All The Dead Girls

by Tim Kizer

  It must have been one of the nicer neighborhoods since the woman had opened the door without asking any questions and was obviously not afraid she’d get robbed.

  “I’m looking for Angela Hancock,” said Albert. “I guess it’s you.”

  “Yes, I’m Angela.” The woman nodded.

  “My name is Al. I would like to talk to you for a couple of minutes. Do you have a couple of minutes?” So far, the only sound coming out of the bowels of the house was the TV chatter. It appeared Angela’s husband was hitting the bars with his buddies tonight.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to get his ass off his La-Z-Boy.

  “What is it about? Are you selling something?”

  “No, I’m not selling anything. It’s about your daughter Marilyn. Do you have time?”

  “Yes, sure. Please come in.” Angela stepped aside, letting Albert come inside the house.

  “Thank you very much, Angela. You have a beautiful house, by the way.”

  They entered the living room, and Angela waved at the couch, inviting Albert to take a seat. Then she offered him something to drink, and he politely declined.

  “Are you from Buffalo?” Angela muted the TV and put the remote on the arm of the chair she was in.

  “Yes. I arrived here a couple of hours ago.” Albert smiled. “Now let me cut to the chase, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you have a lot of other things to do tonight.”

  “You said it’s about my daughter.”

  “It’s about Marilyn and her friend Frank. Do you know Frank Fowler?”

  “No, Marilyn has never told me about Frank Fowler.” Angela shook her head. “We don’t talk a lot about her friends.”

  “When was the last time you spoke with her?”

  “We talked on the phone about two weeks ago. Are you one of her friends?”

  “I am a friend of Frank’s. And I’m really worried about your daughter and Frank.”

  “Are they in trouble?” Angela frowned.

  “They could be. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Marilyn and Frank for two days now. Nobody knows where they are. Did Marilyn tell you where she went?”

  “No, she didn’t. Did you try her cell-phone?”

  “She turned off her cell-phone. She hasn’t been home for the last two days. And neither has Frank.”

  “You think she is with him? What does this guy do?”

  “I think they left Buffalo together. And I don’t want you to worry too soon, Angela. I’m here to ask you to pass a message to Marilyn in case she calls you. I need your help to prevent them from doing anything stupid.”

  “Is Frank some sort of troublemaker? How did Marilyn meet him? Does he use drugs?”

  “No, I doubt he does. He’s a decent guy, but sometimes he gets confused and makes wrong choices. However, chances are your daughter is not in any danger.”

  “You are not trying to spare my feelings, are you, Al? If she’s in trouble, I want to know that.” Angela took her phone from the coffee table, dialed a number, and stuck the phone to her ear.

  “As I said, it’s too early to worry. All I know is, Marilyn and Frank left Buffalo and their cell-phones are off.”

  “You’re right, it goes straight to her voice-mail.” Angela put her cell in her lap.

  “I’m sure your daughter will be fine, Angela. If I were you, I would tell her to come back to Buffalo. Do you think she’s going to call you sometime soon?”

  “I have no idea. She calls every other week or so. She might call in a couple of days,” answered Angela. She looked at the doorway, probably wondering when her husband was going to finally show up. Albert immediately recalled every word he’d told her so far, checking if he’d said something that might have scared her. He concluded that he’d given this woman no reason to panic. “I can leave her a message to call me,” added Angela.

  “Sounds great. Could you tell her that Albert dropped by and left this?” Albert pulled a neatly folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Angela. “I would much appreciate it if Marilyn passed this message, word for word, to Frank.”

  Angela spent a minute reading and rereading the note Albert had given to her and finally said, “I’m going to follow your advice and stay calm, even though it’s easier said than done. Can you at least tell me if Marilyn did something illegal?”

  “I assure you Marilyn hasn’t broken any laws yet. But the sooner she and Frank come back to Buffalo, the better.”

  “I understand. I will read her your message. Hopefully, she’ll check her voice-mail tonight.”

