Deranged

by Jacob Stone

  Henry moved quickly as he picked her up and carried her to his car where it was parked in the shadows. Aside from Brenda’s car, there was still another in the parking lot, and Henry wanted to get out of there before that person finished locking up the place. He didn’t bother tying up or gagging the waitress. Given how hard he had hit her, she was going to be out for a while. He dumped her in the trunk and moved fast to get behind the wheel, and he burned rubber as he tore out of the parking lot. After a mile or so, he forced himself to slow down. He had to remind himself that there could be extra patrols on the road because of SCK.

  He had the radio tuned in to a news station, and the big story that night had been about Morris Brick single-handedly foiling a Beverly Hills jewelry-store robbery. Heck, they were even giving the story more coverage that night than the Skull Cracker killings, and they were going into a lot more detail than the earlier report he’d seen on TV. If what they were reporting was true, Henry could understand why. Supposedly Brick took the gun from one of the robbers as he beat the man unconscious and then in a split second shot the other robber, disabling him. What made it an even bigger story than Brick’s heroics was that a famous actor had gotten shot during the ruckus. Henry had never heard of this actor before, but the news reports made a big deal over him, and of course, Brick was also credited with saving this actor’s life.

  Henry tugged at his lower lip as he thought about Brick being like Superman. Or maybe more like Batman. And this was who he had to have chasing after him? The news report had played a few comments Brick made at an impromptu press conference, and one of them was about the Skull Cracker Killer. According to Brick they were following up on a lead from New York that was looking promising. He refused to say anything more about it other than he expected this to lead to SCK’s arrest. Henry had thought about that and decided Brick was trying to play some sort of mind game on him. There were no leads in New York or elsewhere they were following up on. Brick was only trying to get under his skin and scare him into making a mistake, and no matter how good Brick was he wasn’t going to be able to do squat. After tonight, Henry was done, and SCK would no longer exist. He and Sheila would wait an appropriate amount of time to move back to Portland so as not to attract any attention, and that would be the end of it.

  Something Henry had recently read popped into his head. An article about how the police could trace the location of someone’s cellphone. He couldn’t remember whether the cellphone had to be turned on for the police to do this, but then again, he had no idea if the waitress had a cellphone with her, and if she did, whether it was turned on or not. He pulled over and opened up the trunk. She was still out cold. He dumped the contents of her pocketbook into the trunk, and sure enough, she did have a cellphone and it was turned on. He turned it off, then dropped it to the asphalt and smashed it several times with his heel. After wiping off any prints he might’ve left on it, he flung it as far as he could while making sure not to get any fingerprints on it.

  He couldn’t help chuckling to himself over how sloppy he’d been and the potential disaster he’d narrowly avoided. Even if the police couldn’t trace the waitress’s phone, if she had woken up, she could’ve used it to call for help.

  Wow, he thought. He looked up toward the night sky. Someone’s got to be looking out for me!

  Once he was back in the car, he changed the radio to an easy-listening music station and whistled along with the songs that they played. During the twenty-minute ride back to Simi Valley, he passed at most a dozen cars, none of them police cars. By the time he pulled into his garage, he was feeling relaxed and at times had even forgotten about the waitress he had stored away in the trunk. Not completely of course, but enough so that he had moments where none of this seemed quite real.

  When he opened the trunk, she was not only awake, but had gotten her hands on the tire iron that was back there for changing a flat. She surprised him with how quickly she leapt from the trunk like some sort of crazed banshee, almost as if her legs were spring coils. Her face was a bloody mess, but that didn’t stop her from clobbering him pretty good with the tire iron, hitting him right above his left ear. The blow dazed him enough that he almost fell to the floor. She should’ve used the opportunity to keep hitting him. If she had done that, she would’ve lived. Instead, in her panic she ran to the garage door and tried to lift it open. If she had pulled the manual release handle, she would’ve escaped, but as Henry got his bearings and watched her struggle to open the door, he realized she’d probably never seen a garage door rigged up with an automatic opener, which would make perfect sense for an apartment dweller. At the last second, she noticed the red handle attached to the trolley mechanism. As she reached up for it, Henry ran at her. He sort of stumbled into her, hitting her with his shoulder, and the force of the blow knocked her face first into the door and sent her sliding to the garage floor.

  As she lay unconscious, Henry went back to the car and got the tape and rag out of his gym bag. His ears were still ringing from the tire iron she’d bounced off his skull, and he had to steady himself for a moment before he moved back to her. After he taped her wrists and ankles together and stuffed a rag into her mouth, he left her alone in the garage. He was still feeling too woozy to carry her inside the house.

  Sheila’s eyes held a feverish, expectant look in them as Henry walked past her. She didn’t say anything to him, but Henry knew she was dying to ask him about the commotion she’d heard coming from the garage.

  Henry was still staggering a bit as he made his way to the bathroom. For several minutes he splashed cold water onto his face, and when his eyes could focus, he studied himself in the mirror. Maybe he was imagining it but his left pupil looked larger than his right. He grimaced as he gingerly touched the area above his ear where she had hit him and could feel how swollen the lump had already gotten. That waitress had clocked him pretty good, he had to give her credit for that.

