CHAPTER 52
I slumped to the floor, legs useless, arms hanging limply by my sides. Clegg came over and knelt down beside me.
“Take off that hood,” I said. “I can’t look at you with that thing on.”
Clegg shook his head. “Precautions,” he said again. “I don’t know when our guy is going to show up on the video feed.”
“You’re crazy. But you know that already, don’t you?”
“If you want to save Ruby, I’m thinking we’re going to both have to be a little bit on the crazy side,” Clegg said.
I felt separated from my body, afloat and shapeless. “I can’t live with myself if anything happens to her.”
I wished I hadn’t voiced that possibility, worried it might somehow make it all come true. Clegg didn’t answer me. I could see his eyes through those slits in the black fabric of his hood but failed to pick up even a trace of worry.
“How can you be so calm?” I asked him. “I feel sick inside. I can’t stop shaking.”
“Same way you were calm when you decided which rope you were going to cut,” he said. “When somebody’s life is on the line, you act first, panic later.”
I looked up at the computer, blinking, as if that would make Ruby appear. Between blinks the video feed went completely black. I rushed over to the computer, started moving the mouse around, manically pressing keys on the keyboard, doing everything I could think to do to make the black screen refresh and show me the room again. As much as I loathed reconnecting with that horrible setting, I didn’t want a second to go by where I wouldn’t be able to see Ruby.
A minute passed. Then two. Then five. The computer screen flickered as I fiddled with the keyboard and mouse, and when it refreshed, she was there: Ruby tied to that oak chair, her arms and wrists secured by thick ropes, a ball gag shoved into her mouth, her strawberry hair matted down by sweat. A jagged tear in Ruby’s pink pajamas left one of her bony shoulders completely exposed. I could see red marks on her face and neck, along with other welts and bruises, too.
“Ruby! Baby!” I felt gutted by an invisible knife that sliced me from belly to chest. “Let her go. . . . Let her go . . . please,” I begged. “Whoever you are. Come take me. I’ll do anything.”
A masked figure rose from below the camera’s lens, slowly and purposefully, as if wanting to delay the reveal in dramatic fashion. I believed it was Carl Swain who appeared from below the camera’s scope, but until I saw his face, he’d remain the Fiend. It took a moment to make sense of the grotesque disguise he wore, but soon enough I had it figured out. The blue police cap adorning the zombie policeman mask was ripped and faded, as if long buried in the ground. The gray crinkled face of the mask featured a twisted mouth and two rows of pointed teeth set askew into decaying black gums, all below white pupils encased in yellow eyes. The rubbery skin, pinched in places and made to look flayed in others, did a good job portraying rot and decay.
“Hey, John,” the Fiend said, his voice muffled within that mask. “Long time no see. Miss me?”
“Let her go!” I screamed.
The Fiend cocked his masked head to one side in a calm manner. “Where are you?” he asked, lowering the level of his gaze to get a better look at the scenery behind me. “I see lots of interesting things tacked on the wall.”
“You know where I am, Swain,” I said.
Do I have it right . . . ? Are you Swain? The Fiend?
“Oh, you’ve figured me out, have you?” he said. “Actually, I do know where you are. I have a GPS tracker fixed to the bottom of your car. How’d you think I knew I could go and get me some Ruby?”
“Why don’t you take off your mask and show your face, you coward?”
“No can do,” he said. “See, I like our game, our little mystery. Do you know who I am? Can you be certain?”
A thick clump of Ruby’s hair fell in front of her eyes. She rolled her head from side to side to shake away the irritation, but the hair, heavy with sweat, wouldn’t budge. Her chest heaved and fell with each uneven breath.
Without thinking, I reached out and put a gloved hand on the computer monitor, touching the pixels of her hair, and imagined I could do for her what her own hands could not.
From behind me I heard a door open and turned my head to see Clegg dragging Swain’s mother out of the BDSM bedroom. She was blindfolded. No problem finding one of those around here. The ball gag stayed in her mouth, and with her arms and legs still tied, the only way to move her was to drag her. Clegg, his face still obscured underneath the fetish hood, pushed Swain’s mother in front of the computer’s built-in camera.
“So if you know where we are,” Clegg said, “then you know who this is. You let Ruby go, and nothing will happen to her.” Clegg held Swain’s limp and listless mother up to the camera like she was a puppet in a puppet show.
A dreadful feeling overcame me. “What are you doing?” I said through clenched teeth. “Ruby’s life is at stake! Don’t mess with him!”
“Trust me,” Clegg said, his voice sharpened to a harsh whisper.
“I heard that,” the Fiend said. “So now this is really fun. We’ve got two men in masks, two women with ball gags stuffed in their mouths, and you, John, the odd man out. I love it! Who’s your pal under the hood? Look, I won’t blow his cover, but is that your friend repaying a debt? A little police work outside the lines of the law? Oh boy, you guys inspire me.”
“Please, my friend means what he says,” I told him. “He’ll hurt your mother, and I won’t be able to stop him.”
Swain’s mother squirmed and squealed, trying to break free from Clegg, but her efforts were weak and futile.
“You know something? That’s so unbelievably convenient,” the Fiend said, sounding exuberant. “You can commit your next crime, right here and right now.”
I stammered before I could speak. My body tingled. “What do you want me to do? Tell me.”
“The SHS Killer—that’s what they’re calling me,” the Fiend said in his distinctive rasp. “I’m becoming something of a cult figure around town, a real media super whore, and I want you to broaden that legacy.”
“What?” I was unsure of what I heard, unable to make sense of it all.
Clegg must have squeezed or pinched Swain’s mother. She cried out in pain. “We’ll make an exchange,” Clegg said, his voice a growl beneath that hood. “Mom for Ruby.”
“No exchanges,” the Fiend said. “It’s time for John to step up to the plate in his criminal career and swing for the fences. Look at his progression. I admire you, John. Honestly, I do. You’ve put in a lot of hard work into all of this, but now it’s time to take things to a completely new level. It’s time for you to become a murderer like me. I want you to kill another person just the way I would do it. Choke the life out of someone. Then cut off the fingers and leave ’em . . . well, you know where.
“So if you want to kill Mommy Dearest, go right ahead and do it. But make sure you tell your police buddies where to find the body. Because if there isn’t a new victim of the SHS Killer reported on the news within thirty-six hours, I’m going to give them one, and it will be your lovely wife, John. I’ll cut off her fingers, one by one, and smile as she bleeds until I get bored with her misery. Then I’ll choke her until she sees nothing, hears nothing, and speaks nothing ever again.”
Before I could say another word, the live chat went dark, and my Ruby was gone.