DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) (22 page)

‘Hi, I’m Sandy Bateson and this is my first ever personal computer which Nicky has kindly given me. You didn’t leave anything on here that’s private did you?’ Sandy had a light, easy voice and there was no hint of tension in it. She sounded happy, but then it seemed like she was recording the entry after just having received the unit.

‘I reset the whole thing, cleaned the memory.’ A boy’s voice: Fox assumed that was Nicky. He sounded happy too.

‘Nicky’s good with computers.’ And that was Trudy. The three of them together for Sandy’s first foray into personal computers.

‘Oh,’ Nicky added, ‘and I shut down all the sound output and the wireless links, like you asked. It won’t make a sound unless you want it to.’

‘Thanks,’ Sandy went on. ‘Okay, well, this is just to say “hi, computer,” and I’m going to be using you to keep a diary. I’ve never had a diary before so I’ve no idea what I’ll put in here. Happy things. I’ll put all my happy things in here so I can keep them forever.’

That lasted all the way to the second file. ‘Dear Diary… Shit.’ The voice was low and there was a slight sibilance which suggested the recording was being done with Sandy’s lips more or less
on
the microphone. ‘He came home pissed and wanted to know why I wasn’t in bed. It was nine thirty. So now I’m going to have to stay in or cover up the shiner I’ll have by morning. Shit.’

Fox lay on her bed, surrounded by things which she had left behind when she had gone off to join the Army, and imagined Sandy lying in her own bed. The girl’s bedroom was a girl’s bedroom, at first glance. There had been dolls and a couple of books on shelves. A wardrobe of favoured clothes she preferred to have handy and not recycle. There was a vanity unit, and there the image broke down because there was a hairbrush, but no cosmetics, none at all. A seventeen-year-old girl without even a lipstick pen or some eye shadow? Trudy, the dedicated reader, had had some basic make-up in her room. Fox had had a kit her mother had bought her for Christmas which she had barely ever used, but it had been quite complete and she had even asked her mother to run her through the delicacies of kohl pencils and lip liners. Sandy had nothing.

So there was Sandy, lying in her bed… She would sleep in something. Fox had slept naked in summer from the age of fourteen when she had declared to her mildly shocked parents that it was ‘far too hot’ for her favoured, blue nightdress. When he had got his mouth closed, Jonathan had told her not to run around the house naked and that had been that. Sandy would be wearing something. Panties and a T-shirt. Body armour which would not be enough. She lay there, huddled up under her girly, flowery duvet with the light of the screen obscured and her mouth pressed to the microphone, recording her diary entry and fearing her father might find her. The rip under the bed, Fox realised, was positioned so that someone lying on it could reach under without setting foot on the floor to get to the computer.

That was borne out by the sporadic nature of the entries. Some weeks there were none, some two or three, never more than that. Fox made it through a couple of months, a litany of torment, mental and physical, before she found what she had dreaded.

‘Dear… Shit, it hurts. Dear Diary, sometimes I think you’re the only friend I’ve got. Trudy’s great. And Nicky… But I can tell you anything and I can’t… can’t tell them. He went out with Crystal. Some stupid party. I know he hates them. They came back and I could hear them arguing. Him arguing. Mom knows better than to fight back, but he hit her anyway. I really hoped he’d just go to bed, but he…’ There was a muffled groan. ‘I feel sick. I don’t know how I can keep letting him… He came in and… I try to get wet for him, like he told me, but all I can smell is him and booze and it hurts so much…’ The recording continued, but there were just muffled sounds for maybe thirty seconds. Crying, Fox decided. She had learned how to keep her crying silent, probably at a young age. ‘I wish I was dead.’

Fox got off the bed and paced across her room. She had never been one for physical books and she had taken the personal things she felt were important when she walked away from this place. What was left was her childhood. A teddy bear named Woodrow Patch, because her father had given him an eyepatch when one eye had dropped out. He had been just Woodrow before that. A doll in a ridiculous, flouncy dress, with huge, lacy underskirts, which Fox had never named and had thought was childish even when her mother had given it to her for Christmas at the age of eight. There was still a poster on the wall of a band Fox had liked in her late teens when she had been into deathdub.

