A fifty-something man who already looked like he was pushing sixty-five, teetered over to where she stood under a streetlamp. “Come on, Skye. Just a buck. That’s all I’m askin’ for. Danny-boy over there won’t share. Says it’s too cold out tonight.”
Skye whirled, came around full circle to see the lined face that had once belonged to a local sportscaster. William Cannon had suffered an on-air breakdown. As a result he’d seen his illustrious career come to an end over one ill-timed rant. His wife had kicked him out shortly thereafter and the man had slipped into depression. He’d loaded trucks for a brief time but without any other permanent place to stay, he had eventually drifted to living on the streets where he’d been since 2001. Recently William had begun to show signs from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Without regular medication, he tended to become confused which made him an easy mark for anyone looking to beat him up. Skye had tried to help him before to no avail, and so had Lena.
“William Cannon, shame on you. You told me you’d get off the street. You promised Lena you’d go stay with your daughter over in Olympia.”
William gave her a sheepish look. “I did. Lena drove me over there. But after a couple days, turns out, Karen didn’t want me around her kids. Can’t say I blame her much.”
Skye reached in her pocket, pulled out a five but snatched it back when he stuck out his hand. “Promise me, William, tomorrow night you’ll get off the street and head to the shelter. You have to be there early by four at least to get a bed. Are you listening to me, William? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Aw, Skye, you worry ’bout me, too much.”
“I worry about you because you hang out with Danny Treader who served time in prison and is one mean asshole when he drinks, which is all the time.” She reluctantly slapped the bill into William’s palm knowing he would either lose it to Danny or he would drink it away—another one of life’s sad realities Skye couldn’t do anything about. “I come by here tomorrow night, William, and see you here with Danny, I’m gonna get you off the street myself. Understand?”
He nodded but grabbed the money.
Skye shook her head as she picked up her pace knowing full well William was more than likely a lost cause.
She hadn’t gone a full block when at Sixth and Wheeler, Skye spotted a group of hookers that included the drug addicted Dee Dee and one of the girls she’d found last spring named Lucy Border. Purposefully Skye veered in the opposite direction. After William, she didn’t need the reminder that while she’d saved the little redhead from sex-trafficking bound for Argentina, she’d lost Lucy to an endless string of Johns right here in Seattle.
Sometimes the hard knocks in life were too real and depressing to dwell on them.
She and Kiya covered another half a mile down yet another back alley until it started to drizzle. The woman met the eyes of her wolf and realized it was time to head home.
“Come on, Kiya, it’s time to get warm,” she uttered. “Some nights you just need to know when to call it quits.”
Frank had never scaled a four-story brownstone before. Even though he’d considered doing just that for about five minutes, he damned sure wouldn’t try it at four-thirty in the morning with the rain coming down making every surface wet and slick.
So he slipped into the Cree woman’s building the old-fashioned way, through the front door using the key he’d duplicated.
For a few minutes, he stood in the tiny vestibule, rain dripping along his back making a mess on the scuffed wood floor. The foyer was so small and drab, he couldn’t help the sense of claustrophobia that wanted to descend along with that feeling he’d landed in a slum. His eyes zeroed in on the cluttered mailbox area to the right. Messy, trashy, it was just another example of how the lower dregs of society couldn’t even keep what little they had clean or tidy.
It angered him that such a stunning woman chose to live in this kind of filthy surroundings. But he smiled to himself when he considered how he intended to take care of that tonight. He hefted his bag onto his shoulder, patting the leather. Didn’t he have all he needed right here to take care of the bitch?
Frank began the climb up the stairs, trying to avoid the steps he remembered that had a tendency to creak. But in a structure that had been built in the 1940s that was damned near impossible.
He’d given her plenty of time to get to sleep after her ridiculous habit of patrolling her turf. In spite of his admiring her speech that night at the Belmont, if it were left up to him, he never would have allowed her to walk the streets like some common tramp in the first place.
