“That may be true of the killer, but it doesn’t prove it’s Tim.”
“I think he uses a verbal script,” he said, ignoring her comment. “Something to do with sex. About his sexual prowess, maybe. Narcissists tend to be in denial about their faults. Mark said Tim had no girlfriends.”
“Maybe because his first sexual experience was a disaster. Tim said the girls shunned him because of his stutter, so he bribed one of the popular girls to go out with him. He promised to share a bottle of Wild Turkey.”
“Wild Turkey. Jesus, he’s the wild turkey.”
“Don’t make fun of him!”
“Okay. What happened on the date?”
“They drove to a lover’s lane and started drinking. The girl told him to take off his clothes and stripped to her panties and bra. Tim got so excited he ejaculated all over her, and the girl laughed at him. Tim was humiliated.”
“Just like the prostitute.”
“Stop building a case against him!”
“Stop defending him! You haven’t seen the corpses. I have. He ties them up and tortures them verbally. He hates women.”
Dana drank more water and methodically screwed the cap on the bottle. “Tim didn’t kill that high school girl, Frank. He took her home. The next day all the kids at school were laughing at him. The girl had told them what happened.”
“Sad story, but not every guy that has a bad sexual experience turns into a sexual sadist. These crimes are about anger and power.”
He flashed his lights at a Saab poking along in the high speed lane, waited for it to move over, and accelerated. In less than a minute they’d be at the rest stop.
“Did Tim ever wear a Mickey Mouse watch to his therapy sessions?”
Dana looked at him, surprised. “Yes, and when I asked about it he got furious. He said his father gave it to him. I asked why that made him angry, but he refused to talk about it. Emotionally, Tim was very immature.”
Like Lisa Sampson, he thought, recalling the childlike swirls and curlicues Lisa had made on the rental car contract. To a con-man like Krauthammer, Lisa was ice cream.
“He’s arrogant, he’s vicious and he’s a sexual sadist. Tim thinks he’s entitled to kill these women. Face it, Dana. He’s evil, pure and simple.”
And if he hurts Lisa Sampson, I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch.
_____
Seated on the floor with his back against the checkout stand, the sinner squinted into the slanting rays of the afternoon sun pouring through the windows at the front of the store, brilliance far less powerful and dazzling than the flashing dome lights on the police cars that ringed the building.
“Let the girl and the clerk go,” called a mechanical voice.
A cop, using the bullhorn again. The sinner smiled. The clerk wasn’t going anywhere and neither was Marie.
He looked over at his Bonnie girlfriend, staying out of sight as he’d instructed, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside shelves of canned milk and instant coffee. Engrossed in a copy of Glamour magazine, she licked a finger and turned a page, gazing at pictures of half-naked women. He knew what was in such magazines, tarts and harlots flaunting their bodies.
The fact that he’d blown the clerk’s brains out had shocked Marie but hadn’t changed her feelings for him. Or so it seemed. He studied her weak chin, her blob of a nose, her beady brown eyes. Was she faking? He’d seen women do that, pretend to like him one minute, turn on him the next.
No, Marie was still naïve enough to believe that love made the world go round. She still thought it was possible for them to escape and run off somewhere and be Mr. and Mrs. Tim. Dense, dull-witted Marie.
Aware of his hollow stomach, he scanned the boxes on the low shelves in front of the counter and spotted the familiar yellow and red wrappers. Perfect! Slithering on his belly like a snake to keep his head below the windows at the front of the store, he grabbed the box of Mr. Goodbars, slithered back to his niche beside the checkout stand, opened a candy bar and bit off a chunk. Bliss. Or what passed for bliss, at this point.
Marie laughed, shaking her head at him. “Tim, you are so cool. A gazillion cops outside and you’re eating candy.”
“I didn’t eat breakfast.” In fact, he’d eaten no lunch either, unless he counted the Hershey’s chocolate with almonds. Nanny would be appalled. Three candy bars, and no vegetables. Father, of course, would never have allowed it. “Do you know what Ted William’s best batting average was?”
She gave him a blank look. “Who’s Ted Williams?”
