Death Grip

by Elaine Viets

  If that’s true, why was I hearing muffled screams, thumps, and cries for help? And why was Cutter barking so hard?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Pepper spray in hand, I cautiously climbed to the top of the stairs.

  FORTY

  Rosanna had both hands cuffed to a tarnished brass bed. At least, I thought this poor woman was the missing housekeeper. She was so thin, bloody and dirty, it was hard to tell. She was pulling on the cuffs and trying to scream. Her face was red and her mouth was covered with silver duct tape. Sweat gushed down her forehead.

  The attic was hot, airless and windowless. The only light came from the louvered vent in the eaves. It had the same low ceiling as my attic.

  I crab-walked over the dusty wooden floor to the bed, trying to soothe the frightened woman. ‘It’s OK, Rosanna, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘Hold still while I get that tape off.’

  I peeled off the tape and Rosanna was gasping for breath. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ Her voice was a dry croak.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You’re safe.’

  ‘No!’ she said, her eyes frantic with fear. ‘He’s coming back.’

  Rosanna was badly bruised, especially around her neck – and bleeding from about four different areas – neck, upper arms, chest and legs. She was wearing a thin blue cotton nightgown, stiff with dried blood.

  I called 911 and tried to make them understand this was an emergency. I had a hard time convincing the 911 operator, who must have lived in the Forest.

  ‘Are you saying the victim is in the Bellerive guesthouse and Mr Bellerive doesn’t know it?’

  ‘Mr Bellerive is— Oh, just get here fast, OK? It’s an emergency.’

  ‘Please stay on the line, ma’am.’

  ‘Can’t!’ I hung up and called Katie.

  ‘I found her,’ I said. ‘Guesthouse attic. Get here as fast as you can. She’s hurt and Briggs may come back and attack us both.’

  ‘We’re on our way,’ Katie said. ‘ETA ten minutes. Keep the phone on so we know what’s happening.’

  ‘Help is coming, Rosanna,’ I said.

  ‘Hurry!’ she said. ‘He could come up here any minute!’

  In the attic’s southwest corner was a faded red velvet camelback sofa with a tattered quilt on it. The quilt and the couch were covered with suspicious brown stains. The smell of decomposition seemed to be coming from both. The pup was pawing at them and rolling around on the quilt, possibly destroying evidence.

  ‘Cutter!’ I said. ‘Come here.’

  He ignored me until I said the magic words. ‘Treat, Cutter, treat!’ Then his little round body came bobbing over. I fed him a couple of treats.

  ‘Sorry for the delay, Rosanna,’ I said. ‘Let me get you out of those handcuffs.’

  Fortunately, they were cheap cuffs. I knew how to open those, thanks to a tip from an old cop. I opened my Swiss Army knife and used the screwdriver to pry away the two metal parts. The tiny screwdriver made my hands feel big and clumsy. It kept slipping before it finally worked. I twisted once more and Rosanna was free.

  She was exhausted and weak. As I gently rubbed some circulation back into her raw, bruised wrists, I noticed the food stains down the front of her gown. Rosanna saw me looking at them.

  ‘He wouldn’t uncuff me so I could eat,’ she said, her voice weak and tearful. ‘He fed me my dinners. I’d spit the food back at him and he’d beat me.’

  Suddenly, Cutter was raising a racket. He sprinted to the top of the stairs and barked frantically, bouncing up and down.

  ‘It’s Briggs!’ Rosanna said. I heard the terror in her voice.

  I also heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Too late to pull them up. There was no railing or barrier around the stairs.

  ‘He’s bringing lunch,’ Rosanna said.

  Briggs wasn’t bringing lunch – he was bringing trouble. I looked around desperately for some way to stop him. Damn! I’d left the mop downstairs.

  ‘There’s nothing up here to use as a weapon,’ Rosanna said. ‘Believe me, I’ve looked.’

  I handed her the barking puppy. ‘Take Cutter in the corner behind the sofa. Hide!’

  Rosanna staggered across the attic with the squirming pup while I pushed the heavy brass bed across the room to the stair opening. It was hard going, since I had to crouch. One final push and the bed partly fell into the stairway and became a barrier.

  Cutter was barking louder. Now I heard someone almost at the top of the steep stairs. ‘Move that bed, or I’ll kill you both,’ commanded a cold voice. Briggs. ‘Now!’

