by Blackie Noir
“Wouldn’t be a pair of stiletto heels, one of them broken?”
Vance grinned, “That gold shield is starting to fit you just fine. The shoes match the heel you found. Sally’s definitely our girl. She left some torn, bloody clothes too, along with the other stuff, but her essentials were gone. I don’t even need to think about that shit, I always figured she was in the wind. She’s 39, been knocking around long enough to know how lucky she was that night.”
“She has a sheet?”
“Yeah. Not exactly a desperado though. Lightweight shit. Three possession beefs, crank. Couple of soliciting, couple shoplifting, one ADW.”
Eyebrows raised, Nadine said, “What was that assault about?”
“Smacked some sucker between the eyes, with a high-heel shoe.”
“Want to bet it was a stiletto heel?”
“Like the one we found?” Vance laughed, “No bet.”
“What’s Logan doing, far as running her down goes?”
“Fuck can he do? He’s got a BOLO for Sally Brown, aka Satana, and her Camero.”
“Statewide?”
“What else? Widowmaker may be a big deal locally, but it doesn’t generate enough outside interest to warrant a nationwide APB on a possible witness.
“So? What can we do, to run her down?”
Vance shrugged, “We sit tight for the moment. Tomorrow all this will go in front of Sheba. We’ll be meeting with her, then we’ll see. When it’s officially our case, I’ve got a few things we can try. Till then, we relax.”
Chapter Twenty Six
It hit Sarah on the drive to Prescott. Not only did she remember where the Widowmaker first crossed her path, but, off of that, she knew where to find him. Of course, at the time of her recollection she had no reason to connect her rescuer to the Widowmaker. She thought of the dude simply as her angel.
She hadn’t made the Widowmaker connection on her own. Kicking back, after a luxuriating bubble-bath, in a high-dollar motel in Prescott, she’d been channel surfing when a shot of JuicyTown caught her eye. From the moment she upped the volume, she’d been hooked. Hitting every news channel for the next two hours, getting updates on the lurid story: Triple homicide at strip club; Widowmaker prime suspect; missing witness sought. At first she’d been shocked. Her angel, the man who had pulled her from the clutches of Wolf and Ray Bob, was the notorious serial killer, the Widowmaker? Not that it made any difference, not one fucking bit. Why should it? Sarah owed her life to the man, period.
Besides, this Widowmaker? Not exactly a fucking ogre, at least not in the eyes of Sarah and the girls she’d worked with. More power to him, was the general consensus. The Widowmaker definitely had a high approval rating among Sarah and the other dancers. The guy had been doing his thing for years, targeting vicious dirtbags with a history of misogyny.
Dirtbags like . . . Vito.
Shit. There it was. Sarah knew it, deep in her bones, Vito had been the killer’s intended target. Wasn’t an accident he’d been where he was, he’d been waiting for Vito. Not an accident, but certainly an unprecedented stroke of good fortune for her.
Good fortune indeed. Not only was she still among the living, but she was living a new life, and she’d been able to bury Satana in the process. The trip to Prescott had been part of her transformation. Can you spell dentist? Four days in Prescott, a good portion of them spent in the dentist’s chair. X-rays, surgery to remove the broken stumps of her three newly lost teeth, couple of fillings, one motherfucking root-canal, and the casting of the mold for a partial plate. The finished denture would be ready in a few weeks. Her new bridge-work would replace not only the three teeth lost in the attack at JuicyTown, but two others that had succumbed to neglect years ago. Unlike Satana, Sarah Burns would be able to smile with the best of them.
Between sessions in the dentist’s chair, she relaxed and recuperated in her well appointed room, dealing with her oral pain as best she could, employing a minimum of prescribed medication. Solid food was out, but she dealt with it, temporarily making do with milkshakes, strained baby-food, and coffee. She got by, promising herself a magnificent gourmet feast when she was fully healed.
That promised indulgence had occupied a good bit of Sarah’s thought time, the time that wasn’t spent thinking of her angel. All thoughts of food were automatically deleted when the Widowmaker story broke. He now had commandeered all of her conscious cerebral energy. Slowly, he had managed to usurp her dreams as well.
