“Guy’s pretty brave,” Kendall said.
Parker looked around the back yard. “Not really. The fences are high and the garage blocks the nearest neighbor’s view.”
“Still,” Kendall countered.
“Yep. Bold may be the better word. And smart, I’ll bet.”
“How so?” Conch asked.
“No semen sample out here. I doubt we find any of his blood inside. We may get lucky with some hair samples, if she got a piece of him. Odds aren’t good that we’ll get prints on the door either, and I’m willing to bet the Clorox bottle is print free too.”
“That just shows he’s careful, at least on the back end, but not so smart,” Conch replied. “If he were so smart, this place wouldn’t be such a mess.”
Kendall joined in. “Can we even assume it’s the same guy? I mean, the liquor store gig was so clean it squeaked. This place is a mess.”
“Good point, Kendall,” Conch agreed.
“Could be a coincidence.”
“Never believe in coincidences,” Parker said aloud without realizing it.
Conch turned to him. “What’d you say?”
“My partner. He said never to believe in coincidences.”
A somber look came over Conch’s face. “I’ve lived by that one myself. For many years.”
“So?” Kendall asked. “If it was the same guy, why such different looking crime scenes?”
“He’s getting reckless,” Conch answered.
Parker disagreed but said nothing until Conch seemed to see something in his face and called him out. “Detective?”
Hesitating a bit, Parker finally replied, “I think he did this on purpose. I think he wanted us to see this. The whole thing, maybe save with what happened with the Clorox bottle. That’s all that he really tried to cover up. Everything else? He just didn’t give a damn about.”
Kendall shook his head. “Great.”
“Maybe,” Conch said with a nod. And then, looking again at Parker, he said, “But it still doesn’t tell us one thing: why this girl?”
“What do you mean?” Parker asked.
“What’re the odds that one of the girls you and your partner interviewed ends up being his next target?”
Parker looked at the ground. “I guess we can’t call that a coincidence either, can we?”
Conch grunted. “No, Detective, we can’t.”
CHAPTER 19
THE FIRST THING KYLE felt was someone’s hand on his forehead. Then fingers through his hair. His eyes felt heavy, distant, apart from his body, as if they would never again open by any command of his brain.
Then there came a series of smells; lavender and peppermint wafted across his face and into his nose, awakening him, slowly and mercifully.
Everything hurt. He was conscious mostly of pain in those areas he could remember being stung, but the pain was dull and fading, save for the sting on the back of his neck, which was throbbing relentlessly.
“Sit. Sit up,” a female voice said softly but firmly. He heard her but he wasn’t sure she was real.
Kyle was trying to process where he was and what had happened, but it was all coming to him in fits and starts. Even his spatial awareness seemed off. He tried reaching out his right arm but only his hand moved. Again he sent the command, and again his arm wouldn’t listen.
“Try again, horo-sha,” she said.
Unable to get his right arm to listen, he tried his left, with somewhat better results. It swung off his chest and down to the ground. He felt her hands, small but strong, gripping him under one armpit, pulling him forwards and up into a seated position. Sensation returned into his lower back and legs, as if the circulation to them had been cut off for some time. He groaned.
Again he smelled the lavender and peppermint, but this time he felt its delivery tool: a soft cloth that was pressed against his upper lip and beneath his nose. The herbs seemed to shake at his brain, forcing it out of its hibernation.
“You try. Try sit. Hold,” she said, her voice right on the other side of his eyelids, which were still refusing to open.
Nodding, he felt her fold his deadened right arm across his lap, then she raised his left hand to his face and pressed the scented cloth into it so he could keep it pressed against his nose.
“Think now. Happy thoughts. Important. Good memories take place bad memories, okay?”
Again he nodded. Last time he remembered, he was in a very dangerous place. But this woman seemed to be helping him. But what if he was wrong? What if she was trying to hurt him somehow? In his condition, he realized he had little choice but to go along.
He made himself concentrate, moving his thoughts away from the pain in his body and to a place deep within. Happy thoughts? How was such a thing even possible now?
Janie came to his mind almost immediately. A moment when she was six. A “Daddy Day” when the two of them had hung out together at the park and then gone to the frozen yogurt shop in town, where they’d sat with cups filled a mile high with far more candy than yogurt and played Connect Four at one of the store’s game tables.
Janie didn’t like to lose. She sat opposite him, down 2–0, resolute in her attempt to beat him, her teeth trapping her tongue between her lips, her little brown eyes squinting with such concentration, as if the fate of the world rested on the placement of her next checker. It was a warm, bright day, with light shining through the store’s floor-to-ceiling windows and catching in Janie’s soft brown hair, lightening a few strands that had escaped across her cheeks.
Such will, he thought, such determination.
They traded a few more moves before she said it. “It doesn’t matter, Daddy, if I win or lose, you know.” It wasn’t a question.
Kyle was surprised. “Oh? Really? And why is that?”
“Because if you beat me again?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll just stop talking to you for the rest of the day.”
He chuckled at her threat. But she looked at him firmly, her hand dancing to the left of the board to drop a checker and create a line three deep, running top to bottom. “I mean it. Jus-so-ya-know.”
