"Ooh, such language." Lacey was playing the tease again. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Or should I say, 'Did you?' Because you never will again."
She was wearing a medium-weight navy-blue jacket, and now she unzipped it to reveal a short-sleeve knit pullover top and jeans underneath. She draped the jacket over the back of a nearby chair, then reached up, crossed her arms, and pulled the top over her head.
At least she hadn't gone the Victoria's Secret route. Underneath the top, she wore a plain black sports bra. I thought it looked pretty damn good on her anyway, but that wasn't the point. The striptease wasn't part of the script we'd agreed on.
Calling a huddle right then might give our prisoner reason to suspect dissension among the ranks of his tormenters, and that would never do. So, trying to sound casual, I said to Lacey, "Um, what're you doing there?"
She was just kicking off her plain black shoes to reveal bare feet. "Doing?" She gave me an innocent look that I didn't believe for a microsecond. "Oh, you mean this?"
As she spoke, she'd been unbuckling her belt and undoing a button on the jeans. Now she yanked the zipper down and pushed the jeans past her slim hips. They fell, pooling around her ankles, and she kicked them free.
"Gosh, Stan, you don't think I want to get a mess all over my clothes, do you? Blood washes off skin much more easily than it does fabric."
Lacey bent, picked up the jeans, and placed them on the chair. She had on a pair of those gray women's undershorts that look like the boxers men wear, and are just about as sexy. But, still, on Lacey…
A couple of steps brought her over to the commando, who was staring at her in barely concealed panic, despite his big talk of a few moments ago.
She ran a hand slowly along his inner thigh, just brushing his shrunken penis. "Besides, having a naked woman do all the things that I'll be doing to him adds a touch of piquancy to the whole experience – don't you think?"
Then she reached behind her back for the bra fastener. "If you guys want to stay for the show, it's OK with me. But if you go upstairs, there's beer in the fridge and a working TV in the living room. In fact, you might want to turn it up extra loud."
"Good idea," I said, and turned away just as the fastener came undone and the bra slid down her arms. Karl followed me at once.
We pulled the big door shut behind us, and immediately from inside came the sound of metal sliding on wood. I remembered that there'd been a big bolt next to the knob, and it seemed that Lacey had just shot it, locking the door securely from the inside. I looked at Karl, and he stared back. This part wasn't in the script, either.
Karl and I made our way back around the side of the cottage to the front door and let ourselves in. There was beer in the fridge, all right, but it didn't appeal to either of us – for different reasons. Lacey was right about the TV, too. The old 19-inch portable had extendable rabbit ears that could pull in two of the local channels. We settled on one and watched stupid sitcoms. The reception wasn't all that good, but then I can't say that I paid real close attention. I kept waiting for screams to start issuing from the room underneath us, but all I could hear was the inane dialogue and canned laughter of the TV show. Finally, I asked Karl if his acute vampire hearing was picking up anything from below.
"No screaming, if that's what you mean," he said. "I can sort of make out Lacey's voice, and sometimes the guy's, but I can't catch what they're saying."
"Let's say we start hearing screams, thirty seconds from now. What do we do about it?"
Karl scratched his chin. "What do you want to do about it?"
"You could take that basement door down, couldn't you? Despite the fact that it's bolted shut?"
"Yeah, that wouldn't be much of a problem," he said. "Assuming that's what we decide to do."
"Why wouldn't we? The plan was to terrify him into talking, remember? We can't sit here and let her torture the guy, even if he is a fucking scumbag."
"The dude's not under arrest," Karl said. "And Lacey's not acting in her official capacity as a cop, either."
"He's in our custody, Karl. We brought him here, which makes him our responsibility. And torture, no matter what the motivation, is still a crime. We're supposed to uphold the law – we're the good guys, remember?"
Karl looked at me. "You never bent the law a little, Stan? Here and there, out of necessity?"
"Even if I did, what Lacey's doing down there is more than bending the fucking law – it's breaking it."
"Not yet, it's not," he said. "No screaming, remember?"
"What if she gagged him?" I asked.
"He'd still be making sounds through his nose, and I'd hear it."
I sat back and pretended to watch the TV. I was beginning to wish I'd never had the bright idea of trying to scare one of the Church's thugs into giving us information. I should have had Karl try Influence, even if he wasn't real good at it yet, and kept Lacey out of this entirely. Grief and rage had turned her into someone I didn't know anymore, and didn't like very much.
What if Karl heard muffled screams from below and didn't tell me? Or what if I heard them, too? In theory, I was Karl's superior and could order him to tear that basement door down. Except the operation we were on had no official sanction. And what was I going to do if Karl refused – shoot him?
I came up with answers for all those questions – trouble was, I kept changing them every couple of minutes. I was still trying to figure out what to do if it got bad down there when the front door opened and Lacey walked in.
