The Girl Who Didn't Die--A Suspense Novel

by Tim Kizer

  “That’s when you saw that last text message from Kelly?”

  “Yes. And that’s when we realized that Tony didn’t come home the night before. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m trying to see how much time Frank had to hide Kelly’s body. Looks like he had no more than three and a half hours to do it.”

  Graham winced slightly when he realized he had just uttered the word ‘body.’ Given the context he had used it in, this word had a sinister connotation which might have been a sign of his diminishing confidence that Kelly was still alive. He had actually been making a deliberate effort to avoid saying it in Josephine’s presence so as not to appear a defeatist in her eyes.

  “I think you’re right. He must have gotten rid of her body before calling me. It would have been too risky to delay that.”

  “So, it’s one hour to get to the place where he buried her, one hour to dig the hole, and one hour to get back home.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “He could have gone as far as fifty miles away from his house in one hour.”

  “Yeah, he probably drove the limit to keep from getting pulled over by the highway patrol.”

  “Exactly my thought. Those highway patrol morons can pull you over for no reason at all.”

  “Nice detective work, Columbo.” Josephine laughed softly. “What time are you coming over today?”

  “I’m thinking around six.”

  “Ron was wondering why you don’t just move to our place until we find Kelly. Would you like to take a break from your wife?”

  “That’s an interesting idea. I might take you up on this offer.”

  “Maybe it’s time to dump your wife. She’s totally useless, isn’t she?”

  “She doesn’t really bother me yet. She’s doing her thing, I’m doing mine, everybody’s happy. I could give it a thought in a year or two, though.”

  “Well, I’ll see you after six, Graham. And don’t stress too much. Things always work out in the end.”

  “What if Frank still doesn’t remember where he took Kelly?”

  “Then I’ll give you a nice heavy phonebook and leave you and Frank alone. How does that sound?”

  “I haven’t used a phonebook in years. But I’m sure it will come back to me in no time.”

  “I believe in you, Graham. I have a good feeling about this Saturday.”

  Chapter 16.

  RUNAWAY

  1.

  ‘It's a bat. It’s just a damn bat. Leave it there, George. Let's go.’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  Josephine lit up a cigarette and looked out of the bedroom window down at the neatly trimmed shrubs surrounding the house.

  “Remember that jogging girl Al caught back in April?” said Ron. “She had a nice ass. I’m still thinking about it.”

  “Yeah, she was a cute girl.”

  “I’m beginning to miss those days, to tell you the truth.” Ron walked up to Josephine and stood beside her.

  “It’s been only three weeks, Ron. It only seems like a long time because you’re in stress.”

  “Maybe you’re right. You want to get something to drink? I’m thirsty.”

  “Okay.”

  They went downstairs to the living room, where Ron opened a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Pride Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon.

  “We should have kept a closer eye on Tony. I guess Kelly was not experienced enough for this,” said Josephine, observing Ron fill her glass with wine. “And we shouldn't have let him go clubbing whenever he pleased. I shouldn’t have trusted his judgment. Five hundred years old, and he still managed to fuck up.”

  “Shit happens, Josephine. No one could have foreseen it. What else could we have done? Keep Tony inside 24/7? He would never have agreed to that.”

  “He would have been alive now if he’d just stayed at home.”

  “You’re right, we should have been stricter with him. But it’s still his own fault. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did something stupid on purpose. I heard him say he was getting too tired.”

  “Tired of what?”

  “Life? He was five hundred years old after all.”

  “Did you hear him explicitly talk about killing himself?

  “No. He never mentioned suicide. He might have thought about it, though.”

