Tyler yanked the laces on the work boot so tight they practically cut off circulation. He whipped the ends into a knot and pulled again. He shoved the other boot on Brian’s foot and jammed Brian’s toes in the process.
“So then the son of a bitch raises the hammer like he’s fucking Thor or something and brings it down on my foot. I had on boots like this, but it sure felt like I was barefoot. I could hear the bones crush through the leather. The pain…oh, shit.”
Tyler finished lacing Brian’s boot like he was trussing a straightjacket. Brian winced.
“But that wasn’t the best part. I wasn’t going to a doctor. Medical care wasn’t the Dunham way. Not for the foster kids, anyway. Experiencing the pain was going to be part of my lesson. So the son of a bitch made me go out to work in the fields. All fucking day.”
Tyler had finished with Brian’s boots, but he didn’t get up. He stayed kneeling, staring at some unseen thing about a hundred miles past the other side of the bathroom floor. His voice slowed and softened and his rant turned into a monotone remembrance.
“So by the end of the day, hell, way before that, my foot swelled up so big I couldn’t get it out of the shoe. That cheap leather was probably the only thing that kept my foot together at that point. I slept with the shoe on. Shit, the next day I showered with that shoe on. The bastard farmer kept me out working until I just couldn’t do it anymore, and I collapsed in the corn rows. Then his wife got real scared, scared that some child advocate would see I was hurt, step in and derail the gravy train by emancipating all their slaves.”
Tyler slid back and looked up at Brian again. His chipper persona surfaced again and his salesman’s smile returned.
“But hey,” he continued, “by then, too little, too late, you know? Permanent nerve damage, bone splinters, all sorts of reasons I walk like this. It’s a lasting reminder of the hellish path our mother sent me down, another of the flames under a pot of rage that gets up and boiling every now and then. A year after I escaped that hell, I went back and evened the score with the old man. It didn’t satisfy. Then I found that nothing releases that steam like a little of the old velvet rope around a woman’s neck.” He patted Brian’s knee. “Dude, that’s why you don’t get it. You’ve missed out on the physical rage. But big bro is gonna fix that.”
Brian’s stomach dropped. “No, Tyler. I see where you’re coming from. I get it. You don’t have to.”
Tyler smiled his freaky kid-on-Christmas-morning smile, the one that only accompanied some evil act. “Little bro, this is for you. You need this.”
Tyler stepped out of the bathroom. Brian struggled against his bindings to no avail. The chair rocked back and forth against the toilet’s porcelain with a tattle of clanks. Tyler stepped back in. He held a big, black, cast-iron pan in one hand. He pumped it up and down a few times.
“The weight seems about right,” he said as he stepped closer. “There’s no sledgehammer in the house, but I think this will do just fine.” He eyed Brian’s right foot, then looked at the left. “You know, I was going to do the right, like mine, but the left would be more like a mirror image. I kind of like that inside joke, don’t you?”
Adrenaline blasted through Brian’s system. His muscles burned as they bulged against the ropes and zip ties. “Tyler, no! Don’t! I’ll help you without this. We can be a team.”
Tyler’s hand shot out, clamped around Brian’s neck, and crushed his shout to a squeak. His arm locked and forced Brian and the chair still. He raised the pan to an inch from Brian’s face. A snarl replaced Tyler’s grin. “Don’t make me make your face the target.”
Malevolence radiated from Tyler, like heat from a sunlamp. It enveloped Brian, suffocating him even more than Tyler’s iron grip around his throat. A bit of that horrific feeling crept in as well, that disgusting sharing of consciousness from his Tyler-point-of-view dreams. Between the evil Tyler displayed and sensing the cruelty that consumed him within, Brian feared for his own tenuous sanity. He froze and closed his eyes.
“That’s a good boy,” Tyler whispered.
Brian gritted his teeth. In his mind, he shouted for deliverance from this living hell.
