The Vanishing Girls by Callie Browning (read this if txt) 📕

arm. The pain in her wrist travelled up to her elbow and made her arm grow numb.

“Don’t tell me no lies!”

Eileen’s eyes watered and her head started to pound as she struggled to catch her breath. “I didn’t, I swear. I only realized it was you just now when I saw the scar.”

Lloyd’s chest heaved as he pulled the scarf off his neck and secured her wrists behind her back. She screamed at the top of her lungs hoping someone would hear, but Lloyd quickly clamped his hand over her mouth and dragged her toward the prep room.

Eileen knew all too well about the monstrous instruments and chemicals in that room. Was this how it was to end? With him killing her inside that room, washing her blood down the drain? He took a scalpel off the tray and turned to face her.

He lay beside her on the floor and smiled, exposing his teeth as he ran his free hand down her cheek and across her chest. His breath came in sharp bursts as he squeezed her breast, hefting them in his hand as she felt his excitement growing and pressing against her leg. She winced and looked away.

Lloyd licked his lips greedily as he touched the other breast.

She thought of the pollen on the victims and the dried yellow blossoms at the last crime scene and her stomach clenched.

“You killed those girls,” Eileen said through gritted teeth.

He waved the scalpel at her like a teacher chiding a student for a wrong answer.“It was you that called the other day, wasn’t it?”

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

“Does Holden know?”

“No,” lied Eileen. “I never told him that I figured out that the killer was finding his victims through the classifieds.”

The shape of Lloyd's tongue traced a circle on the inside of his cheek as he studied her for a moment.

“That number in the ad,” began Eileen slowly. “That’s the payphone outside this building, isn’t it?”

Lloyd didn’t answer, but the tightening of his mouth told Eileen she was right. Suddenly restless, he started to pace the floor, sweat beading his brow as he started muttering to himself.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said as he pounded his head with clenched hands. “I never got a woman unless I gave her money. That was okay at first, until Davis took the government contract from us. Money ran out…so did the women. One even told me that if a man wasn’t giving a woman money, he’d better be giving her a job. That’s where I got the idea. It’s just… Dorothy never cared about a man other than Clifford. She had him and that was enough.”

Eileen’s mouth went dry. “Is that why you killed your sister?”

Lloyd looked at Eileen like a man begging a woman to understand. “I — I didn’t want to, but…”

“She found out, didn’t she?”

Lloyd nodded miserably. “Dorothy got suspicious because I kept waiting by the phone booth for calls, so I started using the unlisted number at the house. She answered one of the calls and said I had to be up to no good and she’d call the police.” Lloyd’s lip trembled. “She had no right to do that. I injected her neck with air and told Dr Thorpe that I’d help him with the forms. Everybody knows Thorpe always takes a short cut if he can.”

Eileen watched the way Lloyd paced, the way he shook his head irritably as he talked. Lloyd was not in his right mind and what made it worse was that he seemed completely comfortable with the fact. He’d kill Eileen too, she was sure of it. She wiggled her hands trying to loosen the knots as she said, “You didn’t have to kill those girls. They belonged to people, they had families.”

“I didn’t mean to kill the first one. But it felt good, powerful — sweeter than sex ever made me feel.” His voice changed; the lust rose up so powerfully in him that his entire body tensed. Lloyd gripped her shoulder like a lover would as he said pleadingly. “I just wanted to try one more time and see. You know?”

Eileen felt faint as she listened to him. He spoke fondly of murdering women, as though it were a rite of passage that he wished he had discovered sooner.

“Then I’d make love to them. When I was a boy, I’d play with the ones in the chiller before my father embalmed them.” Eileen shuddered. “They would do the job but I wanted to try a warm one.”

“I realized how perfect it was if I killed them myself. I could do whatever I wanted while they were almost lively.” Bile rose in Eileen’s throat. He spoke like a man with a proud legacy, a man ahead of his time. His eyes shone and he sometimes sighed as he spoke, reliving the visions that resided rent-free in his mind. “I branded them, you see, made them mine. They’ll never be anyone else’s.”

“But you won’t ever understand. You’re a pretty girl; you can have anyone you want. And I can’t let you leave.”

Eileen’s mind thought back to the red dots she’d marked on the map. It just occurred to her that they formed a perfect circle around…“Your house…” Her eyes widened and her stomach churned. “You dumped all of those girls close to home.”

Lloyd’s shy grin was sickening. “Yes. I wanted them close to me.”

“Gonna leave me in a canefield with a big L on my neck too?"

Lloyd smiled as though Eileen had granted him a gift he'd yearned for. He knelt on his haunches, fluffing the skirt between his legs as he rested the scalpel's steel blade against her pulse. He traced the shape he wanted, as though trying to find the perfect orientation. A smile crossed his lips. “I’ve got something special planned for you."

Chapter 30

A Watery Grave

Holden's chest burned as though hot pepper sauce had been poured into an open cavity.  Eileen's village sat on an elevation in the middle of