Straw Man

by Patrick Logan

  It was the man from the sketch—it was Donnie Duggar, the Straw Man, nude save for a thick rubber apron that covered his chest and genitals.

  The man’s pale eyes were crazed and, in his hand, he held a machete, the butt of which, Drake surmised, must’ve been what had sent him to the ground.

  “Tell me you love me,” Donnie said in an odd voice.

  Drake, his hand still pinned underfoot, yelled, “Fuck you!”

  Donnie replied by raising the machete so high that it nearly grazed the ceiling. When it became clear what the man’s intentions were—separating Drake from his arm—Drake’s free hand shot out. He gripped the man’s ankle and yanked, trying to pull him to the ground.

  But Donnie Duggar was strong and rooted.

  “Tell me you love me,” the man said again. The machete glinted yellow and started rocketing downward.

  “No!” Drake screamed, making one last-ditch effort to pull his hand free.

  But he couldn’t do it.

  The man was too heavy, too strong.

  Drake closed his eyes, unable to watch.

  “I love you; I love you—Donnie, I love you,” a female voice said.

  Drake never felt cold steel slice his flesh. In fact, a split second after Hanna uttered those words, Donnie raised his heel off Drake’s fingers.

  “Donnie,” Hanna said, “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I loved you the first time I was here. I loved—”

  Drake didn’t waste a second. Ignoring the pain in his mangled hand, he scrambled to his feet. Taking advantage of Donnie’s confusion—”The last time you were here?”—Drake wrapped behind the man and gripped the loop of apron that hung on the nape of his neck. Before Donnie realized what was happening, Drake twisted the rubber in his palm, and then leaned all the way back, taking them both down to the dirt.

  The man landed on top of him, instantly winding Drake. If he had had two good hands, Drake had no doubt that he would have been capable of strangling Donnie. But Donnie had crushed at least two of his fingers, rending that hand useless.

  The Straw Man wheezed and spat as he tried to pull the front of the apron from his throat. Drake responded by twisting even harder and the man’s thrashing intensified.

  You can fuck with me, he thought, but you can’t fuck with my friends.

  Donnie started to turn, and Drake found the strength draining from his hand and arm.

  “The key! Drake! The key!”

  He looked to his right and saw Hanna. She was at the front of the cage, her arm stretching through the opening.

  “The key!”

  Hanna was pointing toward something near Drake’s foot.

  He didn’t even see the key, but he didn’t have to. Drake just kicked his leg and the toe of his shoe struck something that made a tinkling noise. Encouraged by the sound, he kicked again, sending whatever the object was—the key, it had to be a key—in Hanna’s direction.

  Donnie shifted again and Drake knew that he only had a few moments before the man broke free.

  “Don’t… ever… fuck… with… my… friends,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Drake heard two sounds then, which occurred at nearly the same time: a cage door opening and one of the steps creaking.

  And then there was Hanna. Like a feral animal, she sprang from her cage, electing to stay on all fours. Her movements caused a stir of dirt and dust to fill the air, and Drake momentarily lost sight of her.

  When he saw her again, she had commandeered Donnie’s machete and was gripping it in both hands.

  Drake let go of the apron at the same time Hanna swung the machete—it was almost as if they’d rehearsed it, like a choreographed fight scene from a movie.

  Gasping for air, Donnie instinctively sat up and finally pulled the front of the apron down and away from his throat.

  Hanna had been aiming for the man’s neck but missed. Instead, the blade lodged itself in the side of Donnie’s shoulder and he howled. As Drake slid out from beneath the Straw Man, he was soaked in blood that seeped from the wound.

  “Hanna!” he shouted, trying to put some space between him and a now shrieking Donnie.

  Hanna ignored him. She placed one foot on the man’s thigh and rocked the blade back and forth in order to free it from the bone. Drake looked away just long enough to locate his gun. He scooped it up and aimed it at the center of Donnie’s chest.

  “Don’t you fucking move,” he ordered. “Hanna, get behind me. Hanna—Hanna!”

