Twist

by John Lutz

  “Listen, Helen, I’ve been in danger plenty of times. You don’t reach the level I have in the news business without risking your hide. I have my own security, and even if they’re not around, I know how to handle myself.”

  “We know that,” Helen said. “What we want to know is whether you’ll cooperate if we ask for your help. You’re in a unique position to influence the killer.”

  “Of course I’ll help to catch a serial killer.”

  “Incidentally,” Helen said, “was the killer’s mention of his ‘Freedom to Kill’ message something you’d heard anywhere before?”

  “No, that was the first I heard of it, during our on-air interview. He sprang it on me just like he sprang it on you guys.”

  “He’ll probably call again. When he does, put him on. He’ll try to forge a bond with you. And because of your efforts to gain his trust, you might feel that helping us to apprehend him is a form of betrayal. It would be only human.”

  “Human? What the hell is that? I’ve seen the world without its makeup, Helen.”

  “Then you know the face of betrayal can be pretty ugly. You might not want it to be yours.”

  Minnie smiled like an ingénue and said, “Helen, I’m not gonna form any bond of friendship with a serial killer. I’ll throw him under the bus and personally back over him. We don’t have enough toes and fingers between us to count all the people I’ve betrayed in order to get a story.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Helen said dryly.

  “It should be. I’m glad you came by the studio, because we need to understand each other. The killer’s trying to use me, and I’m using him. That’s what’s happening here, and nothing more. I’m on the side of God and sunshine and the law.”

  Helen nodded and stood up. “That’s what we had to make sure of, Minnie.”

  “Be sure.”

  “These guys get by in the world by becoming charmers. He’ll try to make you fall for him.”

  “He can believe I’ve been charmed, if he likes. If he keeps talking. That’s my method, Helen. Keep them talking until the mouth runs faster than the brain. That’s when the truth spills out. Oops! You can see it in their eyes. ‘I’ve said too much.’ That’s a sweet moment.”

  “You and I,” Helen said, “we’re pretty much in the same business.” She stood up.

  “No need to run,” Minnie said, looking up at her. “Hang around. Do some more Q and A.”

  “No,” Helen said. “I’m afraid I might say too much.”

  The wasps were stinging him, again and again. They were getting larger, too. Now they were as large as flying roaches.

  He peeked out between the boards of the outhouse, rattled the door, screamed for help. The heat and the stench were overwhelming. The stench. The pain. He banged on the rough wooden door. Saw nothing outside but darkness. The wasps were even larger, brushing against his legs, crawling along the back of his neck. Flying hard into him.

  God! If only he could fly out of here!

  He crushed his face against the splintered door, peering through the crack, watching for her, watching for her . . .

  She must come soon, with her lamp.

  The Lady Liberty Killer woke listening to the trailing noise of his own frightened gasp.

  Awareness and relief rushed in.

  He was safe in his sweat-soaked bed.

  Not there! Not then!

  Somewhere else!

  Thank God!

  He opened his eyes and stared around at a darkness that wasn’t complete. He could see hulking, shadowed forms of furniture, make out a rectangle of moonlight marking the edges of a window shade. A larger, darker rectangle that was the door to the hall, bathroom, and living room.

  Familiar objects.

  He was in his apartment. Not in Missouri. In New York. In the now and not the then. He mentally reached out and felt cool iron bars, rough concrete and brick, a lock, a knob.

  Another door. A small window in it, with iron bars.

  This one he wanted to open, not to get out, but to get in. He gripped the bars and tried without success to rattle them. He screamed and begged to be let in.

  He wanted in!

  He wanted in!

  He woke up all the way and lay breathing hard, staring at a pale ceiling that was a tilting plane miles above him.

  A dream within a dream.

  Then how can I know I’m awake?

  The thought filled him with dread and he hurriedly reached into the darkness and found the bedside lamp, its switch.

  With a familiar click, the light came on, a hundred watts to chase away the shadows and demons of his dreams.

