Opening Moves pbf-6

by Steven James

  Like new locks on old boxcar doors.

  33

  Carl entered his friend Rennie Stillwells’s tavern just down the street from the hardware store. Rennie wouldn’t officially open until five, but all the guys from the Wednesday-night poker crew knew he was always there by three.

  “Hey, Rennie.”

  Rennie looked up from the bar. He was the only one in the room. “Carl. Hey, how ya doin’?”

  “Good. How ’bout you?”

  He shrugged. “Could be worse.”

  “Listen, do you mind if I use your phone, there?”

  Without a word, Rennie set it on the bar. Slid it toward Carl.

  “Um…you know…It’s a bit personal…Has to do with Adele.”

  “Gotcha.” Rennie winked as if he understood completely. “Help yourself. I gotta use the john anyway.”

  He stepped away and Carl turned the phone so the numbers faced him, then he pulled out the note that Adele’s kidnapper had left for him, and spread it across the counter. The number: 888-359-5392.

  He’d done as the note directed and the body was there at the hardware store. In a sense, the ransom had been paid.

  Call the number, Carl. So what if it’s a few minutes early.

  Thinking about Adele being with this man was just too terrifying for him to wait.

  Sweating, his hand shaking noticeably as he tapped in the number, he held the receiver to his ear and waited while it rang.

  No one picked up.

  With each passing second he became more and more nervous, more afraid.

  The note said to call this number, that she would be okay if you did!

  But another voice: No, you called early! You didn’t wait!

  Still no one answered.

  Then Carl heard police sirens and realized that someone must have already found Miriam Flandry’s corpse and called the station, which was less than a mile away.

  And all he could think of was why the man who’d taken Adele, who’d already severed off at least one of her fingers, wasn’t answering.

  And what he might be doing to her instead.

  34

  Joshua drew the heavy-duty zip tie taut around Adele’s left wrist. She was awake now, still blindfolded, but she could obviously tell that she was restrained to the chair and that he was putting something around her wrist. She tried valiantly to pull free. “What are you doing?” Her voice was constricted and tight with concern, and Joshua had to admit to himself that he kind of liked that.

  He thought that maybe it would be more frightening to her if he remained quiet. So instead of replying, he just cinched the second tie around her right wrist, tugging it tight enough to cut off the circulation to her hand.

  “Ouch!” She winced. “Who are you! Stop it!”

  When he still said nothing, she cried out louder, squirming to get free, and it reminded him of the way Colleen had acted the night before. It even reminded him of his first trip into the special place beneath the barn with his father, when that man named Kenneth who was shackled to the boards holding up the cellar’s earthen walls, had tried so desperately but in the end, futilely, to escape.

  “What do you want!” Adele screamed. The words thrummed for a moment inside the boxcar then the mattresses swallowed the sounds, leaving a soft, hollow silence in their wake.

  Joshua bent to do her right ankle but realized it might be best to talk to her after all, to keep her preoccupied until he got started with the Gemrig saw. “I just want you to be still.”

  When he actually did reply to her this time, she was quiet, and he wondered if maybe she’d become hopeful that she could negotiate with him. He didn’t like that his words might be leading her on, might be making her think he was going to have compassion on her. It just didn’t feel right to do that to her.

  She stopped struggling for the moment, then shifted her weight in the chair. “Please let me-oh my God!” She was rubbing the fingers of her left hand together and it was clear she’d just discovered that her ring finger was missing. The first aid tape Joshua had wrapped around the nub kept it from bleeding too much, and the adrenaline, fear, and the lingering effects of the drugs must have distracted her from the pain. “What did you do to me!”

  “I’ve asked Carl to do a job for me. That was to let him know how important it is.”

  She took a handful of heavy breaths. “Okay. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter, but can you let me go? I’ll make sure he does what you want.”

  It was clear that she was just trying to conciliate him. Of course it mattered that someone had snipped off her ring finger, and even though he could understand why she was acting this way, saying these things, Joshua wasn’t sure he liked her downplaying the severity of what had happened, all in a vain attempt to try to make him release her.

  “I won’t tell,” she gasped, and it sounded like she was trying to hold back tears. “I’ll make Carl do what you want. He will. I promise.”

  Joshua enjoyed the screaming, but this begging made him uncomfortable. He finished with her right ankle. Turned to the left one, trying to tune out her pleading, but she kept on, kept promising that she would do whatever he wanted if he would just stop, just please, please, stop and let her go.

  He retrieved the saw. That would change things. Once he actually got started.

  The November air bristled across his bare skin, tiny needles that somehow brought him closer to the moment, more in tune with what he was doing. He closed his eyes, shivered deeply. Embraced the chill of the coming night.

  Last evening he’d left Colleen conscious as he amputated her hands, and that’d been satisfying. Now, with Adele, since he was doing both her hands and feet, it would last that much longer.

  Yes, getting started would make things better, would stop all her talking.

  He decided to begin with her feet.

  Joshua knelt and carefully positioned the blade of the amputation saw against the skin just above Adele’s left foot, about half an inch below the plastic tie.