  “No, I doubt it.” Josephine shook her head. “Everyone wants to live forever. Especially those who deny it. And I do agree that it was his own fucking fault.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, years ago, I read an old legend about this young king from ancient Rome or Greece, I forgot which it was.” Josephine took a sip of Cabernet from the glass. “So, as you might expect, this guy leads a life of leisure, with not a care in the world. And one day an oracle predicts to him that he’s going to die within weeks, maybe even days. So this king starts pleading to the gods to spare his life, and the gods tell him that they will let him live if he finds someone who’ll voluntarily donate their life to him, the key word here being ‘voluntarily.’ Several days later it turns out that none of the guy’s servants, relatives, and friends are willing to sacrifice themselves for him. Eventually, this king stumbles upon a really old blind man living in some cave by the seashore. He asks the old man if he’d like to donate his life to him, considering the man’s miserable existence. And the old man replies, ‘Even though I’m old as sin, blind as a bat, and have to beg for food, every morning, when I wake up and the warm rays of the sun touch my face, I feel like the happiest man in the world.’” Josephine paused. “The old fucker thought he was too young to die. He was falling apart but still wanted to live. There’s survival instinct for you.” She chuckled.

  “So what happened to the king?”

  “He croaked. Nobody wanted to leave this earth before their time. You see, people may say they would give up their lives for this, that, or the other, but when it comes down to the brass tacks, very few of them come through. And those that do are probably insane.” Josephine took another sip of wine.

  “I was wondering, Josie. Do you still believe that Frank didn’t know what Kelly was?

  “I don’t think she was so dumb as to tell him that.”

  “Could he have guessed somehow?” Ron began to refill his glass.

  Josephine shook her head. “I don’t see how he could. Kelly was very low-key. It took her a year to make up her mind to get rid of Kathy, remember?”

  Ron nodded. “You still don’t think that Frank had nothing to do with Tony’s death?”

  “I’d be quite surprised of he did. He’d have to know that Tony was a vampire to have a shot at killing him. Besides, this is not a one man job. Tony was one tough cookie, trust me.”

  “But we can’t be sure about it, can we?”

  Staring at her glass, Josephine put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it up. “Well, we can’t be sure about anything at all, to be honest with you.”

  Yes, all they could do was guess since they knew very little about the night Kelly and Tony had disappeared. Based on the GPS tracking data, they concluded that Kelly and Tony had entered the Marquee nightclub in downtown Buffalo around 10:05 pm and stayed there until around 12:20 am. Tony’s tracking device stopped transmitting at 12:34 am, when he was on Delaware Avenue four miles north of the club; the GPS had never come to life after that point. At 3:51 am, Kelly sent her last text message that read ‘I think I lost Tony. Can’t talk right now,’ which meant that Tony had somehow gotten separated from Kelly en route home.

  Did Kelly lose Tony back at the club or hours later? There was no way to tell. According to the cell-phone company, Kelly was on or near Delaware Avenue four and a half miles north of the nightclub when she sent her last text, so they were guessing that she had been separated from the vampire around the time Tony’s GPS had died and spent the next three hours looking for the vampire or hiding (maybe that was why she couldn’t talk).

  Why did the GPS stop working? The device was attached to the vampire’s waist with a Kevlar strap
that required a key to be removed, so obviously it didn’t just fall off and dropped into some hole. And it couldn’t have been the battery because it had at least five days before its charge ran out. They suspected that someone—probably a bunch of thugs high on drugs—had attacked Tony and gone a little too far in their rage. How did these wackos manage to kill him? After all, slaying a vampire was a hard task, especially at night. Josephine’s bet was on decapitation. There was one thing they were sure about, though: no way in hell Tony had decided to dump them like a used rag. They satisfied his every need—from human blood to sex to diamond encrusted cufflinks—and he would never have backed out of such a cushy deal.

  So was it possible that Frank had something to do with Tony’s death?

  Well, there’s a Russian saying: ‘Even an unloaded rifle can fire once a year,’ so yes, such a theory had a right to exist. She would ask Frank himself about it once they get Kelly back. Hell, it was also possible that Frank had nothing to do with Kelly’s disappearance. For all Josephine knew, Kelly might have been snatched by the same fuckers that had attacked Tony.

