And then Jacob St. George’s eyes went blank and a final breath escaped his body; A mean smile remained etched on his face.
Eddie was wheezing even harder now, air struggling to get into his lungs as he turned towards Gina.
“You!” she said. “You’re the son-of-a-bitch who called me at the clinic … at home.”
“It had to stop,” Eddie said, sobbing. “I wanted to stop Father from harming anyone else, to stop making me bring him women.”
Eddie’s eyes pleaded with her as he knelt down beside her and collapsed across her lap.
₪ CHAPTER 39
“Okay, St. George, I’m here,” yelled a gravelly voice. The rear door to the shop slammed closed with a loud bang. “Where the hell are my packages?”
Gina watched a tall, beefy man push a hand dolly through a row of hanging sides of pork on the far side of the room. He came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the shop.
“Jesus!” the man said hoarsely. His eyes bulged as he looked down at Jacob St. George, the handle of the large knife protruding from the butcher’s chest. He toed the body, scratched at a two or three days’ growth of beard.
Gina was still down behind the large, thick cutting block in front of the locker. She pushed at Eddie, tried to budge him off her lap. She didn’t know whether to remain silent and hope the man didn’t see her, or to call out for help. Before she could make up her mind, Eddie raised his head, looked around at the man, and motioned for Gina to keep quiet. He slowly got to his feet.
“There’s nothing here for you Hiller, go away,” Eddie said.
“You and Daddy have a little disagreement?” Hiller said. “Looks like you won. Man, that’s a laugh and a half.”
“Just go away.”
“Don’t think so, Eddie.” Hiller swiveled his head to look around the room, caught sight of Gina. “And who’s this little dolly? Don’t tell me the late, crazy Jacob St. George didn’t get the job done before he went to meet his maker?”
Gina scooted back against the door of the walk-in cooler, tried to cover her nakedness with her arms. Both Hiller and Eddie were staring at her.
“I told you, there’s nothing here for you,” Eddie snapped. “That’s it!”
“Huh! Little Eddie thinks he’s finally got a pair. Well, wrong time, wrong place.” Hiller started toward Gina. “Your old man was supposed to have a delivery for me. Several packages. Wrapped and ready.”
“No!” Eddie shouted and stepped between Hiller and Gina.
“Get the fuck out of my way, kid.” Hiller pulled a small pistol from his coat pocket, aimed it at Eddie’s midsection, and took another step forward. “Unless you want to join daddy in never-never land,” Hiller said, “I suggest you move. Now!”
Eddie glanced back at Gina, then spun quickly around and swung a fist at Hiller’s head. Hiller easily dodged the blow and smashed Eddie’s face with the gun.
“No!” screamed Gina, scrambling up from the sawdust-covered floor. “Leave him alone.”
Hiller looked at her; his eyes glistened. He pushed Eddie aside and started toward her.
“Not Jacob’s usual taste, but a very usable package. And all stripped and ready for the axe. Right, Eddie?”
Hiller reached behind him and grabbed Eddie by an arm. “Got a problem here, kid. The package is still on the hoof, so to speak.” He looked over at Jacob. “We can save your ass. Do big daddy, too.” He yanked hard at Eddie’s arm. “Get busy!”
“Wh … what?” Eddie said.
“I’m telling you, get busy. I got commitments. Your old man made me a promise. And since you got rid of Daddy, it’s up to you to make good on the contract. You dig?”
Eddie’s mouth dropped open; he shook his head rapidly from side to side, his eyes large and terrified.
“Come on, kid. The slicin’ and dicin’ isn’t my shtick. You’ve got to do it. Jog those memory cells … pretend you’re papa.”
Eddie didn’t move; Hiller glared at him. “Hey, if you’re too chicken to make the kill, I’ll shoot her for you. Tell me where so I don’t damage the goods.”
“Screw you, buster,” Gina blurted. She dashed into the cooler, slammed down the long-handled latch, and peeked through the small, heavy glass window in the door.
