“What is so funny?” he spat.
“You,” I choked.
“You think I’m funny? I bet you won’t think this is funny.”
He pushed the blade into my neck. At first I felt nothing and then a tiny line of fire blazed across my skin as it started to bleed. I looked straight up at him, unflinching.
“You should just get it over and done with,” I told him. “It will save you a lot of trouble.”
“Should I?”
“Yes. Whatever you want from me, you’ll never get it.”
He pulled the blade away and wiped it on a piece of gauze that was lying on the table behind him. The cool, calm Matt was back but I caught a glimpse of the unstable monster beneath. He may have thought he was this new person, a cold and calculated killer, but I knew different and I’d just seen my way out.
SEVENTY SIX
“If you want to tell your story, go ahead,” I smiled. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
“You’ve got all the time I’ll let you have,” he said.
“Well yes, I suppose that’s true. So go on then, I’m all ears. Tell me your sad little sob story. I’ll listen. I’ll even tell you I feel sorry for you. If that’s what you want?”
He grunted and then he kicked something. It clattered onto the floor. Yes. There it was. I knew the rage had to be lying beneath the surface, an ant’s nest just begging to be kicked.
“You’ll do what I say,” he whispered.
“Poor Matt,” I laughed. “Can’t even control the woman he’s got strapped down to a table. I’m a captive audience. I’m all ears. Are you going to gag me now? Shut me up once and for all?”
He was in my face, his eyes burning bright with anger. It hadn’t taken much to push his buttons. I had to be careful that I didn’t press the wrong ones and bait him into killing me prematurely. My goal was escape, not death.
“You really think I care about your sob story?” I looked straight up into his mad eyes. “How nobody ever loved you, how you’ve suffered? How you like to take out your petty frustrations on other people. Make them suffer like you have. Yawn. Heard it all before from smarter killers than you.”
“You little bitch,” he spat. “How dare you?”
“How dare I? What did you think was going to happen when you finally got your hands on me? We’d sit and reminisce over a cup of tea? You beat the shit out of me when I was too little to defend myself. You made my life a living hell, one that only got worse once you disappeared. So guess what, fuck you.”
I could tell he was torn. Part of him wanted to kill me but there was something he was struggling with, something I hadn’t seen before. Restraint. He obviously learnt a few things over the years. He wasn’t the impetuous child he’d once been, just like I wasn’t the victim anymore.
“Wasting time with sluts and adulterers,” I carried on. “How could you even stand it?”
“Shut up.”
“Their filth on your hands. In this room. On your table. I’m disgusted that I’m even laying here where that prostitute was. You can’t get much lower than carving up a whore.”
His cheeks were red. There was a vein pulsing in his temple. I had him. I’d been able to bait him even back when I was a child. It was so much easier now. Just a few more minutes and I’d have him right where I wanted him.
“You know what?” he said. “I think you’re right. Silence is golden.”
He turned to the table and poured something from a brown glass bottle onto a section of gauze. When he held it over my nose and mouth, I tried not to cry.
SEVENTY SEVEN
This time there was no dream. No hallucinations. Just blackness that I fell into like a soft blanket. I wanted to stay there forever, where it was warm and dark. I felt safe and loved. I wondered if I was dead. No such luck.
When I opened my eyes I was lying on my stomach. My joints and muscles cramped and stiff, my head tilted to the side. The table was as hard and unyielding as ever. My shirt had been cut off and lay in shreds on the floor. My bra beside it, the lace slashed to ribbons. I started to shiver. If he’d done that to my clothes then what had he done to me?
My hands were still restrained but they felt looser now. There was movement in the leather cuffs that hadn’t been there before. He hadn’t been as diligent this time. Perhaps I could free myself after all.
I scanned the back portion of the room, looking for anything I could use to aid my escape. There was a stainless steel table holding scalpels and medical equipment. A large wooden chest with a carved lid. I strained to make out anything else in the darkness. My head throbbed as I lifted it up for a better look.
Oh my God. There were photographs pinned to the wall. A sick procession of my life. There I was, the day my mother had taken me to the park. The day she told me we were going to live with Derek and his son Matt. There were so many. In each I was a little older. They continued on long after Matt had run away. There I was in the grocery store, picking out tins of soup. Then out on a date in a badly lit restaurant, laughing over a bowl of pasta. One showed me jogging in the early morning around my neighborhood, headphones on as I blocked out the noisy world around me. The sick fuck had been stalking me for years.
At the end of the line of photos I saw something out of the corner of my eye, hanging from the ceiling. There it was, the dream catcher carved from Jill’s skin. It was beautiful, in a grotesque sort of way. Suspended like a giant snowflake. Was that what he was going to do to me? Carve me up. Brand me forever. Or just torture me until I couldn’t take it anymore.
I wondered if Olin had figured out I was missing yet. Wrapped up in the rescue of his son, I very much doubted he’d even given me a second thought. I had to give it to Matt. He planned everything just right.
