Stop Me Page 11

  ‘Hey.’ Toby leant forward slightly and Leo grasped the moist fingers that had been extended to him. He maintained eye contact with Leo.

  ‘He’s never away from his post and monitors the traffic 24/7. He’s just updating the profiles pages which is why your visit is such good timing.’ Bookwalter drawled.

  ‘We’re giving the Laura page a major makeover. Soon she’s going to be more popular than the other UK victims.’ Toby’s voice sounded like it hadn’t quite broken and his higher pitched twang sounded like a speeded-up version of his father’s. Leo was aghast; he wasn’t sure which was more tragic: what Bookwalter did to earn money or the fact that he’d involved his son. It was time to leave, time to re-enter reality.

  He suddenly wanted to be home, wanted to see Ashley and let her dissect his misguided visit. Leo looked around the room at the posters on the wall. At first he’d assumed they were the usual collage of rock idols and movie images but every one of them had an ecological conscience – images of petrified forests and dead seabirds with slogans of outrage underlining them.

  Twenty-four/seven? Then this was the boy he’d been talking to – this teenager. No wonder Bookwalter had no time for the desalination protest – it was his son who had brought it into their dialogues. Suddenly Leo felt marooned from Laura and any last vestiges of leading a life that dignified her memory.

  CHAPTER 19

  What was Laura doing right now? It was a question he asked himself umpteen times a day. What was Laura doing at this precise moment? Sleeping, eating, crying, breathing? Was she imprisoned, was she in pain? Leo usually managed to stopper what lay beyond those possibilities – was she dead, was she buried, wrapped in bin liners, decomposed – but his desperate journey here had now removed it.

  This signified the end of the slimmest of chances of ever finding Laura alive. It was why he’d resisted taking Bookwalter up on his offer for so long. However unlikely it seemed, Bookwalter had always been a last option. Now that had been extinguished as quickly as he’d suspected, Leo had to face up to doing what Ashley wanted him to do – to let go of Laura.

  Toby clicked his mouse and the Laura page Leo had visited so many times filled the monitor – her beautiful face stared out at them and Leo had never felt less worthy of her.

  ‘We’re overhauling the whole site,’ Bookwalter continued. ‘It’s a continual battle with the search engines so we want to beef up the content and intensify the detail on the click-through pages. That’s where you come in.’ Leo could smell Bookwalter’s acrid breath when he spoke. It was like stale parmesan.

  Leo’s only thought was of leaving but, momentarily, he couldn’t remember how he’d got there.

  ‘Show him what he needs to see, Toby.’

  Toby closed the window they were looking at and opened another that had been minimised in the task bar. A disturbing image filled the screen: a darkened room with somebody spotlit and tied to a chair. The figure’s shaved head was bowed but Leo could tell that the bound, emaciated body – dressed in an ill-fitting boiler suit – was female.

  The room was silent except for Bookwalter’s nasal breathing. ‘And I’m expected to believe that’s my wife?’ Leo didn’t take his eyes off the monitor.

  Neither Bookwalter nor Toby spoke.

  The figure moved her right shoulder slightly and Leo looked at the time display below it. He didn’t need to look at his watch to know that it would coincide. Suddenly, from downstairs came the sound of voices. His cab driver had been as good as his word and it sounded like Perfecta was doing her best to placate him.

  ‘Looks like my time’s up, guys. Anything else to say before I put this into the hands of the police?’

  Bookwalter briefly closed his eyes as if trying to keep his patience in check. ‘What do you see, Leo?’

  ‘A woman who could be anybody tied to a chair.’

  ‘Exactly. So what crime has been perpetrated here exactly?’

  Leo still hadn’t moved his eyes from the screen.

  ‘What if I told you she’s willingly tied to that chair and, even if you didn’t believe that, do you think she’d really come to any harm when she’s currently being watched by 722 people.’

  Leo found the counter at the bottom of the page.