  “Is there another way for you to contact her? Do you know any of her close friends? Can you email her?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I’m not going to bed until I talk to Marilyn.”

  “You know what, Angela. I’d like to reward you for this little favor.” Albert decided it was the right time to offer his little deal sweetener. “Please accept this gift card as a thank you from me.” He placed a one hundred dollar Macy’s gift card in front of Angela. A hundred dollars was the optimum amount in this situation: it was neither offensively low nor suspiciously high. “Do you shop at Macy’s?”

  Angela gave him an approving look and uttered the obligatory ‘You really don’t have to do this.’ It might have been Albert’s imagination, but the sight of the card appeared to have brightened the woman’s eyes.

  “I’ve already taken too much of your time,” said Albert. “That’s the least I can do.”

  Angela still seemed reluctant to touch the card, but Albert was sure she would grab it as soon as he left the house: everyone—including the wealthy folks—loves freebies.

  “Just remember to mention my name.” Albert smiled.

  “Sure. And I’ll read her your note word for word.”

  “Please tell Marilyn that she should contact Frank as soon as possible because this message is extremely important to him. Extremely important, Angela.”

  “So just to confirm—Marilyn is not in any trouble, right?”

  “Not yet. And I’ll do my best to help her stay out of trouble.” Albert glanced at his watch. 9:02 pm. It was almost seventeen hours since he had discovered that Frank had fled. He was happy they had not been wasting the precious time.

  “All right.” Angela picked up her cell-phone from the table. “Is there a number I can reach you at after I talk to my daughter?”

  “Sure.” Albert dictated his phone number to Angela. “Call me anytime.”

  9.

  The good news came at a quarter to ten in the evening: Albert reported that Marilyn had just called her mother.

  “Did Angela pass our message to her?” asked Josephine.

  “Yes, she did, word for word.”

  “Did Marilyn tell her mother where she is right now?” Josephine breathed a sigh of relief.

  “She told Angela she’s visiting a friend in New York, but I think it’s bullshit.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter where that bitch is.” Josephine wiped the sweat from her forehead with her palm. She was getting tired of the excessive sweating, by the way. She wished it were the only side effect of the vampire blood deficiency, though; she would rather sweat like a cow than have these annoying joint aches that no painkiller could beat.

  “Should I go home?”

  “Yes, come back to Buffalo. Now that Frank knows we have his nephew, you don’t have to be in Philadelphia.”

  “Okay. I’m taking off to the airport right away.”

  Josephine hung up, then drank the remainder of the beer, and silently crushed the can in her hand. “This son of a bitch is ours. I have no doubt this bleeding heart fucker won’t let poor Jimmy die.”

  “We’ll see.” Graham pulled out his cell-phone and began to dial. “I’m calling Ron. I want to tell him that bitch has called.”

  Ron picked up the phone after three rings. Graham pushed the speaker button and said, “Hi, Ron.”

  “Hi, Ron,” said Josephine.

  “Did Ma
rilyn call?” Ron asked.

  “Yes, she did,” replied Graham.

  “This fucker is ours,” said Josephine. “I think he’ll be back in Buffalo by Monday.”

  “How is Jimmy doing?” asked Graham. “Is he causing any trouble?”

  “He’s behaving himself. A normal teenage boy would never run away from a hot hooker, and Jimmy is a normal teenage boy. I’ll be surprised if he ever wants to leave.” Ron laughed. “He and Cindy have been having a great time. I told you this was going to work like magic, Josie.”

  “It was a genius idea, Ron. I hope she doesn’t give him crabs or Chlamydia.” Josephine giggled.

  “I bet she was his first one,” said Graham.

  “I’m sure she was. And he can’t get enough of her. I guess he’ll remember this weekend for the rest of his life.”

  “Did Jimmy tell his parents where he went?” Josephine wiped her perspiring chest with a tissue.

  “Yes, he texted his mother that he’s sleeping over at his friend’s place.”

  “Is she okay with that?”

