Read The Watcher in the Wall Online

Authors: Owen Laukkanen

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Crime Fiction, #Thrillers

The Watcher in the Wall (7 page)

BOOK: The Watcher in the Wall
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“You’re goddamn right we do.” The words came out louder than Windermere had planned. Harris raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“This is
kids
,” Windermere said. “This is some pervert on the Internet taking advantage of vulnerable children. You’re saying you want us to sit back and let her keep doing this?”

“You don’t have a legal reason to pursue this subject, Agent Windermere,” Harris said. “She’s not breaking any federal laws.” He gestured to Stevens. “The state of Minnesota may want to look into whether any of their laws have been broken, but this isn’t a federal matter.”

“Bullshit.”
She was standing now, leaning over Harris’s desk. Knew Stevens was watching her, making eyes at her, telepathically screaming at her to calm down. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. “That’s bullshit, Harris, and you know it,” she said. “We shunt this off to the BCA, they’re going to tell us they can’t do shit because Frey’s operating out of state, and they don’t have a clue how to find her. They’ll kick it back to us in a month, anyway, after they’re through spinning their freaking wheels, and by that time Frey’s got herself another victim, or maybe she’s gone to ground.”

Harris lifted a finger.
Caution
. “I hear you, Carla, but legally—”

“My ass,
legally
,” she said. “Those laws were written before the Internet was invented. This is the first time anyone’s ever seen a case like this. And if I’m the only one in this room with the balls to pursue it . . .” She pushed her chair out. Stood. “Then screw it. I’ll see y’all at the Supreme Court.”

She kicked her chair back in, turned on her heel, and stalked to the
door. Shoved it open, caught it with the same motion, slammed it back so hard that heads popped up like prairie gophers all throughout CID.

“Mind your freaking business,”
she told them, still running hot, breathing hard. “God
damn
it.”

<
24
>

Windermere leaned against
the wall outside Harris’s office, catching her breath. Calming down, best she could. Trying to pretend like she hadn’t just blown her stack in front of Harris, Stevens, heck, the whole CID.

Trying to pretend like the Supercop wasn’t losing her cool.

Time passed. Five, ten minutes. Harris’s door clicked open; Stevens stepped out. Scanned the hall and saw her, closed the door behind him. Took a couple steps toward her, rocked back on his feet and let out a long breath.

“Harris is okaying the investigation,” he said. “Says he has our backs if we want to pursue this, says he’ll go to bat for us with the ADA if it comes to it. Says you’re right about the Internet thing, the interstate angle. It’s probably up to the courts to decide, but that doesn’t mean we can’t track down this girl. That’s what Harris says, anyway.”

Windermere kept her eyes on the carpet. “Great,” she said. “Guess I’m not going rogue, then, huh?”

Stevens didn’t laugh. She looked up at him, and he was studying her,
his eyes concerned. “You want to talk about what just happened in there, Carla?” he said.

“What just happened?” Windermere said. “What do you want to know, Stevens? You think I’m acting out of line or something?”

Cripes,
she was thinking.
First Mathers, now Stevens. Word’s going to get around I’m losing my cool.

Stevens seemed to be choosing his words. “This is a screwed-up case,” he said. “That Adrian Miller kid, the others. This isn’t like anything else we’ve ever worked before. I get it.”

She didn’t say anything. Figured she’d let him talk until he ran out of steam. Then, maybe, they could get back to the freaking job.

“I’m just saying,” Stevens said, “I can see how this stuff could affect you. And I want you to know I’m here for you, as your partner. If you ever want to talk about it, you know?”

Windermere pushed herself off the wall. Straightened up. “Yeah,” she said, “I get it. I appreciate the gesture. But whatever you think you’re seeing, it’s not there. Nothing’s up. I’m just fine, okay?”

Stevens shifted his weight. Windermere held his gaze.

“Can we
please
get back to work?” she said. “Maybe solve this case, instead of standing around wasting time talking about feelings?”

“Fine,” Stevens said. “Sure, of course. But if you do want to talk—”

“I’ll find you, I promise,” she said, turning away from him. “Meet you back in the office, okay? I need a little fresh air.”

