“Henry,” says Mr Jones, “go fetch the bolt cutters. I think Brian here’s about to have an accident.” It’s not a sight I’m going to forget in a hurry.
Chapter 4
Today — Friday — back in the morgue
Henry looks down at what’s on the autopsy table, then pulls out his Fifth of Old Kentucky and takes a long swig. He offers me the bottle, and I know I’m driving and everything, but I take a drink anyway. It’s not every day you’re faced with two sets of severed arms and legs laid out like that.
I don’t offer the bottle to the Weasel, just ask him what the hell we’re looking at.
“They’re arms and legs. Women’s arms and legs.”
Henry stares at him. “We know they’re fuckin’ arms and legs. We’re not blind!”
I know the Weasel can hear the voice — ‘Don’t poke the fucking bear!’ — because he hurries over to the counter-top and comes back with a clipboard, flicking through the pages and stammering in his rush to be helpful. “We. . we’ve got another three sets of limbs in the morgue. .” pointing at a row of refrigerators “… they were all removed ante-mortem with a sharp knife and some kind of saw — ”
I say, “Back the fuck up. Who the hell is Auntie Mortem?”
“Ante-mortem. . it means ‘before death’. The victims were alive when he cut them up.”
“Fuck.”
Henry pulls a pair of latex gloves from a box next to the table and snaps them on. Then he leans over and prods at the remains. “Not easy,” he says, one hand resting on an upper thigh, “taking a leg off someone who’s still alive.” He makes like he’s got a saw in his other hand, hacking away at the point where the pale yellow-purple skin turns in to raw meat and bone. “They’d struggle like hell. You’d get blood everywhere.” He lets go of the woman’s thigh. “Much easier to hack someone up when they’re dead.”
And he’s right. We’ve done more than our fair share of nasty shit in our time, but we’ve never cut some poor bastard’s arms and legs off while they’re still alive. Not to say we’ve never chopped anyone up, but just, you know, after they’re dead.
The Weasel goes pale. “Right. . Yeah. . Er. .” eyes scanning the coroner’s report, looking for something that will get us the hell out of his nice quiet morgue, “we’re doing a tox screen on the blood, but the labs are swamped right now. They’re supposed to be sending an FBI agent down to — ”
“Special Agent David Mills.”
Weasel nods. “That’s — ”
“He’s not going to make it.” That’s because he’s lying dead in the trunk of our car. But he was nice enough to tell us everything the Feds knew before Henry finished with him.
And the guy goes even paler. “Ah … right. OK.”
“We want details,” I tell him, “like: where did they find the bits? How long they been dead?”
“Ah. . that’s just it, isn’t it? The arms and legs were removed when they were still living. There’s nothing to say the victims are dead. I mean with the shock and everything it’s likely, but you never know. They could still be alive.”
I look at Henry and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am. Laura, no arms or legs, trapped in some shitty bastard’s basement while he does stuff to her. She’s only sixteen, for fuck’s sake.
Henry growls.
I scrawl my cellphone number on a scrap of paper and tell the Weasel to call me if anything else comes up.
“And you remember,” Henry tells him, as we march back through the corridors to the exit, “we never been here. You haven’t seen us. ’Cause if I hear that you’ve been talking, I’m going to come back and make sure your arms and fuckin’ legs are all they find. Understand?”
Chapter 5
The car’s making some strange noises as I pull up and kill the engine. Friday afternoon and we’re parked deep in the woods off Highway One Fifty, miles from anywhere. The sort of place you expect to hear fucking banjo music and people telling tourists to squeal like a piggy. The road up here was bumpy, rutted. I bet if it wasn’t for the odd logging truck it wouldn’t be used at all.
“This OK?” I ask, and Henry nods. He needs somewhere quiet and out of the way to work, where no one’s going to hear the screams and call for help.
We climb out into the afternoon. It’s stopped raining and the forest floor steams in the sunlight. I go round the back and pop the trunk.
“Jesus. .” Backing away because of the smell. It’s not just Special Agent Mills who’s rank, the cop stinks as well — I think he’s pissed himself. Not surprising.
