by John Lutz
He leaned in and she felt him touching her. Involuntarily, her body vibrated. His hands closed on the backs of her bare thighs and they immediately cramped, causing her body to slam over and over on the hard bench.
She finally stopped trembling and lay still, but the cramps didn’t go away completely. She was afraid to move any part of herself out of fear that they might return.
Calmly, he looked over whatever items were on the workbench, as if debating with himself over which object to choose.
He picked up the knife again, holding it out where she couldn’t help but look at it. The fluorescent light above the workbench cast a wavering reflection in the bright steel.
“We both know I’m good at this,” he said. “And if someone is good at it, someone else is going to talk. You’re going to tell me everything. You won’t leave out a thing.” Again the smile. “Am I right?”
She knew that he was and tried to nod. It wasn’t like in books or movies. A skilled torturer could get a stone to spill secrets.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize the collar was too tight for you to nod.” He touched her with the knife point and the vibrations throughout her body began again. Her bare thighs threatened another bout of major cramping.
“We’re going to have fun,” he said. “One of us, anyway.”
She felt the knife blade moving feather-light across her navel. “I love an outy,” he said. He withdrew the knife and came closer to her. “Do you want to tell me what I want to know? Or should we get right to the fun part?”
He loosened the collar slightly.
“Officer Weaver?”
“What do you want to know?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“About the other woman, of course.”
“Eileen?”
He slapped the back of her head. Hard. She heard herself whimper. Felt the anger. The rage. The terror.
And the helplessness.
He calmly struck a match, stared briefly at its flame, then lit a cigarette and tucked it in the corner of his mouth.
“Bellezza,” he said.
She clenched her eyes shut. Felt the skillful touch of his bare hands on the backs of her thighs. The leg cramps were returning.
She made it through the knife and three cigarettes before she told him: “It’s in the Far Castle garden, incorporated into the fancy concrete birdbath.”
“Incorporated?”
“Inside it.”
He leaned back, giving that some thought.
“That fat clown who owns the restaurant has it?” He sounded dubious.
“His family,” Weaver said. “They think they own it.”
“What are their plans for it? To donate it to a museum?”
“They want to sell it,” Weaver said. “Or they wouldn’t be keeping it hidden from people like you.”
“I know that birdbath,” he said. “It looks like ordinary garden statuary to me. It looks nothing like what we’re discussing.”
“Isn’t that the idea?” Weaver croaked.
He walked away from her, holding the knife low in his right hand, hefting it over and over so it bounced lightly against the cupped backs of his fingers. A lit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. The smell of the burning tobacco, along with the constant pain, nauseated Weaver.
The killer suddenly wheeled to face her, as if having made a decision.
“I’m going to give you something I never gave the others,” he said. “A chance.”
She said nothing, trying not to vomit.
“In exchange for that, I want a guarantee.”
“How can I give you a guarantee?” she asked, swallowing the bitterness at the back of her throat.
“We’re going to play a game,” he said. “I’m going to tie you tight and gag you, and put you in the trunk of my car. Then I’m going to drive it to a place where it can remained parked and unnoticed for days. If you’ve told me the truth about chipping away concrete and finding Bellezza, you’ll win, I’ll reveal to the police where you are. If I discover you lied to me, you’ll stay in the car’s trunk and die a slow and painful death.” He touched the bloody tip of the knife to her nose. “Do we have an arrangement?”
Anything was better than nothing. “Yes.”
He laid Weaver on her side in the trunk, her wrists bound behind her, her ankles bound together. A large rectangle of duct tape was slapped across her face and he worked it tightly with his thumbs so there was a good seal. She was breathing through her nose. He used the point of the knife to make a small incision in the tape so she could also breath through her mouth if she had to. At least for a while. What she couldn’t do was make a noise louder than a soft moan. She wouldn’t be heard outside the tightly sealed and locked trunk.
Before closing the trunk, he gazed down at her. He seemed calm and vaguely amused, as if they were discussing something other than her agonizing death.
“If you told me the truth,” he said, looking her in the eye, “you’ll see the light again. If not, it’s darkness the rest of the way. Understood?”
She managed to nod.
“You’re lucky I like playing games,” he said.
He closed the trunk lid, and she was in darkness.
This was exactly the sort of game the killer loved to play. He and Nancy both knew he wouldn’t keep his word and return after he’d secured Bellezza. But in her mind was a stubborn element of doubt. It had to be there. As the final minutes of her life ticked away, she would cling harder to his words. He’d promised to return and free her. Hadn’t he?
If he’d said so, mightn’t he?
Mustn’t he?
Not the slightest sound made its way into the dark and locked trunk. Not the slightest glimmer of light. With each passing second her terror and hope increased in proportion to each other, and eventually it would be impossible for them to coexist.
Hadn’t he promised?
She was sure she’d heard him promise.
