“You know where I’m going with this Steve,” Shirley said.
“I have an idea, but let me hear the words actually come out of your mouth.”
“Two missing women. Two missing horses that may or may not have dropped their guts. And Armstrong is the common denominator. Think about it. He’s a plastic surgeon.”
“What are you trying to tell me between your gasps for air?”
“Both women were small. Very small. Both horses were enormous. Are you digging me?” Shirley said, still speed-talking.
“Oh Lord,” Taylor said.
“Oh Lord is right. Steve, just what if you could gut a horse, slip in the body parts of a small human, then sew the thing back up again.”
“That’s not thinking outside of the box. That’s thinking inside the horse,” Taylor mused. “Just what does that mind of yours tell you happened to the horses?”
“Two distinct possibilities. They could have been taken to an unscrupulous dog food manufacturer, or they could have been dropped off at a rendering plant. This is horse country. There are probably more avenues for large animal disposal.”
“Jesus.”
“What about motive, Shirley?”
“Lots of people just want to get rid of a spouse, but let’s dig into it. See if money was a motivator. I’ll do some more digging here in Nashville this afternoon, then I’ll have enough to take back to Quantico and get my team working on it. We’re talking two states and serial killing.”
“Okay. I’ll look for a money angle down here. In the meantime, Shirley, a horse is a horse.”
“Of course.”
Chapter 66
The Octopus
ZOEY LOOK AROUND THE darkened room. She had heard the several locks that secured the steel door from the outside every time the madman entered and left the room. Even with all of her strength she imagined she had stored up, Zoey knew she could never break it down. She knew that her imagination was false and she had little muscle left.
She stared down at her now emaciated arms. “I’ve lost so much weight,” she whispered. Oh yes, she remembered. He wants my skin. He wants it loosened up.
The Z always wanted to lose weight. Some weight, but she never dreamed of this diet. Only then did she realize that her special IV diet had become her friend. The restraints on her arms were loose. She had lost so much weight.
Her chance. Maybe her only chance.
Her second cell phone may not be there. Or dead, but it had over eighteen days of standby time, and she always kept that phone turned off.
She tried to raise her arms. The restraints held down her wrists, but she had movement in her arms. Not too bad, she thought.
Slowly she wiggled her wrists. Her hands. She knitted her fingers tight together while imagining they were as flexible and slippery as octopus tentacles. She visualized the octopus’ suckers that could grab hold of the cuffs and help push her hands through them.
But there was a problem. The octopus has no bones.
ZOEY KEPT HER EYES FOCUSED on the ceiling above her. She needed to feel the curvature of the metal cuffs that restrained her. She needed to feel which way she would need to move her fingers and twist her wrists.
After struggling and writhing with a throbbing pain, Zoey’s wrist would pull a little out of the handcuffs, only to pop back in again. She became aware of the fact that one wrist was smaller than the other.
The smaller left wrist became her only focus.
Biting her lips at times when the pain became too grievous, she again thought of the octopus. She willed her wrist bones to bend and fold.
She lifted up her head once, and even with her dry mouth, she began spitting at the wrist, thinking only of the slippery octopus.
With one final excruciating pull the cuff slipped off her wrist and to her knuckles. She folder them like pretzels and yanked again. The left hand slipped free!
Blood gushed from the torn flesh, and even in the dark it was the most beautiful blood Zoey had ever seen.
She started to dab away at the blood, then quickly thought better of it.
“Blood is a liquid,” she moaned aloud.
Zoey held her wounds over her right hand and let the blood ooze between her other wrist and the remaining cuff.
It was of no use. The wrist bone was too large. No matter how hard she focused and used her free hand to help pull, the hand was not coming out.
She knew if she didn’t act fast she would lose any chance at freedom. And her attempt at escape would be discovered and enrage an already insane madman.
There was only one thing she could do. Zoey yanked the IV’s and catheter from her body, then took the bags off the pole and let them fall to the floor. She took firm hold of the pole, braced herself and used all of her upper body strength to snap the pole across her wrist. Her carpal bones had to be broken if she was to survive. At the very least, the scaphoid at her thumb. It must go in order to bend like the octopus.
She screamed in pain, but it wasn’t good enough.
She knew she was going to have to hear the bone break. Maybe more than one. She tried again. Screamed again. And with no freeing results.
She pulled her weakened legs up to her chest. Her left hand brought the pole down across her right wrist just below the handcuff. She raised her legs back across the top of the pole, then shifted position until most of her body would fall unto the bar.
She gritted her teeth and heaved her weight onto the bar.
She screamed in agony.
She heard the thwack of her breaking bones.
Chapter 67
Freedom Cries
DIZZIED BY THE EFFORT AND THE pain, Zoey pushed forward with her plan. She squeezed her wrist together with her free hand and pulled as hard as she could.
The hand came free.
In excruciating pain she had to keep her ears peeled. The madman always made noise when he returned. Lots of chanting and ranting. She had to listen for him. Even without a clock, it was clear to Zoey the man kept no schedule when it came to checking on her.
