and closed her eyes as she cried.

“It’s my fault,” she tried to say between sobs. “He told me not to say anything.”

The detectives stayed with her until Tony came home. A pair of policemen had tracked him down at the music store and told him the news.

Although Tony hadn’t cried, the police later noted that he was clearly upset and horrified at the news. They felt sorry for him and drove him back home to be with his wife.

They had to formally identify the body. At first Cindy refused and Tony said he would do it, but then she realized she needed to see Avril. There was always that one chance in a million that this was a different girl, and she couldn’t ignore that chance.

Her heart sunk when she saw Avril lying on the raised cot-like table at the forensics lab.

“My baby . . . I’m so very sorry.”

Cindy went to hold her daughter’s hand but pulled back when she saw the remains of where the little finger had been hacked off. She pulled back as if hit by an electrical shock and moved away.

Tony held his wife, slowly moving her to the exit. He nodded to the tech who had been watching.

From there, the world continued to turn upside down. The funeral was three days later, on August 14. She couldn’t bring herself to do any of the organizing. Her doctor had prescribed some small white pills that she gobbled down. The pills helped to remove the stress and allow her mind to just stay blank. She needed that.

She had no idea that so many people would come to the funeral. There must have been a thousand, but she only knew a couple of dozen. The rest were the people who had nothing better to do than watch somebody else’s sorrow. She looked around the room and glared, hating every one of them.

She wondered if the Manipulator was in the church. Wasn’t that something a lot of killers did? Go to the funeral? She’d seen that in enough movies that there had to be a kernel of truth. She wondered if the police were filming everyone who showed up.

Surprisingly, she did see her mother and father in the church. They sat in the fourth row of pews. Cindy stared at them and had mixed feelings. Part of her was grateful they showed up, but part wanted to fucking kill them; if they’d just paid the ransom, maybe Avril would be alive today.

The look on her father’s face showed that he was thinking the same thing.

Mom’s eyes were vacant. Maybe she thought she was at Sunday mass.

The funeral home had recommended that the ceremony be closed casket. Otherwise everyone would see Avril’s mangled hands. Or they could cover up her hands, but according to the funeral director, “Everyone knows about them. They’ll all look for it. They’ll care more about that than saying good-bye.”

Cindy just nodded. Her mind wasn’t able to deal with decisions so she just agreed with the funeral director whenever there was a question. She didn’t ask about costs, didn’t ask about alternatives, just nodded.

Cindy would never have a clear memory of the actual funeral or of the wake that followed. She remembered many people offering their condolences, which meant nothing. How could simple words do a damned thing to replace her daughter?

The days that followed were all fog. She sometimes would find herself waking in the middle of the day or staring at a wall in the middle of the night. Normal hours meant nothing. She avoided everybody and was glad when Tony spent little time at home. She really didn’t care where he was as long as he wasn’t with her.

Casseroles arrived. Most went into the garbage uneaten. Cindy had no appetite. All she could manage to do was to feel the overwhelming guilt of causing her child’s death.

The fog grew heavier as the days went on. Then finally Cindy awoke on this overcast almost-fall day and knew her mind was clear. She felt hunger pangs and hurried out of bed to find her way to the kitchen. She made two pieces of toast and spread raspberry jam on them, eating them while she waited for her coffee to brew. She sat and looked around her kitchen, almost as if she’d never seen it before.

“I guess I’m back,” she said. She took a deep breath and knew she’d never be the same person she was before she’d first connected with the Manipulator, but at least she felt vaguely human again.

When the coffee was ready, she poured herself a cup and drank it black. She’d never developed a taste for anything added. Well, except for a very rare Cappuccino she used as a reward for herself.