Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  Her tan skin, her short blonde hair, the soft moist lips that had cried out so beautifully as she lay like a child in his arms. She should have been his, there in his bathroom, bleeding out into his soaking tub. She’d denied him his pleasure; she’d violated his domain, trespassing into his perfect garden. Donna Utley had soiled and snubbed him.

  But not for long. Not long now at all. He’d have her back, and she would give him what was due.

  Grinning hard enough to hurt his cheeks, Ted turned on a Johnny Hartman CD, and pulled out onto the road. It was time to tie up the final end, to finish Theodore Whitechapel’s final victim before setting out on a new adventure. Rain started to fall, streaming like tears down the Mercedes’ windshield.

  Eleven

  Delilah awoke with the disorientation of a diver ripped from the depths. She lay on her back, listening to the rain, and wondering what had woken her in such a panic.

  Then something scraped against the door again. Someone was picking the lock.

  Delilah sat up, biting back a cry of pain. The morphine was wearing off, the IV bag nearly empty. The clock glowed sinister and red in the dim light of the table lamp. She’d slept barely two hours.

  Scrape. A tinny jingling sound of metal on metal pinged through the quiet hotel room. The lock was giving this guy trouble, probably because Delilah had disabled the light outside the door.

  Now she wished she hadn’t. Not that she needed to see who was there. She knew.

  It would be him. He’d hunted her down. Pain and nausea ripped through her abdomen along with a dark wave of fear.

  She ripped off the tape and pulled the IV needle from her hand. Gritting her teeth against the pulling pain, she slid off the bed, staying low so as not to cast movement shadows on the front window. She grabbed her coat off the chair and dumped the pills from the side table into her pocket. There was no time to find a clean shirt.

  The door handle wiggled and she heard a muffled curse. With her own suppressed curse, she glared at the vent grate. There was no time to unscrew the grate and retrieve her cash and ID.

  Teddy was outside, a thin wooden panel away, and staying here wasn’t an option. Fear tingled through her, cramping her hands, clogging her brain with the sound of her pounding heart.

  She couldn’t face him again, that horrible soft voice, that bright tan smile. He was an enervating presence in her mind, large and powerful. Terrible. Evil.

  And clearly he wasn’t going to give up before he’d finished killing her. She knew she’d have to hope he didn’t find the ID and money in the grate. Would he follow her to Atlanta?

  He’s just a man, she told herself. He’ll give up. She hadn’t even done anything to him, except bled helplessly. He’d have to give up. If she could get away again.

  Delilah half crawled across the floor, dragging on her hooded sweatshirt and sandals as she moved. She pulled the sliding glass door open and took off at a run across the construction site, feet squelching in the mud.

  The rain slammed down in sheets, the street lights barely visible in the downpour. Car headlights zoomed past as she gained the sidewalk behind the hotel. Delilah spared a glance behind her. The construction site was empty looking, no movement coming from the lighted hotel beyond.

  Parked cars lined the street. Delilah walked alongside them, trying door handles and checking for open windows. An older Honda sedan’s passenger door popped open. She nearly cried out with relief, the dark expanse of the empty lot behind her making her neck itch. She wanted to be gone, far far away from the nightmare that Daytona had become. She reached around and unlocked the other doors, glancing back again and again.

  Sitting hurt. Thinking hurt. She took shallow breaths and dug the painkillers out of her pocket, popping a large white pill into her mouth. Then she pawed through the glove box, looking for a screwdriver or anything hard with which she could pry the steering column open. She wished for her tools but shoved that desire aside. Wishing and whining wouldn’t get her away and safe.

  She found a flathead screwdriver, a short little thing, and tears of relief choked her throat.

  The plastic shell peeled away. She blinked hard and tried to remember how to do this by touch since the overhead light was too dim to help and bending over for too long made her want to scream, destroying her focus.