The cooking pan whooshed by his ear. Milliseconds later a sickening crunch sounded at the left base of the chair, a chorus of snaps and grinds muffled by leather and flesh.
Then came pain. A debilitating blast of excruciating agony that raced up his left leg into his spine, and threatened to make his head explode. Brian shrieked. His eyes popped open, so filled with tears the whole room seemed to be swimming underwater.
“One finishing touch,” Tyler said.
The black pan flew by again. Another sickening, mushy crunch. The second, stronger wave of pain this time was instantaneous, blinding, unbearable. Brian slipped from white-hot agony to a black unconsciousness he hoped would be eternal.
Chapter Forty-Four
He’s shopping. Pushing a cart through his neighborhood supermarket, surrounded by shiny, fresh vegetables, bathed in over-amped fluorescent lights, chilled by the ultra-conditioned air interior Florida demands.
Relief floods through Brian, washing the last traces of panicked anxiety away in its soothing slipstream. He is free. The nightmare is over. He’s awakened and returned to his real life, apparently still in progress. The kidnapping plotline, the twisted twin antagonist, the cast of victims, all the parts of the fiction his subconscious had spun are gone. A level of happiness Brian had thought forever gone infuses him at full strength. The urge to finish this restocking ritual and get back to his apartment swells.
The cart contains strange things he never buys. Corn dogs. Coffee-flavored ice cream. Twinkies. He fears he’s accidentally switched carts, left some woman and her kids with his cart full of far healthier fare. He tries to turn and scan the aisle.
He cannot. The cart continues on its way to the checkout. On the fly, he reaches out and pulls a carton of canned store-brand soda from a sale display. He realizes where he is, and in this point of view, who he is. Anxiety winds up to deliver the opening pitch in another long game. His mind races in circles for an escape from experiencing his brother’s world.
His left foot throbs, not here, but somewhere else, far away. A reminder that what waits for him awake is no respite, just a different shade of terror from the one he experiences now.
The groceries are scanned, sacked and returned to the cart. He trundles them out into the parking lot’s thick, Florida heat. The cart stops at the familiar silver Camry with the rear windows covered in sunscreens. The trunk pops open and he loads the groceries into the space Brian had memorized as a passenger. To Brian’s horror, another trip had preceded this quest for food. A new package of clear plastic drop cloth, a bag of zip ties, and a fresh roll of duct tape sit in a pile in the trunk. On top of them rests a small, bright red hatchet, cutting edge silver and sharp, barcode tag still affixed to the wooden handle. Tyler might as well have written Candy’s name on each item with a big Magic Marker. The revulsion Brian feels at the sight is the opposite of the sickening giddiness that seeps in from the other side of this vision as his brother sees the same thing.
The trunk lid slams shut, and he takes the driver’s seat. The urge to break the connection, to awaken and disassociate himself from the repulsive sense of glee at an upcoming murder grows.
He stays. Not because he wants to avoid the physical pain that awaits his return, but because he realizes this is his chance. Somewhere there could be a clue to where he and the Palm Bay Preserve subdivision are in the state of Florida.
The distant pain in his left foot moves closer, grows stronger. Brian’s vision of the world around him fades into darkness as the sharpening agony threatens to force him back awake. He tries and fails to will himself back to a deeper level of sleep.
He pulls the Camry out of the lot and onto a four-lane road. Strip-mall stores line the sides with a sameness photocopied from ev
ery other city in the state. The street signs are too distant to discern. A swelling, throbbing ache sends a ripple of black across the view.
His senses snap to high alert. A police car approaches in the rearview mirror, a thin bar of multicolored lights reflected in the white roof. Again, emotions bounce in conflict, trepidation in the parallel consciousness and hopeful elation in his own.
He takes his foot off the gas, though he wishes he could stomp the car into speeding ticket territory. The Camry slows. The police cruiser looms larger in the mirror. He imagines the cop calling in the Camry’s plate, the car coming back stolen, the blue lights firing up to signal the end of Brian’s captivity.
