The Tangerine Killer

by Claire Svendsen

  “Jill’s tough, she can survive losing a couple of fingers,” I said.

  “But what’s going to happen when he runs out of fingers?”

  “She’s got toes.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Well what am I supposed to do? Collapse and cry for poor old Jill? Act all hysterical? That’s not going to catch him is it? This is my way of dealing so deal with it.”

  Olin scowled but seemed to accept my logic. He took the bleeding envelope out to his truck to put it in an evidence bag and I applied a bit of lip gloss and mascara in the mirror while I waited.

  I felt bad for Jill but I had to admit I felt worse for myself. I was very attached to all of my fingers and most of my toes, except for the one I’d broken as a kid that now looked kind of crooked. I couldn’t imagine someone hacking them off. But what really scared me was what was going to happen after that.

  THIRTY FIVE

  He can hardly contain his fury. Sam has nearly been killed in the explosion and that wasn’t the plan at all. The slick dick was the one who was supposed to end up in hospital or better yet the morgue, not his most precious asset. What if her skin had been burned? Everything would have been ruined. From what he can see she was battered and shaken but refused to go to the hospital. Then she had just disappeared.

  He should have been there from the start, been better prepared to make sure she was nowhere near the blast. He doesn’t know how it can all have gone so horribly wrong. Now he doesn’t know where she is and he’s furious. He always knows where all his subjects are at every moment of every day. He feels powerless and out of control. At least he still has the slut in the basement, but she’s only just hanging on.

  It’s quiet down there in the dark. He sits in the corner and observes her like a lion watching its prey. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought she was sleeping but he realizes he took too much too quickly. The slut has been unconscious for much longer than he expected. He knows taking the second finger was just greedy and the extra loss of blood has caused her skin to take on a sallow complexion. He thinks she may even be in a coma but there is no way to tell. Of course if she never wakes then he will be sure. He never really intended to kill her but if she was lost during the process then that would have been okay. Now he can’t decide what to do with her.

  His technique is perfect. He’s ready for the main event. He needs to clear the room, sterilize the equipment, prepare. If only he could decide what to do with the body. He almost wishes she would wake up so he could ask her where she wants to go. He wonders if perhaps he will dump her outside a hospital but no. His new found compassion is pathetic. Weak. Not who he is at all. He reaches for the knife that lies on the floor beside him and rises. He takes one last look at the peaceful, sleeping beauty then swiftly runs the blade across her neck. The blood gushes from her jugular in a pumping motion, she makes a gurgling noise and her eyes flutter open for an instant. He smiles as the blood pools down around his feet and she reaches out feebly with a two fingered hand. Then she is gone.

  THIRTY SIX

  I managed to convince Olin that between the two of us, we could cover more ground separately than together. Plus he was aggravating the hell out of me. He thought I should lie down and rest. Please. What did I look like, an old lady? Sure I was beat to hell but that hadn’t stopped me in the past and it certainly wasn’t about to stop me now. Besides, I knew if I went with him he would make me sit in the car the whole time. It was all right for him, it wasn’t his fingers on the line. He couldn’t protect me forever. As an added bonus, if he wasn’t around then I wouldn’t have to put on a fake smile and pretend I felt fine when I really felt like shit. At least doing something would keep my mind off the pain.

  I had to track down the truth about the baby who mysteriously disappeared. I still hadn’t mentioned it to Olin and the longer I kept it from him, the worse I felt about it. I had to figure out where the child fit into the picture, if it fitted in at all. Then I’d tell him.

  So after much pushing and prodding with promises that I would call him at the first hint of trouble, Olin went off to try and track down the elusive Harvey. As if I hadn’t already been punished enough, I went to suffer the wrath of the one person I wanted to meet about as much as the Tangerine killer. My mother.

  She still lived in the house I grew up in with Derek, my stepfather. He bought the pretty little home in the historic district that she always wanted. It had white painted shutters and a small picket fence. Picture perfect. No wonder she thought Derek had been our savior. The pretty baubles he bought meant she turned a blind eye to everything that went on. I’d have rather lived in a cardboard box on the street than in a house with that man.

  Their car was parked in the driveway. It had a custom baby blue paint job that just seemed creepy and wrong, rather like Derek himself. I sat in my Jeep smoking cigarettes from the stack of packs I had stopped and bought on my way there. I didn’t buy an entire box, after all I wasn‘t actually a smoker. Buying just as many individual packs at twice the price didn’t seem as bad. But I didn’t know why I was bothering to lie to myself.

  She was there at the door before I even rang the bell. Gardening gloves in one hand, trowel in the other. All perfect blonde hair and flawless makeup. She hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  “I wondered how long it would be before you showed up.”

  The ice in her voice sent a chill down my spine.

  “Nice to see you too Mother.”

  There it was. The loving exchange of a mother and daughter reunited after years of pretending one another didn’t exist. She looked good, too good compared to the way I knew I looked and felt. Her piercing blue eyes bore right into me and I returned the stare with unwavering dedication. I had just survived an explosion. I could certainly survive my mother.