  She gave in after a moment and leaned to the side with a careful breath. Red wires, there. She scraped at them with the head of the screwdriver, stripping them down. More shallow breaths, then she twisted them together. Now she just had to find the ignition wire. Brown, usually. She leaned to the side again, trying to keep her torso as straight as possible.

  Movement in the corner of her eye brought her head up.

  Delilah jerked her head around, staring out into the rain. Had that been a person, there, down the street, outlined for a moment in the streetlights? A shudder went through her.

  She sucked in a breath and leaned forward, fear winning over pain. White wire, red wires. No brown wire. Wait, there.

  She gripped it, stripping the stubborn rubbery plastic away.

  Car in neutral, parking break engaged, foot on accelerator. She touched the ignition wire to the twisted red power wires. Click, click. Again she touched it, praying for the engine to catch, to turn over. Click, spark, click.

  Ignition. She pushed down on the gas, giving the engine juice, feeding it. With one hand she jammed the plastic casing back into place over the steering column and dropped the parking break with the other.

  Lights on, time to go. The drive back to Atlanta, back to her home, would take at least six hours. She’d grab her emergency cash and ID from the house, then get out. Someone would eventually find the driver’s license and cash tucked into the wall of her motel room here. Just hopefully not evil Teddy, and not tonight. Atlanta wouldn’t be safe forever. But it was as close to a home as she had, and Delilah needed to rest.

  The painkillers kicked in as she found the US-1 and headed toward the I-95. Delilah squinted through the sheets of rain painting her windshield opaque or glittering depending on the amount of tail lights and street lights. The world was fuzzier on the pain killers, but she could lean back, relax a little. She turned on the radio and winced at the loud country twang that poured from the front speakers. A quick scan with the dial found classic rock and she eased back in the seat, making a few adjustments to the mirrors.

  Delilah loved driving. A car was perfect. She had complete control of it, all the power in the world. No car had only one exit, either. Windows and doors were everywhere. She knew many ways to escape a car, on the chance that she couldn’t control it. Inside a car, Delilah was safe, free. She could go anywhere, get away from everything, and just drive. It was hard to find someone in a car, hard to reach them, harder to kill them. Moving target, free and perfect.

  Bennie, her father, had taught her to drive in a 1951 Willys truck when she was eleven. Delilah had never wanted to do anything else after. She’d make up excuses to drive to the store, to school, to the beach, any errand, any time, as long as she could have a car underneath her.

  She wondered, driving away from Daytona in a haze of rain and drugs, if Jake still had her ’67 Mustang, the powder blue one she’d bought and had restored with money from her first big take. Maybe someday he’d teach Esther to drive in it and then it could be her car.

  “Can’t say I never gave my daughter anything,” she muttered into the darkness. She missed Jake like hell sometimes, but the baby, a little girl now, was just an abstract in her mind, a smiling dark face in photographs sent to the P.O. Box she used as a drop site. That was all she’d ever be.

  Especially if this gut wound kills me.

  Delilah sighed. Maybe she’d take that strange doctor up on his advice. Go to a hospital when she got back to Atlanta, if all was quiet there. She had cash, she could con her way into an emergency room and fake that she didn’t understand enough English to be worth talking to. They’d treat her and then she could run. She hated hospitals on
principle. Never enough space, enough exits. Plenty of cars, though. She’d manage okay.

  Delilah blinked back exhaustion and turned up the volume on the radio. She had a plan. She had the necklace and earrings still on her, which she knew Poppy would pay good cash for. She would live, thrive even, and leave Daytona and its nightmare behind her for good.

  She merged up onto the I-95, twisting her head to watch for cars. She turned her head back and glanced down at the display. The needle of the gas gauge sat solidly in the middle between Empty and Full. With a little luck the car would make it far enough away, though not all the way to Atlanta. She’d figure out what to do then. But she had a couple hours.

  High, in pain, and hopeful, Delilah drove off into the storm.

