by Jessie Cooke
“What should I say?”
“It’s not what you should say; it’s what you would normally say. Normally you’d be lecturing me on being safe…yada, yada, yada. What’s up?”
“Nothing is up.”
“What’s the suit for?”
“I just felt like looking nice.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “To go where?”
“I was thinking about getting a second job.”
“The truth, big guy, now.”
Noah gave it up. “I have good reason to believe that we know where the Valentine Killer lives. Collin and I are going knocking on doors today.”
“And me.”
“No, absolutely not. I’ve already let him take one woman I love, I’m not handing him the other.”
Her features softened. “If he has Ciara it’s not your fault and you need to stop acting like I’m some helpless little female. Before I had the same license in my wallet and the same gun in my holster that you have, I wasn’t helpless.”
“I don’t think you’re helpless, Ava. I think you’re as capable as me, if not more so. But I can’t even fathom waking up in the morning without you. Please don’t get involved in this.”
“You’re my fiancé and my business partner. Ciara is going to be my sister-in-law; I’m involved.”
“Ava…”
“I’m going with you.”
Fuck.
27
“Do you believe in angels, Ciara?”
Ciara was hanging from the ceiling with blood slowly dripping down the side of her face. She had to pee on the floor. Every fiber in her poor, battered body ached. She hadn’t had solid food in…months, maybe? Her lips were so dry that they’re cracked and bloody. There wasn’t a spot on her arms or legs that wasn’t bruised. The latest insult to add to her overall indignity came in the form of the IV he had stuck in her arm sometime while she was unconscious. From the way she felt, he was obviously not putting any good pain meds in there. He just wasn’t ready for her to die yet. Either he was having too much fun watching her suffer, or he was using her as a pawn. Either way, it pissed her off…and now he wanted her opinion on angels. The fucker was solidly insane.
“Ciara? Did you hear the question?” He was sitting in his chair, naked and aroused. How the hell was she supposed to have any kind of conversation with this sick fuck?
“I heard you.” Her voice was so weak and raspy that she didn’t even recognize it. She was already dead, why wouldn’t he just let her go?
“Answer me then, please.”
Jesus. What the hell does he want me to say? “I’m not a religious person.”
He laughed at that and then in that sarcastic tone he seemed to cling to he said, “Really? When I found you in that alley looking for someone to fuck so you could get money to buy more heroin, I thought you were headed to church right afterwards.” Ciara didn’t respond, and after he stared at her for another ten minutes or so he said, “My mother believed in angels.” Thinking of him having a mother was almost too much of a stretch for her imagination. To look at him you might even think he was hatched from something that wasn’t born of this world. He seemed to be losing weight almost as quickly as Ciara was, and it made his naked form that much more repulsive. “My mother said that angels live among us. She said they walk around like people, but in fact they’re observing our actions so that when the time comes for us to go to heaven or hell, they can weigh in on the decision. She said that God was too busy to be everywhere so their opinions are what matters to him.” Ciara was not sure why he cared. He was obviously going to hell no matter who was making the decision. Her luck, she’d end up rooming with him. “She found my playroom when I was a young man and she came for a visit. My stupid wife lived here and even she had never found it.” He smiled that sick little smile again and said, “Mother was so intuitive about all of my needs, though. When she found it I was afraid that she’d be angry, but she wasn’t. Do you want to know what she did do, Ciara?”
“Not in the least.”
He laughed like she was kidding and said, “She took me downtown and helped me pick out my first dear girl. She pointed out the angels in disguise and told me that if I released them from this hell, gave them wings, that they would remember me when my time came. I could keep playing with the bad girls in my playroom and still go to heaven when I died. The girls I gave wings to would become angels, and they would whisper in God’s ear, and tell him what I did for them and urge him to let me into heaven. Mother said God disguises them as addicts and prostitutes so that they won’t be recognized as what they are, but she and I could recognize them.”
“Was she Norman Bates’s mother too?”
He narrowed his beady black eyes at her. “Watch yourself.”
“Why? Will you kill me if I don’t?”
He went on talking as if she hadn’t said a word. He didn’t even want to talk about killing her any longer. Maybe she was already dead and this was, in fact, hell. “Mother was the one who taught me how to give them the shot before I took their life. It was the humane thing to do. She said that when they’re on earth they feel pain the same as you and I and they’re not even aware that they’re angels until after they die. She also gave me a boxful of silver hearts with wings so that when they were found, everyone would know they were on their way to heaven. They didn’t feel any pain when I sent them off and now I have a whole army of them whispering in God’s ear.”
“Good, you can die now.”
He smiled. God, he has an ugly smile. “Not yet, Ciara. You’ll be gone first. Don’t you wonder if you’re one of them, Ciara?”
It was her turn to laugh. It hurt. “I can honestly say that me ending up in heaven has never crossed my mind.”
“I don’t think you are either. I never bring those girls into my playroom. They’re too good for that. The ones that I bring here are beyond redemption….like you. But that’s okay because I’ve got enough angels speaking for me now that I’ll surely be in heaven soon. I set them free from the pain and the bonds that held them here on earth and I sent them home. You I needed for other purposes.”