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “No.”

  “Just like that? No?”

  “That’s right, no.”

  “It’s nice to see the years haven’t mellowed you Mom.”

  “What can I say? You know you’re not welcome here.”

  I bit my tongue and refused to let her get the better of me. She wasn’t my mother, she hadn’t been for years. She was just someone I needed information from, someone I had to use to get what I needed. Just another pawn in the cat and mouse game we were all playing with the killer. A game that could end with my life. Not that she would care.

  “I’m sorry about Lisa.”

  Bull’s eye. I struck a nerve on the first blow. Her eyes welled up with tears. She blinked them back so quickly, I questioned whether I had even seen them in the first place. I’d never seen her shed a tear over me. I had to admit it stung a little.

  “Such a tragedy but then that seems to have been the theme for her whole life,” I added.

  Strike two.

  “Why do you say that?” she sniffed.

  “Well, you never really get over the loss of a child do you? Especially someone as fragile as Lisa. In fact I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did.”

  “You have no idea what you are talking about,” she said.

  “So help me set the record straight then.”

  I saw the wheels turning in her head. The absolute refusal to do anything that might help me in any way and yet her desperate need to defend Lisa even in death. As a child I always felt she would have preferred Lisa as a daughter instead of me. Perfect Lisa with her good grades and sunny disposition. Now I was surer of it than ever. If anyone could have usurped Faye in the role of fake grief, it would have been my mother. It was a role she was born to play.

  “You want me to help you?” she said.

  “No Mother, I want you to help Lisa. Tell me about this.”

  I pulled the photograph of Lisa, Frank and the baby out of my pocket and held it up, keeping it just out of reach in case she decided to try and grab it.

  “Where did you get that?”

  Her eyes were wide with surprise, magnified
by the bejeweled glasses she put on to look at the photograph.

  “It doesn’t matter. I just want you to tell me what happened to the baby and why no one seems to want to talk about it.”

  “No.”

  “No? God Mother don’t you understand? There are lives at stake here, people are getting hurt. Why are you being so stubborn?”

  My voice was loud and angry. She was pushing all my buttons and I was losing control. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it together.

  “Who is it darling?”

  Derek. His voice echoed from deep in the bowels of the house and I took an involuntary step back from the open door. I should have known he would be there. The two of them were glued at the hip. Nausea washed over me in a giant wave.

  “Nobody,” my mother called back.

  “Nobody?” I couldn’t believe she had just lied for me.

  “Look,” she stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her. “I told you never to come here. I warned you to stay away, for your own good. You understand? For your safety. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  She reached out to grab my arm but I pulled away. I didn’t know who the woman before me was but she wasn’t exactly the mother I remembered.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t have come back here. You should go home. Now. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Too late.”

  I spun around to leave but my body protested in a painful spasm which took my breath away. I paused to catch my breath and she came up behind me. I felt her breath hot and sweet on the back of my neck. I wanted to run away as fast as I could but I was frozen in place. Torn between wanting to know what she had to say and afraid of what that might be.

  “The baby wasn’t Frank’s,” she whispered.

  “Then who’s was it?”

  “If you’re going to stay, that‘s what you need to figure out.”

  “Do you know?”

  Her face told me she was hiding something. If she knew then she had to tell me. For a moment I thought she was going to speak but then she turned and went back inside, leaving me with cryptic clues and nothing else.

  I wondered what would have happened if I let her reach out and touch me. I almost wished I had but the moment passed and I couldn’t get it back. Now I just wanted to throttle the information I needed out of her with my bare hands. And chase a lot of painkillers with a bottle of Jack.

  THIRTY SEVEN

  “You need to go and interrogate my mother.”

  Olin had called and asked me to meet him at the diner for lunch to compare notes. I knew I couldn’t keep the baby thing a secret any longer or the fact that my own mother knew things she wasn’t telling me. I couldn’t go near her house again. Olin could deal with her. He’d done alright with Faye. If he could handle that train wreck then he could certainly handle my mother. I felt a little warm and fuzzy inside at the prospect of Olin handcuffing her and dragging her down to the station to interrogate.

  “Your Mother?” He looked confused.

  “Yeah you heard it right the first time.”

  I poked at the dried out bun of my burger and wondered why I hadn’t ordered something a little more palatable. The meat was greasy and the fries were soggy but Olin had ordered the same and tucked in with the gusto of a famished man. When he finished his own plate, I pushed mine towards him and he attacked it without pause. The other diners around us were also tucking into their equally greasy meals. I just felt nauseous.

  “So what does she have to do with all this?” he asked, his mouth half full of food.

  “I’m not sure but she knows more about this than she’s telling.”

  I pushed the photograph of Lisa, Frank and the baby across the table and Olin stopped eating for a second to get a better look. He didn’t ask me where I got it or how long I had been withholding it, he just shrugged.

  “And what does that have to do with anything?”

  It was true I had no evidence or proof that the mysterious baby actually had anything to do with the case at all but the more I looked at it, the worse I felt. In my mind that was proof enough.

