Die Smiling

by Linda Ladd

  After Bud and Shaggy were tied to chairs, Costin jerked me up into a third one and bound me tightly.

  “Okay, now I feel a bit more secure about my odds. Come over here, Brianna, give me a kiss.”

  Brianna went to him and pressed her body up tightly against him. He hugged her close, the gun dangling loosely behind her back. They kissed long and hard, brutally, and I watched Bud struggling desperately to get loose. Shaggy looked petrified.

  Costin stepped away, smiled down at Bri’s upturned face, then backhanded her so hard with the pistol butt that it knocked her completely off her feet. She fell hard on her back and lay still, bleeding from the mouth. Both Bud and Shaggy went berserk, trying to tear their arms loose. I continued to work the ropes tying my wrists. It was my only hope.

  “Brianna, Brianna, you really think you’re gonna get by with this shit? Leavin’ me without a word and making me worry about you all these years. And now, here you are, plottin’ with these two losers to gun me down. I mean, I’m an easygoing guy, but really…”

  Brianna came to enough to try to scramble away from him, but Costin was on her again, grabbing her up, then slapping her face hard enough to knock her down again. The knot I was working with my fingers gave slightly, and I frantically kept at it as Brianna tried to crawl away on her hands and knees. Now she was bleeding profusely from both the nose and mouth. Blood was pouring down her blouse and onto the floor. Bud was yelling curses, threats, and fighting desperately against his bindings, almost hysterical.

  Bud and I both went stone still, though, when Costin pulled out a pair of scissors from his jacket, jerked her head back by the hair, fisted it, and held the point to the hollow of her throat. “You’re gonna die smilin’, too, baby, just like little Sissy did in that shower stall, but you’re gonna have a audience around to watch you die.”

  Brianna was crying and begging for her life as he pushed her into a chair across from me, then secured her there with more of the rope. I watched, terrified, but finally wiggled a couple more knots loose. Eyes locked on Costin, I fumbled clumsily with the last knot, desperate to stop him, then tensed all over when Costin squatted down in front of Brianna and gently fingered loose strands of blood-soaked hair behind her ears.

  Oh God, I knew then what he was going to do. He was going to hack off her lips, just like he did to Hilde. I knew it, knew it in my soul, and I fought the bindings behind my back. I had to get loose!

  Horrified, I watched him take his left thumb and forefinger and pull out her lower lip, then he opened the scissors and began to cut through the soft flesh, hacking at her lip like a piece of steak he was in a hurry to eat. Brianna screamed, shrill, heartrending, agonizing, as more blood gushed out of her mutilated mouth and slowly soaked through her white cotton blouse. Walter was smiling. “Now your fuckin’ detective boyfriend’s not gonna like you so much, is he, Bri? Now you’re not gonna be so enticing to the opposite sex. Maybe that’ll keep you with me for good this time since you’re such a lyin’ whore. Or maybe, I won’t want you anymore, either, now that you’re all cut up and ugly. I do have my standards.”

  My right hand suddenly came free as he put the scissors to her mouth again, and I thrust myself hard to the left, throwing myself and the chair to the floor, then shoving it frantically toward Brianna’s chair and the table holding the kerosene lamp. The whole thing crashed over and hit the floor with a crash and tinkling of glass. The room went black for an instant, and then the kerosene ignited and whooshed into a fiery blaze so quickly that Costin and Brianna had no time to get out of the way. It caught Costin’s pants and Brianna’s skirt, and I could heard Brianna screaming.

  I scrambled and shoved myself toward the spot where Bud had given up his .45. I grabbed it, swung toward Costin, and fired off five quick rounds at Costin, but he’d seen me and dived behind the couch, his pant leg still on fire. Brianna lay still, blood pumping from her face, her skirt on fire. Bud was trying to get to her, lying on the floor on his side, still tied to the chair, but struggling his way to her. I could hear Costin behind the couch, rolling to put out his burning clothes. I took quick aim, fired through the sofa back three more times, but he’d already darted out toward Shaggy’s shotgun. He got it and sprinted for the hall and front door, and I fired again and thought I hit him this time in the leg by the way he went down. But he twisted on the floor and sprayed us all with a single blast from Shaggy’s gunshot. I felt the sting of birdshot hit my foot and ducked behind a chair for cover, pressing the trigger and unloading on the bastard, blam after blam that filled the room with noise and smoke, and the caustic smell of cordite.