  “I guess she isn’t happy that he didn’t tell her sooner, but Jimmy doesn’t give a shit what she thinks.”

  “Excellent. Did you take away his cell-phone?”

  “Yes. And I removed the battery, too. I don’t think he’s going to miss his phone any time soon.”

  “Have you already moved to another hotel?”

  “Yep. I’m taking every precaution, Josephine.”

  “Very well. You just can’t be too careful with this cell-phone tracking shit.”

  Josephine was right: any place where Jimmy used his cell-phone was compromised since the police would have no trouble tracking down its location.

  “I think we’re doing okay. We have at least three more days before his folks start seriously worrying about him.”

  “I have a feeling Frank will be in our hands by that time,” said Josephine.

  Chapter 17.

  D-DAY

  1.

  They decided to go into hiding soon after Graham’s call. They had realized that Josephine and her crew were going to get violent any day now and had no desire to wait for that to happen. Frank was toying with the idea of telling Marilyn what they were dealing with, but couldn’t have brought himself to do it. First, he didn’t want to scare Marilyn, and second, he wasn’t sure she would believe him. Honestly, you probably had to be a firsthand witness in order to take this ridiculous vampire story seriously.

  The next morning Frank bought two prepaid cell-phones, using his fake driver’s license, and gave one of them to Marilyn. Thirteen hours later they were on the bus to Pittsburgh.

  Frank knew he was in big trouble. Well, the biggest trouble of his life, to be exact. Did he have a plan? The only risk free strategy he could think of was to lie low and patiently wait for the ghouls to starve to death. It was apparent that the ghouls had been unable to find another vampire whose blood they could drink; otherwise they wouldn’t be wasting their time looking for Kelly. How long could it take Josephine and the gang to wither away? Frank had no clue. They might have stored barrels of the vampire blood just for this type of contingency, which could last them for many months, maybe even years. However, it was also possible that the ghouls’ emergency blood stash was about to run out.

  How long was he willing to wait? It depended on how long it would take him to come up with a feasible plan to kill the rest of the ghouls. Fortunately, there was nothing supernatural about killing a ghoul, so the plan didn’t need to be particularly elaborate.

  By the way, it would be nice if he could remember what had happened to those two unregistered handguns Alex had procured back in April. Hopefully, they were sitting in some deposit box, waiting to be retrieved.

  It would also be nice if he could get hold of a machine gun and a few grenades. And a flamethrower.

  Yeah, a flamethrower would come handy in this situation.

  On the bus to Pittsburgh, Frank remembered the night Kelly and Tony had died.

  2.

  Soon after his night out at the Pyramid, Frank began to suspect that Tony was thinking of having him join his gang.

  “Have you ever dreamt of living forever?”

  When Kelly asked this question on the last Sunday of her life, Frank had no idea what its real purpose was. It took him a couple of days to figure out that Kelly had been following Tony’s instructions.

  “That would be nice, I guess,” he replied. His answer must have been music to her and Tony’s ears.

  “Yeah, just think of all the opportunities immortality could open.”

  “Right.” He nodded. He was simply humoring her at that moment. To him, it was just one those pointless discussions people had to kill time.

  By the way, would you have changed your answer if you had taken the time to think it through, buddy? Do you really think it would be nice to live forever?

  Well, honestly, Kelly did have a point there. Immortality indeed opens a lot of opportunities.

  The D-day came on the last Friday of April. By that time, they had everything they needed to kill Tony.

  Two very sharp four-foot-long stakes made of ash.

  Well, it was common knowledge that wooden stakes killed vampires when driven through their hearts.

  Two tranquilizer guns and two Glock 17 pistols for the ghouls.

  The safe.

