Rob rolled up first. Shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his shorts and walked along the curb in dirty kicks, stepping around the broken glass like he didn’t give a shit.
“Yo, mister. You buy us some beer, we’ll buy you a six-pack.”
The guy turned his head oddly, like his neck was the only part of him that moved. Rob stood there, waiting for a reply, and after a while, he began to think the guy was deaf-mute or something. Maybe that’s why he wore a mask. Like his throat and mouth were all rotted away or something.
Finally, though, he spoke. Told him:
“I don’t drink beer. I drink gin.”
“Okay, so—”
“So I’ll make you a deal,” the guy said. “I’ll buy you the beer. You buy me the gin.”
“Awesome,” Rob said, then caught himself. Too eager, fool. You’re buying this deformed bum some booze. Don’t sound so grateful for buying him free shit. “Deal,” he quickly added.
Sqweegel walked into the corner store and sailed into the beer aisle. He loved shopping for things in person. He did it so rarely.
His white suit was completely hidden away from the world behind a trench coat, gloves, trousers, hat, sunglasses. Glance at him from behind, and you wouldn’t think anything of him—just an ordinary man. Glance at him from the front and you might catch a glimpse of white that would give you pause, but then you’d remember this was L.A. There were plenty of celebrities who ran around town incognito. This was the city of sunglasses, of masquerades. Sqweegel fit right in.
He was pleased to find that the store stocked plenty of bottles of mass-produced lager with twist-off caps. Very easy to open—and reseal—with a small amount of torque. Especially if you’re wearing rubber gloves.
Sqweegel eyed the surveillance cameras, then selected two six-packs of the brand he thought would impress the children the most. He used a palm to quickly twist the tops off all of the bottles in succession. Then out of a small sewn-in pocket of the hoodie he produced a medicine dropper full of a yellowish liquid.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
One for each bottle. More than enough. The liquid was highly illegal and incredibly potent.
Caps went back on, twisting hard, then sealing with a small push of the palm. The children would never know the difference.
Sqweegel carried the six-packs to the front, handed over the cash with a gloved hand. The counter jockey gave his face a quick glance, but then took the money without comment. This was California, after all.
Within minutes, the freak was back outside, big brown paper bag in his hands.
Score.
The guy stopped, though, and stared down into the bag. “Seems they don’t sell hard liquor here. Let’s take a drive, shall we? Find some other liquor emporium so you three can hold up your end of our bargain?”
Then he looked back up, locking eyes with each of them. Creepy little black eyes like marbles. Rob heard his buds saying yeah, okay, but he wasn’t sure this was the world’s best idea.
“Dude,” he whispered to his friend Chris. “We actually going to get into the car with some strange guy?”
Chris shot him a withering look. “What, are you five? You afraid he’s going to offer you candy?”
“No, man, it’s just—”
Chris leaned in close, hand on Rob’s shoulder.
“Don’t be a pussy. We’ll get this guy his gin; then we’ll bolt. Fuck him. We’ll get our party on.”
Which his how Rob found himself in the passenger seat of the beat-up, musty Pinto, next to a skinny dude in a mask who it turned out was wearing rubber gloves. No, he hadn’t noticed them at first. If he had, maybe Rob wouldn’t have even given him the money for the beer in the first place.
chapter 46
Chris and Tom were rolling around the backseat like two idiots, laughing and elbowing each other, making the springs squeak under their weight. They were already halfway through their first beers. Glad they could relax.
Rob had his bottle of Yuengling resting between his legs, cap in his hand. The surface of the beer tilted left and right like the liquid capsule in a carpenter’s level. He was hesitating and not quite sure why.
Maybe it was the smell in the car, which was a little too much like raw sewage. Rob tried to find the button that would lower the window but instead found a crank handle. Figured. When did they stop making cars with freakin’ window handles? The 1980s or something? But the crank didn’t do anything. It jiggled a half inch up and down but otherwise stayed locked in position.
Fuck it. He took a large sip of his beer. He was slipping into a sour mood, and that would pretty much kill the night.
Rob watched the lights and shop windows and people along Olympic speed by. The beer was cold and good. Nothing like a beer on a school night.
All the while, the driver said nothing.
“What’s with the face mask, dude?” Rob finally asked.
“Yeah,” Chris called from the back. “What, do you go out with Batman at night and fight crime and shit?”
Chris and Tom started howling in the backseat, the pricks. They weren’t up here in the front. Sitting just a few inches away from him.
If the guy was bothered, though, he didn’t show it. He kept his eyes on the road, stopping at the lights and changing lanes now and again. Slowly, he reached over and turned the car’s heat up as high as it would go, like it wasn’t already stifling in here.
Finally, he turned to look at Rob. The two black beady eyes regarded him from the eyeholes.
“You mean, do I don a costume and apply my own brand of justice to evildoers in the night?”
“Uh,” Rob said, “something like that.”
“I have a rare skin condition,” Sqweegel said, and let the words hang in the air.
“Oh,” Rob said. “That sucks.”
“Yes, it does suck. If any part of me is exposed to sunlight, I’ll shrivel away to skin and bones, and birds will pick at my flesh with their bloodthirsty beaks.”