“Care to share those purposes with me?”
“Ultimately to finally get caught. The police have a sketch of me now and if I’m right, your dear brother has recently discovered where I might be living. I’ve left the garage door partially up so he can see my car and the back door unlocked…you should be seeing him very soon.”
Not that the idea of seeing Noah didn’t thrill her. She couldn’t wait to see him, and watch him kill the crazy bastard. But what was up with Psycho Joe suddenly wanting to get caught? “Why now?”
He’d already stood up from his chair. He still had his dick in his hand. He made her so sick. “Why what, Ciara?”
“Why do you want to get caught, and why do you want my brother to be the one to catch you?”
He sat back down and she almost wished that she hadn’t asked him so he would have gone. “I have a terminal illness, Ciara.” He paused like he thought she was going to give him her condolences. She was dancing inside. At least the earth wouldn’t have to deal with him much longer.
“Good,” she said, defiantly. He looked at her like he was aching to use the knife. Ciara was hoping that she could goad him into it. “I hope it’s cancer and it’s in your balls.”
“My testicles are fine,” he said, touching himself. Ciara kept her eyes on his face, which was only mildly less disgusting, as he said, “I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. I went away to get treatment and, I thought, die; as it turned out the treatment added months to my life, but the tumor is spreading again now. It’s in my liver and gallbladder, so the treatments aren’t working. The doctors have only given me weeks at this point. Ciara, do you know that nine is the largest amount of bodies that can be attributed to one serial killer in the history of this city? Of course there were others who left bodies strewn across the U.S. or whatever country they were from…but nine is the most ever take
n from our city by one man.”
“I wasn’t privy to that bit of trivia.”
He cracked up again. “You do amuse me, Ciara. Anyway, my record will stand long after I’m gone, I’m sure. They will use the word ‘prolific’ and teach entire classes about me.” He wanted her to ask how many he’d killed, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. The more he talked about it, the more excited that shriveled thing in his hand got. She wished once again that she had something in her stomach so that she could puke. When he realized she wasn’t going to ask he said, “You were going to be number twenty.”
“But you decided to truss me up and keep me instead?”
“I thought about how hard your brother has worked to catch me. It’s really not his fault he never did. I had Mother helping me for the longest time and outside of my activities I went to work every day, put up with my bitch of a wife, and lived a normal life. I have an IQ of 154. I was just way too smart to catch. The girls I kept in my playroom in between the ones I left in the alleyways were well disposed of, but I’ll be sure your brother knows where to find them so that I get credit. I’d just really like this prolific life of mine to come full circle before I die.”
“So you’re going to let Noah catch you, and you want him to live so that you get credit for all of your killings. What exactly am I for?”
“Fun,” he said with a smile. “After all, if I’m going to die I’d like to have just a little bit of fun doing it. Insurance too…but mostly fun, and I’ll get credit for you too in the end. Noah gets credit for me, but we wouldn’t want his head getting too big, now would we? He is going to get here just almost in time to save you.”
Shit! The fucker was planning to kill her in front of her brother. Of everything he’d said and done so far, that made her the sickest. He bent and took the knife out of the pocket of his chair where he always left it when he came in to talk to her, and then he turned and she saw his bony, naked ass head for the door. “Hey! Psycho Joe!” He turned back toward her. He hated it when she called him that. “What if I am an angel?”
He looked disturbed by that but he tried to play it off. “I doubt it, but what if you are?”
“I’m sure as hell not putting in a good word for you. What if the last one who dies is the one that gets to decide your fate?” She could actually see the anxiety welling up in him. She had struck a nerve. “What about the other ones you kept here in your ‘playroom’? If you treated them as poorly as you have me I doubt they’ll be anxious to give you the thumbs up either. What if you went to all of this trouble and you’ve been wrong. What if we were all angels?”
He rushed back over and slammed his fist into the side of her head. It popped back so hard that she thought it gave her whiplash…but it was worth it. “You’re no angel. If anything you’re the spawn of Satan himself.” Ciara smiled through the blood in her teeth and said,
“Even Lucifer was an angel…once.” She braced herself for another punch or the knife. She was honestly hoping to piss him off enough that he would just kill her. Seeing her die would ruin Noah’s life and she couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t hit her again, though, or slice her throat. Surprisingly, he brought the knife up over her head and cut through her restraints. He let her body fall to the floor…hard. Ciara lay there in and out of consciousness for a while. Her arms felt like they were being pricked with a thousand needles as the circulation came back into them. When she could finally feel them again, she used one to push herself up enough to look at her feet. While she was unconscious he’d cut that restraint too and left her alone. What the hell? What is it he wants me to do?
She sat there on the nasty floor and tried to figure it out. Did he want her to run? She couldn’t really even feel her legs so she didn’t think that was an option. The only thing in the room besides her was the bed he’d stripped bare and his chair. She looked at the chair. It was like a dining room chair, made out of wood with a nasty cushion covering the seat. She envisioned herself waiting by the door and slamming that chair into the side of his bald head. She wished that she believed she could do it. She was probably down to eighty-five pounds by then and she hadn’t walked in God only knows how many weeks. Her arms had been tied up over her head with little to no circulation for almost that long. Picking up that chair was a pipe dream and she knew it. She would have to think of something else.