  Outside, the city stirred restlessly in the night. Distant car horns blared. A siren like the wail of something woeful sounded far away in the dark. There was a muffled shout, a muted clang of metal. A bus or truck roared and rumbled down in the street.

  Still, with every breath, with every heartbeat—fully awake and in the actual and coherent world—he wanted in.

  34

  Chillicothe, six weeks earlier

  There was a trusty who trimmed prisoners’ fingernails and toenails, while the prisoners’ hands were cuffed behind them, but Mildred Gant never availed herself of those services. She used her teeth to keep her nails chewed down to the quick, and she secretly saved the trimmings.

  Late at night, when her cellmate Isabella was asleep in the top bunk, Mildred would lie awake in the bottom and let one hand dangle down to the concrete floor. Doing the fine work by feel, she would gather the nail trimmings and sharpen them on the rough concrete surface. She saved the sharp trimmings in a folded sheet of paper, which she kept rolled up and tucked in a crack where the plumbing ran into the wall behind the toilet bowl.

  Mildred’s cellmate Izzy, as the other women in detention called Isabella, was not a cooperative person. She didn’t share. In fact, she made everything, including the top bunk, her own. She chose to dominate.

  She was ten years younger than Mildred and trimmer and more solid, with muscle developed in the prison gymnasium and on the exercise yard. In fact, she did push-ups in the cell, while Mildred dutifully watched and counted. Forty, fifty push-ups. Sometimes one-handed push-ups. Impressive. Though her forearms and shoulders were bulky, she still appeared feminine, mainly because of her long auburn hair. Her hair cascaded in waves and ringlets around her ears, then fell almost straight to the small of her back. Izzy’s hair was obviously her pride.

  Mildred fantasized about getting on top of Izzy and stuffing handfuls of her hair into her mouth with one hand while she held Izzy’s nose with the other, so the dumb-ass woman would inhale and choke to death on her own hair. She would no doubt give Mildred quite a ride before she succumbed.

  Sometimes Mildred would fall asleep thinking about that, and not the dangerous side of Izzy.

  Izzy was inside the walls for giving her third husband a severe beating that began after he’d lost consciousness. He was completely paralyzed now, as well as divorced. Izzy’s lawyer had enough pull to have her charge reduced from attempted murder to intent to do great bodily harm. She still had five more years to serve of a twelve-year sentence.

  Nobody messed with Izzy. Least of all Izzy’s cellmates, who tended to come and go.

  Some evenings, for amusement, Izzy would tell Mildred how her husband used to beat her. Then she would show Mildred how she’d turned the tables on her assailant. And she would beat Mildred. The trick was to inflict pain without leaving incriminating bruises. That called for a lot of internal injury. If the assailant knew how, such a beating could be administered without leaving much of a trace.

  While she was inflicting pain on Mildred, Izzy would always ask the same question: “Where’s the money?”

  Mildred’s answer was more or less always the same. “Ain’t no money.”

  The conversation that developed would also be much the same:

  Izzy: “Said on the news it was paid out.”

  Mildred: “Said wrong.”

/>   Izzy: “News don’t lie.”

  Mildred: “Neither do I.”

  Izzy: “That hurt?”

  Mildred: “Some.”

  Izzy: “I can make it hurt more.”

  Mildred: “Go ahead and have your fun.”

  And Izzy would.

  When she was finished with Mildred, for the time being, she would stand in front of a small all-steel mirror and use a brush with rubber bristles to brush her long hair. The hair made a soft crackling sound with every stroke.

  Mildred knew it was only a matter of time before she’d be forced to brush Izzy’s hair. She wouldn’t endure that.

  Like Izzy’s former cellmates, Mildred had taken to walking bent forward at the waist, so as not to awaken the pain.

  Prison staff and administration knew of the situation but did nothing to stop it. Compared to some of the other problems they had to cope with—drugs, gang affiliations and wars, suicides, shower homicides—Mildred getting her ass whipped from time to time was nothing to them.

  So Mildred suffered, and Mildred planned.

  Thursday, supper was often a pathetic mix of cut vegetables, meat chunks of dubious origin, and pieces of potato. All half submerged in greasy brown gravy. The prison called it stew.

