Dead End

by Jeramy Gates

  Val felt something tugging her to the west. Maybe it was the call of her old stomping grounds in Idaho, or the spirit of the landscape she knew so well. Maybe it was the desire to catch up with old friends and long ignored family members, or the lure of the setting sun on the deep blue Pacific. It didn’t matter. She’d drive in that direction until something caught her interest. Then, she’d stop for a while before moving on to the next place. There was no hurry. It felt good.

  Chapter 29

  It was four p.m. when Lynette Webster sent the twins upstairs to play. The transformation of the hidden attic-room into a Disney-like palace had begun almost immediately upon its discovery. The girls had taken it unto themselves to relocate all of their toys, dolls, and princess gowns and tiaras into the secret room. When Lynette saw what they had been doing, she had been so impressed by their diligence and creativity that she’d helped them to decorate the small space.

  “You have one hour to play in your castle,” she told them that afternoon. “Then you can help me make dinner.”

  She didn’t need to tell them twice. The girls loved the fact that they had a secret hideout in the house. And Lynette loved the fact that she could send them upstairs to play for an hour or two during the day without worrying about them, so she could get some extra work done.

  Lynette’s accounting business wasn’t too impressive at the moment: she only had four clients, but two were rapidly growing businesses and another had just incorporated. If she could just hang onto those clients, Lynette might find her humble practice expanding in another year. She might even need to hire an assistant and rent an office in town.

  Lynette listened to her daughters’ muffled voices as they vanished upstairs. She retired to the PC in the living room. Within seconds, she was tabbing through spreadsheets and tallying invoices with the speed and accuracy of a samurai swinging his blade.

  Later that afternoon, Lynette saw a glint through the window, a momentary flash like sunlight bouncing off a windshield. That was strange. There wasn’t any road in that direction, and there shouldn’t be anyone out there. She stared out in that direction, but saw nothing. Her curiosity piqued, she leaned over to where she could draw her gaze across the entire field north of the house. The glare, she realized, had come from the windshield of a small single-engine plane flying low and moving in her direction. The plane appeared to be making an emergency landing. Without a second thought, Lynette snatched her phone off the desk and ran for the door.

  She was in the driveway and moving toward the field in seconds. Her chest went tight as she saw the vehicle plunge into the wheat, throwing a cloud of dust in the air. Though the crop wasn’t tall, the rolling landscape obscured her view. Lynette couldn’t guess whether the plane had crashed, or if it had managed a successful landing.

  She raced through the field, swiping the long waving strands away as she forged a path. Up ahead, the dust cloud swirled on the breeze and then vanished into the sky. She burst onto the scene, panting, eyes wide with panic. The plane rested before her, a small single-engine Cessna, the white wingtips stretching out across the tips of the wheat. The pilot was nowhere in sight.

  He must have collapsed, she thought, leaning closer. She reached for the door handle, and froze as the icy steel edge of a knife blade touched her throat. The heat of a man’s body pressed up against her from behind.

  Panic gripped her. Lynette’s mind swam, searching, struggling to make sense out of this. The man reached out with his left hand, pushing the door shut, and she saw horrible blisters running from the back of his hand to his elbow, where they disappeared under the sleeve of his navy blue polo shirt. He smelled like sweat and urine. His breath was hot against the back of her neck.

  “Shhh!” he whispered. “Which way to the house?”

  She made a whimpering sound. “No, please!”

  The knife moved, slicing delicately across the surface of her skin. It bit just deep enough to leave a trail of blood. Her whimper died into a sob. Tears began to flow. The man moved, spinning her around. She stared into his face, aghast. His burns extended all the way up the left side of his body, reappearing under his collar to climb his neck and the side of his head. Part of his left ear was missing. What remained of the organ was a small, black and blistered protrusion of flesh. His left eyelid had swollen shut, and most of his hair was gone. All that remained were whisker-like stubs protruding here and there amongst the third-degree burns on his scalp. The bubbling, blistered flesh glistened with some sort of burn lotion.