  ‘Johnny!’ Perfecta obviously had her hands full with the cab driver but Leo’s attention darted back to the image.

  ‘Toby, help out downstairs.’

  Toby grunted reluctantly while he unstuck himself from his leather swivel chair and squeezed past Leo.

  ‘There are a hell of a lot of worse things being done legally to people on the internet… Subscription services for members like ours are so that consenting adults can watch or participate. You’ve only got to do a quick search of the BDSM sites to get a flavour of what’s permissible…even within our own shores.’ Bookwalter reeled it off like a carefully rehearsed sales pitch. ‘I bet a lot of those people don’t care if it’s Laura or not. What pops people’s corn is their own business. Fact is, the law enforcement of this community is more than familiar with John Bookwalter and, however much it displeases me, it would take a hell of a lot more than this for them to ever perceive me as any kind of real threat.’

  ‘You really expect me to believe that this is Laura?’

  ‘Depends on how much you want her to be Laura. You must at least acknowledge it as a possibility, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘You think that’s the reason I’m here?’ Leo wondered if he really had another excuse. Whatever it was he’d fantasised about doing to Bookwalter when he met him in the flesh, however – his desire to punish him for living off Leo’s misery and the pain of the other victims – seemed unthinkable in this environment. ‘You know nothing of me or of my agenda. What exactly is yours?’

  ‘If I had on my Vacation Killer head I’d say I want to trap you like I did her. But with this business head on I’d say all I want is a little of your time. In exchange for that I guarantee I’ll prove to you whether she is or she isn’t Laura beyond a shadow of a doubt.’

  ‘I think we could prove that now.’

  ‘Not with my consent.’ Bookwalter clicked the window shut and Leo suddenly resisted the urge to laugh. He couldn’t see how Bookwalter could possibly juggle the reality of family life with his world of selective and lucrative delusion. Standing face-to-face it was virtually impossible to summon the rage he felt towards him for using Laura and the other victims to populate his commercial fantasy. ‘Sounds like there’s somebody downstairs who’s very insistent on seeing you, Leo.’

  Leo left Bookwalter breathing over the computer and headed downstairs.

  Toby and Perfecta were blocking the progress of the cab driver who was now halfway up the hallway.

  ‘Your three minutes is up. Tell these people what I’m doing here.’ Sweat was pouring from his face which was set determinedly.

  ‘Thanks for waiting but I think we’re OK…’

  The cab driver’s shoulders sagged backwards but Toby and Perfecta’s hands remained against his chest. ‘You won’t be needing me to stay?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘OK then…’ The cab driver remained where he was and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh…’ Leo fumbled his wallet out of his jeans and pulled the cab fare plus the two hundred he owed and passed it through Toby and Perfecta.

  The cab driver snatched the notes, turned on his heel and left Leo alone with the family.

  CHAPTER 20

  Leo was sitting in Bookwalter’s oriental garden, sipping the glass of iced tea that Perfecta had made for him before she’d gone back indoors. Bookwalter was showering and Toby had returned to his workspace.

  The garden of stepped lilies and peonies was sheltered from the wind by a high red brick wall and the only sound was the water churning around the bamboo water wheel in the pond at its centre. Leo observed the handful of koi leisurely gliding into each other, then looked across at the swimming pool and jacuzzi on a raised platform at the end
of the lawn. Everything looked a little cramped – as if the wealth was rapidly outgrowing its dimensions.

  Whatever Bookwalter wanted from Leo he doubted that it was anything beyond using him to legitimise his ludicrous claims to infamy. It looked to be a full-time living for Bookwalter – a family business that needed to keep on delivering. He seemed to be the ultimate example of an anti-celebrity – famous and dependent on the patronage of warped sickos and people with too much time on their hands who took great delight in according cult status to unfortunates and lunatics. Multiply those people the world over and it wasn’t inconceivable that serious money could be made from offering to cut in the advertisers on his spurious popularity.