  “Listen to me!” she cried, and started in again, wriggling frantically. “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, you don’t need to do this!” She’d obviously pieced two and two together, probably taking into account what had happened to her finger along with the fact that something was constricting her wrists and ankles. “Okay? Whatever you want, I’ll make sure-”

  “If you keep moving, this is going to hurt a lot worse and it’ll take longer, and I’m guessing you wouldn’t want either of those things to happen.” He tugged on the end of the plastic tie again, cinching it deeper into her skin to make sure it was as snug as it needed to be, then he grasped her foot and held it firmly against the ground to keep it in position.

  “No!”

  He realigned the saw…

  “Please stop!”

  …Tightened his grip on the handle…

  “No, I’ll-”

  And drove the blade forward, bringing a spray of hot blood and a bright, fresh scream from Adele.

  The cut was just shy of half an inch deep. Joshua paused, took a moment to drink in the sound of this woman’s cries. As he did, he felt-along with the excitement-a piercing stab of shame doing this, enjoying her suffering so much.

  The reality that her pain brought him so much pleasure was unsettling. He’d done enough research on serial killers to know that the majority of them were sadists, relishing the act of making other people suffer.

  You’re a sadist, Joshua. You’re a-

  Never before throughout his life had he thought of himself in that way, not before this autumn when all this began. But now he was forced to admit that he really did enjoy causing pain, and the discovery of that dark part of his nature emerging so clearly, so distinctly, troubled him.

  Adele was crying in between her shrieks of pain.

  “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

  The evil which I would not.

  That I do.

  Joshua reali
zed that he would never be the same again, not after giving free rein to this part of his nature. Acts like this undoubtedly changed a person in fundamental ways. Once you start down this road, with the type of crimes he was committing, there’s no turning back. Yes, he might be able to find eventual forgiveness for his actions, but he would never be able to erase the impact they would have on his conscience, on his soul.

  “Light is come into the world”-his father made him recite the verse from John, chapter three, so, so many times-“and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

  Their deeds were evil.

  Are evil.

  You are-

  He shook the thought loose.

  Adele’s leg was quivering and it wasn’t as easy as before to hold her foot in position against the floor.

  He really should keep going.

  As he angled the saw into the wound, Adele screeched again and tried to jerk her leg away from the blade. But then, when she gasped to get another breath, even with the mattresses inside the boxcar, even with the door closed, Joshua thought he heard a clang outside.

  “Quiet,” he told her firmly.

  She directed her head toward him as if to look at him, even though she was still blindfolded. Her leg quivered with pain.

  Yes.

  There it was.

  He heard it again. Faint, but definitely the sound of something banging against the track near the boxcar.

  Someone was outside, nearby, in the train yard.

  Adele must have heard it too, because she yelled, her voice even louder than when the saw blade had bitten into her ankle. “I’m in here!”

  Leaping to his feet, Joshua clamped his hand firmly over her mouth. “You don’t want to upset me and I don’t want to gag you. Be quiet now.”

  But almost immediately he decided the gag would be necessary.

  He thought of the necrotome tucked in its sheath on his belt. Then his eyes flicked from the Gemrig saw, to the hypodermic needle containing the drugs he’d been planning on giving her later, to the Glock.

  And Joshua decided what he needed to do.

  35

  Muffled sounds.

  But it was impossible to tell which boxcar they were coming from.

  I ran alongside the line of cars, trying to discern the origin of the sounds, but I couldn’t. And then, just as suddenly as they began, they stopped.

  Slowing so I could listen more carefully, I noticed a small area of snow was kicked up in front of the door of a car not too far down the track. I ran to it. The door was chained shut, but the chain allowed the door to remain open a crack, just a few centimeters wide. The chain ran through the metal handle to another handle bolted onto the side of the train car.

  It had an old chain but a brand-new padlock, and even though it was a different brand than the one on the front gate, just the fact that it was new was enough for me.

  The crack was just wide enough for a person to slip his hand through and lock the padlock from inside the car. A perfect hiding place-you’re locked inside with the only access locked from the outside.

  But then a realization: the wind that cut through the crack made a high-pitched shrieking sound.

  Maybe that’s what I’d heard.

  Maybe that’s all it was.

  But I wasn’t about to take any chances. I unholstered my weapon and called inside, “This is the police. Whoever’s in the boxcar, lie down. Hands to the side!”

  No sound, except for the impertinent wind.

  I pounded on the wall of the boxcar with my fist. “Reply if you are in the boxcar!”

  Silence.

  The crack was certainly wide enough for someone to shoot through and I wasn’t excited about putting my face in front of it. Finally, however, I clicked on the Maglite and, standing to the side, I tugged the door open as much as the chain would allow.

  I aimed the beam of light into the car, waited to the count of three, then leaned over and peered through the crack.

  The narrow width made it hard to see, and even with the flashlight I couldn’t make out very much at all, but I could see what at first looked like a large sack or a slumped pile of clothes just on the edge of my vision. However, in an instant I realized it wasn’t just a pile of clothes-it was a body with its back to me. I shouted again, but the person didn’t move.

