The Wicked Flee (A Marty Singer Mystery Book 5)

by Matthew Iden

  “No kidding,” Gerry said, relieved Eddie was seeing this his way. “If it’d been anyone else, all they would have is the phone number.”

  “So now we have to protect ourselves. The girls are gone, so that’s good. I’ll move them out of the motel in the next few days so you can lay low. Temporarily, man,” Eddie said as Gerry started to protest. “Look, I know you think you can run a string of girls out of your house when the state cops are looking to bust your ass, but why take the chance? You take a call when your phone’s tapped or an e-mail when your Internet’s being scanned and you’re toast. You’re going to have to eat this one. We’ll let this blow over, then set you up with a new string in a couple of weeks. You’ll be making bank before Easter. Okay?”

  Gerry nodded, looking at the floor.

  “Next, you need to get rid of anything in the house that could incriminate you. If the cops drum up a warrant on some bullshit charge, they could pull you in for something that’s not even related to the string. You got anything like that here in the house?”

  “Like what?”

  “Jesus, Gerry, use your head. Dope. Guns. Money. Anything that would make a cop suspicious.”

  “Okay, yeah,” Gerry said. “There’s some stuff.”

  Eddie raised his eyebrows. “So, get it. We have to clear this place out. Your house has to be like a freaking church.”

  “What are we going to do with it?”

  “There’s got to be a twenty-four-hour storage place around here, right?” Eddie asked. Gerry nodded. “Get everything packed. When you’re done, I’ll take it all over and stow it, then bring you the key. It’s a hell of a lot easier to hide a key from the cops than a Glock and a bag of blow, right?”

  Gerry looked unsure, but said, “Yeah.”

  “So get busy,” Eddie said, scrubbing his face. “You got any beers around this place?”

  “In the fridge,” Gerry said, then headed upstairs. “Help yourself.”

  Eddie grabbed a beer, then stalked the ground level of the house while Gerry banged around on the floor above. He sipped as he checked closets and behind beds, opening drawers and boxes at random. Too much of the girls’ junk still lay around. Nothing jumped out right away—there was little personal decoration on the walls, no mementos in the dressers and desks. But there were too many beds in the bedroom. Boxes of condoms. More makeup and clothes than even the average teen used or needed. None of it of the Sunday school variety, either.

  There was nothing he could do about it now, of course, but the important thing was that none of it was personalized or identifying. No names, numbers, or pictures. Nothing that could be traced back to him. A mysterious dead end.

  Twenty minutes later, Gerry came down the steps carrying two suitcases and breathing hard. He dropped them in the kitchen and looked at Eddie expectantly.

  Eddie tipped the bottle back and finished the beer, then gestured at the cases. “That’s everything?”

  “Everything,” Gerry said. “Twenty thou in cash, a baggie of dope, and some blow. And a Glock, believe it or not. You must be psychic.”

  “You didn’t put anything on a computer, did you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Phones? Laptops?”

  Gerry reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Just this. And I don’t use a laptop. I can barely use the fucking phone.”

  Eddie turned to put the empty bottle in the sink. “Good. We’re going to get through this, bud.”

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  “Grab me a roadie and we’ll get out of here.”

  “Sure, Eddie.” Gerry opened the fridge and bent over to grab a beer from the bottom shelf. When he heard the refrigerator door open, Eddie turned away from the sink, pulled out his gun, and—aiming carefully—shot Gerry twice in the back of the head. The shots were deafening claps and the smell pinched Eddie’s nose shut. Blood and brains fanned out across the inside of the refrigerator, scarlet against the stark white of the appliance. Gerry’s body dropped to the floor, with his chin—the only thing left of his face—coming to rest on the lip of the refrigerator near the vegetable crispers.

