Shaken (Jacqueline Jack Daniels Mysteries) [Plus Bonus Content]

by J. A. Konrath

  Peering up at the door at the top of the flight, I wondered if there was any chance at all it might be open. Whatever drug I’d been given was strong. It knocked me out in just two sips. But perhaps my abductor was used to his victims being unconscious for longer than I was, and there was no need to lock them in the basement.

  Buoyed by the possibility, I slowly ascended the staircase. I felt each creak of the wood in my teeth. Every step was a battle between wanting to hurry, wanting to retreat, and forcing myself to go slow and steady to minimize the noise. By the time I reached the top of the flight, I was shivering, covered in cold sweat, my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow.

  I put my ear to the door, listening.

  Silence.

  My shaking hand fit itself around the doorknob. Softly, carefully, I attempted to turn it—

  —and the sucker actually turned.

  It took the remaining bit of self-control I had left not to throw the door open and run like hell. I was naked, and had no idea where I was, or what time it was, or who had me. My best chance would be to find my gun, or a phone.

  Setting my jaw, I eased the door open, praying for oiled hinges. It moved with minimal whining, and I stuck my sweaty head through the doorway and squinted down a dimly lit hall. The house was quiet. No movement. No human sounds. I stepped onto the tile floor, passing a crucifix hanging on the wall, passing a framed Nagel poster, passing a light switch that I desperately wanted to flip on.

  The basement had been a hostile, foreign environment. But upstairs was an average, normal home. Horrible things shouldn’t happen in a house like this, which made it even more frightening. Anyone walking into this modest dwelling couldn’t possible guess that the basement had a refrigerator full of severed heads, or that the person who lived here liked to abduct and dismember women.

  The hallway opened up into another room. I paused again, forcing myself to go slow, gingerly peering around the corner and seeing a living room.

  There was a TV. A sofa. A floor lamp, the low-watt bulb under the shade glowing soft yellow. The window had curtains pulled shut, but I could see through the cracks it was night out. On a coffee table were several textbooks, including one that had Social Studies: Teacher’s Edition written on the cover.

  Then I heard something. A low, male voice, from someplace in the house. Too faint to make out any specific words.

  I decided to run for it. Moving quickly, I found an adjacent hallway, located the front door, and gripped the knob.

  It wouldn’t budge. The door was solid, heavy wood, and the deadbolt was key activated.

  Turning around, I went back into the living room, kneeling on the sofa, sweeping back the curtains.

  The windows had bars over them, chained shut. I stared outside and saw I could have been in any number of Chicago neighborhoods. There were cars parked along both sides of the street. A sidewalk. Trees. My abductor had a neatly trimmed front lawn and a small flower garden with violets.

  I got out of the living room, rounding another corner, stopping abruptly when I saw the phone hanging on the wall. I picked it up, and the male voice I heard grew in volume tenfold, a foreign accent coming out of the receiver.

  “—take care of her soon. In fact, I’ll do it right now. I just heard a click. I think she’s awake and listening to us.”

  I let the phone fall, then turned and ran, rushing down the hall, finding the kitchen, skidding to a stop and then slipping on a slick, plastic tarp that had been set on the floor, my feet losing their grip, my ass hitting the ground, sliding forward into Shell.

  He was lying on his back, clutching several coils of rope to his chest.

  I was thinking to myself that I had to get out of there, that I didn’t have time to untie him, and then I realized that it wasn’t rope at all, it was his intestines, and I tried to crab-walk backwards but Shell’s blood was all over me and I couldn’t get any kind of traction, couldn’t get away. His dead, open eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth forever frozen with his final scream. Once he’d been a living, talking human being. I liked him. I’d kissed him. And now he was a cooling hunk of meat, profanely slaughtered, no trace left of the man I’d known.

  Then someone walked in, filling the doorway. He was naked, thick, his hairy chest matted with blood. Slavic features, a dark, five o’clock shadow on his chubby face, which regarded me with amusement.

