The Ultimate Romantic Suspense Set (8 romantic suspense novels from 8 bestselling authors for 99c)

by Lee Taylor

  Once again I force myself to look. To listen. This time Speck is naked except for his white crew socks, which are pulled up over his calves. His breasts large and round, stomach flaccid, penis almost nonexistent, like Mike had said. He poses for the camera, like he’s a beauty queen—one hand behind his head, turning sideways, smiling. Cool Dude grabs at his tits, then spins him around and tries to shove paper money up Speck’s ass. They’re laughing. Big joke. All the while Cool Dude is kneading Speck’s ass, showing it off for the camera, spreading the cheeks apart to make a better view and get the money in. Then Speck leans over, holds onto the back of a chair while Cool Dude, who is totally in control, stands with a complete erection and methodically jams his penis into Speck’s ass.

  I can’t watch. Can’t listen. Nausea has taken over. I pull my knees up, cover my face with my arms and sit in a ball wanting to magically disappear, but their voices won’t stop. They just get louder. The laughter gets louder. I concentrate on the pipes. The clanging. It makes a kind of music. I hum along with it to drown everything else out.

  Time passes, then another question. This time I can hear it without concentrating. “Do you like being fucked by men?”

  Speck says, “Absolutely.”

  “Have you always liked being fucked by men?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ever think about getting out of here?”

  “Sure, every day, but I know I won’t. Met some of my best friends of my life in here. If they only knew how much fun I was having—”

  A noise on my side of the room startles me. I look up but can’t see what or who it is. From out of nowhere, a rough hand comes across my mouth and another starts to pull me up and away. I inhale, terrified, instantly sure that I’m going to die. It’s a man, but not Denthead, hands are too big. I can feel his body against mine. Smell his stale breath. Can’t move, even though my arms are free. I’m frozen.

  He drags me back to the same door I entered.

  “Relax,” Captain Bob whispers.

  I want to scream. He opens the first door and stops in the vestibule.

  He speaks again, “Relax, I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t talk. They’ll hear you. I’ll let you go if you promise not to scream.”

  I nod and start to let go of the fear, but the adrenalin is still pumping. He slowly removes his hand from my mouth and comes around in front of me and says, “Let me get you out of here.”

  “No, not yet.” I turn to face him.

  “This is dangerous, Carly. Those two just put enough coke up their nose to run through a shotgun blast. If they see you here, there’s no telling what they might do. You gotta get out. Now.”

  He opens the door. Instinct tells me to run. To get as far away from this room as I can. To run and keep on running until I’m safe. Safe from Speck, from men like him, but there isn’t anywhere to go. To hide.

  I’m tired.

  “No,” I say out loud, more to end my own argument rather than the Captain’s. “Not until he answers my question.”

  “What?”

  “I have to know. The families need to know. Did Mike ask him my question?”

  He pauses, looks me straight in the eyes. “No, he didn’t. Been concentrating on mine. I can’t let you stay here, Carly.”

  I push on with my conviction. This time he won’t talk me out of my desire. This time I win, not him. “I’m not leaving. If you try to make me, I’ll let Speck know I’m here. You think I care what happens to me? You don’t know what I’m capable of.” My mind is swirling, trying to come up with bait. “What about the warden? What will he do when he finds out about all of this? Fire your ass, that’s what. Make it so you can’t work anywhere, in any state. Who’s going to pay for your crippled wife when you don’t have a job? Do you think anybody’s going to care about a cripple?”

  He raises his hand as if to hit me, then grabs my arms and shakes me instead. “Don’t you dare—”

  He stops. We stare at each other. He lets me go, slowly. Animosity drains from his face. There was a moment when I saw violence in his eyes. Felt it in his touch. A moment when I thought I’d lost. “Go back to your hiding place. I’ll get Ronzell to ask your question.”

  Somehow I wish he hadn’t told me the guy’s name. Don’t want a name attached to the voice. Makes it too personal, but I’m wondering where Mike is. I didn’t see him in the room. I’m just about to ask the Captain when he leaves through the outer door. I don’t have time to think about Mike now. I have to hurry back to my vantage point. I don’t want to miss Speck’s answer.

