by King, Leo
“My pleasure, Sam,” Richie said with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow in time for coffee. I like mine with sugar and cream, all right?”
“All right,” Sam said, then leaned back against the seat, clearly still very drunk.
Closing the door, Richie watched as the cab drove off. He gave a happy sigh as he headed back into the hotel lobby. With a skip to his step, he headed into the elevator and clicked his floor number. Leaning against the back wall of the elevator, Richie took several long, deep breaths to push the tipsiness back, no longer having to pretend to be drunk in order to keep Samantha comfortable around him.
It was on his third deep breath that Richie realized he wasn’t alone.
“You look happy,” said a sultry voice beside him. Richie turned his head to see that the woman in the red dress was his elevator companion.
“I am,” he said, and then he looked at the elevator doors again. “So where are you heading?”
“Top floor,” she said, with a sigh that was mournful, like a lonely saxophone’s final exhale. “People aren’t doing their jobs properly.”
“Oh,” Richie said before looking over at the woman again. The way she phrased her problem only reinforced his belief that she was somehow involved in organized crime. “Sounds kind of suspicious. You’re not in any trouble, are you? Do you need any help?”
“Not really,” she said, her naturally sultry tone suddenly bitter. “The help I was looking for didn’t come when I needed it. And I’ve already suffered for it.” Then she smirked almost devilishly. “But now I get to pick up the pieces.”
Richie said nothing to that. He just looked forward again. “Sorry. I have a habit of trying to rescue women. It’s an annoying trend I think I’ve just developed today.”
“Then go solve that murder, writer-boy,” the woman said, her pouty lips curving into a sweet, sexy smile. “You are going to do it, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Richie said, nodding to himself as much as to his strange companion. “I’m going to do it. And I’ll have help, too.”
Richie then thought of Sam. And I’ll help her, while I’m at it.
The woman looked upward as she sucked on her bottom lip for a long moment, almost as if she were nearing climax. “Mmmmm, so what’s your plan?”
“I’ve got some work to catch up on,” Richie said with a chuckle, even as the elevator stopped and the doors opened. “Quite a bit before I head to bed. But that’s just how I roll, lady. I burn the midnight oil to do what has to be done.”
“We all do,” she said as Richie left the elevator. “We all do what needs to be done.”
“Right,” said Richie, giving the woman a nod of thanks. “Good night.”
She just stared up at the ceiling of the elevator and smiled as the doors closed.
The Lady in Red. Who the hell is she?
Once inside his room, Richie stripped off his clothes and got into his robe, laying out a pair of jeans, boots, and a T-shirt for the next morning. He was already thinking about his breakfast with Sam.
“I may not be able to write about the Bourbon Street Ripper copycat murders,” Richie said to himself, “but I can sure as hell help solve them.”
The alarm was set for six o’clock in the morning, and once that was done, Richie sat down in front of his computer. Cracking his knuckles, he started to load up his web browser.
“All right,” Richie said to himself once more, “time to get to work.”
Chapter 13
Rodger’s Bad Day
Date: Thursday, August 6, 1992
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Mad Monty’s Warehouse
Ninth Ward
When Rodger’s consciousness and vision returned to him, he was back inside the warehouse with the door tightly shut. He wasn’t sure how long he had been out, but judging by the daylight seeping through the windows of the warehouse, it couldn’t have been that long. Rodger quickly realized two things: he was tied up with a chain, hands bound in front of him, legs bound at the feet, and he was suspended in the air by virtue of one of those hanging hook-chains attached to the chain binding.
“Good,” said the booming voice of Mad Monty from the center of the warehouse. “You’re awake.”
Rodger swiveled a bit by swinging his lower body, turning to face Mad Monty. The large man was over by the conveyor belt, leaning on an equally tied-up Horace, pushing one hand on his face and another on his knees. The parole officer was tied up pretty tightly, and the conveyor belt now had raised sides, so rolling off would be impossible. Between Rodger and the machine was a small table. On that table lay Horace’s briefcase and Rodger’s coat and sidearm. Rodger could see that the weapon still had its clip in it.
