Darper glanced at him as though Marcus’s temperament was the last thing on his mind.
“Hey!” Marcus shouted, standing up. “I’m talking to you.”
Darper pointed his gun at him. “Get away from the shelves. Go on. To the back.”
Marcus kept his ground as Darper advanced.
“Do I have to ask you again?” Darper demanded.
“What are you going to do? Shoot me?”
Darper’s face froze. His lips twisted and his nose scrunched up.
His fingers tensed.
“Alright,” Marcus said. “Take it easy.”
“To the back.”
Marcus backed away slowly, his eyes searching for something to knock over. For something to throw at Darper.
There was plenty to choose from.
“You know I’m innocent,” Marcus said. “You know that right?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Darper replied.
Back further they went.
“Why? Are you working for someone then? Someone want me dead? Is that it?”
Darper shook his head.
Marcus made it to the wall. Pressed his back against it.
“What happens when you have to kill me though?” Marcus asked.
There was no mercy in Darper’s eyes.
He was waiting for Marcus to make his move.
“I guess I just do it,” Darper said.
CHAPTER 53
“Oh God… Oh fucking hell… What in Jesus Christ’s name…”
Taylor’s eyes fluttered.
She felt the presence of someone standing over her. His hands at her waist and then under her armpits. He lifted her up and rested her against the wall, swatting the spiders off of her.
“You poor thing… What have they done…”
Taylor opened her eyes.
She caught the hands of the man attempting to help her.
“It’s alright,” she said. “I’m okay…”
Her vision came into focus.
She recognized him.
It was the C.I.D. Director who had just been in Rose’s office a few minutes ago.
He continued to dust her off, despite Taylor’s attempt at resistance.
“I said I’m fine, you don’t have to…”
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Shandling. Detective … Taylor Shandling…”
She stepped away from him, straightening herself up.
There was something odd about the way he was looking at her. Something unsettling.
“I’m Matthew Feirstein. I’m supposed to be in charge of –”
“I know who you are,” Taylor said.
Feirstein nodded. He looked back in the direction of the interview room where the hose and machine were set up, the spiders crawling about everywhere.
“Was it Jack?” Feirstein asked. “Is he here?”
Taylor nodded.
“He came after you.”
“Yeah.”
Taylor looked around.
They were alone up here.
“I have to be going,” Taylor said.
Feirstein didn’t reply right away, hesitating.
Taylor turned around and started walking in the opposite direction.
“Wait up,” Feirstein called, chasing after her.
She increased her stride, but he caught up.
“You have to lock this floor down,” Taylor said. “I don’t think the spiders are poisonous, but obviously you don’t want anyone else being exposed to them.”
“I’ll make the call as soon as I know you’re okay.”
They stopped a few feet away from the elevator.
Taylor reached out and pressed the button.
“What are you doing up here, all alone?” she asked him. “Don’t you have a hostage situation downstairs?”
Feirstein adjusted his tie. “No, I… There were reports of someone spotted up here. I thought it might have been Darper.”
The elevator doors opened.
Taylor stepped through them and looked back at him.
“Where are you going?” Feirstein demanded.
“To save my friend,” Taylor answered.
CHAPTER 54
Erin could feel his rough and coarse hands fondling her breasts and buttocks. His dirt riddled fingers inside where they shouldn’t be. His slurring, drunken breath.
This wasn’t a man she was dealing with. This was a beast. A creature of revile and disgust.
She fought him.
With unmoving hands and unmoving legs.
With eyes that wouldn’t even open.
She fought him with her mind, until she was –
Awake.
“Motherfucker…”
His molesting impressions gradually withdrew as she realized he was no longer in the room with her. That he hadn’t been here in a while. There was blood dripping from the side of her head. She’d passed out.
“Oouch…”
Her body throbbed with pain.
Flashes entered her mind, flashes of the dirty cop taking her out to the field to execute her, the gun pressed against her temple. Him laughing. Like it was a joke.
But the bullet didn’t come.
He was saving her for something else.
Erin ripped the black sheet of plastic away and sat up in the bathtub. The lights were on in the adjacent room, but in here things were hard to see. She stood up, aware she was naked. Freezing cold. He really had been abusing her.
“Fucking asshole,” she seethed through clenched teeth.
She stumbled across the concrete and came to a curtain which she pushed away, revealing the next room.
It was wide, open. Hardly a stretch of carpet in sight.
There was a pool table in the centre. A dark-skinned man tied to a chair, his face beaten to a pulp. Slumped over. Not moving.
Erin spied her jeans and sprawled out across the floor.
She hurried over and got dressed.
“Who – whose there…”
The man in the chair was talking to her.
Once her clothes were on she rushed over to him.