  “My little cop girlfriend is awake,” he said, his English tinged with a slight Russian accent. “My name is Victor Brotsky. We will have some fun, you and I. Yes?”

  Then he raised up one of his meaty hands, and I noticed he was holding a butcher knife.

  Present day

  2010, August 10

  Phin peered through the food tray slot in the door to the isolation cell. Victor Brotsky sat on his cot. He looked much older than his mug shot, which made sense—he’d been in prison for a long time. Brotsky was grayer, balder, and fatter than he was when first incarcerated. He wore dark blue slacks and a light blue shirt, the buttons straining against his barrel chest.

  “You are wasting your time,” he said. “I will tell you nothing.”

  Phin clenched his fists. He wanted to wrap his hands around Brotsky’s fat neck and squeeze until he could feel the monster’s heart stop beating.

  Warden Miller called for two guards, dressed in riot gear, and they opened the cell door. Both had tasers at the ready. Brotsky didn’t even bother to look over at them. His head was resting against the wall, eyes closed, his fingers tapping against his lap as if he was listening to music.

  “Mr. Brotsky, I’m Sergeant Herb Benedict. I’m Lieutenant Daniels’s partner.”

  Now Brotsky’s eyes opened, focusing on the new arrivals. “Your partner, she is not looking so good lately.”

  “Where is my partner, Mr. Brotsky?”

  “She is with an old friend of mine. Though perhaps friend is too strong a word, considering the amount of money he charged me.”

  “Your friend,” Herb said, “is it Andrew Z. Thomas?”

  “I do not know this person.”

  “Luther Kite?”

  “I hired the best. He is an expert at what he does. Better, perhaps, than even me.”

  “I’ve got a deal for you,” Harry said. He’d been quiet for so long, Phin had almost forgotten he’d come along. “I’ve got a hundred cartons of Marlboro Reds.”

  “I don’t want your cigarettes, svoloch.”

  “They aren’t for you,” Harry said. “I’m giving a carton to every man who sticks a shiv in your ass in the shower. Two cartons if they fuck you after they stick you.”

  Brotsky smiled, and it was a chilling thing to witness. “I have been in here for more than a third of my life. You cannot scare me. You cannot hurt me. You cannot bribe me. The sooka cop will die in agony, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Phin turned to the warden. “I want ten minutes with him.”

  Miller looked pained. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”

  “Just ten minutes. I promise I won’t kill him.”

  “He’s human garbage,” Miller said. “I know that. But I can’t willingly let an inmate be abused in my prison.”

  “The woman on the iPhone,” Phin said. “She’s pregnant with my child.”

  Brotsky barked out a wet laugh at this.

  “Please,” Phin said.

  He took a step away from the warden, watching the guards in his peripheral vision. If Miller didn’t go for it, Phin figured he could grab one of their tasers, lock himself inside the cell…

  “Miller, let’s talk for a second,” Harry said. “In private.”

  Phin watched, helpless, as the two men walked down the corridor. Though it was torture to do so, Phin forced himself to look at the iPhone again. Jack was unconscious, and the man in the hat was pulling her across the floor, onto a large circle made of wood. There were straps for her arms and legs.

  Phin also saw something small and shiny on the floor, next to Jack. He zoomed
in.

  It was a speculum.

  Once again, Phin eyed the taser. If he hit the first guard in the throat, took his weapon, and fired it at the second guard, that would give him at least a minute alone with Brotsky. Longer if Harry and Herb guarded the door.

  “I’ve decided to allow these gentlemen to settle their differences on their own,” Warden Miller said. He was looking at his shoes. “You have ten minutes.”

  Phin shot Harry a glance. “Thanks.”

  “Make them count,” Harry said. “And make this fat bastard feel every second.”

  Phin handed Herb the iPhone and stepped into the cell, hearing the steel door clang closed behind him.

  “Now, we’re going to have a little—”

  Before Phin could finish, Victor Brotsky, all two hundred and seventy pounds of him, leapt up off the cot and slammed against Phin, knocking him to the floor.