He stares up at me with terrified eyes. I can see his mouth working on the gag, trying to threaten us, plead, something. Henry and I grab him by the shoulders and pull him out into the sunlight.
The cop tries to get to his feet, but ten hours locked in the trunk with a rotting FBI agent and his legs are like rubber.
“Jack,” says Henry, taking off his suit jacket and hanging it on a nearby tree branch, “I need you to get rid of Special Agent Stinky.”
“Ah, fuck. .” says Jack, peering out from the back seat, “why me?”
“’Cause I said so.” Henry takes off his sweater and it goes on the branch next to his jacket. Then it’s the shirt’s turn.
Jack swears his way out of the car, “Cock-sucking, God-damned, lousy, mother-fucking. .” He takes a handful of plastic sheeting and hauls the agent’s body out of the trunk onto the grass and mud. Jack’s feet slither as he drags the wrapped corpse away into the woods. “Got my fucking new shoes on as well. .”
“You know,” I say to Henry, pointing at the cop, “we have to ditch the car. They’re going to notice this guy’s missing — if they haven’t already — check what his last call was, and then every cop in Illinois is going to be out looking for us.”
Henry stands there in a white undershirt, his US marine ‘Semper Fi’ tattoo sitting high and proud on his arm. “I think we need to talk about Jack,” he says, snapping on another pair of those latex gloves. “What you know about him?”
“He’s from the Bronx.”
“Yeah, but what’s he done?” Henry hauls the State Trooper backwards till the guy’s sitting against a tree trunk.
I shrug. “What you mean, what’s he done?”
“I mean,” says Henry, uncuffing the cop’s hands, “you ever work with him before?”
The cop tries to fight back, but his arms don’t work. Henry punches him in the face, just in case, then pulls the guy’s hands round to the other side of the tree and cuffs them again. He’s going nowhere.
“Nope.” To be honest, I’d never even met the guy till two days ago.
“So why the hell’s he here? You and me, I can see. We’ve worked for Mr Jones a long time. We got a track record. But Jack. .” He shakes his head and starts unbuttoning the cop’s waterproof jacket.
“I heard he came out of Chicago. Did some work for the Palmer family. Strong-arm stuff. Why?”
“I don’t trust him.” Henry takes out his eight-inch combat knife and runs it along the seams of the Trooper’s jacket. Cutting the fabric away. Then he does the same with the guy’s shirt, till the Trooper’s sitting there naked from the waist up. The cop’s crying, the mumbling behind the gag getting even more frantic.
“When a dog gets all mean,” says Henry, “they chop his balls off. Like Mr Jones did to Brian there. Maybe we should do the same to Jack.”
Henry unbuckles the Trooper’s belt, then pulls down the guy’s pants, till he’s sitting there in nothing but his boots and underwear.
“Jack’s just an asshole,” I say, “He’ll be OK.” Besides, I don’t want to see another castration for a long, long time. The balls would have been bad enough, but the frank and the beans? No wonder Brian doesn’t talk much any more.
“Hmmm. .” Henry doesn’t sound convinced. He pulls the Trooper’s gun out of its holster and twists it back and forth in front of the guy’s face. “I think we’ll start with this.” He sits back on his haunches and places the barrel agai
nst the cop’s knee. “You’re a State Trooper, right? So they’ll have told you all about this Sawbones bastard. Like where they found them arms and legs. You’re going to tell me all about it. And just so you know I’m not shitting with you, and this isn’t all a big hoax, I’m going to blow your kneecap off before we start. OK?”
Behind the gag the Trooper screams.
“What happened to you?” I ask, when Jack finally staggers back to the car. He’s been gone nearly an hour and a half. His jacket and trousers are smeared with mud, his hair’s all messed up and his bruised face is twisted into a scowl.
“Fucking fell, didn’t I?” he spits. “I fucking hate the great fucking outdoors. What’s so fucking, pain-in-the-ass great about it? Fucking trees and fucking mud.”
“Well, at least you didn’t get eaten by a bear.”
Jack freezes. “You’re fucking shitting me! Bears? You sent me out there, on my own, and there’s bears?”
“You got a gun, don’t you?”
“Bears. .” He shivers. “And me dragging Agent Bear Snack all over the fucking place.”