She moved to lift her arms. No longer a tough old broad, she thought, but tough enough. The left leg would not cooperate. The right one, stronger. She’d need to rise up and twist her body in order to have that leg support her.
Three attempts. Failure. Resting in between. Calling forth every angel and spirit and garden gnome to spare her, on the fourth attempt she wrangled her body to the side of the bed, placed her right leg down on the floor. and collapsed in a heap.
The little engine that could, she thought, and she crawled toward the chair with a stream of blood behind her that could rival the tributaries of the Amazon River.
She reached up and tugged at the clothes. The work shirt came off and, although she knew her phone wasn’t there she kneaded every pocket with hopes, as if it were her mama’s bread dough.
Nothing.
She inched closer to the chair. Too much effort for her weakened arms and broken hand to try and reach again. She pulled on a corner of the stiff white fabric and the pants fell to the floor.
And she heard the thud. The most magical sound of the thud.
SEVENTY-SIX MILES AWAY, Pocko struggled to open his eyes aboard The Sarah, in the middle of the desert and strapped to a table. If he could open his eyes, he could deliver himself from the nightmare. And the pain.
He knew he hadn’t seen the full sun in days. His eyes would not focus, but they must, he told himself. The drugs seized his brain, but not all the pain that usurped him. It was no nightmare.
He lifted his head and gazed toward the source of the pain.
His legs were large patches of exposed and open flesh. He had been skinned alive.
Staring at his arm, he no longer saw the tawny flesh of his proud Mexican heritage. His arm looked white. No. Mottled. He focused harder.
The skin had buckled into a mountainous range of red bumps. Black skin surrounded the red and curled away from his body like charred pieces of paper. And what he knew
was the sign of infection. He could see the puss.
He prayed for deliverance. He prayed to his god or any god, not to spare him, but to take him. He prayed, again.
ZOEY STRETCHED TO REACH the phone on the floor. How could fingers grow so weak? How long have I been here?
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered once she could feel the device in her hands. She snatched at it and held it to her bosom, but only for a fleeting moment.
The final test. One more thing. She turned the phone on.
It made the low-battery alert sign. Next to the thud of the falling phone, it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.
Her fingers didn’t cooperate. Her eyes still struggled to adjust. All she needed was to punch in three little numbers. She made out the number nine and hit it. Thumped it really, with her stupid fingers.
Good. Go faster. Low battery. Go faster.
Barely able to hold the phone, she looked for the next magic number. One.
The sound! The sound of the madman returning. No time.
Zoey shoved the phone onto the metal chair and heaped her clothes over the top.
She had no choice. She leaped for the bed, her arms trying to hold on to its edge. She angled her body to support her diminished weight on the good leg. No choice. She could heave herself back up and somehow pull the IV and catheter lines up to her. Cover them with the flimsy sheet. Play dead. He would not know. Would he?
And then she realized her fatal flaw. She had to get that phone. How could she have left it? She’s not thinking straight. She’s not thinking at all.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Zoey thwarted her body off the bed again, this time in control of her body with nothing, but pure adrenaline that comes with being prey.
And the madman entered the room.
Chapter 68
Black & White
“YOU STUPID BITCH!” he screamed. “You cunt!”
Zoey turned to face the monster, her big brown eyes clearly seeing the black leather mask. The nostril holes. The mouth hole. And the steel eyes glaring at her.
The monster dealt a blow to her back and Zoey fell hard to the floor.
She didn’t see anything else.
SACRUM WOULD TAKE CARE OF THINGS. Ignorant woman. Those IV’s were her lifeline, stupid bitch. Marcus sure as hell didn’t want to be smelling her urine stinking up the place.
Sacrum lifted the limp body back to the bed. He reinserted the IV’s, laughing when he saw the bones poking through at her wrist. He increased the morphine cocktail, and because he very much needed her alive he reattached the saline drip. He reinserted the catheter to please him, and he made damn sure the restraints were tight. On his next visit, he would bring the leg restraints, just to be sure. And he’d move up the entire surgery schedule after one final peek in on his other patient.
He didn’t even remember driving, but somehow the black Jaguar took him straight to The Sarah. He didn’t like driving the beautiful vehicle out in the desert, but he had no choice. His SUV was locked up in his garage until he could figure out how to get rid of it.
He said to Pocko, “I guess white’s not your color. Not to worry, good man. You’re still quite alive and I’m working on your new skins. I just didn’t know you’d need so damn much of them.
“Pity, really. All that porcelain skin not exactly working out, but your donor has beautiful and healthy ebony skin. Just the ticket we need.”
Sacrum left the scene of his handiwork. Stepping off the deck of The Sarah, he cried. He knew that this experiment might fail. He knew the black skin, delivered so late to the rotting body, would likely not work out. He’d have to improve his techniques the next time.
Marcus knew that he would need his White Goddess. Soon and permanently.
Chapter 69
Follow the Money
GAGE TOOK COFFEE WITH ME in the early morning out on our patio, after I’d seen his lights on in the studio all night long.
“I need to go to Chicago in the next week. I’ve made a decision to cut my travels back there to three or four times a year. I’m nearly out of inventory and I can’t paint there so I can’t sell there.”