  I didn’t move from my spot on the side of the stair opening. Neither did the brass bed. It still covered the top of the stair opening.

  Briggs fired a weapon – probably a shotgun – and the mattress exploded, tufts of stuffing flying everywhere. He fired again, and the bedstead shifted.

  Now he could squeeze through. I brought out my Swiss Army knife, though I doubted it was any good in close combat, and my pepper spray.

  Briggs would be up here in a moment. I could see Rosanna in the corner, struggling to hold the puppy. He was scratching her arms and nipping her fingers, trying to get free. Rosanna tried to hang on, but she was too weak to hold him.

  I figured my pepper spray was the best bet and prayed it would subdue Briggs. But that stuff was tricky to use. I only had one shot.

  Briggs’s angry head popped over the top of the stairs, and I hit him with the spray. He ducked at the last second, and I got him, but mostly the top of his head. Some did get in his eyes and that infuriated him.

  Briggs bellowed and fired his shotgun. The shot grazed my arm. He clubbed me in the head with the shotgun butt.

  Now I was dazed and bleeding. And desperate. Briggs would kill Rosanna if help didn’t arrive soon.

  Cutter broke free from the kidnapped housekeeper, and launched himself at Briggs. The furry yellow missile landed on the killer’s face. The pup clamped his teeth on Briggs’s nose. Briggs screamed, but the pup wouldn’t let go. He had the killer firmly by the beezer. Briggs howled – at least as loud as he could howl with a twenty-two-pound furball on his face.

  Briggs dropped the shotgun during the struggle. He couldn’t remove the pup without removing a big chunk of his nose. I grabbed the shotgun and clubbed him over the head with it, and managed to avoid the pup.

  Briggs and the pup – who was still hanging onto the killer’s face – tumbled down the stairs.

  Now it was blessedly quiet. I heard sirens right outside.

  ‘The police are here, Rosanna,’ I said. ‘Briggs can’t hurt you any more.’

  She was weeping quietly in the corner.

  I peered down the stairs. Far below, Briggs was unconscious on the floor, his leg twisted at an awkward angle. Cutter was still clinging to his nose, chewing it like an old shoe.

  ‘Briggs is out cold, Rosanna,’ I said. ‘I think his leg may be broken. All we have to do now is hang on as well as Cutter did.’

  FORTY-ONE

  ‘Cutter! Let go!’

  I could hear Katie at the foot of the stairs, trying to get the pup to stop chewing on the unconscious Briggs’s nose. He did, but not before a four-by-three-inch piece of skin was missing.

  Yep, Cutter had gulped it down, but none of us said that out loud. Katie wiped the blood off her pup’s mouth and sent the schnozz-swallowing pup upstairs, where I fed him treats and praised him. The official report would say that Briggs’s nose was ‘damaged during the fracas.’

  Jace dragged Briggs out of the entrance to the staircase and he and Katie raced upstairs. Katie checked Rosanna first, and made sure that the paramedics carried her out of the attic to the hospital.

  Then she checked me. ‘Looks like you’ve caught part of a shotgun blast to the shoulder. You’ll have to go to the ER to get the pellets removed. You may need arthroscopic surgery. Don’t worry, that’s not as serious as it sounds. You also got clubbed in the head. Maybe it will knock some sense into you.’

 
; ‘Katie!’

  ‘OK, I’m pissed that you let my dog off the leash and he chomped Briggs’s nose.’

  ‘I needed his leash to move the water heater,’ I said. ‘And I saved Rosanna. And so did Cutter.’

  ‘OK, we’ll talk about this later. You’ve got a nasty wound on your hairline from the shotgun butt. You’re going to need plastic surgery. You’ll probably get antibiotics and a tetanus booster shot. You’ll be out of the hospital in a day.’

  In time for my date with Chris, I thought.

  That’s almost what happened, except the hospital kept me in for two days. I had a concussion and there was dirt or something on the shotgun butt, so I was stuck in the hospital while the docs dealt with the concussion, did surgery on my arm to remove three shotgun pellets, plastic surgery on my hairline, and IV antibiotics for the whole mess. Part of my hair was shaved for the plastic surgery, but I knew it would grow back. I was groggy from the painkillers. I had my date in bed with Chris that Saturday night. Too bad it was a hospital bed.