Henry looks up from what’s left of the State Trooper: the poor guy’s a mess, but he’s still breathing. Just. “You bury him good and deep?”
Jack looks offended. “Course I did. And far out too. Only way anyone’s going to find that FBI bastard is with a Ouija board.”
“Good. You did good.” Henry even smiles. He holds out the Trooper’s gun. “You can finish this one off.”
No one moves. Then Jack says, “He tell you everything?”
“Oh yeah. They found them arms and legs four days ago, stuffed in a bunch of bins round the back of a diner. Just off the Interstate. Said they think whoever did it was heading East.”
“You think he’s hiding anything?”
Henry glances down at the Trooper’s blood-soaked body. “Nope. He ain’t got jack shit to hide anyway. Only lead they got is maybe some people saw a dirty Winnebago parked where they found the body parts.”
“Then why do we need to kill him? We could just let him go.”
There’s a pause. “Yeah. . why not? After all we only kidnapped him, stuffed him in the boot with a dead body, tortured him. . I’m pretty sure if we asked him nicely he’d keep his mouth shut.”
“I’m just saying, OK? You said he’s told us everything so — ”
“Hello? Earth to planet fuckin’ Jack: he — knows — your — name. He can ID us!” Henry holds the gun out again. “And I want you to kill him.”
Jack’s sweating. “I don’t want to kill him. You tortured the poor bastard — you kill him.”
“See?” says Henry, turning to me, “I told you we can’t trust him.”
That got a scowl. Jack flexing his muscles. Making himself look bigger. “The fuck you talking about?”
“Me and Mark was just saying,” Henry goes over to where his jacket’s hanging from the tree and pulls a cigar out of the pocket, “how we don’t know you from shit.” He sparks up a big silver Zippo lighter and sets the flame to the end. “How you could be anyone.”
“I just buried an FBI agent in the fucking woods! With bears!”
Henry puffs, getting the cigar going, then blows out a big cloud of bitter-smelling smoke. “For all we know, you could be a cop.”
“A COP?” The bits of Jack’s face that aren’t bruised purple go bright red. “A fucking cop? You dirty old bastard! You — ”
“What did you call me?”
This is getting outta hand fast. “Come on,” I say, “this ain’t helping.”
Henry puts the Trooper’s gun on the ground, then turns to smile at Jack. It’s not a nice smile. It’s the kind of smile you see on a really pissed-off shark before he bites you in half. “I think you and me need to have another chat, sonny.”
“I’ll do it.” It’s a little voice, shaky, young. And we all turn to see Brian clinging onto the doorframe of the crappy car we stole in New Jersey. He’s trembling, one hand holding on to the place where his equipment used to be. Before Mr Jones took a bolt cutter to it. “I’ll kill him.”
Henry smiles. “You sure, kid?”
Brian nods, and shambles forwards, each step coming with a wince of pain. “I’ll kill him. . and you. . you take me to a hospital. .”
Henry picks up the gun. “How do we know you won’t go to the cops?”
“And tell them. . what? That. . that I shot a State Trooper?”
The kid has a point. Henry hands over the weapon, shows Brian how to cock it — no pun intended — and stands well back. I take my automatic out and hold it loosely at my side. You know — just in case Brian decides to go out in a blaze of glory.
The guy handcuffed to the tree looks up at Brian’s pale, bloodless face. The Trooper narrows his one remaining eye and moves what’s left of his mouth. We can just hear the word, “Please.”
Before Brian blows the guy’s head off.
Chapter 6
“You’ll find her, won’t you?” says Brian as we pull up outside the hospital in Morton, about as far away from where we’re going next as possible. He looks a little better since killing that State Trooper. Like he’s got a bit of spark left in him.
“Yeah,” I say, “we’ll find her.”
He nods, then sits there, like he’s thinking about something. “Mr Jones — will you ask him to send. . you know, my things. Will you ask him to send them here?”
“Brian, I — ”
“He said he’d keep them in the freezer — they could stitch them back on. .” He looks at me with those desperate, puppy-dog eyes, wanting me to tell him that some surgeon can sew his dick back on after it’s been in the Joneses’ freezer for a couple of days. He’s not kidding anyone but himself.
