Twist

by John Lutz

  Dred Gant had a neatly trimmed mustache and beard, large black-framed glasses, and longish hair with a part in the middle. It was difficult to know the color of his eyes behind the reflections in the lenses of the oversized glasses. His hair was blond with dark roots.

  “He might as well be Elton John,” Pearl said.

  “Or Justin Timberlake,” Jacob Thomas said.

  Quinn said, “Who the hell is Justin Timberlake?”

  44

  Fiona was startled to wake up next to a warm male body. Then remembrance of last night came to her in a rush that made her dizzy. The time in her apartment, here in her bed, the depleting of her supply of vodka.

  My God! She shouldn’t have had so much to drink. She would have kicked herself, actually, only she feared waking the nude man next to her in her bed. At least she assumed he was nude. The wrinkled, turned-back sheet came up to his waist.

  No, she thought back. She knew he was nude.

  Her mind grasped for facts. She had left him alone in the kitchen to put ice in the glasses and pour their drinks. Straight vodka because that was all Fiona had where she kept the liquor in a cabinet above the refrigerator.

  Beyond that, Fiona couldn’t recall much.

  Demon rum, she thought. Though she couldn’t remember even tasting rum.

  Moving slowly and carefully, listening to the man’s easy breathing, she rubbed an eye that was sore from being mashed into the pillow. What the hell was his name? Brandon? No, Brady! No, Brad. First-name basis. And he knew her only as Fiona. Or as some of the things he’d whispered to her last night, when he wasn’t being rough. Brad liked it rough, but not too rough. She probably didn’t have a bruise on her body. But he’d known how to play her, have her eating out of his hand.

  She regarded him through only one eye. His brown hair was barely mussed, and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Almost smiling.

  He was no great prize, but a girl could do worse.

  Fiona decided not to get up yet and shower. She’d wait for him. She was comfortable enough, with only a light sheet over her and the ceiling fan ticking away and providing a soft breeze.

  In fact, she was very comfortable.

  The killer knew Fiona was awake, and he was sure she thought he still slept. He maintained a neutral expression, with his eyes lightly closed, carefully regulating his breathing. His sensory perception was on high. He was aware that she was staring at him, but he didn’t mind. He’d practiced feigning sleep. It was a skill that had often proved useful.

  He put the woman out of his mind for now and recollected last night. He hadn’t touched much in the apartment, and he remembered precisely where and what he had touched.

  Sometime after midnight, when he was awake and Fiona still slept, he’d gone into the bathroom down the hall. He’d wiped all the fixtures and smooth surfaces down with a damp towel. Being extra careful to make sure there would be no fingerprints for the police to find.

  Before returning to bed, he’d gone into the living room and found his briefcase where he remembered placing it at the end of the sofa. He’d withdrawn a pair of tight, flesh-colored rubber gloves, and slipped and snapped them deftly onto both hands as if they were second skins.

  He’d be using them shortly. Though he didn’t want to rush. He enjoyed the anticipation almost as much as the act.

  He lay there in the dark, in the soft breeze, giving his imagination full play. Waiting for the dawn. This time his victim wasn’t going to be drugged. He wanted her to anticipate and feel every nuance of her torture.

  When he heard her soft voice, he knew he’d dozed off.

  That was okay. He was instantly all the way awake and alert, although he hadn’t opened his eyes or moved a muscle. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell it was morning and the room was full of light.

  He realized his left hand rested on top of the sheet.

  “What’s that on your hand?” she asked again, in a fond and amused whisper. He felt her lips brush his cheek.

  “Rubber gloves,” he said.

  “What on earth for?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said.

  Fiona lay face up on the bed. Her arms and legs were lashed to headboard and footboard with ties from a robe and dress the killer had gotten from her closet. A rectangle of gray duct tape was plastered over her mouth. In the center of the tape was an indentation in the shape of a small O from her last, futile breath. She had died on the up beat, the killer mused.

  He was still nude except for green disposable paper booties of the sort surgeons and OR nurses wore. They fit well enough over his bare feet. He was cleaning up after himself carefully. He dipped the forefinger of his gloved right hand into blood that had pooled in a low spot on the mattress, then he padded into the bathroom. He scrawled his FREEDOM TO KILL message on the medicine cabinet mirror and smiled.

  Mustn’t forget Quinn and his minions.

  For a moment he thought of adding that this time his victim had been fully awake and aware of everything he did to her. Then he thought better of it. Economy was safety. Deviation was danger.

  He rinsed the blood from his gloves, then went to his briefcase, which he’d brought into the bedroom so he could have his implements within reach. Fiona’s bulging blue eyes seemed to follow him. He enjoyed that.

  Bending over the briefcase, he withdrew a seven-inch-high plastic statuette of the Statue of Liberty. It was like the others that he’d bought at different places, over time.

  He propped Lady Liberty in Fiona’s abdominal cavity at an angle so she seemed to be peeking out over the wide flap of stomach skin, her torch held high as if in a signal.

  Freedom to Kill.