She was fully dressed, I was glad to see, except for the outer jacket she'd been wearing. She was perspiring freely.
I guess she'd familiarized herself with the place during her first visit, because she went without hesitation to a door and opened it to reveal a sparsely stocked linen closet. She found a tattered blue bath towel, looped it around her neck, and began to dry her face and hair.
I was waiting for her to say something. When she didn't, the best I could come up with was, "Done for the night, Lacey?"
She stopped mopping her face and looked at me, her expression hard to read. "Yes, Stan, I'm all finished."
When she didn't elaborate, I said, quietly, "Did you kill him?"
"No, he's very much alive."
"Has he still got all his parts intact?"
She gave me a half smile. "If he didn't, I'm sure you would have heard the screams. Or if you couldn't, Karl would have." She looked at Karl. "Right?"
He just nodded.
"So what did you do to him?" I said.
"I broke his spirit," she said. "Through a combination of terror and sexual excitement, I put so much stress on his psyche that he couldn't stand it, and he broke."
Karl and I looked at each other.
"Sexual excitement?" he said to Lacey.
"Oh, yes," she said. "It can be an important component in an effective interrogation. That's why I was naked. The Gestapo used the technique sometimes, with prisoners they thought wouldn't respond to the more direct approach. Certain prisoners would be questioned by an attractive woman, who would slowly build sexual tension in them, but deny release until she got the information she wanted."
"How come you know all about the Gestapo?" I asked.
"I've been doing a lot of reading, Stan, ever since you told me I might have the chance to question one of these people. God bless the Internet."
"You studied torture, you mean."
"No, I studied methods of interrogation – which sometimes included torture, I admit. Some of the stuff I read grossed me out – or would have, under other circumstances. But I just viewed it as data that might prove useful."
"And was it?" I said. "Useful, I mean?"
"Oh, did I forget to mention that part?" The grin that blossomed on her face reminded me of the old Lacey, someone I hadn't been sure I'd ever see again.
"The next snuff video is scheduled to be filmed two nights from now, in a warehouse at 1634 Stansfield Avenue. Festivities are due to start at midnight, I
believe."
"Holy shit," Karl said.
I jumped up, ran over to Lacey and hugged her. "Lacey, that's fantastic! It's all we need to bust these motherfuckers, once and for all."
The grin was still in place when she said, "Well, it's good to know that my little efforts do not go unappreciated."
"They don't – believe me," I told her.
"Did you get anything else out of him?" Karl asked.
"Just a couple of things," Lacey said. "One is that they've been using Drac's List to identify likely victims."
"Damn, I knew there was something wrong about those people," I said, ignoring the look that Karl gave me.
"Once they have a profile that looks promising," Lacey said, "someone pretending to be a vampire member will contact him – or her – and start an online conversation. The so-called vampire will find out if he lives alone, has any close friends or relatives, all that stuff. Once they identify somebody who won't be missed for a while, the 'vampire' makes a date – except the poor guy, or woman – gets a lot worse than a vampire bite."
"You mentioned a couple of things," Karl said. "What's the other one?"
"Just that, to the surprise of nobody here in this room, the Church owns the People's Voice," Lacey said. "The connection is hidden by a series of holding companies, but the Church is pulling the strings."
"I asked the Feebies to have someone look into the paper and who was behind it. They never got back to me, which isn't exactly surprising." I looked at Lacey. "Congrats, kiddo – you did a hell of a job."
I ran a hand through my hair. "The only other pressing problem is what to do with Rambo down there until we raid the warehouse the night after tomorrow."
"We could just leave him there," Lacey said. The monster was back in her eyes now. "I can come back in a week or so and bury him."
"That's not exactly what I had in mind, Lace," I said. "There's got to be another way to keep him on ice until–"
"I think I've got an idea," Karl said, and we both turned toward him.
"The county sheriff's an old fishing buddy of my Uncle Ned," he said. "Name's Andy Probert. I used to do a lot of fishing up here myself, and I've known the guy for years. I bet if I ask him, he'll put our commando in a cell for a few days under a John Doe – which is maybe the only name we'll get out of the guy, anyway."
"Hold him on what charge?" I asked.
"Doesn't have to be a charge, does it?" Karl said. "We'll call it 'protective custody'. Sheriff Probert won't ask too many questions."
"That sounds like exactly what we need," I said. "You wanna give the sheriff a call and see if you can set it up?"
"Absolutely," Karl said.
Ten minutes later, the three of us went back to the basement. Our prisoner, who was still tied as before, started when we walked in, but seemed kind of relieved that Lacey wasn't alone this time.
He looked at us dully. His face was streaked with drying tears, and there was a half-absorbed puddle in the dirt underneath him. I assumed that Lacey had so terrified him at some point that he had pissed himself.