“Yeah. I’ll ask him.”
I pop the door and Brian clambers out, wincing and groaning. He stops, then looks back into the car. “You find the bastard who grabbed her, OK? You find him and then you call me. I want to know that he’s dead.”
And then he turns and limps through the door marked ‘Emergency’.
“You know,” says Henry, “never thought he’d do it. Shoot that cop.” He smiles. “For a stuck-up college asshole, that kid’s got some balls.”
We look at each other in silence for a minute, and then piss ourselves laughing.
“Now this is more like it,” says Henry twenty minutes later, settling into the passenger seat. It’s the fifth car we’ve tried in the hospital’s long-term car park, and the first he’s liked enough to steal.
“Fucking hell!” Jack’s looking round the back seat. “This thing’s ancient!”
“This thing is a classic. 1954 Ford Crown Victoria.”
It’s a huge boat of a car with tailfins and chrome all over the place. Looks like a God-damned juke box, but Henry loves it. “My dad had one of these,” he says, running his hand over the dashboard. “He let me borrow it sometimes. Broke his heart when he had to sell it. .”
I check the sun visor — the spare keys are right there. Some people just don’t deserve nice things. I crank her up and the V8 engine growls into life, sounding like a smoker on a cold morning.
“Jesus,” I say, “think it’s going to make it out of the car park?”
“Yeah,” Jack leans forward from the back seat, “drive it into the ER. This car needs medical attention!”
“You’re a pair of assholes. You know that?”
I shrug and put it into gear. “You remember that when you’re pushing this thing down the Interstate, OK?” I test the brakes as we get to the exit. They’ve got all the bite of a soggy marshmallow. “Where to?”
Henry takes out a notebook — it’s got ‘ILLINOIS STATE TROOPER’ printed in gold on the cover. “According to the cop Brian whacked we got three witnesses. .” I can see his lips move as he skims the page. “One’s from Delaware, one’s from Chicago, and number three lives back there in Bloomington.”
“Shit,” I pull out into traffic, “that’s two counties away, this thi
ng’s never going to make it.”
“Just shut up and drive, OK?” Henry pulls his cellphone out and dials directory assistance, looking for a Mr Brian Milligan in Bloomington. He scribbles half a dozen numbers into the State Trooper’s pad then starts ringing round. “Yeah, hello?” he says, putting on a fake Illinois accent. “This is Officer Ted Newton, State Police. You the guy who spotted a Winnebago out on the Interstate? Where they found them arms and legs? … Uh-huh. . Nah, OK, sorry to bother you.” Then he tries the next one on the list.
It goes on for a while — Henry pretending to be some cop making follow-up calls. In the end he gets the right Brian Milligan and they talk for about five minutes, then Henry hangs up and sits there tapping the phone against his teeth.
“He don’t remember anything other than it was a brown Winnebago,” Henry says at last.
Jack doesn’t sound impressed. “Whoop-defucking-do. Like that narrows it down. How many brown Winnies out there you think? A million? Two?”
“That’s why we’re going to pay the guy a visit,” says Henry, putting his phone away. “See if we can’t jog his memory.”
And we all know what that means.
Ten o’clock and it’s nearly dark. We’re standing outside Brian Milligan’s front door as he peers at the State Trooper ID Henry’s holding out. Henry’s got his finger over the picture so the guy can’t see who it really belongs to.
The guy’s old, not ancient — about Henry’s age — but his hair’s gone south for the winter. There’s none on his head, but plenty tufting out the neck of his bath-robe.
“OK,” the guy says at last, putting his glasses back in his robe pocket, “you can come in, and so can he, but this one,” he points at Jack, “he stays out here. I don’t like the look of him.”
Jack opens his big mouth, but Henry gets in there first, “Most people don’t.” Then he tells Jack to keep an eye on the car. Which doesn’t please Jack very much, but what’s he going to do?
Milligan’s apartment is a shit hole, littered with empty bottles and cans, two fat blow flies chasing each other around a bare light bulb. The guy wanders over to a tatty armchair and settles back into it, pulling his robe tight around his beer gut. There’s a TV in the corner, playing America’s Most Wanted with the sound turned down.
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