“Uh, my name is – my name –”
“You gotta get help. Call the cops. The real cops. He’s gonna kill us. He’s lost his frickin’ mind…”
“Alright,” Erin said. “You … stay there…”
“I ain’t going anywhere. I’m fucking tied to this fucking thing. Can’t you help me –”
“Just try to stay calm. I’m working on it.”
Erin turned around, spotted a door in the far corner and made her way over.
She stopped halfway.
From the corner of her eye she spied something sitting on the pool table.
Her gaze shifted to the left where she saw there was a large, black automatic pistol.
In the middle of an open newspaper.
CHAPTER 55
Ross was outside. He was leaning against his car in the driveway, a cigarette in his hand. Phone in the other. Dialing. Dialing. Waiting for him to answer.
“Hello.”
“Darper. How good of you to take my call.”
“Yeah well. Things aren’t looking too good at the moment.”
“I had a feeling you would say that,” Ross remarked. He exhaled. Flicked the cigarette away. “How far did you get?”
“I’m trapped in a storage room in the underground car park.”
“Do you still have Marcus with you?”
A pause. “Yeah. He’s here.”
“Put him on.”
“Okay…”
Ross waited.
“This is Marcus.”
“Very good. Hand the phone back to Darper.”
“First tell me what you want.”
Ross laughed. “All in good time.”
“You know I didn’t do it, right?”
“Never thought you’d say that.”
“Jesus, I’m INNOCENT –”
“Yeah, put Darper back on�
�”
Ross stepped away from his car. He began descending the drive.
“Dwayne. This has gone far enough,” Darper said returning to the line.
“I understand the situation,” Ross replied. “I’m willing to make a compromise.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
Ross approached the outer garage. He moved round the side.
“Will you let Erin go then?”
“I will do that for you.”
“Thank you. I’m very relieved to hear that.”
“But first you have to kill Marcus.”
Ross stopped at the side of the garage, where a tall axe was resting.
He picked it up.
“What?”
“Just say he went for your gun or something. And the thing went off. There was nothing you could do.”
Ross steered himself round to the garage door.
Put his hand to it.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I know that Erin won’t be coming back if you don’t.”
Ross pushed open the garage door.
“Surely … you can’t expect me to…”
“Oh, but I do…”
Ross staggered past the pool table without looking at it.
The curtain was hanging as he’d left it.
“But you don’t even know whether he’s Spider Jack or not! He could be innocent!”
Ross pushed the curtain back. “Maybe it’s not about whether he’s innocent or not. Maybe it’s about you, Scott.”
“Me?”
“Sure, why not?”
Ross turned on the bathroom light.
Erin was still in the bath, the plastic covering her.
“Why do you hate me so much?” Scott demanded. “I was always willing to look the other way with you. I never ratted you out. Why are you doing this?”
“Maybe I’m just sick of chasing after the bad guys,” Ross said. “Maybe it’s time I become one.”
“Alright. You win. Just … give me a moment to think.”
There was a pause.
Ross looked down and saw the plastic slowly peel away.
She was there, underneath.
Pointing the gun at him.
His mouth fell. He dropped the axe.
“I’m doing it. I’m doing it now,” Scott said.
Ross blinked a couple of times. “That’s not even load –”
CHAPTER 56
It was a little after nine pm when Taylor’s car made a left and pulled into the tennis club’s car park. She just sat there for a few minutes not doing anything. There wasn’t much in the way of wind or rain outside. The night had become still.
She reached over to the paper bag sitting in the passenger seat beside her. A fresh purchase. The seal unbroken.
Taylor sat the vodka on her lap and broke the cap off. Staring ahead into the dark, glittering reserve opposite, she raised the bottle to her lips and drank.
And drank.
And drank.
In a way, she knew it was wrong. Wrong that she should take any pleasure in this at all. It was Sal’s drunkenness that had pushed her away from him. From opening up. What a night it would have been if she’d been able to tell him about this place, while he was still alive. She’d watched him get so invested in Nadine’s tale from her past, with her abuser. It must have broken Sal when he found out Nadine’s story was all bullshit. He did find out after all, didn’t he? In the end. Before he passed. Before he was there, in Taylor’s arms, dying…
She wept.
This was real. Taylor’s monster was real. She’d just been standing opposite him in the hall. She’d felt his strength. She’d heard his voice. When his mask came off, it almost didn’t matter what face was lurking underneath. Whether it was one of her old friends. Or someone she may have seen at the office.
Or a complete and total stranger.
It didn’t matter who he was.
Tomorrow morning she’d still be Taylor.
And he’d still be Jack.
If either of them made it that far. Taylor had doubts.
She put the bottle aside for the moment and opened the glovebox. A gun dropped out, fell into her hand. She reached in and grabbed a fresh cartridge, and changed it from underneath.
The bottle went to her lips again.