  And speaking about being unsure—it had never been confirmed that that Tony had actually bitten Kelly that night. They assumed that Tony had done it based on two things: first, Kelly had been seriously considering becoming a vampire prior to her disappearance, and second, a few minutes before heading to the nightclub she sent Ron a message that read: ‘I wanna get the bite tonight.’

  “Maybe we should try to find Travis?” asked Ron. “We might get lucky.”

  Josephine shook her head and said, “It’s a dead end. He either committed suicide or put himself into a torpor. He could be hibernating at the bottom of some old mine shaft, for all we know. They’ve got a whole bunch of those in Minnesota.”

  “You think he took a long sunbath?” Ron cracked a thin smile.

  “Something like that.”

  Ron pulled a tissue out of the box and blotted the sweat from his forehead and temples.

  “That night, why do you think Kelly didn’t use her gun to protect Tony?” He crumpled the tissue and dropped it on the table.

  Josephine shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe she forgot it in the car. Or at home. Or maybe she simply panicked—who knows?”

  “I wonder if I would have panicked if I’d been in her shoes.”

  “I don’t think you would.” Josephine took a deep puff. “I’ve been thinking about how to prevent this situation from happening again,” said Josephine. “What we need is a backup vampire stashed away in a safe location. We wouldn’t be in this debacle if we had such a backup, would we?”

  “Like a spare tire, right?”

  “Yes, like a spare tire.” Josephine nodded. “When we find Kelly, that’s going to be the first thing we’ll have her do—make us a spare vampire.”

  “We could buy a ranch and bury that guy under the barn.” Ron leaned back and crossed his arms.

  “Yeah, that’s a great place to keep the spare.” Josephine smiled. “And the cool thing is, there is no expiration date.”

  “No expiration date.” Ron took a sip from his glass. “I was wondering: what happens to those who run out of the juice? Do they die?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “I think each case is different. Probably, no longer than five months at best.”

  “Is my cancer going to come back?” Ron frowned; a glimmer of fear flashed in his eyes.

  “Yes, it is. I guess you and I will be the first ones to go if we don’t find Kelly.” She put her hand on Ron’s. “Enough of this doom and gloom. We’re not dead yet, are we?” Josephine examined Ron’s face, trying to figure out if there were any uncomfortable questions he couldn’t bring himself to ask her.

  The gang must think she had been too soft on Frank. From a certain standpoint, there was a bright side to it. They were underestimating her, which meant she had an advantage, and Josephine loved having an upper hand even if it gave her no ostensible benefit at the moment. If they could look into her soul, they would have realized that whatever soft side she’d had sixty years ago had long shrunk to the size of a dandruff flake. Perhaps the gang would have had more faith in her if she had told them the real story behind Tony’s lost leg.

  You see, the barbarians that chopped off Tony’s left leg back in 1965 did not work for a cuckolded husband, who mistook Tony for a guy fucking his wife, as the official account said. It was Josephine who hired those poor schlubs. Why did she do it? She wanted to demonstrate to Tony that nowadays even a five-hundred-year-old vampire needed a solid team of helpers at all times. A peg-legged vampire was an easier target than the one with intact limbs, which meant that Tony’s dependence on his ghouls was going to skyrocket after that little misadventure.

  And it wasn’t like she went overboard with it, you know. She had specifically ordered the guys to cut below the knee, thus leaving Tony with a bigger part of the leg.

  Josephine got a bargain on the deal, too; when the thugs showed up to receive the other half of their fee, she simply shot them all dead with a handgun. No, she didn’t kill them out of stinginess. She just didn’t want to leave any loose ends.

  “Are you nervous?” Josephine asked.

  “Honestly, yes.”

  “Well, it’s all about trade-offs.” Josephine paused to formulate her next thought. “Right now, you might probably wish you were a vampire. But you see, with all their legendary strength, all their immortality, all their bad ass reputation, vampires have a couple of weak spots that are a deal-breaker for me personally. I have no desire to live my life hiding from the sun. I refuse to face a constant risk of dying a horrible death just because some jackass managed to drag me outside in the middle of the day.”

