THE CHARM OF REVENGE

by Tom Secret

  76. THE COCK CROWS

  Tuesday, 9:30 a.m.

  “Ronnie, open the door!” Donatello banged again as Ronnie picked another delivery box from the floor inside and carried it behind the bar. “Ronnie, come on! Open the door will you?”

  This time, Ronnie looked at him and mouthed, No.

  Donatello’s pride was yelling at him to leave and write Ronnie off as a bad job, but Inspector Wilkes’s words were screaming at him to stay. He banged on the glass once more.

  Ronnie walked over and opened the door. “What the fockin’ hell d’you want?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Well, I don’t fockin’ need to talk to you, so piss off!”

  Ronnie closed the door, but Donatello pushed against the brass handle. “Ronnie, please! I’m sorry, I was out of line, all right? Sometimes the cop in me takes over, and the last few weeks have been… I don’t even know the words.”

  Ronnie studied him. “A skull fock?”

  Donatello managed a smile. “Exactly, sort of… yes, one of those.”

  Ronnie didn’t return the smile. “You want a coffee?”

  “Bet your life.”

  Ronnie released the door and strode off to the bar as Donatello, breathing a sigh of relief, stepped into the sanctuary of his friend’s bar and trundled over to the usual bar stool. His bar stool.

  Flicking the switch to warm the espresso machine, Ronnie prepared the cups in silence.

  Halfway there, Donatello thought. Now he needed to break the ice. “I’m sorry, Ronnie, I was way out of line.”

  “You were that.”

  “I need a favor, though.”

  “Ah, the cock crows!” He slid the saucers onto the bar and placed a shiny spoon on each.

  “Colby’s trying to frame me for those murders. Said they called, and you told them I left at ten thirty. Did they? Because you know I didn’t leave until gone eleven.”

  Ronnie stopped working the espresso machine, his face dark as thunder. “No, no, and no, Donatello!”

  “What?”

  “No, you didn’t leave at ten thirty, and no, they didn’t call.” Here’s your coffee.

  “And the third no?”

  Ronnie placed his hands on the bar and leaned toward him. “You laid into me last night, Don. Your old pal Ronnie. You interrogated me like I was a fockin’ criminal. Now you need me to cover for you on the nights of those murders, am I right?”

  “Well, um, I—”

  “That’s what I figured! And the answer’s fockin’ no!”

  “But Colby’s trying to frame me, Ronnie!”

  “So now you get how it feels.”

  “But I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “That’s the problem with you cops! You never fockin’ think. You go in guns fockin blazing, and when it all turns to shite, you figure the rest of us saps will forgive and forget. Well, we don’t. So the answer’s still no. You can enjoy a taste of your own medicine for once. Now, finish your drink; the bar’s closed!”

  77. GOODBYE, RANDALL

  Tuesday, 9:32 a.m.

  “I’m cold, Daddy!” Lilly said as she laid the worm back down in the leaf litter and covered it up.

  Brad removed his blue fleece, wrapped it around her shoulders and scooped her up on his arm. “Okay, let’s hear what the one inside has to say for himself.”

  The car door opened and Jack got out, giving them a deathly cold stare.

  Marcus looked from Jack to Lilly, then to Lola and Brad. “I don’t think they should see what’s inside.”

  “Dad…” Jack tried to find his voice. “Was the one inside… part of… of what happened?” He glanced at his mother.

  Brad caught the meaning. “Yes, Son.”

  Jack fixed his eyes on the building entrance and slipped past them like a wraith, disappearing into the shadows.

  “Lola, quick, take Lilly. I have to cover what’s inside!” Brad ran through the first section, past the rough-cut timbers, into the second room, past the cutting benches, and skidded to a halt beside the giant bark-stripping machine. He was too late. Jack was standing stock-still, less than three feet from the living remains of Randall P. Cilcifus.

  Jack turned to Brad with a haunted look that no twelve-year-old should ever have. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Your grandfather has been asking him questions.”

  “Questions that made his flesh fall off?”

  “He gave him… drugs.”