Ciara thought about Noah. Psycho Joe seemed to think he could lure her brother in by keeping her. She wished that she believed it wasn’t true. She had been gone for so long that a lesser man than her brother would have written her off by then. But she knew Noah and if he had any indication whatsoever at all that she was in trouble, he’d come, stupid fuck. She didn’t know how that mother of theirs managed to spawn a child with a conscience.
Ciara looked down at the tubing still in her arm and wondered how big the needle was attached to it. Psycho Joe used the only good vein she had left. She wondered if her aim would be good enough to shove the needle in his eye when he came in the door. That should incapacitate him long enough for her to run…she hoped. She thought she had already established that running was probably not an option, though. And of course, the last time she got out the door, she didn’t see anything. She had no idea where they were. It was so quiet that she wondered if they were way out in the country somewhere so that no one could hear her if she got out and screamed her head off anyway. Maybe she would just die in the desert if she tried to run. Maybe that would be better for Noah. She just couldn’t let him see this sick fuck kill her. Noah would kill him and those two events would ruin his life. She didn’t want him to ruin his life for her. She was probably not going to live very many more years anyway. She closed her eyes and wished that she was religious. Maybe at least then she could occupy some of this time with prayer.
Ciara pictured herself hitting him with the chair again. He was really not much bigger than her anymore. Maybe the adrenaline would kick in and help her. She scooted over next to it and reached for it. Communicating with her arms was difficult, but when she grabbed hold of it and tried to pull herself up her legs felt like wet noodles and she slipped and slid on the accumulation of fluids on the floor. She was also dragging the IV bag. She reached over and pulled the needle out of her arm. A trail of blood followed but she wasn’t worried about that. She had lost so much lately already that she wasn’t even sure how she was still functioning.
She kept trying to pull herself up, thinking if Psycho Joe was watching her on a camera somewhere he was probably having a good laugh. She was bathed in sweat by the time she got to her feet. She stood there until she felt steady and then tried to pick up the chair. It didn’t budge. She tried to push against it with the same result. She struggled with it for quite some time before realizing that it was bolted to the floor. Joe was a psycho, but he was not stupid. Frustrated all over again, she half-walked and half-crawled to the door. She wanted to just get this over with so she turned the knob, closed her eyes, and braced for the skull fracture. When nothing happened she cautiously opened her eyes. She was staring at a long, dark hallway and the only thing that she could see on either side was smooth wall. She dropped down to all fours and began to crawl.
Collin fidgeted with his tie before knocking on his fifth door. He hated ties and suits and shiny shoes. He particularly hated them when the hot Arizona sun was beating down on his back and he had to walk for miles in those shiny shoes. Noah had taken Ava with him. Collin thought that he was afraid to let her out of his sight. As much as Collin didn’t want her to finish the lecture she started on him that morning, Noah had better hope that he kept her safe.
Collin hadn’t been received well at all so far, but he kept going. He raised his hand and knocked on the door of another huge house and seconds later it was pulled open a crack.
“Yes?” the man looking out at him through the crack said in an irritated tone of voice.
“Hello there. I’m looking for a woman and I was wondering if you’ve seen her?” He didn�
�t open the door any wider, so Collin held up the picture of Ciara. The man’s face was impassive.
“No, I don’t know her.” He started to close the door and Collin said:
“Maybe you could check with your family, or your staff. She’s missing and we think she’s in danger…”
“I’m the only one that lives here; my mother passed on five years ago and my wife just over a year ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I have another picture. This one is a sketch of a man.” When Collin pulled that one out he actually cracked the door open further and looked at it with interest.
“Odd-looking fellow,” he said.
Collin thought the “fellow” that he was talking to was kind of odd-looking as well. He had thick dark hair that hung down over the front of his glasses and down to the collar of his robe. His skin was as pale as a ghost and the red and blue paisley silk robe and the red silk pajama pants only emphasized it. He was staring at the picture with a strange look on his face…almost a smile. Collin finally said, “Yeah, he is strange-looking. I think you would definitely remember if you saw him. He’s bald and according to the man who gave this description he doesn’t have any eyelashes or eyebrows either.”
The man pulled his glasses down to the edge of his nose. When he did that, Collin could see that his eyebrows were drawn on and he didn’t have any eyelashes either. He was trying to be subtle, but his dark, beady eyes were on Collin’s face then and at that moment Collin was sure that he knew what he was thinking. The man took a step back from the door and Collin could see that his right hand was holding a Glock. With a creepy smile he pulled off his wig with the other hand and said, “Maybe you should come in. We can discuss this better in private.” Fuck. Collin knew he had a lot to learn about being a Skull. Maybe the first one should be to always carry.
Ten minutes later, Collin had been forced to strip out of his clothes and the man was sitting across from him in the living room, naked, with the gun still pointed at his head. Collin had to admit that at least Noah had an interesting job. He’d also have to say that he’d prefer to take his chances with whatever he met as a biker on the street. “You’re one of his brother-in-laws, right?”