by Linda Ladd
Claire listened to him, but she was also looking around and assessing her chances for escape. That’s when she saw another captive in a cage half hidden in shadows along the far wall. There was a man inside it, all right. A young man who looked a whole heck of a lot like a Fitch, but one she’d never seen before. At the moment, he looked as if he had been beaten into submission and couldn’t quite focus his eyes. He was still fully dressed, lying on his side, blood coming out of his nose and mouth and wetting the front of his yellow Missouri Tigers sweatshirt. His breathing was shallow and wheezing, as if his lungs weren’t quite working right.
Bones/Punk the Double Homicidal Maniac was still shooting the bull. “Know one thing I learned when those bastard Fitches put me in that god-awful hospital place? I learned that this feud thing goin’ on between the Fitches and the Parkers was really dumb. Lots of silly stuff goin’ on for no good reason. So I thought I’d come back here and me and Bones’d clean it up some, you know, help out our brothers a bit. Bones knew what to do, too. He said the only way to do that was to kill everybody in Fitchville. Just kill ’em all, everybody, men, women, children, and little babies. Just end it up right now, good and tight. Bones says that’s the only answer to that kinda grudge fightin’. So that’s what we’re doin’. He says they deserve it anyways, ’cause they’re the ones who put me in that hospital and kept me away from him.”
He stopped, and stared at her without blinking for so long that she felt he might have gone unconscious. No such luck. “I could’ve killed you, too, real easylike, after Bones and me followed you and that other guy to that cabin a few hours back. Bones’s out takin’ care of him right now. He won’t be gone much longer, though. He’s gonna walk him out back to our dump site where nobody can find him and then shoot him. After they left, I just waited for you to come outta that cabin so I could catch you. And I’m gonna keep you alive till last and see what Bones wants to do with you. He’ll be comin’ back any minute now. He told me to bring you in here. He said we’d have lots of fun with you.”
Well, Claire sure did hope that old Bones would stay somewhere in the back of this lunatic’s brain a mite longer. She also hoped that meant that Misha was not dead and might get away and come find her. But right now and since she was dealing with the good, or at least, better part of the split personality, maybe she could win him over before Bones decided to pay her a less chatty and more deadly visit. “They’re gonna find me, you know that, don’t you, Punk? I didn’t check in like I was supposed to, and so they’re gonna know I’m in trouble and come looking for me. Bud and the whole sheriff’s department and the FBI. I’m a police officer so they’ll mobilize the whole damn highway patrol to search for me. It’s only a matter of time before they find us here. Better let me go now before they track you down and lock you up again.”
“They aren’t gonna find us out here. Even Bud can’t, and he’s real smart, too. A good guy, and I’m sure glad he wasn’t with you tonight, or we’d have to kill him, too. Then he couldn’t go huntin’ with me. Nobody’s ever found us out here, not the Fitches, not our pa, not nobody. See, you gotta know the entrances, and Bones’s got ’em hidden real good. So maybe you just oughta shut your trap now. Bones isn’t gonna like your sass, no how. Just warning you. Better listen, too. Bones’s not as gentle as me. He’s gonna whup you up nice and hard, break all your bones up into little bitty pieces. That’s what he does best.”
Claire took that warning to heart, definitely. She felt shivers rising on her skin and skittering down her spine. She felt fear taking hold of her and not letting go. She had to get control of it. She was in a very bad spot, and she was completely on her own this time. She had better find a way out of that cage and out of that mine and in a great big hurry, too. As Punk moved away and headed for his other victim, Claire put her feet up against the bars and kicked the door as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. Across the room, Punk was now dragging the captured Fitch out of his cage. His hands were already tied together, but he had to be dragged, limp-limbed and only half-conscious, which was probably good. Punk hoisted the man into the air until he hung suspended from a hook drilled into the ceiling. His victim’s eyes remained shut, his breathing labored. Claire hoped to God that he was unconscious and wouldn’t feel whatever Punk was getting ready to do to him.
