“The man we believe killed Lily Campbell was carrying a rug. We think he may have used the rug to get the body into the club. Did you see it?”
“No. When I saw him, he was moving away from the stage. Maybe he’d already deposited the body.”
Ben lowered her back into her chair. “Paula, tell me everything you saw. Everything.”
“There isn’t much. The club had barely opened. This guy was moving out; I was moving in. We brushed shoulders; I gave him a bit of a knock. And I saw the way his hair bounced on impact. I mean, independent from his head. I used to wear a wig myself when I was younger, so I knew what that meant.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. Why would I? I just thought the man was losing his hair and didn’t want to settle for a toupee. You never know. Men are weird about hair loss.”
“Is that a fact?” Ben said evenly.
“Even after the murder, when I was talking to the police, I didn’t think anything about it. I didn’t make the connection. A woman was murdered onstage; I had no reason to link that to some guy wearing a wig.”
“Paula, this is very important.” Ben gazed steadily into her eyes. “I want you to cast your mind back to that night. Concentrate. Try to remember what you saw. Tell me everything you can remember.”
Paula took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Okay. I’m taking myself back to that night. I’m remembering. He was wearing—well, I’ve already told you about the shades.”
“Right. What else do you see?”
“That’s about all. Silver mirror glasses. He’s about my height. Maybe a bit taller. He’s black, or looks black, anyway. His hands are disgusting; fingers are stained an ugly blackish-yellow. He’s strong-looking, well-muscled.”
“What else do you see? Go through the whole scene. You’re walking through the club …”
“I’m walking down the floor, picking a table. I see this guy coming, but he’s moving quite fast and I don’t have time to get out of the way. We bump shoulders, his wig bounces. I say I’m sorry; he makes a grunting noise. He moves on toward the bathrooms.”
“Was there anything else, Paula?”
“I’m trying, but that’s all I can remember.” She opened her eyes. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more—Ben?”
Ben wasn’t looking at her. He had turned away, was staring off into space. “Can it be?” he muttered. He took the penknife out of his pocket and stared at it.
“What are you talking about?”
Ben still didn’t look at her. “But if—” His face suddenly blanched. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Oh, my God.”
“Ben, what is it?” Jones stood beside him. “What’s going on? Do you—do you know who the killer is?”
Ben slowly turned his head till his eyes met Jones’s. “Oh, my God,” he repeated, even more softly than before. “I think I do. I think I do.”
When Tyrone awoke, he was blind, chained, naked, and cold.
He didn’t know where he was or what had happened to him. His mind was all a blur at first; he was barely able to pull his thoughts together long enough to remember who he was. Slowly and painfully it began to come back to him.
His arms were chained above his head. Handcuffed, he thought. He didn’t know how long they had been locked up there. It felt like forever. He couldn’t sit down; the cuffs held him too high, too tight. The best he could do was lean against the wall beside him, and he could only barely do that. His legs were so tired; his knees ached and throbbed. He was so weak he wouldn’t have been able to stand—except that he had no choice. He was chained into position; no matter how badly he wanted to move, to sit, to lie down—he couldn’t.
And he was naked. He was certain of that. He didn’t know when he had lost his clothes or who had taken them, but he was absolutely certain they were gone. He was exposed, vulnerable.
And he was blind. Not permanently, he hoped. There was something draped over his head, something that extended down past his neck. He wasn’t sure what it was. It felt hot and scratchy. It let no light through, none whatsoever. It was hot and stifling; it made it hard to breathe.
He had no idea where he was. He seemed to be standing on a tile floor. He thought the wall on his right side was tile also, but he couldn’t be certain. He could only touch the wall with his shoulder, which made it hard to reach a certain conclusion. He felt nothing on his left side. Nothing but open air.
He didn’t know how long he had been here, how long he had been chained up like a slab of beef in a meat factory. It felt like days, weeks even, but he knew it had probably not been that long. He had had no company, no interaction, no food or water, since he had come to his senses. Nothing to help him measure the passage of time. Nothing to connect him to the world of the living.
It seemed his captor wanted it that way.
That was his best guess anyway. And all he could do was guess. Why hadn’t the man killed him already? What was it he wanted? Was it the penknife?
“Come and get me, you bastard!” Tyrone shouted suddenly. He didn’t know what had come over him. It had bubbled forth all at once, an uncontrollable rage, like a cyclone. “Talk to me!” he screamed. “Talk to me!”
Was it his imagination, or did he hear the soft impress of footsteps somewhere in the distance? It wasn’t much, barely more than the beating of his heart. But it was something, wasn’t it? Or was it just that he so desperately, desperately wanted it to be something …
A door pushed open. He heard the turning of the knob, the brush of wood against carpet. It was something. No, someone. Someone was coming.
Someone was coming!
His elation faded almost instantaneously as the sound of the footsteps told him the approaching figure was off the carpet, walking on tile. Very close.
“Get me out of here!” Tyrone shouted. “Now!”
There was no response.
“I know you’re there, you son of a bitch! Don’t pretend you’re not!” He was breathing hard and fast, causing the bag over his head to cling to his lips. “You don’t have the right to chain me up like a dog!”
