AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Violet wasn’t sure if Regis was telling the truth or lying, but she did get the sense the brothers were playing a dangerous game with one another. Cecil had coughed up Regis’s name concerning Bella Dawn and being at the bar—which had surprised Regis. Now Regis was casting light on Cecil.
“What makes you think Cecil is the Blind Eye Killer?”
Regis huffed. “Why not? You already have him on the suspect list, and you know even less about him. The truth is Cecil has been peeping in on girls since he was fifteen, and over the years it’s escalated. I’ve kept an eye on him, kept him in check. Cecil has some problems—”
“Well, welcome to humanity, Regis. We all have problems. You’ve been covering for him.”
Regis closed his eyes. “You don’t understand. My mother doesn’t have all her faculties. Never has. And she’d wanted a girl. When Cecil was born, she said he was too pretty to be a boy, and she named him Cecilia. Didn’t know who his daddy was, so there was no father to contest it. Most folks had no idea he wasn’t a girl—even me. I was only three when he was born.”
“What does this have to do with being a peeper or a killer?” John asked, losing his patience.
“Mama raised him as a girl. He wore dresses, played with dolls. Mama made him dozens of rag dolls. He loved them. He played with the girls, but he also liked to get rowdy with the boys—Mama wouldn’t let him. He had no idea he was a boy. She never let us change clothes together or be in the same bathroom. But then puberty hit, and things changed. He started liking girls. Mama jumped all over him for that and whipped him good. He was not to be lookin’ at girls. One Sunday, he walked in on our cousin and realized her girl parts didn’t match his girl parts. ’Course, he knew he wasn’t like other girls. He wasn’t filling out like them. But Mama would hear nothing of it. Then his voice changed. Kids realized he wasn’t a girl. He had an Adam’s apple. Mama still forced him into dresses, braided his hair and sent him to school as CeCe.”
Violet’s stomach turned. What was the deal with all these crazy, abusive moms, from Mother to Reeva to Regis’s?
“By the time he hit fifteen, he was twice the size of Mama, and together we told her he was no longer going to wear dresses. Boys messed with him in ways you can’t imagine. Girls wouldn’t go out with him because he’d been a girl, at their sleepovers when they were younger, and it was too strange. Too weird. He didn’t know who he was or who he was supposed to be.”
Identity confusion. Violet wasn’t unsympathetic to his plight. But it didn’t give him a free pass to become a serial killer. “And then what?”
“I should have done something. I didn’t. I saw him suffer, and I let him suffer. He didn’t fit anywhere. When he started peeping, I kept him at bay. Or at least I tried. But I owe him for not doing something sooner to help him.”
“You are supposed to be upholding the law.”
“I didn’t think he was the killer until after Atta.” Regis shifted uncomfortably.
“Why after Atta?”
“I went by his place the Saturday morning after Atta went missing. He was asleep on the couch. Blood on his shirt and Atta’s locket she wore with a picture of her mother inside on his chest. It scared me. Cecil said Atta gave it to him, but I knew that was a lie. Then when we found Atta and the purse, I knew it was from him. He’d given them to all the girls he had tried to date over the years, the ones that had rejected him.”
Violet connected the dots. Cecil had a twisted and tragic upbringing. “The dolls in my room at the bed and breakfast—”
“Cecil’s old dolls. He’s still obsessed with them. Makes dolls for the kids in the holler sometimes.”
The rag doll Him had made for Lula Boyd. Cecil was the Him. Atta’s compact and candy. They’d grown up with CeCe—the name the bartender had called him that had set him off. Not Cecil. It was too strange, off-putting even. In his mind, they lured him in with their eyes but forced him to pay for services, which in his warped way would be the sin. He couldn’t say no. He hated that they said it, unless he had cash.
Maybe he saw himself in those women.
Dark but lovely.
He identified with them but hated that he did. Murdering them was murdering himself.
“He has Bella Dawn—or had if she’s already dead,” John said. “And he’s got Ruby Boyd. Where would he take them?”
“I know.” Violet swallowed hard and put the pieces together. “John, that photo we found of the little girl in the cabin. That’s Cecil. The cabin means something to him. To the growing-up years.”
“We moved when Cecil was about twelve,” Regis said. “Right before he had trouble at school when puberty hit. And the man Mama lived with...he wasn’t always kind to Cecil. Or any of us.”
Cecil would see the cabin as a safe haven before bad things happened. “I saw wood shavings in the passages in the house—”
“How did you find those?” Regis asked.
Violet ignored him. “I wasn’t focused on them. But the shavings in the cabin. It connects. The cave where the bodies were found is close by.”
“We didn’t see any blood there, though.”
“No. But maybe we wouldn’t. He knows how to use needles skillfully, and if he put them under then removed their eyes, it wouldn’t be a huge amount of blood. Towels, a sheet—burns easy enough. He beat them up prior to taking their eyes, but he focused on their faces, breasts and genital regions.” He beat them in areas he was supposed to have but didn’t. Hatred. He was beautiful but missing key parts of the female anatomy, which caused him so much bullying by his peers. “He keeps trinkets in that old box—the photo for one. He’s keeping their eyes somewhere. Somehow.” Violet called Ty and sent him for a warrant to search Cecil Johnson’s home. They had probable cause. Especially since Regis saw the bloody shirt and Atta’s locket in the house.
“Let’s go to the cabin. We might find Ruby. Maybe even Bella Dawn.” Though the timing of the other bodies said it was unlikely Bella Dawn would be found alive.
