Burner, page 20
Her heart raced. Her throat was dry and Iris felt her breath quicken.
She slid open the side door of the van and grabbed the bag of groceries she had bought earlier in the day. After tearing the brown paper bag, Iris spilled the contents on the parking lot to look like an accident, and then grabbed what she needed from the floorboard of the van.
It had taken time and patience. Planning, and research. But it was surprisingly easy to make chloroform at home. Iris knelt down, pretending to pick at the spilled groceries, and waited. She smiled to herself when she saw the shadow cast beside her on the asphalt, and heard the girl ask if she needed help.
Hello, Sarah.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
AUDREY: now
“Hell would be a welcome thing compared to what it’s like when your child goes missing.” Audrey’s eyes were red. She swallowed hard and wiped at her nose.
“After I filed the report, they started asking all these questions about Sarah. Was she dating anyone? How was she paying for college? Did she use drugs?”
“Part of the investigation.” Blevins crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“Oh, I know. I do. Guess they found out some girls at campus had sugar daddies. Few others were web cam girls on porn sites, working to pay for school. But the police just kept asking questions and I…” Audrey clenched her hands into fists. “I wanted to scream at them to find my daughter, to just stop asking questions and find her. But it’s not like that, is it? Might as well scream at a person with cancer to get better. Can’t rush anything, good or bad.”
“Did it occur to you that the woman in your barn might have been the—”
“No.” Audrey shook her head and tears spilled over her cheeks. “To think it might have been… her… that took my Sarah never crossed my mind. Why would it? That girl chained up in Paul’s barn… she…”
“Wasn’t real?”
“Detective.” Audrey released a desperate sigh and put her hands against the edge of the desk. “She wasn’t real. But she was, yes and I… No, it never occurred to me it might have been her. Not once.”
“If it had crossed your mind, would you have told the police?”
Audrey stared at him, but didn’t respond.
Blevins’ phone went off again and he gritted his teeth as he withdrew it from his jacket and looked at the screen. “Excuse me,” he whispered to Audrey and then stood and walked into the hallway.
Audrey couldn’t understand the words Blevins said, but his tone was low and harsh, laced with frustration. The words he said right before his footsteps headed back toward the office were the only she could make out: “I’m aware, you don’t need to remind me.”
He sighed as he stepped into the room and took his chair, a tight expression on his face. “Mrs. Dugan, three months after your daughter was taken, she was found. The chances go down with every passing hour, and unless it’s a domestics case or plain dumb luck, most abductees aren’t found after the initial forty-eight-hour window. It’s not much, and I know it offers no comfort, but at least you have answers. Most parents never do. The terrible, undeniable truth is that the world is full of plain white vans.”
Audrey considered Blevins’ words and gave a weak nod. “Having a child, raising them… watching them learn and grow into a young adult.” She wiped at her eyes and inhaled sharply through her nose. “And they can be snatched away from you, just like that. It’s nothing you can adequately describe to someone unless they’ve lived through it, too. Unless they’ve seen it with their own eyes.”
Blevins tapped his fingertips against the desk. “I hear that’s what they say about the Sistine Chapel.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
AUDREY: then
The only person to see anything was a teenaged bag boy at the grocery store Sarah shopped at, and the kid hadn’t been fast enough to catch the license plate of the van before it sped away.
A plain white van, Audrey thought.
Parking lot security footage showed Sarah walking from the store to her car and stopping to help someone in a hoodie. The angle made it impossible to see what took place between the two vehicles, but the figure stood up, appeared to be struggling with something, and then slid the door of the van closed.
Audrey had watched the video footage over and over again, staring at the moment her child had been taken. It felt like a new wound each and every time.
I know it’s her. I don’t know how, but I know she fucking did this.
Her face crumpled on itself and Audrey bit down on her tongue, hard, to prevent herself from breaking into sobs. She checked her phone, for the tenth time in the last hour, to make sure it wasn’t on mute. For the past three days, Audrey had barely slept, and when she did, it was short doses with her phone gripped in her hand.