By the time Fox was Sandy’s age, the room had had a sound system and a computer. A VR visor would have been sitting on the computer, ready for use, and, when she had been in the room, her wearable unit would be sitting on the desk beside it. There had been more posters, a pile of memory sticks,
lots
of clothes. You could not see the childish stuff for all the teenage clutter. Sandy’s room belonged to a ten-year-old. And in it, her father had been raping her.

Having broken the self-imposed taboo on talking about it, Sandy was more forthcoming about her father’s nocturnal activities. She knew that her mother knew it was happening. She always called her mother Crystal, never ‘my mother’ or ‘Mom.’ She did not blame Crystal for what her father did and, in one candid moment, admitted that she could not blame her for not stopping him. Crystal was as afraid of Malcolm as Sandy was, maybe more so. Sandy knew what that fear was like, described the terror that crawled into her gut whenever she heard footsteps outside her room, the heavy, icy-cold weight that sank in and made her mouth dry and tears spring into her eyes.

Then there was a change. The recording came from a Wednesday in early April. ‘Dear Diary, I think I met someone today. I know it’s stupid, after what happened with Nicky, but this guy… He’s different. I won’t say much just in case
he
finds this. I’m going to be
so
careful about this one. And there’s no chance of being late home, because he’s not here at night.’

That went on through April, and there was no mention of what her father was doing to her. It was as though, finally, Sandy had something nice to record and it was pushing away her daily horror. By May, things were getting more serious. ‘I think I’m in love,’ Sandy recorded and the sound of her voice, even at a whisper, made Fox’s heart leap for her.

And then things went bad again. ‘Dear Diary, I got another shiner from him today. He told me there was someone he wanted me to meet. A man. He said… He said this man was very important and could help the family, and that I had to meet this guy and… be a good girl for him. I didn’t want to. At least after he punched me in the eye he had to call it off. I heard him talking to someone, saying I was bleeding and it would have to wait.
I
can’t wait anymore.’

The next entry was on the following Wednesday. ‘It’s set. Next week.’ That was it, nothing more. Fox checked the date. The Wednesday after the recording would be the twenty-third of June. That was the day she had been called out to Lauren Coolidge’s body, and the day Sandy Bateson had vanished.

There was one more entry, on the twenty-second. Fox started the playback and listened to Sandy’s happy, expectant voice. ‘Dear Diary, tomorrow I’m going. Drew’s going to help me and I’m going to be gone from this hellhole forever. I’m a little sorry for Crystal because she’s going to catch Hell for it, but…’ There was a pause, not even breathing, and then, ‘Shit! Not now…’

There were noises which Fox was not sure about until she heard another voice. ‘Is my good girl asleep?’ Sandy had hidden the PC quickly, too quickly to turn it off. Malcolm’s voice was audible, but muffled. ‘I know she’s not.’

‘Please, D-daddy, not… not tonight.’

‘Now then, Sandy, be a good girl for your daddy…’

Fox made herself listen to it all. Every gut-wrenching, heart-tearing second of it. Her mind filled in the images as she heard the sounds. Tearing fabric as he ripped her panties off her, the creak of the bed springs and the wail of pain and fear quickly bitten off, the grunting and the final longer grunt of release, the creak as he got off the bed.

