A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(48)

“Thanks.”

“You looked happy.”

I pause, tensing again, as I say, carefully, “I am…,” and I’m waiting for the inevitable comment, the one that suggests she’s done me a favor, tricking me into coming to Rockton, but she only nods and then, before she goes, says, “The next time you come by, maybe you can bring the puppy. Nicole would like that. She mentioned it, and I suggested she ask you to bring her, but she doesn’t want to be a pest. It might cheer her up. She tries to hide it, but it’s … rough. Really rough. Especially the nightmares. I know Will left sedatives, but she’s not taking them. I don’t feel right sneaking them into her tea at night, but I am tempted.”

“I’ll talk to Will and Isabel.”

Diana makes a face at the mention of Isabel. There was an issue between them early on, where Isabel had been convinced Diana was “freelancing.” Selling sex, in other words. But I get only that face—no argument—and then she’s gone, promising to be back in an hour.

Nicole comes inside, and I set the two books beside a chair. She moves them farther from the fire, giving me a wry smile and saying, “Sorry. That’s how he used to keep me in line. Burn pages of my writing.”

I imagine that. He could threaten to take away her food, her water, torture her, even kill her, but what good does that do when someone wants to die? No, he threatened the only thing she cared about.

I say I’m sorry, but that makes her uncomfortable. Like when she’d apologized over taking the books with her. They would to us seem inconsequential. To her, they’d been the one good thing that came of her time down there—maybe not even the stories themselves, but what they represented, those hours when her mind escaped that hole.

“About the other women,” she says. “Are they … his?”

“We aren’t sure. Did he mention that he’d done this before? Taken captives?”

She shakes her head. “No, but … sometimes he’d reference other women. I figured they were girlfriends or such. Now I wonder if he was referring to them. Those women you found.” She takes a notebook from the side table. “I made a list of everything he’d said about other women.”

I move to sit beside her, and we go through her notes. A pattern emerges, one I’ve read about in serial killer cases. A man searching for a woman who fits a very warped set of criteria. His perfect mate. When each victim fails to meet his expectations, he resorts to shaping—giving his victim hints on how she should behave to make him happy. How she should behave to stay alive.

As for shaping him, one woman stands above all others. His mother. Sometimes, in crimes like these, men seem to be looking for that unconditional love. Nicole’s captor played out yet another variation on the maternal theme: looking for the kind of woman his mother considered worthy. And his mother was very particular.

“I remember him saying how one woman tricked him. He thought she was single, no children. She had a scar, and he didn’t know what it was from. She said she’d had a baby, who lived with his father. He checked me for a C-section scar like hers. Made me swear I’d never been married. His mother said divorced women are whores, and he shouldn’t touch them.”

Victoria Locke had left her six-year-old son with his father when she came to Rockton.

“He also checked me for tattoos,” she says. “Another ‘sign of the whore.’ He said he’d been tricked about that, too. He’d been with a woman for a while before he realized she had a tattoo on her lower back. Some ‘heathen symbol,’ he said. Which made it twice as bad. Mother would not have approved.”

“Did you get the sense his mother was still alive?” I ask. “Up here? Or down south?”

“He never said. It didn’t seem like he ever planned to introduce us. He just had to reassure himself that she’d have approved of the woman he was, you know, raping. He never tried to fancy that up, either. I thought he would. In the movies, guys like him tell themselves they love the woman they’re kidnapping. That she’ll see he’s amazing and fall for him. I kept waiting for a sign of that, so I could use it. I even tried to fake caring for him. Fake…” She steels herself. “Fake enjoying it. He didn’t like that. He wanted exactly what he had—an unwilling captive. One who met his mother’s requirements.”

“And you did.”

“So it seemed. But that didn’t help. He kept looking for flaws. Always looking.”

Because he wanted to find flaws. That justified the abuse. Justified the murders.

We talk for a while after that. Before I leave, she says, “I’d like to go for a walk.”

“Sure, just ask whoever’s on guard duty to take you. I’d rather you didn’t wander around town alone, but you aren’t a prisoner here.”

“I mean into the forest.”

I sit back down.

“Yes,” she says. “I know, that should seem like the last thing I’d want. Which is why I do. I loved the forest. I got captured because I loved it. I said I wanted berries, but I wanted the excuse more. I don’t blame the forest for what happened. I blame myself. I knew how dangerous it was, and I didn’t respect that.”

I understand. That is the lesson my parents failed to impart, the one I now get from Dalton. Whether it’s the forest or horseback riding or ATVs or snowmobiles or caving … this thing you’re doing? It might kill you. But it’s amazing too, so take precautions and enjoy it. My parents had stopped at the “might kill you” part. But this is life, isn’t it? It’s amazing … and it might kill you. In fact, someday, it will.