  Eddie stared at the mess, then carefully put the pistol back in his pocket. A strange odor hung in the air that was more than just the tang of the gunshots, and he breathed through his mouth, telling himself not to think about what he was looking at, what he’d done. Kneeling gingerly beside the body, he fished around Gerry’s pocket—his body was still warm—and pulled out his cell phone, which he pocketed. The refrigerator’s compressor suddenly kicked on and he jumped like a cat.

  Quickly, he grabbed Gerry by the feet and pulled him the rest of the way out of the refrigerator. The chest and head hit the kitchen floor with a wet thump. He closed the refrigerator and the mess with it, then slipped his used beer bottle into a pocket and rinsed the sink.

  Careful not to step in the spreading pool of blood, Eddie moved quickly around the first floor cracking open windows, then he shut the heat off at the thermostat and put the air-conditioning on manual. He sprinted up the steps to the second floor to make sure Gerry hadn’t been lying about laptops and computers, then grabbed the two suitcases and hurried out of the house, locking the door as he left.

  He couldn’t do anything to get rid of the tracks, but all the cops would have was his shoe size and the fact he wore one of the most popular brands of boots in the world. He’d touched almost nothing, was taking with him whatever he had, and he was wearing gloves anyway. The suitcases went into the Mustang’s trunk. He jumped in the driver’s seat and pulled away from the curb, nice and easy. He’d been there thirty-three minutes.

  With luck, he’d just severed the most dangerous connection to his past. Now he had to grab Lucy, head north, and capture the future that lay ahead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  She didn’t know what to make of Jack. Compared to the man who’d kidnapped her, with the serious expression and strange dead eyes—Eddie?—Jack was almost a welcome relief, a living cartoon, capering and cracking bad jokes and dancing in place. He inquired after her health and brought her a hot cup of tea anyway, presenting it with a courtly flourish. She wrapped her hands around it for the warmth, but didn’t dare drink it in case it was spiked like the Coke Tuck had given her. It was the first thoughtful gesture anyone had made since her nightmare had begun.

  But when he didn’t think she was watching, the clownish mask on Jack’s face slipped, revealing a weird, disturbing expression. It didn’t take a genius to guess what he was thinking, even if he thought he was hiding it behind an act. But she had at least an hour of relative safety—Jack was obviously afraid of Eddie enough to keep his hands to himself. The thought made her shiver. Judging by the way Jack had acted, Eddie’s threats were something new and different. Which meant Jack was used to having his way with whoever Eddie normally dropped off.

  Maybe that was something she could exploit. If things are bad, Chuck had told her once as part of her “training,” and nothing you’ve done has worked, talk to the guy. Humanize yourself. It’s easy for the guy to think of you as an object, a piece of trash. Don’t let them do that. Make him see you as a person.

  “Where do you work, Jack?” she asked with a confidence she wasn’t close to feeling. He’d made her sit in an easy chair in the corner while he straightened up the living room as though getting ready for a guest.

  “Huh?” he said, taken aback. He obviously thought she was mute from fear.

  “Where do you work? What do you do for a living?”

  “What’s it to you?” he asked, squinting at her suspiciously.

  “I’m curious what there is to do out here, so far from the city,” she said, trying desperately to sound conversational.

  “It’s not that far,” he said defensively. “Twenty minutes to DC, half an hour to Bal’more.”

  She nodded, encouraging him to talk. “Is t
here a lot of work around here, then?”

  Jack shrugged. “Enough. I pump gas down at the Stop-N-Go on weekends. Mow the grass over at Glenwood Greens when they call.”

  “Oh? Does that . . . does it pay well?”

  He laughed, a sound like a cat scratching at a door. He pulled a rickety dining room chair over and turned it around to sit backwards on it, facing her. “Peasant wages, m’lady. I’m lucky to make enough to eat most weeks.”

  “Oh,” she said, stumped. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry. It’s just the way it is,” he said, then got an evil look on his face and waggled his eyebrows. “Kind of like the pickle you’re in right now.”

  Lucy swallowed and couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Do you know what . . . Eddie is going to do with me?”

