In the Belly of Jonah: A Liv Bergen Mystery

by Sandra Brannan

“Liv?” Streeter’s heart pounded. “You wouldn’t happen to mean Liv Bergen, would you?”

  The short one smiled and elbowed the tall one. “He knows Liv. And he’s cute.”

  Streeter asked, “Where did she go?”

  “Well, she left too,” the tall one said. “She’d been here for . . . oh, what would you say, Ann Marie. An hour or so?”

  “Yes, I’d say an hour, maybe less,”the short one answered. “She was studying again. She does that a lot. Picks a subject she knows nothing about.”

  “Then studies about it, just so she keeps her mind fresh,” the tall one added. “She’s such a special young lady.”

  “This time it was about art,” the short one announced.

  Streeter felt sick. He could feel the sweat pop along his brow and upper lip. “Did she say what kind of art?”

  “Surreal art,” the tall one said. “Modern, bizarre. She was looking for art with people and fruit.”

  “A pomegranate?” Streeter asked, swallowing hard.

  “Never mentioned that,” the short one replied shaking her head.

  The tall one shook her head too. “She was looking for art by people like Magritte.”

  “And Salvador Dalí,” the short one added.

  “And Liv’s already left?”

  “About twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago,” the tall one said. Streeter felt the bile rise in his throat and looked at his watch. He must have just missed them. Right before he posted Cameron at the front door.

  “She left with Dr. Jay,” the short one added. “They left arm in arm, as a matter of fact. Is there something wrong, dear?”

  “AREN’T YOU THE LEAST bit curious where we’re going, Liv?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I think so,” Dr. Jay said, moving at a good clip down the sidewalk toward a partially filled parking lot. No one was in sight. “You’re going to love what I have planned for you.”

  I glanced over my shoulder again, willing the police to be chasing us, hoping against hope Agent Kelleher had followed me to the library and waited to pop out of the nearby bush at just the right moment. When Dr. Jay pushed me into the fancy sports car, I decided it might not be so prudent to wish for someone else to save my sorry ass from this crazy bastard.

  I was on my own.

  I scanned the car, looking for any kind of weapon. The car was devoid of anything except what came with it off the showroom floor. My father came to mind in that moment, or, more specifically, one of his many “life’s lessons” statements did. He had told me that if I was ever caught in a situation where I needed to fight my way out of it, to use my head—and to use my keys.

  As Dr. Jay was walking around the front of the car, I reached into my jeans pocket and retrieved my key ring: there were two large ones to my Ford Explorer and a small one to my house. I fumbled with the largest key, slipping it between my first and second finger and closing my fist tightly around the other two keys in the palm of my hand. Perfect. I had a makeshift knife. Dad would be proud.

  The driver’s side door opened and my abductor’s face appeared.

  “Want to take it out for a spin?” he said, wearing a sickening grin.

  It occurred to me that Dr. Jay had likely fashioned himself after a young Elvis Presley, thereby hoping to attract women easily. A curled lip. Bedroom eyes. But with Dr. Jay, it was all wrong. Something about him seemed disingenuous, like he was a cheap copy. He was probably more like a love child conceived by Mr. Roarke and Tatu on Fantasy Island.

  “Where are you taking me?” I snarled, happy to see that he was distracted for a moment as he was climbing into his car. I slid the keys into my right sock, deep beyond the ankle of my steel-toed boot, while he wasn’t looking. He’d already made me empty my jacket pockets. It was just a matter of time before he asked me to do the same with my jeans pockets, once he thought of it.

  “Somewhere very special,” he said.

  He turned the key in the ignition. The car hummed to life.

  “You’re Jonah,” I just realized.

  Big mistake. His hand flew to my throat and he started squeezing. “Where’s the letter?”

  I clutched at the long fingers of his strong hand, struggling for breath as he crushed my windpipe. I tried to answer, and my lips moved, but nothing came out except an unnatural gurgling. Was that my voice? I started to see stars and offered up a quick prayer for God to help me. Dr. Jay loosened his grip, his hand falling back onto the steering wheel, and I coughed, gasped, and spewed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I choked, protectively covering my neck with my hands.

