“No,” he said. “I—”
“Killed her,” Sampson said.
“No,” Parks said, struggling, and then he apparently resigned himself to the situation. “Look, okay, I know Emily, but I did not kill her, because she is not dead. That video was just a fantasy. She made it for me as a kind of going-away present.”
“Give us a break,” I said.
“It’s true,” Parks said. He went on to claim that Emily McCabe had told him she’d saved enough money to quit the business and was going to school in Florida somewhere.
“Florida somewhere?” Sampson said. “That’s the best you can do?”
Parks lost his cool then and snapped, “It’s the only thing I have. Look, I liked Emily. A lot. I would never kill her.”
“So tell us how to reach her,” I said.
“I don’t know how to reach her,” he said. “She didn’t want me to know. She wanted a clean break and an entirely new life. I respected that.”
“No phone number?” I asked.
“Lost my phone, remember?”
“I’m not buying it,” Sampson said, marching him back toward the roof hatch. “We’re taking you in, and we’ll be searching your apartment. That snuff film you made is going to send you to prison for the rest of your life.”
“No, wait,” Parks said. “I’m not lying. Emily’s alive. Somewhere.”
“Hell of a defense,” I said.
He said nothing this time. After I’d climbed down through the hatch, Sampson removed Parks’s handcuffs and ordered him at gunpoint onto the ladder. The pimp dropped down and offered no resistance when Sampson put the cuffs back on.
When we led him down the staircase, Parks said, “How about I help you and you help me here?”
Sampson grunted. “How can you help us, Neal?”
Parks licked his lips and said, “I want you to know that I could be killed for saying this, but I can tell you about real snuff films and the crazy, sick bastards that make them.”
“Uh-huh, and what good does that do us?” I asked.
Parks hesitated again but then said, “Maybe you’ll figure out what happened to those blondes that have been disappearing.”
“Like Emily McCabe?” Sampson said.
“No,” Parks said. “Like two blond lesbian bitches from Pennsylvania.”
CHAPTER
26
TWO GIRLS CRYING.
Those were the last clear sounds Gretchen Lindel had heard, and that had been hours ago.
Two girls crying, Gretchen thought, and she strained to hear more.
But through the plywood walls, the seventeen-year-old heard nothing. No voices. No floorboards creaking. Not even a jangle of chain. Or a desperate sob.
The silence made Gretchen mad beyond reason. She kicked and shook the chain that ran from her left ankle to the wall, and she glared at the little camera mounted high in the far corner, where she couldn’t reach.
“Who are you?” she screamed. “Why am I here? What do you want?”
Gretchen collapsed into sobs as she had too many times since she’d woken up in a plywood box about the size of a prison cell dressed in a cheap white flannel nightgown, lying on a new mattress still in its wrapper, and covered with thick wool army blankets.
There’d been food. A big tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken and bottles of Gatorade. A metal bucket to relieve herself in the corner where her chain would reach. And the single LED light overhead that never went off.
The constant light had made Gretchen lose track of time. As her crying subsided and she pulled the blankets up around her, she realized she had no idea how long she’d been in the box. Three days? Five? A week? Longer?
The kidnapping itself had felt like a nightmare, like something that she’d wake up from. But no matter how many times she slept in the box or how hard she tried to forget, she kept seeing the men grabbing her, kept seeing Ms. Petracek murdered.
They shot her like she was nothing.
What will they do to me?
Gretchen felt panic surge and tried to turn her thoughts to something else. She’d heard her father talk about doing that many times as a way out of pain.
She breathed deep into her stomach, held it, then exhaled slowly, seeing her father and mother in her mind, so in love and yet so apart now.
What is this doing to Dad? To Mom?
Gretchen felt sick at these questions and wanted to cry again.
He doesn’t deserve this. Neither does she. Haven’t they suffered enough, God? Haven’t they suffered enough?
She thought of her best friend forever, Susan, and her sometime boyfriend Nick. What are they thinking? Are they trying to find me? Is anyone?
Curling up into a fetal position, Gretchen tried to find strength in prayer and in her belief in the good. But the questions kept circling and elbowing their way back into her thoughts.
Why am I here? Why is this being done to me? What did I do, God, to deserve this? What if I never see Dad or Mom again?
The soft squeal of metal on metal stopped her thoughts, made her sit up and stare in fear at the crude door with the two dead bolts. It had never opened before.
The door swung inward.
The teenager’s hand flew to her mouth, and she stifled a scream.
He was football-player big and dressed in black, from his motorcycle boots to his wool cap and tinted paintball visor. There was a blinking GoPro camera mounted in a harness on his chest. But she was focused in terror on his right gloved hand, which held an ornate knife with a curved and wicked-looking blade.
“Hello, Gretchen,” he said in a strange electronic voice. “Are you ready to play a game for us?”
CHAPTER
27
I SLIPPED INTO bed shortly after one thirty in the morning, unsure of how much of Neal Parks’s story I believed and too tired to think about it anymore.
It felt like only minutes passed between my head hitting the pillow and someone shaking my shoulder.
I came to consciousness thickly and cracked open a groggy eye to see Jannie and Ali standing by my bed, dressed for the morning jog I’d promised them. I could feel the heat of Bree’s body behind me, and not wanting to wake her, I held a finger to my lips.
They nodded and crept out of the room. I got up, feeling a little dizzy and wanting three, maybe four more hours of sleep. But these days a promise to my kids was a promise I tried to keep.
I got dressed in the closet and eased out of the room, smelling coffee brewing downstairs. I went to the kitchen, where Nana Mama, in her navy-blue nightgown and robe, was already pouring me a small cup of coffee. Jannie and Ali were tying their shoelaces.
“Bless you,” I said when she handed the cup to me.
“You fall asleep in front of the TV again?” Nana Mama asked.
I nodded and took several reviving sips of the coffee.
“I think that TV should have an automatic shutoff,” my grandmother said.
“It does,” Ali said. “Or the cable box does.”
“Let’s go,” I said, wanting to end the conversation. I set the empty cup down. “I have a new client coming this morning, and I don’t want to be late.”
We went outside. The first light of day showed in the sky, and the air was cool when we started to run. We took a route that led to Lincoln Park and back, about four miles round trip.
When I ran alone, I rarely thought, and yet I often got home to find I’d figured out one problem or another. The subconscious at work and all that. But a mindless run was impossible with Ali, especially once Jannie picked up her pace after a mile and left us in the dust.
“Dad?” Ali said, jogging beside me. “Did you know that running for more than thirty minutes promotes brain-cell regeneration?”
I glanced down at him, in wonder again that a nine-year-old, my nine-year-old, could know about brain-cell regeneration.
“Can’t say that I did,” I said, puffing along. “I mean, I know it’s good for your heart.”
“And good for your brain,” he said. “I saw a thing about it online. That’s why I told Jannie I wanted to start running with her.”
“So you could regenerate your brain cells?” I said. “C’mon, bud, you’re nine. You’re still growing brain cells and will be for a long time.”