Empathy (25 page)

“So?” Markus asks, dropping a bottle of whiskey on the table with three tumblers. He must have a sixth sense of what’s coming.

Reaching into my jeans pocket I pull out the bundle of paper, scanning through them frantically for the right one. My heart is pounding so loud against my chest I’m worried it will crack the bone. Throwing the paper down on the table, it floats across the polished wood, stopping near the bottle. Ryan looks over, rising slightly to get a better look.

“Where did you get this?” Markus asks. His eyes flick to Ryan. “You fucking sold me out?”

My insides congeal. Did I hear that right? My world tilts on its axle as I look over to my friend.

“Well, this is awkward.” Ryan, my friend, Blake’s brother, speaks into the room but he sounds far away.

I pull out a chair and quickly drop into it so I don’t fall to the floor.

“I got that from his brother. He’s a detective, Markus. He was clearly investigating you for murdering my parents. You son of a bitch!”

He doesn’t even flinch or try to deny it. He pours a shot of whiskey and pushes the glass towards me. Is he serious right now? I grab the glass and lunge at him, but his arm comes up to protect his face, the glass rebounding from his arm.

“You fucking crazy bitch.”

“You’re calling me crazy? I will end you for this. When he arrests you I will use every cent you wanted to inherit to make sure you never see the outside of a prison again.”

His sneer is deadly, but screw him, I want justice for his greed.

“This,” he holds up the piece of paper, “is a contract with the killer, Mel, you fucking idiot!”

Ryan flexes his shoulders.

“You’re a contract killer?” I want to laugh at myself for asking but my life is full on crazy right now and I need to voice everything and have it answered so there’s no more confusion, no more lies.

“Not me, Mel. Blake.”

His words pull the breath straight out of me, and with it, my soul. I’m dying all over again. The fist is tighter than before. It’s a lie… it can’t be.

“When I first saw you I knew you were special. You provoked me, Melody.” Ryan rose from his chair. “Your looks, the brush of your legs against mine. You wanted my attention so you got it. It was fate! I met your brother in Club Nine. He likes a whore there called Vicki, she’s a filthy little slut and she looks just like you.”

I want to take a rain check on this pain. I can’t deal with it anymore. My heart pounds at my chest. Markus is staring at me, wringing his hands together.

“You see, your brother isn’t your brother at all and he likes to punish poor little Vicki and pretend it’s you. I couldn’t believe it when Vicki divulged his kink to me. He calls her Melody while he fucks and disciplines her.” Ryan’s chuckle is cold; it’s weird hearing a laugh from him. I realise I’ve never really heard him laugh before. “I thought it must be a coincidence but the only reason I was in there fucking Vicki was for the exact same reasons. Because she looks like you. So I made contact, and sure enough, the little pissant was a little on the crazy side, not that I can talk.” He pulls a weird face using his finger to swirl at his skull to indicate insanity. “It was fate. I was being tested and served you on a plate! And you made it all so easy, Melody. When Blake’s life changed. Death impacted him and completely transformed him but we had an unhealthy upbringing. You, on the other hand, had a perfect set of parents. You shone real bright and I wanted to watch you unravel. I wanted to see how much darkness it would take to dim that light.” Pain washes through me, is he playing with my head? His heart was black, rotten and mine was decomposing with every new secret he divulged. “Markus was easy to manipulate.”

“Fuck you, Ryan,” Markus spits.

The room temperature drops, the air almost alive with an electric current. Ryan moves like a cat striking at prey, his hand grips at Markus’ throat. He pulls him against his body and away, then against him again before guiding a stunned Markus into the seat my mother died in. The color drains from his face and he looks down to his stomach, my eyes following in slow motion. Red ink expands across the fabric. Oh no…no…no. This isn’t happening.

“Don’t look so mortified, Mel. He deserved it. Didn’t you want him to pay? And he interrupted my story.”

Screams fill the room. Mine. A heaving thud lands against the side of my head, stealing my consciousness.

SHUT THAT OFF, MEL. TURN it off.
My eyes adjust to the light streaming in the room, heating it like an oven. Shit it’s hot. I’m alone with a note scribbled on a piece of ripped paper on her pillow.

What the fuck does that mean? Grabbing my cell - that was what woke me up - I frown at the eighteen missed calls from my partner, Zach. Something must have gone down last night. There’s a nervous energy in the air that I can’t quite put my finger on. Hitting call back, I wait.

