Sleep Tight (23 page)

Mary spotted the address Wakefield had given her and parked her rental car. It wasn't fair that obnoxious, partying frat guys got the coolest houses, but there it was. Sebastian Tate lived in a massive three-story stone building with an equally impressive wraparound porch and defaced cement lions guarding the front steps.

Dave Matthews was blasting from a radio somewhere, and two guys on the roof of the porch were rolling out sod. The temperature was in the low fifties, but that didn't keep them from going shirtless while they worked.

She shaded her eyes and shouted up at them. "Does Sebastian Tate live here?"

One of them straightened. He wore khaki shorts and a curled cap with a band logo on the front. "Tate? Yeah, most of the time. Go on in."

"What's the grass for?" she asked, curious.

"Homecoming. We're having a kegger, and we're gonna put lawn furniture out here. You aren't a cop, are you?" he asked, laughing.

She pulled out the leather case that held her photo ID and flipped it open.

"Oh, shit."

The other guy stopped working. "Nice going, Carver."

"Hey," he called down to her, "nobody here will be under twenty-one."

"I'm sure they won't," Mary said dryly, slipping the badge back into her pocket. She had zero interest in their drinking habits. "Where'd you say Tate is?"

"His room's on the third floor. Go on in."

"Thanks."

The place reeked of stale beer. As she took the stairs, she met two students on their way down, laughing and struggling to transport a half-finished keg.

She found Tate in a room that may once have been a library. Sunlight managed to filter through windows that looked as if they hadn't been washed in years. Two unmade double beds were shoved against opposite walls. Clothes Uttered the hardwood floor, and the room smelled like sweat and dirty socks. The radio she'd heard outside was blaring, the DJ shouting nonsensical patter.

Tate sat at a table, deeply engrossed in something she couldn't see.

She knocked on the molding of the open door.

He didn't hear her.

She walked over to the radio and turned it off.

"Hey!" He looked up. "Who the hell are you?"

She introduced herself, flashed her ID, and said she wanted to talk to him.

In his hand was an X-Acto knife he was using to cut out mat board for photos.

"You're pretty good at that," she said, noting the precise lines. She remembered trying to cut mat board and knew it was excruciatingly hard to do. In the right hands, an X-Acto knife could do as much damage as a scalpel.

"I've already been downtown." He leaned back, one hand braced on the table in front of him. He was shirtless. Didn't anybody wear shirts around there?

"I'd really like to talk to you myself." She found a chair and pulled it close, sitting down. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Cantrell . . . You aren't related to Gillian, are you?"

"You mean Officer Cantrell? She's my sister."

He gave her a big, predatory smile. "I'd rather talk to her."

Of course he would. "What kind of photography are you interested in?"

"Black-and-white."

"Nature?"

"People." He tossed down the knife. "I like taking pictures of people."

She fished around in her coat pocket and pulled out a page torn from City Pages, the Twin Cities free weekly entertainment paper. "Is this your ad?"

He glanced at the clipping, but couldn't have looked closely enough to see anything. When he didn't answer, she read it aloud.

"Models. Female. Eighteen to twenty-five. Blond. Some nudity required." She read the ten-digit number. "According to the phone company, that number belongs to you."

"So?"

She sensed his restrained rage, and maybe an urge to hit her.

"That's not against the law, is it?" he asked, his face taking on an angry flush.

"No. Not as long as they're willing participants."

"Oh, they're willing. If they answer the ad and find out it's not up their alley, they don't do it. Simple as that."

She wasn't letting this creep off so easily. "Would you mind showing me some of your photos?"

"I've got buddies in law school. I know I don't have to show you anything without a search warrant. And there's no way a judge or DA's going to give you one."

He was absolutely right. They didn't have anything to justify a search warrant. "How about names?" she persisted. "Do you have names of the girls you've photographed? I'd like to talk to them. Just to put my mind at ease. Just to confirm what you're saying."

He shoved himself to his feet, rummaged through a pile of papers in the corner of the room, and finally came back with two phone numbers written on a scrap of paper. "There," he said, angrily thrusting it into her hand. "Call them. They'll tell you I was a perfect gentleman."

"Thanks," she said, pocketing the numbers.

Outside in her car, Mary was able to reach one of the women, a girl named Poppy Adams, and arranged to meet with her at a bar in Brooklyn Park. She left a message at the second number.

Poppy was bottle blonde, about twenty-one, wearing a black tank top, hip-hugger jeans, and hemp chokers. She had several tattoos and piercings.

"I'm trying to get into acting," she told Mary, "and needed some publicity photos. Those cost like hell, so I told him I'd pose if he'd print up some extra shots for me."

"How did he behave when you did the photo shoot? Was he professional?"

"Do you mean, did he try anything? No, he just took the pictures. Then he gave me a few of his cards and said if I knew anybody else who might want photos to let them know about him."

"Have you passed his cards on to anybody else?"

"Yeah. A couple of girls."

"You wouldn't happen to have their numbers, would you?"

She had to think about it for a second. "One of them doesn't have a phone, but I can tell you where she lives. Her name's Jennifer." She gave her directions to an apartment building in Uptown. "The other girl ... I don't even know her name. She used to come in here quite a bit, but I haven't seen her recently."

Mary pulled out four-by-six head shots of all the murder victims. "Do any of these look familiar?"

Poppy examined them, shook her head, and gave them back.

"If you do see the girl you told me about, will you ask her to give me a call?" Mary handed Poppy her card. "And if you think of anything else, please get in touch with me."

