“Here, Jasper,” she said, picking up an old gray sweatshirt of Lonnie’s lying on the back of a rocker. “Go find Lonnie.”
The bloodhound immediately bounded down the steps and headed around back. Julia followed. She had never been to Lonnie’s private studio, didn’t know exactly where it was, but Jasper would find it in nothing flat. He could find anything. She strolled after Jasper, who was sticking to the well-worn rocky path that wound its way out through the big trees and thick undergrowth, the cool darkness inviting and primeval.
She glanced around for Cathy’s dogs but didn’t see them. There was no distant barking as happened when they had squirrels treed and were jumping up at the trunk, trying to get to them. Cathy must have taken them out to Charlie’s for shots or something. It was pretty quiet out in the deep woods, except for the slight rustling of leaves high in the treetops and the faraway buzz of a boat’s motor on the river. Despite the heat of the sun, little of the warmth or bright light filtered its way through the heavy foliage in the canopy of trees stretching high above her. It was almost like trekking through a forest back in colonial days, shady and cool and silent.
After about a fifteen-minute walk on the meandering dirt path, she caught sight of the structure that Lonnie apparently used as his workshop. It was fairly large, and she had a feeling it had been the residence of an Axelrod relative at some time. It was certainly isolated enough for Lonnie to paint and sculpt and let his creativity blossom. Peace and quiet. Total peace and quiet. To an almost unnerving degree.
She made her way to the front door and knocked a couple of times but didn’t get an answer. Jasper had followed Lonnie’s scent directly to the door and now alerted her by sitting down beside her. She knelt and patted his head. “We aren’t having much luck, are we, Jasper, boy?”
Standing, she tried the antiquated white knob. It turned easily, so she pushed open the door and called out for Lonnie. All was quiet. Silent as a cemetery. She walked around inside the house, admiring the displayed paintings and worktables loaded with lots of paint tubes, sculpting tools, and blank white canvases. Surprised, she picked up a really exquisite metal sculpture of a woman sitting on a log. It looked a lot like Cathy. She smiled. Lonnie’s retreat. All his favorite toys. Sort of like Will’s fancy-as-Bill-Gates’s computer room.
Suddenly she heard the low whir of some kind of machine. She crossed the kitchen to the back door. When she opened it, Jasper ran out the door and headed around the side of the house to explore. She saw Lonnie outside, working with a welder under a corrugated-metal lean-to, sparks flying. She called out his name, but he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the welder. She descended the steps and headed out across the yard. When Lonnie abruptly stopped welding, he heard her behind him and whirled around to face her. Smiling, she started to apologize for scaring him, but then her gaze dropped down to the set of scales he was holding in one hand. Scales with a crossed-swords finial. The exact same scales that she’d seen at the Tongue Slasher crime scenes.
Stunned to a standstill, Julia couldn’t move at first. Lonnie did. He came right at her, and Julia scrabbled for her weapon, got it out, and fired a round. He cried out as it winged him in his left arm. She fired again, but he was too fast and lunged to the right, out of range. He swung the heavy base of the scales hard at her head, so hard that it knocked her to her knees and made her vision go dark for a few seconds. Dizzy, eyes blurry, she felt him grab her weapon and wrest it out of her grip, just as Jasper shot around the side of the house and went after Lonnie, barking and snarling and tearing at his pants leg. Lonnie clubbed the dog and then hit Julia again, this time so hard on the temple that the world went dark. She sank into it and knew no more.
As soon as Julia hung up on him, Will lay back against the pillows, fuming mad. She could be so hardheaded at times, it was downright infuriating. On the other hand, she was a trained police officer. She knew what she was doing and how to do it safely. She was just going down the road to see her friend, Lonnie Axelrod. Relax, Brannock, he told himself. He took a deep, cleansing breath, and then heard the low ding of his cell phone. He picked it up and looked at caller ID. Las Vegas PD. He pulled it up at once and found the picture Archie York had scanned in and e-mailed back. Maria Bota had drawn a circle around one of the men sitting in the courtroom gallery at the Parmentier trial. A seat right behind the prosecutor’s table. He stared at it in disbelief. Their eyewitness had circled a picture of a younger Lonnie Axelrod. But it was him, no question about it. Oh God—Axelrod was the Tongue Slasher. And Julia was on her way to his house.
Will jerked out his IV needle and threw off the covers. Julia was walking straight into danger and had no idea that she was. It all made sense now. Axelrod had lost his daughter and two grandchildren. The photos of the two kids were proof of that. Folger Parmentier was drunk when he hit them and had been living it up ever since. Varranzo was his attorney. Lockhart was the judge. Of course, of course, of course! Why hadn’t they put it all together before?