In his experience, some women refused to listen. To him, Skye Cree was another mouthy broad who didn’t know her place or when to keep her trap shut. He silently vowed to show her both.
She was up there, hopefully snug in that sorry excuse for a bed she slept in and warm under those hideous handmade quilts she liked so much. Typical woman, impractical and frilly, decidedly ill-informed, he thought now. For that alone, he would give her something special as a send-off.
He knew about her breakup with the geek, knew she’d stormed out of the luxury condo two days earlier. At least she’d shown some sense there in leaving the guy. Ander might’ve found his cameras, might’ve thought he’d found one or two bugs, but the jerk hadn’t found all of the surveillance devices.
So Frank had listened and he’d learned. He’d waited and he’d planned. And now it was time to act.
Once he reached the fourth floor, Skye’s door was only a few steps from the stairs. He mentally prepared for what he’d already practiced. The place was so small, so cramped he’d have to keep to his plan.
Before slipping the key into the lock, he took several deep breaths to clear his mind. Then he stepped into the pitch black. He had to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. It was so much darker than what he remembered. The dammed place was so small and the packed furniture made it seem even smaller. When it took his vision longer to correct than it should, he was tempted just to reach over and flick on the light.
That, of course, he couldn’t do. But he could use the penlight he wore around his neck. He thumbed the button to the “on” position and shined the sliver of light around so he could see.
He quickly made out the lump under the covers. In his mind’s eye, he knew exactly the spot where he needed to go for his staging area. But first, he needed to remember how far the bed jutted out so he wouldn’t bump into it on his way to the miniscule kitchen. From memory, he counted off the exact number of footsteps, his anticipation growing with each stride.
He slipped off his tennis shoes, then his socks, removed his jacket. He pulled his shirt over his head, unzipped his jeans. Just about the time he’d worked them down around his ankles, he felt a sharp searing pain shoot through both knees. He staggered backward before he buckled and crashed into a shelf full of dishes.
Light flooded the room, momentarily blinding him.
“How does that feel you sorry piece of shit? In case you forgot, that was for Sylvia Waterston,” Skye shouted as she pulled the baseball bat back around her head for another blow in case he advanced on her. Skye narrowed her eyes at the sight of Frank De Palo crumpled on the floor writhing in pain. Other than his jeans around his ankles, the man was naked.
“Come on, get up, you bastard! So I can finish beating the shit out of you.”
“You and what army,” Frank spewed out, doing his best to put the pain out of his head long enough so he could stand. Pulling himself upright with the help of the kitchen chair, he balanced himself before he added, “You think that bat will stop me, bitch? Think again. Or are you even capable of intelligent conversation?”
“More than you know. I’m pretty sure this bat is what will bash your skull open just like you did to Julie Freeman. And I’m not here to talk to the likes of you. Normally I don’t believe in using artificial means to uh, excuse the pun, bring a man to his knees. But then you, Frank, are no man.”
With his right hand, he rubbed
his bare genitals up and down in a lewd gesture. “This says I am. You’ll never own a pair of these. And without balls you’re just something for me to use and throw away when I’m done.”
When he tried to make a move toward her, Skye brought her leg up, rammed her knee into his crotch.
Frank doubled over, bumped into the wall so hard he dislodged the stained glass hanging there then went down like a sack of bricks, cupping himself before curling into a ball.
“Aw, did that hurt, Frank? You aren’t bleeding even though it probably feels like you are. Try to picture your victims, Frank. Try to picture what they went through when you inflicted so much pain on them. Why don’t you tell me how long you’ve been killing defenseless women? When did you start your little side hobby? Was it with Denise Holland or Cheryl Wittingham?”
At the mention of the two girls, Skye actually saw the fury settle into Frank’s brown eyes. She waited for him to right himself again and didn’t have to wait long. He tried to stand using the bed this time, swaying a little in the process.
