Mr. Sandman: A Thrilling Novel

by Lyle Howard

  “I’ve got to call Julie to warn her first.”

  Lincoln pointed to a phone on the wall next to the refrigerator. “Use that one.”

  Lance walked over to the phone and stared at it, unsure of himself. “Should I use a pencil or something to dial the number?”

  Lincoln couldn’t take his eyes off of the repulsive con­coction on the stove. “Why?”

  “Fingerprints?” Lincoln grimaced at the thought of someone actually carving into the organ and draping the morsel with the sautéed onions. “Just dial the damned phone!”

  Quickly, Lance dialed and waited … three rings … four … five. In the back of his mind, the droning tone melted into another one of his mental warning premonitions. It echoed through his head like a low energy electrical shock. “Something’s wrong,” he said, unaware that he was speaking aloud.

  “Maybe she’s in the shower.”

  “No,” he said dreamily.

  Lincoln looked at Lance just standing there with possibly the blankest expression he had ever seen on someone. “How do you know?”

  “Just know.”

  Lincoln pried the phone from Lance’s clenched hand. “Sometimes you really worry me, Cutter, you know that?”

  Lance’s head shuddered as the feeling passed like a breeze moving along a rain cloud that had been blocking the brightness of the sky. “We’ve got to get there fast.”

  “We will, but first I want to call for some back-up.”

  Lance grabbed the detective by the elbow. “There’s no time for that. You’ll have to call from the car!”

  Julie Chapman sat in the living room with her back rigid against the soft cushion of the recliner that Lance loved so much. If she relaxed, she probably would have been more comfortable, but the nylon ropes that bound her to the chair were cutting into the tender flesh of her upper arms.

  “Why don’t you stop struggling? Twisting around like that will only make you more tense.”

  Julie’s eyes burned at the intruder with a mixture of fear and hatred. She had thought that Lance had forgotten his key when she heard the doorbell over the hissing of the running water, and now she was a prisoner in her own home, her hair still wet from the shower. “I could scream, you know.”

  Jacob Cohen smiled serenely from the couch across the room. “But then I’d have to kill you … so … I don’t think you will.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “You didn’t think so when you were kind enough to invite me in.”

  Julie craned her neck to ease the tension of the rope that was chafing at her throat. “I just opened the door.”

  Cohen waved his gun nonchalantly in the air. “A mere formality … by the way, the name is Cohen … Jacob Cohen.”

  The name didn’t mean anything to Julie, but it was obvious who the weasely little man was. “What do you want from me?”

  Cohen leaned toward the coffee table and impatiently shifted the position of a small black box which he had brought with him. Julie studied his meticulous movements as he treated the box as though it contained something very valu­able to him. “Nothing … I don’t want anything from you.”

  Julie squirmed a bit. “Then why not let me go?” Cohen leaned back on the couch but didn’t take his eyes from the box containing the vile packed in ice from his freezer.

  “We will wait together.”

  “Wait?”

  His words were chosen very matter-of-factly. “For Mr. Cutter. We will wait together for Mr. Cutter.”

  Julie glanced over at the phone that was so near, yet so far away. “Lance isn’t coming here,” she said, thinking quickly. “He’s gone out of town for a day or two.”

  Cohen reached over the back of the couch and used two fingers to separate the vertical blinds which covered the large picture window overlooking the front yard. His eyes blinked slowly as he strained to see out into the darkness. “No…I’m afraid you’re mistaken … I think Mr. Cutter should be show­ing up here very soon.”

  If Julie didn’t know better, she would have thought that the frail little man was high on something. His gestures were slow and precise, with very little extra expended effort. And he kept toying with the box.

  “What’s in the box?”

  Cohen’s lips curled into a sinister grin. “A present for Mr. Cutter.”

  “For Lance?”

  Cohen frowned and looked out the window again. “Change the subject.”

  “Are you the man Lance has been looking for?”

  Cohen glared at Julie. “Don’t be so naive. Do all of your visitors tie you up like this? Of course I’m the one he wants.”

  “Stupid question.”

  “Very.”

  Julie wrestled with the ropes. “Excuse me, but I’m scared.”

  Cohen’s eyes sparkled. “I can sense that. I like the smell of your fear.”

  Julie gnawed nervously on her bottom lip. It was evident that this guy’s mind had boldly gone where no mind had gone before. She decided to keep him talking the way she had been trained at the academy to reassure a jumper standing on the ledge of a building. Only this time, she knew, the jumper wouldn’t’ t be talked down. “I don’t understand what you mean by “‘the smell of my fear.’”

  Cohen stood up to stretch. His bad leg was bothering him. There had to be a change coming in the weather. His bad leg always aggravated him when there was a foul weather brew­ing on the horizon. He limped slowly across the living room, pausing every few feet to examine a picture or knickknack adorning a wall or bookshelf. “All animals can smell fear,” he said, picking up a small Lladro figurine of a ballerina in midstretch. “It’s a survival instinct we’re all born with.”

  Julie’s eyes followed him across the room. “I’ve heard of sensing fear, but smelling it?”