SEVENTY EIGHT
I heard his steps on the stairs. Stomping down in a way he hadn't before. The door flew open and hit the wall. Something had happened to really piss him off.
"So you're awake then," he said.
I didn't reply.
"So what I've been wondering, while you've been sleeping, is what the hell is this?"
He stepped over to the table and dug a pointed finger into my back.
"What is what?" I asked. I had no idea what he was talking about.
"This," he shouted. "Your back."
Then it dawned on me. He planned to use me as his perfect specimen. Jill had just been a trial run. I was going to be the real piece of work. His masterpiece. But that could never happen. No wonder he was pissed.
"How could you let this happen?" he spat.
"Shit happens Matt. Get over it."
"But your skin. Your beautiful skin."
"Yeah well it's not beautiful now and it wouldn’t have been after you carved the shit out of it either so just get over it. I have."
I hadn't thought about my back in a very long time. It wasn't the sort of thing I spent a lot of time looking at in the mirror, at least not anymore. It had been a crisp day in October when I staked out a drug dealers squat. He'd stolen money from a client and I'd been hired to retrieve both the money and the client’s daughter. It wasn't the sort of case I usually took on but business had been slow and I needed the cash.
Someone had tipped them off that I was coming. The ensuing fight hadn't been pretty and during the struggle I was pushed down onto the hot exhaust of a running car. I’d been in the hospital for a week and had a skin graft to show for it. Back then it was the most pain I ever had to endure. Regardless I still managed to get the girl and the money. Plus the client paid my hospital bills and gave me a hefty bonus. I hadn’t had to work for the rest of the year. It had been worth it.
"All the time I've wasted," he said. "I risked everything for this one moment and now it's been ruined. You've ruined it."
"I still have lots of other things you can carve," I said helpfully.
He picked up a scalpel and held it up to the light. If I could get him to come closer, perhaps I’d try and take it from him.
<
br /> "No. It has to be a back. Nothing else will do."
"Really? I had no idea. What's wrong with a stomach or a nice thigh?"
"What's wrong with a stomach?" he shouted. "Flesh stretched and distorted, full of fat and gore. Disgusting. The back is pure. Untainted. Holy."
I had no idea what kind of crack he had been smoking or where this insane obsession with backs had come from but it was clear that none of my other body parts would do.
"Guess you'll just have to let me go then," I smiled.
"Let you go?"
He bent down, his face in mine. "I'll never let you go."
"What are you going to do? Keep me tied to the table forever? I won't live long like this."
He stood up and looked down at me. I could tell he was considering his options. If he wanted to keep me alive, he was going to have to let me down off the table. My legs were numb, my fingers barely functional. I had to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t eat or drink like this. I knew he was thinking the same thing. He had two choices. Kill me or move me. It was up to him but either way I was ready.
SEVENTY NINE
He stood by the wall and watched me. I tried to pretend I didn’t care. Arms crossed, fire in his eyes. I knew he was trying to decide what to do with me.
“Better hurry up and make a decision before your girlfriend comes home,” I finally said. “Oh wait, I forgot, you don’t have a girlfriend. You have to tie women down to get some.”
His cheeks burned red and he looked away.
“I never fucked that dirty whore.”
“You mean Jill? I’m sure you couldn’t help yourself. She was practically begging for it anyway.”
I had to back him into a corner and force him to make a move. And I wanted answers.
“Do you know how many men had that sad bitch after Frank?” he asked with disdain. “Dozens. She’d fuck them anywhere. In the park, even public restrooms.”
“And I bet you loved every minute of it. Hiding in the shadows. Jacking off while they fucked her. I know you like to watch.”
“I liked to watch you,” he smiled.
I felt sick. I hadn’t thought about my childhood for a very long time. Sometimes you have to block things out to survive but strapped to a table with death looming before me, I had a lot of time to remember. The things I buried were starting to resurface.
One hot summer’s night caught in my mind. I woke to find Matt in my room, masturbating over my sleeping body. I screamed and pulled the covers over my head but he didn’t even flinch. He finished the job, ejaculating over my bedspread, then he left the room. I had no idea how long he’d been there or what he’d done to me before I woke up. I told my mother but she didn’t believe me. I begged her to get a lock for my door but she refused. That was when I started sleeping with the chest of drawers pushed against the door and a bread knife under my pillow.
I knew Matt got off watching those men pay to have sex with Jill. It was just the sort of thing that aroused him.
“They were animals,” he said. “She was their puppet. With Frank it was different. Now that was something to watch.”
I wondered how many times Frank had snuck out of the house to meet up with Jill. How Lisa had been left home alone. Was that when he’d taken her? When he’d killed her?
“Lisa wasn’t a whore,” I said. “She wasn’t tainted and dirty.”
I thought I saw something cross his face. A flash of regret? Just there for a moment and then gone.
He ran his scalpel over my back, obviously weighing his options. First the scar tissue and then over the soft, smooth flesh. Did I have enough left to satisfy him? I didn’t think so. The doctors had done a good job with the graft but the resulting skin was thicker, rougher, its edges raised.
