by Kirk Alex
The room they found themselves in reeked of excreta and blood. This was the same room where Marty Roscoe had had his knees shot off, the same room where Petunia Roscoe had been finished off by Cecil’s accomplices. Plenty of blood on the floor and other places was in evidence: the blood-soaked mattresses were there, pleas for help scribbled on walls in blood; handprints, footprints, fingerprints on walls and door. The stench was beyond belief.
Grown men were gagging, but there was a purpose to their presence and an objective.
Nels Randall leapt in the air and tapped the panel that covered the window, trying to get a fix on things, if possible, on what the panel was made of and just how much of a challenge it might be to knock it loose, dislodge it, if need be.
Nels Randall shook his head. “Solid.”
Fred Yale wasn’t bothered. “That’s all right. There’s more than enough of us here by now to deal with this sociopath.”
The attorney was no macho man by nature, and he knew it, and neither were his buddies—but that was okay, it was acceptable; the idea of having a bunch of other people’s help, if required, was one of great comfort.
Sam Kowalski couldn’t help but wonder how many kooks Biggs had in the place and said so out loud.
Fred Yale glanced his way. “Makes no difference. They’re outnumbered. Cops are coming.”
With measured steps and great caution, Fred Yale walked toward the door with the missing lock. Reached for the doorknob and, ever-so-gradually, opened it and stood face-to-face with Big Tex Leo Nix attired in his customary cowboy hat, jockstrap, worn cowboy boots.
This time, however, his left bicep was bandaged and a red kerchief had been wound round it and ends tied in a tight knot to keep it all in place and stave off loss of blood. In addition to the new development, Big T/Tall T had a holster strapped ’round his waist and a six-gun in his hand.
The former cement truck driver and part-time bronc-buster’s first shot hit Fred Yale in the forehead, somewhere above the nose. There was immediate blowback: Yale’s brains punched out through ears, nose and mouth, although quite a bit blasted out the back of his noggin.
The impact of the slug had the lawyer back-pedal some, not much, a step or two, in rapid succession, before he dropped back with enough force to knock down some of the others there with him. Sam Kowalski had managed to avoid the domino effect. Remained standing.
Big Tex took a self-assured, casual step inside the room and continued to blast away. Never had more fun in his entire life. Waited for the day to go all out in this manner. You bet. Felt even better than getting the drop on that serial fornicator what was molesting his darlin’ wife’s behind in that dirty ol’ motel.
Big Tex was handy with a gun. Had to be—when you was from the Lone Star State.
Nels Randall took two shots in the chest. Sam Kowalski took a hit in the face, another in the belly. Instant death was all she wrote. The rest who had broken in through the window with Fred Yale were either dead or dying.
The cowboy was proud of himself: another Wyatt Earp or Marshall Dillon. Only he was plumb out of bullets now.
A shot rang out from one of the interlopers lying on the floor before him. Couldn’t tell who or what, but the slug found its way into Leo Nix’s left testicle, and then the encore soon followed. Left a nice, neat hole in the cowboy’s spleen.
He looked down. Too stunned to move, too much in shock, too weak to curse them one and all. All Big Tex could do was utter a bewildered: “I left Texas . . .” before falling on his face.
CHAPTER 578
Carlos and his bunch hadn’t had any encounters as of yet. They had made it through the back door, reached the kitchen, found it locked. The man with the shotgun, Stan Tatum, told them all to stand back and let go with a blast. Kitchen door was no longer an issue. Stan Tatum thought to let some of the others take a look in there, while he and Carlos Duarte walked down the hallway to the front entrance.
“Think you can do this one with that shotgun, Mr. Tatum?”
Stan Tatum said nothing. There was a four-by-ten-inch slot in the door with a latch. He unhooked the latch and slid it open. Saw to it that none of the people out there were anywhere near the entrance or in harm’s way.
He pointed the shotgun at about doorknob level, aiming low. Fired a shot. Noticed that it didn’t do enough. He tried again and again. Reloaded his shotgun and fired one more time.
The front door was loose enough now for Carlos and his friends to force it open. Carlos’s father and mother, along with Xavier, hurried inside.