“You don’t know Ted Williams?” he said, incredulous. “The greatest hitter of all time? Played for the Boston Red Sox?”
“Oh. Baseball?” She returned her attention to the magazine and flipped a page. “I never watch baseball. It’s boring.”
Her casual dismissal took his breath away. If he’d said that to Father, the man would have killed him. Not literally, perhaps, but figuratively. Father would have humiliated him, would have browbeaten him into submission. “My f-f-father was obsessed with baseball statistics. He said I was stupid.”
She looked at him, mouth agape. “Really?”
She said nothing for a moment, staring at him. He glowed with satisfaction, pleased that he’d gotten her attention, knowing this was a contest: Who’s got the meanest, rottenest daddy in the whole world?
“Your father’s the stupid one. Calling you stupid? Tim, you’re the smartest guy I’ve ever met.”
Proud warmth filled his chest. He was beginning to enjoy this.
“My father used to call me The Cow.” She rolled her eyes.
Despite the eye-rolling, he could tell she expected him to commiserate so he offered a comforting smile. “You can’t let other people label you.”
Except when they label you, in all accuracy, the Tongue Killer.
“You’re quite lovely, Marie. He had no right to call you that.”
“Well, he did, and I believed him. Whenever one of his girlfriends dumped him, he’d be mean to me.” She gave him her deeply-hurt-inside smile. “But not any more. Not while I’m with you, Tim.”
He leaned his head against the checkout station, running the comment through his mind: Not while I’m with you. What a sweet thing to say.
He looked over to tell her so, but she was gone. His heart pounded. Marie had deserted him! He should have known better than to trust her.
But then she was back, crawling down the aisle on her hands and knees, pushing a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and a box of Eskimo Pies ahead of her. “I’m hungry,” she said, giggling. “You think I should pay for them?”
He rubbed his throbbing temples. Marie expected him to save her. She still thought it was possible to escape this nightmare, still thought they might drive off, buy new clothes, eat a nice dinner and start over. But their luck had run out. He had to do something.
Steeling himself, he crawled to the gate that opened into the area behind checkout counter, the clerk’s final resting place, his face the color of bleached bone. Sickened by the stench of bodily waste, the sinner took care to avoid the dark pool of congealed blood. The clerk’s hand was flung out to the side. Beside it was the snub-nosed revolver.
Mesmerized by the clerk’s eyes, vacant eyes that saw nothing, he reached for the gun. And felt cold clammy flesh as he accidentally touched the clerk’s arm. He jerked his hand away. Wracked by a shudder, he snatched the gun and retreated, scrambling through the gate to escape the horror. He opened the cylinder of the blue-steel snub-nosed .38 Special. It was fully loaded. Good thing he’d squeezed the trigger first. Better a dead clerk than him.
He crawled over to Marie and showed her the gun.
“Do you know how to use one of these?”
She grinned. “No, but I’m a fast learner. Show me.”
CHAPTER 28
Frank slowed to a crawl and rolled into the I-55 rest area, an Exxon station with two bays of gas pumps and a glass-front convenience store. The name on the marquee, ON THE RUN, seemed ironical
ly appropriate.
He parked outside the cordoned-off perimeter, feeling the jittery buzz he always got right before the action. Encircling the convenience store, SWAT team sharpshooters outfitted in black held rifles with high-powered scopes, and two dozen uniformed officers knelt behind police cars, their weapons glinting in the afternoon sun. Other than the hum of highway traffic and squawks from police radios, the rest area was quiet, but sizzling with tension, everyone waiting for something to happen.
He gathered himself, embracing the adrenaline rush like a sprinter at the starting block. You’re so ready to put your life on the line, Frank. You don’t care about me and Maureen. It’s all about you and your macho need to beat the bad guys.
Evelyn’s taunt after he came home one night, wired after a bust.
He was no macho man, but he felt most alive in the face of danger, more alive than at any moment in his life, except when he was having sex with a willing partner. Okay, sometimes he did plunge into dangerous situations, but only when the stakes were life and death. Only when the guns were drawn and time crept by like a long slow freight train.