  Mildred thought of it as opportunity.

  She chose Thursday at dinner to slip a handful of razor-sharp finger and toenail clippings into Izzy’s food, which Mildred was as usual made to carry to their customary places at one of the long tables. The cell block guards not only didn’t mind Izzy bullying Mildred, they approved of it. They figured that without Izzy, Mildred would be hell and a handful. Though nothing was ever expressed in words, Izzy received extra candy bars and privileges in exchange for making sure Mildred stayed manageable.

  Mildred had soon learned there was a hierarchy in prison. The guards pretty much left it alone to work. Thanks in part to Izzy, Mildred was at the bottom of the pecking order. Too bad for Mildred.

  And Izzy.

  A few hours before dawn, Izzy awoke with a horrendous stomach ache. Mildred could hear her groaning in the bunk above. Then Izzy began to cough and gag.

  Mildred got up to take a look at her cellmate in the dim light. She could see that Izzy had spit up some blood and was curled in on herself with pain. The fetal position. That pleased Mildred.

  The sharpened nail trimmings had done their work before becoming softened by swallowed food and stomach acid. If left alone, Izzy might bleed to death internally. But only might. Mildred had seen a dog poisoned this way when two fellas made a bet, and it had survived. Never barked much thereafter, though.

  Izzy’s groaning and gagging wasn’t a problem. If any of the guards heard it, they would assume they were listening to Mildred suffering at the hands of Izzy, and stay away.

  When Izzy had been administering her beatings to Mildred, Mildred had been learning. She knotted blankets around Izzy’s legs and arms, leaving her midsection bare. Then, using the tips of her stiffened fingers, she drove the wedge of flesh, bone, and fingertips deep into Izzy’s innards, shoving with a scooping motion, just beneath the rib cage and up. Over and over again.

  Izzy couldn’t catch her breath at first, and was angry as hell. She began to scream, and she knew she had to be plenty loud and identify herself to get any results. Mildred was ready for that. She forced one of her socks, full of swept-up dirt, into Izzy’s gaping mouth. No sound emerged other than a muffled squawk.

  That was it for Izzy’s screaming.

  “You comfortable, bitch?” Mildred asked.

  Izzy shook her head violently, making her long hair fly in all directions.

  Mildred laughed, but softly, so no one in the dim cell block would hear. It remained quiet out there beyond the barred door. A lot of the women were snoring, which also helped to cover up any noise Izzy might make.

  There was a lot of time left before daylight. Mildred set about going to work in earnest, enjoying herself.

  Letting Izzy almost die.

  Prison doctors couldn’t make a precise diagnosis of Izzy’s problem. There was considerable internal bleeding. It was as if she’d suffered serious damage, but X-rays showed no significant injuries except for possibly severe bruising.

  How this had occurred was impossible to know. No one, including Izzy’s cellmate, Mildred, had any idea as to how this had happened. Mildred said Izzy had been experiencing dizzy spells lately, and suggested that she might have had a bad fall.

  Izzy was hospitalized for over a week. She wasn’t the same after she returned, whiling away her time in the cell with Mildred.

  Who slept in the top bunk.

  35

  New York City, the present

  Eva lay spread-eagle on her back on her bed, gazing up at the ceiling light fixture. It was an old one, with a bowl-shaped frosted glass cover. It was also switched off. The light in the room was from the bedside lamp and the smaller lamps on Eva’s dresser.

  She knew who Brad was, what he was, and through her terror she wished she could ask him a thousand questions.

  She could ask none. She could barely make a sound through the thick tape plastered over her mouth.

  She listened to herself breathing hard and rhythmically, fearfully, through her nose. Oddly enough, her terror was at a distance. That was because she simply couldn’t believe this was happening to her. She had picked up a serial killer in a bar, liked him, had been looking forward to good sex with him. Then, no doubt because he’d put something in her drink, she’d passed out.

  And here she was.

  Good God! Here she was!