That right there killed the laughter in the backseat.
Birds?
Pecking at flesh?
Say whaaaa?
Rob turned his attention back out of the passenger window, watching L.A. roll by. He blinked. A long blink. The kind where you find yourself nodding off for a second before pulling yourself back up out of the dark. Whoa. What the hell was that about? It wasn’t even nine yet.
He turned around and the world suddenly vibrated, like someone had just kicked a bass drum buried deep in the earth’s crust. This wasn’t an earthquake, was it? Rob’s vision swam out of focus before clicking back.
In the backseat, Tom was already passed out, head on Chris’s shoulder, bottle of beer slipping out of his long fingers before banging to the foot well and foaming out at the top. Chris, meanwhile, looked like he was having trouble moving his hands. He fumbled at the bottle near his lap but couldn’t quite pick it up.
Rob wanted to warn him, No, dude, don’t drink any more beer, something’s wrong with it—
But then he was out, too, and his head slipped down between the two seats.
Sqweegel gently pushed the one next to him back into his seat. His head rested against the passenger window. Drool had already formed in the corners of his mouth.
Now his gloved fingers found the ancient radio and fiddled with the knob until he found the classical station. Something bombastic and German was playing as he took the on-ramp to the freeway. There was a little bit of driving ahead of them, and he didn’t want to get caught up in traffic longer than he had to.
If you were looking carefully, you might have been able to see the white plastic over Sqweegel’s face shift, right around where his mouth should be.
He was smiling.
chapter 47
Somewhere in Southern California
Rob’s brain reloaded. The smell hit him first—a foul toilet smell. Then the cold concrete pressed to his cheek, which didn’t make sense. Wasn’t he
in some dude’s Pinto just now? What the hell…?
And then he realized he was naked, and somebody had bound his wrists and ankles with plastic ties, and his skin went dead cold, quickly followed by an explosion of ice in the pit of his stomach.
God, did it smell in here. Wherever he was.
He wished like crazy that he could go back in time and tell Chris and Tom, No, I don’t care if you guys think I’m a pussy; we just shouldn’t get in the car with this friggin’ freak. We shouldn’t even be here, pimping for fuckin’ beers. We should be home preparing for college, just like our parents keep trying to drill into our stupid little skulls.
The room was dark, but Rob could hear moaning next to him. Sounded like Chris waking up. If Rob hadn’t been so terrified, he would have started cursing him out and telling him what a moron he was.
Then, all at once, the room was full of harsh light.
The freak in the face mask was standing next to a floor lamp. No hoodie or jeans now. The same material that Rob thought was a mask was now revealed to be a suit, covering his entire body. Well, almost his entire body.
The thing that protruded from a zippered hole in the front of the suit was uncovered.
Rob hadn’t seen many other guys naked. He was only seventeen. Your curiosity gets the best of you and you take too many glances in the gym shower room, you’re liable to get your face smashed in. But even to Rob’s untrained eye, this guy seemed unnaturally large. Disproportionate on any human being, let alone this underfed-lookin’ guy.
The freak padded toward them now, something in each hand, cock bouncing slightly as he walked. Rob craned his neck around for a better view—oh, shit, what if it was a gun?
The man unzipped his mouth as he placed the objects on the floor in front of them:
A broom.
A baseball bat.
Then he stood up again and began stroking himself, massaging it into full tumescence.
“What are you going to do to us?” Rob asked, immediately sorry the moment the words left his mouth.
“I think you know what I’m going to do to you,” the freak said.
“But I want to give you some options. The options are…me. This broom handle. Or this baseball bat. You three decide. By who or by what. Or shall I decide for you?”
Rob glanced down. The guy’s dick, it turned out, was wrapped in the white plastic, after all. Wrapped so tight, you could see the veins. Holy shit. What the hell was going on? And what was he talking about, options? By who and by what…Oh, God, get us out of here. Someone fucking hear us and get us out of here….
“What are you doing, man?” Chris screamed. “We didn’t do anything to you.”
“I’m ten inches at full erection. The broom handle is thirty-six inches long and two inches wide. The wooden bat is only thirty inches long, but the width is six inches around. But don’t worry. I do have certain tools, should you require further assistance.”
Tools? Who was this guy?
“If you can’t decide,” Sqweegel said, chiding them, “I will decide for you.”
Rob hated himself for the choice he blurted out, but he knew he had to choose first, before the others beat him to it.
Rob tried to tune out everything that followed. The howled complaints from Chris and Tom, who quickly realized what he’d done to them. The feel of the skinny freak’s cold, gloved hands on his hips. The gross breath over his shoulder. The grunting noises. After a while, he began to imagine that his body had split all the way up to the middle of his throbbing, wracking chest.
After more endless agony, it all stopped. Rob heard the sound of the man rubbing his palms together.
“Just getting you warmed up,” the freak said. “Now let’s really have some fun.”
Then it resumed.
And seeed to last forever…
Sqweegel pushed the first boy down to the ground—Rob—and watched him go into shock. It was an education he’d never forget, and Sqweegel was pleased with himself for being able to provide it.