By the second day the story had begun to dwindle. Sarah had been relieved when the only mention regarding her had been a vague reference to a witness, possibly an employee at JuicyTown. Said witness was urged to contact the LBPD, confidentiality was assured. She figured they already knew who she was, they’d be looking for Sally Brown. Fine, let them look, like Sarah Burns gave a fuck about spineless Sally.
The evening of the second day saw the embers of the dying story accelerate into a roaring blaze. The missing witness was forgotten, hell, even the Widowmaker was temporarily reduced to second billing. The accelerant? The eerie visages of Wolf and Ray Bob leering out at a sensation-starved populace from a few million TV screens. Losers in life, super-stars in death.
An intense search of the duo’s impounded van had yielded two drivers licenses: Joanne Rice, nineteen years, San Diego County. Alice Dowd, twenty years, Riverside County. Both young women had been missing for more than a year. Along with their licenses an assortment of women’s undergarments had been discovered. Classic serial killer’s souvenir kit. The families of both girls had been contacted in the hope that any, or all, of the undergarments might be identified.
Next day, it was all Widowmaker, baby. Given the strong possibility that his two latest victims had been sexual-psychopaths, serial killers of the worst stripe, his stock had risen enormously. Always a marginal cult icon, now? Hey, dude’s mainstream! Hero, with a capital-H. The first Widowmaker tee-shirts hit the streets that evening. Black. Blood-red calligraphy. Front: “Widowmaker,” with an outline of the Grim Reaper below. Back: “Thirteen . . . and counting!”
Sarah didn’t need a tee-shirt, she’d been the Widowmaker’s biggest fan since the night at JuicyTown. And, she sure as shit, didn’t need a TV to view the vile countenances of the two degenerates who had attempted to abduct her that night. They ran rampant through her nightmares. Just as he had in life, so it was in her dreams, the Widowmaker interceded in her behalf.
The new developments brought Sarah to some soul-searching. What must the Widowmaker be going through at this point? Did he find the furor surrounding his latest lethal escapade uplifting, or draining? His decision to spare her; was he confident of his choice, or plagued by misgivings? She felt that perhaps she alone, through the touch of his fingers on her carotid, was aware of a sensitivity others would never recognize.
Brushing away a Sally Brown-like apprehension that her old self-destructive nature was resurfacing, Sarah considered the ramifications of reaching out, actually contacting her angel. Madness, or simply repaying a kindness?
Don’t get ahead of yourself girl, first be sure that you’re right, that you can actually find the Widowmaker. Funny, six years, a whole big city police department clueless, literally, and now she was gonna find the guy? Why not? She knew who he was, already had a good plan for running him down. She needed access to a computer, next stop? Prescott library.
No cyber-geek, nonetheless, it took Sarah less than half-an-hour to come up with two addresses and two phone numbers, business and home, for the man she believed to be her angel. Now, crux-time, she had what she needed. Would she use it? Shit girl, it’s only a phone call. Yeah, to the fucking Widowmaker.
Alright, that was enough of that shit. It was all in the perception of the thing. If she made the call, she wouldn’t be calling the Widowmaker, she’d be calling the man who’d saved her life. Saved her life, then let her go when he could have taken that life to protect himself. Even though she now had a name for the guy, she’d continue to think of hi
m as her angel, at least until she called him. If she called him.
Back at her room, undecided and restless, she channel-surfed the news stations. Good thing too. A new Widowmaker story had broken. The lionization of a killer didn’t sit well with the powers that be. Not a full day had passed, since the coming of the tee-shirts, and the first reward was posted. Fifty thousand. A small start, but John-Q-citizen needed a reminder, the Widowmaker was a criminal, a murderer for God sakes, not some masked avenger from a comic book. By the end of the day the reward had been bumped, three times, the six-o-clock news reported it at 125,000.