Monty grinned that toothy, fanglike grin again, saying, “Man, you have no fucking clue how happy I was to hear that you were coming over today. I’ve been thinking for years about how I’d do you. You can’t even imagine how hard it’s been to wait for the right moment.”
Rodger screamed, “Monty!” Just the act of screaming made Rodger start to rotate away from the scene, and like a flailing fish, he struggled to return to facing Monty again. “You think you’ll get away after this? You know I got backup coming!”
Monty laughed a great booming laugh and said, “Shit, you mean that skinny bitch kung fu partner of yours? My boys are chasing his ass down by the river. He’s gonna get a real lesson in being a bitch.” He sniffed once more. “But you and nerd-boy be dead long before that.”
Rodger knew how bad the situation was. Without any way to call for help, he had to wait for the thirty-minute time limit they’d set with Ouellette to run out. By the time the police commander acted, he and Horace could already be dead.
Deciding the best chance he had to keep them both alive was to keep Monty talking and killing time, Rodger started up again. “You don’t have to kill Horace, Monty. Your beef is with me, not him.”
Spitting to the side, Monty said with a growl to his voice, “You think I care about this limp-dicked pussy? You can’t imagine how annoying it’s been listening to his wimpy voice tell me what I should and shouldn’t do. Fuck, man, you know how hard it is to be a bad motherfucker when you have to drink nonalcoholic beer and listen to Beethoven? Hos don’t respect that!”
“Like your woman didn’t respect you when she fucked your best friend?” asked Rodger. He had played this card before, and it worked perfectly. Monty was pretty much emasculated when his old girlfriend had had a child with Monty’s best friend. Only through crushing the guy’s windpipe did Monty regain his manhood, as well as earn himself ten years in prison. It was a topic Monty was always sore over.
Much to Rodger’s surprise, however, Monty just smirked and shook his head. “Man, I am well over that shit. I’ve had so many bitches since then it don’t matter no more. Besides, I fuck guys now, too.” Mad Monty leaned forward on Horace, resting his elbows on him. “White, lily-assed guys like your pussy-boy partner.”
Rodger knew his face betrayed both his horror and his disgust, Monty’s threat of making Michael “his bitch” suddenly making sense. Rodger started to speak again when Monty suddenly cried out in pain. Looking over in surprise, Rodger saw Monty withdrawing his hand from Horace’s face, a large bite mark on it. Monty screamed, “YOU FUCKING TWITCH!!!”
Rodger stared at Horace in horror. Horace, you stupid idiot!
He felt desperation grow in his chest as he struggled for a way to turn attention back to him. Like a car’s transmission might do at the worst possible time, Rodger’s brain locked up, and he could only utter idle threats. “Monty! You hurt Horace, and I swear I’ll hunt you down like a dog!”
That only made Monty cackle, and with a roar of laughter, he pushed a button on the side of the conveyor belt. With a sudden clank and whir, the machine came to life, a constant clanking and crashing coming from the interior of the large metal container that the conveyor belt fed into.
The belt itself started to slowly move Horace toward the
machine as Monty called out, “Watch closely, Detective, this shit’s gonna happen to you next!”
“What the heck is that thing?” cried out a panicked and terrified Horace as he struggled to get free from his chains.
“That is something of my own design,” said Monty. “I use it to shred metal into bits so I can melt it down easier. To be honest,” he mused as he walked alongside his struggling parole officer, “I have no idea what it’ll do to a human body.”
“Have you lost your mind, Mr. Jones?” cried Horace. “You know you’ll get the death penalty if you do this!”
The fact that someone like Horace was trying to psych out Monty restarted the fuse in Rodger’s brain. The detective screamed, “Yeah! You know we’ve got backup coming, Monty! We’re not stupid enough to come in here without a Plan B. Assault and attempted murder is bad enough, but if you actually kill us, you’re killing yourself.”