  He touched the tip of the knife to her chest. She winced as it pierced the fabric of her blouse and bit into her skin. “The house,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  In the kitchen, the man struggled to tie her in a chair. The rope wasn’t cooperating, or his hands weren’t. Not surprising, considering his condition. She wondered what had happened to him. Had it been a car accident? A burning building? And what about the plane? She didn’t dare ask.

  Lynette contemplated making a run for it. With his physical disabilities, she might actually escape. But what then? What about the girls? She couldn’t just leave them with him. Lynette had no choice but to sit there, patiently waiting for the man who would probably kill her to finish tying her up. That was the most excruciating part of all. She was cooperating. What was wrong with her? The girls were just upstairs…

  When he was finally satisfied that she wouldn’t escape, Lynette’s captor made a quick search of the first floor. He returned a minute later with a bottle of vodka under his arm and a photograph in his right hand. His left hung limp at his side, oozing and overworked from the exertion. He brandished the photo, showing it to her like evidence of a crime. It was a picture of their family vacation last summer, the trip to Disneyland. It was the whole family, with seven-foot-tall Mickey standing in the middle, the twins at each side.

  “Where are they?” her captor demanded.

  Lynette bit her lip. What could she say? What if he caught her in a lie? She had to buy some time. She was rolling the dice, and the girls’ lives depended on it. “Gone,” she said.

  “Gone where?”

  “Paul is at work. The girls are spending the week with their grandmother.”

  “Work?”

  She glanced at the clock. Paul would be home in ten minutes. Twenty at most. There was no point in lying. “He’ll be here soon. Around five-thirty, usually.”

  The man wore a skeptical look, but the answer must have pacified him. He set the photo on the counter and struggled to wrench the cap off the bottle. He tilted his head back and swallowed several gulps. Lynette watched him stand there swaying for a few seconds, and then he disappeared back into the living room.

  A wisp of movement caught her attention. She drew her gaze to the stairs. To her horror, Lynette saw Ava’s face smiling back at her. Lynette shook her head, her eyes going wide. Go, she mouthed, nodding back upstairs. Ava frowned. Behind her, Sophie appeared and gave her mother a cheerful wave. Lynette became frantic. Her heart hammered in her chest

  Go, go, go! Hurry! Please understand, she thought. Please, God, make them understand!

  There was a noise in the doorway. She jerked her head in that direction and saw her captor appear with a towel in hand. As she watched, he cut the edge of the cloth and then tore a long strip. That too, took some effort. As he worked, when it was safe, she threw a glance back at the girls. They were gone. She relaxed visibly. Somehow, she hoped, they had understood. They knew it wasn’t safe. Or maybe they thought it was a game.

  Please…

  The man appeared before her, blocking her view. He dangled the shred of cloth in front of her and then bound it around her head as a gag. She made no move to stop him; not so much as a whimper. She accepted the humiliation. There was no arguing it now: she was his captive. She couldn’t even scream. Then, like clockwork, she heard Paul’s sedan pull into the driveway.

  Chapter 30

  Valkyrie checked into a hotel in Ohio the
first night. She went to bed immediately, and she was back on the road by eight-thirty. That afternoon, she was in Kansas. It was there, amidst the endless rolling fields of grain under the impossibly wide blue sky that Val finally felt like she could take a breath. The past was behind her now. It was time to move on to a different stage in her life.

  She turned up the stereo, rolled down the windows, and let the clean country air fill her nostrils. She felt a burden lift off her shoulders. She had nowhere to be. It felt strange, but good… free. Especially knowing that the Collector wasn’t out there anymore; that she didn’t have to worry about any more victims. For the moment, the world was as safe as it ever could be.

  Around eight, Val stopped at a roadside diner. It was a little place in the middle of nowhere with a name she would forget by morning, but she chose that place because semi trucks surrounded it. She had long since learned this indicated a reputable restaurant with good food, good prices, and little chance of food poisoning.

