Page 62 of Sinful Reality

“Bullshit! People die every fucking day, and unless someone is thereto bring attention to it, then no one else is gonna notice. They were homebodies, Gilbert. The girl fell off the swings on?—”

“January eleventh.” He exhales, gulping as reality becomes horror. “Fuck, Malone. The report is dated January eleventh, nineteen ninety-seven.”

“She fell off the swings that day,” I repeat while Minka’s hand snakes up to cover her trembling lips. “She went home with her mother and brother after that incident, and until you show me proof otherwise—and botched schoolwork isn’t it—she hasn’t been seen since.”

“So she fell off the swings and… what? Died from a fucking concussion? Died in her sleep? And instead of reporting it like any normal, functioning human would, her mom stayed silent and went on with her life? That’s far-fetched, Malone. We both know it.”

“Minka spent all night scouring that footage you sent over.” Mentioning my mobster brother couldgray-areaan investigation faster than we could think up a better cover story, so I run with my lie without remorse. “Every single fucking year, Gloria and her kid are in the same footage, at the same place, at the same time as each upcoming victim. In eighteen separate years, Serena is nowhere to be seen.”

“What?” Minka swings around and snatches Cato’s notebook.

“Minka asked if the daughter—who would now be an adult—could look after her brother when their mother was unwell, but Gloria sidestepped the topic and had her son committed instead. Why would you do that if you have adult children?”

“Taking in a kid like…” He gulps. “One like Lachlan, who isn’t mentally okay. That’s a lot of work. She doesn’t have to do it if she’s not up to it.”

“Find the girl,” I snarl. “Find her alive, and this goes away?—”

“Methylated spirits,” Minka gasps, shoving her blankets off and standing too quickly. She stumbles left and crushes her palms to her eyes, groaning, and completely blind to Cato’s readied hands in case she falls. “Oh God, Archer. The methylated spirits. We joked about it days ago.”

“What?” Fuck Gilbert. I leave him hanging and pay attention to her instead. “What did we joke about?”

“If our perp drank it, they’d be blind. Right?”

“Okay. But no one is blind.”

“No, but Gloria’s kidneys have gone to shit. Excessive and consistent exposure to methylated spirits would do that.”

“And the pregnant one,” Cato inserts. “The kid ain’t a kid by that point. He’s a man.”

“Oh my God.” Minka presses a hand to her stomach, her cheeks paling and her eyes watering. “Oh God. If Serena is dead and Lachlan was as attached to her as Gloria said, then maybe she’s replacing what was broken. The girl died, for whatever reason, and he’s not mentally equipped to deal with that loss.”

“Hold on.” Cato shoves up from his makeshift bed and circles around to pace. “We’re dealing with a dude with a kid’s brain, right? He’s not thinking like a man. He’s thinking like a child. They’re not his lovers. They’re his sister? But he has sex with them, anyway?”

“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Minka whimpers. “His brain doesn’t always make sense.”

“She was hunting them down and replacing what was lost.” I yank the phone back to my ear and snarl, “Gloria was hunting these girls and gifting them to her son on what may have been the anniversary of his sister’s death. She didn’t die from a concussion after her fall from the swings. She died because he was obsessed with her. She was his little doll, and he was worked up that day. He’d protected Serena from Andy, who hethoughtwas a threat. Gloria took them home and separated them so Lachlan could calm down after his fight, but he was already worked up by the local boys, too. He was just a kid, and Serena was barely out of her toddler years. Jesus, maybe he choked her to death while he was hugging her. Or suffocated her by accident. Or knocked her down the fucking stairs and into the basement.”

“The basement!” Minka snatches up her laptop, the cord connecting it to the television whipping free and flinging back toward the screen. Then she taps at the keys one-handed. “Each girl came home with dirt under their nails and paper in their stomachs. They werealsoexposed to significant levels of ethyl hydroxide, a cleaning agent thatalsohappens to destroy kidney function. We’ve hypothesized that we’re working with a Jekyll and Hyde personality type: one is OCD and clean, the other can’t control themselves, and they’re not fussed with hygiene. Thegirls are not raped consistently, which would track that he’s not entirely interested.”

“He was driven by curiosity.” Cato’s nose creases with disgust. “Not lust. He had the mentality of a child, but the body of a man. His dick is gonna get hard sometimes, even if he doesn’t mean for it to, so in those instances, he did what felt good. But the rest of the time, they were his playthings.”

“She doesn’t know she’s a suspect yet.” Gilbert moves around again, trudging across a homicide bullpen where phones trill and cops work. New York or Copeland; the sounds are almost the same. “She’s confident that no one would even consider her.”

“Why?” I yank the phone from my ear and hit speaker, so Minka can listen in. “Why do you say she’s confident?”

“Because she’s coming to the station in a fucking hour to speak with our sketch artist.” He strides through a door and slams it shut in his wake. “She called yesterday, saying how horrible it all is and how, as a parent, she’d be sick to her stomach if her child was missing and she didn’t know what had happened. We got to talking about the past, and I was asking her questions, hoping to shake something loose. It seemed I had, because she mentioned seeing this dude skulking around. It was so fucking long ago, and she can’t be entirely sure. But I asked if she’d agree to speak to our artist. She said she would.”

“She’s sick,” Minka rumbles. “Looking down the barrel of death in the next few years, and when that happens, her son will have nowhere to go except back into a facility. Janiesa’s abduction is grabbing more attention than she probably expected, and the media has already connected it to the original seventeen.”

“It’s getting too hot,” I add. “And Doctor Mayet and I were reminded just this week: parents will do whatever they need to do to protect their children. She doesn’t want you to look at her—or worse, Lachlan—so she’s coming into the station to provide you with a brand-new lead that takes you as far from her son as possible.”

“We can’t raid her house while she’s here, if that’s what you’re thinking, Malone. We have nothing but a few coincidences.”

“Bullshit!” Cato spins back and shoves his phone in my face. “We have CCTV footage of her watching every single victim for years.”

“Put her with the sketch artist,” I order. “Doesn’t even have to be a real artist. Hook her up with a detective, have him question her while he’s drawing. She’s busy looking left, you go right.”

“We need a warrant for that! Jesus, Malone. I can’t just?—”

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