  When I finally reposition myself, I can see that Speck and his lover are seated again. Speck wearing bright blue, silk women’s panties. His lover in gray men’s briefs and a dark T-shirt. Neither talking. Sorting through a pile of money. Looks like hundred-dollar bills, but I can’t tell for sure from this distance.

  Speck is talking, “She was the one that flirted with me. She was the last one to go. I knew I had all the time in the world. I stuck the goddamn pistol under her jaw, cocked it and said get naked, bitch.” He’s laughing now. Cool Dude smiles as well. “Then when she got naked she didn’t have nothing I wanted so I killed her.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Not now.”

  They talk about his painting job in the prison. How he used to paint pictures. How the “Doc” got him going on canvas when he was first in, but now he only paints the tunnels and the cells. Speck pulls out a yellow piece of paper, shows it to the camera and says something about how it allows him to paint. Tells Ronzell how he gets his job done in half the time and then fucks off for the rest of the day. Then he laughs.

  “Doc” must be Marvin Ziporyn, a Cook County Psychiatrist who wrote a book about Speck, a biography of sorts, sometime in the late sixties. The good doctor talked about Speck’s life before the nurses, what he was feeling during the trial. How he felt about his family, his wife Shirley, his daughter and his mother. Tried to make him human—a product of an abusive upbringing, a violent society. Ziporyn attempted to convince Speck to plead insanity because he was probably insane at the time of the murders…that he had one of his many blackouts…and perhaps, just perhaps, he never did kill those nurses, after all. I burned the book after I read that.

  Ronzell unfolds a piece of white paper and asks Speck, “How did you feel after killing all those ladies?”

  Speck looks up. No expression. Glass eyes. He shrugs and says, “Like I always felt…have no feelings…if you’re asking if I felt sorry…” He stares down at the floor for a moment, then looks back at the camera and calmly says, “No.”

  My name is Pamela Wilkening.

  I wanted to be a nurse for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid my favorite toy was a brand-new can of Band-Aids. My dolls served as patients and whenever I could get a friend or two to play with me, we always played ‘hospital’. I guess you could say I was obsessed.

  My twenty-first birthday fell on August 2, a few days before our graduation. I couldn’t have been more pleased, except maybe if it fell exactly on the very day of graduation. What a way to turn twenty-one. Some people want to celebrate it at a bar. Not me. I wanted to walk up on stage at the Aerie Crown Theater and know that I was officially an RN. Nothing could have given me a better high.

  Because graduation was close and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore, I finally agreed to go on a blind date with a boy named Mulehead. My friend, Sherry Finnigan, set it up. The four of us went to Riverview, an amusement park just outside of Chicago. We had the best time talking about cars, mostly. We must have gone on about a million rides and ate enough cotton candy to turn our stomachs bright pink. It felt great to get out with friends and have fun. I’d almost forgotten how.

  Sherry and I used to have fun all the time until she got kicked out of our townhouse in March of 1966. She was a high-spirited kind of girl who never could adhere to the rules. I wanted to be more like her. Maybe that’s why we were such good friends, but I couldn’t risk some of the things
she’d want me to do. Not that nursing didn’t mean a lot to Sherry, it did, she just had a different way of showing it.

  Funny how things worked out. She looked at curfews and rules as obstacles to work around. I looked at them as guidelines that I had to adhere to if I was going to make a good nurse. Sherry had a way of sifting through the bull to get to the important stuff. I could never tell the difference.

  I came home on time that night, in bed by curfew, like I did every night. Sherry drove off with her boyfriend and my blind date….

  The next night, Richard Speck woke me around midnight, with a gun in my face, demanding money to go to New Orleans. I obeyed and gave him everything I had, but he tried to rape me. I spit in his face and told him I would pick him out of a lineup. That’s when he plunged his knife into my chest. I never got to graduate. Never saw my twenty-first birthday.