  On Saturday afternoon, Katie had brought my good pink robe, so Chris didn’t see me in that ugly hospital gown, and she wrapped my bandaged head in a pink-and-blue scarf.

  At dinner time, I was happy to pass on the hospital’s mystery meat, stewed green beans and apple sauce.

  Chris arrived with flowers – a bright spring bouquet with a pink ribbon around the vase and a dinner he’d cooked himself. He pulled the curtain around my bed for privacy. We dined on cold lobster salad with crusty French bread and had chocolate mousse for dessert.

  Chris looked so strong and handsome in his dark sports coat and gray pants.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. ‘They wouldn’t let me see you yesterday. They said you had two surgeries.’

  ‘I did, and I slept most of the day.’

  ‘You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever known,’ he said.

  I laughed. ‘The pup is the real hero.’

  ‘Don’t underrate yourself,’ he said. ‘And you’re avoiding my question. How do you feel?’

  ‘Much better since you’re here,’ I said.

  Then he kissed me – a deep, yearning kiss that took away all my pain.

  EPILOGUE

  We blamed the dog.

  It wasn’t fair, but it worked. I claimed that I was walking the pup when Cutter got loose and ran through the hole in the fence at the Bellerive estate. I chased him to the guesthouse. The basement door was open and the pup ran in and up the steps. By that time, I could hear Rosanna’s muffled screams. I tracked the pup upstairs to the hall closet, pulled out the water heater, ran upstairs and found Rosanna. I called 911, and then, worried the operator didn’t understand the urgency, I called Katie. Jace just happened to be consulting with Katie, and the two of them rushed to the estate.

  This story had more holes than a lace curtain, but it allowed the bosses to save face. After all, they’d told Jace to stay away from Briggs, the killer, calling him ‘one of our finest citizens.’ But Jace had ignored their orders and saved Rosanna. Greiman had sense enough to keep quiet about getting everything wrong, and the powers that be appreciated his tact – and his silence. Like Jace said, the man was a cockroach and, as usual, he survived. Jace was given a letter of commendation in his file. It was done quietly, of course. Like I said, the Forest knew how to keep its secrets.

  Besides, we were heroes. Especially Cutter. The mayor gave him a special ceremony at Chouteau Forest City Hall, where the adorable pup got a medal. The mayor clutched the fuzzy photo op as if his (political) life depended on it. Rosanna presented Cutter with a raw steak. I couldn’t watch the dog eat it.

  As for Briggs Bellerive, he was taken to SOS hospital with a concussion, a broken right leg – that left him with a permanent limp – and of course, the gnawed nose. Briggs was no longer the Forest’s most eligible bachelor. Thanks to Cutter, he was now as ugly outside as he was inside.

  Briggs’s mutilated nose needed what’s called a ‘full-thickness graft.’ The surgeon removed a piece of skin from his groin to graft over Briggs’s mauled nose.

  Too bad SOS’s best plastic surgeon was on vacation. The man on duty could be called competent, on a good day. The surgeon told Briggs he was ‘lucky’ the graft had taken. When Briggs finally healed, his nose still looked like a dog had chewed it. In prison, the nicest name he was called was Dog Face.

  And Briggs did go to prison – forever. The evidence against him was overwhelming. In addition to Rosanna’s testimony, the police found fingerprints, hair and DNA for all three dead women. Missouri was a death penalty state, and Briggs, whose cruelty knew no bounds, was terrified he’d be executed. The DNA for the flower in Terri’s pocket was a Salmon Baby nasturtium, which matched Briggs’s prized plants.

  The Chouteau County prosecuting attorney made a deal: Briggs could get life in prison with no possibility of parole. But only if he talked.

  And Briggs did. He confessed that he enjoyed killing his best friend, way back in high school. Strangling the boy during sex was a thrill that Briggs wanted to relive. When he was packed off to the UK to go to school, he kept himself under strict control. But once he returned home, he felt bolder. He began to allow himself ‘celebrations’ – his word for kidnaping a victim and committing erotic strangling. Briggs kept a ‘special few’ of the women alive in the attic and had sex with them, strangling them with garden string. Sometimes he’d go too far and kill his victim. Then he’d move their bodies to the couch, until it was safe to move them without being caught. At that point, he would drive the bodies in his Range Rover to the edge of the woods, then use his wheelbarrow to take them deeper into the forest and bury them. He murdered his high school friend and three women, including Terri.