  Henry found a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol in the medicine cabinet, spilled several tablets into his palm, and made a face as he stared at them. He was nauseous and wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep the Tylenol down, but he swallowed the tablets anyway. He stood for a moment wishing the room would stop spinning on him, but he knew that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon. Gritting his teeth, he staggered out of the bathroom and went to the utility room where he found a plastic tarp that he’d used when he painted some of the rooms after they bought the house. He brought the tarp out to where Sheila was sitting and spread it out on the floor. Then he went back to the attached garage.

  He still wasn’t feeling strong enough yet to be able to pick up the waitress, so he dragged her by her feet into the house and onto the tarp. His thinking was still cloudy, and he only then remembered that his gym bag was still in the car, so he had to go back to retrieve it. When he returned, Sheila was staring keenly at the waitress.

  “She has to still be alive,” she said in her slow, painful way. “It’s no good if she’s already dead.”

  “She’s alive,” Henry said.

  “What did you do to her? Her face is a mess.”

  “What I had to.”

  “Clean her up. I need to see what she looks like.”

  Henry swallowed back the cutting remark he almost let loose. After what he’d been through that night, Sheila was going to be picky about this? But there was no point in arguing with her. He left the room so he could bring back a bucket of warm water, soap, and a washcloth. The waitress stirred slightly as he washed her face, but otherwise was still out of it. Once he had her cleaned off, Sheila nodded her approval.

  “Wake her up,” she ordered.

  Henry slapped the waitress lightly on her cheek until her eyes fluttered open. Then he rolled her onto her stomach and used the hammer and chisel on her.

  Chapter Forty-four

  “Honey, someone’s ringing the doorbell.”

  Morris groaned as he stirred awake. For several seconds he tried to pretend Natalie hadn’t told hi
m about the doorbell, but when it rang again he forced his eyes open and stared groggily at the alarm clock kept on the shelf by Natalie’s side of the bed.

  “I can’t make out the time,” he croaked out hoarsely.

  “It’s ten minutes after two.”

  Morris groaned again, and then with a concerted effort swung his legs off the bed. “If it’s a reporter, I might kill the guy. Or gal,” he said.

  “Under the circumstances, no court would blame you.”

  Morris moved in a shuffling gait as he headed out of the room, his leg muscles stiff. He almost tripped over Parker who was lying outside the door, but at the last moment he awkwardly hopped over the bull terrier.

  “Some watchdog you are,” Morris groused.

  Parker opened an eye and his tail thumped once half-heartedly, but otherwise he didn’t move. Morris appreciated how exhausted Parker had to be, and he continued on to the door. A peek through a side window showed Walsh standing outside ringing the bell.

  “You weren’t answering your phone,” Walsh explained to Morris after Morris had let the detective inside his house.

  “I was getting too many calls from reporters.”

  “I can imagine. Quite a night you’ve had, and sorry to say it’s just getting started. SCK might’ve grabbed a waitress from a restaurant in North Hills.”

  “When?”

  Walsh checked her watch. “Around an hour and ten minutes ago.”

  “How likely is it SCK?”

  “Someone grabbed her unless the owner of the place did something to her and is trying to put the blame on SCK. I’ll tell you more on the ride over.” Straight-faced, she added, “Nice boxers. The little hearts are cute. How about you put some clothes on?”

  Morris had answered the door wearing boxer shorts and an undershirt. He told Walsh he’d be right back, and he left her to get dressed. This time when he stepped over Parker, the dog didn’t bother to open his eye and his tail barely moved.

  Natalie was sitting up in bed waiting for him. Even in the semidarkness of the room, Morris could see her worried expression.

  “You’re heading out?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I have to. SCK might’ve just grabbed another victim. This time in North Hills.”

  “I see.” She tried smiling, but it was a weak effort, and her concern only deepened. “I wish you didn’t have to go. You were so exhausted earlier.”

  “I still am,” Morris admitted as he slipped on a pair of trousers. “But I have no choice in the matter. I’ll be careful. I won’t work myself into a stroke. I promise. Maybe I’ll be able to take a nap on the way to North Hills. Annie Walsh will be driving.”

  “Awfully nice of her. Will Parker be joining you?”

  “Doubtful. The dog’s a slug right now pretending to be dead to the world.”

  “When you get back, wake me, okay?”

  “Sure, of course,” Morris said, knowing full well he wasn’t going to be disturbing Natalie if she was sleeping. He finished buttoning his shirt, and moved over to his wife’s side so he could give her a kiss. She made it linger longer than she normally would’ve, in her own not-so-subtle way to motivate him to come home as soon as possible.

  A test of true love, Morris thought smiling to himself as he grabbed a tie and his suit jacket on his way out of the room. If Nat had tasted his bad late-night breath, she didn’t show it, and if hers tasted anywhere near as bad as his, he didn’t notice it. He remembered again at the last second to step over Parker, and he hurried to join Walsh by the door. The detective had two coffees that she’d picked up from a twenty-four-hour convenience store waiting for them in the car, and she pointed out that there was sugar and half and half in the paper bag. Once they were underway, Walsh explained what had happened.

