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These are people being tortured, captured on film, for the entertainment of a killer.
And one of them is her own brother.
CHAPTER
35
“I DON’T REMEMBER a camera,” Griffin whispers next to her.
She turns to him. “Stop looking, Nate.” She tries to push him backward, but he doesn’t budge. “Please? This isn’t something you should see.”
At last, he turns. “Just tell me,” he says, quietly. “Is Mia there?”
She scans the wall. She recognizes some of the victims. She remembers the girls from the Kemper Ford Galaxy, and here they are, alive. She can make out the metal of a car door; the girl is turned away, her hands in front of her. It’s out of focus, but Cara can see bloody skin, the holes in the girl’s chest. She can’t comprehend how this guy can control someone at the same time as he’s stabbing them, yet here is the evidence. She knows these are his souvenirs, the wall he goes back to, to enjoy what he’s done over and over again.
But then she stops.
“Cara?”
“Yes, Nate. I’m sorry. She’s here.”
He turns back, sees the photo Cara’s looking at. It’s Mia, her hands tied, the photo taken from above. One eye is already blackened and swollen, the other looks up, full of tears. Griffin goes to take it from the wall, to hide it from plain sight, but she stops him.
“I’m sorry, Nate. It’s evidence.”
She knows he’s strong enough to overpower her and take it anyway, but instead he turns and storms away. She runs after him, out of the apartment, past his discarded crime scene suit on the ground, catching up with him in the stairwell.
She grabs his hand, but he shakes her off.
“Leave me alone, Cara,” he says. His shoulders are slumped. “Please. Just do your job. Catch this bastard.”
He walks away from her, slower this time, and she lets him go.
* * *
It doesn’t take long for the scene of crime officers to descend. They work fast, cataloguing evidence, taking photographs. Cara can’t bear to go back to the wall, so she starts to look at what else is in the room. A tattered hardback of James and the Giant Peach. A whole shelf of medical textbooks. Biographies on Dahmer, Bundy, Manson, Fred West, the GSK. She pulls one down: Post-it Notes mark specific pages, and she opens it up, looking at the pencil marks highlighting passages of text. Lift torso to drain blood, she reads. Head in saucepan of water eyeballs boil away flesh takes longer. He’s done his research. And he’s done it well.
She moves on. Two Polaroid cameras, the sort beloved of retro-seeking millennials, smudges of something that looks like blood clear on the brightly colored plastic. Boxes of film. Notebooks of all shapes and sizes. She opens one. A piece of newspaper flutters out, and Cara leans down, picking it up from the floor. The headline: ANIMAL KILLER STILL AT LARGE. She replaces it back in the notebook and looks at some of the text on the page. It’s childish handwriting, scribbles in capitals. She tries to read it, but she can’t make out the words. They need to get some floodlights in here; she can’t see a damn thing.
Cara waves to a crime scene tech. “Can we get this lot logged first?” she asks, and they nod. There are shelves and shelves of them—who knows what’s written on their pages?
The pint glass has already been taken away, a rush put on the analysis.
Among all the chaos, Deakin arrives. She recognizes his posture in the white suit and watches him as he walks up to the wall of Polaroids. She leaves him to it and crouches down to the VHS player below the television. She hasn’t seen one like this in years, and she picks up a video left on top. After the Polaroid photos, she has a bad feeling about the tape—and the rows of others behind.
“Cara?”
She turns toward Deakin. He points to the photographs.
“Do we know if there’s anyone here we haven’t found?” he asks, and she walks up to join him.
“Not that I can tell. Might help us identify the Dahmer victims.”
“Hmm.”
He turns back, facing the wall. She stands next to him. They look at the little white squares together. Her attention stops on one. It’s a man, bare chested, smiling, willingly posing for the camera. She recognizes the kitchen in the background—it’s the Dahmer apartment. She wonders how long this man lived after this photograph was taken.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?”