He paused, sucking in air, trying to calm his trembling. But there was still no response. Not a word.
“Unchain me, you sick bastard!” Tyrone was shouting at the top of his lungs, giving it everything he had. “Do you hear me? Take these goddamn—”
He never got to finish the sentence. Tyrone heard the swift rush of air followed by an explosion in his groin. He tried to cry out, but there was no air left in his lungs. His knees crumbled, but the cuffs held his wrists up fast, giving him no release.
Second and third shock waves of pain coursed through his body. It had been a direct kick to his exposed and vulnerable genitalia, and it hurt like nothing he had ever before experienced in his entire life.
“Wh-why?” he whispered. His body was like a dead weight, threatening to pull his arms out of their sockets. The pain would not stop, and there was nothing he could do.
He heard a squeaking noise and suddenly it was raining. Raining hot water.
It was a shower! That’s where he was; that’s why the wall and the floors were tile. His wrists must be cuffed to the showerhead.
The elation of discovery soon faded to the threat of imminent danger. The water was pouring down on him. Hot water. And getting hotter …
Much hotter. Tyrone screamed. The water was scalding him, sizzling his skin. He pushed back onto his feet and danced around, trying to escape the fiery rain, but there was nowhere he could go. The water burned down on his exposed skin, on every part of his body. He felt as if his flesh was melting, then slowly peeling away.
“Stop!” Tyrone cried. “Please—stop!” He flung himself against the wall, but the showerhead held him tight. Maybe if I bash my brains out, he thought to himself, maybe if I just kill myself now. I have to end this. I have to escape the pain somehow—
“You’re killing me!” he screamed, but then he realized that that might well be the point of the exercise
.
The water continued to burn down. It had to be boiling temperature now. His body felt cooked, ruined, like it had been dipped into the sun. He felt weak and destroyed, and he knew he couldn’t last much longer.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the rain ended.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, breathless, pressed against the wall. “Oh, thank God.”
And then he heard the squeaking noise again.
“No! Please, no!”
This time the water was cold. Ice cold. At first, it was almost comforting, soothing—but that didn’t last long. The frigid water seemed to paralyze him, to send him into shock. He was trembling out of control, losing consciousness. His body couldn’t adapt to these drastically changing temperatures. He could feel his heart doing flip-flops, breaking down under the pressure.
He wanted to scream, but he didn’t have the strength. He just hung there, motionless, and the cruel water pounded down on him, freezing his veins and the flow of blood and everything else that made his body work. This was the end, he knew. The absolute bitter end. He couldn’t possibly survive this. No one could. No one—
And then the water shut off again.
Tyrone was hyperventilating, gasping for air. “Puh—puh—” He tried to stop stuttering, but he was so cold. He never felt so cold before. “Wh—what do you want? Why are you doing this?”
But there was no reply. Until—
Tyrone heard the swish of air just seconds before the blow landed. It smashed into the soft part of his stomach, pummeling him back against the tile wall. His body had been stretched to its limits when the blow landed, making it hurt all the worse. Tyrone instinctively tried to clutch his middle, but his wrists were still cuffed.
His stomach ached. He felt as if something had been severed, some tendon or muscle. He wondered if he wasn’t bleeding internally. For that matter, he might be bleeding externally, for all he knew. He could see nothing.
The next blow came mere seconds after the first. It hit near the same soft place as the first and was even harder. His cuffed arms were twisted to one side, wrenching his left arm almost out of its socket.
He couldn’t scream anymore, just couldn’t do it. Everything that had been in him, every bit of fight, of resistance, had been sucked away. Instead, he cried. He wept. He was embarrassed, but he couldn’t stop. Once he started, the tears tumbled out of his eyes in an unending stream. He felt pathetic, humiliated. But he couldn’t stop.
“Please,” he said, barely above a whisper. It was all he had left. “Please stop.”
But the attack did not stop. The next blow came to his head. The sharp sudden impact of a fist drove like a hammer into his face. His sore, aching, scarred, soft putty face. Tyrone felt his nose split open and explode, cartilage and blood flying, and not a second later, he felt the back of his head slam back against the tile wall.
All at once, his legs disappeared. He hung limp, like a dead turkey, forcing the showerhead to hold him dangling in midair. And the blows didn’t stop.
Another fist smashed into his face, so hard he felt as if the knuckles touched his skull. And then again. And again. And then he felt the man’s foot in his stomach, pounding and pounding, followed by another incapacitating kick to the groin. He hurt so badly he couldn’t separate one pain from another. He was bleeding in every place he could possibly bleed, aching with every neuron of his body.
More blows rained down on his gut, his kneecaps, and worst of all, his poor pitiful face. He couldn’t speak; he thought some of his teeth were broken. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t hide. He couldn’t even kill himself, which he would gladly have done at that point. But he couldn’t. All he could do was cry and whimper. Cry and whimper and wish he was dead.
And then, without warning, the man decided to speak. His voice cracked down like thunder. “When I return, you will tell me where the penknife is,” he said in precise, measured tones.