68
With Weaver tucked away, the killer checked to make sure that what he might need was in place. He would return briefly and pick it up later tonight. There was an old shovel, and a rusty pickax that had broken halfway up its wood handle but would still be useful. A folded tarpaulin. More duct tape, just in case.
There was other, heavier equipment. A compressor with a muffled engine, a small jackhammer, a set of steel wedges. And there was clothing—a disguise.
It occurred to the killer that he could make a good television commercial about the duct tape, what a useful product it was. A testimonial.
Had any of the infamous serial killers done celebrity television commercials?
Hi, I’m Charles Manson (or the Zodiac killer, or Son of Sam). I’m not a sheep of the herd, but I’ve played one in the real world, and I wouldn’t set out on a kill without my duct tape.
Why not? It was all lies, anyway. Fun and lies.
He began cleaning up, taking his time. He didn’t simply wipe to eliminate fingerprints—he rubbed, sometimes leaning his weight into it. This had to be perfect one time around. There wouldn’t be a chance even for a quick cleanup later.
The last thing he did before leaving the building was to wipe the car down carefully, inside and out, still wearing his rubber gloves, so there would be no fingerprints. He had already wiped down the interior of the vehicle’s trunk, knowing it would soon contain Weaver.
A less careful man would say this overabundance of caution didn’t matter.
But a stray, neglected print might matter someday. A print that might match his own.
He would do as he told Weaver, parking the car, with her in it, at a desolate spot near the East River. There the vehicle would sit for quite a while before someone called the police about it, and it would be towed.
The first surprise for the police would be that the old car had stolen New Jersey plates and was a chop shop vehicle impossible to trace.
The second surprise would be the corpse of Officer Weaver.
&nb
sp; Either way she played it, this would be the end for Weaver. If the killer could remove the birdbath and uncover Bellezza, why should he complicate measures by telling anyone about an untraceable parked car with a body in it?
The killer hoped she was telling the truth about Bellezza being contained in the concrete birdbath at the Far Castle, but one way or the other, Weaver would die of dehydration or suffocation in the car’s locked trunk. She hadn’t really believed he’d see that she was rescued. But he knew she’d convinced herself that she believed him. It was a shame he couldn’t be there to see it. Would she run out of hope before she ran out of air? Or would it be a tie?
He mentally removed her from the game board.
There was no sound.
No light.
And Weaver had no illusions. BMW trunks, even on older models like this one, were tightly sealed. She was sure now that the killer had lied to her. It was a simple horrendous fact. She knew she would soon be dead.
D.O.A. would return and dispose of her body. Or put it on grisly display, complete with carved forehead.
He’ll be one up on Quinn. On us.
Men! Damn them!
Men played their asinine games.
Men killed.
She tried moving her arms and legs and found them tightly bound with industrial duct tape. She could move her head slightly. Shift her legs if she moved them pressed together ankle to knee. There was only slight play in the tape. She could work it looser, but never loose enough to work her way free. And even if she were free of her bonds, would she be able to find a way to open the trunk?
She lay nude and sweating in the fetal position. Frustrated. Fuming. Fretting.
That’s it. Tape that will stretch only so far.
That’s what I’ve got to work with, if I’m ever going to leave here alive.
69
“Damned paddle!” Fedderman said.
He had somehow been knocked clear out of the canoe, all the way up onto the lake’s mud bank.
His brother. He had something to do with this.
Lights were flashing, red, blue, white. Fedderman’s clothes were stuck to him, soaking wet, and he could feel something, rain drops, tickling his bare ankles where his pants legs had worked their way up as he . . . what?
Fell?
He blinked, trying to remember. Above him, Batman hovered black and silent against the background flashes of light and darkness. Barely moving like a breeze-borne kite, this way, then that . . .
Not Batman—raining—a black umbrella keeping the light cool drops off his face. Fedderman moved slightly and a wedge of pain slammed into the side of his head, and he remembered.
Some of it, anyway.
“Feds?”
Quinn’s voice. Deeply concerned. What a pussy.
“Feds? You hear me?”
“Cold cocked me,” Fedderman heard himself say. “Wham! Wow!”
“Who?”
“My brother.”
“What?”
“Canoe.”
“You’re scaring me, Feds.”
“How do you think I feel?”
Another voice. Authoritative: “Move that car so the ambulance can get close.”
Ambulance?
Somebody must be hurt. Fedderman raised his head to see what was going on.
Wham! The headache. That’s what was going on.
But the pain had not only cleaved his mind, it cleared it.
“Weaver,” he said.
“We’re looking for her,” Quinn said
“Looking for her? Jesus! I don’t know what happened, Quinn. I was tailing her and I got hit by the sidewalk. Gotta find her . . .”
“We’ll find Weaver. Worry about yourself now.”
Strong but gentle hands slid in tight beneath Fedderman. He rolled an eye and saw a collapsible gurney. There was another, weaker, blast of pain; in his head and down the back of his neck.
