He caught the one big wave he was looking for, came up on the board, rode the crest, and when it started to curl under, he twisted around into the tunnel, and for one long moment he was in the eye of the universe. Then he drove into the monstrous wave, flipped up, over, and down, surrendering to his destiny.
Chapter 59
Vlad grabbed the nurse by the arm and back of her neck, lifted her out of the trunk, and stood her on the sidewalk. She was obviously scared, but there was also a simmering defiance in her eyes that made him cautious..
He started herding her toward the entrance to Rosia’s apartment building. He felt a riffle of air around him, looked, saw nothing or no one. He shivered. Perhaps it was one of those feelings that, as his mother used to say, occurred when someone walked across your mother’s grave.
Stupid superstition. Besides, her bones are mixed in there with all the other Potter’s Field nobodies.
He shook off the chill that rode his back.
What difference did it make anyway?
The Mazzio woman was looking around the street; he was taking too much time, needed to get her inside.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Just go where I point you!” He poked the stiletto into the cheek of her ass.
They went through the entrance, where a homeless guy was splayed out on the dirty, broken tile floor, sound asleep in his own vomit. He pulled her up the stairs and along the grungy hallway to Rosia’s apartment. He slammed her against the wall and leaned all of his weight into her chest while he took the key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
Inside, the smell of decay and death rushed out to meet them.
“Someone died here.” Her voice was shaky; she tried to yank away from him. He punched her in the mouth and she cried out. He watched in fascination as blood flowed from her split lip.
* * *
Gina wanted to run, at least try to run. But she had little strength left, and she knew he wouldn’t think twice about killing her on the spot. A she shoved her down a hallway, a horrible stink got stronger and stronger to the point where she was gagging..
On the threshold of the bedroom ,she dug her heels into the threadbare carpet and held on to the door jambs, refusing to take another step. Without a word, he shoved the stiletto into her ass again, deeper this time —the pain shot straight up to top of her head. She screamed, screamed again and rammed an elbow into his chest.
He spun her around and slapped her hard across the face. She started to fall, but he caught her and flung her onto the bed next to a dead woman. The odor of death, mixed with the stink of her own fear, was making her light-headed.
Maria Benke and her mother had been tied down spread-eagle, like this woman. Globs of blood were clotted all over her head and body where he had sliced her. The woman’s eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling, her mouth hung open in an expression of terror.
* * *
Pepper Yee looked at the security screen with Tom, who headed Ridgewood’s security team.
She wasn’t impressed.
Tom was at least fifty pounds overweight and even with that heft, she knew he wouldn’t be able to take down a skinny-ass kid, much less anyone who could be real trouble. Even though he was the head honcho at Ridgewood, she would bet his salary probably didn’t even equal that of a rookie cop. So why would Tom, or any of the other hire-a-cop, risk their lives no matter what the situation?
“How many of your staff are on duty in the hospital right now?”
“We have a regular force of fifteen, but almost half of them are out sick.”
A regular fucking army and I’ll bet my last dollar they’re all just as buff as you.
“Did you check through the tapes?” Pepper asked?
“No, I thought I’d leave that to you.”
Of course.
“Okay, let’s get to it.”
* * *
Harry had been wandering the halls of the hospital, stopping and talking to staff members he knew. The conversations weren’t about anything special, he just couldn’t go home to their empty apartment.
His insides felt raw and he was scared to death for Gina. He finally gave in and made his way back to Mulzini’s room. Harry knew the inspector needed his rest, but he was the only one Harry could really talk to about Gina and the entire situation.
He peeked into Mulzini’s room, which was dimly lit. Marcia and Dirk were gone and Mulzini was asleep. He sat down in the chair next to the bed and tried to empty his mind, but he kept coming back to Gina—she’d been taken and she might be a murder victim at this very moment.
“You ought to go home, Harry.”
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“You ought to go home, ” Mulzini repeated.
“Yeah, I know. But I can’t. Not yet. I’d feel like I was giving up if I left now ... left before I knew anything certain about Gina..” He looked away, his chest so tight he could barely breathe. “How will I go on without her?”
Mulzini swung his legs around and pushed himself into a sitting position. He leaned toward Harry. “Pepper’s good people. She’ll find your Gina.”
“Yeah, I suppose ... sooner or later.”
The inspector reached over and squeezed Harry’s shoulder.
Harry snuffed back a sigh, but it didn’t stop the tears from flooding his face.
“But will Yee be in time?”
Chapter 60
Pepper Yee had zipped through the elevator security tapes until she was down to the last hour.
“Are all your cameras active?”
“What do you mean, Inspector?”
“You know damn well what I mean. How many are props to fool the public into thinking you have tight security in this very public building?”
Tom shifted in his seat, looked away from her. “About half are active.”
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Just when she was ready to ream him a new one, she saw Gina in the elevator. She was smiling almost purposely for the camera.
This isn’t Hollywood, girl.
She slowed down the streaming and studied the four people in the elevator with Gina, who was in a back corner. When the car stopped, four of the passengers moved like single unit and were out in the snap. Gina followed them out, then turned and went a different direction.