  Then all went quiet except for Brianna’s shrieks of pain and horror, Bud and Shaggy’s screams of rage, and the crackling of flames as the sofa caught fire. Smoke filled the room in a gray haze, and I crawled to the wall and kept my back against it while I reloaded. I could hear Costin now, his footsteps running across the front porch and down the steps to the yard. He was getting away, damn it, and everything in me said to go after him, stop him, but I knew Brianna was bleeding heavily, her skirt still on fire, and Bud and Shaggy were helpless to reach her.

  I pulled myself to Brianna and smothered the flames with an afghan off the couch, and then I got the scissors and cut the bindings on Bud. He scrabbled on all fours to Brianna, jerked off his shirt, and held it against her butchered mouth. Then he cradled her in his arms, groaning with despair. I cut Shaggy loose, but found he was hit, too, in the chest and arm, and having trouble breathing. I stamped out the small blaze still burning on the carpet and sofa, then found my cell phone still in Shaggy’s pocket where he’d stowed it earlier. I punched in 911, requested police, the fire department, and multiple ambulances, and then did my best to remember how to direct them to the house.

  Twenty

  It took the Springfield police about ten minutes to reach us, with the ambulances and fire department right behind them. The fire damage was minimal, but the scene was grisly and surreal, smoky, blood spattered and horrific, all of us injured or shot up in one way or another. Brianna was the worst off, by far. The paramedics managed to staunch the bleeding on her mouth and even locate the severed tissue and get it on ice for possible reattachment at the hospital. I tried to reassure Bud with an account of Carlos Vasquez’s successful surgery. He just stared blankly at me, so I shut up.

  Shaggy was stabilized and loaded onto a gurney. They weren’t sure yet but didn’t think his internal organs had been damaged, except maybe for his lungs. Bud was hit, too, not bad, but he paid little attention to his own wounds, more concerned with getting Brianna the medical attention she needed so desperately. He looked in shock. I was in shock.

  Walter Costin had gotten away clean, just like he said he would, just like Bri and Shaggy said he would, slick as an eel, he is. I put out a statewide, all points on him as soon as I could but wasn’t sure what car he was in, so I had no way of identifying the make. Chances were slim he’d get picked up. That’s what I was thinking about, that, and how to explain the whole sordid mess to Charlie, without incriminating Bud and Shaggy for locking me up, much less their discarded and ineffective plan to murder Costin. Not exactly the thing you wanted your detectives and criminalists to be doing in their off time.

  I couldn’t say I blamed them, not now, not after witnessing what Costin was capable of, what he’d done to Brianna in front of my eyes, the woman he purported to love, at that. I shared their eagerness to hasten his demise, actually, because if anybody on this green earth needed a bullet between the eyes, it was one Walter Costin. I wouldn’t mind being the one to do it, either, in fact, relished the idea, was now fantasizing about it most of the time, but I had to take succor in the fact that I’d hit him. I was almost positive he was wounded. Maybe it’d be fatal, and he’d crawl off to some dark hole to bleed to death and we could have a job-well-done party.

  Brianna and Bud were rushed away together in the first ambulance. Bud holding her hand. Shaggy and I shared number two. He was unconscious now, a
nd the EMTs took my vitals and examined my foot and said I’d been damn lucky, a damn sight luckier than everybody else. Yep, lucky me—the wound in my instep barely even hurt. Sirens blaring, they sped us all to the St. John’s Regional Health Center just off National Avenue in Springfield, where I sat quietly in a green-draped cubicle in the ER while a young doctor named Marta Barnes put a couple of stitches in the instep of my left foot, all neat and even like a real Betsy Ross. But I could handle stitches, hell, I should buy my own needle and thread and carry them with me, for injurious days. I didn’t even limp too badly. Yeah, one out of four of us had been quite the lucky duck. Only bad thing, Costin had put some holes in my brand-new black hightops.

  Black called me up about the time Dr. Marta finished winding gauze around my foot.