Mrs. Duarte kept calling her daughter’s name. Yolanda inquired about the gun shots heard a moment ago that came from a part of the basement Freddy and his buddies had gone in.
Carlos shook his head. “Don’t know. Haven’t been down there yet.”
Mrs. Duarte stood at the door to Biggs’s living room. Saw that it was locked. Another solid door, no doubt. Perhaps not quite as fortified as the front, but would be difficult enough to force open.
“Allow me, ma’am.”
Stan Tatum handed the woman a couple of the cotton balls, waited for her to insert them in her ears, and had her step aside. He aimed the barrel of his shotgun at about knob level, at a downward angle—to be sure. Let go with a blast. Door was easy to kick open after that. He stepped in, did a quick look-around. Stepped back out to deal with another door across the way.
As far as Mrs. Duarte was concerned, this room warranted more than a cursory once-over. She went in. Dresser on her left had a combo tee-vee/VCR sitting on top, couple of short stacks of religious videos.
Further on, next to the dresser: makeshift book shelving loaded down with tracts on religion, various Bibles and tomes having to do with Christianity and the Second Coming.
Then you had the corner, of that part of the room, that consisted of a stage, of sorts. There was a raised platform, about a foot off the floor, a velvet curtain hung from the ceiling above.
She glanced down. There was a black garter. Brushed the curtain back on the mini stage: saw a pair of black panties, fishnet nylons, a red high heel shoe.
Next to the stage was a wall with posters from Biblical motion pictures taped down or tacked on to mask the fading, grim, and cracked wallpaper. The rest of the wall space was covered in one-foot-square self-adhesive mirror tiles that went from floor to ceiling and had Rorschach-type black patterns on them. There was a closet door, and more mirror squares to the right of it as well as on it.
She tried the door. Door was locked. She shoved the recliner up against it a few times and the door was no longer an issue.
Odor of must in the walk-in closet was overwhelming: must, roach spray, stale sweat, and the fetid stench of something dead and rotting. She tugged on a string above her head that was connected to a bare bulb in the ceiling. Wattage was anemic. At least she had some light to work with now.
There was a clothes rack in front of her, as well as one off to the right. A good deal of the clothes—shirts, pants, coats, bathrobes, hanging from either wire or plastic hangers—had a visible layer of dust on them and were, for the most part, men’s clothes.
There was a shelf above both racks with carelessly folded T-shirts, pants, towels, blankets, and bed sheets, among stacks of porn videos in glossy, full-color boxes depicting, in graphic detail, any number of acts of sexual perversity: lesbianism, group sex, gang-bangs, bestiality, vaginal and/or anal masturbation/insertions with a variety of odd objects (nameable and otherwise), in addition to cardboard boxes packed to overflowing with more hardcore VHS tapes.
There was yet more on the stained and dirty carpet below, among the footwear and a rolled up blue tarp and empty birdcage, the bottom of which was lined with a sheet of hardcore newsprint: soiled and littered with feathers, men’s and women’s footwear, as well as stacks of additional pornographic publications: some slick: Penthouse, Gent, Hustler; others merely street rags printed on cheap pulp. There was a folding chair on her right.
She stepped inside. A large
cockroach ambled past her feet that made her flinch. There was a mouse trap in a corner on the right with a dead rodent in it that did not do her stomach much good. She took a moment to steady her bearings, assure herself that she was not going to vomit, and noticed that a hole had been carved out of the wall in front of the chair and that one of the mirror squares was a two-way that yielded a generous view of the living room. There was what appeared to be audio equipment, listening devices, on the carpeted floor on the far side of the chair: shotgun mic, headset, mini tape recorder, binoculars, Polaroid camera, plastic bottle of skin lotion, box of tissue, another box of latex gloves.
It wasn’t any one single factor that did it, instead more like all of it combined: the smell, dead rodent, repulsive images on the video boxes, lotion, sound equipment, position of the chair, two-way mirror, hole in the wall, that clearly denoted voyeuristic and otherwise twisted behavior . . . that assaulted the senses and underscored the chill that surged through her and made the hair on the back of her neck and arms stand on end.