When Punk turned and looked at her, she stopped kicking on the barred door of her cage. “Hey, you, Claire Morgan, stop that kicking or I’m gonna cut off your feet.” He frowned. “Hey, you ever hear a bone break clean in two. That pretty li’l snap it makes. It’s like the finest music in the whole world. It’s like playin’ a fine-tuned instrument. That’s what we call you guys in the cages, our instruments.”
Then, and to Claire’s absolute horror, Punk picked up a claw hammer off a table, raised it up in the air, and then brought it slamming down in a brutal blow on the man’s left shin. She did hear the muffled sound of the bone giving way, and the pain brought the victim around. He shrieked in the most terrible way that Claire had ever heard.
“Stop it, Punk!” she cried desperately. “Just stop it!”
Punk did stop it. As if surprised, he turned around and stared at her, hammer still poised in his hand. “Why? Just ’cause Bones caught ’im don’t mean I can’t play on him some.”
Queasy and trembling, Claire realized in that moment that she was utterly, completely helpless to save that poor man’s life, or her own, and her voice showed it, wavering out weak and breathless and pleading and full of despair. “Yes, it does, yes, it does, Punk. Bones’ll be mad at you if you take his fun away. He likes to do it himself, doesn’t he? He won’t like this one bit. Put him back in his cage. Come get me. You caught me.”
“But I’m just now gettin’ started. Be patient. We’ll get to you in good time.”
But he did stop his torture for a little while, and appeared to be standing there and thinking about what she’d said. Claire held her breath and hoped to hell that she had gotten through to him. If he would take her out, untie her hands, she could fight him, but she had to get out of the cage first. Then he called out, “I didn’t used to hurt people this bad, you know, tie ’em up and beat on ’em, didn’t even like it, but ever since I got out of that nuthouse and found my own true love had gone and got married to my own brother, that’s all I ever wanna do. Just bust up folks, and I mean, bust ’em up good, too. Know what, I’m just like Bones now. He taught me how to hunt down Fitches just like he does. You know, it just makes me feel good to do it. So just sit back and relax. Your time’s a comin’ up soon enough. Bones’ll wanna do you first, though. Or maybe he’ll just keep you for a while and have some fun with you.”
And then he went back to work, methodically inflicting damage on his barely conscious captive’s body. Claire fought desperately to get out of the cage, kicking at the bars, but she couldn’t break through. Finally, she just gave up and shut her eyes and tried to block out the moaning and groaning and cries of pain. She had seen plenty of awful things in her law enforcement career, but she had never witnessed anything like what Punk was doing to his helpless victim. The abuse went on awhile, with various bats and tire irons and hammers, in sort of a horrendously organized way, as if there was a method to his madness. Finally, Punk or Bones or whatever devil he was, stopped his gruesome work, now panting with exertion but smiling, always smiling. Then to her utter horror, he started licking the man’s broken-up body, especially at the places where splintered bones had pierced the skin. Oh, God, oh, God. He was a sadist. A walking, talking abomination. He was worse than Thomas Landers had ever been. He took more pleasure in inflicting pain than killing his victim.
Punk continued undressing and licking the poor man for a long time. Claire spent that time frantically jerking and kicking as hard as she could on the bars. Nothing worked, the cage was way too strong. She stopped and tensed up to the consistency of set concrete as Punk approached her again.
“You enjoy that, Claire Morgan? Did you hear my pretty music?”
“I heard a bone break when you hit him.” She almost had to choke those words out, and then she hesitated, watching his expressions for guidance. This guy was a criminally insane psychopathic serial killer, and she was the only one around on whom he could take out his mountains of crazy. Across the room, she could hear a low moaning. His other victim had to be dying, had to be. No human being could endure such a beating and ever function normally again. He couldn’t last much longer. She took a deep breath. In, deeply, hold. Out, deeply, hold. Okay, play along. She had to. What else could she do? Decision made, her voice still had a slight tremor when she spoke. “I liked it, I guess. It’s different. I never heard any music quite like that before.”
“You want to hear some more?”
Oh, God. Her bones were certainly next on his bone-breaking to-do list.
“Do you?”