But like any good fighter, Frank still had some game left. He kept up his momentum as he grabbed for his bag and the eight-inch blade he’d brought but hadn’t yet taken out. The knife lay within his reach next to the .45. “Fuck you!” Frank yelled.
But before he could get a firm grasp on either weapon, still clutching the bat, Skye pivoted for a better angle, and then whacked Frank in the back between his shoulders with a thud. She heard the wind sail out of his lungs as he dropped to the floor, gasping for air. On the wooden surface the knife skidded a little farther away. Frank snuck out his hand, stretched and strained to get to it. And Skye’s boot came crashing down on his wrist. There was a loud crack as Skye twisted her boot for effect.
Frank let out a muffled cry of pain. “I knew you couldn’t take me in a fair fight,” Frank wheezed out as he tried to roll to escape. “I knew you were a crazy bitch,” he spat out as he did his best to crawl under the bed.
“Like you ever gave any of your victims a fair fight,” Skye pointed out, as she blocked his path and then stomped on his ribs with her boot. She came down so hard, she heard the bones snap. “You want a fair fight, Frank? Then get up,” Skye said in challenge as she threw the bat behind her. “Come on, Frank. You know you want to. You want to do to me what you did to Tracy Lewis,” she urged and watched him try to stand again. “That’s why you brought the cannon with you.”
That had Frank throwing out an arm and a punch which Skye dodged. “You telegraph your moves, Frank. I watched every one of your so-called fight videos on YouTube,” she told him as she placed a well-timed kick to the other side of his rib cage with the heel of her boot.
When the rib cracked, this time Frank folded like an accordion and struggled to catch his breath again.
“See? Now that time you over-extended yourself like you always do. Is that all you got, pretty boy? Because for some reason, I thought you were gonna be a real badass, a lot tougher, you know?”
With the last bit of strength Frank could manage, she watched as he made one desperate lunge in her direction. Skye took the heel of her hand and with an uppercut, landed a blow to his nose.
Frank lost his footing and fell back in blinding pain as the blood spewed forth like Mount St. Helens. Through tear-filled eyes, as if he’d just realized he’d been set up, Frank stammered out. “You were waiting for me? How…how did you know I was coming?”
“Oh Frank, you’re the stupidest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen. Josh and I played you—like a drum.”
“You…you…did not.”
“Oh yeah, we did.”
“You two broke up. I had it planned…all of it…I waited…for the right…opportunity.”
“We staged the breakup, Frank. Josh found the bugs you planted, every last one of them. And we set you up like no one before ever has. All we had to do was put out bait a coward like you would never resist. And that bait was me. Face it, De Palo, you got arrogant and that breeds sloppy every time.”
With that, the door burst open and Josh came through first, followed by Harry Drummond and then two uniformed officers.
“So this is the brilliant tactician who specializes in beating up defenseless women before he brutalizes them? He doesn’t look like much,” Josh said with disgust. He stared at Frank in a heap on the floor, still whimpering and holding his balls with one hand, his broken nose with the other. Walking over to Skye, he kissed her soundly on the mouth. “Hello, baby, feel better?”
“Not really, I want to, no, I need to hit him one more time,” she said as she made a move past Josh to get to Frank. But Josh grabbed her arm. “It’s over, Skye. You beat the crap out of him. Leave it at that.”
“I think I better read Frank his rights,” Harry determined, dragging a battered Frank De Palo to his feet.
“She’d never have taken me without the fucking bat,” Frank grumbled as blood trickled down his face.
While Harry slapped cuffs on the battered jerk, Josh laughed. “De Palo, you’re lucky she didn’t take that bat and stick it up your ass for scaring the shit out of that three-year-old boy.”
Half an hour later, Josh stood outside the building on the sidewalk making sure Skye didn’t go after Frank again. It hadn’t escaped his notice the way Skye kept watch on Frank all the while the paramedics treated the guy’s wounds, much like a wolf eyeing dinner.
