by Jack Kilborn
“That’s all.”
His shoulders slumped. I felt kind of sorry for him.
“Tell him you’ve been on your feet all day,” Harry said, “and your toes are really sweaty and stinky.”
I wished I could turn the earpiece off.
“That’s kind of a weird,” I told the guy. “Don’t you have a mother or an aunt or someone else who can give you a hug?”
“No one. I just got divorced, and I’m all alone.”
“How about friends? Neighbors? A church group?”
Bald Guy shook his head.
Harry said, “Try taking off your shoe and sticking your foot under his nose.”
“I just need a little tenderness,” Bald Guy said. “Will you do it?”
He looked so devastated, so desperate. Plus his vehicle was air-conditioned and smelled nice. What more prompting did I need? I walked around the front of his car/truck and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Dammit, Jackie! Find another john!” Harry, in my ear. “There aren’t any laws against cuddling! Don’t waste our time!”
The earpiece really needed an off switch. In fact, so did Harry. The sad thing was, Harry wasn’t as bad as some of the other jerks I had to work with. What did a female cop have to do to earn the respect of her peers in this city?
I guessed it wasn’t dressing up as a hooker, offering BJs.
“Okay,” I said. “One quick hug. On the house.”
I opened up my arms, ready to embrace this poor clod, and he handed me a latex glove. I backed off a notch.
“Are you sick?” I asked. “Contagious?”
“No, no, nothing like that. While you’re hugging me, I’d like you to stick your fingers up my bottom.”
No wonder he was divorced.
“And wiggle them,” he added.
“Mirandize that pervert,” McGlade said. “I’ll call the wagon and be right there.”
I opened my silver-sequined purse, reaching for my star and handcuffs.
“I’m a police officer,” I said, making my voice hard, “and you’re under arrest for soliciting a sexual act. Put your hands on the steering wheel.”
Bald Guy turned bright red, then burst into tears.
“I only wanted a little tenderness!”
“Place your hands on the steering wheel, sir. And for future reference, fingers up the wazoo really doesn’t qualify as tenderness.”
“I’m so lonely!” he sobbed.
“Buy a dog.” An unwelcome image popped into my head, of this pervert with some poor Schnauzer. “On second thought, that’s a bad idea.”
Bald Guy moaned, wiped his nose with his wrist, and then flung open his door and ran like hell. Which didn’t make much sense, considering that in jail he could probably find someone to fulfill his request for free.
“He bolted!” I yelled to Harry. “Coming your way!”
I pushed open my door and scrambled after him. Three steps into my pursuit I broke a heel and almost fell onto my face. I recovered in time, but my speed was drastically reduced. A penguin on stilts would have been faster, and looked less clumsy. I wasn’t about to kick my broken pump off—this wasn’t the nicest part of town, and I didn’t want to step on a dirty needle.
“He ducked down the alley, Jackie!” Harry said. “It lets out on Halsted. Run around and block his exit!”
Easy for him to say. He was wearing gym shoes.
I rounded the corner, hobbling as fast as I could, my spandex skirt riding up and encircling my waist like a neon pink belt. My purse orbited my neck on its spaghetti strap, and each time it passed in front of my face I reached for it and missed. Inside was my 9mm Beretta, and I didn’t want to be charging into any alleys without it firmly in hand.
Honking, from the street. I wondered if it was the squadrol—a police wagon that picked up and booked the suspects we caught on this sting. No such luck. It was a carload of cute preppy guys. They hooted at me, pumping their fists in the air.
“What’s that sound?” Harry said. “You watching Arsenio?”
I skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley, tugged down my skirt, and tugged out my Beretta.
The hooting stopped. I heard one of the preppies yell, “The whore is packing heat!” and their tires squealed away.
“Where is he?” I said into the mike.
“If he didn’t come out on your side, he’s hiding in the alley somewhere.”
“I’ll meet you in the middle.”
“It’s dark. Don’t shoot me by mistake.”
Harry didn’t mean it to be condescending, but he wouldn’t have said it if I were a man. I set my jaw, gripped my weapon in both hands with my elbows bent and the barrel pointing skyward, and crept into the alley.
The decaying garbage odor got worse with every step, so bad I could taste it in the back of my throat. I moved slowly, letting my eyes sweep left and right, looking for any place Bald Guy could hide. I came up to a parked car, checked under it, behind it.
“Jesus, the stink is making my eyes water.” Harry said. “It smells like some fat guys with BO ate bad cheese and took a group shit on a rotting corpse.”
Harry wore so much Brut aftershave I was surprised he could smell anything.
“You’re a poet, McGlade.”
“Why? Did I rhyme something?”
I stuck my head into a shadowy doorway, didn’t find Bald Guy, and went deeper into the alley.
Then I heard the scream.
It came from ahead of me. A man’s voice, with a hollow/echoey quality to it.
