Darknet (21 page)

“Good,” she said. She hadn’t had any coffee since Avril had died.

During her fog, Cindy hadn’t bothered looking at the news, which was probably a good thing. For the first few days, Avril was front page headlines. It wasn’t every day that a child was murdered by a shadowy figure from the dark side of the Internet.

Today, she did turn the news on, though. Nothing much grabbed her. The lead story was about a pretty young woman who’d claimed more than a million dollars in the state lottery. The actual winning draw had happened months earlier, but the girl was incredibly shy and only now had found the courage to come forward to collect her winnings. Cindy smiled, thinking that girl had quite a future ahead of her, and then frowned when she realized if she or Tony had won that money instead, maybe Avril would still be alive.

If only . . .

“If only . . .”

She knew that if only was a mug’s game. She could list a hundred
if onlys,
and what would it get her? Nowhere. Avril would be just as dead.

Cindy put her coffee mug down, still staring at the pretty girl on the news. It was a photo behind the news reporter, not the actual girl, and just for a moment, rage ran through her. She wanted her daughter back!

The emotion evaporated as fast as it had arrived, and Cindy calmed herself. She pushed her coffee mug aside and turned the TV off.

She went for a shower, not completely sure when the last time she’d done that. The steaming water felt wonderful cascading down her body, and she stood there staring into the water for several minutes without moving.

When she finished, she dried herself and sat on her bed. She had no idea where Tony was. It was only seven o’clock in the morning. Maybe he’d been gone all night.

Fine with me.

All of a sudden she wondered about what was happening in her life. Did she still have a job? She hadn’t talked to Ryan. Did she still have her friends or had she chased them away by hiding in the fog? Maria?

What bills were on the way to her from the funeral and all the related activities? For that matter, what bills had arrived that she’d ignored?

Did her brother and sister come to the funeral? She didn’t know. Did she care? She didn’t know that, either.

And what about Tony? What was going on with him? Had she chased him away for good?

“Let’s hope so.”

She knew she likely wouldn’t be that lucky.

Cindy dressed. She looked for something to fit the weather and ended up wearing some dark tights and a cozy gray wool top with long floppy sleeves.

She went to her computer and checked her e-mail. She felt trepidation, wondering if the Manipulator would have been trying to contact her, to continue his extortion, even though she had nothing left to lose. However, although she had several hundred e-mails (about half of which were spam), there was nothing from the murderer.

Many of the e-mails were from her friends and family, and yes, there were notes from both her brother and sister, both friendly and full of kind wishes.

A few dozen were from various media outlets wanting interviews. She deleted them all.

One e-mail stood out from all the rest.

* * *

Dear Cindy,

Your mother and I know we should have listened to you, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. We’re so very sorry. I tried to find you at the funeral, but things are difficult with your mom and I had to take her home.

I hope one day you can forgive us for our errors. It won’t be easy, so please take your time, but remember that each day, your mother gets further and further away from us. It’s hard for her to remember much of anything, but I know she still loves you just as much as I do.

Love, Dad.

* * *

It was dated ten days earlier. She read it three times before leaving the computer and going for a walk outside.

Suzanne McDermott had been a cop for twenty years. She started out partnering on a patrol car on the night shift, which she hated. Her partner was a crude middle-aged man who was just counting the days till his retirement.

Eventually, Suzanne earned her stripes and was now a detective, working (mostly) the day shift, mostly on interesting cases that didn’t involve cheap hookers and drug buys in the passageways between buildings.

This case was different for her, though. It would have been different for anybody on the force.
Fuck
, she thought.
Nobody’s ever had a case like this before, here or anywhere else.

Suzanne hesitated only for a moment before ringing the doorbell. As she waited, she glanced around the house. Like half a million other Seattle residents, she’d listened to Cin every day. She enjoyed the radio show but hadn’t heard the most important broadcast of Cin’s career. That didn’t matter, because all of the station’s broadcasts were available for listening on the Internet. The detective listened to the whole show even before being assigned the case.

A movement to the side caught her attention and she saw Cindy McKay looking at her from a side window. Suzanne smiled and nodded, and Cindy returned the nod before disappearing. A few seconds later, the front door opened.

“Hello again, Detective.”

“Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. McKay.”

Cindy seemed lost in thought, as if she were deciding whether to be polite or to slam the door in her face. Suzanne said, “It’s okay. I won’t be long.”

Cindy took a deep breath and stood aside. “I’m sorry. Please come in.”

They walked to the living room and Cindy waved at the armchair while taking the couch. Suzanne wanted her to feel at ease, so she sat where she was directed.

“Are you feeling any better?”

Cindy made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a snort. “I just try to get from one day to the next. It still all seems like an impossible nightmare.”

“I bet.”

“Can I get you something? I can make coffee? Water?”

“No, nothing for me.”

“So, go for it. What are you here for?”

Suzanne took out her notepad and opened it, but had second thoughts and closed it again.

“My mother was beaten by my father,” she said. The words were out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. “He shot and killed her when I was sixteen and somehow convinced a jury that it was self-defense.”

Cindy stared at her, but kept quiet.

“I always wondered how a woman could put up with that. Being abused for years. Decades. There were times when I hated my mother for not just packing up and moving on. I thought she was a coward for not leaving, and her cowardice meant I’ve gone through the past two decades without my mother.”