  “All animals smell it … and I can smell it too.”

  Julie cleared her throat. She wasn’t sure if it was dry from nervousness or from out-right panic. “Can I ask you the million dollar question?”

  Cohen scratched the side of his face with the barrel of his revolver, and for the first time, Julie noticed the abnormal length of the man’s fingernails. They looked more like claws or talons, perfectly manicured and polished, gleaming like ten miniature daggers in the light coming from the chandelier hanging over the dining room table. “Yes,” he hissed, never turning to look at her.

  “Why … why are you doing this?”

  Suddenly, Cohen’s head darted from side to side … cat­like. “What was that?’

  Julie cocked her head. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Cohen raced across the room, jumped into a crouching position on the sofa and peered out through the blinds. Still nothing. “This is not good.”

  The last thing Julie wanted was for this guy to be spooked while holding a gun and who knows what in the black box. “Is there someone out there?” she asked calmly, hoping her tone would pacify him.

  Cohen’s eyes flashed anxiously across the front lawn. Even in the darkness he could see the dark patch of burnt grass where he had bungled his mission earlier in the evening. “Is that man all right?” he asked, as though he really cared. “The television report never really said anything about his condi­tion.”

  While his back was to her, Julie worked some more on the ropes. “Which man?”

  “The television said he was a retired weatherman.”

  “Ah, you mean Harry Kaplan.”

  “Yes, Mr. Kaplan. Will he recover?”

  “So the ferret wasn’t meant for him?”

  “Of course not. If Mr. Cutter had found the ferret, I wouldn’t be here now.”

  Julie’s memory flashed back to the hideous events of the afternoon and to Harry Kaplan’s last words before uncon­sciousness enveloped him. “Cone,” she said under her breath.

  Jacob spun around. “What did you say?”

  The pieces were falling into place for Julie. “Had you ever met Harry Kaplan before?”

  “Yes.”

  “A
nd you introduced yourself?”

  “Earlier in the day, he came up to the van and I showed him my identification card ….” Now it was Jacob Cohen’s turn to bask in the light of revelation. How could he have been so careless? It was the old man who had identified him. By now, the police had probably discovered … His thoughts suddenly turned to his apartment. The apartment … the lair he had built for himself. He was slowly beginning to understand he’d never be able to return to it. Everything he had worked for … everything had ever hoped to accomplish … had evaporated like smoke with the woman’s utterance of that one little word … Cone. “This is not good at all,” he mumbled to himself.

  Julie could sense that Cohen was losing it. She had to get him back on an even keel before he did something stupid. “Everything will be alright,” she said in an attempt to soothe him. “Let’s just talk. Talking to someone always helps me when I’ve got a problem. Maybe between the two of us, we can work this all out.”

  Jacob took a deep breath as his once confident shoulders sagged. “There’s nothing to talk about anymore.”

  Julie stopped trying to wriggle out of the ropes whenever Cohen turned to face her. “There’s always something to talk about.”

  “Not anymore … it’s all over, I’m afraid.” The tone of a man who had nothing to lose. She had heard it twice before in her short career … both times ending in suicide. “Come on, Jacob, untie me and let’s talk. If you explain to me why you’ve done these things, well then … maybe I can talk to the authori­ties into getting you some help.”

  Cohen set the revolver down on the coffee table next to the black box. It was the first good sign she had seen all night. “I only did it to repay the debt,” he said, hanging his head regretfully.

  “To repay what debt?” Keep him talking.

  “An old debt.”

  “To whom?” He let him become lost in his memories. “He saved my life.”

  “Who did?” This is working … keep it going.

  “I would have starved … died without him.”

  “A friend? Who?” Don’t force it, Julie … you’re not a psychoanalyst, for Pete’s sake!

  Cohen curled up onto the couch as though the room was suddenly getting smaller and he was pressed for space. “At first it made me sick.”

  “Why did it make you sick?”

  Jacob’s voice grew thinner … almost childlike. “I woke up the next morning and there were bugs and flies all over him. I don’t know where they came from.”

  Julie wasn’t sure that she wanted this to go on.

  “My father had split his mouth open like a pistachio shell, and it just flapped around. I tried to close his snout, but his jaws would just fall open again and again.”

  “Are we talking about a pet of yours?”

  “My dog.”

  “Why did your father kill him?”

  “He tried to help me.”

  “Help you from who … your father?”

  Jacob sniffled and wiped a tear that had trickled down his cheek. “Yes…my father.”

  “Was your father hurting you at the time?”

  Jacob rubbed his leg. “He broke it … slammed the door on it.”

  Julie quickly realized that she had jumped into the deep end of the pool without swimming lessons. This poor man was an emotional junkyard. She’d never be able to grasp the full ramifications of Cohen’s dysfunctional childhood by this simple bantering. He needed help … serious help. “This hap­pened at home?”

  Jacob was staring off into the past. “In the shed.”

  “The shed?”

  “In the garage.”

  “Your father had a shed in the garage? I don’t understand.”

  “For me.”

  Julie was drawing a mental diagram of the private hell that had been built especially for the youngster. “Your father locked you away in this shed?”

