Page 73 of Deadly Forever

Twenty-One

“It started out as a lark,” Kaspar said, grimacing as he tried to get comfortable. Leaning against a vehicle with his hands cuffed behind him was hardly conducive to fun storytelling. “After I got out of prison, the first thing I did was visit my son. He was the only one who kept in touch with me during those years.

“His mother was always a bitch,” he continued. “Jacob couldn’t wait to get away from her. Laurie – that’s my ex-wife – didn’t put up much of a fight when I said I was going to take him. I thought she would, but she clearly knew something I didn’t.”

“Are you honestly going to blame this on your son?” James asked, incredulous.

“Oh, it wasn’t his fault,” Kaspar said. “He did make things more … interesting … though. I have to give him that.”

“How so?”

“I spent a lot of money getting us new identities,” Kaspar explained. “When I got the job at the high school, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. Have you seen the girls at that place? They’re all hot and worried about what other people think about them.

“Jacob was initially uncomfortable with the new environment, but he fit in better than I expected,” he continued. “He’s always had the ability to fool people. Even when he was a kid, he could fit in with others and they never realized what he was really thinking.

“He was the one who came up with the idea of drugging the girls and he even found a source through one of his old friends to get us the drug,” he said. “It was standard Rohypnol base with a few tweaks. It only stays in the blood system for six hours and you have to be directly testing for the strain if you want it to show up in a drug test.

“Jacob started throwing parties and inviting kids over,” Kaspar said. “He would pick one girl and drug her and then take her upstairs so he and I could … play. I was happy with the situation because I knew no one would catch us. It was his idea to bring in his little friends. I knew it was a mistake, but I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.”

“How did Jacob pick which boys to invite?” Jake asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kaspar replied. “He can read people. It’s one of his gifts. He has a lot of them, including the fact that he can charm almost anyone. He picked the boys and for a few months things were fine. We didn’t overdo the parties and we made sure that every girl was drugged according to plan.”

“All of that changed when Darcy Sweetin remembered what happened to her, didn’t it?” James prodded.

“It definitely wasn’t a good thing,” Kaspar said. “She made a big stink about remembering Dakota being there and he was terrified. He thought it was going to ruin his future. Luckily for us, she recanted. I still haven’t figured out why she did that.”

“Dakota’s parents paid off her parents,” James supplied. “It wasn’t her choice.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” Kaspar said, tilting his head to the side. “Anyway, I thought things would go back to normal after that, but Jacob had something else in mind.”

“What?”

“The kid has always had a curious streak, but at a certain point I realized he wasn’t interested in what we were doing because of the sex,” Kaspar explained. “That’s why I was interested in it. That’s why the other boys were interested. Jacob was a different story.

“Jacob hardly seemed interested in the sex, if you want to know the truth,” he continued. “He was much more interested in watching how everyone reacted. He was interested in how I would react when he added the other boys into our game. He was interested in how Dakota reacted when Darcy remembered what happened to her. He seemed to get perverse joy from watching the boys scramble.”

“So … what happened?” Grady asked. “What made them go into that mall that day? You were all free and clear.”

“That was Jacob,” Kaspar said. “He went through my files and stole the school letterhead. Then he wrote anonymous letters on it and instructed the boys to come up with a hundred thousand dollars if they wanted him to keep his mouth shut.

“Of course, the other boys were nowhere near as smart as Jacob,” he continued. “They believed it. They thought someone in the administration knew what they were doing. They panicked and went to Jacob for guidance, if you can believe that. It was his idea to go into the mall.”

“But he wasn’t there,” Finn protested. “He wasn’t with them that day.”

“Oh, he was there,” Kaspar countered. “He just didn’t take a gun. He walked into the mall, took a seat in the food court, and watched the chaos erupt. He had a grand time of it, too. He couldn’t stop laughing when he was recounting it. He saw Dakota die and thought it was better than a superhero movie.”

James’ stomach twisted at the admission. “So Jacob pretended to be an administrator and blackmailed the other students into doing what they did,” he said. “He had to know they would die for their efforts.”

“I don’t think he cared,” Kaspar said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure he didn’t care. Er, well, he didn’t care other than for scientific reasons. He wanted to see what they would do. He knew they would die, but he reassured them it wouldn’t happen. He was done with high school, you see. He didn’t really like those boys so he had no intention of maintaining the friendships. The boys had outlived their usefulness.”

“So he watched them die for sport?”

Kaspar nodded. “He thought it was funny.”

“What about the letters?” Jake asked. “Wasn’t he worried they would be traced back to him?”

“He’s always been good with computers,” Kaspar said. “He spoofed one of the other teacher’s email accounts just in case. To my knowledge, none of that has come up, though. He got away with it.”