Chapter 17

“What?” Hernandez sat bolt upright in her seat, her eyes, which had been scanning the parking lot, locking on mine. I stared back at her, my face calm, despite the roiling of my stomach.

“I killed them,” I repeated, forcing my voice to normalcy.

She kept her stare for a long moment, then drew a steadying breath. “If you murdered them, you couldn’t be a cop. Not now. Not ever. Shit. We’re talking twenty, twenty-five years ago. You wouldn’t be out, walking around. Your ass would still be in jail. So, it must have been something else.” Her expression had taken on a sharper edge, a little anger in it now, a little doubt. As if she was wondering if I was the same person she’d worked with, trained with, been friends with for the past few years. “What the hell happened, hermano?”

“I went to pick her up at her house,” I replied. “Just like any other day. But when I got to the door, I heard a scream. I was inside before I knew what I was doing, moving up the stairs. There was the sound of an impact, something striking flesh, another muffled scream. It was coming from the door to Annabelle’s parents’ room. I didn’t think. Didn’t make a conscious decision. Maybe all the signs I’d been seeing for years added up all at once. Maybe, on some level, I knew what I was going to find. What I was going to have to do. Whatever the reason, I kicked the door open.”

I closed my eyes and could see it, as clearly as if it had happened only the day before and not twenty-something years ago. Most of the room was a standard master suite. A large bed, dressers, doors leading to what I assumed were either closets or bathrooms. No carpet here, just a tile floor in a cold, institutional white. Next to the bed stood a piece of furniture for which, at the time, I had no name. Wooden braces formed an A-shaped frame, maybe six feet tall at its peak, four or five feet wide on the long sides, and three feet wide along the shorter edges. Boards crossed the front side of the frame, forming an X.

Annabelle hung there, arms above her head, legs spread-eagle, bound to the boards at wrist and ankle. She wore not a stitch of clothing, but there was nothing alluring about her nudity. Her pale, revealed skin only served to call attention to the thin red welts raised on her stomach and thighs, and the bright crimson trickles of blood that seeped from long, narrow cuts on the slopes of her breasts. A ring gag had been forced into her mouth, held in place by leather straps. Her eyes widened as I stepped into the room, and I could see the fear in them, the pain, the regret…and above all, the shame.

I described the scene to Hernandez, as coldly as I could manage, categorizing it like I would any other crime scene, forcing the words out, one by one, and doing my best to choke back the rage that boiled alongside the memories.

“She wasn’t alone,” Hernandez said.

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “She was not. I didn’t realize it at first. All I could see was the girl I loved, hanging there, naked and afraid. Then I heard the laughter.” My fists tightened until my knuckles turned white, and it took a concerted effort to not slide my hand down to my sidearm, to feel the reassuring weight of its cold lethality.

“Shit, Campbell.”

“Yeah. Her ‘parents’ were there. Both of them.”

I ground my teeth and stopped again, in part because the memories were painful enough already, and about to get worse. But only in part. Killing Annabelle’s owners was a secret I had carried for a long time, through both my military and law enforcement careers. I had no doubt that my superiors in the army and on the force had learned some of the details—every good commanding officer, whether they wore green or blue, found out everything they could about the men and women under their command, through every channel possible. My records might have been sealed, but in the digital age, nothing was ever truly forgotten.

Still, I had managed to avoid any direct conversations around the details of the events that took place upon that day so long ago. And I had never, not even to my parents, divulged the one fact that would have irrevocably altered the course of my life. I killed Annabelle’s owners, yes. But as far as the courts knew, it was an act committed before I knew the truth about Annabelle, before I knew that she was a synthetic.

I was on her “father” before his smug laughter had finished sounding, true, but at first all I’d done was deliver a good hard right to his face. And he had only laughed harder. His words, diamond hard and with as much soul, were burned into my brain. I could recall them verbatim, even now. “You little shit,” he had said around his guffaws. “She’s a toy. A fucking mule. A synthetic. She’s our goddamned property. And you’re what? In love with her? Going to save her? Might as well be in love with a toaster, you insufferable little puke. Get the hell out, before we call the cops.”