  Sherry was accused of dating Speck, of bringing him into our townhouse. She never did. It was a lie, but the school expelled her anyway. Sherry never got to graduate, but she did get to keep her life.

  Twenty-four

  I sat between those bookcases until Speck stopped talking. Until the camera was turned off and taken away. Until the lights went out.

  I sat between those bookcases hoping for the Captain to come back in and tell me the show was over. Tell me to go home. Tell me that everything would be good again.

  I sat between those bookcases and waited. Waited to stop crying. Waited to stop shaking. Waited to stop feeling.

  I sat between those bookcases while the earth kept spinning. While Speck kept breathing. While his evil heart kept beating and I stopped hating.

  I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somewhere during that time I let it all go. Pushed the hate out of my body, dumped it onto the floor and walked out into the cool night air. Just like that. Without decision.

  I’ve been smiling ever since. Everything will be all right now. Everyone will know. Chicago will be outraged. They’ll want Speck dead. No more parole hearings. No brothers and sisters and classmates reliving the nightmare. It’s over. And it’s all captured on a thread of video tape.

  On the drive back to the motel, I pull into a liquor store and buy a bottle of champagne, the kind that Mike likes to celebrate with after we close a big deal. I figure the guy ought to know. Deserves to know what he did. What I’m feeling. How after twenty years it’s all over.

  I pass by a mall. Turn back around, park and run into Carson’s to buy a new outfit, complete with shoes, earrings, handbag and makeup. Tons of makeup: blushes and powders and red lipstick, bright red lipstick in five different shades. When I get back to my car I can hardly fit all the bags in the front seat. Hardly see through the rearview mirror, but I’m loving what little I can see. A new me.

  • • •

  “What’s the occasion?” Mike asks as I pour him a glass of Mumm’s and he sits down on my bed to get a better look. My hair’s all curly sweet, and I’m wearing a black dress that shows off every curve, earrings that dangle to my bare shoulders and heels that say ‘fuck me’ every time I cross a leg. The perfume, Opium. He can’t take his eyes off me. “Did we sign one of those Bible movies with a million extras or what?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just my way of paying you back for going into that room every day with Speck. I know how much it’s been bothering you and I owe you. After all, you were forced into it. And now that it’s over…it is over, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, the Captain just has a few more questions he wants to ask Speck. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to wrap.”

  “Good, then tomorrow I can start calling people. Maybe Carol Marine over at Channel Five, I like her…or Bill Kurtis at WBBM. One thing’s for sure, whoever gets that video, it’ll make their career.”

  “Maybe no one will want it. It’s repulsive. That’s not even the word for it. It’s worse than repulsive. I don’t think I have the vocabulary to describe what I’ve witnessed in the last few days. You won’t be able to stand what he says and does. Maybe you shouldn’t even see it.”

  I pour myself a glass of Mumm’s. “Good little Mike. Always playing my guardian angel. But I don’t need an angel any more. Already saw it. Today, up close, in the room. Couldn’t see you, though.”

  He drinks down his glass of champagne and I pour another.

  “What are you talking about? You were there?”

  “Hiding like a little church mouse. Saw it all. That’s why I’m so happy.”

  “He makes me sick and you’re happy? He’s a vile man.”

  “Yep, and that’s good. Wonderful, actually. The more vile the better. In honor of the vile event, the release of the video, I’ve decided that we should celebrate. A sort of coming-out party for the truth.” Mike just sits there, staring so I continue. “You still don’t get it, do you? Poor, sweet, naive Mike.” I brush his hair away from his forehead. He pushes my hand away. Angry. “The world will finally know who that bastard is and they’ll have to take action. No more parole hearings. No more uncertainty as to who killed those nurses. No more trustees in a maximum-security facility. Everything’s right there in living color. Caught on videotape. All the answers to all the questions and you helped do it. You’re a hero. You and the Captain. Like you said, I owe you. Big-time. Besides I’ve decided that you’re right. It’s time for me to let Speck go and get on with my life. I can do it now…so,” I say, lingering on the word, teasing with my glance, “let me make it up to you. There must be some nice restaurant around here where the lights are low and the tables are set just for two. I’d like to buy you dinner. I’d like to buy you a million dinners.”