  “Where’s the letter?”

  I answered honestly, risking another death grip. “I don’t know. I gave it to my friend Lisa.”

  He threw the car into reverse, pulling out of the parking spot. “Agent Henry. Well, look where that got her.”

  I shot him a sideways dagger.

  “Dead,” he said, staring at me and grinning. He turned back to watch the road.

  “You killed her,” I said.

  “Lisa Henry was a beauty. I called her Awakening. She put up one hell of a fight.” He turned the rearview mirror so it was reflecting his face. He stretched and twisted so he could see the angry scratches down the side of his cheek and neck. I silently cheered Lisa and Jill for marring him.

  Dr. Jay was conceited, self-absorbed. Study his weaknesses, I told myself. Study and learn.

  “Jill didn’t fight at all,” he said, as if hearing my silent cheer.

  My stomach churned again and I fought back the desire to upchuck. Often, the motion of ordinary driving is enough to make me nauseated. Given Dr. Jay’s erratic driving and my loyalty to both Lisa and Jill—let alone the fact of my sitting beside the very monster who had killed them both—it was all getting to be a bit too much. He talked as if it didn’t matter that he took the life of these two special women, beautiful souls. Both were strong, amazing spirits, with brilliant lives cut short—by this reptilian freak.

  “I told her if she fought me, I’d take it out on her little sister, Julia,”he explained. “And I would have. In fact, I would have enjoyed taking my frustrations out on that little bonbon. So, Jill obeyed my every command. Right to the very end.”

  I imagined the center hole punched through Jill.

  I lost it.

  All over the front seat and dashboard of his fancy car. I simply leaned forward and hurled between my knees, all over the floorboards. The smell was powerfully bad. Dr. Jay immediately rolled down his window.

  “What the—”he started and decided against whatever he had planned to say or do. He said, simply, “You cow.”

  “Sorry,” I lied, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket. Secretly, I hoped that once he had killed me, little traces of my barf in his sporty car would be the evidence collected to nail this guy’s ass. “I get motion sickness.”

  The truth was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jill and what he had done to her. How he must have used all her innards as chum for the freshwater fish at Horsetooth.

  I lost it again, only this time I had tried to roll my window down first. But Dr. Jay had locked the power windows, so all I managed to do was barf all over the passenger side door and under the nice leather seat of his expensive car.

  Oddly, a vision of Mr. Wagner and his can of magic sand came to mind. Whenever any of us students puked at the Catholic grade school, the kind old janitor brought his magic sand to soak up whatever smells and gunk had erupted from our little bodies. Mr. Wagner never let on if he was disgusted; he wore the same deadpan expression as when he’d wheel out the gurney with the four candles—three pink and one purple—on it during Advent to our mournful rendition of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”I hadn’t thought about Mr. Wagner in years.

  “My Maserati! You are such a disgusting vaca,”Dr. Jay shouted. “I ought to torture you by suffocating you with your own bile, you filthy cow.”

  I stifled my glee. I had managed to piss him off and it fel
t good. The same kind of good I felt when the keys dug into my ankle. I would have my chance. If I was going to get eaten by this mountain lion I was at least going to make it as painful as if he were swallowing a feisty porcupine. Like Lisa had.

  Dr. Jay pulled into the driveway off Whaler’s Way. After my initial shock in realizing this was not a plush hotel, but rather his house, the irony of Jonah living on Whaler’s Way settled on me like a terrible omen. I imagined the whale swallowing me as he tucked his car into the garage, quickly lowering the automatic door behind us. In the belly of Jonah, I thought. And felt a chill.

  “Get out, you selfish pig,” he hollered at me.

  I grabbed the slippery door handle and hoisted myself out of the stinky car. He stepped out and stomped through the garage into the house. I stood staring at the organized garage, noting the old pickup with a topper in the second stall. I was scanning the space, looking for another possible weapon, when Dr. Jay emerged with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge.

  He shoved the bucket toward me and said, “Get to work. I don’t have all day.”