  From this angle I couldn’t tell whether I was looking at a man or a woman, although the frame looked small. A woman. Possibly a slightly built man or an adolescent boy. When I looked closer, I made out dark stains on the clothing near the person’s rib cage.

  Blood.

  I shouted again to see if the victim would respond, but there was no reply. I tugged hard at the door again, but I could only move it two or three centimeters before the chain caught. Without bolt cutters, there was no way I was getting into this boxcar.

  The other side.

  The sliding door on the other side.

  I punched at my radio as I swept around the car to see if there was another way in. “Ralph, I’ve got someone down. Injured, maybe a fatality. I’m at the seventeenth boxcar from the east end, by the woods.”

  “On my way.” By his tone I could tell he was already running.

  The door on the other side of the car was welded shut, so I quickly returned to the side facing the forest. I studied the ground again, trying to see if there was any way to tell which direction the person who’d left this boxcar might have gone. But there simply wasn’t enough snow.

  I turned, searched for any movement, crouched and swept the Maglite’s beam beneath the train car as I’d done earlier, but I still saw no evidence of anyone else nearby.

  While I waited for Ralph to arrive, I called for backup, telling the dispatcher that there appeared to be at least one victim and that we needed an ambulance. “Make sure they have bolt cutters and the Jaws of Life. The front gate and the boxcar are both chained shut and I want to get into this car as fast as possible.”

  Ralph appeared, leaping over the coupler between two cars.

  I pointed toward the boxcar’s door. “Over here!”

  He closed the distance between us. “So you can’t tell, injury or fatality?”

  “Not until we get inside.”

  He grabbed the metal handle and yanked at it, trying to get the door open, but the chain caught, held fast. “I tried that,” I told him.

  “Yeah,” he said vaguely. “Let me see that flashlight.”

  I handed it to him and he attempted to slide it into the door handle, but the Maglite’s casing was too wide. He slipped out his Mini Mag and wedged it in.

  “That chain isn’t going to break, Ralph.”

  “I’m not trying to break the chain.”

  I could’ve kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier-of course, the handle. Torque it loose from the boxcar and the chain is useless.

  He took a deep breath and pulled down fiercely on the flashlight. I thought it might break but it didn’t. However, it didn’t do the trick either. The door handle didn’t pull free.

  “I need more leverage,” he mumbled, then turned and inspected the area surrounding the car.

  Wondering if there might be a loose fence post he could use, I studied the fence line but didn’t see anything promising. When I turned around to look for him, I saw that he’d gone to a flat car on a neighboring track and now hoisted a three-foot-long pipe into the air. He jogged back to me, augured the pipe into position, clenched his teeth with the effort, and cranked down. Hard.

  With a tight, high-pitched squeal, the handle on the door bent, but only slightly.

  He repositioned the pipe.

  Yeah, he was going to be able to pry that loose.

  The ladder on the car was rusted but looked climbable. “I’m going to have a look around.”

  Holstering my gun and jamming my flashlight beneath my belt, I scrambled up and stood on top of the boxcar.

  The day was languishing around us, night crawling quickly over the
city, the visibility fading fast.

  I turned in a circle, studying first the area north of us, then the parking lot, then the fence line.

  And that’s when I saw him.

  He was about forty meters away, moving stealthily through the drainage ditch on his way to the loose section of fence that Ralph and I had used earlier to access the train yard. Details were hard to make out in this light, but I could tell he was a dark-haired male Caucasian, large frame, wearing blue jeans and a maroon or brown-colored down coat.

  Knowing that he’d very likely been the one to attack the person in the boxcar beneath me, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I unholstered my SIG. “Milwaukee Police! You by the fence, do not move!”

  He paused, still facing the other direction. Before I could give him any more instructions, there was a mighty cry as Ralph hefted on the pipe. A harsh metallic snap ripped through the air. I heard the door slide open and then the sound of Ralph jumping into the train car.

  I kept the gun aimed at the suspect. “Hands up!” But the wind caught hold of the words, throwing them back at me, and he didn’t move. I shouted louder, “Hands up! Now!”

  Slowly, the man raised his hands.

  “Turn around!”

  He didn’t move.

  “Dead!” Ralph yelled to me. “Male! Late thirties!”

  The suspect didn’t move.

  “Turn around!” I repeated. “Face me-and keep your hands in the air!” A beat of silence from Ralph, and he must have been checking the victim for an ID because a second later he called, “It’s Hendrich.”

  What?

  Then who’s the guy by the culvert?

  “Turn toward my voice! Slowly!”

  The suspect began to turn slowly, just as I’d commanded, but then all at once he slung his right arm out in front of him and leveled it at me.

  Time seemed to pause in midbreath.

  In the wide swath of shadows, his hand was shielded enough that I couldn’t tell whether or not he held a weapon. In that instant I had to decide what to do-assume he had a gun and drop him, or assume he didn’t and let him live.