She watched as Hiller reached the door in three long strides. As he grabbed the door pull, she rose up on her toes and smashed her bare rump against the inside latch bar to prevent him from opening it.
The icy-cold metal impressed itself into her flesh, and stuck. She could feel pressure on the latch from the outside, then came a pounding on the door, all accompanied by muffled, angry shouting. There were a couple of gunshots, one big thud into the door, and a push at the handle, but the door held.
She wanted to look out the window again, but she would have to move away from the door latch, and that wasn’t about to happen.
She waited – seconds, minutes, an eternity.
* * *
The gunshots and flying sparks from the bullets slamming into the door latch sent Eddie charging forward, one shoulder lowered to catch Hiller in the small of the back. When he fell, Eddie kicked him in the solar plexus. The impact knocked the wind out of Hiller and sent the pistol sliding across the floor.
“I told you to go away,” Eddie said to the fallen, gasping gunman. He reached out and tried to open the cooler door. When it didn’t move, he knew Gina was holding the latch on the other side. He tried to peer in the window, but the glass was fogged.
“Gina! It’s okay. You can come out.”
No response.
Hiller, groaning, tried to sit up. Eddie kicked him back down, grabbed the loose end of a ball of twine suspended from the ceiling and wrapped the rough sisal cord around Hiller’s wrists and ankles.
“I’ll … I’ll kill you,” Hiller mumbled.
“Not today, Milty.” He stuffed a wadded paper towel into the man’s mouth and moved back to the door of the walk-in freezer.
* * *
Gina shook, cold, tremors rippled up from blue toes to her pounding head. What if she passed out, couldn’t continue to hold down the latch if there was another attempt to open the door?
Her mind was sluggish; she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about anything. But she had to do something. Much longer in the freezing storage room and she would pass out. Already she could barely move her hands and legs.
She unstuck herself from the metal handle, tearing skin in the process. She massaged hard at her buttock while she looked outside, peered through the tiny window as far as she could to the left, then to the right. No one. Her breath fogged the glass even more.
She heard someone tell her it was safe to come out.
But was it?
She took a deep breath, tried to stop shaking, and unlatched the heavy door. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, she pushed outward. The heavy door creaked open and there stood Eddie St. George.
“Don’t touch me!”
She jumped back inside the meat locker and hit the latch.
“Gina, can you hear me?” Eddie shouted. “It’s okay. You can come out. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Her teeth chattered so hard she almost couldn’t respond. “I … I d-don’t t-trust you.”
“Father’s dead,” Eddie said.
“S-so?” “Th-that other m-man,” she called out. “And.you. Wh-hat about you?”
She felt St. George pull at the door handle.
“Milty’s tied up,” he shouted. “And I’m ...I’m …” A moment passed. “You have to trust me, Gina. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“N-no! I’m not c-coming out. Y-you k-killed Arina and S-shelly.
“No-o-o!” he groaned. “Father! Father killed them. Made me bring them.”
“I-I d-don’t care who d-did wh-what,” Gina said, slapping at her upper arms.
“You can’t stay in there,” he pleaded. “You’ll pass out. Die.”
“In here, out th-there.wh-what d-difference d-doe
s it m-make?”
“The killing’s over,” St. George said so softly she barely heard him. “Never again.”
She knew he was right: she was going to pass out soon. It was either die here or take her chances outside the locker.
“What do you want to do?” St. George called. “You can’t stay in there.”
“Go away!”
“I’m going,” he said. “I’m going to Megan Ann. Count to ten and come out. I’ll be gone.”
* * *
Gina lost track of the count at three, paused, started over again, then again, but couldn’t seem to get past three. Finally, she started shoving on the heavy door, unsure whether enough time had gone by or she had enough strength to open it.
“Hold it right there!” It was a no-nonsense command.