  The six-foot long safe, which was four feet wide and about two feet deep, was going to fit Tony rather comfortably. They didn’t have a specific action plan at the time they bought it. However, a few basic thoughts had popped up when they had started plotting Tony’s murder. For instance, there was no guarantee that a wooden stake would kill the vampire, which meant they had to come up with a way of holding Tony hostage without any one of them getting bitten or ripped apart. A safe seemed to be an excellent place to store the vampire. No matter how strong Tony was, eleven-gauge steel plates had to be too tough to break even for him; his fists and feet weren’t made of steel, after all.

  The GPS jammer.

  Frank remembered buying a GPS jammer on Ebay. Actually, they had used Alex’s account to make the purchase since they didn’t want Josephine to find out later that Frank had acquired something so exotic as a GPS jammer just before Tony and Kelly had vanished. You see, there was virtually no legitimate purpose a benign certified public accountant could use this piece of electronics for.

  What did they need the jammer for?

  They suspected that Tony could have a GPS tracker somewhere on his body—yes, they were that paranoid—and the jammer was supposed to prevent this device from receiving satellite signals and thus keep Josephine uninformed about places the vampire had visited in the several hours prior to his disappearance. The fear of the all-knowing, all-seeing Josephine didn’t appear to be over the top to either of them; they realized that you can’t be too careful when hunting a vampire guarded by a gang of psychos.

  Trash can liners.

  Sleeping drugs.

  And a few other things.

  On the D-day, Frank was trembling inside but appeared calm and aloof on the outside. He kept thinking about the checklist of things he and Alex had to have done before making the move. He was afraid of the “Want of a nail” scenario where one little thing they accidentally missed would cause the whole operation to collapse.

  Since there were too many variables out of their control in this equation, what they had in mind was an outline rather than a plan.

  Kelly and Tony arrived at half past nine.

  “Ready to go clubbing?” asked Tony.

  “Sure.” Frank quickly dipped his hand into his pocket, checking if he hadn’t forgotten to put the vial with the sedative in it.

  “I have an idea, Frank. Why don’t we leave Kelly here and have ourselves a boys’ night out? What do you think?”

  They had prepared for such a turn of events: Frank had put crushed Ambien pills in the iced tea jug that sat in the refrigerator as well as the coffee pot right
after Kelly had left for Josephine’s house to pick up Tony. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a fail proof solution since there was no guarantee that Kelly would actually end up drinking the sleeping-pill-laced iced tea or coffee tonight.

  “Do you mind staying home alone, sweetheart?” Frank shifted his eyes to Kelly.

  “That’s okay, honey. I’ll be fine. Go have fun, guys.”

  “We sure will,” said Tony.

  “Best wife in the world. Don’t wait up.” Frank kissed Kelly on the cheek and joined Tony, who had begun inching towards the doorway.

  Half an hour after arriving at the club (Tony picked the Marquee nightclub in downtown Buffalo for his third night out with Frank), Frank went to the restroom and called Alex to warn him that Kelly had stayed at home and to ask him to check whether she was still asleep before driving the truck into the garage. At the end of the call he reminded Alex to bring the spare key to Kelly’s car he had given to Alex the day before.

  “Did she park in the garage?” asked Alex.

  “I don’t know. Bring it just in case.”

  They left the club around half past midnight, when Tony suggested they find a place with softer music where they could chat without raising their voices.

  “I’ve been wanting to discuss a couple of things with you, and tonight seems to be the perfect time to do it,” he said.

  Just before they walked out of the club, Frank excused himself to the restroom and called Alex, who had already parked their Ford F-150 in Frank’s garage and was waiting behind the wheel of the truck for Frank and Tony to show up, his tranquilizer gun in his lap, his wooden stake and Glock 17 on the passenger seat. Frank told him that he was going to try and bring the vampire in the next hour. Alex informed him that Kelly was asleep in the master bedroom and that she had left her BMW parked in the street. He also let Frank know that he had placed Frank’s wooden stake, which was wrapped in newspaper sheets for disguise, by the tool cabinet.

  As he pulled his Land Cruiser out of the parking lot, Frank asked Tony in a casual tone, “How about my place? I have a well-stocked bar cabinet. Do you drink gin?”