  The killer used the bathroom to shower, scrubbing himself carefully. He wore a plastic shower cap from his briefcase and made doubly sure that no hair went down the drain that might be retrieved for DNA purposes. He knew that there might be a hair or two somewhere in the apartment; healthy people lost quite a few individual hairs per day. But his DNA wasn’t in any of the data banks. A match could be made only after he was apprehended, and he didn’t plan on that happening.

  When he was sure he was leaving behind nothing that would provide an unintended clue, he stood at the foot of the bed, holding his briefcase. He drew a deep breath and took one last long look at Fiona, fixing her in his mind.

  She stared back at him, looking appalled.

  Well, that was too bad for her.

  Murder was actually so easy. Simple as ABC. If everyone knew that, there’d be lots more of it.

  He thought about leaving some other taunt for Quinn, maybe something relating to Jody, sweet Carlie. Or Pearl. Quinn’s vulnerabilities.

  Then he reconsidered. It didn’t take much to push Quinn’s buttons. Mustn’t overdo it, though.

  Wouldn’t want to press the wrong button.

  As he left the apartment, the last thing he did was peel off his gloves and wipe down the doorknob. He took the elevator down, knowing he would soon simply be another of New York’s faceless millions. There was such contentment and security in anonymity.

  No one took any particular notice of him as he left the building, and within seconds the teeming city enveloped and protected him.

  He was one of its own.

  Quinn thought the Fiona crime scene was like another installment in a running nightmare. The killer exercised the usual care not to leave any real clues, and he employed the usual techniques that Nift so admired. The only difference was it looked as if this one might have fought back a little. Not that it mattered.

  Quinn went into the bathroom and wasn’t surprised to find the usual message scrawled in blood on the mirror.

  He went back and looked down at the usual victim. Yet she wasn’t like any of the other victims. They would all have been different from each other once you got to know them—if they were still alive. Catching sight of his reflection in the dresser mirror, he was startled by the expression on his drawn features and found himself wishing he were any
place but here.

  Nobody ever really gets used to this.

  The killer knows that.

  Quinn strode toward the hall door. He had to get out of there. In a corner of his vision he saw a surprised Fedderman, the pale forms of the techs haunting the scene like curious ghosts,

  Nift’s voice: “Leaving so soon? I’m just getting to the good part.”

  The killer Quinn couldn’t stop had done this. A killer who had to be aware that the torture went on long after he’d left his victims. He knew the heartbreak and broken lives he was leaving in his wake. The years of furious impotence.

  Rage rose in Quinn like an angry sea. He knew it would never completely recede.

  45

  Helen sat in the chair across from Minnie Miner on the ASAP set. The leather arms of the chair were stained and stiff from hundreds of perspiring guests. It surprised Helen how clean and new the chair appeared on the TV studio monitors and on her television in her apartment.

  “Fiona!” Minnie said, squirming around to get comfy in her own chair, not nearly as scuffed and stained as Helen’s. “The killer continues his gruesome march through the alphabet.”

  “I think since we’ve made it to F that we can assume that,” Helen said. “It is beyond coincidence.”

  “Of course, many of us in the media were saying that weeks ago.”

  Minnie was getting on Helen’s nerves. “The media can speculate and be wrong. The police have to be sure. One wrong assumption and they can soon be miles off course. Like the explorer who was off by one degree at the beginning of his voyage but sailed hundreds of miles beyond his destination.”

  “What explorer was that?”

  “Santo Vincenti Diego.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “There you are.”

  Minnie gave Helen a look, not quite knowing if she’d just been had. She was gaining respect for Helen, who had a knack for taking control of an interview without seeming to do so.

  “The killer is doing what you predicted,” Minnie said, as a kind of peace offering. “He’s becoming more sadistic. More vicious and grisly. I mean, the things he did to poor Fiona, the F girl.”

  “What he did that was worst of all,” Helen said, “was to keep the woman alive as long as possible once he began to work on her.”

  “And there was no sign of—”

  “No sign of rape or forcible entry, but there had been sex, with a condom.”

  “Is it possible that they knew each other?” Minnie asked. “That they’d been lovers?”

  Helen shrugged her broad shoulders. “Anything’s possible. This killer thinks he’s intelligent, so he leaves few, if any, clues for us to work with.”

  “Thinks he’s intelligent?” Easy, Minnie told herself. Don’t do anything that makes it seem you’re defending a killer. Ratings, ratings . . .

  “I know he’s baffled the police so far,” Helen said. “But what he’s doing isn’t an intelligent risk. He doesn’t seem smart enough to understand that time isn’t on his side. If he makes only one mistake, overlooks only one thing, we might have him. And when we do, if he’s convicted, that will be the end for him. Game over.”

  “Whereas if you don’t get him today, you simply start over again tomorrow.”

  “Until eventually he’s ours,” Helen said.

  Minnie raised a forefinger, gazed off in the distance, and then touched the finger to the hearing device in her ear.

  “Excuse me, please,” she said to the camera displaying the red light.

  She unclipped her miniature mike from her lapel and spoke softly into it so no one could hear other than whomever she was talking to.

  Then she said, “Yes, yes,” quite clearly and looked at Helen and then out at the studio audience. Back to Helen.

  “The killer wants to talk to you,” she said. She could hardly contain her emotions as she pronounced the words.