The man didn’t wait for an answer. He didn’t need it. Tyrone heard the footsteps recede; he listened until he was alone again. Alone with his guilt and his shame and the certain knowledge that when the man returned, he would tell him anything. Anything he wanted to know. Anything at all.
Chapter 45
“THEN TELL US!” Jones implored. “Who’s the murderer?”
“I can’t be sure,” Ben replied. “But given what Paula said, and this little bauble I received in the mail …”
“Would you please not do that mysterious trailing off thing again? You’re making me insane!” Jones shook him by the shoulders. “If you know something, tell me!”
“Or tell me!”
They all whirled around to see Earl ambling through the office door.
“I see you’ve been released as scheduled,” Jones remarked.
“Yeah. With a goddamn dog collar!”
Jones nodded sympathetically. “Maybe it will keep away fleas.”
The phone rang. Jones left Ben and walked to his desk to take the call. A few moments later, Ben heard Jones calling to him. “Boss?”
Jones was covering the mouthpiece with his hand. “Yeah?” Ben said.
“A call for you.”
“Tell him I’m busy.”
“He says he wants to talk to you right now.”
Jones was acting strangely, stuttering and hesitating. He was acting almost … scared. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know. He won’t say.” He leaned forward, hissing, “Ben, I think it’s him!
Earl ran beside Jones and pressed his head next to the receiver. Ben picked up the other phone. “I’m here.”
“I think you know who this is,” the voice growled, “so let’s not screw around with the preliminaries.” The voice was strange and muffled; Ben guessed he was holding something over the receiver to mask his voice. “Is it safe?”
Ben’s lips parted. What was he talking about? “Is what safe?”
“If you have illusions of killing time so this call can be traced, forget it. Two minutes and I hang up. So let me try again. Have you still got it?”
Ben hesitated, trying to think fast. “But I don’t know—”
“Don’t screw around with me!” the man bellowed. “I’ve got Jackson. What’s left of him, anyway. And if you ever hope to see him alive, you’d better cooperate.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “I’ve still got it.”
“Have you told the police?”
“No.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“No.”
“Good. I want you to come and see me. Bring it to me immediately, no stops in between. And come alone.”
“But—”
“No buts. You’ll come now.”
“But—alone? I’d have to be crazy.”
“If you don’t, the kid dies!”
“But how do I know—”
“You don’t believe me? Just listen.” Ben heard a heavy thumping sound on the other end of the line, followed by a scraping, a pounding. And the unmistakable sound of human pain.
“Say a few words to your buddy,” the man growled. “You can still talk, can’t you?”
The line was silent for what seemed an eternity. Finally Ben heard a broken, raspy voice. “Puh—puhlease. Help … me …”
The phone was ripped away, and Ben heard the sound of another blow landing on something soft, followed by a huge agonized cry. “He ain’t got much time left, Kincaid. He’s bleeding to death, among other things. If you don’t come, he’s gonna die. And soon. Understand?”
Ben bit down on his lower lip. “I understand.”
“You know where I am?”
“Where we met before?”
“Right. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to get here before I start cuttin’ your friend into pieces. I’ll meet you outside. Don’t call the cops or anyone else. If you do, I’ll kill Jackson and disappear.”
“You have to give me a chance—”
“I don’t have to do anything. Listen to me. There’s only one road up here
, so I’ll see you a long time before you see me. If you’re not alone, this kid’s a dead man. That’s a promise.”
Ben heard a click, then a long droning tone that told him the line was dead. He dropped the receiver into its cradle.
Jones was still holding his phone in his hands; he and Earl had heard the whole thing. “What are you going to do?”
Ben glanced down at his watch. Fifteen minutes. He barely had enough time, even if he left immediately.
Jones’s eyes widened. “You’re not thinking about—you’re not going to—”
Ben turned away. “I have to get my keys.”
Earl jumped in front of him. “Take me with you.”
Ben shook his head. “You heard what he said. I have to come alone.”
“I’ll hide in the backseat.”
“It’s too risky. To you and to Tyrone.”
Jones jumped in. “C’mon, Boss. Do you dream for a minute that he’s going to let Tyrone go?”
“Maybe not. But I have an idea—”
“That’s crazy. He’ll kill you.”
“There’s one thing we know for certain. If I don’t come, he’ll kill Tyrone. Do you want that?”
Earl’s jaw clenched together. “No, man. ’Course I don’t. But this is suicide.”
Ben tried to get past him. “I have to try.”
“Then take me with you. I’m the one who started this. I’m the one he really wants.”
“And if he knew you were out of prison, he probably would’ve asked for you. But he doesn’t. You’re safe for now. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Ben, I insist—”
“No.” Ben went into the side office where he’d left his coat. He rustled through the pockets till he found his keys, then emerged.
Jones was blocking his way this time. “Boss, you can’t do this!”
“Don’t call Mike,” Ben said. “You know him. He’ll march in with a SWAT team.”
“Boss, this is crazy. This is nuts.”
“It isn’t nuts. He’s got Tyrone. He’s hurting him. Probably torturing him.”
“But you’re risking your life!”
“Tyrone risked his life to save mine. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d just be a name on a tombstone right now.” Ben marched toward the door. “I don’t have any choice.”
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