The last call had been a useless one from the Selinsgrove Police Department to let her know there wasn’t anything to update her about. They were searching for the white van, asking people in the area if they had seen anything. She could be anywhere by now.
Doing nothing was eating her alive inside, and the feeling of utter and absolute helplessness was making her want to crawl out of her skin. She stood from the couch and paced the living room. Her eyes were raw, swollen from constantly being on the verge of crying.
Audrey had considered calling Mr. Schmidt, getting him on the phone and letting him know one of his products was unpredictable and on the loose. She had run through the conversation in her head several times.
But then what? What if I tell him and he and his cronies get pissed?
I saw her chained up in my fucking barn and she got loose. They’ll blame me for that, there’s no doubt in my mind. What will they do to me because of that?
She walked into the kitchen and glanced at the wine rack, considered tasting oblivion again, if only to numb the pain for a little while.
No. I need to be sober if they call.
She’s your little girl, Audrey. They’re going to find her.
Audrey screamed and slammed her fists onto the counter, rattling the dishes stacked by the sink. The voice in her head didn’t sound convincing.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
IRIS: now
“The girl cried, ohhhh, she cried... part of me wanted to laugh, and another part of me wanted to scream in her face and tell her about her mother and what a fucking cu—”
Iris bit off her words, pulled back, and took a few slow breaths.
“When I got home, I dragged her from the van to the inside of the concrete block building. Set her up on an office chair I bought at the town thrift store, and taped her arms and legs to it. I waited there, watching. I felt her silky hair and ran my fingertips over the skin of her shoulders and down over her arms. Her eyes were closed for the longest time, but when she opened them, I got to see it there. The confusion. The absolute fear.”
Doctor Walker’s face was slack. His breathing was shallow. His attention moved between Iris and absently touching the folder on the table. When Iris didn’t continue talking, he cleared his throat and stared at the iPad for a moment before he met her eyes.
“You knew what you were going to do. You… you had this thought out. Planned ahead of time?”
Iris nodded. “Of course, I did. Thought about it, planned it like it was going to be the most amazing surprise party ever.” She smirked and pulled the dead cigarette butts from the tray, arranging them on the table one by one.
The doctor watched Iris smile. “You had her there, in the building, and then… how did everything else happen?”
“She woke up, started screaming and crying, pleading with me to let her go, asking me why I was doing this over and over.” Iris nudged the cigarette butts into place until they spelled out FUCK YOU.
“I shut the lights off and locked the door behind me, left her there alone in the dark, screaming and crying.” Iris smiled. “I’ve got to tell you, Doc, I slept better that night than I had in a long, lonnng time.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
IRIS: then
Iris watched as the girl worked her lips against the silicone bit strapped around her head and over her mouth. The rubber was slick with the girl’s spit and a silver line dangled from her chin.
Her eyes were red and wide. Scared.
No, Iris thought, not scared… terrified.
Is that what I looked like at the beginning? Scared and weak?
Before Iris had put the rubber ball gag on her, the girl had been sobbing, babbling through tears. “What do you want? My mother… my mother has money. She can pay you. Please let me go. Why are you doing this?”
Over and over again, in a fast-moving train that ended in outright screams as the girl struggled against the tape restraining her arms and ankles to the chair.
And then it stopped as abruptly as it had begun, ended even before Iris had buckled the strap at the rear of Sarah’s head.
The screams were the last of the girl’s fight. Iris was disappointed the girl gave up so quickly, the utter resignation of it. But then, things were only getting started, so the girl might have more gas in her tank later. Iris could only hope.
A case of bottled water and a gallon jug of orange juice sat in the middle of a large oil stain on the cement floor. Iris had also bought a fifty-pound bag of Alpo Prime Cuts dry dog food because the grocery store didn’t carry Ol’ Roy. That had been another disappointment, but the Alpo would have to do.