Wincing with pain, he pulled on his jeans and T-shirt, dialing Julia’s number with the other hand. She didn’t pick up. He cursed to himself. When he headed out the door, a nurse showed up in the hall and gave him some trouble about leaving, but he brushed past her. Nobody was going to stop him. He could drive, and he’d steal a car if he had to. Then he remembered the security guard down in the emergency room. It wasn’t far to Will’s house. The guard could get Will to his boat. After that, Lonnie’s place was less than ten minutes from there by water.
In the elevator to the lobby, he dialed J.D.’s number. If anybody could get to Lonnie Axelrod’s place in record time, it was J.D. He put in another call to the CPD and Phil Hayes, just in case. Then he headed at a run for the ER.
Julia blinked her eyes, trying to think how long she’d been unconscious. All she knew was that her head felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. She tried to keep her eyes open but couldn’t do it; it hurt too much. She could hear a dog hysterically barking somewhere far away. Jasper? She tried to garner her thoughts enough to remember what had happened. But her mind was immersed in a deep fog. She licked at dry lips and sank back into the hazy, strange dreamscape.
Later, when she came to again, she was shivering with cold. She was in a dark place, dank and damp. What—a cave? She tried to move, sit up, but couldn’t seem to do that, either. Oh God, what? Were her arms and legs strapped down? Finally she got her eyes open enough to recognize that there were several electric lanterns hanging on some kind of line strung up above her. The light made her blink. Jasper was still baying, somewhere far away. He sounded scared. What happened to him? She struggled desperately for coherence, felt blood running down the side of her face, and slowly, agonizingly, finally regained her memory. When she did, she was sorry she had.
Fighting the straps holding her down, she turned her head and tried to see where she was. On the table beside her, she could see the razor-edged fillet knife. A length of yellow ski rope was coiled neatly beside it, right next to the large pair of pliers. Lonnie Axelrod sat close by, in a rocking chair, calmly watching her. He had a clean white bandage wrapped around his arm where her slug hit him. Blood was seeping through the gauze. He said nothing and his face looked totally blank, his eyes on her face but completely unfocused. He looked like a different person, nothing at all like Cathy’s quiet and agreeable and pleasant husband.
“Lonnie, Lonnie, look at me. Listen, please.” Julia’s throat felt dry, her words coming out so hoarse and scratchy that she barely recognized her own voice. She could taste blood inside her mouth. “Let me go. You don’t want to do this. Cathy doesn’t want you to do this. You know that. She’s my friend. You’ll break her heart.”
Lonnie seemed to fight his way out of some kind of thick morass deep inside his mind. He stared at her, then shook his head. “Cathy will never know it was me. She’s got no part in what I’ve done. She doesn’t know I’m capable of these terrible things.”
To Julia’s shock, Lonn
ie began to cry—hard, wracking, self-pitying sobs. Tears ran down his pale cheeks, dripping onto the dark green welder’s apron he wore over his street clothes. “You don’t know what I’ve been through, Julia,” he sobbed out. “You’ve got no idea how they made me suffer.”
Julia fought to remain calm. She swallowed down the cutting fear. “Yes, I do, Lonnie. I do, I swear. I understand all too well. I’ve read everything about the accident. About your daughter, Victoria. About her two beautiful little children. It’s horrible what happened, a terrible thing. It’s a miscarriage of justice. I don’t know how you’ve stood it all this time.”
“Because I thought that the truth would win out, that people would see the evil of Parmentier and the others. But they didn’t. They were evil, too. They got him off.” He began to weep louder, making his words halting and hard to understand. “I had to do it. I had to do it for Victoria, for Abby and Tommy . . . I couldn’t live with myself anymore if I didn’t get them justice . . . so I did it . . . before I breathed my last, I did it. I had to . . . and I’m not sorry, not at all . . . I’d do it again . . .”
Julia knew she had to make him see reason, but her heart was hammering so hard that she shook with it. “I know, I know you did. You got them all, all the ones who lied and bribed and said those awful things about your daughter. But now it’s over. You’ve got to stop. Stop the killing. Do it for Cathy’s sake. She loves you so much.”
“Cathy doesn’t need to know,” Lonnie said again. Then suddenly his face changed entirely. He became angry, furiously lashing out at her. “Why did you have to come here? Go snooping around my house? Follow me back here? Everything was going along just fine until now. The media was beginning to find out the depths of their evil and depict them as the evildoers they were. I was going to stop the killing once I got Folger Parmentier. I was going to leave the jurors alive, the ones who were paid off to get those hung juries. Did you know there were four trials? All mistrials because of hung juries. All paid off by Parmentier’s family.”
“Untie me, Lonnie. This is wrong. You know it is. I had nothing to do with any of it. I’m innocent, just like Victoria was. You don’t need to kill me.”
Her last words seemed to make Lonnie stop and think. He sat back in his chair and slowly rocked back and forth as he pondered what she’d said. “I don’t want to do this to you, Julia. I like you, I truly do like you. I was so pleased that Cathy had an old friend to spend time with. But then you had to get assigned to this case. You ruined everything when you came out here today.”