  Underneath Leo’s anaemic mortification, however, there was a resounding sense of relief. Bookwalter’s pathetic attempts to perpetuate his claims were laughable and the apprehension that he’d been feeling ever since he got on the plane had rapidly dissolved. The duplicity was as much his as Bookwalter’s – he’d disregarded his own intuition and allowed himself to be hoodwinked, and for that reason he summoned most of the disgust for himself.

  Leo wondered if Perfecta and Toby held down jobs or if perpetuating the Vacation Killer actually kept the wolf from the door for the entire family unit. How much of their lifestyle was skimmed off the back of shattered lives and events they had no connection to? He was determined to halt Bookwalter’s set up, pull the plug on his whole offensive little enterprise. Doing that would at least be the beginnings of a justification of his involvement with him – a positive course of action that would have an actual repercussion. Maybe that way he could begin to make amends for sullying his and Laura’s lives by even being associated with him.

  Bookwalter was undoubtedly right; there was probably nothing the authorities could do. Not even the live image Leo’d been shown could be classed as illegal. It could still all be explained away as an elaborate performance as could everything his host accused himself of. He looked around and speculated as to how the family had lived before the Vacation Killer had murdered his first victim. Was Bookwalter as brain damaged as he’d always suspected or had everything been coldly calculated from the moment he’d walked into the precinct and attempted to confess?

  Perfecta returned with the tray of home-baked cookies and set them down on the patio table, tightening her lips into a smile before turning to leave again.

  ‘You have a lovely home, Mrs Bookwalter.’

  She reached the patio door again before she decided to turn and answer his unspoken question. ‘We’re not married.’

  Leo thought about his next question but she answered it before he’d asked.

  ‘I’ve lived under his roof for over three years now but he’s never asked me.’ Her eyeballs rolled briefly upwards and Leo wondered if it was weary affection or a genuine gripe out of earshot.

  Idly, Leo wondered what had happened to Toby’s mother. ‘The three of you seem very happy.’

  Perfecta nodded a little too quickly as if pleasantly surprised to be engaged in conversation. ‘There are many things I would like but…’ She cut herself off. ‘We’re very fortunate.’ The words didn’t sound like her own.

  ‘And you’re quite comfortable with John being…’

  She smiled this time, the first genuine one he’d seen. ‘It’s not so different to live with a celebrity.’ She seemed certain of this. Not that Bookwalter had ordinary habits but of the fact that he was most definitely famous. Her smile turned into a smirk. ‘I tell people he is as messy as any other man.’

  So Perfecta was star-struck. It certainly explained why she would happily clean up after Bookwalter and Toby.

  She seemed to detect his bemusement and the smile left without a trace. ‘He’s always provided well for me.’

  ‘Does it not bother you how he makes his living?’

  ‘He’s always provided well for me.’ She shrugged her shoulders and this time her hostility showed she really meant it.

  ‘So, you know everything he and Toby do?’

  She pursed her lips before she answered. ‘I’m his bookkeeper. There’s nothing he does without consulting me. John admits he’s hopeless with money so he leaves everything to me. I pay the bills, I put food in mouths but I know who keeps me alive.’ She made as if to leave and then turned and looked him sourly in the eye. ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘It’s a good question.’

  She waited for Leo to finish answering but he already had. He looked into his iced tea and waited for a response but realised she was gone. He was about to take another sip when he was blinded by the flash of a camera.

  Turning, he found that Bookwalter and Toby had replaced Perfecta at the open patio doors. Bookwalter beamed. He looked different and Leo realised it was not only because he’d now changed into a darker blue Hawaiian print shirt but because his hair was slicked back from his shower and he now wore spectacles which magnified his eyes comically. Toby stood beside him with the camera.

  ‘Don’t take pictures of me,’ Leo said definitively. Was this part of Bookwalter’s package deal? Did he want the pair of them shaking hands?