“Hmm. Okay. Fine.” Kyle shrugged, blocking the move.
Then she seemed to change her mind. “It’s okay, Dad. I won’t stop talking to you.”
“Oh? Good. Because that would make me very sad,” Kyle said, sticking out his lower lip.
“Not nearly as sad as you’re going to be now.”
With that, she dropped a checker in a nearby slot to make a diagonal Connect Four, looking Kyle in the eye as a smile blossomed on her face.
His daughter, from the day of her birth, had always been a wind at his back. Everything about her said “hope.” They laughed together before he praised her for her victory, while on the inside the happiness spread in him like a warm blanket. That look in her eye. That smile when she won. They told Kyle something else about his little girl: someday she would be just fine at taking care of herself.
The woman’s peppermint-clouded voice returned in his ear. “Good. Keep happy thoughts. Better. Sores going.”
Kyle swam around in his mind for a moment, clutching at memories like water lilies, some floating away at his grasp, others sinking, before one held firm: Tamara’s twenty-fifth birthday, at a Dodger game. Newly married, it was just the two of them, young in their careers, kids still just ideas out there on the horizon.
They were in his company’s seats, right there along the third base line, on their second beers and sharing a huge bag of peanuts. She was wearing a blue Dodger t-shirt that fitted her snugly and a white pair of shorts, her hair just the way he loved it: in a ponytail, strung through the back of the Dodger baseball cap she was wearing. When the pop-up fly ball happened, it was from a late swing by one of the players on the Houston Astros, and it sent the ball up and over the stands.
He was shocked when it came directly down their way and, looking to play the hero, the baseball glove he’d brought for just this purpose at the r
eady, Kyle got into position.
It was all for naught. Tamara had brought a glove too, and though Kyle had the height advantage, she had the angle. When she snagged the ball and let loose an excited squeal, the people in the section around them had cheered for her and she’d jumped excitedly into his arms.
He would never forget the feeling of love for her that he had, right there, in the stands, the sound of the crowd all around them, the smell of freshly cut grass from the baseball field in mid-summer, spilled beer at their feet and Tamara wrapped tightly in his arms.
“Good, horo-sha. Okay. Open eyes,” the woman said louder this time.
His eyelids fought against him for a moment, but then Kyle was able to get them to crack and to get his eyelashes to blink against that awful, yellow-orange light of hell, which pounded with brightness at his eyeballs.
Everything was blurry. He saw lazy lines of what he imagined were those sand dunes in the distance, a small black pile of something in the foreground, which he recalled were the hornets, all dead now.
Yes. That’s right. They attacked me and… “They killed me,” he croaked.
The form of a woman, kneeling next to him to his left, came into view. She shook her head, and putting both her hands on his cheeks, she turned his face towards hers.
“Look now. Focus. At me.”
Her fingers were slender, with short nails that nestled softly into his cheeks.
Looking at her made him feel safe somehow. So he concentrated his vision.
When she finally came into focus he saw instantly that she had green almond-shaped eyes that rested beneath thin eyebrows that were jet-black, like her hair, which was long and straight, parted in the middle and pulled back, a few wisps of shiny bangs hanging firmly over her forehead.
She had a tattoo on her shoulder, multi-colored, greens with blues that created a water effect, with swaths of orange forming two coy moving in opposite directions around a white coy with black and red spots. The tattoo spilled halfway down her arm to her bicep and up the side of her neck. Across her arms were leather bands, and over her other shoulder he saw a leather quiver, marked with symbols and loaded with arrows.
“You… see… now?” she asked, her voice thick with concern.
Kyle’s eyelids were trying to slam shut again.
She slapped him on the cheek. “No, horo-sha! You must not sleep anymore. Danger here.”
He coughed and forced himself to sit up further. Taking another long, deep breath from the peppermint-infused cloth, he waited as the cobwebs cleared further and opened his eyes again.
He noticed now that she was wearing leather armor from the waist up, and she wore small boots made of leather as well. Her body was taut and muscular, the lines from her quadriceps in her thighs deep and firm. One of her knees was cut and a deep scar ran down the length of one of her thighs.
Next to her, standing up from the sand, was what at first looked like a stick. But his depth perception was still off, and when he finally focused completely on it, he saw that it was no stick at all. It was a sword. A katana. He knew the type well. Since high school he had been fascinated by Eastern societies and Japanese culture in particular.
There was no mistaking what a katana sword meant, and taking in the full image of the woman before him and adding it to the tanto blade that was stuck firmly in her belt, Kyle knew what she was immediately.
A samurai.
THE LITTLE WAITRESS HAD SPUNK.
“What are you going to do with us?” she spat through the hair that had fallen over her face.
The Bread Man said nothing, instead maintaining his focus on the thick band of leather in his hand. It was getting a bit worn, but it would do for now. He was hoping that the waitress wouldn’t be the last of his pets, but The Other never made any promises, and The Bread Man lived his life with no expectations.
“Answer me!” she screamed with rage. That was rare. Usually the screaming started with desperation or a little defiance. But from the moment she’d awoken, tied to the far wall, she’d been enraged. Actually, that wasn’t true. She’d just been mad then. It wasn’t until she saw Pretty Ashley chained by her ankles and wrists to the wall near her that she’d become enraged.