“Now for you two. Who wants what?”
The two boys squirmed away like freshly born maggots. Wriggling across the dungeon floor, white, pale, limbless things trying to avoid a fate they were powerless to stop.
“I suppose you are leaving the decision to me.”
Rob closed his eyes tightly and prayed to God harder than he’d ever prayed before that this was just the worst fucking nightmare of all time and he was going to wake up any second now.
But, of course, he didn’t.
chapter 48
Hancock Park High School Thursday, 3 P.M.
The afternoon bell rang.
Some students had dismissal down to a science—a way to hit the lockers (if necessary) and make their way to the nearest exit in the shortest amount of time. Last to the buses is a punk.
So they were the first to see the three boys—naked, bound, and gagged on the front steps.
At first they all thought it was a joke. Some kind of senior prank, where you fuck with the freshmen and embarrass them in front of the entire student population.
But by the time more students had gathered, pouring out of the front doors, someone pointed and screamed. Blood. There was blood pooled around them, and they were squirming and shaking and screaming with their eyes.
Socha Medical Hospital
Riggins stood in the hallway, waiting for the doctors to finish up. They’d brought the kids here, the closest hospital.
He couldn’t imagine what must be going through their parents’ minds right about now. The kids had been missing since the night before. Riggins could imagine the parents up all night, praying, making bargains with God to bring their kids back alive, no matter what; it didn’t matter; they’d do anything.
Their prayers had been answered. But most likely not the way they’d wanted.
Question now, of course: Was Sqweegel responsible? Riggins had asked to be notified of any particularly horrific assaults or murders in the entire Southland area, and this certainly qualified.
When he told Wycoff about it an hour ago, he’d gone off on a rant. Fuck the kids! This monster doesn’t abduct. He tortures. He kills. Stay focused on the case. Nothing else matters!
But Riggins couldn’t let it go. Socha Medical Hospital was quickly becoming their satellite Special Circs office—what with Sibby, and news about the priests nearby, and now these kids. It bothered him.
Why those kids, from that particular neighborhood? Was it the proximity to Socha—which was only a ten-minute drive down West Third? Was it just the kids’ bad luck to run into a Level 26 killer as he cruised the streets of Los Angeles?
Or was it the fact that Dark had lived with his foster family in Hancock Park and had attended the same high school?
Riggins hoped the kids would be able to shed some light on the thing. Even the smallest detail about their tormentor, or where they’d been held, could be the key to everything.
The three of them would soon be transported to the nearest LAPD station house. Riggins knew better than to push his way into the station and start waving his jurisdictional cock around; it was a fight he didn’t need.
But it had worked out anyway. The cop, a beefy, no-nonsense man named Jack Mitchell, had agreed to allow Riggins and Dark to observe the interviews. Especially after he was made to understand that this was exactly the kind of case Special Circs dealt with on a daily basis.
Dark approached, seemingly out of nowhere. “What’s the story?”
“In a second,” Riggins said. “What’s the latest with Sibby?”
“No change.” He seemed to want to change the topic back to the case. “And these kids? They say anything yet?”
Dark had seen the kids as they were wheeled into the ER an hour before. He’d been outside for some air and asked one of the uniformed officers what had happened. Christ, the therapy they were going to need. From the stigma as much as the physical stigmata they’d be carrying around in the months to come. Dark was stunned to hea
r about how they’d been discovered, naked and bleeding, right outside Hancock Park High School.
His alma mater.
Coincidence? Very well could be. But he’d asked Riggins to look into it anyway. After the dead priests and the fire at the church—his church—Dark was starting to not believe in coincidences anymore.
“I made a deal with Jack Mitchell from the LAPD,” Riggins said. “Parents signed consent forms—we can watch the interviews. And if need be, I’m sure I can sweet-talk our way in there for some follow-up. The parents want the guy who raped their boys caught—and his balls floating in a jelly jar, if possible.”
“I know how they feel,” Dark said.
To see the interrogation, log into LEVEL26.com and enter the code: violated
chapter 49
West Hollywood 7:09 P.M.
Up a long, narrow flight of concrete stairs, Dark made his way to the front door of the apartment.
This was a new place—the one Riggins had arranged for him, mostly as a place to store his essentials. Things he’d need to access quickly.
He paused in front of the door, key in hand, paranoid thoughts running through his head. Had Sqweegel followed the moving company? Had he followed Riggins, who’d personally hauled the boxes up to this third-floor apartment?
Was he somewhere inside, tucked into a corner, or under a sink?
Dark almost hoped so. He’d like to get his hands on him, even for just a few seconds. Even if he died in the process. He just wanted to dish out a little payback for breaking into their home. The one safe place. The place he and Sibby had made together.
Never mind that now. Focus on the task at hand.
Dark was still wearing the shirt that he’d had on at the crash site, and it was still stained with Sibby’s blood. Back in the waiting room, Riggins had looked him up and down and urged him to go to the apartment, take a shower, put on some fresh clothes already before he started to offend. Probably made sense.
Level 26 Page 13