The reward changed things, drastically. The switchboard at the LBPD went wild. Seemed like half the yo-yo’s in LA county had an uncle, cousin, father, neighbor, priest, boss, whatever, who, without a doubt, would turn out to be the Widowmaker. With no shortage of crazies to provide interviews, the media had a field day.
The reward changed a few things for Sarah too. She grew anxious. Sure, most of these morons were harmless, attention starved loonies with nothing to sell but bullshit. But . . . what if? What if there was another Sarah out there? Someone who was the real deal, someone who could nail her angel’s ass to the wall. Necessity had intensified her need to come to a decision. She had to move, now.
Driving back to Aguilar Sarah did a lot of thinking. She thought about her upcoming conversation with her angel. She thought about her feelings, and her debt to him. She also thought about her future. And, she thought about the money. One-hundred and twenty-five thousand. It was a lot of money. Fucking chunk and a half. Yeah.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Widowmaker
Bad day? Fucking understatement of the year. Still, it would pale against the events of that night.
He’d always recognized this world as the utterly bizarre place it was. But now? Seemed that all of a sudden he was the center of the latest bit of insanity to overwhelm his little corner of this peculiar sphere. The sudden focus was as unwanted as it was, in his opinion, unmerited.
He’d spotted the first tee-shirts in the parking lot of an Albertson’s. Woman and child, perhaps mother and daughter. Walking behind the pair, he’d read the back of their shirts; Thirteen . . . and counting! What the fuck? Stepping up his pace, he passed, spun, and walking backwards checked out the shirt fronts. WIDOWMAKER , arched over a grinning reaper.
The woman, noticing him, his eyes on her chest, glared, pulled her child closer to her side. Laughing, he’d turned, went on his way. Dumb bitch, wear a logo on your chest people are gonna read it. That’s the idea, right? Wonder what she’d think if she knew she’d been bad-looking the object of her misguided admiration. By the time he got home laughter had been edged out by despair. He coped, fighting off the oncoming depression the best way he knew. He got pissed.
Fucking people, what gave them the right? What he did was meant to be clandestine, his vocation wasn’t a goddamned video-game. What kind of mother puts clothing exalting a killer on the body of her child? What kind of scumbags manufacture that sensationalistic type of shit? Whores, plain and simple. A nation, no; a whole fucking world of whores prostituting themselves and everything in sight for a few pieces of silver. He looked at one of his tattoos, thirty odd years of fade, but the message remained clear. Fuck The World. Some things never change.
He grabbed a bottle of Beam. Drinking, smoking, it was nip and tuck for an hour, but finally old Jim Beam came through for him. Cool again, he consoled himself, accepting the responsibility; he had fucked-up years ago by nurturing the insanity that would become the Widowmaker. It hadn’t been clever, just sick. But it was what it was, fuck it. It was over. At least he had gone out tough. Never were two assholes more deserving of what they got than Wolf and Ray Bob. If he was to be remembered, let it be for the annihilation of those scuzzy savages. The Widowmaker’s swan-song.
Best laid plans . . . all that shit, then the phone rang. It was the first of two calls that day. A three minute conversation, that effectively ended the Widowmaker’s retirement even as it began. That first call, delivering a message so ominous it immediately brought the icy talons of fear into play, stripping the secure warmth of his whisky high away in seconds. A case of good friends delivering bad news. Rolly Brigand, ‘Rollicking’ Rolly. Long ago brother to the IceMan. Road warrior, whiskey and women, thousand mile crank-fueled runs. Thick and thin, tight. Choices made, in later years, the IceMan, buried, committed to family, a different life. Rolly, committed to death-dealing, now doing life, no chance of parole. Years of occasional phone calls, sporadic letter writing. Contact dwindling to the annual Christmas card. But, however fragile, the bond still remained.
Rolly spoke of a man, a man unknown to the Widowmaker, a man who nonetheless would do him the ultimate evil. The man had a name, Cuchillo Medina. Forewarned was forearmed. In a week, Medina would rise, free to carry out his vengeance driven slaughter. Initial shock receding, the Widowmaker immediately concerned himself with viable solutions. Far as he could see, there was only one.
