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Lacey wasn’t sure Nico would agree with that assessment.
“Even though I did Vincent a favor, and he gave me what I needed at the time, I could never forget.Vincent shouldn’t be allowed to get away with murder.With killing his own son.”
What was Serge gabbling on about now?Wasn’t he the embodiment of a hypocrite?He was a serial killer.Had murdered at least four women, possibly more.And didn’t he also intend to murder his own child?Wasn’t he drawing Nico in with the intent to kill him?But that one statement gave her pause.Gave her hope.If in his sick and twisted mind, it was okay to kill innocent girls, but not okay to kill your own flesh and blood, then maybe Nico had a chance.Serge had also mentioned in his ramblings that he’d set Danika free when he’d murdered her.For some reason, he believed he was doing the women a favor by killing them.
Lacey didn’t even pretend to understand what was going on in his mind, but perhaps she could use this newfound information to her advantage.
“You’re right,” she said slowly.“No one should be allowed to get away with that.Family is sacred.”She was picking and choosing her words with care.“So what did you—”
Serge held up his hand, and stupidly, she stopped talking.But then she heard it too.The low drone of a car engine.Someone was coming.Lacey tried to wriggle a little higher up the wall so she could see more out of the window.The engine cut out so suddenly that Lacey wondered if she’d imagined it.Was it Nico?Had he figured out Serge’s little game after all?
Before she could properly react, Serge had dashed across the room and slapped a bit of duct tape over her mouth.She hadn’t even had time to think about screaming out a warning.
Her eyes pleaded with Serge, but he merely turned away and went back to stand by the window, watching with that hawklike gaze.
CHAPTER TWENTY
NICO SAT IN the chair opposite the old farmer as he’d poured out his tale of despair.Once Pacca had made up his mind to tell the truth, it was as if a tap had been turned on, and the words just spewed from his mouth.Pacca’s story was one of violence and betrayal.And if Nico had had the time, it would’ve made for an intriguing listen.But as it was, Nico prompted him for the pertinent facts and no more, silently urging him to get on with his story, waiting impatiently as Pacca’s flow of words was often punctuated by a hacking, wet cough.The old man didn’t sound well.
In the beginning, Pacca and his only son, Alexander, had been close.Alex had left the farm to start his own business as a house painter when he was eighteen, but Pacca knew that trade was slow and his son wasn’t doing too well.Alex had never married, and lived a bachelor’s life in town,sowing his wild oatsas Pacca put it, but never settling down.Then, after Pacca’s wife died twenty years ago, the old man had struggled to cope with the farm on his own.So when Alex suggested he move back home to help out his dad, Pacca had agreed.The farmer had then consented—stupidly as it turned out—to make Alex a part owner of the farm, so he was assured of an income if anything happened to his old dad.Pacca had already started dabbling in farming the alpacas, and was beginning to show a profit, but Alex didn’t like the new trend and thought he should go back to farming barley and potatoes, as they’d been the staple crops since his grandfather before him and brought in solid money.
They began arguing all the time, usually ending in shouting matches.Pacca wouldn’t be swayed, hoping to prove to Alex that he was right about the alpacas being the most profitable way to earn money.They were the livestock of the future.Their fleece is highly valued and worth its weight in gold, they also produced milk and cheese products, and alpaca meat is extremely low in fat and in high demand at some of the ritzy restaurants on the mainland.But Alex went against his father’s express wishes and ploughed up one of the prime pastures, planting potatoes without permission.Things deteriorated from there.Pacca tried to throw him out of the house, but Alex wouldn’t leave, saying the place was half his now.
Finally, Pacca had taken out a second mortgage on the farm and paid Alex off, just to get rid of him.But Alex hadn’t gone far.He bought the property next door, and taunted Pacca from there, while trying to turn the property into a viable farm by growing barley and potatoes, just like he wanted.But it turned out, Alex was a crummy farmer; his land was too small to turn a profit, and he didn’t understand agriculture as well as he thought, so he was always hassling Pacca for more money.Which his father gave him, begrudgingly, getting deeper and deeper into debt, while the rift between them deepened.
But Pacca missed his only son, worried that they would both end up lonely old men, staring at each other over the fence that kept them apart.And he always hoped they could reconcile.One night, after a few whiskeys for dutch courage, Pacca had gone over to confront Alex, and try to come to some sort of agreement.“He was my only child.My flesh and blood.I just wanted it all to go back to the way it was.I can’t believe he treated me that way,” Pacca had complained.
Pacca hadn’t even made it past the front door when things had turned nasty.Alex had committed the cardinal sin, and punched his father in the face.This had been seventeen years ago, and Pacca had been younger and stronger then.So, in shock and rage, the farmer had flown at his son, shoving him backward, not realizing he was standing at the very edge of the top of the stairs leading down from the veranda.Alex had hit his head on the way down and never got up.He was already dead by the time Pacca knelt by his side.