  “The waitress who might’ve been taken is named Brenda Maguire. The owner of the restaurant, Jack Conway, and Ms. Maguire were alone together closing up the place, and he told her around one that she could take off. Fifteen minutes later he finishes up what he had to, but when he goes outside, her car’s still there.”

  “So she got in someone else’s car. It could’ve been someone she knew. She could’ve gone with this person willingly.”

  “She’s not answering her cellphone, and they found blood near her car.”

  “How much blood?”

  “Drops.”

  “So she was forcibly abducted,” Morris said.

  “Unless the owner of the place is lying to us about what happened.”

  “What about Ms. Maguire? Does she fit SCK’s profile for his next victim?”

  Walsh was grim-faced. “Pretty much perfectly.”

  “If this is SCK, he took her someplace private to kill her. Where does she live?”

  “An apartment in North Hills.”

  “You need to send a patrol car there. The psycho might’ve taken her to her own apartment to kill her. Also you need to put a trace on her phone.”

  “Both have already been done. Her apartment’s empty and two patrolmen have been stationed inside of it, and her phone’s not showing up in a trace.”

  “He must’ve destroyed it,” Morris said after he thought it over. He took several sips of his coffee and added, “I’d also flood as many extra patrol cars in North Hills as the department can manage.”

  “That request has already been made.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  Walsh shook her head. “That’s all I have.”

  Morris drank more of his cheap convenience-store coffee, savoring it as if it were the finest French roast ever brewed. Whatever grogginess he’d been feeling earlier was gone, and his mind raced with different thoughts of how this might lead them to SCK. He only half heard Walsh as the detective asked him something.

  “I’m sorry, I missed that.”

  “I was just asking if things went down in that Beverly Hills jewelry store the way they’ve been reporting it.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Damn good shooting then.”

  “Not really. I was aiming dead center for his chest.”

  “Damn lucky shooting then.”

  “I can’t argue that.”

  “Something I found awfully conspicuous in the reporting was why they shot Hollywood.”

  Morris grimaced at the thought of that. “He tried playing the hero and coldcocking one of the robbers. It didn’t work out the way he had hoped.”

  Walsh sighed. “It seldom does,” she said.

  “Very true.”

  It was an eighteen-mile drive from Morris’s home in West Hollywood to North Hills, which normally would’ve taken thirty-six minutes if you drove the posted speed limits. Walsh kept her lights flashing and her foot heavy on the gas, and she got them to the restaurant in a little less than fifteen minutes. There was a small mob of police and forensics already there by the time Walsh pulled into the restaurant’s front lot. Morris wasn’t surprised to see Detective Greg Malevich at the scene, but he was surprised to see Gilman gabbing with the detective. The mayor’s deputy assistant was no longer dressed in an expensively tailored suit, but in worn jeans, a Loyola Marymount sweatshirt, and tennis sneakers. He was also looking worn out, and as exhausted as Morris had felt earlier. Morris stopped off to have a word with Malevich, who told him that he’d hit a dead end trying to track down whoever Corey Freeman thought he was meeting at the house in Venice where he was butchered.

  “All I’ve been doing the last twenty-four hours is beating my head against a wall,” Malevich said.

  Morris nodded. “Pretty much the same as myself,” he said. “We’ll touch base tomorrow morning and see where we’re at. In the meantime, let’s see what we got here.”

  Gilman joined in, saying, “I’ll tag along also. Morris, when you’re done here, we’ll talk.”

  They continued on to the back of the restaurant where floodlights had been set up, illuminating the back parking lot as bright as day. One of the members of the forensics team came over to show them the tr
ail of blood drops they found, half of which had already been scraped off the ground.

  “The drops started over here,” she said, pointing to a marker that was roughly six feet from Maguire’s car. “And end over there by the last marker. There was a good deal more blood at this first location.”

  “He must’ve attacked her over here and carried her to a car parked near that last marker.”

  “Most likely.”

  Morris squinted at one of the floodlights illuminating the area. “Can we turn those lights off?” he asked. “I’d like to see how dark it would be back here without them.”

  The lights were turned off. Gilman commented that someone could’ve been standing ten feet from the first marker and Brenda Maguire wouldn’t have seen him. “And if a car was parked over by the end marker, she wouldn’t have seen that either,” he added.

  The lights were turned back on. Morris asked the forensics specialist whether they’d found anything other than blood.

  “Only blood so far,” she said. “If it had rained recently, we might’ve gotten lucky with foot or tire prints, but the dirt’s packed too hard to leave any. We’ll be scraping up all the blood and seeing whether it’s from one or more sources.”

  Morris thanked her for her help, and she went back to work while Morris, Walsh, Malevich, and Gilman went inside the restaurant to talk to the owner. Conway was sitting in the bar area with another detective, both drinking coffee. From what Morris could tell, Conway was looking either devastated or very guilty, and he couldn’t decide which it was.

  Conway looked up at the group approaching him and offered a bleak smile. “I’ve got a fresh pot brewing. Can I get any of you coffee?”