And there was another factor to consider, particularly in this area. Gina had been a Boston patrol officer for over half a decade and had responded to dozens of calls exactly like this one. Some loser with a hard-on for the cops would call in a phony report just to see the authorities run around like chickens with their heads cut off, often using the distraction provided by the response as cover to commit some other felony nearby.
Gina stepped out of the vehicle, scanning up and down the street for the second responder. This was just about the worst place in the entire city to have to investigate a call alone. The building was abandoned, condemned, which meant that anywhere from a couple to maybe as many as a dozen fucking vagrants were using the piece of shit as their home base. And vagrants didn’t like cops, for obvious reasons.
After a couple of instances last year where officers responding to calls exactly like this one had been ambushed, set up to be attacked and then badly injured, the administrative geniuses who hadn’t walked a beat in decades had come to the conclusion—prompted by the patrolmen’s union, of course—that it was too dangerous for officers to answer these types of calls in neighborhoods like this alone.
Now, the revised procedure called for a minimum response team of two officers, which was why Gina stood cooling her heels with one foot on the front bumper of her cruiser, scanning the area, waiting for Tommy Mitchell to join the party. So far, no one seemed to be paying any attention to her, but experience had taught her that could change in an instant.
Finally Mitchell’s cruiser rolled slowly down the nearly deserted street and Gina felt the tension ease, if only slightly. Tommy was not what even the most generous observer would consider a self-motivated officer—he was a thirty-year veteran who had never risen above the rank of patrolman—but standing alone in this neighborhood had begun to make Gina feel conspicuous and uneasy. Like a target.
Tommy eased to a stop behind Gina and worked his way laboriously out of his vehicle. She figured he had to be two hundred eighty pounds if he was an ounce, and what might once have been muscle had years ago turned mostly to flab. If ever a cop fit the stereotype of the donut-eating flatfoot, it was Tommy Mitchell. Gina watched the left side of the cruiser rise on its suspension as he exited and tried to suppress a smile, more or less succeeding.
She wondered why she had been so tense just a moment ago. This was just another bullshit call phoned in by just another crank with an axe to grind. She would be treated to the sight of Tommy Mitchell trying to avoid a heart attack as he trundled up the three stories only to discover an empty apartment; then she would get to listen to his colorful language on the way back down. Then she would return to her vehicle and get on with her day.
No big deal.
Except something felt wrong. The crank calls involving fictional dead bodies designed to fuck with the police were almost always the same—very non-specific as to gender, age or cause of death, they were uniformly stunning in their lack of creativity. But this one was different. According to dispatch, the caller had been panicked and agitated, practically babbling in his haste to relate the information.
And he had been extremely specific: A young woman, probably early twenties, naked, tied up in a dentist’s chair—that was a new one—and brutally tortured, tiny stab wounds all over her body and—this was the most disturbing—long strips of skin peeled completely away from her bones.
“Mr. Midnight,” the caller had said.
Thinking about the report made Gina shiver and she wondered if Tommy felt any more nervous about this call than usual. He hitched his belt up under his massive belly and glanced at her, his face scrunched into a scowl. “Let’s get this shit over with,” he said, and Gina decided Mr. Midnight would have to be standing in front of Tommy Mitchell with a loaded gun in one hand and a surgeon’s scalpel in the other to arouse his suspicions, and even then he might not notice anything was wrong until he took a bullet in the forehead.
Tommy stalked across the cracked concrete walkway and up the dilapidated stairs into the building, not looking back or waiting, simply assuming she would follow. She sighed deeply and trotted to catch up. The lock had been broken off the front door—years ago by the look of the rusted mechanism—and never replaced. Undoubtedly any replacement would have been hacksawed off as well, so what would be the point?
Gina entered the gloomy building and followed the sound of Tommy Mitchell’s boots clomping up the stairway to the right of the foyer. It was obvious he wanted nothing more than to clear the call so he could get back to whatever he had been doing before—sitting in his cruiser reading a book, most likely.