  “Where are you? I’ve been waiting an hour at your place for you to show up. Food’s getting cold.”

  “St. John’s Regional Health Center.”

  “In Springfield? Oh, God. What happened? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, so are Bud and Shaggy. Brianna’s not.” I told him the gory details then, and it sounded even worse when I said it out loud. I wish I didn’t have to listen to myself when I talked like this. I finally dwindled off with the story, and so did my spirits.

  “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Black was beginning to say that a lot. Almost like a mantra. But he sounded really worried, which was nice, I guess.

  “The helicopter’s in Kansas City picking up a patient, but I’ll come get you in the Lear.”

  I thought that sounded pretty good. I was tired and wanted to sleep, somewhere safe and without scissors, maybe with Black there, armed with a loaded pistol and standing guard. “Thanks. I’d really appreciate it if you would do that.”

  We hung up, and I knew Charlie was next on my list to be apprised of the situation. I didn’t want to make that call, uh-uh, no sir. Maybe I’d just let Bud do it, let him explain how this hellish catastrophe managed to transpire. Better yet, maybe Bud and I needed to sit a spell and get our stories straight before we contacted anybody who had the power to fire us. Even more than that, I wanted to make sure Bud was all right. I couldn’t forget the terrible, stricken, horrified expression on his face when Brianna was being mutilated. One that never faded off to his regular expression. The senseless brutality had affected me big time, too, and I couldn’t even let myself think about her flawless, beautiful face or how it must look now or the way Walter Costin had just scissored off her bottom lip like he was cutting a tag off a pillow.

  Nope, emotionally, Bud probably wasn’t doing so well, and since it was going to take Black a while to get to Springfield, anyway, I decided to hobble upstairs and check on my partner. I did swallow down the pain pills they gave me and found out Bud had been admitted with minor gunshot wounds down the left side of his body. Brianna and Shaggy were both still in surgery.

  The early morning shift was just coming on duty, and I meandered my way through a relatively deserted emergency room now that our little bloody band had been triaged and admitted, and into one of the main hospital corridors, where I found a gaggle of nurses in a rainbow-hued variety of uniforms chatting together and drinking Starbucks coffee. I asked at the desk where they’d taken Bud.

  According to her name plate, the receptionist’s name was Cassandra Case, and she was wearing the coolest turquoise suede boots with fringe on them I’d ever seen. I usually preferred black police-issue combat boots, but these looked great on her legs. She had a nice smile and friendly manner and was gorgeous enough even to work at Black’s hotel. The way she had her stuff arranged on her desk, all in right angles, even her ballpoint pen, told me she just might be a bit on the anal side, too. She directed me to a semiprivate room on the second floor west.

  The halls were whispery quiet, most patients asleep and dreaming in darkened semiprivate rooms. When I pushed Bud’s door open, I heard snoring, which I figured was a good, positive sign that they’d given him a potent sedative to calm him down and take away that horrible expression imprinted on his face. It would be better for him if his mind was completely numb, just sitting there, sterile, convoluted gray matter, with no thoughts of Bri’s mouth streaming blood. But when I pulled back the curtain, it was a young boy who looked about eighteen, snoring happily, mouth open, one leg suspended in traction.

  I limped past the first patient and pulled aside the privacy curtain. The other bed was empty, white sheets thrown back, IV needle on the floor, its bag still half full of fluid.

  I left there in a hurry and asked at the nearest nurses’ station if Bud Davis had been released. He hadn’t. They’d last checked on him about an hour ago. My concern mounted, and I took the elevator down, my gut all twisted up. I dialed his cell number but didn’t know if he even had it with him or if it was ringing endlessly somewhere in that blood-splattered farmhouse from hell. He wasn’t waiting in the surgery wing, either, and Brianna wasn’t out of the OR yet, so where the hell had he gone? Then it dawned on me where he’d gone. He’d gone after Walter Costin.

  My alarm bells really started to go crazy. I called the Canton County Sheriff’s Department and filled in the duty officer on the status of the case, then asked if he’d seen Bud. He said nobody had seen him and to try his cell phone. I headed back upstairs again, punching in Bud’s number again. I let it ring the whole time I walked down the corridor to the recovery room. Shaggy was now out of surgery and I wanted to talk to him. I flashed my badge, and the nurse let me in, but said I could stay only a few minutes. I was getting a lot of practice visiting recovery rooms since I’d gotten this case.