She stopped and looked at Cindy, deciding to stop talking. How could this be helping?

A curtain of silence seemed to cover the room. Suzanne thought of the face of her mother, who died at about the same age she currently was.

“Your mother didn’t have any choice,” said Cindy.

She stared at Suzanne and added, “You’ve never been abused. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I don’t see anything different in
your
eyes.”

“But I do. I see it every day that I look at myself in the mirror. I see fear, disgust, self-pity, and hate. Hate for him and hate for myself for being so scared.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes, as if she could see those things even without a mirror.

“I see those same things sometimes in other women. I see them on the faces of strangers walking down the street. I see them occasionally on the faces of women I interview for the show. I see it at Pike Place market and on the bus and sometimes I think I see it when watching the news on TV. An abused woman can see the others if she’s paying any attention at all.”

Suzanne nodded.

“I talked to your friend—” She opened her notepad again. “Maria Delgado. She confirmed your story, saying you confided in her about being beaten.

“Yes. She’s the only person I ever told.”

“But you only told her a month ago.”

“It’s not easy to talk about.”

“I know.”

“Well?”

“Well, a more suspicious person might think you were setting up a motive.”

“What?”

“A more suspicious person would ask themself if everything was really the way it seemed. You say you hired a contract killer, which is a crime . . .”

“I’m ready for that.”

“But there’s been no payment. You also made that clear in your statement. So, you didn’t actually follow through on it. There’s no proof of anything. No e-mails, no voice recordings, no transcripts of your chats, no transfer of money, so a more suspicious person might hit a dead end pretty quickly. They might think you’ve been setting up an alibi.”

“Who might be more suspicious?”

Suzanne lowered her head and for the first time, Cindy noticed her partner was missing.

“Are you on the job right now?”

Suzanne looked up and shook her head gently. “I just want to help.”

“I really don’t know what you’re saying.”

Suzanne thought of her mother again and remembered the look in her eyes that Cindy had talked about.

“You need to be sure there’s never going to be a money trail, Cindy. Or any other kind of trail. You need to be absolutely sure. Because if there’s no trail, it’s only your confession. That’s not enough to convict you. Right now, you’re your only enemy. You need to be sure there’s no loose ends.”

Cindy stared at the detective, seemingly not sure what to say.

“You haven’t committed a crime, Cindy. You need to remember that.”

“I did. I started this whole thing.”

“No. You did nothing wrong. That is where your mind has to be.”

Suzanne reached over and took Cindy’s hand.

“And you need to get away from him. With Avril gone, he has no strings to pull on you. You need to get him out of your life.”

Cindy looked like she wanted to cry, but instead she squeezed Suzanne’s hand and nodded silently.

* * *

In the middle of the afternoon, Cindy was sitting in her living room (
our
living room, she corrected herself), sipping a glass of Coke. It had started out cold but over the past couple of hours it had warmed and gone flat. She didn’t notice.

Instead, she tried to use some of the lessons she’d taught her thousands of listeners over the years. Part of her show was to include quick self-help topics she’d pulled from various magazines. Her favorite topics included lists like
10 Ways to Increase Your Self-Esteem
and
12 Lessons to Live By
. There were a million lists out there that she could pick and choose. Now, she remembered some of the most memorable things she’d taught her audience:

* * *

Do things you won’t be ashamed of in five years.

Live your own life, not somebody else’s.

Go to sleep happy every single night.

Laugh three times every day—real laughs, not forced.

* * *

And her own personal ideal: Don’t live with regrets, not a single one.

Cindy was full of regrets. Every aspect of the last month was something she regretted because it’d caused her to lose her daughter.

However, she knew there was a silver lining just waiting for her. It wasn’t much of a lining, just a glimmer, but today she would grab onto anything to find a reason to continue living.

The past thirteen years that she’d been married to Tony had been a horrendous nightmare. She’d come to accept that as a matter of course. It was just how things were.

Now, though, she had a choice. It didn’t have to be that way. She didn’t have to be a victim a minute longer, because Tony no longer had the leverage to hurt Avril. He had no power over her anymore.

The realization frightened Cindy. She’s been sitting for an hour after the epiphany hit her. She really didn’t have to be beaten anymore.

“Can’t believe it’s possible,” she said to the empty room.

But it is.

At a little after 4:00 p.m., the doorbell rang. Out of an abundance of caution, she peeked out the window to check, but the man at the door was exactly who she expected. She cracked open the door.

“Hello,” she said.

“Ma’am! I’m with Century Locks.”

“Yes. I need my locks changed. Front and back. Oh, and the door from the garage to the house.”

“Won’t take long. Maybe an hour.”

She nodded.

When he was finished, the locksmith gave her the new keys and said the company would bill her. She thanked him and smiled as he left. She immediately locked every door, and secretly wished for Tony to show up soon. Let the bastard know he no longer had a home.

She vaguely wondered where he was. She hadn’t seen him for . . . two days? Or was it three?

“Maybe I’m rid of him for good.”

Even as she said the words, she knew it would be too good to be true.

Tony woke in the middle of the afternoon after a nap in Deb’s bedroom. She wasn’t home and he’d decided not to bother going in to work today.

Fuck it, with a million bucks in the bank, who needs to sit around wasting time waiting for customers in a rinky-dink music store?