And now was that time. Lisa Sampson was not going to die.
A garbage truck roared by on the highway, jolting him out of his ruminations. He glanced at Dana, sitting beside him with her hands in her lap, outwardly calm, though the skin around her eyes was tight with tension. Wordlessly, she offered him a cigarette. He hadn’t had one since he’d told her about the little girl in Boston. Last night, he realized. It felt like eons ago. He was tempted: have a cigarette to quell the dragons devouring his gut. No, he’d have one later, if he got Lisa out alive.
He opened his door. “Let’s go find out what’s happening.”
They walked to a Louisiana State Police cruiser twenty yards away, four men in body armor clustered around the trunk, moving awkwardly, torsos bulked out, shirts damp with sweat from the oppressive heat and humidity, and the nervous tension.
Frank identified himself to State Police Lieutenant Murphy, the tactical leader, and introduced Dana as Krauthammer’s therapist. Murphy barely acknowledged her, clearly not happy to have a woman around. A six-footer with steel-gray eyes and thin bloodless lips, Murphy introduced the others: a State Police Corporal, a wiry black-clad sharpshooter, and the hostage negotiator, Ben Whitworth, an ebony-skinned man with a salt-and-pepper moustache and sorrowful brown eyes.
“What’s the situation?” Frank asked. “Did the customers get out?”
“Yes. Through that door.” Murphy pointed at four black-clad SWAT team members positioned beside a door that bisected the right-hand side of the building. “It’s the emergency exit. No other doors or windows other than the ones in front.”
“What about the clerk?”
“Status unknown,” Murphy said. “He never came out. A male customer heard a shot after he left through the side door and stuck his head back inside, but Krauthammer threatened to shoot him if he didn’t leave.”
Frank saw Dana frown, twisting the ends of her ponytail in her fingers.
“Have you talked to Krauthammer?” he asked.
Murphy indicated a bullhorn on the ground beside the cruiser. “I got on the horn and told him to send out the girl and the clerk. We waited ten minutes, nothing doing, so I told Ben to give it try.”
“There are two video cameras in the store,” Ben Whitworth explained, “but they don’t feed into a central monitor so we can’t see what the subject and the hostage are doing. What we want, of course, is a dialogue. I asked if he had a cellphone and said we’d give him one if he didn’t. When I gave him my cellphone number he called me right away, said he didn’t want to talk.”
“That’s exactly what he said?” Dana asked.
Everyone looked at her, surprised, perhaps, that this petite woman with the ponytail had the temerity to interrupt. No surprise to Frank. Dana wasn’t the type to let the boys do all the talking.
“Yes, ma’am,” Whitworth said. “I asked him to let Lisa go and he said, ‘No one’s going anywhere.’ When I asked about the clerk, he said, ‘I just told you, no one’s going anywhere. Go away. I don’t want to talk to you,’ and then . . .” Whitworth pulled a face and shrugged. “Then he disconnected. We haven’t spoken since.”
“You got an extra vest?” Frank said to Lieutenant Murphy. “I want to go in the store and talk to him.”
Whitworth frowned. “Do you have negotiating experience?”
“Sure,” he said, hoping to loosen things up. “I used to be married.”
The comment drew amused grins from the men, but not from Dana.
He pleaded his case to Murphy. “I worked a few hostage situations when I was with Boston PD, and I interviewed Krauthammer twice, so I know what I’m up against. On the way here Dr. Swenson gave me his psychological profile. She was his therapist when he was in high school.”
Murphy gave him a long silent stare. Frank waited, hands clenched behind his back, his stomach in knots.
At last Murphy said to the Corporal, “Get him a vest.” As the Corporal opened the trunk of the cruiser, Murphy said, “But understand this, Renzi. Having you go inside is not my first option. Ben, see if you can get Krauthammer to answer his cellphone.”
Whitworth nodded and began punching numbers into his cellphone.