I hadn’t, of course. I couldn’t. When I had done what I had done, I had known the truth. And I’d been holding tight to that truth ever since. It was, most likely, the only reason that I was not locked up in some corporate-run factory prison. But did I risk telling Hernandez the truth? Did I burden her with the knowledge that I was, as far as the law was concerned, very likely a murderer? Oh, the case was long since closed, and couldn’t be reopened, whatever facts might come to light. I was in no legal danger from anyone knowing the truth. But if I told Hernandez, then it would become her secret to bear—or not—as well. I couldn’t do that to her, couldn’t put that burden upon her. Couldn’t take that risk. So I stuck to the “official” version of events.

“I lost it,” I said. “Seeing the man who was supposed to be her father standing there like that, laughing at me as he abused the girl I loved. I attacked him. I must have surprised him—I guess he was used to blind obedience. This was long before I’d had any actual training, but I was a big, athletic kid. I knocked him down with a couple of quick punches, powered more by rage and youth rather than any real skill. And then I kicked him. A single kick, just to shut him the hell up, to stop that cutting, mocking laughter. It caught him just beneath the chin.” I could still feel the crackle of cartilage crushing under the force of the blow, the shock of pain and the savage satisfaction it brought. “It was an accident. At least, I don’t think I meant to kill him. But the kick crushed his windpipe and, I learned later, the force ruptured his carotid. He was dead within seconds. We were all too shocked, too stunned, to do anything but watch him die.” That much, at least, was true.

“And the ‘mother’?” Hernandez asked, her voice neutral. I almost winced at her tone. I’d heard it before. I’d used it before. It was the tone most cops got when a suspect was confessing to a particularly heinous crime and you had to let them finish before leveling the charges. It was a sterile, neutral, institutional kind of a tone, bereft of any emotion. It wasn’t the kind of tone you ever wanted to hear from a friend.

There was no going back now. “She lost it. Screamed an animal scream. I thought she was going to attack me. But she didn’t. Instead, she went for Annabelle.”

The memory was there, waiting, when I closed my eyes.

Annabelle’s mother stood before her, screaming incoherently, face reddened from the effort. In one hand she held a long, narrow-bladed knife. Part of my mind recognized it as a filleting knife, used to scale fish or cut very thin slices of meat. The needlelike tip had doubtless been the instrument to carve the fine lines of blood into the slopes of Annabelle’s breasts, and was probably responsible for many of the scars that crisscrossed her body.

I should have feared that knife. I should have feared the woman wielding it. But all I felt was an ice-cold rage. I took one step toward her, and her eyes widened. Her screaming shut off midcry, and a calculating look replaced the terror in her eyes. A cruel smile twisted her lips, and she spun without warning.

I had just enough time to raise a hand in denial as the knife blade plunged between Annabelle’s breasts. A violent shudder coursed through her, rattling the frame from which she hung. Her eyes met mine a final time, and I watched, helpless, as the light slowly faded from them.

Annabelle’s mother and I stared at each other, bookended by the corpses of the people we loved. There was no more screaming, now, no shouts of defiance or anger or loss. One of us was going to die. I saw it in her eyes, and had no doubt she could see it in mine. Her fingers were still curled around the knife, and she pulled, trying to yank the blade from Annabelle’s corpse.

The body heaved, bucked, but the blade did not move.

Synthetics were not supposed to be able to defy their owners. Whether or not Annabelle had managed it in life, she found defiance in death. She would not let go of the blade. That almost certainly saved my life. I stepped forward again, now just one long stride from Annabelle’s mother. My hands flexed, fingers curling.

I shook the images from my mind. “The bitch killed her,” I said. “Out of spite. Drove a knife right into Annabelle’s heart. And then she came for me. Maybe I didn’t mean to kill Annabelle’s ‘father.’ Maybe. To this day, I’m still not certain about that. But I damn sure meant to kill her bitch of a ‘mother.’ It was a brutal, dirty fight. She had that stupid little riding crop, and she knew how to use it.” I drew one finger along the corner of my eye, where a small white scar ran. “She almost took my eye. But it was more a toy than a weapon, something designed to hurt, but not injure, not kill, meant for the pain-is-pleasure crowd. I got my hands around her throat, and no matter the punishment she laid upon me, I didn’t let go. It was easy. So damn easy. I could still see Annabelle, hanging there, still and lifeless with the hilt of a knife sticking from her chest. I didn’t let go for a long, long time. When I finally did, I was alone in a room of corpses.”