"All right," I told him. "In a minute, I'm going to start cutting you free from there. When I finish, I want you to get dressed. Understand?"
"Yeah."
"Once you're loose, you don't want to even think about going all Bruce Lee on me. If you do, my vampire partner over there will tear your throat out. He hasn't fed in a couple of nights, and he was telling me earlier that he thinks you look tasty."
Karl smiled, giving the guy a good look at his fangs. "Tasty," he said.
"Yeah, OK, sure," the commando muttered.
When the prisoner was cut down and dressed, Karl handcuffed his hands behind his back and led him out to Lacey's car. She was going to drive them to the Pike County jail, where the sheriff would be waiting to make sure that prisoner John Doe was processed the way we wanted. Guess Karl and I should have taken separate cars, after all – we hadn't thought far enough ahead. I wanted to get back to Scranton as soon as possible, to brief McGuire on what I'd learned tonight.
Lacey started to follow Karl and his prisoner out, but stopped and turned back to me.
"I wanted to thank you," she said, "for leaving before I was completely naked."
"It seemed… I dunno… wrong to stick around."
"I wouldn't have said anything if you and Karl had stayed, but I'm glad you didn't. So – thank you, Stan."
"You're welcome, Lacey." What else was I going to say?
After nearly getting murdered in the police parking lot a couple of times, Karl and I had bugged McGuire to see about getting better lights for the place. He'd impressed upon the chief the importance of what we wanted, and he, in turn, had gone to the mayor. To the surprise of practically everybody, the city council had approved the funds, and our parking lot behind the building was now lit up like a football field during a night game.
The downside of all that illumination is that it makes you a well-lit target for somebody looking at the parking area from outside.
That's why when a deep voice from across the street yelled, "Hey! Markowski!" I scuttled behind my car, dropped into a crouch, and drew my weapon. I heard a car door open, and peered through the chain-link fence that encloses the parking lot.
Ivan the ogre was slowly climbing out from behind the wheel of a big SUV. "Markowski," he called, "I got a goblin!" He made a summoning gesture. "Come on!"
I was torn. I needed to tell McGuire what I'd learned about the next snuff film – but he'd be in his office for another couple of hours. If Ivan had found a goblin willing to talk about who had sent the hit squad of greenies after me, then that was a goblin I badly wanted to meet.
I yelled over to Ivan, "I'll be right there!" Having him bring an unauthorized vehicle into our parking area would require all kinds of time-wasting paperwork. It was quicker for me to go out to him. I stood up and walked rapidly toward the gate.
Ivan was back behind the wheel and as I approached he said, "Get in back, Markowski."
There was a goblin in the front passenger seat. Like all of them, he was short, with matted green fur over black skin. In the close confines of the SUV, I noticed that he smelled like wet dog – a big, old wet dog with bad teeth. The goblin was half turned in his seat, looking back at me nervously.
"This Fred," Ivan rumbled. "Only goblin I could get to come here. Has no English, so I translate."
I looked at Ivan. "Fred?"
He shrugged those enormous shoulders. "Close enough."
"OK," I said. "Ask him if he knows about somebody going out to Goblinville to recruit a bunch of them willing to kill a cop."
Ivan frowned at me. "Goblinville? What's that?"
"I mean whatever they call the place where they live, out near the dump."
Ivan turned to his passenger and spoke in Goblin, which always sounds to me like a mixture of Chinese, Russian, and the sound of a cat fight.
After another nervous look at me, Fred turned to Ivan and answered.
"He say human come, a while ago–" Ivan began.
"Wait," I said. "How long is 'a while ago'?"
"Goblins not good with time," Ivan said. "Could mean a week, a month – who knows?"
"All right," I said. "Go on."
"He say human come, bring meth – but not much. Give to some goblins, promise more. Want goblins to kill human – cop."
"Did the human say why this cop needed to be killed?"
More Goblin talk followed. Then Ivan turned to me again.
"Human say cop bad for goblins. Say he kill goblin, year ago. No goblin remember year ago, but some want meth. Meth enough reason."
"Ask him what this human–"
Suddenly, Fred stiffened. I noticed he was staring past Ivan, out the driver's side window. He pointed out the window and started jabbering.
I turned and looked where he was pointing. In the police parking lot, Special Agents Thorwald and Greer were getting into what looked like a black Ford Explorer. Ivan had the windows of
the SUV closed, so the Feebies couldn't hear the goblin, fortunately.
"What's he so excited about?" I asked Ivan. "What's he saying?"
Ivan said, "He say that the human who come with meth, over there. The bitch."
"Bitch?"
"That what he say," Ivan said. "'That one, that one, the bitch'."
"Ask him if he's positive." I watched the Feebies back out of their parking space and drive away.
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