The police car swings left out of the mirror’s field of view. It accelerates and blasts past the Camry’s left side. Brian’s heart sinks as he senses his brother’s jubilation. He realizes the opportunity, and focuses on the retreating cruiser. Just in time he makes out ‘Osceola County’ in green letters under the wide banner reading ‘Sheriff’.
Pain like a shark bite slices through him. The connection to his brother goes black
* * *
His bathroom dungeon jumped into bright, unwelcome focus. Excruciating agony pulsed through his body with every beat of his heart. Tears streamed down his face and he whimpered. His foot felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, that it must have surely burst through the leather boot and torn it to shreds. He glanced down his left side. Somehow the shoe was in one piece. He was certain that the foot within it was not.
Despite the torment, he managed a grim attempt at a smile. ‘Knowledge is power’ people always say. Well, now he had some knowledge. Palm Bay Preserve in Osceola County, east of Tampa. He just had to figure out how to tell the police what he knew, and share with Weissbard the location of the real Playing Card Killer.
Chapter Forty-Five
The rich smell of brewing coffee drew Weissbard upward from slumber into consciousness. Then his eyes snapped wide open. How late was it if Maryanne was already up making breakfast? He jerked up out of bed to check the red readout on the clock radio.
Ten after five in the morning. Darkness still filled the gaps between the window blinds. He stood down from internal panic mode. He threw back the covers, then shivered as Maryanne’s Ice Station Zebra version of temperature control swept away the accumulated warmth of the bedding. He pulled on a bathrobe and padded into the kitchen.
White marble countertops amped up the glare of the kitchen’s overhead lights and he squinted as his eyes struggled to adjust. Maryanne stood by the sink, long hair in a ponytail and already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He smiled at how he still thought her legs looked sexy. She saw him enter the room and sent two pieces of wheat bread on a dive into the toaster.
“What are you doing up so early?” he said.
“Partly because I want to weed the flower beds before the sun turns the yard into an outdoor sauna,” she said. She placed a bowl of egg whites in the microwave and hit the Start key. “But mostly because someone needed to keep you from the fast-food drive-through on the way to work.”
He sat at the kitchen table and sighed. “You’re going to make me healthy, even if it kills me.”
“Two birds, one stone.” She set a cup of coffee in front of him. “You didn’t sleep worth a crap.”
“Sheridan’s still in the wind, and he could be in Hawaii by now.”
“Nope. That’s the excuse you are going to tell everyone, but there’s more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve seen you like this before. The, what was it, Malone case back home?”
“The couple killed walking home New Year’s Eve about ten years ago?” It had been one of Weissbard’s highest-profile cases.
“Yeah, that one. Everyone said robbery. The evidence said robbery. You dug up the vic’s Mob connections and caught the contract-killer perp.”
“Have I mentioned how hot you are when you talk cop?”
The microwave dinged. Maryanne pulled out a bowl of cooked eggs. She placed it in front of Weissbard, then dope-slapped him in the back of the head. “Don’t be stupid. That look you had, your restless night routine, that was because you knew something didn’t fit. A part of the puzzle was in the wrong place, no matter how much everyone else said it was all finished. Well, you’re doing all the same things.”
He tried to decide if he hated or marveled at how she frequently knew him better than he knew himself.
The toaster slammed up two browned slabs of fiber for pickup. Maryanne dropped them on a plate, put them in front of Weissbard, and took a seat at an empty setting. Weissbard searched the table for the butter tub. He opened his mouth to ask, translated her ‘Don’t even waste time asking’ look, and the question died in his throat.
“It bugs me that he escaped,” Weissbard said. “But you’re right, there are other inconsistencies. The logistics of his escape don’t make sense, like why he’d cut the tracker in his bedroom, and apparently bring nothing with him when he bolted. Then, he looks different in the gas station video and I can’t account for how he did that. And the last murder? It doesn’t fit the M.O. because it isn’t a woman, and the clues at the scene were clear, more like they were planted than they were the result of a sloppy murderer. The last thing Sheridan would be was rushed, killing someone in familiar territory, and somewhere he knew he wouldn’t be interrupted.”