Pacca had stared down at his male child, his only heir, the one who was meant to continue in his footsteps, and wept.When he finished weeping, he tried to decide what to do.
In a terrible twist of fate, Pacca understood that he’d just inadvertently solved all of his problems.Without Alex around, he was free to keep farming how he wanted to.He also stood to inherit Alex’s land, as he was the only surviving next of kin.Without Alex bleeding him dry, his money troubles would disappear.Or they would disappear, if Pacca could make his son’s body disappear.There was no way he was telling the police the truth, they’d put him in jail for the rest of his life for murder.
Nico was going to refute that statement, as it would surely have been looked upon as self-defense, and Pacca may have served only minimal time.But he asked a more direct question instead, because he needed to get to the heart of the matter as he still had no idea how his father and Pacca knew each other.
“How does Serge factor in all of this?”
“I’m a Vietnam vet, didn’t you know?”Pacca had looked at him then, a hint of pride on his face.But that soon disappeared when he went on to say, “Me best mate was conscripted, and so I joined up in solidarity.That’s what you did in them days.Never let a mate down.”Pacca’s gaze turned inward as if reliving those days after he’d been shipped off to fight in another man’s war.“Nigel died over there in that godforsaken jungle.And I came home wounded, a changed man.”He patted his knee as he said this.That explained the old man’s limp.Nico wished he’d looked into all this earlier instead of putting that investigation on the back burner.Apart from giving him a deeper insight into Pacca’s past pain, his military service may have raised a red flag in Nico’s mind as well.
“I was pretty messed up, but for a long time I wouldn’t admit it, and I wouldn’t tell anyone,” Pacca continued.“And it was dreadful the way some of those bastards behaved toward me when I came home from the war.It was like I was a pariah or something.I tried to forget about it and just get on with the farming, but when they finally built that memorial for us vets in Canberra, I went over to see it.It was kind of like an apology by the government, you know?”He stopped as another coughing fit overtook him, and Nico winced as the old man turned and spat into an old tin sitting at his feet.
Yes, Nico knew all that, in theory at least.How badly the Vietnam soldiers had been treated when they returned home, in both America and Australia.And how the government had erected a national memorial on Anzac Parade for the vets.Nico had even visited it on a school outing once.Nico’s mind had been computing all the variations in his head, but when Pacca mentioned Canberra, he had a lightbulb moment.He suddenly had an uncanny feeling he knew where this was going.
“I joined a veterans’ group over there and made some good mates.We’d meet up at least once or twice a year in Canberra.To support each other and stuff, you know.We weren’t picky about who could join either, as long as you’d served in some manner.The group got big toward the end.We had guys in there from the Korean War, and the—”
“The Gulf War,” Nico finished for him.Oh.My.God.That was the connection.And Nico had never even known his old man attended these meetings.But of course Serge wouldn’t have wanted his family to know.That would’ve been admitting to a weakness.
“And you met Serge through this group?”he asked, even though he’d already guessed the answer.
“Yeah.”Pacca nodded, but there was something unfathomable in his gaze.“A lot of the guys were wary of him when he first joined.I mean some of us—hell, maybe even most of us—suffered from some form of PTSD.And we knew some guys with severe mental problems.But that group was there to help.But with Serge… There was something else.Something really dark inside him.”Pacca raised his red-rimmed eyes and stared at Nico.“Something a little scary.”
Nico nodded because he knew what Pacca meant.Serge may have kept most of his darker side at bay around his family, and perhaps they only experienced the mere tip of the iceberg.But it must’ve been there, buried deep, waiting to come out, to kill.
“I was really the only one to befriend him.Even though he was quite a bit younger than me, we clicked, you know?We would talk for hours about death and dismemberment and the way the eyes of a child could stare at you, wide open and still accusing, even after they were dead.It might sound morbid, but for us it was cleansing, like squeezing all the pus out of a pimple.”Pacca nodded as he remembered.“He always said he owed me a debt of gratitude.For my compassion.For my understanding.Not that I really understood him.And not that I think I really helped him, that man was seriously mucked up.But he said that if I ever needed a favor, no matter what it was, that he would help out.”
“So what did Serge do for you?”Nico asked.“What favor did you ask?”
“I called him and asked him if he could dispose of a body.And he said yes, like I knew he would.That man was capable of anything.”Pacca seemed to sink in on himself at his confession, but Nico was trying to put the pieces together.Had Serge already been planning to fake his own death?And perhaps Pacca’s call was a sign.Because he now had a spare body to act as a proxy for the car crash.Or maybe he’d come up with the idea on the fly on the drive down here to retrieve Alex’s body.Because he would’ve needed a way to dispose of him.