Frank told Dana to wait there and took the Kevlar vest back to his car. If Murphy did decide to let him go in, the extra-large sweatshirt in his trunk would hide the vest, but that might not fool Krauthammer. It wouldn’t protect him from a head shot, either. In the last analysis it was all a fucking crapshoot. The important thing: his wide-leg sweatpants would conceal the Sig-Sauer in his Velcro ankle holster.
_____
The sinner polished off another Mr. Goodbar and looked over at Marie, hunkered down out of harms way, sitting cross-legged on the floor between two grocery shelves, sipping a can of Diet Dr. Pepper.
“Do you think you could get me a bottle of water?” he asked.
“Of course!” she exclaimed, beaming at him as if this was the greatest adventure of her life. He had no doubt that it was. He watched her crawl down the aisle toward the frozen food cooler on the back wall, staying low to remain hidden below the shelves.
As she scuttled around a corner and disappeared, his cellphone vibrated against his thigh. He took it out and looked at it. Unknown number. It was probably that cop calling him again. Or maybe it was a telemarketer calling to sell him life insurance. But it was too late for life insurance and way too late to talk to the cops. He shut off the cellphone and put it in his pocket.
Marie scrambled down the aisle with a six-pack of bottled water, set it on the floor and shoved it over to him. “Abita Springs. It’s nice and cold.”
“Thanks.” He took a chilled plastic bottle, unscrewed the cap and gulped half the contents, wondering how long they’d be able to hold out.
“What’s your father’s name,” Marie asked.
Astonished that she would ask, he said. “Mark. Mark Krauthammer, the worst father in the universe.”
She nodded, understanding, he could tell. “Was he mean to you?”
“Mean? Mean doesn’t begin to describe it. He hired the Nanny from hell to take care of me. I hated both of them.”
“What did he do? For work, I mean.”
He stared at her. Why was she asking all these questions? She was beginning to sound like Detective Renzi. But no, she was smiling. She really wanted to hear about his father. Correction: She wanted to hear why he hated his father, because she hated hers.
“My f-f-f-father is a cold, cruel man. All he cares about is Nanny, and I’m not so sure of that. He needed her to take care of me.” Visualizing the disgusting scene he had interrupted one night when he came downstairs, Father and Nanny on the couch, locked in a passionate embrace, mouths together, making sucking sounds. “He used her for sex, too.”
“Just like my father. He’s always screwing around.”
“You’re very perceptive, Marie.”
“I have to be. Most guys think I’m stupid.” She beamed him a smile. “Except you, Tim. You don’t think I’m stupid, do you?”
You’re pretty stupid to be here with me.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
A tinny, mechanical voice startled him, a new voice, different from the last one. “Hey, Tim, how you doing? It’s Frank Renzi. I’m coming inside so we can talk.”
He clenched his fists. Renzi, the liar. Renzi, the relentless detective who’d conspired with the priest-pretender to cause his downfall. Renzi was the last person he wanted to talk to. Maybe he’d shoot out the glass in the door and scare him off. But Renzi didn’t seem the type that scared easily, and he had only six rounds left. He might need them. There were plenty of cops out there, eager to storm the building, guns blazing.
It was only a matter of time.
He’d thought that when the end came, it would be like a roller coaster ride, a slow nerve-racking climb followed by a terrifying plunge to the tune of shrieks and screams. But it wasn’t. Everything was clear now, as simple as solving an algebra problem. He had anticipated this day, dreading it, but also, perversely, longing for it. Now that it was here, he felt nothing. His mission was over. No more light fading from terror-stricken eyes, no more tongues, no more thrills and chills of excitement. No more internal voice chiding him for his failure du jour.
He looked at Marie. “We’re about to have company.”
She licked her lips, gazing at him, her eyes fearful.
The Glock lay beside him on the floor. He picked it up and checked to make sure the safety was off. The Glock was primed and ready. Was Marie?
“Ready?” he said, waving his hand, the hand holding the Glock.
She nodded, eyes solemn, raised her loose white shirt and patted the snub-nosed revolver tucked into the waistband of her baggy blue jeans.
“You’ll be fine, Marie. Think of this as a game of hide and seek. Ready or not, here they come.”
ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) Page 32