  Briggs saw Terri on her run, and was struck by her blonde beauty. He began stalking her. She was different from his other victims – she was from the Forest, and she wasn’t a lost waif like so many of them. He admired her strength. He read about her success and her scholarships and wanted her. He saw her running one afternoon, identified himself and said he wanted to talk about sponsoring her career. Briggs said he knew she’d need the best trainers and those were expensive. He asked her not to say anything, not even to her mother. They could bat some ideas around and when they had a deal, she’d be free to tell everyone. Terri knew his reputation as a philanthropist and thought it would be safe to visit him. She agreed to meet him the next day.

  He drove Terri to his home on Rosanna’s day off. Instead of offering the young track star sponsorship, he tried to seduce her over tea. Terri wanted nothing to do with him. To someone her age, Briggs was an old man. Briggs said he understood. He offered her more tea and roofied her drink. Terri woke up in the attic, handcuffed to the bed, her mouth duct-taped. Briggs told Rosanna to keep the staff out of the guesthouse. That was fine with the housekeeper. She had enough to do. Briggs found Terri a ‘disappointment’ after a while and killed her. He went back to his old pattern of picking up young women who wouldn’t fight back.

  After Briggs buried the track star, his housekeeper wondered why he’d bought a new wheelbarrow and thrown away a perfectly good one. Rosanna’s curiosity may have saved lives. Briggs avoided killing more young women after Terri the track star. But he grew restless. Briggs knew he had to get rid of Rosanna ‘if he was ever going to have some fun.’

  He also knew the speculation about how Casey Anthony had avoided a murder conviction. Briggs let the barbecue meat rot in his Range Rover, then bought more meat for the real barbecue and blamed Rosanna. He couldn’t let her leave his compound. He was sure she knew he’d killed those women. Briggs terrorized his housekeeper and planned to kill her on Saturday – the day after Cutter found him.

  Rosanna spent a week in the hospital, and many months in counseling. Lisa, her mother, and the faithful Kevin were there to help her through the worst. Six months after her ordeal, Kevin asked Rosanna to marry him. She said yes.

  Monty represented Rosanna in a civil suit against Briggs. Th
ey settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Rosanna and Kevin were able to buy a new house and Lisa got a new red convertible for Mother’s Day. Rosanna is going back to college for a degree in hospitality management.

  Monty also represented LeeAnn Higgs in a civil suit against Briggs. Her dramatic photos convinced Briggs’s lawyers to also settle out of court. LeeAnn retired from the oldest profession and went to college. Three more of her colleagues also sued and got a good payday. The Uber driver testified that the women were badly beaten when he drove them home.

  Oh, and after Monty made a phone call to Evarts Evans, the letter of reprimand was removed from my file.

  There was one other case settled during the Briggs brouhaha. Remember Shirley, the woman who mutilated her sick old mother’s finger to get her diamond ring? The autopsy revealed that the mother had been poisoned by the eye drops in her tea. Shirley pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving life without parole. Her sister, Ellen, got the ring.

  As for Melissa DeMille, the pretty fourth wife of the obscenely rich hedge funder, there was no way to pin Dr Robert Scott’s death on her, but his widow, Samantha, and her Forest society friends meted out their own punishment. They made sure that Melissa’s husband, Joe DeMille, found out all about Melissa’s adventure with Dr Bob, including their champagne-fueled romp at the St. Louis hotel. He filed for divorce. Melissa had signed a prenup, but thanks to her adultery, Joe cut her off without a dime. She now lives in low-rent Toonerville and works as a checker at a Walmart.

  A month after I got out of the hospital, I was healed enough to have that dinner with Chris at his house. Mario fixed my hair to cover the plastic surgery scars at my hairline, then treated me to a manicure and facial.

  It was a warm night, and Chris served dinner by candlelight on his back deck. Surrounded by pots of fragrant flowers, we had a spring salad with pomegranate dressing, chicken and asparagus in white wine, and lots of crisp, dry wine. For dessert, he brought out warm chocolate sauce and strawberries. We began feeding each other chocolate-drenched strawberries, and then we were kissing, and then we were in Chris’s big bed. A bed that held no memories for me, good or bad.