  Three years ago

  2007, August 10

  Dalton won.

  We were up all night, calling twenty-four-hour storage facilities. When we ran out of those, Herb had the idea to call hotels, checking for guests in room 515.

  We were still calling when Dalton’s plane took off for Cape Verde.

  In between calls, Herb, Tom, Roy, and I had devised several techniques to stall Dalton. Ramming into his car on the way to the airport. Calling TSA and saying he was a terrorist with a bomb. Arresting him on a made-up charge.

  But we didn’t attempt any of them. Much as I felt Dalton was Mr. K, I couldn’t prove it. My duty, as a police officer, was to uphold and enforce the law. In the past two days, I’d failed at my duty. I not only failed to catch the bad guy, but I’d done a lot of things I wasn’t proud of in my effort to catch him.

  The end did not justify the means, because there was no end.

  I said goodbye to Herb and was heading back to my house in the suburbs to try and get some sleep, though I doubted I would. That’s when I got the text message on my phone. A message from Dalton.

  IT ALL WOULD HAVE WORKED OUT FOR YOU, JACK, IF YOU’D ONLY GONE TO SEE MY SIS…

  Looking at the word SIS, I realized what had been nagging at me, and I wanted to shoot myself for missing the obvious. On the back of the boy’s picture, I’d assumed Dalton had written the number 515. But he hadn’t written that. He’d written SIS.

  I got on the radio to the watch commander back at my district and had her search for any of Dalton’s relatives in the area.

  “Anywhere specific?” she asked.

  I thought about the photo I’d swiped from his condo, of the woman sitting on the porch.

  “Schaumburg,” I said.

  Three minutes later, I was heading to Golf Road and Bode in the Northwest suburbs, going to visit Janice Dalton, John Dalton’s younger sister. I called Herb en route, and he told me he’d meet me there. Maybe Janice knew something. Maybe the boy was still alive. I kept my foot on the gas, even without my siren, hoping against hope that we still had a chance.

  After exiting onto Route 53, I got a call from the crime lab.

  “Lieut, it’s Hajek. My expert buddy looked at the photo and told me what was altered about it. It’s not an original. It’s a picture of picture, which has been colorized.”

  “Explain.”

  “These days, many photo studios can do photographic restoration. You know, fix scratches, rips, folds, fading. They can also add color to old black and white photographs. That’s what was done with the boy. It’s a professional job, and we could probably trace who did the work.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  I arrived at Janice Dalton’s house—the same house as in the picture on Dalton’s hallway wall—before Herb did. I knocked on her door without waiting for him.

  Janice was older than I was, gray, with smile lines on her face that had deepened into serious wrinkles.

  “Ms. Dalton, I’m Lieutenant Daniels from the police department. Do you know this person?”

  I held up the boy’s picture.

  “Of course I do. That’s my brother, John, when he was a kid. Is everything okay?”

  I recalled Dalton’s words, at the storage facility.

  “I’m saying that we can only be here for so long. For some, it could be years before we leave. For others, it could be just over twenty-four and a half hours.”

  He hadn’t been talking about a child’s death. He was talking about a child leaving the country. And that child was him.

  “Can I come in, Ms. Dalton?”

  She nodded. I still wasn’t sure why Dalton would send me on a wild goose chase. For fun? To prove he was smarter than I was? All of the books in his condo pointed to him being a true crime junkie. Maybe he just wanted to mess around with the famous cop he’d read about.

  So what about all the innuendo? All the double-talk? Was Dalton even a criminal?

  “Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee, Lieutenant? I can make a pot.”

  I plopped onto the sofa and stifled a yawn. “No, thank you. I just have a few questions about your brother. You know he left the country a little while ago?”

  She nodded, sitting on the love seat. “A dream of his, to live on an island. He worked hard his whole life, saving up money. He finally earned enough to retire.”

  “What did your brother do?”