Even the fact that Frank had gladly crawled onto a gurney and let himself be handcuffed to it didn’t seem to make Skye feel at ease.
When one of the male paramedics looked at Skye, then up at the half-naked Frank as they loaded the sleazebag into the ambulance, the tech couldn’t help it, he laughed. “I’ll be damned, I never knew a serial killer before who got his ass wiped by a girl. Not such a tough guy after all, huh?”
That mocking comment brought Frank to a sitting position, his body vibrating with rage. He rose up off the stretcher and shouted, “No one beats me. She got lucky. Do you hear me…lucky! I’ll be back, bitch, you just keep watching over your shoulder because you’re dead. Do you hear me? You’re dead!”
The other EMT, a female, reached over and pushed hard on Frank’s broken ribs. “I’d say you’re lucky to be alive, tough guy, because she flat out kicked your ass.”
“She had a bat,” Frank kept saying over and over again.
Harry shook his head as he crawled into the back of the vehicle with Frank. He waved at Josh and Skye before the EMTs closed the doors and said, “Tell the driver to make sure we hit every bump on the way to the hospital, will you?”
“I have to say, that’s the longest forty-eight hours I think I’ve ever spent. I went nuts without having you around,” Skye admitted as they made their way back to her apartment.
“Same here. Those two days felt like a week. During which time, I wanted to walk over to your apartment no less than twenty times. I missed being able to look across the room and see you sitting at the laptop, or turning to you in bed.”
“I discovered I don’t like sleeping alone anymore. I like having you next to me so that when I wake up in the middle of the night, you’re there. Besides, I missed that rainforest of a shower you have. Makes me wonder though, what were we going to do if Frank hadn’t made his move when he did? What if he’d waited another week?”
With that, she stopped walking and grabbed his shirt. “I’m not sure I could’ve lasted that long.”
“Then our plan would’ve fizzled. We’d’ve come up with another one though.”
“Thanks for trusting me to handle that bastard.”
“You owe me for that. Do you have any idea how difficult it was? I had to watch from another apartment while that son of a bitch went inside knowing what he came here to do to you.”
“I know.” Skye trailed her fingers down the side of his jaw. “But it’s over now.”
When they got to the door of the little studio, they stood among the rubble of what used to be her tiny little hole-in-the-wall apartment. She looked around a
t all the damage to her things. Her colorful Fiestaware that had belonged to her mother was pretty much a memory. Various sizes of broken pieces were scattered all over the floor. She glanced over at the fractured stained glass Jodi Cree had so painstakingly crafted so many years earlier.
“We’ll send the stained glass to a professional, Skye. Maybe they’ll be able to repair most of the pieces.”
“We can try. How did you know he’d break into my apartment that night after my speech? Did Kiya show you that?”
“Bits and pieces. Mostly that and the fact it was evident early on the guy thought he was so much smarter than the rest of us. We had to give him something to make sure he kept fostering that idea.”
“At the risk of this going to your head, planting the journals and the computer was nothing short of brilliant. I never would have thought of leaving my old laptop here either. And changing the password so he’d have no problem getting it to boot up was a shrewd move that the jackass never saw coming. And who knew my notes would ever be of interest to anyone but me. Turns out, Frank De Palo found them fascinating enough to keep reading. And setting up the camera in here was an added stroke that gave us a decided advantage.” She grabbed his shirt again and pulled him into her. “Tell me something, Mr. Ander. Is your offer still open?”
For a minute he wasn’t sure what she meant. But as he studied her violet eyes, he noticed the light come into them. That light gave him sudden hope. “It’s still on the table. I never took it off.”
“Good. Because I want you, all of you, that includes your family, the swanky address, or a boxy home in the country. It doesn’t matter much to me where we live. I guarantee you that wherever you are, I’ll be happy. Because I want to marry you, Josh. We’ll adopt children. We’ll adopt five if that’s what you want. Because I love you.”
Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell Page 24