SAVORY BEEF FLAVOR. EVERYTHING YOUR DOG NEEDS.
Iris tore off the threaded strip of paper at the top and set the opened bag aside. She dragged over a folding lawn chair in front of the girl and sat down.
Tears streamed from Sarah’s eyes, but she was quiet except for a low whine coming from deep within. The line of spittle from her chin became a swinging pendulum, and Iris watched it for a moment, mesmerized by the teardrop of saliva at the end. The thread broke and dropped against the girl’s bare hip.
“You know, I knew your father.” Iris watched Sarah’s eyes, watched the girl’s mind at work behind them. “Ohhh, oh no. He wasn’t fucking me… at least he hadn’t.” She scooted her chair closer to Sarah and leaned forward. “That would have been easy, but… distant. Unemotional.”
Iris pulled a bottle of water from the package and opened it, stared at plastic cap in her hands for a moment, and then took a long drink. “What your father and I shared was something much more intimate than simply shoving a cock into any hole. What your father did took… mental fortitude.”
She capped the water, set it down on the cement, and then lifted a narrow yellow canister in front of her. A small hissing noise escaped as she adjusted the valve at the top of the tank. Iris withdrew a box of wooden matches from the pocket of her hoodie and held it in front of her. Diamond Strike Anywhere.
Sarah trembled in her chair and her whining noise changed pitch, became an animal’s cries.
Iris scrubbed the head of a match down the side of her jeans and heard it flare. She held it in front of her, and then moved it toward the invisible stream coming from the torch canister. Immediately, a blue flame appeared from the tip and Iris waved the match, dropping it to the oil-stained concrete.
She reached behind the case of water and picked up a length of rebar, a little over two-feet long and mottled with rust. Iris had found it a week ago, one afternoon as she was walking some of the paths in the woods behind her trailer. Some hunter had cobbled together a deer stand from weathered two-by-fours and steel bars. The rebar had been there for quite some time if the rotting wood of the stand was any indication.
It seemed fortuitous, finding it out there in the woods like that, and she brought it home with her, studying it later that night, tracing her fingertips over the ridges of the steel bar, the spirals, so much like the ripples and whorls of scarred flesh.
Iris positioned the end of the rebar to be within the flame of the torch and whispered to Sarah. “You are so very special.”
Mucus ran from the girl’s nostrils, making parallel lines over the black straps of the gag. Iris studied it for a moment, and then moved south, marveling yet again at the girl’s truly perfect skin.
While the girl had been unconscious, Iris used scissors to cut away her blouse and lacy pink bra. The shorts had come after, and Iris had paused for a moment to admire the girl’s panties—cute and feminine, with a tiny bow at the top, a satiny fabric the same pale pink as her bra. Iris snipped the sides of the panties, pulled them free of the girl, and let them drop to the garage floor. Her gaze returned to the girl’s body.
Golden Spring.
The phrase popped into Iris’s mind—an ancient memory. After sifting through what seemed a thousand paint chips, she and Nathan had chosen a color for their living room—a hue of sun-kissed leaves in late fall, warm and cozy without being obnoxiously bright. It had been a toss-up between Arizona Sun and Golden Spring.
Golden Spring won.
It was the exact color of the girl’s tanned skin.
Iris appraised the girl’s bare body. Her breasts were perky with youth, small nipples with areola a fine blushing pink. Even slouched as she was in the chair, Sarah had a flat stomach that curved to the soft swell of her waist and hips. Long legs of a ballerina, spread wide as they were, revealing the core of her.
Iris had been wrong about her earlier judgment—the girl was beautiful.
Ridges along the steel bar had started to glow. The pattern of raised stripes had turned a blood red, and as Iris watched, their hue drifted to a bright Maraschino cherry.