  I did as I was told, scrubbing away at the floorboard and the door of his precious Maserati. I eased up on the elbow grease, at least enough for Dr. Jay not to notice, particularly on the area under the passenger’s seat. I would leave something for the forensic team to find and link to me after my mutilated body was found. A shiver skipped down my spine as my mind flashed to some of Dalí’s other paintings. As brave and ornery as I pretended to be, I was still scared shitless by the prospect of being butchered with high-pressure water. I glanced over my shoulder at the beat-up pickup and realized the compressor, water tank, and hose must be hidden in there. De Milo’s mobile butchering shop.

  “Hurry up,” he hollered, watching my every move.

  I did as I was told, taking my time but not so much so that he might figure I was stalling, which I was.

  “You’re done,” Dr. Jay said abruptly, jerking the sponge and bucket from my hands, leaving them by the doormat, and disappearing once more through the door to the house.

  I darted toward the toolbox, drying my hands on my jeans, and fished for a screwdriver. Hearing the door open again, I leapt away from the toolbox and shoved the tool down my pants in one smooth motion. I covered my face with my hand as if I was woozy.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, a camera and a white bed sheet tucked in his arms.

  “I think I’m going to be sick again,” I said.

  “Filth,” he spat. Tossing the items into the back of his truck, he demanded, “Get in.”

  I stood, staring at him. Not the truck. Not the high-pressure water.

  “Get in,” he insisted, motioning with his head for me to get in the truck, his eyes boring through me.

  I did as I was told.

  GUNS DRAWN, STREETER CREPT up the driveway along the hedge to the enormous house on Whaler’s Way, Kelleher right behind him. The agent in charge had sent Brandt around back with Kyle Mills and Raymond Martinez. He asked Brandt’s man, Andy Doughty, to hang back at the curb in an unmarked in case everything went awry and they needed to call for backup. The four crime scene technicians were waiting in a van parked around the block.

  Streeter crouched low and leapt onto the porch landing without a sound, flattening himself between the front door and the bay windows. He motioned for Kelleher to join him and pointed to the other side of the door where he wanted him to stand. Ready to bust open the door or through the window if necessary, Streeter stole an instant peek through the bay windows. He leaned back against the house and squeezed his eyes shut, holding onto the flash image of the inside of Jonah Bravo’s living room. Fireplace directly across from the bay windows, couch to the right allowing whoever sat in it to watch out the window or at the fireplace from the same place. An armchair was situated by the right side of the window;a lamp sat on a table underneath the windowsill. The lamp was turned off. Not surprisingly, the fireplace was cold. Streeter saw no movement of light from a television in the room.

  He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, ready to take a closer look inside. He craned his neck to see through the window and verified his snapshot image of the room being empty. He looked around and saw no light spilling from the hallway or any other room from the house.

  Streeter pressed a button on his two-way and talked into the clip mic on his collar. “Looks empty, can’t hear a sound,” he whispered. “Brandt?”

  Brandt and Mills were at the back door by the kitchen. Kyle Mills’s voice sounded, “Same.”

  “Martinez?”

  “Same. I’m at the door to the garage. Maserati’s inside.”

  “Pickup truck?”

  “No pickup. Empty stall, though.”

  Streeter and Kelleher exchanged a glance. Both men’s shoulders sagged.

  “Doughty, are we clear?” Streeter asked.

  “Clear,” the young man’s voice cracked.

  Streeter took a deep breath. “On three, guys. One, two, three.”

  Streeter slammed his shoulder against the door alongside Kelleher and the door splintered at the hinges. The two men pounded the door again and it twisted to the ground. Shoulder to shoulder, the men rushed into the living room and cleared the area, sweeping around every large piece of furniture and every closed door. The house was full of silence other than the noise of the kitchen door crashing to the floor and the muffled sound of the garage door being rushed by Martinez. The only thing Streeter could hear was his own heavy breathing and his heart pounding in his chest. His mind’s eye flashed to Lisa’s naked body, to Jill’s mutilated corpse, and to Liv’s captivating smile in the photo.

  Where was she?