“Okay, Tom,. do you have any surveillance right outside this elevator?”
“Yes, we have two active cameras in that section.”
“Well, don’t just sit there like a lump. Get me one or both of them on the same time line as that single woman stepping out into the garage to the right.”
Tom worked at the computer and had it zipping through time.
“There! Stop!”
A man was carrying Gina over his shoulder. He took her to the back of a Chrysler 300, opened the trunk, and dumped her inside. Once the trunk lid came back down, Yee could read the license plate number. She wrote it down and watched the sedan drive away toward the exit.
“Tom, do you have an active camera at the garage exit?” She held her breath as he fast-forwarded through the tape.
“This might give you what you want.”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
* * *
Mulzini was worn out; it had been hard watching Harry become so unglued. The man was usually pretty calm and with it. Right now he was looking off through the window, not saying a word. Mulzini could imagine what he was thinking.
The Inspector was starting to doze when the door crashed open and Pepper Yee rushed into the room. A nurse was with her, trying to get her to leave.
“You’re not family. You can’t go in there.” The nurse was annoyed and wasn’t giving up on her efforts to keep Yee out of the room, badge or no badge.
Harry turned away from the window, walked up to the nurse, and whispered in her ear. She nodded, gave him a glare, turned around, and went back out the door.
“Hello, Inspector,” Harry said in a not-so-nice voice. “Nice to see you again.”
“Okay, Harry. I know I blew you off, and I shouldn’t have. I apologize.”
Before he could respond, she stepped past him to speak to Mulzini. “We’ve got a BOLO out on the car that took Gina Mazzio away. We grabbed a break with the surveillance cameras ... got the make, model, and license number of the vehicle. Didn’t get a clear look at the perp, though.”
Mulzini could see Harry taking in every word. He was chalk white.
“Are you heading out?” Mulzini asked.
“Well, yeah!” Yee said, giving him the eye.
“Take Harry with you.”
“Are you nuts, Mulzini? You want to put him under fire, too? No way.”
“Trust me. He won’t be a problem ... will you, Harry?”
Harry shook his head negatively, started toward the door. “All I want is to find Gina.” He turned to Yee. “Come on, Inspector, you owe me this one.”
She gave Harry a I’d-like-to-strangle-you look and turned to glower at Mulzini. “Oh, man, if this goes south, are you ever gonna get it ... hospital bed or no hospital bed.”
“And you!” She pointed at Harry. “No lip! When I say jump, you jump; don’t even take time to say, ‘How high.’”
Chapter 61
Gina watched the man grab the dead woman by the hair and pull her off the bed, leaving behind a bloody outline of her body. The smell of rot was so strong, she started gagging when acid seared her throat.
“You’re a nurse. You’ve never seen a dead woman before?”
“I’ve never seen anybody mutilated.”
“I am an artist, after all.”
“You. You, what’s your name? You did this while she was still alive?”
Gina didn’t want to die, she would gouge his eyes, kick him in the balls, do anything to get away.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter. “My apologies for not introducing myself. My name is Vlad, Vlad Folo. And your name is Gina Mazzio. He laughed again. “Is that better, Gina Mazzio, the nurse who doesn’t like the sight of blood?”
“And you’re Vlad Folo, sadistic killer!”
He considered that for a moment. “No, Nurse Mazzio, I’m a businessman. I sell a service and I get no complaints about my work.”
Gina scooted away from the bloody outline. “Why would you do that to anyone? Is that what Mort Tallent paid you to do?”
“So you know the good doctor hired me?” He started pulling off his shirt. “Yes, Tallent pays me to kill—and I kill—my way.”
Vlad pulled a knife from his pocket and cut away the bottom corners of the bloody sheet, then ripped off four bed-width strips.
“Move to the center of the bed, Nurse Mazzio.”
Gina looked into his dead eyes. “I’m not moving into that bloody mess.”
He raised the knife high and plunged it deep into her thigh, twisted it before pulling the blade out slowly. He raised it to strike again.
She screamed, “Don’t!”
“Move!”
Gina closed her eyes and shifted until she was in the middle of the bed—her blood dripped onto the clotted mess already there.
Vlad took one of the strips of sheet, grabbed her arm, and tied the wrist to the bed post. She struck out at him with her other fist, but he stood by the bed and laughed at her useless jabs.
Gina’s heart was thrumming in her ears.
Harry, Harry, I’m going to die.
He jumped on the bed, straddled her, and restrained the other arm. When he finished securing the second wrist, he jumped off the bed, avoiding her thrashing legs.
When he reached for her ankle, she tried to kick him in the face. He stood back and laughed again and suddenly reached out and grabbed her. He muscled-down each leg until she was spread-eagle like his other victims had been.
His smile turned into a leer as he stood in front of her and stripped off the rest of his clothes, then pranced around the bed, turning this way and that to show her his body. He picked up his knife again and methodically cut away her clothes.
“Oops!” he said each time he nicked her skin.