I nodded and sipped my coffee.
“And we can’t fix what’s broken with us if I’m so far away. I don’t care what all the bi-coastal happily ever-after couples say. I want this. I want Tucson and I want you.”
I acquiesced with a smile, “And the Earl of Éclair?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “He’s my Chopak Deepra and you’re my Angelou Maya.”
“Oh, Gage. Do you ever stop with the spoonerisms?”
“Hey. I work hard on them. They’re part of my charming personality, but I do have something to tell you. Something about that Dr. Armstrong and Rachel Lee.”
The fight began.
WATCHING SHIRLEY STORM through the door to his office, Detective Taylor spit out his coffee in mock surprise. He said, “I knew you’d find the money once you knew to look for it.”
Shirley laid her tablet on his desk. “Steve, don’t you know it. Emily Johnston had one helluva life insurance policy for a med-school resident.”
“What? No hugs? No glad to see you again, Stevie? No nothing?” Taylor laughed. “Besides, you can use all the fancy technology you folks in Quantico have and all your super-power brains, but I already know what you’re going to tell me.”
“Go ahead, smart ass,” Shirley said.
“As you learned, there was no comingling of funds within the relationship, but there was a $1.5M life insurance policy taken out on Emily Johnston, by one Marcus Armstrong. Surprise. Payable to one Marcus Armstrong. At the same time he also took out a $2M policy on his own life, payable to Ms. Johnston. The insurance company didn’t even flinch. Like-for-like, they must have surmised. Two young medical students with their entire lives ahead of them, and lives as big income earners that needed their services.
“Once they declared Johnston to be legally deceased, Armstrong received the money. He was already living in Tucson at the time, although not in his big fancy house. According to my timeline his eyes were already fixed on the woman who would become his first wife; one Amanda Rice. They married soon after the life insurance check arrived, but it looks like wifey used her own money to buy the ranch. In cash. Free and clear. And with both of their names on the deed. Our Dr. Armstrong could have realized a nice profit right there, but Amanda Rice Armstrong did comingle funds with her husband. Marcus Armstrong had fat bank accounts, and at the time she was pronounced dead he had a juicy life insurance settlement coming his way. A pay-out of $2.5M.”
“He gave himself a nice little pay raise,” Shirley inserted.
“But Amanda Rice Armstrong took out the policy on her own. She was an heiress to the Rice Copper Mine Company and still served as C.E.O. and president to her grandfather’s business.
“And finally, Ms. Shirley, just what about that part where you tell me how great my detective work is?” Taylor loved playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Shirley.
“Duly noted as quite impressive,” Shirley said.
“You know we don’t have enough to take this to the D.A. without him sending us both off to the Looney Farm. Hell, we don’t have enough to obtain a search warrant. No judge would sign it.”
“What do we have, Steve?”
“Oh my god, the great FBI agent asks of my opinion?”
“Shut up. I have a headache and I’m sleep-deprived.”
“We have a guy who drives a two-tone Black SUV and walks with a limp and happens to be a plastic surgeon.
“We have two knocked-off-the-universe women that happened to have been in his life so deeply that he was the recipient of their life insurance funds.”
“Big funds,” Shirley groaned.
“And we have two missing horses, and more importantly, the big caveat. We have no bodies. Not even a carcass of a horse. And no weapons.”
“It’s still a crap shoot, Steve, but I play a mean game. My money is on a horse o
r two that may not have been horses in the end.”
“Of course, of course,” Taylor smiled.
Junior dashed into the detective’s room with a half moonwalk, half electric slide. It must have been the new genuine leather cowboy boots he bought in Nogales that would fall apart under the first monsoon, but they were rather pretty, Taylor thought.
“I hope you have healthy food around here and not more of those cherry blintzes and double-wrapped bacon hotdogs. I won’t feed my young fit body that stuff, old man.”
“Wow. The Junior has a sudden burst of self-esteem. I like it,” Taylor said. “Peanuts around here somewhere. We rallied for almonds, but with the budget cuts we had to axe that idea. The peanuts are courtesy of my peanut salary.”
“Hey, you’re staring at my shoes. Sheesh, Taylor, you told me to get some shoes that don’t look like cop shoes and these are perfect!” Junior whined.
“Except I might have to put you back on the street with Shirley.”
“I love her, but I also know she’d beat me up as her stupid side-kick. I have a little something for you.”
“I knew that. Tell me.”
“I’ve been staking out the good doctor’s medical clinic over on Grant. All on my own time. I live right around the corner and I’ve been working nights. Pull my car up in the day to see the action.”
“A real stake out for you. Commendable,” Taylor said. “Unless one of our guys pulls you over for loitering.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“You’re dying to tell me. What have you got?”
“That good old doctor does not have the thriving practice he touts. Seems like he has one receptionist, one nurse, a bunch of screened off rooms to the back. And in three days, I’ve only seen one patient go in there. And she was out within an hour. I don’t know about these kinds of plastics, but I’m guessing this wasn’t even a nose job. I thought this guy was some pillar of the community with all of his success and his philanthropic activities.”
Evil Cries Page 18