“Blake, thank fuck. I need you to come in. Don’t talk to anyone, come straight to evidence room three.”

The call disconnects and my mind spins. There’s no way they could have anything on me, I’m too careful. Melody’s note stares up at me. I try her number and get the answer machine. “Call me straight away when you get this.”

Twenty five minutes later I walk with my head down to evidence room three.

Zach rushes over to me, scanning the corridor before closing the door. His hand rubs through his sandy hair.

“What the hell, Zach?”

“Sit down.” I don’t like taking orders from people but the unease in his voice makes me sit. “New evidence came in about that Club Blue murder. A video from a shop a few blocks up.”

“And what took so long?”

He sits in front of me shaking his head. “They were going through footage to find a graffiti tag on their back wall. Anyway, Blake, you need to see this.”

He’s freaking me out. He turns to the set up and clicks play. The screen comes to life. A dark alleyway sits static on the screen. Moments pass before a figure approaches; it’s the suspect. He lifts his blood drenched hoodie over his head and drops it in a trash can. His face comes into full view making me jolt upright, my chair crashing to the floor.

I’ve done all the courses, felt it in my bones, but ignored it all. I knew in my heart something was wrong with him. Oh God, nearly every person who is close to, related to or a victim of a psychopath utters those words. Did I force him to this? I feel sick. I’ve killed but never took pleasure in it like he does. I’m not brutal and without cause. I don’t kill randomly for fun.

“Blake?” I snap from the haze. “I haven’t showed this to anybody else. It came to my desk.”

“I need to leave. I need to go to him.”

I run from the precinct, driving in a fog of everything in my life playing out up to now. How could I let him become this? How can I save him now?

I try his cell numerous times, getting voice mail. Rushing from the car across our drive I drop the keys trying to open the door, the tremor in my hand a new thing for me.

The house is quiet, the same unsettling atmosphere surrounding me as when I woke up.

“Ryan!”

Taking the stairs two at a time I run along the hall and I bash at his closed door, the hinges rattling from the impact. The door slowly glides open. The roar of my own heartbeat pounds into my skull. Blood. So much blood. This is really happening. I’m breaking apart, falling into the pits of hell. My time has come and this is hell, it has to be.

Fuck, that’s Clive. The naked body of the kid from college, eyes open, throat cut. Two women carved up with a blade decorate his bed. God, I can’t even determine the death blow, they’re riddled with fucking slashes. Blood covers every naked inch of them, the white room painted with their life.

I pull the door closed, walking down the stairs into the front room. His PC is booted up, a paused video on the screen. I press play, losing my footing, my knee hitting the floor with a thud. Melody lay in his bed wearing the tank and panties I saw her in that first night she stayed here. She lay there motionless as he stood above her, stroking himself. I want to die so I don’t have to witness this. He found his release, jumping from the bed to pull out a sweatshirt to wipe her clean with before shoving it back in his bag.

What the fuck? Melody. Where the fuck is she? Where’s Ryan?

I boot up my tracking to her GPS. She’s on the road. Where the hell is she going?

PRESSURE PUSHES AGAINST MY WINDPIPE. A burn from a freezing sensation stings the soles of my feet, arms keeping me steady release me, the pressure at my throat intensifies. My hands are bound behind my back.

My senses all hit at once and Ryan fills my vision. I’m hanging from the ceiling by a rope around my neck, my feet slipping on ice in a bucket.

“Finally.” I can’t answer him. I can’t scream. “You like the ice? I just thought of it while you were taking a cat nap. If Blake gets here before the ice melts I’ll let him cut you down.”

He’s insane. How had I been so blind to him? The callousness towards others. The disregard for everyone. The sense of superiority. He’s possessive and cold but I rationalized it and now the toxic relationship I’d encouraged is destroying me like a disease.

“Blake killed for what he thought was my honour. My father had a thing for young men.” I don’t want to hear any more. The rope isn’t killing me quickly enough. “I used to watch him watch Blake. I knew he was fighting his urges and he did fight them by using violence. Only on Blake, though. All my bruises were self-inflicted to make Blake think he was harming me. That night, the night Blake killed him, I was taunting him. He was jerking it in his room. He chased me into my room and hit me, shouting at me about not being all there in the head.” His grin is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. “I fell onto the bed and he came over me to throttle me. Blake came in and he let the scene speak for itself. I added some muffled screams for show.” He shrugged, like an eleven-year-old orchestrating something so drenched in malice is normal.