Something horrible was happening to Bald Guy.
My whole body became gooseflesh. I just joined Vice two weeks ago. Even though I was still a patrol officer, and made the same pay, I jumped at the chance to wear plainclothes and ditch the standard uniform. But plainclothes turned out to be hooker-wear, and I felt especially vulnerable without my dress blues on. It wasn’t easy being tough when you’re wearing a micro-mini.
Another scream ripped through the alley. The little girl in me, the one who still woke up scared during thunderstorms, wanted to turn around and run.
But if I gave in to my fear, Harry would mention it in the arrest report. Then it would be back to riding patrol and answering radio calls, where I got even less respect.
I forced myself to move forward. Now my gun was pointing in front of me, toward the direction of the sound. The Beretta was double action and protocol dictated it stayed uncocked. The harder pull meant less accidental shootings. Theoretically, at least. My finger was so tight on the trigger that a strong breeze would have caused me to fire.
“You see him?” Harry asked. I heard him in my earpiece, but I also heard him in the alley, somewhere ahead.
“Not yet.”
“Maybe he’s screaming because he can’t stand the smell.”
I didn’t think that was the case. I’d heard my share of screams on the Job. Screams of joy. Screams of sorrow. Screams of pain.
This was a scream of terror.
A clanging sound, only a few yards away from me. A Dumpster. I held my breath, heard whimpering coming from inside.
“He’s in a Dumptser,” I told Harry.
“Probably sitting in a big pile of rats.”
I approached quickly. It was dark, but I could see the Dumpster lid was open.
“This is the police!” I shouted, hoping my voice didn’t quaver. “Raise your hands up where I can see them!”
Bald Guy complied. But there was something wrong. Rather than two hands, I counted three.
I moved closer, and realized the third hand wasn’t his. It belonged to a woman.
And it wasn’t attached to the rest of her.
I felt someone touch my shoulder and jumped back. It was Harry.
“Looks like he got you a birthday present, Jackie. Quite a handy guy.”
My stomach seized up, then I bent over and vomited, soaking my broken shoes and getting it caught in the fake curls hanging in front of my face. When I heaved for the final time, the t
ransmitter popped free of my bustier and plonked into the puddle of puke.
“Happy twenty-ninth,” Harry said.
The following is an excerpt of Killers by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn.
Donaldson
“…multiple fractures of the clavicle, humerus, radius and ulna, a dislocated shoulder, a dislocated elbow, multiple contusions and lacerations, including skin abrasions covering about thirty percent of his body. A concussion. Plus the son of a bitch lost six teeth and an ear.”
The man speaking had a high-pitched voice, with a slight southern lilt.
“How’d it happen?” This voice was Latino, probably Mexican.
“Chained to the back of his own car, which went down the side of a goddamn mountain.”
“Poor guy.”
“Don’t waste any tears on this one. See the deputy outside? Soon as this bastard wakes up, he’s getting arrested. This dude is a serial killer. Name is Gregory Donaldson. Likes to cut up hitchhikers. Did all kinds of crazy, sick shit to them. Hear tell, he murdered more than fifty people.”
Low whistle from the Mexican. “Goddamn. Looks like he got what was coming to him.”
“You said it, brother. There’s a special room in hell for people like this.”
Donaldson peeked his eyes open. The men in his hospital room wore scrubs, the kind with novelty print patterns that were supposed to cheer up patients. One of them was chubby, early thirties, in need of a shave. The other was short, Hispanic, and even from ten feet away Donaldson could smell his armpit stains.
Donaldson figured they were orderlies. Beyond them, through the doorway, he saw the sheriff’s deputy the white guy had mentioned, a portly man in a khaki uniform. He sat in a wooden chair reading a magazine called Handgun Enthusiast. The gun on his belt had a snap over the holster.
Donaldson had been awake for a few hours, faking unconsciousness to avoid being asked questions, biding his time until he figured out a plan.
As situations went, this one was dire. Even in the grip of the morphine haze courtesy of his IV, Donaldson hurt. He hurt bad. His left arm felt like it had been yanked out, chewed up, and sewn back on upside-down. The neck brace was cruel stainless steel, screwed onto his scalp and shoulders, making it impossible to turn his head.
Donaldson peered down at the substantial girth of his body. A thin blanket covered his protruding gut. His arm was a mess, swollen to twice its normal size, purple and scabby with surgical pins and clamps holding his shattered bones in place. The pins poked through the flesh in half a dozen places.
He touched the side of his head, felt a bandage on his cheek and another that went up over his ear. Correction—one that went up over where his ear used to be.
Donaldson tried wiggling his toes, and that ignited his legs. He felt like he was lying on a hot skillet with the flames growing larger. Skin abrasions covering thirty percent of his body. That was the clinical explanation. Fucking agony was a much more appropriate description.