  Jack looked into Brad’s eyes for the first time since the warehouse. “Where are his fingers?”

  “Um, I think he bit them off, Son.”

  “Oh.” Jack cast his eyes over Cilcifus’s festering flesh. “I’m glad!”

  “Are you going to be all right, Jack?” Brad whispered.

  Jack didn’t take his eyes off the man. “Is he sleeping?”

  “I think so.” Brad shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the horrors his son had encountered. He looked around for something to cover Cilcifus, spotted an oily old tarpaulin in the corner, retrieved it, and threw it over the man’s torso, just in time.

  Lola appeared from behind the machine, carrying Lilly in her arms. The girl’s face snuggled into her mother’s hair as she slept.

  With her hand on the back of Lilly’s head in case she awoke and tried to look, Lola stepped into the open space in front of Cilcifus and stared at his face.

  Cilcifus’s eyes remained closed, with his head rocking back and forth. He jolted, taking short, sharp breaths. “Uh! Uh!” His head whipped from side to side, face contorted. “Daniel, wake up! Wake up!” He kicked at the sawdust with his heel, slamming the handcuffs that held him against the leg of the bench.

  “What’s he doing, Grandpa?” Jack said.

  Cilcifus convulsed again. “Uh! Daniel, wake up, little maggot! Wake up! No, Mommy, it wasn’t me! I’m not the bogeyman. Just wake him up. No, Mommy, please! Don’t tell Daddy. Please, I want to ride my bike… Daddy, don’t listen! Don’t hit me! Stop hitting me! Aargh!” He pulled his legs against his chest and wept on through the nightmare.

  “The drugs are making him relive the bad things he’s done,” Marcus said. “From what I can tell, something happened to his baby brother.”

  Jack’s face was flushed as he looked up at Brad. “Did he see… what they did to me?”

  Brad blinked back the tears, wishing he could say something that would undo what had happened. “He was one of the bosses.”

  Cilcifus’s eyes peeled open into a bloodshot squint. His breath hissed through his teeth as he locked onto Lola. “You!”

  Marcus stepped forward. “Tell my son what you told me, Cilcifus.”

  “Bogeyman…” His head slumped forward, then rose again. The rims of his eyelids were bleeding.

  “It takes a few minutes before he becomes coherent,” Marcus said. “Cilcifus, tell my son, or you won’t get your next fix.”

  Cilcifus’s breath hissed faster. “Filthy little family!”

  “Last chance, Cilcifus!”

  “Bradlehh…”

  Marcus crossed to the bench where the Krokodil had been cooling and prepared the final shot.

  Cilcifus squinted at Brad. “Pla-a-ayground.” His head slumped again.

  “What did he say?” Brad glanced at Marcus.

  “‘Playground.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s where you two met.”

  “Fairweather…” Cilcifus muttered.

  “He’s the boy that beat you up on your first day at school.”

  Brad felt the blood drain from his face. “What are you saying? That he’s been after me since…”

  “Since you took your revenge with the pencil,” Marcus said.

  “For thirty years!”

  “Re-e-venge!” Cilcifus echoed.

  “Not just after you.” Marcus placed the needle into the noxious brew and pulled back the plunger, filling the barrel. “He was the one at the municipal authority all
those years ago.”

  “The pimply kid that busted my first company?”

  Marcus laid the needle on the bench above Cilcifus’s head and faced them. “When he joined the IRS, he tracked you down, and every time you started a new business, he was behind the IRS problems you kept having. Oh, and it was his money, along with Michaels and Walton’s, that Black invested into Revolution.”

  “And the rest is history,” Lola whispered, still staring at Cilcifus. “I told you it was personal.”

  Brad closed his eyes as the emptiness took over and tears streamed down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Lola.”

  Lola stepped toward Marcus and slid the sleeping Lilly off her shoulder and into his arms. In one fluid motion, she reached into her bag, withdrew the black-handled kitchen knife and swung it like a scythe at Cilcifus’s throat.

  “Lola, no!” Brad grabbed for her, catching her arm as it arced through the air. “Don’t!”