  “M’lord doesn’t confide in the likes of me,” he said, back to his courtly demeanor. “I am but a vassal to him, a serf to be used at his convenience.”

  “What does he . . . usually do with the girls he brings here?”

  “Oh, you are far from usual. If you were one of Eddie’s regular girls, you’d already be at the Fredericksburg rest stop performing fellatio, as the Romans called it, for the truckers. A cute, young thing like you? The semis would be lining up for the chance . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off and this time he didn’t bother to hide the weird look on his face.

  “Are you a collector?” Lucy asked, stumbling over the words as she looked for something to distract Jack. Maybe Eddie’s threats weren’t going to be enough.

  His attention snapped back to the present. “What?”

  She gestured around the tiny house. “All of these collectibles. You’ve got so many . . . things. I guessed you were an antiques collector of some kind.”

  Jack looked around the room as if the items on the walls had spontaneously sprouted in place. “Oh, I’ve been buying this stuff for years now. I’m a scholar of the Middle Ages, you might say. The Norman Conquest, Richard the Lionheart, Edward the Black Prince.”

  “That’s so interesting,” she said, forcing an element of wonder into her voice.

  “I never had the money to go to school for it, but you don’t need that to know what you’re talking about. Study anything long enough, you can be an expert.”

  “You’re self-taught, then?”

  “That’s right. Go ahead, ask me something, anything.”

  Lucy blinked. “Well, what was the Norman Invasion?”

  Jack leaned forward, his expression intense. “In the year 1066, France was getting a wee bit crowded. A Frenchman named Willie decided that the isle of Britain was ripe for the picking . . . and he should be the one to pick it. So he gathered an army, one of the largest ever assembled—pikemen and archers and knights and nobles—and sailed across the Channel to challenge the English king, Harold. It was the largest invasion in history to that point. But do you know the most amazing part?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No.”

  “Every single one of his men was named Norman. That’s why they called it the Norman Conquest.” Jack stared into her face, waiting for a reaction. She looked back at him, at a loss. He leapt to his feet, waving his arms in the air and shouting, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, girl. It’s a joke. Get it? The Norman Conquest?”

  Lucy had flinched and cried out when Jack had sprung up, but he hadn’t noticed, having already grabbed a plaque off the wall. He gestured at it spastically. The ornament was slightly larger than a dinner plate and made of a thick, dark wood cut in the shape of a shield. Steel rivets outlined the edge. Crossed in the center were a miniature broadsword and mace.

  Jack traced the edge of the sword. “Here. See this? See how there’s almost no point, but a long edge? Why do you think that was?”

  “For chopping?” Lucy said in a small voice.

  “No! Well, yes. But that’s not why it was the predominant weapon of the period. They couldn’t forge the quality of steel needed to keep a point that would do any damage against the armor of the time. So all they did was chop, chop, chop instead of poke, poke, poke.”

  Jack tossed the plaque behind him without looking and moved to a frame on the wall. It held the floor plan of a castle, poorly drawn in blue ink on lined notebook paper. Arrows and exclamation points pointed to various parts of the schematic.

  “And this! Do you know what this is? Huh?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I don’t,” Lucy said, but Jack was too absorbed to hear her.

  “This is Château Gaillard, one of the mightiest castles ever constructed. Richard the Lionheart built it in France as a big ‘fuck you’ to the French king. It held off a siege for over a year and it only fell when one of the king’s men climbed through the sewer and right up the shitter. Surprised the hell out of Richard’s men. Can you imagine being on the commode and some fella’s head pops out of the toilet next to you?”

  As Jack droned on about buttresses and parapets, Lucy’s eyes dropped from the drawing to the plaque that he’d flung on the table in front of her.

  “I made a study of the place, though,” Jack continued, stroking his chin. “And I know just where old Richie went wrong. See this curtain wall here? It wasn’t crenellated. His men could’ve held the French off for another six months at least if he would’ve only spent the money to fortify it properly. Of course, it wouldn’t have hurt to put a few bars across the old poop chute, either.”