She swallowed hard. Her mouth and throat dry. Stood still for a moment; arms folded and pressed against her mid-section. She happened to look down again, at the blue tarp. Stained. Some of the stains were dark, deep-crimson dark, others transparent or milky white. Whole or partial feathers, too large to have come from a parrot, stuck to various parts. Didn’t dare consider what it meant.
Looking back up, using both hands, she parted the clothes that hung from the rack in front of her. Olivia was not to be found, not that she expected as much. But you hoped. You had hope. Instead, what she discovered was a sliding wall, or a type of sliding door. It had been left open by a crack measuring about two inches in width.
She got up against it. Pushed fervently to the left, until she was able to slide it open wide enough to step through. And she did: Stepped inside a room of equal size as the walk-in closet, a utility/laundry area.
By the time she made it past mops, yellow buckets, push brooms, metal shelving on her left, approximately as tall as she was at five feet ten inches, stocked with cans of Lysol spray, jugs of ammonia, boxes of laundry detergent, containers of bleach, cans of air-freshener, more plastic jugs of ammonia and disinfectant cleanser and taking in the washer and dryer against the opposite wall—she heard Mr. Tatum’s shotgun do its startlingly loud business in the hallway, twice—blasting open a door. Blasts made her jump even though she had left the cotton balls in her ears.
She would be there to join the men in a minute. First she needed to do a thorough search of this utility room that she was in.
A pile of women’s clothing caught her eye: in the back there, on the floor, by the wall on the right, against a disassembled blue baby crib and a bundle of unopened baby diapers, amongst purses and shoes, all sorts of women’s footwear, lots of women’s footwear: pumps, T-strap, clogs, sandals, ankle boots, sling back, thigh boots—that she wanted to dig through, as well as dig under. Felt a need. To make sure, to make certain. The only way to not overlook any possibility—even though it repulsed her to have to touch anything with her hands.
She whispered her daughter’s name. “Olivia, honey?”
CHAPTER 579
The police scanner crackled with law enforcement jargon, while the all-talk radio station, presently between segments, ran a Preparation H commercial.
Stan Tatum and Mrs. Duarte’s husband Rafael entered Biggs’s bedroom. Froze upon seeing the walls plastered with images from horror productions dealing with cannibalism and torture, butchering of young females and general mayhem. Among the stills and one-sheets and posters were eight-by-ten black-and-white autographed glossies of strippers and porn stars in the buff, snapshots and Polaroids of other females who did not appear to have anything to do with show business; there were newspaper clippings with headlines that had to do with missing girls and women (as well as some that dealt with missing males); there were Polaroids of Mr. Duarte’s daughter Olivia Candida: nude Polaroids, Polaroids of Olivia in compromising positions and situations; disgusting photos of his daughter and a black woman (he had noticed once or twice at Jessup’s diner, a dancer/stripper they called either Peaches or Pearleen) engaged in various sex acts, photos of his daughter having intercourse with Cecil Biggs, photos of Olivia being whipped with a belt across her bare buttocks and made to do things with the black woman, as well as Biggs himself in either evil clown makeup or wearing a disgusting pig mask and spraying various open-mouthed females with copious amounts of sperm. There were images of Biggs, his daughter and the same black woman with the impossible-to-miss-breasts engaged in a menage.
It not only shocked and sickened him, but filled him with escalating rage. His belly churned, in knots. Eyes close to welling.
Where was his daughter?
There was a black safe the size of a large cabinet straight ahead against the wall on the right. Door had been left ajar. Safe had guns and ammo in it. Stacks of cartridges. Practically an arsenal. He wouldn’t go near that and hoped no one else did.
The closet was on the other side of the bed. Olivia was not in there. They discovered boxes of handcuffs, bottles of chloroform, whips, chains, ball-gags, locks, dildos, rubber vaginas, vibrators, skin creams and body oils; a gas mask or two.
Nowhere else to look other than under the bed. Mr. Duarte doubted he would find anything there. Took a look all the same.