Now his demented grin became dreamy, happy, appeared almost orgasmic. “Each bone makes its own sweet sound, kinda like different notes, and you can put ’em together once you figure it out. Bones told me that. He’s better at it than me. He got lots of practice while I was locked up, but I’m getting better.”
Claire breathed in deeply again, desperately trying to calm raw, ragged nerves, trying her best not to give in to pure mindless panic. She did not want the Bones personality to emerge, not here, not now. Dr. LeCorps made it clear to her that Bones was the brute of the family. But how could he do any worse than the terrible injuries she’d just witnessed Punk inflicting? She had to get him to let her out of the cage. That was her only chance. “Why don’t you let me out of here, Punk? Let me watch you work, up close, where I can hear the music better.”
Punk’s eyes went extremely narrow, latched on her face, watchful, examining her in minute detail, no doubt thinking things over in his damaged, defective, demented brain, maybe even chatting about it inside his head with Brother Bones. Then he seemed to wake up from a short doze and laughed and shook his head. Claire’s heartbeat wavered, not sure yet. “Don’t think I oughta do that. Thomas Landers told me how tricky you are. He said you were always tryin’ to escape when he had you tied up, and that you’d turn on him in nothin’ flat. So I won’t be taking no chances with you, no ma’am. But you can watch me all you want. I’m gonna go now and try to find me another Fitch to play you some tunes on. I try to catch us two instruments every night, you know, one for me to play with and one for Bones. That’s how we gonna get rid of all of ’em. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta dump that guy over there. We got us a good place to put the bodies ’til spring. Nobody’s gonna find ’em, not even Bud and those other cops. You wait right here, you hear?”
“Please untie my hands. It hurts me to lay on them like this. Please, I can’t get out. Please take off the cuffs.”
Punk thought about it, and then he walked around to the back of her cage, reached in and released her. “Now don’t make me sorry I did this.”
“No, I won’t. Thank you.”
Then he grinned at her, the whole time he was donning his winter parka and snow boots and gloves and ski mask and leather fur-lined cap. He headed outside without another word to her, his victim’s broken body hanging limply over his shoulder, but she could see that the man was dead. God, now she’d seen with her own two eyes what Blythe and Paulie had suffered at his hands before he killed them. And how many others had died so cruelly in all the many years that Bones Fitch had been running loose and preying on innocent victims?
Claire renewed her efforts to get out, trying to pull loose the steel bars, using every ounce of her strength to dislodge them. They would not budge. She got her feet up against the door again and started kicking out with both feet, again and again, determined to get out before Punk returned. She did not want to be around when Bones emerged and took over. He would not mess around. He would not show mercy. He would not stand outside her cage and chat her up. This time Black was not going to come and rescue her, did not even know that she was in trouble. This time she was alone in the hidden lair of a psychopath with no way out. But she was gonna survive, damn it. She was not going to die in this awful hole. She was gonna get away. Somehow. Some way. She was not going down easy, no way, she was going to fight for her life. She was not going to let him kill her.
Chapter Twenty-five
By the time her captor stomped back into the cave, his coat covered with a crust of snow and ice, Claire was exhausted from kicking and jerking on the bars. Then the scariest madman she had ever run across walked right back up to her cage, smile still on his face. Not a good sign. Rigid with fear and tension, she waited for him to speak, terrified he had become Bones Fitch now, come back to take care of her once and for all.
“Couldn’t find nobody else to play. Sorry ’bout that, ma’am. Guess you’re gonna have to do. But just think how good you can hear the music, if it’s your own bones I’m a snappin’ and a poppin’. That’s good, right? Maybe I’ll go easy on you. Your bones are probably real slender and fragile and stuff, like Blythe’s were. You know, easy to crack. But those kind sound good, too, once we got ’em all dried out and hanging up like wind chimes. But it’s gonna hurt you, till you pass out all the way. Sorry, I hate to hurt you so much, you bein’ Bud’s friend, and all, but that’s just the way it’s gotta be. But then, after that, you won’t feel a thing until you’re dead and frozen up in the ice out there in the river.” He gestured with his hand toward the shaft where he’d earlier disappeared with the body.