  Ron nodded. “Yeah, it does seem kinda brutal that they can die by simply going outside at the wrong time.”

  “Being a ghoul gives you the best of the both worlds. You live forever, you don’t age, and you can lead a regular lifestyle. You just need to make sure that your vampire won’t hang you out to dry one day.”

  “True. You hit the nail on the head once again, Josephine.”

  2.

  “The way I see it, we’re doing this world a favor,” said Ron. “Overpopulation is a big problem nowadays. We’re just helping the humanity solve it, that’s all. Think about all those greenhouse gasses those people would have farted into the atmosphere if they’d stayed alive.” He burst out laughing.

  “You’re cracking me up, Ron.” Josephine began to laugh after him.

  The landline telephone rang, and Josephine got out of the table to answer it.

  “Josephine?” she heard Albert’s voice. “It’s me Al. You’d better sit down.”

  Albert sounded agitated.

  “What is it?” She turned to Ron and told him who was calling. Then she pressed the speaker button so Ron could hear the conversation.

  “Frank ran away!” Albert shouted. “This asshole is gone!”

  “Why do you think he ran away?” Josephine exchanged glances with Ron.

  Frowning, Ron whispered, “Motherfucker.”

  “I was in his house ten minutes ago. I checked every room. He’s not home.”

  “What were you doing there at five o’clock in the morning?” asked Ron.

  “I was driving by his house and saw that his bedroom windows were shut. Those windows had always been open at night the last three weeks, so I figured something was not right. I opened the front door with the key you’d given me and went inside. The house was empty. This son of a bitch skipped town, Josephine.” Albert could hardly catch his breath.

  “Maybe he’s at his friend's place? Maybe he’s been partying all night?” said Josephine. “Are you in his house right now, Al? His security alarm must have gone off.”

  “I’m in my car. I parked two blocks away from his house,” replied Albert. “I don’t think he’s been partying. He turned the lights off at half past eleven, and I didn’t see h
im leave the house. And his car is in the garage.”

  “What time did you go back home last night?” asked Josephine.

  “Fifteen-twenty minutes after the lights went off.”

  “Did you see Marilyn’s car by his house?”

  “No.”

  “Frank knows that someone was in his house,” commented Ron. “As far as I know, his security company calls the client before sending the police. I wonder what he told them.” He lit a cigarette. “What’s the police response time for an alarm like this? It has to be at least fifteen minutes.”

  “Have you seen any police cars in the neighborhood?” asked Josephine.

  “Not yet.”

  “Did anybody see you enter his house?” asked Ron.

  “I don’t think so. Everyone in his neighborhood is asleep at five in the morning. And it was dark, too.”

  “I wonder if Frank had a police car sent to check on his house,” said Ron. “I’ll ask Graham to find out.”

  “Al, go check if he’s back home and call me,” said Josephine. “Be careful. Watch out for cops.”

  “Okay. If he’s home, I’m going to tie him up and talk to him man-to-man,” said Albert. “It's time to beat the shit out of this fucker. Graham thinks so, too.”

  “Don’t do anything major without talking to me first. He’ll get what he deserves, I promise,” said Josephine.

  “I’ve got a hunch this jerk is not coming back,” said Albert. “I knew he would run away.”

  “Why would he run away?” asked Josephine. “Who is he afraid of? Police? They’ve never accused him of killing Kelly, have they?”

  “He’s afraid of us,” said Albert. “He knows we know what he did to Kelly, and he’s afraid of payback.”

  “You think he’s scared enough to be on the run for the rest of his life?” Josephine cast an inquiring look at Ron, prompting him to share his opinion. Ron, who was holding his cell to his ear, remained silent.

  “He was right to be scared of us, wasn’t he?” remarked Albert.

  “His cell-phone is off.” Ron took his phone away from his ear and pressed the hang button. “This is not a good sign.”