“So why aren’t you working that angle?”
That was a good question. One he should have asked himself days ago.
“Because I guess I wanted Sheridan to be the one,” he said.
“Because he came to you and thought he could practically confess to being the killer without you arresting him. And that insult really got under your skin.”
“Yes. And the department brass, and the District Attorney, are all convinced he’s the Playing Card Killer. Can that many people be wrong?”
“They were about the Malones.”
And so they had been. Had he been that much hungrier ten years ago, or had the year-round Florida humidity just sapped all the fight out of him? He pushed himself away from the table.
“You’re right,” he said. “There’s some missing piece I need to find.”
Maryanne cupped a hand to her ear. “Say that first part again. It sounds so sweet.”
“No time. I need to get to work.”
She slid the plate of wheat toast closer. “After you eat, Columbo.”
Weissbard gave her an exaggerated look of exasperation and slid back to the table. She smiled and went back to the sink. He bit into a slice of wheat bread. It tasted like stale particleboard. He didn’t dwell on it. His mind was already searching for new solutions to the disappearance of Brian Sheridan.
* * *
Hours later, Weissbard sat at his desk scrutinizing a list of phone records from the last week to and from the Sheridan house. His desk phone rang and Washburn’s number lit up the ID. Weissbard answered.
“Detective, I finished analyzing the tire track casts from yesterday.”
Weissbard waited for the rest of the news. Nothing. He sighed.
“And what did you find, Washburn?” he recited.
“The tire casts are practically no help, at least for now. They’re from Tourenza brand tires that would fit on a Camry. Tens of thousands were sold in Florida last year.”
Weissbard hadn’t held out much hope they would be a breakthrough. “You said they were no help now, but…?”
“There’s a definitive wear pattern along the inner edge because the car is out of alignment. People always align the front end, but forget about the rear. If you do find the car, I’ll be able to confirm that it was the one at the scene.”
“Well, that’s something,” Weissbard said. “Congrats. You earned half your pay today.”
“That’s almost a compliment coming from you. I�
�ll take it.”
Weissbard hung up and returned to the phone call listing. Most of the incoming were under sixty seconds long, with the Sheridans wisely letting them go to voicemail. The outgoing were to the same few numbers: work, lawyer, family.
The phone rang. It was Washburn again.
“Now what?” Weissbard said.
“I just got something to earn the other half of today’s pay,” Washburn said. “A partial DNA hit on Sheridan’s sample. But you won’t believe from where.”
Again, Weissbard waited in vain for the punch line. “Damn it, I don’t have time for guessing games. Just tell me.”
“Virginia. About two years ago. An assault victim was beaten practically to death. The assailant’s skin cells were found under the vic’s fingernails. The DNA was probably degraded by time and the nasty condition of the vic’s hands, but it’s a partial match. Place Sheridan there and you establish a pattern of behavior.”
“Yeah, I kind of know how that works. Email me the files.”
“Already on the way.”
Washburn hung up and an email from him popped up on Weissbard’s monitor. Weissbard clicked on it and opened up the file from the Culpepper, Virginia police.
Darrell Dunham. Forty-seven years old, but his picture looked a decade older, with the leathery skin of a life-long smoker and a swollen, rosy nose that said booze had accompanied those cancer sticks. The farmer and his wife managed a parade of foster kids. One look at the guy and Weissbard knew his motivation for hosting the kids was less likely to be altruism than the pursuit of free labor.
The second picture was Dunham after the assault. Holy Jesus. The guy’s head looked like a purple beach ball with two swollen eyes and a pair of misshapen blackened lips. The ME’s report also listed numerous puncture wounds in the midsection, likely from a large knife. Someone really hated this loser.
The Playing Card Killer Page 20