Long, rippling, and, yes, unspeakably horrendous shivers started shuddering their way down Claire’s spine, like an endless undulating field of wheat blowing in the wind. The very calm and matter-of-fact way he had just described her demise was completely chilling, all right. And okay, now it was pretty damn clear that he planned to beat her within an inch of her life, strike that, beat her to death, and sooner rather than later. Okay. Okay. Now she was in big trouble. On the other hand, that meant he’d have to get her out of her cage in order to hoist her up into his favorite pummeling position. At least, that would give her a fighting chance to get away. She could probably take this guy down. In a fair fight. Black had taught her a few new boxing moves to go with her kickboxing prowess. Problem was, she didn’t think serial killers were into fair and gentlemanly rules of engagement. Not from what she’d seen and heard thus far. But he wasn’t all that big or strong, and he sure wasn’t that bright except in planning heinous criminal deeds and escaping from the guys in white coats who were probably still chasing him.
Maybe she could trick him. Wrestle his weapon away somehow. Kill the damn bastard in the most horrible way possible. That one sounded the best to her. Okay, that was her plan, as weak and unlikely and impossible as it was. Now all she had to do was wait for him to decide to release her from the cage and beat her to a pulp, and not panic in the interim or in the aftermath. Stay calm and carry on, as the British used to say during the war. Yeah, right. At the moment, she heartily wished she was in England or at least had a grenade to toss at the freak grinning through the bars at her.
“Where’s Bones, anyway?” she asked him. Maybe distraction would work. Chat, chat, and more chat. “I’d sure like to meet him before, you, well, you know.”
“Play bone music on you?”
Claire frowned. Maybe distraction didn’t work with the criminally insane. He seemed to have a one-track mind with Claire being his next musical ditty. “Yeah. Guess that’s gonna happen, regardless of what I do or say, right?”
“Hey, it’s gonna be so pretty. Really melodious, I promise. It’ll make it worth dyin’ for. You’ll be smilin’ the whole time, promise. Everybody that we’ve played tells me that they like it.”
Yes, and she probably would, too, after he broke both her legs with a Louisville Slugger and urged her to utter flowery compliments abo
ut his musicality.
“So, come on now, Claire Morgan. Let’s just get you out and movin’ over there and set you up and get all ready for when Bones comes back.” He was leaning down close to the bars now and inserting the key hanging on the chain around his neck into the padlock. “Would you rather that I tie your arms up to that hook Bones put in the ceiling or strap you down on the worktable? You can choose. I don’t mind. Whichever floats your boat.”
“Whatever makes the music sound better, I guess.”
Punk nodded agreement and pulled the lock apart, and then opened the door, still smiling and happy and nuttier than Mr. Peanut. She crawled out on her hands and knees, her legs cramping from being bent inside the small space so long. “I don’t think I can walk yet. Give me a minute to stretch my legs, okay?”
“Sorry about that. I do want you to be comfortable. I promise. That was Bones’s idea, you know, to put our musical instruments inside those old metal punishing cages so people couldn’t really kick their way out. He’s real smart.”
Instruments, again. “Oh, I know he is. But so are you, Punk. But you don’t know how much that I really like you. I knew it the first time I saw you out there with your brothers.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yeah. Look, I’ll show you.”
Punk looked down at the doubled fist she held up, and then she smashed it into his genitals as hard as she could and then even harder into his nose when he bent over in agony. She heard the melodious crunch of his nose when it broke and welcomed the sound. Warm blood spurted out and hit her in the face and chest, and he staggered backwards, grabbing himself. But then he grabbed her parka with one hand as he fell, pulling her down with him. Claire really started punching him in the face then, aiming for his injured nose and front teeth, hitting him with both fists, but she couldn’t break his grip on her coat. He hit her in the face, a brutal direct hit on her left eye. Stunned, she dropped back, unable to function for a few seconds. Quickly twisting around, he jumped on top of her and straddled her waist, the blood gushing from his nose and down over her face and hair.