  Her eyes widened as she looked past his shoulder. “It’s too late.”

  Brad whipped around. “NO!” he yelled as Jack slipped past, scooped the needle off the bench, and drove it into the side of Cilcifus’s neck. His haunted eyes met each of theirs before resting on Lilly as he depressed the plunger.

  78. THE GIFT

  Tuesday, 4:35 p.m.

  Donatello thought about Ronnie as his car bounced along the rutted track beneath a leafless canopy that stretched ahead as far as he could see. Dear old Mom had always said, if you want a best friend, get a dog. But Donatello never had time for a dog, and now he’d alienated perhaps his only real friend, and he needed to make amends.

  Lance’s earlier call had snapped him out of his funk and given him a brief respite from worrying over Colby’s imminent reprisal, but now as he looked for the turnoff, the feeling of doom, returned with a vengeance.

  The distant flash of blue and red, through the woods on the left, caught his eye. He slowed to a crawl, spotted the narrow opening, and threaded his way onto the track that wound through the ancient woods. It finally opened onto a media circus of color and noise playing out before an old abandoned sawmill.

  The flashing turrets of the police cars and ambulances dominated the center of the clearing. Three TV station vans emblazoned with logos covered the perimeter, a TV chopper circled overhead, and all manner of people trudged back and forth.

  “Way to go on securing the crime scene,” Donatello muttered under his breath as he headed toward the timber building.

  Flashing his badge, he ducked under the tape and headed through the yawning entrance into the first section, past the army of loitering officers and into the second section where all the timber processing must have taken place. He scanned the dust-caked machinery and old industrial benches and spotted the giant machine that was shielding the camera flashes.

  Rounding the monolith, he stopped in his tracks, gagged, and backtracked. He pulled out his handkerchief to cover his nose and inched closer to the gangrenous remains, handcuffed to the leg of the workbench. “Jesus H!” he muttered. “What the hell happened to him?”

  “That’ll be the word for it, all right,” the photographer said.

  “Excuse me?” Donatello looked up, surprised anyone had heard.

  The photographer raised his head from the viewfinder. “Hell!” He gestured to the remains. “Where this one’s gone.”

  “The M.E. say what happened?” Donatello said.

  “Something about a homemade drug that makes the flesh rot.”

  “And his hands?” Donatello forced himself to look at the corpse.

  “Dude chewed his fingers off.”

  Donatello grimaced and looked around.

  “If you want the M.E., he’s in the room back there.” Snappy pointed to another door, obscured behind stacks of ancient timber.

  “What’s there?”

  “Another body, Big D.”

  Donatello spun to see Lance’s cheerful grin. “Stone the crows, Lance! You could have given me a heart attack!”

  “Sorry, boss, but if you think this one’s pretty, wait till you see the other one. Come, I’ll show you.”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to regret this.” Donatello followed Lance into a room roughly twelve feet by ten, with a ceiling he could touch if he stood on tiptoes. On the right was a single broken window, with jagged shards of glass gripped by ancient putty, and rusting metal security bars outside. Opposite the window, the wall of the room was covered from end to end with decrepit metal filing cabinets, half with drawers hanging open and all covered in decades of cobwebs and dust. Unlike the sawdust-covered floors of the first two areas, this one was concrete, had been meticulously swept and, judging by the smell, recently sprayed with bleach.

  In the middle of the floor, with its shoulders pointed toward the window, lay a naked body with a long, deep gash on its arm. At one end were its bare feet; at the other, a pinkish yellow mass of facial muscles and teeth framed the skeletal rump of the nose, and fleshless eye sockets, from which the eyeballs stared out. From the mound of additional flesh lying on the chest, the skin had been peeled from the forehead, down past the Adams apple and now lay face down against the torso.

  “Way to get some introspection!” Lance said.

  Donatello flicked him his best withering look. “He left the eyes in their sockets, Lance.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.”