Gina stopped leaning into the door, but couldn’t stop shivering.
“Come on out, hands high and in front of you.”
Gina pushed the door a little more, stumbled through the narrow opening, and raised her shaking arms, palms out. At the far end of the room, two uniformed cops were crouched, pistols aimed in her direction; a sullen, handcuffed Hiller stood off to the side.
She looked around for Eddie St. George, but instead saw Pepper Yee, who rolled her eyes and told the officers to lower their weapons.
Yee snatched a bloodstained butcher’s coat from a wooden peg, stepped out to block the cops’ view of Gina, and walked across the room.
“D-do I f-finally have your f-full attention?” Gina said as she passed out.
₪ CHAPTER 40
Gina kept trying to open her eyes. Someone was talking to her, telling her she was going to be fine, but she couldn’t remember why that was important or why she wasn’t fine in the first place. Slowly, she climbed through a dense layer of confusion to a reassuring level of time and place. Then she was able to open her eyes.
She stared into the concerned face of an EMT, who smiled widely at her. “Becoming a polar bear means you should stop and get the fur coat first,” he said.
“Don’t listen to him,” a female EMT said, recording her body temperature before checking each of her fingers. “Close your eyes and get some rest. You’re going to be okay.”
“Just how cold did I get in that freezer?”
“Not too bad. And your vitals are all stable.”
She was now alert enough to be scared. What had the hypothermia done to her? “What about my fingers and toes? Am I going to lose them?”
The female EMT reached under the pile of blankets, took her hand and squeezed it. “Everything looks good. I think with some basic medical treatment you’ll cruise right through this.”
Well, at least she wasn’t shivering anymore. That had to be good. Gina shifted her head at the sound of a deep sigh, saw Yee standing at the back of the ambulance. The detective smiled when Gina looked at her.
“You manage to get yourself into the strangest situations, Ms. Mazzio.”
“What are you doing here?” Gina said. “Lose your cruiser?”
“Nope. Just not letting you out of my sight this time.”
Gina tried to read the continuous ECG strip they were running on her, count the drops running into the IV port hanging above her head. No deal. She couldn’t concentrate.
“Detective Yee?” She was becoming light headed, had trouble organizing her thoughts. “I’d appreciate it if you called my. my…fiancé.” She was suddenly very, very tired. She could barely get Harry’s cell number out of her mouth.
* * *
“Neither one?”
Gina awakened, looked around to see who was talking. It was Yee, a cell phone tight against her ear. She shifted her eyes, saw that she was on a gurney in the ER
“Yeah! Yeah! Keep looking.” Yee folded the cell and put in her pocketbook.
“Can’t you find Harry?” Gina mumbled.
“Looking for St. George and the Hendricks woman,” Yee said. “That call came from one of my people at his penthouse.”
“They aren’t there?” Gina remembered why she’d been trapped in the freezer and fought a sudden shiver. Even though blankets were piled on top of her and the fluid running through the IV was warmed, she didn’t believe she would ever really be warm enough again. She squirmed around, wished she had some underwear and socks to put on.
“Been and gone, from the look of things,” Yee said. She leaned back and gave Gina a stony-eyed stare.
“What?”
“What? Well, for starters, what ever possessed you to go to Eddie St. George’s apartment in the first place?”
“I told you, I was trying to find Megan Ann. Wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“You’re goddam lucky, do you know that?”
“That’s the third or fourth time you’ve said that since you picked me up,” Gina said.
“And you didn’t know anything about this God-awful business the St. Georges were involved in?”
“Of course not! All I knew was that a couple of our nurses were missing, and that maybe Megan Ann was missing too.”
“Damn lucky!”
“Agreed!” She rubbed her palms on her thighs, tried to create more heat under the covers even though she suspected her actual temperature was normal again. “But how did you happen to show up at the butcher shop? I’m pretty certain you weren’t looking for me.”
