Gathering Dark by Candice Fox (best life changing books txt) 📕

“Why did you assault her?” Jessica asked stiffly.

“She wrote to me asking if I’m her daddy, telling me she’s all messed up about her life and this and that.” He shrugged. “I didn’t care. I kept her on the line after I saw her picture. She was a little honey. Most girls who write to death-row inmates are real warthogs. I wanted to see if I could get a piece of that ass.”

“You didn’t stop to think that she might actually be your daughter?” Jessica scoffed.

“No. I guess I didn’t think too much about it.” John rubbed his nose on the back of his tattooed hand. “A man takes what presents itself.” Jessica noticed a deep, jagged scar on the inside of his wrist, no doubt a suicide attempt on the inside. She understood they were frequent on the row.

“So what are you here for, if not the assault?” he asked. Jessica saw a flash of something in his eyes. Genuine interest poking through the false bravado, the practiced boredom, like a thorn hiding in a knitted sweater. “I haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. What’s going on?”

“She’s missing,” Jessica said.

“Oh,” John said. Jessica watched carefully, but the wall had come down again. The corner of his mouth twitched, and nothing more. “Missing how?”

Jessica described the circumstances of the crime scene at Dayly’s apartment, Al Tasik’s bust on a car full of Crips with Dayly riding in the back. John listened, smoking, staring at his tar-stained fingernails.

“Maybe these Crip fellows found out about me,” John said. “Knew she was coming to see me. Maybe they bought in to all the bullshit about the hidden money and threatened her.”

“So there is no further hidden money?” Jessica asked. “I’ve read your letters to Dayly. You hint at it pretty strongly.”

“Yeah. See, that’s what you’ve got to do to get them here.” John smirked. “The women. Chicks want to come here and visit, but they don’t want to look like sickos. They don’t want to tell their friends they’re in love with a death-row inmate they’ve never even met yet, so they need a reason to visit, at least initially. They need a story. It’s called a Pull. The serial killers—they’re the most popular. Women write to them from all over the world. So their Pull is that they’ve got extra victims they want to confess about. Then the girls have a respectable reason to come here, you know, so they can solve a crime. Help the victims’ families. You pull them in, and then you get your grabby-grabby.”

“Grabby-grabby?” Jessica said.

“Yeah.” John flashed his full set of teeth, at least half of them gold. “There’s a guy in here. The Silver Lake Killer. You heard of him?”

“I might have.” She didn’t know if Fishwick knew she’d arrested Trelles, but she wasn’t going to take the bait if he did.

“He told this woman lawyer from San Jose that he has a partner out there somewhere to this day, a guy still killing girls. The lawyer started visiting on the regular, and within a few weeks she’d forgotten all about the whole partner story. She visits once a month now and pays a guard a hundred bucks for that end cage there, the one behind the pylon. Two years she’s been coming here to give him a blow job and stock up his commissary account. They’re getting married, end of the year.”

“Awesome,” Jessica said. “That’s really wonderful. I’m so pleased you told me that.” She gave him a big, sarcastic smile.

“I had my fun with Dayly while she was here. Shame I won’t be seeing her again,” John sighed. “Maybe I forced her a little, but I was sure she’d be thinking about it some, later on, maybe when she went to bed that night. She’d be back.”

Jessica took a moment to swallow her revulsion. “Was it really worth it?”

He shrugged. “I could die tomorrow. I’m a highly desirable target in here. I killed a kid. All the other inmates have got a hard-on for me. So I’ve got to get what I can get, while I can get it.”

“You’re a real loony tune, aren’t you?”

“Your face is classic.” John thumped the steel tabletop in front of him with his fist in hilarity. “You’re so horrified. You know, I didn’t even catch your name.”

“It’s Jessica.”

“Jessica. Pretty. You’re Latina?”

“Dayly is gone, and her activities in the past few weeks have been strange,” Jessica said. “We know that she was trying to hire a plane. You said in your letters that she wanted to ‘fly away’ into a new life. Those things together suggest to me that you had her pretty convinced that the money was real. Did she leave here knowing it was all a Pull?”

“I don’t know,” he yawned. “I don’t really remember. I was pretty distracted during the visit.”

Jessica sighed.

“The first one was real enough. Burying the cash in Pasadena, that was a mistake,” John continued. He leaned back on his stool, cupped his hands at the back of his head and stretched. “I didn’t think about who might get access to it. You’ve seen the reports. You know a bunch of construction workers found it.”

“I do,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, well, those guys should have just split it. Instead they handed it in. Can you believe that? Now the government’s got it. It’ll go to paying these idiots’ wages.” He nodded through the glass at two guards walking by behind Jessica. “Maybe I ought to send in some requests for how it’s spent. I mean, it’s my money. I got one pillow in my cell and it’s storm gray. It’s six years old.”

“Uh-huh.” Jessica nodded. “Almost as old as your youngest victim.”

“Ooh.” John smiled. “A smart-ass. I like smart-asses.”

“If there’s nothing else you can tell me about Dayly’s disappearance, I’ve got to go.” Jessica stood and smoothed down her shirt.

“I’m sure if I’d thought about it more at the time, I’d have realized hiding the money like that where just