Booming out more laughter, Monty said, “Shit, you think I don’t know you got your little butt-buddies coming? This is why I’m using this thing on you and not giving you an acid bath. I know I ain’t got time. But once you and nerd-boy here are dead, I’m outta here. I’ve had an escape plan in place since I built this fucking warehouse, just for this occasion. I’m heading to Mexico. Fuck this fucked-up city! Fuck this serial killer shit! And fuck the fucking Nite Priory!”
Rodger’s eyes widened at the mention of the Nite Priory. He recognized that as the name that sent Topper Jack his letter.
Rodger’s thoughts were interrupted by Horace screaming to be let go, pleading for his life, blubbering in gut-wrenching terror. Horace was halfway to the machine, and while from this angle Rodger could not see what the interior must look like to the parole officer, his imagination filled in some horrific blanks.
“It’s okay to scream,” Monty taunted Horace, his sweat dripping down on his parole officer’s face. “It’s okay to cry. It’s gonna hurt real bad. So go ahead and scream for me. Scream like a bitch.”
“Monty.” Rodger’s voice thickened with panic. “Don’t do this! For heaven’s sake, don’t do this!”
This just spurred Monty on to laugh more maniacally and slap Horace repeatedly in the face, knocking his glasses off. “Gonna die, pussy,” Monty started pseudo-singing. “Gonna die real bad, pussy! Scream like a girl for me, pussy!”
Monty stopped slapping Horace as the parole officer cried, snot and tears running down his face, begging for his life. The front of his pants had gotten very dark, and he struggled in vain to get free, unable to roll off the conveyor belt due to its side guards. He even tried to push himself back.
“Stop it!” Rodger’s voice was just as frantic as he struggled to break free himself. It was like struggling against a one-ton weight. He couldn’t think of what to say, what to do, to make this situation stop. He had never felt so helpless.
With his feet inches from the machine, Horace looked down and started screaming, “NO! NO! NOOOOO!” while trying to curl his feet back. Monty stood back and laughed cruelly while rubbing the front of his jeans and panting like a dog. As Horace’s feet entered the machine, blood sprayed everywhere. The parole officer’s scream was shrill and girlish.
Rodger forced himself to look away, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. The sounds of Horace’s screams, accompanied by the clanking of the machine and the sound of bones crunching, meat tearing, and blood squirting, lasted an obscenely long time.
One of the more shrill screams turned into outright crying for his mother, which squelched into a choking and gurgling sound, and then only the gruesome sounds of a body being mangled.
When Rodger finally looked back at the machine, Horace was nothing more than a mess of red meat and blood slopping from the back of the machine, out of a small metallic chute, and into a trough.
Rodger felt sick to his stomach, trying hard to hold back the bile. He really wanted to vomit. Instead, tears of rage came down his face. As the machine shut off, Monty let out a loud whistle, having come around to the rear of the machine and seen the bloody mess.
“Fucking hell,” Monty said as he headed over toward Rodger, snorting with laughter like he had just heard the best joke of his life. “There is no way in shit I can clean that up before your buddies get here.”
Standing in front of Rodger, Monty cracked his knuckles and said, “Too bad I don’t got enough time to really enjoy doing you in, old man. But you’ll scream for me like a bitch, too, won’t ya?”
“How could you do that to another human being?” Rodger said through his teeth, with shock, rage, and many more emotions coursing through him. Turning to Monty, Rodger spat in his face and cried out, “You disgusting animal!”
Wiping the mess off of his face, Mad Monty smirked and said, “Yeah, you my bitch now, Rodger.” With a single swing of his massive hand, Monty slugged Rodger in the gut hard enough to knock all the air out of his lungs.
Rodger’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and while he was barely conscious, he was aware of being lifted up and carried over to the conveyor belt. When his senses returned to him, he was face-up and pointing, feet-first, toward the machine.
The interior was too messy with Horace’s guts to see clearly, but it looked like someone had merged a car crusher, a wood chipper, and a mass-killing machine into one terrifying contraption.
Looking up, Rodger saw Monty’s face grinning down at him.
“Bye-bye, Detective. Fuck you.”
With the push of a button, Monty started the machine up, and Rodger soon saw himself heading, feet-first, toward the jaws of the machine. As the mists of being knocked about left, the severity of the situation hit.
