Page 37 of Edge of Control

Caleb shook his head. He had a hand gently resting on the gun at his belt, as if worried the killer would burst in to finish off the ones that were hot on their trail. “The first two were both bartenders, and Julie worked as a dental hygienist. Although we did find a large supply of drugs in her closet. She may have been a dealer, but if she was, she wasn’t very lucrative. None of them were exactly rolling in money.”

“Yet they had it…”

“Rich parents?”

“Maybe for Julie, but definitely not for Ricky. His family hated him. Basically cut him off.”

“Someone else? Rich boyfriend? Sugar daddy? Or some side hustles.”

“All possibilities,” I said, moving over to the TV stand. There were a few thin vases with fake flowers on the entertainment console, along with a couple of books that were coated in a thin layer of dust. There was one book standing upright that didn’t have a speck of dust on it. It had a thick black spine. Almost metallic.

I almost moved on, almost left it alone.

I picked it up. Opened it.

“Fuck,” I said.

The book was hollow. Inside it was a thin GoPro-style camera. It was aimed directly at Julie’s body. The spine of the book appeared to be similar to a two-way mirror, clearly see-through. I already knew what I’d find when I powered up the camera.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and chained Raven wandering from the Nightly shore?—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Holy shit,” Caleb said, reading the poem over my shoulder.

Except this wasn’t the only thing that was on the camera. Nevermore appeared to have forgotten to erase the memory before they took the photo of the poem. Sloppy? Were they rushed?

Regardless, I scrolled over and pressed Play.

My jaw dropped. Caleb gasped.

It was a sex tape of Julie, but it wasn’t just Julie and some random guy she was fucking. The other face on camera, the one currently with his head thrown back and hands tangled in her hair as she blew him, was averyrecognizable face.

“That’s the fucking mayor of New York,” Caleb said. “Fuck.”

He was right. The guy being blown on camera was Ashton Torres, the recently elected mayor of New York City. A man who had based his entire campaign on his pristine family values, on his atomic family unit, on his pregnant wife and two daughters. They’d been at all the campaign events, almost like props. Their smiling, pristine faces had been plastered on all the campaign ads, all the fliers, all the commercials.

And here he was, blowing his load down a dead sex worker’s throat.

“I think we figured out how these victims were making their money.”

“Prostitution?”

“Blackmail,” I said. “They were involved with something. Someone out there is having these people draw inrich and connected clients, secretly filming them, then profiting from it. That has to be why Ricky had that camera hidden away in his closet, positioned in perfect alignment to film whatever was happening on the bed.”

“Could it be Nevermore?”

“Maybe… maybe they’re leading these people to their victims first. That way, they can kill and get paid all at the same time.”

“Jesus Christ.”

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