“Why?” she managed to wail. “Why did he kill my boy? Franz tried to be his friend.”
I lowered my eyes. “You won’t like the answer.”
“Tell me!”
“Your son was involved in the gay community. At some point he got sucked into a clique centered around an offworld doctor. This doctor made a new drug called the genie. It makes people extremely susceptible to suggestion. Your son Franz used the drug on Carew. He raped him for several days.”
The crying stopped. I expected denial. Refusal to believe. A wall of motherly love that would keep her from seeing the truth about her son. Instead she asked, “Is it a pill?”
“A liquid. It comes from snails.”
Her face went white. She wobbled on woozy legs. I reached for her in an attempt to catch her before she went down, but she’d already dropped to a seat on the asphalt. “Snails,” she whispered.
I sat next to her. “That’s right.”
A pair of teenagers walked by, strange looks aimed our way.
“Hudson gave me a snail to eat.”
I nodded, not entirely surprised.
“He told me it was a delicacy, fed it to me in a wine sauce. It was his birthday. He took me to bed, undressed me. Th-then he brought out a stranger from the closet. I remember wondering what he was doing in there. Hudson told me he was a friend. He wanted me to have sex with this man while he watched.”
The genie was true evil. “And you did it.”
“I did. I didn’t want to, but I did. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I thought I was depraved. I mean, who would do something like that?”
“You were raped.”
She pulled at her hair, strands coming out in her fingers. “I fucked him.”
“That wasn’t you. It was the drug.”
“How could I-”
I pulled her hand away from her hair, gave it a pat. “It wasn’t you.”
“Oh my God, he filmed it. I let him film it.”
“When was this?”
“He just had another birthday, so a little over a year ago.”
The last tile cemented into place, the Samusakas’ dirty mosaic now in full focus. Franz and his pop were quite a pair. Franz the young entrepreneur, selling the doc’s plastic surgery and introducing the genie to his gay friends. His father, a man who treated family like possessions. A man who would let his own wife get raped for his pleasure.
Franz must’ve shared the genie with his father. Hey, Pop, look what this snail can do. Gee, that’s pretty neat, son. I think I’ll try that on your mom.
“Do you remember when your home was broken into?”
She closed her eyes, her hands back in her hair, squeezing down, clumped strands poking through her knuckles like weeds through a fence.
“That was Carew’s doing. Paulina let him in, which was why no windows or locks were broken. He wanted Franz’s rape vid. He ransacked Franz’s room to find it and then he brought it to the police, but the police ignored it. These were the same two detectives who later covered up your son’s murder. They said the vid didn’t prove he was raped. Looked like he enjoyed it.”
She wrung her hair some more.
“Carew killed them.”
She moaned.
I kept talking. “Your other son, Ang, was the first to find his brother’s room after Carew ransacked it. But instead of reporting the robbery right away, he decided to hit his father’s study. He doesn’t like his father, does he? I’m guessing Franz was your husband’s favorite.”
I couldn’t tell if her moaning meant I was right or wrong. I plowed ahead anyway. “Ang found your husband’s vid, the vid of him feeding you the snail and everything that followed.”
She grabbed my arm, nails digging in. “Are you saying my son watched me?”
“Yes. He has the vid. But at first, he let your husband think the burglar took it. It must’ve taken him a few days to figure out what he wanted to do with it. He’s been using it to blackmail your husband ever since. I didn’t know what was on the vid until now.”
Her moans turned to sobs. Another shattered life. Welcome to the club.
“Carew went into hiding after killing Franz. Nobody will admit to seeing him since. Your husband and housekeeper won’t talk to me. I came to you hoping you could help me find him.”
She wiped her face with a sleeve, fabric streaked with mascara. “How would I know where he is?”
Figured as much. I stood and stretched my aching back. I picked up my bag. It was mostly water now, the ice melting away. Just like my options.
“Brownie ran away one time.”
“He did?”
“This was right before Paulina stopped bringing him over. He was gone for two days, hiding in the abandoned boathouse.”
“You have a boathouse on your property?”
“It’s on the lake. Hudson’s father used to fish there. When he died, Hudson stopped maintaining it. He doesn’t like to fish.”
“Is it still there?”
“It’s jungle now.”
The boathouse was right where Crystal Samusaka said it would be, cracked stone walls held in place by a sprawl of thick roots that spilled down the sides like a melted scoop of coffee ice cream, ferns sprouting from the crevices.
I sloshed through shallow lake water. I’d given up on the trail, thick jungle making it nearly impassable. I looked back to see if anybody was coming. Stopped and listened.
I’d gotten a helluva scare when I jumped the wall, saw a line of uniforms with flashlights coming right at me. Rusedski’s task force had made the Carew-Samusaka connection, and a search of the grounds was under way. Wouldn’t be long before they made it here.
Rusedski was probably in the main house right now, grilling Hudson and Miss Paulina, the proud parents of a lizard-man serial.
I climbed onto the twisted dock, turned off my flashlight, and pulled the weapon I’d picked up on the way here, actually stopped by my place to get it. I faced the boathouse, honed in on dim light seeping from the window.
He was here. And time was short.
Dock boards creaked under my shoes. I gripped the weapon tight in my left, plastic bag handles hooked over my right’s crooked elbow.
I moved slowly in the dark, approaching the doorway, picking my way through tumbled stone and tangled roots when a loose rock rolled out from under my foot. I caught my balance, plastic bag swinging from my arm, the sound of crinkling plastic. I steadied the bag with my gun hand, breath held in my lungs, silence restored.
Did he hear that? I waited, listening.
Nothing.
I allowed myself to breathe, allowed my foot to take another step when a voice came from inside. “I can hear you.”
My soaked pant legs suddenly felt cold, like I’d waded through ice water. I trained my weapon on the doorway, finger sweating on the trigger. Wait for him to come check on the noise. Just wait him out.
Time passed, a minute, maybe longer.
“I can see you.”
Heartbeats thudded in my chest. Don’t believe him. Stay quiet and force him to come to you.
“I can see you through a crack in the wall. Whoever you are, you should come in. I don’t have a gun.”
His voice was calm. Soft. I didn’t move, eyes probing the shadows, my finger primed to fry the doorway with fire.
The wall lit with points of light, a bright light poking through a half dozen cracks and holes. I looked down at the constellation of light spots on my chest. Shit.
“See, I could’ve shot you right then if I had a gun instead of this flashlight. Come inside.”
I wanted to run. Wanted to be anywhere but inside that boathouse. But I had no choice. I had to see this through.
I followed my weapon to the doorway-a slanted rectangle of stone-and inched my way inside. The air was scented with formaldehyde. Weak light drooled from a portable light wedged into a cluster of roots that had conquered the rafters. The room was long and narrow. Floor-to-ceiling racks ran up each side with canoes stowed in several bays, one of the shelves converted to a sleeping space, pillow resting on a blanket.