  Shaggy was still pretty out of it, but he recognized me when I leaned down close and put my hand on his forehead. He felt feverish.

  “How you doing, Shag?”

  “Not so hot.”

  “They say you’re gonna be okay.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it. Bri okay?”

  “She’s in surgery. It sounds pretty good. They can do wonders now.” Well, that was a big lie but he didn’t need to hear the other, less rosy side of the coin. He shut his eyes and didn’t question me. When he opened them again, it took a second for him to focus, then he said, “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t’ve ever locked you up. We should’ve let you get him. You would’ve done it right.”

  I glanced over at the nurse who was tending to another patient, one who was sick from the anesthetic he’d been given. I blocked out the gagging sounds he was making. “Listen, Shag, you gotta tell me where you think Costin might go.”

  “I dunno.”

  “I think Bud’s gone after him. Did Brianna tell him where Walter might hole up if things went wrong?”

  Shaggy was so groggy that he had to struggle to stay with me. “We talked about gettin’ him in Florida, if he didn’t show up at the farm. He’s gotta house down the beach from Bri and Hilde’s. Hilde said he bought it after Bri took off. He watched their place all the time to see if she ever came back.”

  That surprised me. I wondered if he’d been there, watching me chase Carlos up the beach the day Ortega tackled me. “You gotta tell me exactly where it is. I think Bud’s gonna try to take him down by himself.”

  Shaggy’s eyes were bleary, nearly closed, almost done with me, and he shook his head slightly, slurring now. “Walter’s0-7860-2069-5ud’ll never get him. He’ll kill Bud. You saw. You saw how he is.”

  “I think I winged him. You really think he’ll go back to Florida and hide out?”

  He nodded. “For a while, maybe. He probably thinks nobody but Hilde knows he’s got that place.”

  Shaggy managed to get out that Costin’s house was the last one on Hilde’s beach cove heading south, that it was another old place with a detached garage in the backyard, weathered gray and more rundown than hers. He said it had a swing on a screened-in front porch and a big Chinese wind chime. Shaggy didn’t last much longer after that and he dozed off. That’s when the nurse told me to leave. Still Shaggy’d given me enough. I reme
mbered seeing pictures in Hilde’s scrapbooks, with her sitting on a porch swing. Yeah, that’s exactly where he’d go, especially if he thought we didn’t know about it. He’d think himself safe for a couple of days, then he’d get a flight straight to Bolivia if he was smart. And he was.

  I dragged myself down the hall to an empty waiting room overlooking the front of the hospital. I didn’t see any long black limos roaring into the parking lot to save me, so I took a deep breath and punched in Charlie’s number. He answered on the second ring and sounded his usual pissed self. I filled him in on what had happened and he was silent then said, “So everybody’s gonna be all right.”

  I said, “Yeah, but we gotta big problem and not much time to take care of it. I’m pretty sure Bud’s gone after Walter Costin, and if he has, he’s probably in trouble. I need your permission to go after him.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  I hesitated. “Florida. He probably thinks Costin will head down there.”

  “You bet that’s a problem. We have no jurisdiction there. Call Ortega and let him handle it.”

  I lied. “Well, I’m not a hundred percent sure Bud’s heading there, but I know he’s injured and emotional, not thinking clearly. I doubt if he can find Costin before I intercept him, but if he does, I think he’s gonna get hurt before he can bring him back. I gotta get down there, Sheriff.”

  “Let Miami handle it.”

  “He cut off her lip right in front of us, Charlie, while she was alive and begging. That’s why Bud’s wants to get Costin himself.”

  “You’re talking about another damn jurisdiction, Claire.”

  “Sheriff, we can put down at an airstrip up around Hollywood, where Costin’s purported to have a house. That’s where I think Bud’s headed. I’ll call Ortega and have him check the passenger lists and wait for Bud at Miami International. One of us is bound to intercept him.”

  “I can’t give you permission to do this, and you know it.”