  As expected, the food was high quality. The waiter was charming, and the bill was comfortable, considering the size of the plate he’d given her. Val couldn’t eat half of it. She took the rest in a to-go box because she couldn’t stand the idea of throwing away that much good food.

  After a pleasant day on the road and a nice dinner, Val felt like treating herself. She kept her eye out for a fancy hotel, the type with a spa bath and a gym downstairs; a place where she might even stay a few days and contemplate her future. Unfortunately, there were no such places along the highway in east Nebraska. There were however, plenty of budget-friendly motels where a vacationing family might stop on their way through town to somewhere more interesting, or the brothers of the Big Moose Lodge could gather for their annual convention.

  Val found herself in one of these simple, but adequate motels. Needless to say, there was no spa tub. There was a pool, but it was outside, it wasn’t heated, and it didn’t look particularly clean. There was also a gym, if you could call it that. It was in the basement -a dark, humid, smelly room that looked like a better place to catch a fungus than lose a pound. Val passed.

  She hit the road bright and early the next morning. Valkyrie was still headed west, if for no other reason than a longing to visit home again. Not the farm -she’d already done that- but it would be nice to spend a few days in town, maybe call on some old friends. And after that? she thought. Who knows?

  The phone rang, and she absently tapped the screen on the dash. Thinking it was Matt, she blurted out “Did you make your decision?”

  “Hello, Valkyrie,” said a breathy, grating voice.

  Valkyrie slammed on the brakes, locking them up. The tires screamed, black smoke churning up into the air as the Packard fishtailed to a stop in the middle of the two-lane highway. A breeze swept across the fields, tousling the tips of the grain like an unseen creature moving through them.

  “Are you there?” said the voice. “You didn’t wreck your car, did you?”

  “You! It can’t be…”

  “Oh, but I am,” he said. “You didn’t think it would be that easy to kill me, did you?”

  Val gripped the wheel, her knuckles going white. The leather made creaking noises. She licked her lips, threw a glance at the long stretch of empty road in the rear-view mirror. “Where are you?”

  “I’m waiting for you,” he said with a low chuckle.

  “Waiting? Where?”

  “I think you know, Val. It’s time to bring this thing full circle.”

  “Full circle?” Her eyes widened. “Are you in Idaho?”

  “Bingo,” he said. “B-I-N-G-O was his name-o. Being back on the farm lifts my spirits so.”

  Her heart caught in her throat. “I don’t live there anymore. That’s not my home!”

  “Oh, but it is still your home. I’ve been trying to explain that to this family, but they’re not quite getting it.”

  “You son of a-”

  “Easy, Val. You don’t want to test my patience.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I already told you. I want to finish this. I don’t know why I hesitated before. You’ve made a real fool of me.”

  “If you hurt those people, you’ll wish you had died on that boat.”

  “We’ll see. But if you really want to save them, you know what you need to do.”

  “I’m a thousand miles away.”

  “Drive fast. I’ll wait.”

  Val slammed the car into gear. She stomped on the accelerator and the tires screamed. “I’m on my way,” she said in a cool voice.

  “Good, don’t take long. I tend to get bored. And one more thing: No cops this time. And no friends. I’ll be looking out for you, and if you’re not alone, I’ll kill them all.”

  The line went dead. Val forced the accelerator to the floor. The landscape became a blur outside the windshield. The Bluetooth connection went back to playing jazz music. She tapped the screen to turn it off.

  Chapter 31

  Lynette cried out to warn Paul as he came through the front door that evening, but her gag smothered the sound to a muffled cry. Paul found her bound and gagged, the killer standing behind her, the edge of his long knife held to her throat. He tensed up as his gaze swept across the scene. His posture went rigid.

  Lynette saw so many things written in his face in that one moment. Should he fight, or flee? Were there other criminals there, or just the one? And what about the girls? The killer saw his reaction, watched him absorb the scene and simply said, “No.” Then he moved the blade a little against Lynette’s throat so that it glinted in the light.