  A prop man walked hurriedly out and handed a cell phone to Helen, who sat shocked.

  But not for long. Who did this asshole think he was, trying to rattle her?

  “Helen Iman?” asked the ordinary male voice on the phone.

  “Yes,” she said, and waited. She’d noticed that her voice resonated with a slight and immediate echo. Sound was being fed through to the studio audience.

  Minnie whispered loudly in sotto voce that the killer was on the line with her guest—really!

  “I can’t talk long without my call being traced,” the killer said.

  “Your paranoia is showing,” Helen said.

  “I called to remind you that after F comes G, and after G comes H.”

  Helen felt her blood rush to a small cold place in her core. She almost dropped the phone. Suddenly the studio became even more uncomfortably cool.

  “Listen—” she began. But she noticed immediately that she was talking to herself.

  There had been no click, but the background hush of the call had changed and she knew she and the caller were no longer connected.

  Minnie was staring at her, almost vibrating with excitement. This was quite a coup. The killer and perhaps one of his future victims, right here on her show.

  Ratings were going to—

  She saw Helen stand up and detach her lapel mike, then gently lay it and its transformer on the chair. Obviously she was leaving the set.

  Minnie hadn’t nearly milked this situation dry.

  “Helen! Helen! I know you’re shaken. Who wouldn’t be, after that last, incredible remark? But you mustn’t—”

  But Helen continued to walk away.

  No one tried to stop her. No one so much as touched her or even looked directly at her. It was as if she had something that might be contagious.

  The killer had marked her.

  Out on the sidewalk, her cell phone chirped. She hesitated even removing it from her purse.

  The electronic chirping continued. Whoever was calling was determined. Reluctantly, she put her hand into her purse and withdrew the phone.

  The chirping went on unabated.

  She didn’t answer until she saw that the caller was Quinn, and the fluttering bird that was her heart became calm.

  “You might want to watch Minnie Miner tomorrow,” he told Helen. “I’ve just given her some instructions concerning an interesting news item about a woman who won the lottery just before going to prison, and her house in the country.”

  And he explained to Helen the trap they were going to set.

  “It could work,” Helen said thoughtfully.

  “Could is enough to make it worth a try,” Quinn said.

  PART THREE

  Oh, write of me, not “Died in bitter pains,”

  But “Emigrated to another star!”

  —HELEN HUNT JACKSON, Emigravit

  46

  Bland County

  Fate remained on the side of the Killer. Dred Gant was in a rental car, driving toward Jefferson City, Missouri, where there was going to be an auction in pre-1899 firearms.

  He was using his 3G phone to listen to Minnie Miner ASAP on the Internet. Because he was out of town didn’t mean he had to miss what had become, if not his favorite, the most interesting of the TV shows he watched. He wasn’t actually watching the show, though it was visible on the phone on the seat beside him. He had to be careful driving, the way the traffic weaved at speeds over eighty miles per hour on Interstate 70.

  As soon as he heard Minnie Miner relate the story of a woman from a small town in Missouri, who in 2000 had won a lottery jackpot and then gone to prison, he knew it was a trick. His pursuers would know that he’d know the story was related to that of the Lady Liberty Killer.

  This was not coincidence. Minnie would use her show to broadcast any sort of bait that would result in a catch. Her adoring audience would patiently assume the relevance and be delighted with the outcome.

  Minnie described how people had searched the woman’s ramshackle house and yard for traces of the money, but had found none. Now, howe
ver, there were rumors that some money had been removed, stolen, but much of it hadn’t.

  That “rumor” had also not been a coincidence.

  The coincidence could be that he had heard this news when less than two hours from his boyhood home.

  And, according to Minnie Miner, there might be money he hadn’t found in the dilapidated house.

  His money. Not his mother’s now. Or anyone else’s.

  His.

  The killer decided that might was reason enough to run the risk. There came a time in any game when one of the players must seize opportunity. Safety here would be in acting first and directly.

  He stayed on Interstate 70 and drove toward the orange setting sun.

  Night had fallen, and it was almost ten o’clock.

  Dred Gant sat out of sight in the dim moonlight, gazing down the hill at the house where he’d grown up.

  He was comfortable in a shelter among the ancient pines that were scattered on the sloping hill beyond the house. There were fewer of the trees than he remembered, but they were much larger.

  From where he’d positioned himself, he could see the house’s front porch, and off to the right, not as far from the porch as he recalled, was the old wooden outhouse. He felt the bile of anger rise bitter in his throat and swallowed it noisily. As he had so many times here at . . . home.

  It bothered Dred at times, knowing strangers, and some people he knew and despised, had rooted through his old home. One he would no doubt inherit, if the authorities could find him. Well, they could keep the house and the rocky, hilly land around it. He’d keep his freedom, and his mission.

  The money was another story. Whether it was dimes or dollars, it belonged to him. He would use it to maintain his lifestyle.

  He remembered watching old movies and television shows, fascinated by the way how, while the projectors or DVDs were running, their stars seemed to lead lives pertaining only to the roles they played. Those people on screen led precisely the lives they wanted. Or that the script demanded. Of course, being fictional, they could do that.