to her message inbox.
There it was, an email from Daphne Brown. No message. Just a link to a YouTube clip. Kendall clicked on the link and waited for the advertisement for a trip to Greece on a luxury liner reached the ten-second mark so she could X it out.
The video was entitled: How My Story Began, Part One.
Kendall could feel her heart rate accelerate a little as the clip worked its way from start to finish. Feeling a little sweat collect at the nape of her neck, she pushed her chair away from her desk and dialed Birdy Waterman’s number at the medical examiner’s office.
“Hi, Kendall,” Birdy said. “What’s up?”
“Are you in your office?”
“Yes,” Birdy said. “Gloves about to go on.”
“Can you come over here?”
Birdy hesitated. “I’m about to start an autopsy on a crash victim from yesterday.”
Kendall pushed. “But you haven’t started, have you?”
“No, but . . . what’s this about, Kendall?”
Kendall looked at the YouTube video queued up on her screen.
“Put the corpse back in the chiller and get over here,” she said. “Brenda Nevins has posted a video blog. You need to see it.”
“Video blog? What is she, fourteen?” Birdy said.
“This is no joke,” Kendall said. “Come over as soon as you can.”
“Send me the link,” Birdy said.
Kendall moved her mouse to copy the link, but thought better of it.
“We need to watch this together,” she said.
“You’re making it sound like a premiere of some show, Kendall.”
Birdy was right.
“I think it is,” Kendall said.
* * *
The image was high-definition clear and left no room for doubt. Brenda Nevins had not ever been a person who could lay low. She took the microphone, looking at the camera.
“The light is on, so I guess you can see me. Or you can see me when I post this. I’m not stupid enough to do this live. It pissed me off to lose the chance to be on TV to tell the world my true story. The morons in the legal system really screwed me on that one. I don’t like to be screwed with. I’m the one who does the screwing. Right, Janie?”
She turned and tilted the camera to Janie Thomas, who was bound and gagged on a chair. Silver duct tape cocooned her forearms to the armrest. Her feet were out of view. The gag appeared to be black fabric, some clothing item.
“Looks like underwear,” Birdy said. “Wonder whose?”
Kendall didn’t answer. Her eyes were bonded to images on her computer’s screen. In particular, Janie’s terrified eyes riveted the detective. Though farther back in the shot, there was no mistaking the pleading coming from them, an urgent message that was stronger than words.
Help me.
Brenda let the camera linger on Janie, then on herself. She wore full makeup and a teardrop necklace that Erwin had reported Janie was wearing to work the day she went missing from the prison. The teardrop, an amethyst, nestled between Brenda’s breasts.
Brenda was nothing if not consistent. She was always one to make sure people’s eyes landed right there, Kendall thought.
Brenda resumed talking. “Janie, you know your baby doesn’t like it when you don’t answer her. Makes me annoyed. When I get annoyed, I need to do something to liven things up. You know, to break the tension.”
For the first time, Birdy noticed a curl of smoke in the frame. She tapped her finger on the screen.
“She’s going to burn her,” she said.
“It’s one of her favorite things to do,” Kendall said, sliding back into her chair. “She almost did it to her child.”
“Who does that?” Birdy asked.
The answer, of course, both women knew, was a sociopath like Brenda. Maybe no one had seen someone so profoundly evil in the annals of crime. Kendall had. She’d been in the cage with the predator when she interviewed her on the Darcy Moreau murder case. She’d seen the charm and pretense of being human play out, the sickening game of those who have no other purpose in life but to win others over and destroy them.
Brenda tugged at the chain around her neck, the amethyst rising and sinking, swinging back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch.
“I know I shouldn’t smoke,” Brenda said. “It’s a nasty habit that I picked up in county jail and carried over to prison. Not much else to do in that hellhole.” She looked at Janie over her shoulder. “No offense.”
Then back at the camera, those gorgeous but lifeless eyes, sucking in every viewer who’d ever look at the video. “Smoking really scares me. I do not want to be one of those women whose mouth is a sagging sphincter that wicks out lipstick and is an instant sign that she’s getting old.”
Brenda reached in the direction of the curling smoke. Her fingertips now held a cigarette. She took a deep drag and then, seemingly absentmindedly, examined the filter before exhaling a sliver of smoke.
“Plus I have to constantly reapply lipstick, and in prison—not that that’s a problem at the moment—decent cosmetics are hard to come by,” she said. “I let a hideous creature from Preston fondle my breasts in the shower as payment for a tube of L’Oreal that came into the institution in someone’s rectum. Gag me. The things one has to do to look halfway decent.”
Brenda let out a laugh.
Kendall shot a look at Birdy.
“She thinks she’s a star,” she said.
“A Kardashian, maybe,” Birdy said, her eyes still on the video.
Kendall was caught off guard. Birdy was more Kerouac than Kardashian. “You watch that crap?”
“No,” Birdy answered. “But Elan’s girlfriend Amber does. She’s over a lot.”
The exchange between the forensic pathologist and the detective was that kind of forced break in the tension that people engage in when watching a horror movie.
The popcorn is stale.
Have to go to the bathroom.
I just remembered I left the water running.
“Suddenly,” Brenda said, getting up and walking over to a now squirming Janie, “I’m hungry. Do you like Indian food, Janie? I love curry. Don’t get me started on tandoori chicken. Love. Love. Love tandoori. Surprisingly, there was a fantastic Indian place in the Tri-Cities that I used to go to with my boyfriend. It had the best