  Paul’s shoulders slumped. Like Lynette, he had no choice but to consent. How could he fight back, when the killer had a knife to his wife’s throat? He obediently took a seat in the chair next to her, facing the dining area and the windows to the front yard. He made no effort to struggle or defend himself. The killer bound him -not with rope this time, but with some duct tape he had found in the cabinet by the pantry.

  Lynette saw the terror in her husband’s eyes, and she tried to relay to him through her expressions that the twins were okay. For now, anyway. She couldn’t be too obvious about it, and she couldn’t be sure if he got the message.

  The killer went back to his drinking. The bottle at this point was half empty. Over the next two hours, he polished off the rest. He had also taken some of the pain pills from the medicine cabinet, left over from Paul’s injured knee last spring. Paul had been flying a drone in the back field with the girls when it happened. The drone had crash landed, and the three of them had gone running after it. In the process, Paul stepped in a gopher hole and nearly broke his leg. He had come back limping, with a girl at each side, barely able to stand on his injured leg. By dinner, the knee had swollen to twice its normal size. A few hours later, Paul had been in the E.R. getting x-rays and the girls were spending the night with Lynette’s sister Angie.

  The killer continued popping those pills now and then, and finished off the vodka. Around eight p.m. he came back into the kitchen with a crazed look in his eyes and drew up a chair to sit before them. He turned it around backwards, so that he could fold his arms across the backrest as he stared them down. He still had that knife in hand, and he toyed with it as he spoke:

  “I suppose you have questions,” he said with slight slur. “Normally, I wouldn’t bother. But I’m bored. Way I see it, I could start cutting you, or I could tell you what this is all about. How ‘bout that?”

  Lynette gave a frantic nod of her head. He smiled. “Good. Thought so.” He frowned, pointing the knife at her. “I presume you mean talk?”

  She nodded again, and he laughed. “Good, good.”

  She glanced at Paul, terrified. The poor man looked broken. The fight had gone out of his eyes. Like her, he only hoped at this point that the girls might survive.

  What would that be like for them, she wondered. How would it affect them, growing up without their parents? Knowing that they had been killed by some stranger who’
d broken into their home… It would be devastating. It would change them forever, haunt them…

  The killer leaned back a little, folding his arms across the back of the chair as he tapped the knife against the chair frame. “I’m what they call a psychopath. Not the TV kind, the real kind. I was always different. I knew right away that I wasn’t like the other kids. When the teacher made a joke, they laughed. I watched them, wondering what it meant. I learned to emulate their responses: happiness, fear, surprise. But I never felt any of that. I still don’t.

  “But when you’re different like that, you notice other things. I was smart. I knew that, because I could compare myself to my peers. I found adults easier to understand. Most adults are sociopaths…”

  He went silent, gazing into the distance. Lynette and Paul exchanged a worried glance. But their captor wasn’t done. He sighed. “I killed a man when I was twelve. I had killed other things before that: a few cats, a dog, a squirrel. I wasn’t very methodical about it, just curious. What is death, I wondered. I’m still not sure. I’ve seen it so many times…

  “One summer, a man came to my door.” The killer smiled as he savored this memory. “He was overweight, dressed up in a nice suit but his belly stuck out so far. I really hated that man. I didn’t know why. I wanted to kill him from the moment I saw him. I wanted to cut that gut open and see what was inside. But he was so much bigger than me.”

  The killer’s smile widened as he focused on Lynette. He gazed into her eyes and she stared back, horrified. “I offered him tea,” he went on. “I went into the kitchen, boiled a pot of water, and when it was ready, I mixed it with drain cleaner.” He shook his head, chuckling. “I know, rookie move, right? How could he not smell it? Anyway, I had a kitchen knife tucked into my belt. When he took a drink, he started to gag, and I reached behind my back-”