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“Didn’t you work with him in the drug squad?”
“Only briefly.” Deakin looks through the window after him. “He was the same then.”
Griffin’s ignoring their exchange. He takes a tape out of the box with a gloved hand. “What do you think? Start with this one?”
“As good as any.”
He pulls the old tape out of its cardboard case and pushes it inside. Cara hasn’t used one of these machines for years. She remembers them being scratchy and unreliable, and sure enough, the image on the screen is grainy.
Gray snow evolves into a room. The camera focuses in on a bed. A woman lies facedown, naked, on the bare mattress. Lank hair is over her face, her arms tied behind her back with tape, palms together. She’s not moving. Cara’s eyes scan the image, but there are no recognizable features about the room: the walls are white, no windows, no doors. The mattress is stained; the soles of her feet are black with dirt.
Next to her Griffin and Deakin are both silent. Even her own breathing seems loud.
The tape hisses. They hear a door open and a man steps inside. He’s wearing what seems to be a gray tracksuit, a black balaclava covering his face. He turns and holds something out for the camera to see. It’s a knife, long, clean, and sharp.
“Fuck …” Griffin whispers next to her.
The man turns back to the woman. With his free hand he pokes her, and she moves slightly. They hear her groan.
“Cara …” Griffin says slowly.
On the video the man rolls the woman over to her back. She’s skinny, ribs clearly visible, hip bones jutting out. She has bruises on her knees and across her body, an angry red cut on her forehead. She seems to be awake now; Cara can see her eyes looking at the man, silver duct tape over her mouth. She sees the woman’s eyes widen, tendons straining in her neck as she tries to scream. The man looks to the camera then raises the knife above his head.
Deakin and Griffin both dive for the VHS machine. They knock it sideways, the cable comes loose, and the image disappears. But Cara’s still staring at the black, her mouth open. Then she turns slowly.
“That wasn’t porn,” she manages to say at last. She looks at the box of tapes. There must be ten, maybe twenty in there, with the same codes on the labels.
Deakin shakes his head. He tries to speak, then clears his throat.
“That was a snuff film,” he says.
CHAPTER
45
JESS CAN’T KEEP still. Back at the apartment, she makes herself a mug of strong coffee, then has a shower. She’s annoyed with herself for asking Griffin about Mia; she can’t imagine what he’s thinking now.
She sits down at the table and logs on to Griffin’s laptop again. She knows she shouldn’t, but she can’t help but look. She logs on to the system she has seen Griffin use a hundred times before, pulling up her own details, then the case information for her house. Griffin says he’s looking into it, but he hasn’t told her any more than that. And she’s desperate to know. If he finds something—if he clears her—then she can see Alice.
Sure enough, the fire investigator’s report has been uploaded, and she reads it, scanning the technical information for anything interesting. Verdict: fire started by deliberate ignition of liquid paraffin oil in the front hallway. One fatality. Human remains discovered on bed in first-floor front bedroom on excavation of the scene.
She clicks away, to the audio file of the 999 call. She selects the recording and it bursts into life. There’s static, then the operator talking. The voice making the call is a woman, breathless and rushed. The operator tells her to slow down.
“There’s a family in there, oh God, a little girl lives there …” The woman on the recording takes a deep breath. “There are flames coming out the front of the house—please come quickly.”
“A fire engine is on its way,” the operator confirms.
The recording ends. And again she wonders, Why our house? Why us? She realizes how lucky she and Alice had been to get out alive. If it weren’t for her jumping out the window, knowing she’d be immune to any pain, they both would have been dead now.
She clicks the screen away, then sees another report loaded on the system. Postmortem findings: Patrick Richard Ambrose. Her finger hovers for a moment before curiosity gets the better of her.
It’s a long report, and Jess scans the medical terminology, desperately trying to make sense of it all.
Soot in larynx, trachea, and bronchi, evidence of heat trauma to the mucosa. Extensive third-degree dark, leathery burns over 50% of the body, with broad, erythematous margins, intact skin appearing translucent and waxy. Skin splitting in evidence from postmortem movement rather than antemortem injury.
What does that mean? Jess wonders.
Her eyes continue to scan down the page.