“To quote someone I know, damn straight about that!” Yee made a couple of notes on a pad. “We had a tail on this guy Milty Hiller, a sub-human type we were onto for dealing in illicit body parts.”
“That’s what the butcher was doing?”
“Yup!” She made a couple more notes. “We’d set up a sting at a funeral home and were going to take down Hiller and his accomplices there. But he surprised us. Took off in the opposite direction. Lost him for a while. Had to call out an APB. A patrol unit finally spotted his truck parked outside the butcher shop. By the time Daniels and I got there with our backup guys, Eddie St. George was gone. But we did find Hiller, all trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
“The guy kept threatening Eddie with a gun, wanted him to cut me up for body parts. They kept calling them ‘packages.’ Yuck!”
“Yeah, we found some of those in St. George’s freezer, but the ones we found in slime-ball Hiller’s truck should be enough to put him away. He apparently made another stop before going to the butcher shop.”
“Lucky me you showed up when you did,” Gina said.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Gina tried for a second time to sip some warm water the nurse had brought her, but she couldn’t get the fluid to go down. “So,” she said, “you caught Hiller, Eddie’s father is dead, Megan Ann and Eddie are missing, and you still don’t know what happened to Shelly Wilton and Arina Diaz.”
“That isn’t quite true,” Yee said.
“Which part?”
“The missing nurses part.”
Gina grit her teeth, took a deep breath, and said, “At the butcher shop?”
Yee looked away from her. “The crime scene people discovered that the late Mrs. St. George’s plastic-wrapped head wasn’t her husband’s only trophy.”
“How many?”
“More than you want to know about, all packed nicely in pork loin boxes,” Yee said. “The late Mrs. St. George was the only one on display, so to speak.”
“God!”
“Should close out a lot of missing person files throughout the Bay Area,” Yee said. “What I need from you is every single thing you know or think you know about Eddie St. George, no matter how insignificant you may think it is.”
“What would you say if I told you I feel kind of sorry for the guy? He–“
“Knock it off, Mazzio. Eddie St. George is either a mass murderer or an accomplice to mass murder. And if I get the smallest inkling you’re not telling me the truth, Ridgewood General is going to be missing the services of another nurse.”
* * *
Gina was still wiping tea
rs from her eyes when she was released from the ER, almost two hours later.
Poor Arina, poor Shelley. And all those other women.
Yee had offered her a lift home, but she’d declined, lied and said she had a ride. She wanted to get away from any semblance of crime and the police as quickly as possible.
The staff had found her some used, disinfectant-smelling clothes to wear, none of which fit very well. She didn’t want to think who might have worn the scratchy garments before she got them. But the hospital scuffs were great, except that they kept falling off her feet.
When she reached the sidewalk, using one hand to keep her drawstring pants from falling, she looked for one of the taxis usually lined up at the ER exit.
And there stood Harry, leaning against the passenger door of her Fiat, holding jeans, a sweater, and sneakers.
“They found you,” she said.
“Yee chased me down, but a couple of EMT friends picked up on her operation on their scanner and let me know even before she did.” He opened the car door. For a moment they just stood and looked at each other.
Gina grinned, ran into Harry’s out-stretched arms, grabbed him around the middle, and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
# # #
About the Authors
Bette Golden Lamb, an e-Bronxite, writes crime novels and plays with clay in her home studio. Her artistic creations appear in juried exhibitions, galleries, art associations, and retail stores. She also hangs out with her 50+ rose bushes and sneaks out to movies when she should be writing or sculpting. J. J. Lamb switched from engineering to journalism just in the nick of time, then on to an Associated Press career. Army intervention provided a top secret clearance, a locked room with table-chair-typewriter, and the time to write short stories. This led to a PI series featuring Zachariah Tobias Rolfe III before collaborating with Bette. The Lambs make their home in Northern California where they are busy at work – individually and together – on many more creative projects.
Sin & Bone: A Medical Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 2) Page 23