Rolly didn’t offer, and the Widowmaker didn’t ask. They were old school, men who believed in handling their own shit. That said, Rolly did have a few ideas, the germ of a plan. The Widowmaker heard him out, tweaking Rolly’s plan with ideas of his own. Rolly would keep him updated, when Medina was sprung the Widowmaker would be ready.
Cuchillo Medina. Cuchillo; knife in Spanish. The Widowmaker drew a Mark II combat dagger from his boot. Twirling it over and again, through the fingers and over the knuckles of his right hand, he poured more Beam with his left. Steady as a rock. Stopping the knife, haft in his palm, he drank, looked at the needle-pointed, double-edged blade. Cuchillo. I got your fuckin Cuchillo, cocksucker.
The second call, when it came late that night, knocked him on his ass.
He didn’t recognize the voice. But, call it whiskey intuition, he knew who it was. He was back at JuicyTown, her blood pulsing through the artery beneath his fingertips, the .22 ready in his other hand. Not using it, a mistake? He was about to find out.
She said, “I don’t know how you’re fixed for friends right now, but you have one on this end of the line.”
“My friends have names.”
“Know who I am?”
The Widowmaker laughed, said nothing. The woman said, “Sarah. Better?”
“Sarah.”
“Not that it would mean anything to you. Now, how about my question? Know who I am?”
“You’re a woman owes me, big time. Twice over.”
“Good guess.”
“Not a guess.”
Sarah laughed, “You’re psychic.”
“Sarah. Put your fingertips up to your throat, right side. Put’em on the big artery there, next to your windpipe. Feel that?”
“You getting freaky on me?”
“Do it.”
“OK. Now what?”
“Feel that?”
“I feel it. My pulse. So?”
“That’s what I felt the other night. I felt it again, throbbing, when I picked up the phone. Knew it was you, no doubt about it. Pulse don’t lie.”
“You’re full of shit.”
He laughed, “Maybe, a little bit. Sarah?”
“Yeah?”
“What the fuck do you want?”
Just when he thought she had hung up, her voice, almost a whisper, came through, “I don’t want . . .”
“Sarah, I can’t hear you.”
“Shit. Look . . . all I want to do is thank you. That, and to tell you, you didn’t make a mistake that night. I’d never dime you.”
“You’ve got character. They’re offering a nice piece of change for my ass these days.”
“Money can’t buy what you gave me.”
He laughed, “Guess I don’t have a care in the world then.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Didn’t say that. One thing though, it’s a lot easier to bullshit somebody over the phone. Face to face? Different story.”
“Face to face? You want me to
meet you, reassure you, in person? I don’t think so. No offense, but I’ve seen you in action.”
“Right. Still breathing too, aren’t you?”
“Planning to stay that way.”
“I’m not a threat to you.”
“Nor I to you.”
“Sarah? How’d you find me?”
“Coincidence. Just one of those weird things.”
“Sounds interesting. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Well . . . ”
“In person.”
She laughed, “You don’t give up.”
“No, I don’t. Meet me. For a drink.”
“You don’t give up, and I don’t drink.”
“You drink coffee?”
“By the gallon.”
“There you go. Meet me for coffee.”
“Where?”
The night’s whiskey had kept him loose, free and easy the Widowmaker said, “Your call.”
“How about the lion’s den?”
“Never heard of it. How do I get there?”
“Get up, walk to your door, open it.”
His porch light was weak. He had to squint, look twice, but it was her. The short brown hair and makeup free face had fooled him momentarily. But her supple frame and assertive carriage couldn’t be camouflaged. It was the woman from JuicyTown.
She turned off the cell-phone in her left hand, kept the pistol in her right aimed at his chest, grinned, and said, “It’s not polite to stare. Invite me in.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Johnny Vance stared through the one-way glass, laughed, turned to Logan and said, “So that’s the Widowmaker. Art, you been pilfering weed from the evidence locker? Cause if you’re trying to tell me that little weasel is our boy, buddy, you’re tripping.”
“He’s the one saying he’s the Widowmaker, not me. I just thought you might be interested.”