  “That’ll do it. Dinner will wipe out the shit from my head.” He lets out a sigh. “Okay, where do you want to go?” he asks, plunking down his glass on the nightstand a little too hard. He gets up while looking down at himself. “I have to change. These clothes make me sick.”

  “Great. I’ll make a reservation and meet you outside in, say, twenty minutes?”

  Mike nods and leaves my room. So far, everything’s running on high speed. Couldn’t be better, even though Mike’s a little testy. He’ll get over it. Always does. Doesn’t like to pout. He’s really a good guy. And cute. Really cute.

  I make a call to the front desk. A woman answers and tells me there’s a great restaurant about five miles from our motel called the Lamplight Inn. She’s eager to make the reservation for me. Probably thinks that I’ll take her to Hollywood just for making a phone call. Who am I to spoil her dream? I tell her to make the reservation for two, at eight o’clock. I figure by ten I ought to have Mike all wrapped up and under the covers. Looking forward to the excitement, I hang up the phone and take a peek in the dresser mirror, smiling a sugar sweet smile. All sunshine and innocence. What America loves. What Mike’s been waiting for. It’s all good times from now on.

  • • •

  The restaurant sits by itself behind a cluster of trees. Tiny white lights adorn the windows. The building is made out of stone with a huge iron lamp hanging from the peak of the roof over the front door. When we walk inside, I’m swept away by the romance of it: candlelight, soft jazz mingling with the whispers of lovers, tables separated by fountains or small trees, and flowers everywhere of every kind and shape. The back of the restaurant opens onto a garden with gazebo seating or seating under the stars. There’s an earthy fragrance to the place that heightens my sense of serenity, pumping into my veins like a drug. Everyone seems calm and smooth.

  Mike takes my hand. I let him. All at once there’s a time warp. My mind plays a trick. I’ve jumped back to spring of 1966, with Speck erased, and I’ve spun forward to 1972. I’m twenty-one. I’m in love. The world is right. The eight nurses are alive somewhere working hard at their careers, enjoying their loved ones, laughing with friends and I’ve just stepped into one of my Beatles fantasies. Ringo has taken my hand for the night. We’re lovers, he and I, this Ringo-type character, all smiles and charm.

  The maitre d’
escorts us to our table out in the garden. As we follow him through the restaurant, a sense of peace washes over me. I’ve never felt such tranquility.

  “You look beautiful tonight,” Mike says once we’re seated at our table. “And calm. That video mean that much to you?”

  “You could say it freed me, but let’s not talk about it any more. It’s over.”

  He smiles, but it’s a different kind of smile. Almost distant and not meant for me.

  Under a massive willow tree, a three-piece band plays Misty, an old Johnny Mathis tune from the sixties, or was it the fifties? I can’t remember exactly. It was Sharon’s parents’ favorite song. It makes me think of hot summer nights, nights when I dreamed of moments like this, when I longed for them while staring up at a white full moon in a black sky, praying for a true love, yearning for his touch.

  “How’d our extras do? I was a little worried leaving you alone with Vivian for so many days. How’d it go?” Mike asks.

  “We’re not getting much done. Our stars keep blowing the scene. Don’t know which actor, but the inmates sure love all the jokes that keep flying. Jim and Arnold are hot. They should be doing stand-up somewhere. Thanks for the concern. As you can see I’m marvelous. In fact, I had a great day, today. Listening to Speck and knowing that it was all caught on tape made all the difference. I made some decisions after that. Took a little drive. Did some shopping. Bought this dress.”

  “And did I tell you, you look beautiful?”

  “Ah-huh. So do you.”

  And he does. Too beautiful. It’s one of those moments when a woman looks at a man and sees all that he is. It’s in that moment, that instant, when she falls in love.

  “Let’s dance,” I announce. Mike agrees. We get up and make our way to the tiny dance floor. He takes me in his arms and I’m breathless.