The accent was so deep, I almost didn’t understand him as he said, “Tell me everything.”
I snorted. “We’ll have to go in here. My dad’s old bedroom. It’s the only place where I can guarantee Emily wouldn’t go snooping in. Not that she would snoop.”
I opened the bedroom door and turned on the light. Eight photos of men decorated the back wall. News clipping were thumbtacked under the images. A map covered the other wall with multicolored thumbtacks for spots in Harlem.
Leaning against the wall, I let the Russian drink it all in.
Smart as he was, he said nothing, walking slowly inside, reading a few lines of each article, and then going on to the next one. One by one, he went through the stuff that I’d cut out and put on the wall. It lasted for a good ten minutes.
At the last image, he turned to me. “Emily is the Tinder Killer?”
“Yes.”
A neutral expression covered his face. He walked over to the table by the window where I’d scored a few of the victims’ criminal records.
He opened a few and flipped through the pages. “They were all suspected of rape. Did she know this before finding and killing them?”
“I don’t think so. She never remembers, and we’ve never talked about this.” I rose from the wall. “I found her in her bedroom one night covered in blood. She was just sleeping there with a knife in her hand. I called Xavier.”
“The man that lives in the abandoned bus?”
Damn. Emily did you give him your social security number too?
“Yes,” I said.
“He’s like her uncle?”
“Yes.” I sighed, uncomfortable with him knowing so much. “Xavier called Darryl. We all decided not to tell her. We washed and dressed her. Cleaned her bedroom—”
“But you had no idea what she’d done?”
“No. Xavier only found that she’d messaged some guy on Tinder to hook up. We had the meet up address.”
“Where was it?”
“A hotel. We had his picture from his Tinder account—D.t.f.BeastBoy.”
The Russian quirked his eyebrow at the name.
I continued, “I was going to check on Mr. Beast Boy the next day. But that morning, the hotel’s maid found him. His face was all over the news. We matched it to his tinder account from her messaging.” I marked my neck. “She’d sliced dude deep, right here and then a long side swipe.”
I carved a large cross on my chest with an imaginary knife. “Then she did a holy cross, crucifying him as Xavier would say. He’s religious, when it comes to death.”
Then I did a show of stabbing my groin. “And finally, she cut his dick off over and over.”
The Russian swallowed.
Yeah. You’re not grinning anymore, are you?
“After we found that out, Xavier gave her a heart locket for her birthday and said some bullshit about him always wanting to be with her.”
“The locket tracked her?” he asked.
“Exactly. When she went on the move for her Tinder meets, one of us went to check it out.”
“How many times does she meet with people?”
“Every other week. It’s always a different person. But what we realized is that she didn’t kill them all.” I gestured to the pictures. “Just these eight.”
“Men who had backgrounds of rape.” He leaned his head to the side. “Do you think they tried to rape her?”
“I don’t know. Xavier made us promise to keep it from her. He doesn’t think her mind can handle it. She’s smart, maybe a genius in some ways, but still fragile in other ways. He wants to keep her safe.”
The Russian nodded. “So, you three watched her, and when she killed someone, you cleaned it up?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “The night Rumi died, Darryl was supposed to be watching her. He had Xavier’s tracker. The next thing I know, he’s waking me up in the middle of the night and saying that she killed Rumi.”
“Rumi was on Tinder?”
“No.” I walked out of the room, pulled the disk out of my pocket, and went to my laptop.
The Russian stuck his hands into his pockets and stalked over to me. His eyebrows furrowed, but other than that, he gave me no impression of what he was thinking.
It took a few minutes to turn on the computer and upload the footage. I’d seen it tonight and it had explained everything.
“When I showed up to Rumi’s that night, Darryl kept making sure that I was going to destroy the footage. He didn’t press the matter, but it was clear he didn’t want me to look at the recording.” I pushed the button to start the video. “I knew something was wrong and saved it. I just didn’t know why he was so anxious about it, until I saw it today. He’d sounded off, when we talked on the phone.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Yes. He said the Russians freed him.”
Kazimir smiled and said to himself, “They’re definitely working together.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My stepbrother and Darryl.”
And then puzzle pieces began to form in my head, giving me the whole picture. “Now, everything is making more sense.”
The footage began to play.
We watched.
On my laptop, the image of Rumi’s office appeared on the screen. A door opened. Darryl walked in, holding a very drunk Emily. She stumbled along with him, giggling and playing an imaginary flute or something with her hand.
“What did Darryl give her?” the Russian asked.
“Something more than liquor, for sure,” I said.
Darryl left Emily on the leather loveseat next to the office’s window. They talked about something, but we couldn’t hear the conversation. There were no voices with the recording. Eventually, Emily fell asleep, smiling and leaning her head on her brother’s shoulder.
After a few minutes, he pulled out a knife, rose from the couch, laid her down, and placed the knife in her hand.
I gripped my desk hard, hating Darryl. “I don’t know, if I can watch this for a second time.”
“We’ll have to show this to Emily.” The Russian clenched his jaw. “No more secrets from her. She should know what she’s capable of, and what she’s done, or it won’t ever stop.”
“Good.” I gave him a sad smile. “You can be the one to tell her.”
“I will.”
On the laptop, Darryl walked away from a sleeping Emily as she gripped a knife and turned the light off.
“I have other camera footage, but it just shows him leaving the condo. The security guard was knocked out from whatever Darryl gave him.”
“Who killed the guard?”
“I did.” I shrugged. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
He waved it away. “You did it to protect her. If not, then she wouldn’t have been around to protect me.”
We returned to the screen.
I pressed a button to fast forward. “She’d been in the office, sleeping for a good two hours.” I stopped the fast forwarding. “Rumi shows up right here.” I paused and turned to the Russian. “Rumi was expecting a hooker in his office.”
“She’s missing now. Do you know about that?”