“If you do this, Cathy will never forgive you. Never.”
He rose and walked over to her. “They’ll think you’re just the next victim of the Tongue Slasher. That you got too close and he killed you. I’ll take your body somewhere else after I’m done. She’ll never know. But if I let you go, you’ll turn me over to the police and I’ll have to go to jail.” He just stood there, staring down at her. Then another voice came out of his mouth, a stranger’s voice, and his eyes glazed over with some kind of dark, terrible intensity. Lonnie Axelrod was insane.
“Here, Julia, let me show you my collection.” He moved across the room and out of her line of vision. He came back to her with a big scrapbook in his hands. He opened it so that she could see the photos of his victims. The first one was Lucien Lockhart. Julia felt bile rise up in the back of her throat when she saw that he’d glued part of the judge’s tongue on the page. A souvenir for him to keep around and enjoy over and over again. He turned the pages, showing her the tongues of his other victims.
Julia squeezed her eyes closed and swallowed hard. Lonnie Axelrod was two different people, a split personality. The killer, a psychopath, completely crazy. Not the dutiful husband Cathy had thought him to be, not the mild persona that he showed to others most of the time. Right now, Lonnie was a killer who thought he had no choice but to murder her. She had to buy time. Will was on his way. He had to be.
“Lonnie, listen to me. You can’t do this. Will Brannock knows where I am. I told him I was coming here to see you, that the pictures in your mother’s album were the same kids who died in Parmentier’s accident.” And she had told Will not to come, not to worry about her. God, she hoped he hadn’t listened to her.
Her words got Lonnie’s attention. He smiled. “I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to change my mind. It’s not going to work. Killing you is the only option I’ve got.”
“Believe it, Axelrod! Get down on the floor, arms wide! Now!”
Julia’s heart nearly stopped at the sound of Will’s voice coming out of the darkness of the cave’s tunnel. Will moved into sight, arms extended, gun aimed at Lonnie’s chest. Lonnie grabbed Julia’s Glock out of his waistband.
J.D. came out from behind Will, weapon on Lonnie as he moved along the opposite side of the cave. “It’s over, Axelrod. We’ve got you covered. Put the gun down. Let her go. Don’t make it worse for yourself.”
Lonnie put the barrel of the gun against Julia’s temple. “Back off, or I’ll kill her. I swear I will.”
“No, no, Lonnie, please don’t! No!” That was Cathy’s voice, crying out from somewhere in the dark—shrill, distraught, her words dissolving into loud groans of horror.
Julia tensed all over as Will inched closer, moving his aim to Lonnie’s head. “Don’t do it, Lonnie. Just put the gun down. Put it down, and nobody gets hurt.”
“Cathy, Cathy, oh God,” Lonnie cried out to his sobbing wife, who had come forward into the light and was begging him to stop. “I did it because Victoria didn’t deserve what they did to her. Neither did those sweet angel babies. They were so little, just toddlers. I loved them so much . . .”
Lonnie stifled his own sob, and then he suddenly stepped away from Julia and put the gun against his own temple. “I’m so sorry, Cathy, I’m so damn sorry. I love you. I love you more than anything in the world.”
When he pulled the trigger, the noise was deafening in the underground cavern, and the caustic smell of cordite and the coppery odor of spilled blood filled the air. Cathy ran over and dropped to her knees beside her husband’s lifeless body. She cradled him in her arms and wept. Will rushed over to Julia, slit the cords with the fillet knife, and frantically pulled her up against him.
“Thank God, we got here in time. Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”
“Yes, he hit me with the scales, I think. He was going to kill me, Will. He was going to cut out my tongue.”
“C’mon, we’ve got to get you to a doctor. Next time, listen when I tell you to wait for me, damn it.”
Will helped her sit up and held her tightly against him while he examined her head wound and tried to staunch the flow of blood. Weakly, Julia laid her head against his chest, trying desperately to calm the fear still surging through her bloodstream. She had almost died. She had been within minutes of being murdered and mutilated. If it hadn’t been for Will and J.D., she would be dead. She would be Five.
“How did you find me?”
“You can thank Jasper. We heard him baying and found him lying outside the entrance to the cave. He’d collapsed there. Axelrod must have attacked him with something.”
“Is he all right?”
“He will be, once we get him to the vet.”
Then J.D. was there on the other side of her, brushing back her blood-soaked hair. “Oh God, are you okay, Sis?”
Julia nodded, but she was shivering all over, and she couldn’t seem to make it stop.
“Man, you’ve got to stop doing this kind of thing. My heart won’t take it.”
None of them laughed at J.D.’s comment, but Julia thanked God that it was over, that the Tongue Slasher had found his last victim. And, by the grace of God, it wasn’t her.
Thrilling Suspense from Beverly Barton
_After Dark 978-1-4201-1893-3 $5.99US/$6.99CAN
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