  Hanna didn’t listen.

  She swung the blade again and this time, her aim was true. It struck a stunned Donnie in the soft skin just above his collar bone, sending a geyser of blood that reached the ceiling.

  “No!” Drake screamed.

  The blade slid out more easily this time and Drake tried to grab Hanna’s arm to stop her, but she was relentless.

  “I fucking hate you,” she yelled as she swung the blade again.

  More blood sprayed, this time speckling the naked girl’s whimpering body in the cage to their right.

  “I fucking hate you!”

  Hanna swung the blade again and again, each hack digging deeper into Donnie’s neck.

  Drake wanted to stop her, needed to stop her, but he feared that if he tried again, the blade would slice him open on the backswing.

  All he could do was watch in horror as Hanna became progressively more coated in blood and gore.

  It took a total of eleven blows before Donnie’s head was completely hacked from his shoulders. If it wasn’t such a horrifying sight, Drake would have wondered how the man managed to stay on his knees the entire time. It seemed improbable, impossible even.

  Only after the Straw Man’s head landed dully on the ground next to him did the rest of his body collapse.

  Even then, Hanna wasn’t quite finished yet.

  She straddled Donnie Duggar’s severed head and bent at the waist.

  “I fucking hate you,” she whispered one last time and then spat.

  Chapter 83

  “You don’t remember how you got out of the cage? What happened before Drake got there?” Sergeant Yasiv asked the terrified woman across from them. It had been three days since Jenny Margolis had been rescued from the basement—three days after Hannah had decapitated Donnie Duggar and had fled the city.

  Jenny had been cleaned, fed, and subjected to numerous psychological and physical examinations prior to today’s interview. Even though the NYPD had officially taken over the case, Drake insisted that he be present today.

  His request had reluctantly been granted.

  “No. I don’t remember anything after he grabbed me on my run.” As she spoke, the girl’s pale eyes darted to Drake’s right hand, the one covered in bandages.

  The one with the broken fingers from where the Straw Man had stomped on him.

  “And you’ve never seen this man before?” Yasiv slid the photograph of Robert Tiedeman across the table to the woman. Unlike when Lisa Fairchild had looked at it, Jenny spent time examining the man’s features before slowly shaking her head.

  “No, he wasn’t there. It was only the man in the—” her voice caught for a moment, “—it was only the man in the apron.”

  Yasiv nodded and looked at Drake.

  “Thank you,” the sergeant said as he rose to his feet. Drake followed the man’s lead.

  “Thanks.”

  They were halfway to the door when the woman spoke up.

  “No, thank you.” Her voice was soft. “If you hadn’t…”

  Drake looked back, nodding, and Jenny let her sentence trail off.

  That was for the best. Nobody else needed to know that Hanna had been present at the hunting cabin, and nobody else needed to know what she’d done.

  Sure, there were several holes in the story Drake had provided Yasiv and his team about what had transpired in that dirt basement, but not a single person seemed all that concerned. The only thing that mattered to the DA and the NYPD was that Donnie Duggar was dead,
that the Straw Man was gone, and that there would be no more skinsuits on display around New York City.

  This wasn’t nearly good enough for Drake—not by a longshot. He couldn’t stop thinking about the notches in the workbench leg that he’d grabbed when he’d almost fallen down the stairs.

  In his mind, there was only one reason why someone would make those grooves, and it wasn’t for aesthetics.

  “Anything come out of Monty and those missing girls? I told you about—”

  “The notches, yeah,” Yasiv finished for him. He looked uncomfortable and massaged the back of his neck. “Fifteen of them in total. Listen, we looked, we did—we searched that basement. I know what you think, Drake, that these represent missing girls, ones who Monty took long before Donnie started any of this sick shit. But we couldn’t find any evidence down there—only from the most recent victims. The other cases, from back in the late eighties, early nineties? They’re just too old.”

  Drake read between the lines.

