Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [341]
She put her hands over her face and started to cry, not quietly either.
Steve Brown spoke over her sobs, as if he’d heard them before. “What was done to them, Ms. Blake, what was done to them was monstrous.” He didn’t look like a man who’d had to say monstrous a lot in his life. I didn’t think it was a word he’d chosen lightly.
Barbara Brown was rocking back and forth, back and forth, while she wept. Her sobs must have been as loud as I thought they were, because the phone on my desk rang.
I jumped, but got it. It was Mary, our very good secretary. “Is everything alright?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you need me to pretend you have another client?”
“Fifteen minutes,” I said.
“Or sooner if it gets louder?” Mary asked.
“Yes, that would be fine.” I hung up, promising myself to send Mary flowers, or chocolates, or both.
Steve Brown was trying to calm his wife. She’d stopped rocking and was leaning in against him. The sobs had quieted, a little. When her blue eyes turned to me again, they contained that promise of violence again. If she knew who had done it, I wasn’t sure what she’d do to them. Looking into her eyes, I wasn’t at all certain that she’d wait for a judge and jury.
She spoke very fast, her words almost sliding into one another, “They raped Cathy, raped her, and they mutilated Stevie, they cut . . .” She just stopped talking, her hands pressed over her mouth, eyes impossibly wide. There wasn’t a lot of sanity left in that look.
I kept my eyes on her, while I asked Steve Brown, “So someone gave them a lift after they had car trouble, and then . . .”
“They found them in a shed in the woods,” he said, “and they’d raped them both.” He said in such a quiet voice, no change of inflection, as if he felt nothing when he said it, and maybe he didn’t, not up where he was aware of it anyway. He’d had to push his pain underground, as far as he could shove it, because Barbara’s pain was more important than his, more all-consuming.
“They cut him . . .” He almost broke then, but he rallied, and I watched him fight his face to hold it all together. “They castrated him.” One of his eyes gave an involuntary flutter. “While he was still alive.” His voice had gotten softer.
“The police never found it,” she said, and her voice was shrill, “they can’t find it. The monsters took a piece of him away, and the police can’t find it. We had to bury him without it. They took it, and we couldn’t get it back for him.” Her voice was growing louder and louder, not exactly a scream, but not far from it. The shrill edge of hysteria was in full cry. “They didn’t take anything from Cathy. Why didn’t they cut her up? Why just Stevie? Why that? Why did they take that? Why that?”
If I’d had a dart gun full of Valium, I’d have used it. But I didn’t. It was awful, horrible, but I couldn’t fix this for them, and I really didn’t need another nightmare to add to my list. I couldn’t help them. It was a human monster, and I wasn’t an expert on that kind of monster.
I finally went with that. “Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown, Barbara!” I yelled it, and it didn’t phase her. She was gone, gone into her pain, her sorrow, her loss. I was yelling, but there was no one home to hear me.
Mary opened the door and said something twice before I could hear it over Mrs. Brown’s voice. “Your next client is here, Anita. You’ve gone fifteen minutes over already.” Mary was looking at me, but her eyes were a little wide. She’d been a secretary and law clerk once for a criminal attorney, so she’d seen grieving and hysterical clients before, but either this was a new variety, or Mary didn’t like it any better than I did.
“I’ll use one of the other offices, Mr. Brown. I’ll give you and your wife a few minutes to collect yourselves.”
Barbara Brown ran to me. “Please, Ms. Blake, please, please help us.” She grabbed the front of my jacket. Her hand brushed the butt of my gun,