‘Good girl. Friday night you’re going to be a good girl for Druss.’ Fox felt her face go cold as the blood drained out of it, but she kept listening. There was nothing audible for maybe another minute. Sandy was crying her silent tears until she could pull herself together, retrieve the PC, and turn it off.

~~~

There had been a need to wash her face. Cold water. It had washed the sensation back into her cheeks, and then she had started downstairs to the workshop. Meeting her father at the bottom of the steps had been something she really did not want.

‘You okay, Fox? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m… I just read something that bothered me. Uh, to do with another case.’

‘The killer in New York?’

Fox smiled. ‘I need to go check on Pythia.’ Starting past him, she stopped and put a hand on his arm. ‘Dad… When I left, I was kind of pissed off and some things were said.’

‘I’m aware. We said some things too, as I recall.’

‘Yeah. I’m not saying I didn’t mean them, and I’m not saying I was wrong, but I’ve never been disappointed that you were my father. I’m glad you’re you.’

‘I feel like I missed part of this conversation.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Dad.’ Turning, she headed off to the garage at a brisk pace.

‘All right, ladies,’ Fox said as soon as she was back in the air conditioning, ‘what do we have? Kit?’

Kit appeared in her longer skirt and glasses ensemble. She looked pleased and Fox noted her downloading herself back to the processor in Fox’s arm. ‘I have found Sandy.’

‘Show me.’ Fox closed her eyes and found herself standing in a reconstruction of the market. A time counter hovered, constantly at the right viewing angle, and said the time was eleven forty-five.

‘Pythia built this from the camera views at the time. Sandy walks in from behind you.’

Turning, Fox spotted the girl as she walked into the park. Sandy was pretty, younger than her years and yet older. Her blue eyes were dull, but her hair was bright gold and fell around her shoulders like a cloud. She was wearing jeans and a light, thin-strapped top, which Fox figured her father would not approve of but then her father would be out at work at this time. Her figure was good, but thin. She would fill out with a little more age, Fox guessed.

They followed her as she walked between the stalls. Her eyes flicked about constantly. She was nervous, constantly checking to see whether anyone was following her, but the two people who were actually watching were doing it almost a week later. Fifteen minutes of checking and she turned, making a beeline for a stall on the northern side.

As far as Fox could tell, all of the stalls there were staffed by people from out of town, several of them out of the south. Sandy checked about once again and then slipped around behind the stalls, and that was when a boy turned and reached out for her hands. The video froze.

‘Hello, Drew,’ Fox said.

‘You know who he is?’ Kit asked.

‘Only the first name. It’s in her diary. You’ve run facial recognition?’

‘Pythia is doing that now. I got a much better image of him from when they were setting up.’ She reached out and pulled a still frame out of the air for Fox to look at. Drew was a handsome young man, maybe twenty, with a solidly muscled body derived from hard work. Dark hair and eyes, rugged features, strong jawline, and high cheekbones. He wore a heavy, leather jacket and jeans faded by age, and boots that looked like Army issue from the last generation of combat uniform.

‘Run it on.’

The couple talked for a few minutes, one of the others on the stall joining in briefly, and then they parted, Sandy moving off at a brisk pace.

‘They do not have a long conversation,’ Kit said, ‘and she does not appear again.’

‘Finalising arrangements. Rogers
and
Bateson were right. Sandy ran away, but she ran away with Drew, probably into the Southern Protectorate. Get images of all the people on that stall. We’ll go to the market tomorrow and see if we can talk to any of them.’ She backed out of the simulation and opened her eyes. ‘Pythia, forensics, please.’

‘There was not a lot to find,’ Pythia replied, ‘but there was something. There was DNA and hair from three individuals, one male, two female, almost certainly the Batesons. I also found hair from three different sources, and fingerprints from three individuals.’

‘To be expected. It’s a family house.’

‘Yes. The bed sheets were clean, almost certainly replaced since Sandy Bateson slept in the bed. The mattress, however, yielded blood from one of the female DNA sources. Not large amounts, but some. There were also seminal and vaginal fluids. The DNA was degraded, but there was a sixty-eight per cent probability of a match to the male DNA source.’

‘Mister Bateson
was
sleeping with his daughter,’ Kit said.

‘Not sleeping,’ Fox replied. ‘He never stayed that long. The print outside the window, Pythia?’

‘Corresponds to an Army standard issue combat boot last used in twenty fifty-two. It is commonly available in surplus stores.’

‘Drew was wearing a pair. So he comes to her window, lets her know he’s there. Maybe she goes out that way, or she sneaks out through the door. I bet Malcolm’s a sound sleeper. At least one of the other people on the stall is in on this, so they’ve waited after the market closed. They have transport not far away. Not too close, don’t want to be seen, but not too far. She goes fast and light. She even forgets her diary, but Daddy raped her the night before and she’s desperate to get out.’

‘You know he did?’ Kit asked.

‘I know. She accidentally recorded him doing it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Oh. Pythia, I want you to extract all the audio files from Sandy’s PC. Clean up the audio and run voiceprint analysis on the voices. Kit… If you want to listen to the files, I won’t stop you, but if you do, be prepared. It’s not a pleasant listen, especially the last entry. Also, I want everything you can find about Cory Druss and any relationship he might have with Malcolm Bateson.’