That was fear for you; it manifested itself in a lot of ways.
“Hey, asshole! I said—” she began again, so he slapped her hard with the band of leather across the left side of her head and face. Spittle flung from her mouth, her lips contorting up towards her nose from the blow. She tried to snap her head back around but she was blinking, hard, and her eyes betrayed her.
Like he’d just been thinking: fear had many masks. The waitress had tried to blow through it with bravado and toughness, but now, the toughness was bleeding away, just like the blood trickling down the cut on her forehead from her bedroom mirror earlier that night, which he’d just reopened.
He went to hit her again and she yelped as Pretty Ashley simultaneously cried out, “No!”
The Bread Man turned to her. “How dare you,” he said. “She wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. This is all your fault, you stupid bitch.”
The room grew quiet as the two girls looked at each other for a moment, the truth of his statement balanced between them, and then Pretty Ashley lowered her eyes to the floor.
“Puh-puh-please,” the waitress murmured. He smiled. So now the begging would begin. This was always the worst part. It was so annoying. He thought of hitting her again to stop it from starting, but he just couldn’t.
There was something about the waitress that The Bread Man really liked.
He supposed it was her tattoos: the skull on her left shoulder, flames shooting out of its mouth and down her biceps to her forearm. On her other shoulder was another tattoo, partially covered by the baby-blue robe he’d draped over her before tying her to the wall, of a bare tree shaped like a cross that made his stomach turn. On one hip she had a small mermaid with a dolphin, and there was a Tweety Bird just beneath where the front of her panty line would’ve been, if she were wearing any.
But the skull was different; it turned him on. It meant she liked death and dark things, and he meant to give her both.
“Just let us go, we won’t tell anyone,” the waitress continued.
“Why? Why would I ever want to let you go?” he asked, reaching out to touch one of her firm breasts. She flinched at his touch but there was no ruining the mirage of her arousal; the garage was cold so her nipples grew hard. He knew it wasn’t sincere but he didn’t care: nothing any woman ever did was sincere. Especially sex.
“Why are you doing this?” Pretty Ashley chimed in, defeat in her voice. It was the question she loved to ask most, as if any answer he could ever give her would be good enough.
The Bread Man just chuckled in reply and shook his head. Pretty Ashley was draped now in a baby-blue robe too. They all had been, at one point or another. Terry cloth. Just like his mother used to wear, almost all the time—when they were baking cookies together or while his father was beating them. It didn’t matter. That was baby blue for ya. Not much of a color. No real statement. It was the color of love and defeat, all rolled up into one.
“You’re a sick fuck,” the waitress said, defiance returning to her face. “A lonely, sick fuck.”
The Bread Man was stunned. Oh. This one was special. Special indeed. Not only was she tough but…
“You’re honest,” he said to her.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes burning like that skull on her shoulder, seemingly studying him. She hadn’t cried once yet. The rest always cried, straight away, some right when they came to, others shortly thereafter once they took stock of their situation and realized, once and for all, that they weren’t going anywhere.
He walked up to the waitress, thinking of burying his face in her hair, before she sneered at him like a cornered dog, and he thought the better of it. “I like you,” he said.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you!”
“Don’t!” Pretty Ash
ley yelled to her, and then she said the word again, except this time in a squeak. “Don’t.”
The waitress vigorously pulled against the chains that bound her, her body thrashing about in unnatural gyrations as if she were having a seizure. Panic. He let her get it out of her system. The sooner she figured out that she was in this for good, the better it would be for everyone.
Meanwhile, he turned his attention back to the band of leather in his hand, chaffed in some areas, marked with dark lines throughout the middle; it had a solid brass ring at the end that was in his hand. He spun it around and walked over to the workbench, where he found the metal bracket that he used to affix the band to the bench. Then he pulled it taut. It held. Good.
“Can I ask you something?” The Bread Man said to the waitress.
She stopped thrashing and looked at him warily. Her lips were tight, but after a few moments, she finally asked, “What?”
“What’s your name?”
She stared at him with surprise for a second before answering. “Why? Why would I ever tell you my name?”
The Bread Man raised his eyebrows with disappointment. “There’s no need to be rude.”
Her face became incredulous. “Are you crazy?”
“Your name is Jasmine,” he said, ignoring her question. He hated the word she’d just used to describe him. If she said it to him again he would strangle her, not enough to kill her, just enough until her eyes began to go bloodshot and she lost consciousness for a bit.
She said nothing. Her face was like a magic mirror. Every new thing he said and it would change into something else. Now? Now it was shock.
“Your name is Jasmine and you work at the Denny’s on Long Bow Road.”
She squinted, hard, and he watched her eyes as she combed through the files in her mind. He wasn’t wearing his hat or his uniform, and the lighting in the garage was bad, so it took her a little longer than expected until finally it registered. “You’re the bread guy. The poached egg guy. Runny. With black coffee.”
He smiled. “I’m flattered that you remember.”
She sneered again. “Fuck you. I only remember because runny poached eggs are disgusting.”
A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2) Page 19