She left him before he could answer. Crossed CID to the fire doors and hurried down the stairs to ground level, across the lobby to the front doors, the parking lot. Didn’t slow down until she was outside in the chill air, the sky a flat, joyless gray above her.

She wanted another cigarette. She’d left her Marlboros at home, the
pack hidden under the bathroom sink, behind her blow-dryer and curling iron and a couple boxes of tampons, squirreled away like contraband in the last place Mathers would dare poke his nose. Still, she craved a smoke now.

There were a couple of young women, admin people, smoking in a little huddle a few feet away. Windermere walked over, pasted a smile on her face, bummed a Virginia Slim and a light, hating herself for the need in her voice as she asked for the cigarette, for the way that first drag calmed her down.

She thanked the women for the cigarette, walked far enough away so she could smoke alone. Caught sight of her reflection in the Bureau building’s massive black façade, stopped and examined herself, tall and angular and unpretty, her mouth too big, her neck thin and veiny.

You’re losing it, Windermere,
she thought.
These freaking kids and that Ashley Frey creep, they’re pushing you over the edge.

She took a last drag off the cigarette and immediately wished for another.
Keep it together
.
Just keep it together until you track Ashley Frey down. Don’t let them all know what a head case you are.

Windermere flicked the butt to the curb. Turned back to the front doors and caught her reflection again.
Yeah,
she thought.
Right. As if they can’t tell already.

<
25
>

Gruber focused all
his anger on his stepsister. She’d ignored him at school, and now he didn’t have any friends—but neither did Sarah, not after the journal incident. She spent her school hours alone, chased through the halls by laughter, by jeers, Todd’s friends’ knowing eyes.

Gruber set about making her home life just as unhappy. He put dish soap in her lemonade, scrubbed the bathroom floor with her toothbrush, put it back dirty. Poured bleach on her favorite blue dress the night of the school dance. Hurt her in every way he could think of, big and small, until she wasn’t the same Sarah anymore, happy and carefree and dancing in her room. No, she was more like a lion in the zoo when he watched her, dragging herself around her bedroom all listless and defeated, her will to live gone.

Somehow, Earl’s belt didn’t hurt as much, now that Gruber had found his own outlet. He didn’t spend his waking hours in fear, didn’t tremble at the sound of Earl’s boots in the hallway.

One day,
he thought as Earl hit him again.
One day, I’ll be bigger than you. And then you’ll regret every second of this
.

The thought kept him warm. Kept him going. He was growing every day. Soon enough, he’d be a man. Just ask Sarah how tough he could be.

And then one day, maybe a month after the Todd incident, Gruber knelt down at the hole and saw that Sarah had found herself a razor blade.

She was sitting in the corner, her back against the door. She’d taken
off her shirt, wore only a bra, and Gruber felt a tingle of excitement when he saw her pale stomach, the flimsy white fabric. Sarah was staring at her forearm, at a thin line of red.

He was confused at first, until he saw the razor in her other hand. Flat metal, the glint of the blade. He didn’t know where she’d found it. Didn’t understand what she was doing.

She stared down at the trickle of blood for a long time. Watched as it oozed from the cut and dripped down her pale skin. He watched, too, mesmerized. It made a beautiful contrast, the deep red and her near-translucent white. It had to hurt, but she didn’t seem upset about it. She looked enthralled, captivated,
relieved
.

•   •   •

He watched Sarah with the razor for days before he found the courage to ask her about it.

They were in the living room, watching TV. A weekend. Earl and Gruber’s mother were out buying groceries and liquor, and Sarah kept eyeing the door. Gruber wanted to say something to her, something about the cutting, but he couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t give away the hole in the wall. So he kept his mouth shut, kept searching his brain. Then she twisted in her seat and the sleeve of her T-shirt rode up, exposing the scars on her arm, long and red and ruler-straight.

He stared. Sarah caught him, followed his eyes. Stiffened and turned away. She didn’t say anything for a long time.

He waited.

“It feels good,” she said finally. “I don’t expect you to understand. You wouldn’t
get it
. You don’t know how hard it is to grow up in this awful place.”

“Are you kidding?” Gruber replied. “Of course I know. I didn’t ask to move out here. Your dad fricking hates me. This place is
hell
.”

“You got that right. Even more so when you’re around.”