Stronger than the pain was a slithering, palpable fear. Donaldson couldn’t go to prison. He was too old for that and cherished his freedom. He wondered how the authorities knew who he was, what he was. Probably that damn female cop from the truck stop a week ago.
Lieutenant Jacqueline Fucking Daniels. How he’d love to have another go at her.
But she wasn’t the one who incensed him to the point where the pain and the fear became secondary. She wasn’t the true object of his hate. The one who made him twitch with rage and need.
That particular emotion was reserved for the one who put him in this hospital. The one who mangled his body by handcuffing him to the back of his own car. The one who put an end to a murder spree which had lasted almost thirty years, and delivered him right into the hands of the authorities.
Lucy.
Thinking about Lucy filled Donaldson with something more than fear. Something that transcended the pain. He absolutely ached for revenge. The thought of having Lucy all to himself, of doing things to her that made his past indiscretions seem tame by comparison, was so powerful it made him salivate.
He had a fuzzy, final memory of her. The two of them tangled up in each other once the car had mercifully hit a tree. The blood on each so thick it turned the dirt they’d been dragged through into mud. Twisted limbs. Broken bodies. Donaldson peeking open an eye, staring at her, watching her chest rise and fall.
Donaldson clenched his jaw, his few remaining teeth still loose in their sockets.
Please, please, please let her still be alive.
He glanced down at his good hand, saw the push button mechanism for the morphine drip, and gave himself a dose.
It helped with the pain.
It even helped with the fear.
But it didn’t help with the need.
Donaldson closed his eyes. But he wasn’t sleeping. He was plotting.
Plotting on how to get out of there and find Lucy.
The first step was getting rid of the fucking pig by the door.
“I know you aren’t asleep. Your breathing isn’t deep enough.”
Donaldson opened his eyes and stared at the doctor standing next to the bed. The man was tall, wide shouldered, sneer lines on his face. He looked like a fucking Ken doll. The name tag pinned to his lab coat read Lanz.
“Where am I?” Donaldson asked. His throat hurt. Raw from all the screaming he’d done while being dragged behind the car. His missing teeth made words hard to form.
“Blessed Crucifixion Hospital. They found you in a ravine, air-evacced you in. I’m performing your first skin graft later today. Doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for it, seeing how the state is going to execute you.”
“Your bedside manner sucks, Doc.”
Lanz whipped out a penlight, then roughly pried open Donaldson’s right eyelid with a latex-gloved hand. The bright beam was like being speared in the retina with a knife. After a few seconds, Lanz pulled away and scrawled something onto a clipboard.
“Was there a girl brought in with me?” Donaldson asked, keeping his voice neutral.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about anything other than your injuries.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of man who takes orders from lowly cops, Doc.”
Lanz seemed to consider it. “Yeah, she was brought in.”
“Alive?”
“If you could call it that.”
“Any chance of me seeing her?”
Lanz offered a sour smile. “Buddy, the only things you’ll be seeing are prison cells and courthouses, right up until they punch your clock.”
Donaldson narrowed his eyes. “I did a doctor, once.”
“Excuse me?”
“I had him strapped down on a table…” Donaldson lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Then I used his own scalpel to cut off small parts of his body. A bit of skin here and there. A finger. An ear. His lips. His penis, in five separate pieces. I used a clotting powder to stop the bleeding so he didn’t die right away. Then I fed the bits to him. One at a time. If he threw up, I made him swallow the parts again. By the time he finally died, he must have eaten almost a quarter of his own body.”
Lanz didn’t flinch. “I’m going to tell the nursing staff to cut you off morphine. We wouldn’t want a charmer like you accidentally dying during the procedure later.”
Dr. Lanz shoved the clipboard back into its slot at the foot of the bed, and then turned to leave.
“See you later, Doc.”
Donaldson closed his eyes and imagined Lanz tied to a gurney, screaming and begging and choking on his own flesh.
But the image didn’t last. Just as it was getting good, his thoughts were interrupted by an image of Lucy. Small. Young. Innocent-looking. With her guitar case and her pink Crocs, her hip cocked out as she thumbed a ride.
In his head, Lucy smiled at Donaldson. The smile quickly escalated into giggling, and then full blown laughter.
The little bitch was laughing at the pain she had caused him.
>
You think you know pain, little girl?
I’ll show you pain.
Compilation copyright © 2009 by Blake Crouch & Joe Konrath
SERIAL UNCUT copyright © 2010 by Blake Crouch & Joe Konrath
Interview copyright © 2009 by Blake Crouch & Joe Konrath
Afraid copyright © 2009 by Joe Konrath, originally published by Grand Central
Snowbound copyright © 2010 by Blake Crouch, originally published by Minotaur Books
Shaken copyright © 2010 by Joe Konrath
Illustrations and graphic design copyright © 2010 by Jeroen ten Berge
This eBook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joe Konrath & Blake Crouch.