  Too old meant that the DA just wanted to shut this down. Nobody was in favor of reopening missing person cases from decades ago, least of all Mark Trumbo.

  Sergeant Yasiv cleared his throat.

  “I’ll tell you what, though, those Duggars? One fucked-up family. Even after all this crazy shit with her brother, Lisa refuses to cooperate, to say anything. What does it matter? He’s dead and his DNA matched the hair found on the gallery mannequin. There are no questions of his guilt. Still, you’d think she’d want to clear her own name, you know? Tell her side of the story. But nothing. It’s like pulling teeth. There was another kid, did you know that? Another daughter, Lisa and Donnie’s sister—Pamela Duggar. Not a single record of what happened to her. Not one trace. God only knows.”

  Drake couldn’t help but picture the disgusting mannequin at the art gallery.

  Had that been Lisa’s sister’s fate, too? Was Pamela Duggar Monty’s and Donnie’s first kill?

  Drake shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the horrifying idea.

  “Yeah, that’s one fucked-up family.” Yasiv sighed. He was tired—they all were. “Look, best I can figure it—and this stays between us—Monty used to take Donnie up to the cabin when he was a boy. They’d hunt, and he’d teach his son how to mount and stuff animals. Now, do I think all the animals they killed had fur, if you know what I mean? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, whatever happened at that cabin messed Donnie up pretty good. Then Monty dies of a heart attack, and Donnie’s put in charge. ‘Cept he can’t cut it, can’t the run the business the way his old man did. It goes under and his sister and mom lose everything. They blame him. Around the same time, the cops start to have some suspicions about Monty and what happened in that cabin. They come looking for his wife, asking questions about some missing girls. She can’t handle it and offs herself.”

  At this point, Drake couldn’t help but interrupt.

  “If they—Lisa, her mom, Donnie, whoever—didn’t know about Monty was doing, didn’t know anything about those missing girls, why would Mrs. Duggar commit suicide after the cops came calling?”

  Yasiv contemplated this for a moment.

  “Why does anyone do what they do?”

  Drake frowned.

  “No, I’m serious. I don’t know. Maybe she knew something, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was just tired. You can’t apply rational thought to irrational acts.”

  This rhetoric sounded familiar to Drake.

  “Anyways, who would have thought that for a time, Donnie was the most normal one of the bunch? Lisa is out there fucking everything that moves, trying to sleep her way into riches while Donnie lives a normal life, gets married, works a regular job. But when his marriage starts to fail and his mind goes, too. He gets laid off, starts obsessing… well, you know the rest. Reverts back to what he knows, what his daddy taught him. Twisted shit, Drake. Someday they’ll do a Casefile or Sword and Scale podcast on the Duggars, that or a TV special. All I know for certain, is that they were fucked-up—correction, are fucked-up.”

  Despite some of the glaring holes, Drake was impressed. Yasiv had woven a fairly tight tale, one that came close to what he believed to be the truth.

  The problem was, the sergeant didn’t know about what happened in the past, about Hanna and her friend all those years ago. Before Donnie got married, he wasn’t normal—far from it. He was already starting to ply his trade, to learn the ropes. Long before Marjorie and her friends, Donnie was hunting.

  Hunting and skinning.

  Just like his sick father, Monty Duggar, had taught him.

  But Drake didn’t push, didn’t correct Yasiv. He wanted to go after Monty, dead or alive, and Lisa, but he was no longer a Special Consultant or whatever it was called.

  He had no power here, no sway.

  And he had Hanna to think about.

  “That’s one hell of an understatement.”

  When they were in the hallway, Drake looked at the photograph in the sergeant’s hand.

  “What are you going to do with him, anyway? With Robert?”

  Yasiv shrugged.

  “Nothing—letting him go. DA dropped the obstruction charges. He doesn’t want any more coverage of this thing, wants to focus on Nick Petrazzino’s arraignment.”

  Drake grunted and chewed the inside of his cheek.