He took in a deep breath and I felt the first cut of the scalpel across my lower back. It stung like hell but I didn’t make a sound. My blood ran warm and wet across my back and then dripped onto the table.
“No,” he shouted. “This won’t do.”
He threw the scalpel onto the table. This was it. The moment I’d been waiting for. There it lay, just inches from my fingers. He turned to face the wall and with what little strength I had left, I yanked my wrist free of the cuff and grabbed the blade.
EIGHTY
At first I couldn’t grasp it. My fingers felt like fat sausages. Finally I had it and he hadn’t even noticed. I lay my arm back down by my side and waited for him to turn around.
"You know," he said. “There were so many women I could have had. But did I stray? No. I waited for you."
He thumped the table and the metal tools rattled like keys.
"You were the one. It was always you."
"Why me?" I asked softly. "What about Lisa? You liked her, didn't you?"
I remembered how he flirted with Lisa when we were kids. He scared her just as much as he had me.
"Lisa was an angel," he whispered. "Pure. Kind. I would have married her."
He picked up a long knife and held it up to the light. Its blade reflected his mad face. "She should have married me. It was our baby. She was meant to be with me."
The baby in the pictures had been Lisa and Matt's? I wondered how that happened. Lisa and Matt as a couple? It didn't seem like a plausible explanation. He probably raped her.
"What happened?" I asked.
"She found out she was pregnant and that was when she hooked up with Frank. I watched her fuck him on the first date. It wasn't like her at all but she had to, you see? She had to convince him that the baby was his and she did. When he found out she was expecting, he asked her to marry him. He didn't love her, it was an obligation. An arrangement. It was all wrong."
"What happened to the baby?"
"She was beautiful. A beautiful baby girl and there that bastard was, holding her, kissing her. My baby not his. I used to sneak into the house at night and hold her in the nursery. I'd sit there for hours, just watching her sleep. So innocent and pure. Then one night Lisa found me there. She went ballistic. Said she was going to call the cops. Call the cops on me? I was the kid’s father. I had a right to be there."
"Of course you did," I said.
I didn't add that he had no right at all. If he raped Lisa that child was nothing he could hold claim over. No wonder she'd been such a mess. I knew now why she blamed me. Why we’d never spoken after I left. Matt had been there all along. Watching and waiting. When I left town, Lisa had become my substitute and Matt fixated on her instead. Two girls who were almost sisters, who could have passed for one another at one time. She must have gone out of her mind.
"She didn't call the cops, I knew she wouldn't. She was scared, you see? Scared they'd find out the truth. She put locks on the windows but she couldn't keep me out. I was always there. Then one night the baby wasn't in her crib. Lisa was sitting in the corner, crying. My little girl limp in her arms."
His shoulders hunched over and his body started to shake. Was he crying? I couldn't believe it. The bastard hadn't killed the child?
"What happened?"
"Lisa killed her," his voice shook.
"Why would she do that? Kill her own baby?"
"She said she had to. She couldn't stand to look at her anymore and know she was mine. She smothered her with the blanket. I should have killed the bitch right then and there but I couldn't believe it."
“Then what happened?”
I had to get him to come back to the table. My body was on fire. The parts I could feel were loudly protesting the restraints but there were others that I couldn’t feel at all. I didn’t know how much longer I’d last.
“I took the baby away.”
EIGHTY ONE
I knew where the child ended up. She was the one we found in the belly of the alligator. He fed his own baby to his pet gator. How could that be love? The child deserved a decent burial. An inquiry into its death. What if Lisa hadn't killed her? What if it was all an accident?
"How did Lisa explain that one away to Frank?" I ask
ed.
I hardly thought he would have taken that one sitting down.
"She told him he wasn't the real father. That her real father came and took the baby away. Then she lied to everyone else."
I imagined that scene playing out in my head. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“That baby wasn't really dead was she?" I said. "You took her because you wanted your own little life sized doll. Something to dress up and play with and when she was older you were going to terrorize her like you terrorized me. You'd have your own little sex slave locked up in this very basement. You could do whatever you wanted to her and no one would ever know. What happened Matt? Did she cry too much? Did you find the whole baby thing too much work? I bet you shook her to shut her up. You probably didn't mean to kill her but you did. You killed your own child and fed her lifeless body to your pet lizard. How sick is that?"
He spun around and lunged at me with the knife. Held it against my neck, his face filled with rage and fury. I finally had him.
"You don't know anything about me," he spat.
"You’re wrong," I said calmly. "It's me you don't know anything about."
With what little strength I had left, I raised my free arm and jabbed the scalpel into his jugular. He staggered back, shock on his face. Then dropped the knife he was holding. I used it to slice through the remaining restraints and sat up groggily. The room swam around me, my heart pounding and erratic.
Matt clutched at the scalpel. A trickle of blood ran down his throat and pooled at the bottom of his neck.
"I wouldn't pull that out if I were you," I said. "Right now that's the only thing stopping your jugular from pumping out gallons of blood."
The Tangerine Killer Page 24