  ‘Later, Toby.’ Bookwalter said it as if it was a certainty and blinked twice at Leo through his thick lenses. ‘Dinner’s almost ready.’ He clacked into the garden in his flip-flops and pulled back the wooden chair opposite Leo. ‘Sorry we can’t offer you anything stronger but we don’t keep beer or liquor in the house. Perfecta doesn’t want me tempted back to my old ways.’ Leo noticed he had a black leather document wallet in his hand and he laid it on the table as if it were a fait accompli.

  ‘Am I to sign something?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bookwalter adjusted the specs on the bridge of his nose and unzipped the wallet. ‘Once you’ve read it of course. I have a copy for you to take away. Absorb it in your hotel room. That’s, of course, if you haven’t changed your mind about staying with us.’

  After what he’d just been shown upstairs, the offer seemed even more ludicrous. ‘I haven’t. I just wanted to make sure you’re covering my imminent flight back.’

  ‘You know I’m good for those tickets. You can return any time you want but the fact is if you weren’t intrigued by my proposition you wouldn’t still be sitting in my home.’ Bookwalter pulled out a fat document and flipped it open to the first page.

  He was right. Could he really dismiss the image he’d been shown? Yes, just, almost – but surely Bookwalter’s bargaining position didn’t rest on the grainy image of somebody who so obviously could have been anybody. Or maybe Bookwalter knew that however insubstantial it was it would still be enough. ‘What exactly do you think you have that I want?’

  Bookwalter’s eyes slipped sideways and then he looked openmouthed at Leo as if the question was academic. ‘The truth.’

  ‘And that’s what you’re supplying.’

  ‘Whether you believe me or not, what I’m offering is a cross section of what I do here. It’s not everybody I invite in like I’ve done you.’ Bookwalter seemed genuinely hurt.

  ‘Look, maybe you’ve reached the stage where you can’t even admit your own lies to yourself but can’t you see what you and your family do is monstrous?’

  ‘Have we not given you hope?’

  Leo was momentarily dumbstruck. ‘Is that what you’re in this business for?’

  ‘Partly. I think the site…helps people.’

  ‘Help? Is that what you were doing when you claimed to hold my wife prisoner?’

  Bookwalter licked his lips while he considered his response. ‘We’re a Christian family, Leo. Everyone’s got to earn a living and we help who we can in the process. Don’t tell me our conversations weren’t a comfort to you.’

  ‘So let me understand what you’re saying. You’re a Christian serial killer who claims responsibility for the mutilation and murder of innocent people to make a few dollars from the internet. And you can square all of that because you’ve been psychoanalysing me.’

  ‘Not a few dollars, Leo.’ Bookwalter�
��s eyes sparkled now and he seemed entirely unscathed by what Leo had said. ‘And if you’ll just let me explain what I have in front of me you’ll understand how this can work for everyone.’

  ‘So when you show me that the person, whoever it is, tied to that chair isn’t the person you’ve been claiming it to be, when you take away my only reason for ever being associated with you while you’ve been blackmailing the desperate and weak part of me, you really don’t expect me to do everything in my power to put you where you seem desperate to go.’

  ‘You could have put a stop to this months ago; why didn’t you?’ Bookwalter licked his thumb and turned another page of the document, raising his eyebrows to study the print. ‘It wasn’t me doing all the talking.’

  ‘No. Toby did a lot of it.’

  Bookwalter looked up and again he looked wounded. ‘Toby only ever filled in when I was indisposed.’

  ‘So who was it in Chevalier’s – you or your teenage son?’

  Bookwalter narrowed his eyes as if Leo’s comment was noxious. ‘Nobody could have written that but me.’

  ‘Seeing as you’ve never left the state of Louisiana, how could I ever have doubted you?’

  ‘There are many things you know about me but even more you don’t.’

  Now it was like they were at their keyboards again, Bookwalter rattling off his tenebrous lines of evasion.

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you’re even considering this. It could be the opportunity to answer all the questions you’ve been putting to me since you first made contact.’