  “Construction, I think. He never talked about his job. I know he made a lot of money. He helped me buy this house. You know, he told me, before he left, that someone would be stopping by here. He wanted me to give you something. Can you hold on just a moment?”

  I nodded, tensing up. When Janice left the room, I reached into my blazer and unbuckled the strap on my shoulder holster, resting my hand on the butt of my Colt. But when she returned, it wasn’t with a machine gun or a live grenade. It was with a notebook.

  “I have no idea what this is,” Janice said, handing the pad over.

  It was a standard Mead school notebook, black cardstock cover, spiral bound, seventy pages. I flipped it open and saw it was filled with handwritten names and dates, starting in the 1970s.

  I don’t think my heart actually stopped, but that’s what it felt like. Because I recognized some of those names. I began turning pages, and I watched as the dates progressed, over a hundred of them, eventually stopping two days ago. The date of the John Doe murder, the man who died on the Catherine Wheel.

  This was Mr. K’s murder book. A complete list of everyone he had killed.

  I had just let history’s biggest serial killer leave the country.

  “Are you all right?” Janice asked me. “You just got a little pale.” I thanked her, excused myself, and managed to get out of there without having a complete and total nervous breakdown. Herb pulled up as I was walking to my Nova.

  “Jack?” He hurried out of his car, his face awash with concern.

  “Dalton was Mr. K,” I said, handing Herb the notebook.

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. “The boy in the picture. It was him. He took us for a ride, Herb. And we let him.”

  Over twenty years on the force, and I’d never screwed up this big. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out again. When I thought about my life, about all I’d given up just to be a cop, I couldn’t help but feel what a colossal waste it was. A failed marriage. No children. For what? What good were all the sacrifices I’d made, when the worst criminal in the history of the United States of America could play me like a cheap fiddle?

  “Want to go get drunk?” Herb said.

  “I want to go to Cape Verde, find the bastard, and blow his head off.”

  “But you won’t.”

  I searched his face. “I won’t?”

  “You can break into an occasional home and hire scumbag private detectives to bend the law, but you’re still a cop, Jack. It’s in your blood, whether you like it or not. And because you’re a cop, you’re going to follow the rules. That’s what you do. That’s who you are. You know that. Which is why you know the good guys lose some
times.”

  I stared up at the sun, which was so bright it hurt. Herb was right, or course. I didn’t like it. Hell, I didn’t like myself. Maybe, if I were a stronger person, I could fly to Dalton’s little island paradise and snuff the murderous asshole.

  But then again, if I were a stronger person, I probably should have quit the force years ago and started a family.

  “Actually, getting drunk sounds pretty good right about now,” I said. “You got the first round?”

  “Absolutely. And just remember, Jack. Guys like Dalton, they don’t just retire. I’d bet you a dozen donuts we haven’t heard the last of him.”

  I stared at my partner and hoped he was right. Because if I ever got another shot at John Dalton, aka Mr. K, I wouldn’t screw it up again.

  Present day

  2010, August 10

  I opened my eyes and stared at John Dalton, aka Mr. K. The ball gag had been removed from my mouth, and my arms and legs were strapped to the Catherine Wheel. So was my waist, a tight canvas belt holding me to the circular plywood.

  “Good. You’re awake. I know you’ve been waiting a long time for this. I know I certainly have.”

  Dalton began to remove items from his bag and set them on the floor in front of me. A blow torch. A filet knife. A box of sea salt. And finally, a sledgehammer. He hefted the hammer, holding it before my face.

  “Shall we get started, Jack?”

  Twenty-one years ago

  1989, August 17

  I scrambled backward, away from Victor Brotsky, who loomed over me with a butcher knife. His naked body was blood-soaked, with bits of what must have been Shell sticking to his matted, curly hairs, covering him neck to toes.

  In my effort to get away, I got tangled up—in Shell. I pushed away warm innards, which looped around my wrists, scooting over his dead body, off the plastic tarp, and over to the back door. It was locked, with a key-entry deadbolt, the same kind as the front door.