  Twelve

  Jimmy Black cursed softly and then looked around the quiet Sunrise Lodge parking lot. No one out and about, everyone sane was hiding inside from the downpour. He was good with locks, though safe-cracking had become his specialty, but it was damned dark out. He wished he’d just brought a bump key instead.

  Jimmy crouched back down and turned his attention to the lock. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, gripping his tools between boney fingertips. Another jiggle, a twist of the smaller pin, and he heard the click. Finally.

  He dropped his tools into his trouser pocket and eased the door open. The place looked empty, as he’d thought it would be. Jimmy had been watching the room for the last hour, crouched down in his rented sedan in the parking lot. Though a light was on, he’d seen no movement.

  He figured Delilah was out, doing whatever she’d come into town to really do. Jimmy fingered the .38 special tucked into his belt and checked around the room. Found a bit of blood on towels in the bathroom and the place smelled a bit like a hospital, all iodine, soap, and something sharp like rubbing alcohol. An empty IV bag hung on a hook over the headboard. Someone had been hurt here. Her boyfriend? A mark?

  Maybe they’d tortured someone here, getting information about something. You had to do that sometimes, with the really big scores, the ones that took a large crew and a lot of planning. Delilah could be on to a big take, a real deal. And didn’t he deserve some of that after how badly his luck had been? Sure he did.

  He checked the closet and found a few women’s clothes hanging up, pants folded neatly over hangers, a couple nice blouses. Good, she was still in town. Jimmy knew she’d be back and he’d just settle down and wait for her, ask her a few questions.

  Like why her car was in the parking lot when she wasn’t here. Meant she had to be with somebody.

  It had been blind crazy luck that he even knew where she was staying. After she’d quit the job, there’d been a big argument about what to do. The whole plan wasn’t possible without a driver and they needed a pro. The illegal casino could be closed up or moved at just about any time, so the job had an uncertain clock on it as well.

  Jimmy had left in disgust as the arguing and ideas came to nothing. It looked like the job might be called off entirely. He’d wasted a trip. Just his fucking luck lately. He needed that twenty grand, bad. Dolmetti wasn’t going to stay off his ass for long and a goodwill payment would set Jimmy back up just fine, buy him some breathing room, time to plan a way to repay, or get out of paying, the last hundred grand he owed.

  This job was supposed to buy him time. Until that stupid broad ruined things.

  He’d headed down to the beach, thinking an umbrella drink and hard tanned bodies to ogle would cheer him up.

  And there she’d been, standing in the sand in her bare feet. Delilah was too thin for his taste, could use a boob job at the least, but pretty in an exotic kind of way. Asian maybe. She’d stood with her eyes shut for a while, her short dark hair floating around her face in the wind.

  Jimmy had decided then and there to follow her. He wanted to know what her angle was. He’d bugged Al about her credentials, not liking the idea of a woman on a job, especially not a job with wetwork, and not doing something as important as the driving. She was a con artist, too, a small timer but a pro. Apparently her family was in the business, though Al didn’t know much more about it.

  Jimmy had carefully trailed her back to her hotel, smug that she hadn’t noticed him. Guess she wasn’t so good after all. She was too young to be seasoned, to be paranoid yet. Which is why he figured she had an angle, maybe wasn’t working alone.

  He knew guys who weren’t above putting a pretty face out to get info on a job going down so they could steal it or cut themselves in. She was the kind of broad who’d do that, Jimmy was sure. Some guy had to have a handle in her back; women in this life always had a handle on them.

  He’d thought about confronting her right there at the hotel, but he didn’t have his gun. Not that he wanted to hurt her, not really. But a gun scared girls and scared was good. Scared talked. He figured if she was what she said, she’d leave town that day. No reason to stay if she wasn’t working anyway. If she stayed, then she was definitely double dealing somehow and Jimmy Black would be the man to set her straight.

  And she was still here a day later. Proof enough for Jimmy. Her car was in the parking lot, but she was gone. Probably her man picking her up. Handle, just like he’d thought.