By the time she reached the second-floor landing, the sound of Tommy’s footsteps was already receding as he proceeded down the third-floor hallway over her head. Jesus, Gina thought, for a fat slob this guy can really move when he’s properly motivated. She sprinted up the final set of steps, cognizant of the shadowy stairwell, pissed off that Mitchell had left her behind when the whole point of having a pair of officers respond to the call was for their protection, not to split up so they could be picked off by any lunatic with a grudge and a weapon.
Hurrying down the hallway, Gina turned right and entered the only open doorway, crashing into Tommy and nearly falling to her butt as she bounced of his massive bulk. He stood just inside the apartment’s entrance, invisible from the hallway, frozen to the spot in shock. Gina picked herself up off the floor, ready to tear into the stupid asshole. She considered herself a patient person, but enough was enough. “What the hell are you…”
She stopped in midsentence, taken completely by surprise as Tommy Mitchell unsnapped his holster and removed his service weapon. He turned and stepped nimbly over her, checking behind them both in the hallway, swiveling the gun left and right. Then he edged cautiously into the apartment.
A creeping sense of horror overtook Gina. Her instincts had been right. This was no ordinary crank call from a disturbed crackpot. She rose to her feet and followed Tommy, stopping in the exact spot he had moments ago, chilled by the sight in front of her.
Whoever had called in this mess had been spot on. Blood was everywhere, congealing on the floor atop a clear plastic tarp laid out with care around the base of what did indeed look like a gigantic dentist’s chair. Secured to the chair with duct tape was a young girl, naked, unmoving and clearly dead, with wounds exactly as had been described to dispatch.
Gina slapped at her holster and removed her gun as Tommy had. She took three steps into the room and Tommy came around the corner. “This shithole’s clear,” he muttered. “There’s nobody here. We need to call this in,” as if expecting Gina to argue. She didn’t argue.
While Tommy made the call, using his cell phone instead of the radio transmitter clipped to his shirt in the hopes of keeping the inevitable lookie-loos away for as long as possible, Gina moved deeper into the room, drawn toward the young woman immobilized on the chair. It was clear the victim was dead—no one could survive such massive blood loss, not to mention the terrible wounds that had caused it—but she went through the motions anyway, checking for a pulse on the woman’s neck. Tommy hadn’t bothered to do that and it should have been their first priority after ensuring the apartment was clear.
The mistake didn’t matter, though. There was no pulse, as she had known there wouldn’t be, and the victim’s skin was cool and sticky with dried blood.
Gina turned away, angry with herself and Tommy Mitchell, unable to put her finger on exactly why. She glared at Tommy, an act that seemed to have no effect on him but made her feel marginally better, and then stepped back to the front door and checked the hallway once more. It would be very bad form to have the killer return and get the drop on them as she and Tommy were busy inside, and securing the apartment from the outside would be the first piece of business to accomplish while waiting for the homicide detectives to arrive.
The hallway was still empty.
She began to pace, waiting for the homicide dicks and the crime scene techs to
begin arriving. She hoped it wouldn’t take too long; the prospect of cooling her heels here for longer than a few minutes with nobody to talk to but Tommy Mitchell was almost as depressing as finding the body of the victim had been.
CHAPTER 41
Milo used the dead cop’s uniform shirt as a towel, pinching material between his fingers and sliding the knife blade through the gap. Blood sluiced off the stainless steel and ran down his fingers. The shirt’s cotton wasn’t terribly absorbent, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, as the old saying went, and besides, after a moment the blade was nearly as good as new. A little blood on his hands didn’t bother Milo Cain.
He reached behind his back and placed the knife carefully between his belt and his jeans, leaving it hanging down off his ass like a razor-sharp tail, exactly as he had done when the doorbell rang.