  Biting her lip, Lucy inched forward in her seat. Jack was following the line of his drawing with a finger, saying something about barbicans or bartizans. She reached for the edge of the plaque.

  Jack turned, looking right at her. “What do you think of my theory?”

  Heart pounding, Lucy clasped her hands together and tried to look attentive. “Why . . . um, why didn’t he spend the money for the . . .”

  “Crenellations,” Jack finished for her. He turned back to the wall, shaking his head. “That’s a good question. I think it’s because he had already taxed the hell out of his peasants and—”

  The lecture concluded with a dull guck sound as Lucy grabbed the plaque with both hands, stood, then swung it as hard as she could at the back of his head, keeping it flat so that she caught him full-on with the edge. Like a broadsword, she thought giddily.

  Jack’s face slammed into the frame, breaking the glass, and he slid down the wall to fall on the floor. Lucy raised the plaque above her head, breathing heavily and screaming in rage. When Jack didn’t move, she lowered the plaque in increments, hardly believing what she’d done. With one toe, she prodded him hard enough to bruise, making sure he wasn’t faking. Though it was hard to believe anyone could put on an act after being clobbered like he’d been.

  Lucy dropped the plaque with a clatter and staggered into the kitchen. She needed to call for help, to get out of the house, but she was shaking with adrenaline and fear. She clawed at the sink taps and turned on the water so she could gulp directly from the faucet, drinking for long minutes. Finally sated, she splashed her face, then turned to assess her situation.

  I need to call Chuck. Eddie or Tuck or someone had taken her phone, but there had to be one in the house. She tore around the dwelling, tipping furniture over, kicking through piles of dirty clothes in the bedroom, and sorting through books about the Middle Ages on the single shelf. There was no sign of a phone.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said out loud. “Who doesn’t have a home phone?” A deadbeat who could barely afford to eat, that’s who.

  She started to cry, unable to believe this was happening to her. Keep it together, Luce, she could hear Chuck say. The bad guys win when you give up. She scrubbed her face with her hands and forced herself to think. If she couldn’t call for help, then she’d have to go out and find it.

  A closet in the hallway held the basics. Jack’s winter jacket smelled like diesel fuel and hot dogs, but it was thick and had a hoo
d. Putting her hands in his grease-stained work gloves was revolting, but the lining was fuzzy and warm. As skinny as he was, a pair of Jack’s work pants still easily fit over her own jeans—an extra layer against the cold. She found a flashlight in a dresser drawer. The batteries were nearly dead and the light weak, but it was better than nothing.

  After she was outfitted, she went back to the living room, peeking from the doorway to make sure Jack was still unconscious. He hadn’t moved. She went to the kitchenette and dug around until she found a filleting knife. That went into a pocket along with a lighter from a kitchen drawer. The food she could find didn’t even look edible—the thought of choking down a Vienna sausage from a jar in the refrigerator made her gag, and she didn’t want to know what the peanut butter had gone through.

  Jack groaned loudly as she closed a cupboard door. A wave of panic flushed through her. She had the knife, but she couldn’t bring herself to simply stab him while he was still half-unconscious. She flung open drawers and cupboards at random until she found the ubiquitous junk drawer. There. Amid the jumble of loose change and broken pens was a half-used roll of duct tape. Lucy snatched it out of the mess and ran to the living room.

  Jack was moving his head slightly and moaning. Moving quickly, she peeled off a three-foot length of tape, pulled his hands behind his back, and wrapped it around his wrists a dozen times. She repeated the maneuver for his feet, using the entire roll, except for a short strip that she slapped over his mouth.

  Lucy stood and looked over her handiwork, panting. Jack was trussed like a pig. It wasn’t enough to make her feel safe, but it would have to do—time was slipping away. If she didn’t get out of the house soon, all of this would be for nothing. Eddie was not the kind to fall for a simple trick, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything against him physically. It was time to move.