  “According to Harvey, the baby died of sudden infant death but Jill said Lisa wouldn’t have killed herself because she was about to get her daughter back. Then my mother said Frank wasn’t the father. This is where it all began, I feel it in my gut.” I flicked the photograph with my fingernail.

  Olin continued to eat. I guessed he was thinking but I couldn’t be sure. I sank back in my vinyl seat and swallowed another painkiller with some lukewarm coffee. This time I didn’t care if he saw me. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t be able to get up. I was exhausted and everything hurt. I just wanted to go back home where nobody knew me and if they did, they still didn’t give a damn. Everything here was far too complicated. Maybe my mother was right. I could still leave if I really wanted to.

  “Look, we’re just not getting anywhere.”

  Olin finally finished eating and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “We keep going round and round questioning people but no one is telling us a thing. I spent all morning looking for Harvey and I came up with nothing. We have to get some dirt on these people if we want them to talk.”

  “Blackmail? Isn’t that a bit below the belt for the police force?”

  “What other choice do we have? We’ve got to start twisting some arms here, make people nervous, get them to rat each other out. If we don’t get a lead on where this bastard is hiding out then pretty soon I’ll have another dead body on my hands and they’re already full making sure he doesn’t snatch you.”

  “Well you’re not the only one working this case. What have the other guys come up with?”

  Olin looked uncomfortable.

  “The lab is still working on the other finger. The guys narrowed down several possible locations they thought may have been the hideout but they were all empty and the explosion pretty much obliterated any evidence that might have been at the shack.”

  “Did they find any bodies?”

  “Pieces. They’re working on identifying them now.”

  “Okay. So what is it you’re not telling me?”

  Olin picked at the edge of the table where the surface was starting to peel.

  “Why did you see Joe again after he was dragged out of your room on a stretcher? I have a report sitting on my desk that says witnesses saw you and him having drinks. What’s that about?”

  I was livid. I should have known all along they would waste precious time and resources investigating me instead of tracking down the real criminal.

  “My personal life is not part of this investigation."

  “But you are and that means we have to look into anyone in your past who might want to hurt you.”

  “I’m a private investigator. I’ve pissed off a lot of people, too many to count. Most of them would probably delight in misfortune coming my way.”

  “And the men you’ve slept with?”

  “Are none of your business,” I said.

  “But they are part of this investigation.”

  “My sex life isn’t on trial here.”

  “I’m sorry but it is.”

  He glared at me and I looked away. God damn it. I didn’t want Olin to know what a piece of shit I was when it came to men.

  “I was right all along, wasn’t I? We were never really partners. You were just babysitting me. Making sure my own investigation didn’t interfere with yours. Or maybe you hoped I’d lead you right to him.”

  I stood up to storm off, wishing I’d eaten my own crap burger and mushy fries and not given them to the man who had been lying to me. Deep down I knew a small part of me had started to fall for him and that had clouded my judgment. At least now I knew where I stood. By myself, just like always.

  I turned and said. “Not that you’d believe me but I was telling Joe to fuck off, okay?”

  “So why didn’t you just tell me that?”
>
  I didn’t answer. I knew that when it came to men I was about as self-destructive as you could get. From the moment I met Olin I wanted him and I had been doing everything in my power since then to stop that from happening.

  “Goodbye Olin. I expect I’ll be seeing you some time after I’m abducted.”

  “Wait,” he said. “You can’t leave.”

  “Why? Am I under arrest?”

  “No. Don’t do this Sam. Don’t push me away like this. I know you’re hurt and confused but you don’t need to do this on your own.”

  I looked straight into those damned soft brown eyes and tried to see into his heart, into his soul. He was a good man, I knew that. All I was doing was hurting him. It was better for him if I wasn’t around.

  “I’ve always been alone,” I said.

  I left the diner with my head held high and didn’t look back. Olin didn’t follow and he wouldn’t have changed my mind even if he had. Perhaps the best plan would be to leave this shit hole of a town behind like my mother suggested and go somewhere the killer would never find me. I had money. An extended stay on a nice sandy island would probably do the trick or maybe a luxury cruise. Just long enough for him to forget all about me and snatch someone else instead or better yet give up and move on. Devise some other dastardly plan that had nothing to do with me and the people I knew.

  But Jill was still out there somewhere and alive or not, I felt I owed it to her to find the man who had abducted her and make him pay. At least with the police off my ass I would be free to dole out my own brand of punishment. I felt the vigilante in me taking over. I knew I had my mother to thank for that.

  THIRTY EIGHT

  Alone again. Free to smoke my cigarettes, pop my painkillers and go wherever I pleased. So why did I feel like shit? Surely it was just my bruised ribs, burnt skin and concussed head but deep down I knew it was more than that. I’d been alone my whole life. I never depended on anyone and I used people to get what I wanted. Information. Money. Sex. It had all been the same to me. But Olin had been different. I hadn’t used or abused him. For a few days I hadn’t been completely alone and I liked it. Now I felt like a part of my insides had been ripped out.