  Her body became rigid and momentarily levitated slightly off the mattress as she was assailed by a wave of panic. Her heart battled to escape her chest.

  Then a curious calm came over her. Like something small caught in the jaws of a tiger, she accepted her fate and wanted her ordeal to be over.

  That didn’t seem to be Brad’s idea. She craned her neck and watched as he placed a Statue of Liberty, obviously plastic and no more than six or seven inches tall, on the dresser, facing Eva. As if he wanted the thing to have a clear view of what he was going to do.

  What is he going to do?

  Her mind spun away from what she’d heard and seen on TV and radio news, read about in the papers.

  Brad came into clearer view, naked except for white rubber gloves and baggy shoe covers of the sort nurses and surgeons wore in operating rooms. Indeed, he went to the switch and turned on the overhead fixture, as if to illuminate a surgical procedure.

  Eva knew which procedure.

  He set his briefcase on the floor and she watched him bend over it, then straighten up. He was smiling, holding something.

  Knife!

  Serrated. Sharply pointed.

  She wet the bed. This was when they always lost control of themselves, when they first saw the knife.

  He leaned over her and traced a wide C on her stomach with his gloved fingertip.

  “Just about there,” he said, meeting her horrified gaze as if trying to find something in her bulging eyes.

  Her body was vibrating now with raw fear that took over every part of her body and mind.

  The knife was all she could see. She couldn’t look away from it.

  The knife!

  And he held it up where she had a good view of it. He wanted her to see. To know. She wanted to deny him that, but she couldn’t look away.

  She heard herself making a muffled, whimpering sound behind the tape. He touched the tape lightly, then pressed it to make sure it was adequately tight. They both knew she was about to scream.

  He steadied himself, bending over her, and she watched his shoulders move and felt the cold blade and heard a ripping sound and knew what it was.

  And she did scream. She heard only a pathetic humming, like that of a bee sealed in a jar.

  Pain washed over her. She raised her head and looked.

  She shouldn’t have.

  She hadn’t realized she’d passed ou
t, but he was holding something beneath her nose, waving it back and forth in protracted arcs, making her smell it. She coughed, almost strangling on her phlegm.

  Unable not to, she looked down again.

  This isn’t happening to me!

  Her stomach was laid open, and he was slowly and systematically removing things. The pain bored in like a separate rapacious creature with teeth and claws. She tasted blood, and was afraid she might drown in it behind the impenetrable wall of tape. She thrashed her head back and forth, managed to breathe, and willed herself to lose consciousness again. When finally she did drift away from the horror of reality, he brought her back again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Until she no longer came back.

  Another crime scene. Another FREEDOM TO KILL message in blood. Another tortured and destroyed woman. If anything, the killer was becoming more vicious and expert in his torture technique. Nift didn’t hesitate to point that out.

  Quinn wondered for the first time if he’d be able to go on seeing and thinking about the carnage. Dreaming about it.

  There really wasn’t any choice.

  Not if he wanted to continue living with himself.

  36

  All Quinn knew about Harlan Wilcoxen at first was that he’d phoned and said he’d only be in New York for a few days, staying at the Hayden Hotel.

  Quinn was familiar with the Hayden. It wasn’t classy enough to be called a boutique hotel, but it was okay, and well located on Seventh Avenue near Times Square. Wilcoxen said he’d like to talk to Quinn about the Lady Liberty murders. He’d also said he was formerly a U.S. marshal in Bland County, Missouri.

  When Quinn saw Wilcoxen walk through the door of the Q&A office, he was impressed. Not that Wilcoxen was physically intimidating. He was easily in his seventies, a little under six feet tall, whipcord lean, and moved slowly, as if he had a sore back he’d long ago learned to accommodate. It was his cool blue eyes under gray brows, the rock-hard set of his jaw, and something about the steadiness of his gaze, that lent him a definite authority. He was wearing gray slacks, and a white dress shirt with a plain blue tie held by a silver clasp. After shaking Quinn’s hand, he sat down in the chair in front of Quinn’s desk. Quinn sat down across from him and waited.