She glanced up, watched the girl’s fingers, the color bleaching from her knuckles as she gripped the armrests of the chair. A soft dripping sound caught Iris’s attention and she saw urine pouring from the chair seat to the cement. Its sharp scent reached Iris and she nodded. “Shhhhh, it’s okay. That happens sometimes.”
The bar of steel matched the color of the raised ridges, and Iris saw it shift to a salmon color and past that, brightening to a muted orange and glowing lemon. It was beautiful to watch, the transformation.
Iris stood up from the folding chair and peered over the flame of the torch at the girl’s face.
Iris smiled. “Let’s begin.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
IRIS: then
By the end of the first week, Sarah’s legs were tiger-striped with burns. Bits of flesh clung to the rebar like tufts of cotton on a harvester. Small flakes of rust speckled the charred skin along the girl’s inner thighs and the fresh burns behind her knees.
Sarah had stopped begging by the end of the third day. Behind the gag, the girl had screamed hard enough for blood vessels to burst in both eyes, making them riddled with threads of crimson.
When Iris used the glowing rebar on the tops of the girl’s feet, Sarah had screamed so hard she had thrown up, her nostrils the only open exit. It streamed out of her and she began to choke, making Iris frantically unbuckle the ball gag and yank it off her head.
Iris arrived at the conclusion it was why the Man had chosen to feed and slake her thirst only after sessions with the torch, so her belly wouldn’t have anything to eject.
The girl’s hair had become greasy and flat against her skull, and the golden color of her skin had faded enough to show crescent moons of shadows beneath her eyes. Sarah no longer cried when Iris sat down in front of her and set the rebar beneath the attention of the torch. The girl’s eyes focused straight ahead, gazing somewhere or at something known only to her. Iris had the fleeting thought the girl had slipped into a catatonic state, but no. It was only during times of her transformation.
It had taken several days, but Sarah began eating the Alpo, crunching it slowly and deliberately between her perfect teeth, but also casually, as if she was at a coffee house having a biscotti.
When Iris walked inside the building, the girl sat there, still as a cement garden statue, and Iris wondered if Sarah’s heart raced inside. Lifting the orange juice, Iris uncapped the gallon jug and held it at arm’s length. She couldn’t stand the smell, not anymore, but she held the opening to Sarah and angled it for her to drink several swallows. She took to the orange juice easily, slurping and swallowing at the open mouths of the tilted bottles, always thirsty for more. That, and the over-the-counter pain pills were welcome changes from the dog food, Iris remembered, almost like rewards.
Iris pulled the bottle away and sat it, uncapped, on the concrete, before she settled herself on the folding chair. She scanned over Sarah’s body and Iris reminded herself she needed to purchase more ointment.
I need to get a garden hose too, maybe several, to reach into the garage and spray her down. My God, the stink of her.
Leaning back, Iris sighed and studied the girl’s breasts like they were awaiting an artist’s touch. Her gaze followed the soft swells and tender curves. It would take some time, yes, but Iris visualized a symmetrical pattern, rising up from the girl’s hipbones, crossing over the girl’s nipples, and meeting over the girl’s sternum. She wet her lips and stared.
“In a former life, I was engaged.” Iris spoke to the girl, but Sarah’s eyes never acknowledged her words. “Almost engaged. I guess there’s not a word for that, really. But I was almost engaged to this amazing man, this wonderful man.”
Iris leaned forward, her knees on her elbows. “It’s a shame you didn’t have a boyfriend, actually. But this man, he uh… he used to love watching these weird documentaries about things he didn’t know about.”
She rose from the chair and reached behind Sarah’s neck to grab the strap of the ball gag and slide it into place.
“We stayed up drinking rum and Cokes one night, watching this documentary about this guy, Lenny Bruce. I’d heard of him, thought he was some anti-establishment comedian, but no. No, I was wrong. He was…” Iris brushed down the back of Sarah’s head, running her fingers through her tangled hair. “An observer, a commentator on human behavior. He was against any form of racism or segregation of any kind, for any reason.”