  Donatello edged around to the top of the victim’s head. The back of the scalp was also peeled away from behind the ears and, like the face, remained attached at the base of the neck, where it rolled up to form a miniature Japanese pillow. The cap of the skull had been crudely sawn and removed along with the brain. “Holy Moses!” Donatello held his handkerchief over his mouth and nose. “Where’s the rest of his head?”

  “Nice, eh? Guess there really is a brain drain in this country!”

  “You need help!”

  Lance’s grin returned.

  “I presume he got killed somewhere else?”

  “That’s what Steve said, and we can’t find the missing parts.”

  “When?”

  “Dunno. Doused in bleach like everything else, but Steve reckons around forty-eight hours.”

  “Killed or moved, Lance?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Well, please ask him as soon as we finish in here. And get Kennedy to cross-reference time of death with those brought in for questioning.” Donatello ran his eyes across the row of filing cabinets. “Did anyone look inside those?”

  “We were waiting for the all-clear from forensics.”

  “You got gloves?” Donatello took the pair from Lance’s extended hand and slid them on as he went to the far end of the cabinets. One by one, he sidestepped the line, peering through the gaps in the drawers, then stopped in front of the fifth filing cabinet. “Lance, call forensics; then grab a flashlight and get over here!”

  Lance returned and shone the beam through the six-inch gap of the second drawer from the top. “Is it a book?”

  “It looks like an accounts ledger… and it’s not dusty. Where’s forensics?”

  “Coming now.”

  “I want this tagged, bagged, and away from here, like yesterday, Lance; and whatever you do, make sure Colby doesn’t see it. I want first dibs at whatever’s inside.”

  The baying of police dogs erupted from beyond the broken glass. Donatello started for the door. “I’ll check out back, but get that ledger out of sight!”

  79. CUPID’S ARROW

  Wednesday, 9:02 a.m.

  Donatello finished clearing the papers from his desk and leaned back in his chair to survey the surrounding pandemonium.

  Into the maelstrom, the soft chime of the precinct elevator announced its arrival. Donatello braced, expecting Colby to come charging out, but as the doors slid open, he sat transfixed by the exquisitely dressed woman who stepped out brandishing a manila folder, and now stood scanning the bustling office.

  The vision intercepted a uniform, uttered a fe
w words that Donatello would have sworn sounded exotic, and faced in his direction as the uniform pointed straight at him.

  Donatello’s heart stopped as she locked eyes with him from across the room. She glided over without breaking eye contact and extended her hand as she drew near, and her porcelain features broke into a gorgeous smile.

  “Hello, I’m Sasha, the new girl in forensics.”

  He rose from his seat without dropping her gaze, knocked his coffee mug, and caught it as it tipped toward his keyboard.

  “Bravo! Good catch!” Sasha smiled, placing the folder on the corner of his desk and clapping her long, delicate hands.

  Donatello extended his hand. “Sorry about that. I’m Donatello—Alfonse Donatello.”

  “And you blush, too!” Sasha’s smile broadened. “This is the report on Damian Black. Sorry, it took so long; I think you’ll find the match of the blood work interesting.” She plucked up the folder and held it out to him.

  Donatello took a corner of the file, looked up, and lost himself in her gaze as she held on a second longer. “Ahem, thank you, um, Sasha. That’s spectacular—I mean, wonderful! Um, thank you.”

  Sasha sauntered back to the elevator, stepping deftly aside as Tommy the file clerk tore around the corner, pushing a trolley stacked to overflowing with half a dozen boxes, and B-lined straight for Donatello.

  By the time Sasha was in the elevator, Tommy had dumped the boxes on his desk.

  Donatello cast her a farewell nod from behind the clutter, his heart leaping as she broke into another smile and wiggled her fingers in a mini-wave as the doors slid shut.

  He slumped back into his chair and let out a sigh, caught himself grinning, then looked up at Tommy with his outstretched clipboard.

  “She’s a cutie, Captain!” Tommy said, motioning for Donatello to take the clipboard and sign for the boxes.

  “Thanks, Tommy, but it’s still ‘Lieutenant.’ She’s new, right?

  “Started last week. Sent the first-floor guys into a tailspin.”