This is it. I am going to die.
In Rodger’s mind, images flashed by. Clinking glasses with Edward in a bar after work. He and Michael catching a man who had murdered his own wife for insurance money. Ouellette giving him a commendation. And, finally, Sam greeting him for the first time in years and offering him a cup of coffee.
Rodger’s mind then focused on Sam, specifically young Samantha, and that look of a child devoid of life, who needed someone, anyone, to make the bad stuff go away. That snapped Rodger back to reality.
Fuck this! I can’t die until I solve this case! For Sam. For Edward. For Michael. And for me.
Rodger looked around, seeing that he was halfway to the jaws of the machine. Walking alongside him, Monty was talking trash. Ignoring the taunts, Rodger looked around for something—anything—that would help to save his life.
The conveyor belt’s side guards were too high for him to roll off. The chains around his chest and wrists severely restricted his upper torso. His lower torso, apart from being bound at the ankles, was much more mobile.
Rodger thought as quickly as he could. Even if he managed to sit up, Monty could easily just punch him out and lay him back down. Since Monty was by his head, Rodger couldn’t kick him.
His only hope was to stop himself from entering the machine.
Looking down at the entrance of the machine, Rodger saw something that could potentially be helpful: a grate, suspended over the mouth of the machine, held in place by a latch. As he drew closer to being turned into compost, Rodger figured it was probably an emergency latch and a safety grating.
Rodger moved his feet some from side to side, and realized that the chains were just loose enough for him to kick his feet up. He reasoned that if he could get the grating down, it might buy him enough time to sit up and jump off the conveyor belt.
Remembering that his weapon, which was on the small table, still had the clip in it, the detective quickly formed a plan.
I’ve got one chance at this working. It’s a slim one, but it’s all the chance I’ve got.
Rodger’s thoughts were interrupted by Monty slapping him in the face, like he’d done to Horace.
“Hey, bitch,” taunted Monty, “no looking away.” With a rough grab, Monty forced Rodger’s head to look down at the mouth of the machine, holding his neck and head in place.
“See that?” Monty hissed into Rodger’s ear, his breath like beer and onions mixed into an unsavory stench. “That shit’s gonna tear you into little pieces.”
Monty rocked Rodger’s head back and forth. “I musta done something right when I made it, ’cause Horace didn’t die until that shit ate his most of his guts and lungs. So you get to watch it rip your balls off.”
Rodger watched the approaching opening of the machine, his eyes on the latch that held the safety grate open. Just a few more feet and he’d get his one chance.
Monty leaned in more and said, “Hey, Rodger, I just realized something.” He tilted Rodger’s head up to face him. “I’m gonna rip your balls off anyway! Ain’t that the shit?”
Rodger started to laugh—possibly somewhat hysterically—at that comment, then said, “Yeah, I guess the joke’s on me, ain’t it? Hey, Monty, before I die, there’s something I gotta tell you!”
“Oh?” said Monty, leaning down to look into Rodger’s eyes. “What’s that, bitch?”
Rodger felt himself get cold, a tingle going down his spine, and his thoughts focus. He could feel the power coiling in his legs, ready to spring, and his concentration centered on the latch that would drop the grating.
Most importantly, he felt an overwhelming feeling of confidence in pulling off the escape plan. As he flashed a grin at his enemy, Rodger said with a laugh, “You’re gonna get your ass kicked by an old man.”
With that, Rodger quickly threw his head upward, his forehead crashing hard into Monty’s mouth. Rodger felt the flesh of his forehead split open as those white teeth cut into him. Every part of him felt invincible and empowered. This desperate attack did the trick, as Monty flew back, and his hands, which were keeping Rodger from looking at the machine, let go of his head.
Quickly, Rodger looked down and saw that his feet were inches away from the jaws of the machine. The exposed grinders and blades whipped and whirled, caked with the bits of blood, flesh, and meat that used to be Horace. Still feeling that incredible focus, along with that chilly sensation, Rodger lifted up his legs and, with every bit of strength in his body, slammed his bound feet up at the latch holding the safety grate open.