From Brooklyn Park, Mary drove directly to Uptown. The loft apartment Poppy had described was above a coffee shop. Uptown wasn't the cheapest place to live, but it was considered the hippest. In order to achieve that hip status, about a dozen people were occupying an apartment that looked more suited to two or three. Jennifer didn't ask her in. Instead, she stepped out into the dark hallway and shut the door behind her.

"Yeah, I got photos taken," she said, arms crossed below her breasts, shoulder blades sharp. She looked and sounded as if she had a bad cold. "But I got the idea I wasn't what he had in mind."

Jennifer had light brown dreadlocks, tattoos, and more piercings than Poppy.

"What type of girl do you think he was looking for?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. He's a frat guy. Frat guys don't go for girls like me. He'd want somebody more conservative. Somebody more Minnesota."

"Minnesota?"

"Yeah, you know those blond blue-eyed girls with white teeth and perfect skin? One of those."

"Did he not take pictures of you?"

"Oh, he took pictures. Even though I wasn't perfect, he didn't seem to mind seeing me naked." She stiffened at the memory. "I thought I was going to get paid. That's the only reason I did it. I needed the money. But he takes the photos, and when I ask for cash he gets mad."

"How mad? Did he threaten you? Hurt you?"

"No, but he was really pissed. He said he was an artist. That I should be honored that he took my picture at all. I asked for the negatives, and he unrolls them, then tosses them at me. I just left them there. It ends up they weren't even the right ones, because . . . well ... a couple weeks later I get this nude photo of me in the mail that says 'Ha, ha, ha' written across the bottom in black Magic Marker."

"Do you still have it?"

She shook her head. "I burned it."

"Did you contact the police?"

"What for? It was my fault, you know? My own stupid fault. But now I'm worried that when I get famous—" She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "—he'll, like, sell the pictures to Playboy."

Chapter 19

Gavin cashed his check and headed for the nearest bar.

He loved alcohol.

During his time in prison, he'd forgotten how much he loved it. Its warm embrace. Its many moods, every high as different as a fingerprint. There were so many variables, so many small chemical factors that could tip the high one way or another—like the contents of a person's stomach, or how much sleep he'd gotten. The kind of alcohol. Wine was different from beer. Tequila, different from vodka. But most of all, his state of mind on any given night determined the path the evening would take.

Sitting at a bar where thousands of elbows had worn the wood smooth, Gavin looked around. Most of the patrons were working on the same project—becoming anesthetized as quickly as possible. Why was it cool to get wasted when you were a kid, and so pathetic once a guy passed thirty? Gavin had the answer. When a kid got drunk, he did it for sheer fun. An adult, on the other hand, did it to escape, to find oblivion.

Trouble was, oblivion never lasted, and you had to do it over again, enduring hangovers, humiliation, and shame for those few blessed hours of numbness.

Sometimes the alcohol turned on you. Instead of being a friend, it became the enemy. Instead of having a good time, you spent the evening sinking deeper and deeper into despair. When that happened, a guy had to go searching for another kind of drug to shut it off, to bring on that feeling of being satisfied in your own skin. And block out the things he didn't want to remember.

Kissing Gillian.

Attacking Gillian.

Almost raping Gillian.

The replay was like watching a movie, watching actors. Certainly the main character didn't seem like him at all. The attack wasn't something he would do or could do.

But he had done it.

Oh, God.

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers against the lids. He'd killed a girl once, but didn't remember it. Some people said he killed his grandmother too. His grandmother, the only person who'd loved him.

Why? Why did I do such a thing?

Then there was Gillian's sister, the FBI agent. She'd been to see him again, nagging at him like an annoying gnat. She thought he'd killed those girls, and sometimes he wondered if she was right. Maybe he had killed them. Even if he couldn't remember.

He heard a sound and lifted his head to see the bartender placing a shot of tequila in front of him. "From the lady at the end of the bar," the man said, pointing.

Gavin looked through the smoky haze to see a woman with blond hair seated at the other end of the L-shaped bar. She gave him a prissy wave. He nodded, lifted the shot glass—cheers—and downed the burning liquid.

His mother died of a heroin overdose when he was three. He couldn't remember much about his father except for the beatings. The one that gave him epilepsy had put him in the hospital. After that he was sent to Minneapolis to live with his grandmother—his mother's mother. He was young, maybe six, and he used to think that everybody lost time, had gaps they couldn't fill. Later it was explained to him that the gaps had something to do with his epilepsy, courtesy of dear old Dad.

"Hi," said a soft voice in his ear.

He looked up from the empty shot glass to see the woman who'd bought the drink standing next to him, an elbow on the bar. She was about thirty, too much makeup, too much sun. One of those women who fried herself on the beach all summer and cooked herself in a tanning bed all winter.

She wanted sex.

But what kind of sex? he wondered. That was sometimes hard to tell. Was she a whore? Or just horny?

"Hi," he said. "What're you drinkin'?"

She slid onto the barstool. "Gin and tonic."

He bought her a drink, and another for himself.

She began talking about being in town for a convention, something about selling digital cameras or cleaning products or something. He didn't care. He didn't give a shit. He'd already shut her out. The company she was with had to be shaky, because she was hanging out in one of the seediest parts of town. Or it could be she was just feeding him a line of bullshit, wanting him to think she was alone and unfamiliar with the area. Whores, the kind that robbed you once you passed out, liked to do that. The world was a great place. Yessirree.