  Jacob trembled and nodded.

  “For how long?”

  Jacob sniffled again. “He never came back.”

  Julie tried not to wince, but it was impossible. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “Your mother?”

  Jacob’s chest heaved in and out. “Never.”

  “So how long were you locked up?”

  Jacob rubbed his forehead. He was getting a headache. Too many bad memories … too many nightmares. “They said four or five days…” he said, cupping his hands over his mouth, “but I think it was longer.”

  Julie leaned forward as far as her restraints would allow her. “So you were in the shed with a broken leg and no food or water for almost a week?”

  “I had food.”

  Julie’s eyes opened wide as the grisly realization hit her. “You … ate your dog.”

  Jacob looked over at her, his eyes glazed-over and as empty as two dinner plates an hour before supper. “He saved my life.”

  Julie nodded slowly with comprehension. “And you’ve been repaying the debt.”

  “I speak for those who can’t. They’re in my blood. They’re in my heart.”

  “Explain what you mean by that.”

  “These people would have indifferently put their pets to death without a second thought. I only used whatever means I had at my disposal to even the score. Do you read poetry?”

  Julie looked a bit perplexed at the sudden change of topic. “Not really.”

  Jacob smiled peacefully as he leaned back and recited his favorite lines. “Walt Whitman once wrote: ‘I think I could turn and live with animals they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long, They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that liveth thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.’”

  Julie nodded. “That’s very beautiful and very true.”

  Jacob smiled a smile full of yellowed and rotted teeth. “I wish I was an animal.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reasons Walt Whitman believed.”

  Julie could sense that Cohen’s demeanor had become more pliable. “Why don’t you untie me, Jacob, and I promise I’ll find a place for you where you can live as Whitman wrote, where ‘no one is respectable or unhappy.’”

  Jacob stood up. “You know of such a place?” Julie nodded that she did. “I’m so tired,” he lamented as he walked over to her.

  From out on the street, there came the inopportune sound of screeching tires. Julie knew she had to hurry. “Come on, Jacob,” she urged him as he stepped behind the chair to undo the knots. “That’s right … just loosen them a bit more.”

  The room exploded in a flood of blue and red swirling lights. Julie hadn’t seen this much color in one room since the early days of disco during the mid-seventies; all that was missing were the mirrored ball dangling from the ceiling, the flashing dance floor, and the thumping bass of a Bee Gee’s song.

  Jacob backed away from the ropes before he had com­pletely loosened them. “What’s going on here?” he whined, retreating for the gun on the coffee table.

  Julie struggled against the ropes, feeling them dig into her breasts, but all of her efforts were pointless. She was still bound to the heavy chair. “Put down the gun, Jacob. For God’s sake, put down the gun!”

  Standing beside the couch, Cohen used the barrel of the gun to push a few of the blinds out of the way so he could see outside. The front yard was blanketed by police cars and television trucks. He let the blinds fall back and closed his eyes. “There’s so many of them.”

  Julie continued to squirm and plead at the same time. “Jacob, please … put the gun down and nothing will happen to you, I swear it!”

  Jacob’s head was pounding like there was a marching band inside. He rubbed violently at
his throbbing temples, leaving the hair on the sides of his face sticking out at erratic angles. His mind was drowning in a sea of pandemonium. To give up now would mean punishment. His mind flashed back to a time when darkness was all he knew. The crawlspace … the shed … prison … darkness. The soft words echoed around his cluttered mind like a directing voice calling down an unfamil­iar corridor. “They do not lie in the dark and weep for their sins … They do not sweat and whine about their condition … Not one kneels for another…”

  As quickly as the disorientation had come, Jacob Cohen’s mind abruptly cleared like a fog lifting under the warmth of the sun’s radiance. His mind was made up. His course of action was set. He was at peace with himself. There was no turning back now. It was too late for penitence. He had decided that, if indeed his time had come, he would be sure to take Lance Cutter with him.

  “Where the hell did all of these reporters and cameras come from?” Lance asked, stepping out of the car and shielding his face from the dazzling lights.

  “They’re like leeches … they scan the police bands to listen in on our broadcasts,” Lincoln admitted, as he slammed the car door closed. “Sometimes they’re faster to the crime scenes then we are.”

  Lance opened the rear door and grabbed Rex by his leash. “I hate publicity.”

  Lincoln smiled. “A good-lookin’ white boy like you? They’ll eat you up!”

  Four back-up units, two television vans with microwave antennas protruding from their roofs, and a couple of report­ers from both the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel stood in waiting outside of the house. Each of the five patrol cars had their windshield-mounted floodlights fixed on the front of the house. The glare of the lights flashed off the large front window like five radiant stars lined up in a row.

  One of the back-up units that had arrived via a side street had spotted the abandoned van less than a block away. When the phone inside the house continued to go unanswered, it was to be assumed that Cohen was holding Julie Chapman hostage. That’s the way that the situation would be handled. Abe Lincoln was put in charge and he had made that decision.

  “What do you want me to do with Rex?” Lance asked, the dog straining at the nylon cord wrapped around his hand.