  “What?” Yasiv continued. “We’ve really got nothing on him. He claims that he was just standing outside the department store when Donnie approached him with the indecent proposal. My guess is that Donnie was just watching the store, waiting for the right customer to stop by. Robert apparently fit that bill.”

  “Wrong place, wrong time, I guess,” Drake remarked, still lost in thought.

  “That’s one of the things I don’t get about this case, though,” Yasiv said. “Why did Donnie hire Robert to have sex with his sister? What the hell was the point of that? Was he jealous of her life? Of her wealth? Did he want her marriage to crumble?”

  Now it was Drake’s turn to shrug.

  “Maybe he just needed Lisa distracted so he could set up the mannequin?” he suggested.

  “You think he set it up during the event? Shit, that takes some balls.”

  Drake couldn’t help but picture Donnie Duggar’s head, separated from his shoulders, while the rest of him was still on his knees.

  “Balls he had. Doesn’t matter, I guess.”

  Yasiv nodded and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small square of paper.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, handing it over. “It’s not much, but at least it’s something.”

  Drake opened the check.

  Yasiv wasn’t lying; it was worth a paltry five grand, which wouldn’t even cover DSLH’s expenses.

  Seeing the look on his face, Yasiv quickly added, “But you have my word, when the DA gives his press conference—and trust me, he will have one—you’re going to be there, on stage with him.”

  Drake slipped the check into his pocket.

  “Think you can do me one more favor?” he asked.

  Yasiv raised an eyebrow.

  “What? What do you need? Because if it’s money, there’s nothing—”

  “No, not money.” He tapped Robert Tiedeman’s photo with his bandaged hand. “I need to borrow him for a bit.”

  Yasiv knew better than to ask too many questions.

  “I don’t see why not. So long as you promise not to beat him up too badly.”

  ***

  “You live here?” Robert asked, his eyes going wide.

  Drake looked up at Lisa and Norm Fairchild’s estate.

  “Nope.”

  “Who then? Who—”

  “Don’t worry about who. Just remember what I told you to say when I give the signal, alright?”

  Robert sighed.

  “Gotcha. I don’t understand any of this, but…”

  Drake ignored the rest of the man’s grumblings and got out of his car. He made his way to the wrought iron fence and pushed the
talk button on the intercom, half expecting Burt Lancaster’s voice on the other end. It wasn’t. It was Norm.

  “Drake? What can I help you with?”

  “I was wondering if I could have a word with you—”

  “I already told the sergeant everything I know,” Lisa shouted in the background, her voice shrill. “I don’t know anything else. I had nothing to do with Donnie. Now leave us alone.”

  Drake made a face.

  “Yeah, you’ve been very helpful,” he said sarcastically. “But I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to your husband, to Norm.”

  This was the truth. Norm had been roped into the Duggar saga just like the rest of them. The man paid for Lisa’s kids to go to school, erased her past as she’d requested, and this was the thanks he got.

  The media was all over him.

  A serial killer lived in his home, ate from his fridge, maybe even slept in his bed.

  It was only matter of time before Norm was squeezed out of his real estate investments and any other business of which he lacked full control.

  There was a short squawk before the box went mute. A second later, the gate buzzed and opened.

  Drake was surprised that he’d gotten this far and was veritably shocked when the front door opened, and Norm peered out.

  “What can I help you with, Drake?”

  “Just close the door, Norm. Just—”

  Drake was here to talk to Norm, but now that Lisa was mouthing off, he couldn’t control himself any longer.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us about your brother? About the business your family used to run? The taxidermy? The sutures? The fucking car? We might have been able to save those girls.”

  Lisa scowled.

  “It was none of your damn business, that’s why.”

  Drake suspected that the truth of the matter was that Lisa had blocked out that part of her life, her past. The woman was obsessed with making something of herself, of having money. In that way, she wasn’t much different from Tobin Tomlin.

  Her first attempt to move up the social ladder—her first marriage—had failed.

  What she didn’t know, was that her second was about to crumble, as well.