Then he knelt down and hooked his arms through the armpits of the dead cop. He rose to a semi-crouch and dragged the still-warm corpse around the corner and into the living room, turning the body sideways and dropping it across the doorway like a fallen log. Its head struck the floor with a teeth-rattling thud, hard enough to cause a concussion had the man been alive. Milo felt confident the interfering flatfoot was beyond such concerns now.
He flashed a bright smile at the younger woman, the one he was going to have so much fun with in a couple of minutes, and then glanced at the old hag to make sure she was still tightly secured in her chair. She was. The duct tape appeared intact.
He had taken a chance dealing with the knock at the door before securing the younger bitch to a chair. Had she been thinking clearly—and quickly—everything could easily have gone to shit for Milo in a matter of seconds. But based on the dynamics he had observed during his disturbing visions of these three people and the short time he had spent here in person, he had anticipated that when he went around the corner and answered the front door, the rattled younger woman would be so concerned about her injured boyfriend she would run to his aid, not even giving a thought to releasing the older woman or rushing to the kitchen for a weapon or to grab the phone.
And he had been right. The pretty young thing was even now crouched over the man Milo had stabbed, thus blowing any chance she might have had to get away.
Because now it was too late.
And she wouldn’t get another chance.
And the best part of all—the delicious cherry on top of this exciting dessert—was that her desperate efforts to assist the man were clearly going to be futile. The boyfriend was still breathing but it was obvious to Milo, who had plenty of experience in this particular arena, that the guy was well on his way to checking out. His skin was bedsheet-white and his lips were turning blue and his breathing was shallow and ragged.
Milo nodded to himself, impressed with his handiwork. All that damage from one knife wound! Granted it was accidental, the result more of luck than skill, but the end result was all that mattered, and this was something to be proud of in any event.
Now that he had a moment to catch his breath, he thought back to what the cop had said at the front door, and how it might affect his plans. A call from a neighbor concerned about the resident at this address. A resident who happens to be a lady.
Apparently the neighborhood wasn’t quite as deserted as he had originally thought. Someone had seen him enter the house and had alerted the police. And killing a cop, although every bit as satisfying as he had always dreamt it would be, had ensured that he would receive a visit by more of the fucking cockroaches before long.
A lot more. And they would be angry.
But Milo wasn’t concerned. He had three hostages with which to bargain. Well, two, once you eliminated the chair-smashing hero, who was clearly not long for this world. One, actually, now that he thought about it, because after he finished with the pretty young thing currently blubbering over the unmoving body of the chair-smashing hero, she wouldn’t be worth a damned thing as a bargaining chip. She was the reason he had come here in the first place and he had every intention of finishing what he started, law-enforcement cockroaches or no law-enforcement cockroaches.
But one hostage was plenty, anyway, and if it turned out that the authorities weren’t in a bargaining mood, so be it. It wasn’t like he had never considered the possibility of taking a bullet to the head. People with his…unusual…interests were universally misunderstood, and Milo had always accepted the possibility he would one day go out in a blaze of glory. If that day happened to be today, he was ready. He wasn’t particularly enamored of the idea, didn’t consider himself suicidal, wasn’t looking forward to dying, but found that the idea of going out in a dramatic showdown didn’t bother him all that much, either.
The woman crouching next to her boyfriend looked up at the sound of the cop’s head striking the floor. She had removed the injured man’s shirt and used it as a makeshift bandage, rolling it up and fastening it around the injury, then closing the gash by tying the sleeves together. It was clever, Milo had to admit, and seemed to have done a pretty good job of slowing the bleeding.
It wasn’t going to make any difference.
“Well, ladies, that was exciting, wasn’t it?” He turned his smile in the direction of the trussed-up old bitch in the wooden chair, but she had screwed her eyes shut. She sat rigid and unmoving, seemingly trying to disappear into thin air through sheer force of will. He shrugged. Oh well. It would have been nice to get a reaction, but she wasn’t the reason he was here, anyway.
