A Necessary Evil(26)

Mollie stared at him in disbelief, blinking rapidly. “Pops…he killed your dad?” She’d known her grandfather was no saint for many years now, but she’d never once imagined him a murderer. He was too kind and gentle a man to take the life of another. Perhaps it was self-defense. That must have been what happened. “There must have been a reason.”

The man walked away from Mollie’s little corner and over to the bookshelf. He picked up a long, red ribbon and tied a bow around the handful of her hair. He was watching what he was doing, not looking at her as he responded. “Your grandfather fancied himself a regular vigilante. He killed my father in cold blood because my father killed his girlfriend.”

That explained a lot. Of course, there had been a reason. There was always a reason. “Did he see him do it?”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” the man said as he examined his masterpiece. “He killed him almost a year later. Tracked him down somehow and snatched him in downtown Lexington one day. Took him to an abandoned warehouse where he tortured him for two days before he put a bullet between his eyes, execution style. Your grandfather was barely nineteen years old at the time. I was just a baby.”

Mollie had trouble picturing her pops torturing and executing anyone. Was that the only time he’d killed? Or did he kill other people too? But then she thought of how much pain he must have been in to have done something so extreme. Suddenly, she felt sorry for Pops, thinking of what he must have been going through to lose his high school sweetheart like that. Thinking on it now, she vaguely recalled hearing her grandfather mention losing someone he loved in a tragic way. She’d never pushed him on the details, as it seemed to be a tender subject for him. The name came to her like a strike of lightning out of nowhere.

“Addie,” she whispered.

The man looked up from his project, and his eyes narrowed. “That’s her. That’s the girl.”

“What did your father do?” she asked cautiously as she shifted her legs, causing the chains to rattle across the cement floor.

“He was a true genius.” He looked almost wistful as he stared at the wall above Mollie. “He was a collector. He had a knack for finding the most beautiful girls…a lot like you, actually. Back then it was much easier to take any girl you wanted. I guarantee he didn’t have to work as hard as I did. People were a lot more trusting in the old days.”

“What did he do?” Mollie repeated, more earnestly this time.

“I was in the dark for many years. I grew up thinking my father had died in an accident. I don’t know to this day if my mother had told me that or if I just dreamed it up myself, but one day when I was sixteen, my mother sat me down and told me the truth about my father.” He paced again. “You see, she was worried about me. Thought I was becoming just like him. I was getting in fights. And yeah, I killed the occasional stray cat, but I enjoyed it. I can’t tell you why. It just felt…natural. Anyway, she sat me down at the kitchen table and told me right then and there that my father was a serial killer. She hadn’t known at the time, of course, but she found out shortly after he disappeared. She said your grandfather’s girlfriend was his last victim. That he kidnapped her one night as she was walking down the street all by herself, not a care in the world. He brought her here. To The Vault.” Mollie’s stomach churned as she imagined poor Addie, not much younger than herself, chained to the same wall, in the same dungeon. “He had his way with her right there on that bed.” He pointed to the bed he’d been sleeping soundly on. Mollie felt nauseated. “Then when he was done with her, he strangled her with his bare hands and dumped her body in the river. But not before taking something from her first.”

He reached toward the shelf and grabbed a small, wooden box, opened it, and walked over to show Mollie its contents. Inside were several, maybe dozens, of tiny locks of hair, each with a different color ribbon tied around it.

“So, you see?” He closed the box and held it down at his side. “That’s why it’s perfect for me to send good old Franklin a lock of your hair. It’ll remind him who he’s dealing with, as well as what he did to me.”

“What do you want from him?” she cried.

“I want him to repent. To truly atone for what he did. He acted as judge, jury, and executioner for my father. But it wasn’t his place. He had no right to take a man away from his baby boy. Because of him, I grew up without my father—I felt like a bastard, and everyone made fun of me. Now he must feel the pain of what it’s like to lose someone he loves. Only then can he truly understand the depth of his sins.”

“You’re going to kill me,” Mollie said, more a statement than a question. “Why not just do it and get it over with?” She didn’t want to die, not yet, not this way. But she also didn’t want to endure whatever this man had in store for her while she awaited her own execution. Better to get it over with than to let it drag on for hours, maybe days. She would make her peace with God and repent of her own sins and rest easy knowing she would soon be in heaven and that one day she’d see her mother again.

“Because,” he tossed the box onto the bed, “I want him to believe he can save you. I want him to have hope. I want to watch as that hope fades from his face when I kill you right in front of his very eyes. That is the only way he can atone for his sins.”