He moved higher. Levitating. A patch of night sky and tall buildings were rotating.
Lifting me. Carrying . . .
He knew they were going to put him on the gurney, transport him.
There was Quinn’s face, looming over him, revolving with the nighttime view. Good man, Quinn.
“I was tailing her and he cold—”
“I know,” Quinn said. “We can talk later, Feds.”
Fedderman felt the gurney moving smoothly. Did the damn thing have wheels? Or were the paramedics carrying him?
“We’ll take care of things on this end,” Quinn assured him, as the lighted and cluttered back of the ambulance appeared beyond Fedderman’s feet.
“Don’t scare Penny with this. Let her know, but don’t scare her.”
“Not to worry, Feds.”
Fedderman was inside the ambulance. “Let me know about Weaver. All my fault. You can’t trust anybody in this world.”
“Nothing is your fault. Nothing at all.”
The ambulance doors slammed shut, and the vehicle was suddenly close and crowded. Voices spoke incomprehensibly. White forms huddled around Fedderman. The siren growled and revved up.
“Don’t ever go out on the lake with the bastard,” Fedderman said, just before they clamped an oxygen mask over his face.
Five blocks from where Weaver was bound and locked in the trunk of the parked BMW, the killer hailed a cab and took it to an intersection several blocks from his apartment.
He didn’t walk toward his apartment, though. Instead he walked east, toward the river, where there were some industrial buildings and a small gray van he’d obtained from a rental firm. He’d used false ID and a hokey story about moving his possessions before his ex-wife claimed everything in divorce proceedings. His first inclination had been to hot-wire and steal a vehicle. He had the skills to do that. But he knew the vehicle might be reported stolen and hit the NYPD hot sheet before morning. That could lead nowhere good. Besides, the semi-legally rented van, with its darkly tinted windows, was exactly what the task required.
He drove to the building where he’d broken Weaver—the fabled criminal returning to the scene of the crime—and loaded the back of the van with a five-gallon can of gasoline that he’d filled two days ago at a BP station in New Jersey. Alongside the gas can he placed the rusty pickax and shovel, and a folded tarpaulin.
All part of his plan. And his plans, once put in motion, ran smoothly.
Halfway to the Far Castle, which had closed and darkened hours ago, the killer steered the van around a corner and pulled to the curb of a shadowed street lined with closed shops.
After a few minutes, motor idling, he drove forward slowly until he saw a space between buildings. He parked near it and turned off the engine. Keeping in mind that there might be concealed security cameras here—because there might be concealed security cameras anywhere—he put on a baseball cap and pulled its bill low, then turned up his collar.
He got down out of the van, making as little noise as possible, and unloaded the five-gallon can of gas from the back. Keeping his head down, he carried the can to the dark passageway and unscrewed the cap. He went deeper into the darkness, then began walking backward, toward where he’d just come from. He was leaning forward and pouring gasoline in a side-to-side motion as he went. Leaving a long trail that, when lighted, would act as an unstoppable fuse.
A voice said, “Wha’ the fu—”
The killer stopped, listened, and heard a scraping sound. He looked in the direction of the noise and saw a dark figure attempting to stand up. A man who had been almost invisible slumped against the brick wall.
A drunk. Or maybe it was drugs. The killer didn’t know and didn’t care. He was grateful that the man was disoriented and continued to scrape the leather heels of his shoes against the bricks in an effort to slither up to a standing position with his back against the wall.
If he did manage to stand, it looked doubtful that he could stay on his feet.
All right. This was unexpected but could be handled. The killer’s plans made allow
ances for contingencies. He screwed the cap tight on the gas can and carried it to where the man had almost straightened up. He was rough looking from living on the streets, wearing torn dress pants and a black T-shirt with the arms cut off to reveal complicated tattoos that involved snakes and nude women. He smelled of stale vomit, even over the stench of the gas.
The killer said, “Let me help you,” and raised the half-full gas can high.
“Wha’s ’at smell?” the tattooed man asked, just before an edge of the metal can came down hard on his head.
He put out a trembling hand to support himself against something that wasn’t there, then crumpled to the pavement.
Working faster but wasting no motion, the killer poured gasoline over the unconscious man, then back-stepped quickly out of the passageway, bending low and continuing the trail of gas until the can was empty.
He put the can back in the van, then returned to the mouth of the passageway and the beginning of the trail of gasoline. He struck a match and flipped it into the glistening gas.
Surprised by the ferocity of the sudden blaze, he hurriedly climbed in behind the wheel of the van and got out of there.
He watched his rearview mirror as he approached the corner. An orange glow flickered from the mouth of the passageway.
It grew suddenly brighter as he turned the corner. The sound the igniting gas made was a low Whump! that probably didn’t alarm or awaken anyone.
Five blocks away, he pulled the van to the curb and got out a disposable cell phone he’d bought at a drugstore uptown. He punched out 911, and in a voice that he made sound excited gave the address of the fire.