“Your boyfriend is one brave motherfucker,” he said to the younger one, whose eyes were fearful but also watchful and wary as she gazed up at him. “Stupid as all get-out, there’s no denying that, but he’s brave. Unfortunately for him, his pain will be emotional as well as physical when he sees what I have in store for you.”
“He can’t see anything,” she spat back. “He’s unconscious, you stupid bastard.”
Milo narrowed his eyes and glared at her. The hatred he had felt the moment he saw her in the first vision ratcheted up a little higher. He was used to commanding submission and fear, but while this one was clearly afraid, she didn’t seem to understand her place in this hierarchy. She would find out soon enough.
He held her stare for a moment, then turned and stalked into the kitchen. He grabbed another chair to replace the one the unconscious hero wannabe had broken over his back, and returned to the living room where he set it down next to the old biddie. Then he nodded at the man on the floor. “Put him in this,” he said.
“He’s too big, I can’t move him.”
“Shut up and do it,” Milo said, taking one step forward, reaching for his knife.
The pretty bitch had stopped crying, but her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and now they widened with his approach. “I’m afraid if I move him the wound will start bleeding again. I don’t think he can afford to lose much more blood,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper.
“Well, he should have thought about that before he attacked me with a fucking chair!” Milo was trying to control his temper, but the very sight of this little bitch pissed him off to no end, and her back-talking and sassy attitude were making it immeasurably harder to do. “So I don’t give a fuck about his little razor-nick. If it bleeds, it bleeds. Now drag his ass over here and dump him in the chair.”
“No.”
Before he even realized what he was doing, Milo had taken three long steps across the room. He yanked the knife out from behind his back and knelt down next to the dim bitch. She leaned away from him but otherwise held her ground. Milo waved the knife in front of her face, then placed it against the unconscious man’s throat and smiled at her. “Your choice,” he said, speaking slowly. “Put him in that goddamn chair or I’ll finish him off right here and now.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, and got to her feet, then leaned down and hooked her arms under her boyfriend’s armpits, much as Milo had done with the dead cop a few minutes ago. With a grunt she began dragging the slack body of the much-larger man across the room.
Milo nodded his approval. “Good choice,” he said, and observed the blood, indeed, begin once again to bubble through the already-soaked shirt. The process of the young woman pulling the body to the chair was resulting in a gush of blood every time she yanked. It was like watching an EMT doing chest compressions on a patient with a hole in his chest. It was almost dreamily hypnotic. Pull, bubble, rest. Pull, bubble, rest.
Finally the chick reached the empty chair. Milo looked at the older one again and now her eyes were open wide. She stared in horror at the scene being played out just inches away. Milo felt a surge of savage excitement and almost laughed out loud.
The younger woman leaned her boyfriend onto the chair. His bloody chest was laid across the seat and his head flopped down on his arms. The girl was breathing heavily, almost panting from the energy she had expended moving him. He probably weighed close to two hundred thirty pounds and she was a tiny thing, probably no more than one-ten, so obviously it had taken all of her strength to drag him across the room.
“I can’t get him up there by myself,” she said, looking at Milo pleadingly. “Just let me lie him on the floor on his back to minimize the bleeding and I’ll do whatever you say, I promise.”
“Let me get this straight. You’ll do whatever I tell you to do, as long as I don’t make you put him in the chair?”
“That’s right. I promise,” she whispered.
“Well,” Milo replied. “That’s quite the generous offer. Let me see…” He crossed his arms and cupped his chin in his hand, pretending to be deep in thought. He knew he should be hurrying things along thanks to the complications that were bound to arise from the dead cop lying on the floor, but this was just too much fun to pass up.
“Uhhh…no,” he said after a satisfying pause.
“Please.”
“Here’s the problem,” Milo answered. “In order to bargain, you need leverage, and you have none. You say you’ll do whatever I want if I only let your dying boyfriend stay on the floor, prolonging his suffering, but the fact of the matter, missy, is that you’re going to do whatever I want, anyway. I have all the leverage.
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