Sarah looked at him, hard, challenging him, defiant. New life in her eyes, like she’d found something in that razor blade the same as what he’d found when he hurt her.

“These scars are mine,” Sarah told him. “And no matter how much he or you or anyone else tries to fuck up my life, this is something that will never be yours. The way the blood comes, that’s mine, and mine alone.”

Gruber watched her study the scars, run her fingertips over those ragged lines. “Cool story,” he said. “Maybe someday you’ll have the guts to actually do it right.”

<
26
>

Even with Drew Harris’s blessing,
Ashley Frey wasn’t easy to find.

Stevens and Windermere combed the NCIC—National Crime Information Center—database for records of anyone named Ashley Frey. For cases with a similar profile. Found nothing.

“It’s like Harris said,” Stevens told Windermere. “This is a legal gray area. People kill themselves. It’s not like anyone’s putting in too much legwork tracking down the buddy who told them how.”

Windermere had been searching for suicide cases that fit the description. Came up just as empty. “Thirty-five thousand people commit suicide in this country every year,” she said. “Four thousand teenagers. It’s impossible to track down the details on every single case.”

They had Mathers reading through Ashley Frey’s old chat logs, dating back nearly four years. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, the victims mostly complaining about their parents, their classmates, how much they hated their lives.

“It would be tedious if I didn’t know how these stories ended,” Mathers told them when they gathered for coffee and a status report. “Instead, it’s just chilling. This Ashley Frey person plays along with the whole thing. In one version, she’s the only child of an absentee father. In the next, her stepfather’s molesting her. In another, she’s just a rich kid who’s depressed. It’s like she tailors her profiles to fit the situation, like she waits to see what kind of personality the victim will like best.”

Windermere drank her coffee, imagined Adrian Miller online, trolling the forums. Imagined this Ashley Frey girl befriending him, playing him, guiding him to his death. Shook her head clear and tried to focus.

“But you’re not finding anything that points us to Frey,” she said. “She’s not giving you any clues?”

“Nothing concrete,” Mathers said. “She uses a lot of the same arguments to coerce her victims, though. That’s a constant.”

“What kind of arguments?” Stevens said.

“Like when she was telling Adrian Miller to do it for her,” Mathers told them. “She did the same with Ramirez and Clark and the others. Like, she talks about how she’s too scared to do it by herself, how she needs someone to do it with her, to show her how it’s done.”

“She’s worked out a formula,” Windermere said. “Figures this is
the best way to get kids to kill themselves for her. Like it’s a freaking science.”

“There’s something else,” Mathers said. “Frey has all these made-up stories, like I was saying. Her backstory is never the same, from victim to victim, but there are common elements. The biggest one is this Earl thing.”

“What’s the Earl thing?” Windermere said. “Like, she talks about knowing someone named Earl? Please tell me it’s more solid than that.”

Mathers put down his coffee mug. Picked up a sheaf of printouts, Ashley Frey’s chat logs, and she could see he’d highlighted passages. “In the absentee-father scenario, Earl’s the dad,” he said. “Ditto the stepfather who’s molesting her. A couple of times, with Shelley Clark and Adam DeLong, the third victim, Frey talks about how she just wants to prove to Earl that she’ll go ahead and actually do it.”

Windermere eyed him over the printouts. “So who the heck is Earl?”

“No idea,” Mathers said. “But whoever he is, it sure sounds like he and Frey have some unresolved issues.”

<
27
>

In the end,
it wasn’t the blade that Sarah chose, when she decided to do it right.

Gruber was watching her through the hole again, after dinner, a weeknight. She’d been quiet on the walk home from school, even quieter
than usual. She’d picked at her dinner, excused herself fast, disappeared down the hall.

Gruber did the dishes and went to his room, pushed the painting aside, eager to watch her some more. It had been five or six months that he’d been peering at her through that hole, a half year’s worth of secret glimpses. It felt good, an addiction, the only thing that really mattered. Gruber lived for these moments, for the stirrings they built inside him, the electric urges.

Sarah was kind of boring tonight. She lay on her bed for a long time, staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes she stood and paced around the bedroom. Dug under her bed for a magazine and flipped through the pages, her face a blank mask.

BOOK: The Watcher in the Wall
11.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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