  Jimmy turned the beige office chair so that it faced the front door, relocked the door, and then settled in to wait. He hoped she came back alone. He wasn’t a big guy, so it’d be hard to deal with two people. But he had his gun, he’d work it out. She owed him answers.

  Yeah. Maybe she had a new job here, or maybe a different crew doing the old job. She could cut him in, keep things nice and professional. Friendly. It would only be fair.

  With a smile, Jimmy rested the .38 on his thigh and leaned back. He sniffed at the air again and sighed, then pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit up. He’d get what was his and the lady thief was going to give it to him, one way or another.

  Thirteen

  Ted stopped off at a hardware store, dashing through the pouring rain. In the past he’d been far more careful about putting together his hunting kits. He’d go to five or ten different stores all around the state, sometimes driving for hours, and of course he always paid cash.

  This time he only went to one store. He paid for the cotton rope, duct tape, utility knife, crow bar, plastic zip ties, lighter fluid, motor oil, and latex gloves with his Visa card. Let the cops track it. By the time they even thought to, even knew about the first killing of ditzy spoiled Cora Swarsky, it would be too late. Theodore Whitechapel would be gone, one for the history books.

  After tonight.

  He grinned at the cashier, making the awkward, overweight woman blush through her orange tan. Ted felt alive, turned on, ready. This wasn’t just any hunt, this was the ultimate hunt. The one who got away.

  Away, but not too far.

  He pulled up to the Sunrise Lodge and watched it for a moment, hovering at the curb in a fire lane. There was a light on in room 159, soft gold shining through the curtains. She was there, then. Maybe dead, maybe not. Well, not yet.

  Time to go get her. Not through the front. That would be a mistake. Ted pulled around the side, parking on the street. The backs of the units on the first floor had sliding glass doors which opened onto a construction site. Ted approved. He’d always been fond of places that had extra exits.

  Well, for him, extra entrances. Besides, sliding glass doors, provided there wasn’t a stick blocking them, often were simpler to open than a lock and certainly a deadbolt. A knife and a credit card would usually do the trick.

  Ted pulled on a black slicker, of which he always kept two or three hidden in his trunk, and a pair of latex gloves. Grabbing his hunting kit, he made sure his Beretta was in easy reach and climbed out of the car. The rain fell, thick and warm, and dripped off his hood.

  He edged along the backside of the motel. It was more likely he’d be noticed walking along here, but he despised the thought of miring his shoes in the muddy tough of the construction site. Besides, anyone notic
ing him would probably think he was headed to his room and just staying under the eaves, out of the rain and muck.

  The curtains of each room were pulled as he went along, counting the doors until he got to the eleventh one. Room 159.

  The curtain was partially drawn, but Ted ducked past it and peeked around the side through the opening. The light from the one lamp shining inside outlined a figure sitting, facing the front door. Ted’s heartbeat picked up, his face flushing.

  Then he squinted, looking more carefully. It was a man. The blonde hair was balding in a tonsure pattern at the crown.

  A man. Ted shook himself and turned away. Donna might have fled town already then. Or this room was a decoy. Or this man could be her man, a boyfriend perhaps. Some protector he’d turned out to be. A pretty little girl like her should have a real man, someone who provided well enough that she didn’t have to break into other people’s homes.

  Ted took a deep breath. He wanted Donna, not some man. He turned and looked back into the room, eyes searching about for some sign that the woman was there, or had been there, or might return.

  Was that an IV bag hanging from the bed? Ted thought so. So Donna was alive then, had gotten some medical care. Good, good. She wasn’t allowed to die, not without Ted’s help. So who was this guy?

  Curiosity spurred Ted into action. He looked down at the door latch and was pleased to find it unlocked. He set his kit down on the concrete patio, careful to make no sound, and drew the Beretta, flicking the safety off. Time to get some answers.

  Ted knew he could slide the door open without much sound, but once it was open the air would change and the rain would get louder, alerting the man inside. So Ted yanked the door open and stepped through, slamming it shut behind him in one clean motion.