He rose. Rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands, as his wife entered the room. She saw the photos of her Livy on the walls and ceiling and dresser mirror and began to hyperventilate. Her husband was quick to embrace her and turn her away from it.
He guided her out of the bedroom and into the hallway. There was no stifling Mrs. Duarte’s sobs. She broke free, plucked the cotton from her ears, and headed in the direction of the kitchen, nearly colliding with her son Carlos as he emerged from it. If the mother was distraught, the son was even more so. Begged his mother to stay out.
“Please, Ma.” Tears dripped from his eyes. “You don’t want to go in there. Please? Do this for me. Ma.”
Mrs. Duarte looked at her son with red-rimmed eyes, exhausted and inquiring. “No. Don’t tell me. Carlos, don’t tell me. . . .” She was shaking her head. Dreaded the worst. Refused to accept it. Carlos struggled with it. Wiped his eyes.
“I love you, Ma . . . Only, please . . . You don’t want to . . . You can’t. . . .”
CHAPTER 580
Someone was having troubles of his own on the other side of that kitchen door—and he was known as “Finger Lickin’” Flinger. Flinger had lowered the birdcage that the chicken was in down to the table and was desperate to get his hand inside for the egg that the visibly hefty and somewhat intimidating pearl-white California leghorn guarded with a rather sharp beak.
Wilburn Claude was apprehensive, yet could not/would not give up. His fear was not of the chicken itself exactly, or so he did his best to convince himself, but that he might accidentally break the egg before he’d had a chance to relieve the battle-ready chicken of it.
One of the members of the posse picked up on Wilburn’s dilemma and shook his head in disgust. With all that was going on around them: the horror, stench strong enough to make a grown man ill, not to mention shock and grief that certain individuals of the rescue party were experiencing, this Wilburn character was preoccupied with something as idiotic as getting at the damn egg inside the cage. Not only was it obvious Wilburn was reluctant to stick his hand in there to shove the hen away, but had no idea how to free the yardbird in order to accomplish his pathetic goal.
The disgusted posse member, a fifty-two-year-old security guard named Tyrone Himes, whose breath reeked of tequila, picked the cage up by the handle at the top, and with the other hand revealed to the bothersome teen with the Mohawk and the twelve fingers, how to slide the bottom out—and as he did the chicken itself dropped into his hand, that he really was not looking forward to. Held on to it anyway, awkwardly, gripping it by the legs. The egg followed and was caught by Wilburn before it hit th
e table top. Flinger wiped it against his shirt front. “Thanks, Mr. Himes. That was genius.”
Tyrone Himes couldn’t believe this screwy white kid and shook his head. Watched Wilburn Flinger poke a hole in the shell and suck on the egg, which only added to the revulsion to what was already happening.
Himes held onto the chicken, not sure what to do with it; thought of maybe placing it back inside the cage, when the kitchen door opened and a wreck of a Mrs. Duarte walked in.
It was not only the surprise of it and the near state of meltdown that the woman seemed to be headed in, but knowing how much worse it was going to become for her in about a minute and desperately wanting to think of a way to prevent it from happening, caused the security guard to lose his hold on the chicken and the anxious yardbird leapt off the kitchen table where he had it and flew into the woman’s face, bounced off hard enough so that it lost its sense of direction and/or purpose, hit the floor and scurried out the open door.
Mrs. Duarte had jumped back, shaken and shocked enough, bumping against the counter in back of her and came close to tripping on Monroe Perez, Rudy’s brother, who was sitting on the floor, slumped against the utility cabinet, an emotional mess, suppressing sobs.
“Oh God. . . . No. . . . No. . . . Please, no. . . .”
Some of the others there appeared nearly as shaken; most were, with the exception of the kookie teen whose primary concern at the moment appeared to be how to drain every bit of the yolk out of that egg he continued to suck on.
Monroe Perez seemed to look up at the woman, if briefly. Glanced in the direction of the refrigerators on his left, then turned away, his head hung between his knees, staring at the floor, staring at nothing. The sobs clearly wanted to punch through, but he fought hard against it.