* * *
Harry could see Pepper Yee’s adrenalin was high as she drove like a demon shot out of hell. He kept his mouth shut and thought about Gina in the hands of Tallent’s mad killer. Yee couldn’t drive fast enough for him.
“Listen, Harry, when we get there, don’t be a wise ass. I want you to stay in the car ... don’t need you to get dusted, too.”
Harry turned and looked at her. “You think Gina’s dead, don’t you?”
“Sorry, Harry. Better to face that possibility now.”
“And you think I don’t know that?”
“Yeah, well—”
“—who do you think helps put cops together when they come in torn apart, barely hanging on, wanting desperately to live? Who holds their hands when they call out for their women, their men?”
He wanted to crawl inside of Pepper’s skin, make her understand there was nothing she could add about life and death or suffering that he didn’t already know. But the bottom line—he was grateful she agreed to let him come.
Harry’s voice was gone. He spoke in a whisper. “Please, Pepper, don’t treat me like a fool.”
“Harry—”
“—some maniac has the love of my life. I’m so terrified I’m ready to scream. But if you think I’m going to give up and just accept she’s dead, you’d better think again.”
Chapter 62
A sudden blast of cold air encircled Vlad.
Mamoushka! If you were here, you would have warned me that black days were coming.
Vlad tried to shake off that sudden feeling of doom settling over him as he stood by the bed and looked down, studied the nurse’s nude body from head to toe and back again.
He had goose bumps from the iciness in the room. Why didn’t she? She had to feel the cold, the end of her life was but minutes away.
Yes, she had to feel frightened, but there was a glint of anger in her eyes; she still craved life. She hadn’t given up hope, like his other victims.
Another blast of cold air jolted him.
Mamoushka!
He wanted to ignore these warnings. But he knew already he’d stayed too long. It was way past time to find a new life far from here.
Put on your clothes. Leave right now. Leave the nurse behind.
Leave!
He tried, but he couldn’t turn away, couldn’t stop looking at the woman. Her naked body was so close.
He bent over her and mouthed her breasts with his wet lips. “You are very beautiful.”
“Get off of me, you piece of shit.” But her voice had changed.
Now he saw fear as she tried to jerk away.
Yes. That’s better.
He ran his hands up and down his hard, naked body, felt the strength in his loins. He threw himself on top of her, slowly rubbed himself against the length of her smooth, soft body.
Yes, her flesh would yield not only to his heat, but to his knife—like cutting through butter. He reached for his blade on the bedside table, saw the blade was bloody, and for a moment was puzzled.
Yes, now he remembered. He’d stabbed her. Even now her wet running blood was on the bed mixing with Rosia’s clotted globules. He would have to clean the blade before he could begin the final ritual.
“Don’t go away,” he said and gave her a sardonic smile. He stood, grabbed the knife, and walked to the other side of the bed.
When he stepped over Rosia’s dead body, he looked down at her and a fresh whiff of death rose to his nostrils.
You’re nothing but stinking flesh now. That’s all that’s left of you, you bitch.
But she’d distracted him.
He was compelled to kneel and looked at the deep slices he’d made across her breasts and stomach.
A memory: Twelve-year-old Vlad coming out of his hiding place in the closet. He’d kneeled at his mother’s body as he was doing with Rosia.
These were the same cuts his mother had e
ndured. Those and the long slash that started from her lips and ended at her pubis.
Vlad was shaking, frozen to the bone.
He began to cry. Sobs filled his chest and he moaned over Rosia’s body. He took her cold hand and held it. Rocked back and forth.
Mamoushka! Mamoushka!
Then he was emptied.
When he looked down at Rosia’s body again, he felt nothing.
Vlad moved into the bathroom and washed the knife until the metal was sparkling clean. When he stepped out, a man was pointing a gun at him.
* * *
Pepper Yee smacked a flashing red light on top of the car to help her cut a pathway through traffic. Harry could only hope that the residence listed on the vehicle registration was not just a ruse. If she wasn’t at that address, what next?
He mentally crammed his panic into a box and threw it out the window of the speeding car. But he couldn’t stop the numbness that had started in his chest and spread.
Gina had been lucky throughout all of the life-threatening situations she’d gotten into, but today, a man hired for the sole purpose of killing her, had snatched her from the hospital garage.
This all started when Lolly came to San Francisco, got a job at Tallent, Cantor & Brichett. Without Lolly, Gina would never have sneaked into Mort Tallent’s office and ended up a murderer’s target.
Wasted wishes. He had to stay in the now.
Gina, Gina, Gina! Please be there. Please be alive when we get there.
“Hang in there, Harry. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
For five minutes his life would be hanging by a thread
Chapter 63
Gina looked at the man, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. One minute there was only her and Vlad, the next minute there was this second man, holding a very large pistol. Anger was etched throughout the deep lines in his face.
“You are the son of Nadya and Ivan Antonev,” the man announced, looking at Vlad. The man had not once glanced in Gina’s direction.
“So?” Vlad said defiantly. “What do you want here?”
Bone Crack: A Medical Suspense Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 6) Page 22