  He raced soundlessly up the stairs to the bedrooms, Kelleher covering his back. The second floor was dark, no lights on anywhere, and all doors swung wide open. Streeter crept up the rest of the stairs and swept each room. The first bedroom was empty, but Streeter noticed the dead-bolt on the outside of the door and the steel grate welded to the steel window frame.

  It was a prison. Probably where Jonah had held Jill between Monday night and early Wednesday morning.

  He opened the closet door. Completely empty. He opened the dresser drawers. Empty. This was the spare bedroom, devoid of any signs of life except for what might be reflected in all the mirrors when the candles in the numerous candleholders scattered about the room were lit. He motioned for Kelleher to follow him down the hall to what appeared to be the master bedroom. They rushed the room, Kelleher darting off to the master bathroom to search and clear.

  No sign of Jonah Bravo. Or Liv.

  Streeter was relieved in one sense, hoping he wouldn’t find Liv as he had Lisa. On the other hand, he knew Liv’s time was running out.

  He pushed the button on his two-way again. “Second floor clear.”

  “Main floor clear,” Mills barked. “Basement too.”

  “Garage clear,” Martinez answered. “He was just here.”

  Streeter and Kelleher exchanged a look, Streeter finally noticing the gallery of pictures on Jonah Bravo’s bedroom wall. He slowly walked over to it, turning on the nearby lamp and shining it directly on the photos.

  Kelleher moaned. “There’s more.”

  “Seven dead, not four,” Streeter counted. “Three we knew nothing about, including his mother and sister.”

  “And look at this.” Kelleher pointed to the seventh empty frame marked “William Tell.”

  “Who the hell was he calling William Tell?”

  Streeter shook his head. His two-way screeched.

  “Streeter, did you hear me?” Martinez sounded.

  “Yeah, I heard you,” Streeter answered. “He was just here?”

  “Yeah, the hood of the Maserati is still hot. And I found a bucket with suds.”

  “Cleaning lady?”

  “On a Sunday? Not likely. And was she driving his Maserati?”

  “Put an APB on the pickup, Brandt. Can you do that?”

  Kyle’s voice sou
nded. “He’s doing it as we speak, Streeter.”

  “Make sure they know Jonah Bravo is armed and dangerous. And he has a hostage,” Streeter added.

  Kyle clicked the two-way in acknowledgment.

  Streeter never took his eyes off the photographs, studying each one, his eyes darting from one to another photo, and each gory detail.

  To Kelleher he said, “We’ve got to figure out where he’s taking her. It’s a matter of life and death. He knows we’re on to him and he’s going to be like smoke after he kills Liv. He’ll go back to Florida. Or worse, Cuba, and we’ll never find him there.”

  Kelleher nodded, rubbing his forehead as he studied the photos alongside Streeter.

  Mills’s voice boomed. “Streeter, you’ve got to see this. Brandt found a darkroom in the basement.”

  Streeter and Kelleher bounded down the stairs, falling in behind Martinez, who had entered from the garage. All three descended into the basement. The sounds Mills and Brandt were making came from a large room encompassing a quarter of the basement; nearly six hundred square feet by Streeter’s estimation. The largest darkroom he’d ever seen.

  He rounded the corner to find Brandt and Mills huddled around a pile of photos scattered on the large table, several more pinned to the walls.

  “Holy shit,” Martinez groaned.

  Kelleher’s mouth puckered at the grotesque sight.

  Dozens of photos of each crime scene were scattered throughout the room, different angles and distances, different lighting and focus. The best four to six were neatly pinned beneath a ten-by-fifteen-inch glossy photo of the corresponding piece of Dalí’s bizarre artwork.

  Going from left to right on the wall were Dalí’s “The Enigma of Desire: My Mother, My Mother, My Mother,”

  “Seated Girl, Seen from the Back (The Artist’s Sister),”

  “Bather,”all three photos of crime scenes with people he had never seen before, and “The Great Masturbator,” with photos of the young couple from Platteville pinned beneath, a photo of Jill Brannigan’s mutilated body next, and finally, a photo of Lisa Henry’s naked body.

  “Streeter, look,” Doug Brandt croaked, pointing at the page that had been ripped from a book of Dalí’s works and pinned next to Lisa’s photographs.