Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(122)

“The nightmares where I was tied to a bed in a room with colored lights. Spinning lights, loud music. Male laughter. Where I wept and raged. Where I relived that shock, that pain, that humiliation. Faceless men, forcing themselves into me. Forcing me to drink something that, after each had had me once, turned me into an animal, so I begged them to take me again. And again when they could untie me, then hang me up by the wrists in the center of those spinning lights, and take me two at a time.”

She paused, sipped the water Peabody had set on the table. Though her hand stayed steady, her breath shuddered out before she spoke again.

“In my ambitions I had imagined men—suitable men, entertaining men. Out of them I would select a mate and build a fine life. But in reality, after those nightmares began, whenever I tried to be with a man, a panic filled me. A terrible sickness. I thought perhaps I had some condition, and began to see a therapist.”

She paused a moment, steadied herself. “I thought I might prefer women, but no matter how gentle the lover I chose, that panic would grip me. For a while, I accepted I could be with no one, could not be intimate, I’d just focus on my work, on my career. But the nightmares wouldn’t relent. My work began to suffer, and the nightmares raged inside me, like the men in them raged.

“And I began to remember more, see more. Their faces. Part of me refused to believe it had actually happened. How could such a terrible thing have happened to me? How could I live and work, day after day, after that terrible thing? But it had happened. I began to understand it had. I couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I thought of suicide, just to end it. And I took the medications my therapist prescribed, but it didn’t relent. One day I attended a support group, one for rape victims. I met CeCe Anson, the kindest woman I’ve ever known, and through her Lydia Su.”

“Su had the same nightmares, the same memories.”

“Yes. We became friends, and I thought, with her . . . but even with her I couldn’t bear to be touched. And it came out, what I remembered or dreamed. It came out she dreamed the same. We sat in the dark, holding each other as those memories fell out of us, twined together. It seemed impossible at first. But then . . .”

“There were too many details for it to be impossible.”

“Yes. I quit my job at the firm, sold my fancy apartment. I bought the house where you found us, thinking that one day I might create a crisis center or a school, or . . . I wasn’t clear on that. I offered my legal services to the group, to the crisis center. I continued to attend the group. It was a lifeline, and I began to do pro bono work for Inner Peace because they’d helped Lydia.”

“You found Carlee MacKensie that way.”

“Yes.”

“And you realized she’d had the same experience.”

“It was weeks, months, but we became what we’ll call wounded friends. We’d have coffee after group, talk. And then, yes, we began to see all three of us had the same dreams, and what had happened, somehow, to all three of us was too similar to be chance.”

Grace leaned forward. “Do you believe in fate?”

“What does fate have to do with it?”

“We met, Lydia and I, then I met Carlee, and we were three. One day I was called to assist another woman with a legal issue. Charity. She’d been in another group and had a kind of meltdown during a session. She’d gone after one of the other women—sexually. CeCe contacted me to help her with the legal issues. She told me she’d been speaking, taking her turn, and had some sort of flashback. The heat, the need—and it had happened once or twice before. She broke down in my little office, told me about her recurring nightmares.”

“Then there were four.”

“Yes, and no possible way this could be anything other than a pattern. I began to search through the records—and that’s certainly a violation—but we were desperate to know if there were more. I found Elsi.

“All the details—I’ll give you all I have. The timing, the where and when, but I’d like to just give you the broad points now.”

“Go ahead.”

“Elsi was so young, and her wounds, we’ll say, fresher and more intense. Maybe they’d mixed the dose. Maybe they’d experimented. I can’t say. But she would have those flashes, and find herself waking up with a stranger. She’d have nightmares so violent she’d harm herself during them. She . . . she began cutting herself.”

Blake paused for more water. “It had just happened, only the previous spring, so she saw the faces clearly—as they were now.”

“And you had Charity to draw them.”

“Yes. Edward Mira, I recognized him, and that led to the others. It led, as we’d already believed, to Yale. Only Charity hadn’t attended the university, but she’d been seeing a Yale man on and off, and sometimes attended parties or events. Lectures. On one of her visits, she found herself wandering the campus before dawn, with no memory of what had happened. At first she believed she’d had too much to drink and had blacked out, or possibly been roofied and raped. But she couldn’t remember. None of us remembered it all, until all of us did.”

“So you planned the murders.”

“Not at first. We’d meet—at the house where you found us because it became ours. A safe place, so in a way, it was a crisis center. We talked about how we could prove it, if we’d be believed if we went to the police.