She drank it hard.
“This one’s for you, Sal,” she mumbled, raising it in the air.
Of course she knew she was kidding herself.
This was all hers.
CHAPTER 57
The car door slammed. Taylor staggered out of it, the gun in her pants. Her hand still wrapped around the bottle. She drew in a fresh gasp of night air. It was what she needed. What she craved. She looked back at the tennis courts, only noticing now that the lights were still on and there were people still there, having a hit. How easily it would have been, to paint a sun in the sky. To fill it up with light blue atmosphere and fluffy white clouds. She could see herself there in 1993. As a little girl. Being left alone by her parents while they played their games.
She turned away from it, back to the road. The gravel scraping underneath her boots. The bottle raised again, the vodka falling down her throat.
Taylor pressed forward.
She walked through the rest of the car park and over the footpath to the edge of the road. A couple of cars went by. Left and right she looked. Then it was safe to proceed ahead.
She walked across the edge of the reserve, the grass still lit brightly by the artificial streetlights. She staggered and stumbled forward towards the path, the light growing dimmer with each step.
How easy.
How easy it would have been to get lost out here.
But Taylor knew the way. She knew what the trees were supposed to look like and what angles the rocky pathway would take. She knew when to go right. She knew when to turn left.
She knew when she should keep going straight ahead.
Before she knew it she was walking past the playground, almost glimpsing a shadowy outline of herself sitting in the swing. Reading a book.
Taylor looked away, taking another drink. The tears swelling her eyes.
She followed the path around drenched in shadow.
Until she was there.
At the base of the tree.
She put the bottle down by the edge of it and put her hands to the planks, forcing herself up.
The insides of the treehouse were dark and deserted. She’d been able to see that from the ground.
But what she hadn’t seen was that there was a person sitting in there, waiting for her. Right by the window.
Taylor stepped through the archway, ducking her head.
As their eyes turned towards her.
“Oh, it’s you,” Taylor murmured. “I guess I should have worked that one out.”
Ms. Redcroft smiled. “We left the precinct about the same time. I saw you getting into your car. Wasn’t sure who would make it here first…”
“I had a stop for something.”
“Of course, you did.”
Taylor edged in further. “So, what do I call you now? Vera? Ms. Redcroft? Or do I call you, Charlotte?”
“I’d still prefer Vera. I don’t go by Charlotte anymore.”
Taylor pulled the gun from her pants.
“Please, there’s no need for that,” Vera said. “I wouldn’t dare lift a finger against you. I’m not a violent person.”
Taylor sat down on the mattress opposite her. “Have you any idea the grief you’ve caused me?”
Vera laughed.
Hysterically.
“Hey!” Taylor said after moment. “Cut that out!”
“Oh my, I just, I can’t even…”
Taylor pressed the gun against her cheek. “I’m not kidding!”
Vera’s smile faded. “I just thought it was funny because whatever trivialities you’ve dealt with in the past eleven hours is nothing compared to the sadness you left me with.”
<
br /> “What?”
“You were so lucky. I know your parents weren’t together, but at least yours cared about you. Mine would just leave me in the house unattended for weeks at a time. I didn’t get to go to school. I didn’t get to have friends. You were my last hope. If only you’d come back when you said you would. We could have been friends forever.”
Taylor lowered her weapon.
She got up and sat beside Vera.
“You followed him, didn’t you?” Taylor said. “After that day.”
Vera nodded. “I was determined. Even more than you were later on. I was more determined than you and your friends put together.”
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t even get past the river, could you?”
“How do you know that?”
“I made it as far as the courtyard before I had to stop. There were birds. Everywhere. I was surrounded. They were pecking at my skin. I could have died. Instead he turned back for me. Pushed them away. And then he took me to his home…”
“Beyond the forest?”
“Beyond the courtyard, beyond the maze…”
“Maze? What maze?”
Vera shook her head. “It’s silly now, I suppose. I mean, I’m not crazy. I know you didn’t mean to leave me there. You wouldn’t have if you knew what would happen to me. Even Jack stopped the killing spree eventually. He grew up too. Saw it for what it was.”
“So what changed? Why did you start up again?”
“You’d have to speak to him about that. I know I’ve played my part now.”
“What does that mean?”
Vera sucked in a breath. “Just … just look, would you.”
She pointed Taylor to the small, rectangular window.
And as she peered out she saw it was him again – the man in red – walking with his back to them, through the grassy field.
A moment in time that had been repeated.
Over
And over
And OVER
Taylor turned back to Charlotte and grabbed her hands. “He’s not getting away this time, you understand?”
Vera nodded, her lips turning inward.
Taylor could see the fear in her eyes.
“He’s not getting away…”
CHAPTER 58
Spider Jack (Guess The Killer Book 2) Page 12