Mr Grimm

by Gary Winston Brown

  Bonnie shook her head. “You know you’re my worst nightmare, right? Beautiful and brilliant.”

  Lacey smiled. “Thanks… I think. I’d hold off on the brilliant part until I get us out of here. Can you find me a strip of medical gauze? I need to make a wick.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  While Bonnie searched the medical supplies closet for the gauze, Lacey removed the can of spray lubricant from the toolbox, walked up the staircase to the door, sprayed the frame of the door with the solvent, then opened the can of aluminum solder and spread the thick paste into the doorjamb and around the lock.

  Bonnie met her at the top of the stairs with the gauze. Lacey handed her the can of penetrating oil. “Soak it in this,” she said, “then pack as much as you can into the gaps in the door frame; bottom, top and sides. When this thing starts to burn it’s going to get crazy in here real fast.”

  Bonnie jammed the oil-drenched strips of medical dressing around the door as instructed.

  “Perfect,” Lacey said. The door had been completely sealed with the flammable mixture of solder paste and lubricant. “We’ll need a long strip of gauze,” she told Bonnie. “Roll out a section from here to the foot of the stairs, then get Melinda and Victoria around the corner. When this thing goes up, it’ll either explode or catch fire, or both.”

  “What if the fire spreads to the staircase before we can get out?” Bonnie asked. “We’ll be trapped down here. We’ll be burned alive.”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “But what if it does?”

  “Then who cares? If we can’t get out of here, then we’re dead already. It’s only a matter of time before he comes back and kills us. Do you really want that animal to take your body apart, layer by layer?”

  “You’re right,” Bonnie said. “I’d rather die down here, with all of you, taking a stand and fighting for my life than let him touch me again.”

  “No one’s going to die today,” Lacey said. She tied the end of the long strip of material around the doorknob and handed the roll of gauze and the can of lubricant to Bonnie. “Keep soaking it as you walk down the stairs. I’ll be right down.”

  Bonnie unraveled the white medical dressing as she walked down the stairs, then moved Melinda and Victoria to safety.

  Lacey called out. “Everyone clear?”

  Bonnie replied. “All clear.”

  Lacey stared at the mass of medical gauze jammed into the doorframe. The top of the stairs reeked with the smell of penetrating oil and solder as rivers of the noxious mixture dripped down through cracks in the wooden door. She stared at the long wick that lay on the steps leading down to the room that was their prison. “This better work,” she said.

  Lacey walked down the steps and joined Bonnie, Victoria and Melinda. The four women stood safely around the corner. She lit the butane lighter. “Ready?” she asked.

  The women nodded.

  “Here goes,” Lacey said. She lit the makeshift wick and stood back.

  Ignition was instantaneous. The oil-soaked length of medical dressing dissolved in a rush of smoke and fire and slithered up the staircase, its ascent dictated by its self-disintegration, jumping to the first step then striking out at the next, until it had traveled to the top of the stairs and met the frame of the door. With a tremendous boom! the door exploded. Cinders of burning wood fell onto the steps and floor below.

  Lacey looked around the corner. The door was gone. In its place light beamed into the room from the top of the stairs.

  They were free.

  “Wait here,” Lacey said. She ran to the toolbox, grabbed the hammer and handed it to Bonnie. To Melinda and Victoria, she handed each a chisel. “For your protection,” she said. “If he’s up there and tries to stop us we kill him before he kills us. Agreed?”

  The women nodded.

  “What about you?” Victoria asked. “You’re unarmed.”

  “I’d love for him to believe that,” Lacey said. “I can take care of myself. It’s you guys I’m worried about.”

  “Don’t be,” Victoria said. Her voice was cold. This was not the shrinking violet that only minutes ago had given up on surviving before climbing out of her cage to freedom. “I want him to be there.” She gripped the screwdriver tightly in her hand. “I need him to be there. This will only be over for me when I see him dead. And I want to be the one to kill him.”

  “First things first, Vicky,” Lacey said. She placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders. Victoria was shaking with fear, fueled by adrenaline. “We get out of here and call the police.”

  “And then?” Melinda asked.

  Lacey headed towards the staircase, leading their ascent to freedom. “Then we turn the tables on the sonofabitch.”

  CHAPTER 22

  ON THE STREET CORNER, Chris rifled through the trash can, searching for the envelope and note Father Frank said he had discarded.

  “What did you find out, Jordan?” he asked. “What makes you believe Father Frank is lying?”

  “Something I felt when I shook his hand,” Jordan replied. “He was thinking about Lacey. He knows her.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” Penner said. “Shona-Lee Cairns told us Russ Paley lets him and Biscuit stay at the club when the weather’s bad. He would likely have met her at one time or another.”

  “He was being purposely evasive,” Chris said. “Jordan told him Lacey had been reported missing. Mentioned her by name. Father Frank didn’t even let on that he knew her name, which Jordan knows is not true. The envelope we found in her locker -the one he delivered to the club- was addressed to her.”

  “It’s more than that,” Jordan said. “I felt a connection between him and Scroll.”

  “You think he knows who Scroll is?”

  “He definitely knows more than he’s letting on.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Agent Penner said. “Let’s go back and take his ass into custody, bring him in for questioning.”

  “We can’t do that,” Jordan said. “We have no evidence. It’ll be my word against his. He’ll lawyer up, ask for a public defender, and that will be it. We’ll lose him. Which means we’ll lose any shot we have of using him to find Scroll.”

  “So we’re back to surveillance,” Penner said.

  “It’s our best bet for now,” Jordan said.

  Chris pulled the last few scraps of paper out of the bottom of the trash can. Stuck to a crumpled envelope was a length of red string. “I may have something,” he said. The agent unfolded the envelope. The calligraphy on the front read, ‘For Your Trouble.’

  “Found it,” Chris said. He opened the envelope carefully, removed the slip of paper, read it. “There’s a note inside,” he said.

  “What does it say?” Penner asked.

  “Jesus!” Chris said as he handed Penner the note. He read it aloud. “It’s time. Set it up.” The agent deduced the meaning of the message. “Father Frank doesn’t just know Lacey… he’s working with Scroll.”

  Chris was already on the run with Jordan hot on his heels. He yelled back to Penner as the two agents headed for Father Frank’s domicile under the bridge. “Call it in!”

  Outside the tarpaulin-draped entrance to Father Frank’s, Jordan and Chris drew their weapons. Chris raised his arm, made a fist, and glanced at Max Penner as he caught up. Heeding the request for a silent approach, Penner took a position ten feet back, raised his gun, and waited for Jordan and Chris to initiate contact with the man who had instantly become a person of interest in their investigation.

  Chris nodded at Jordan, as though to acknowledge that she should be the one to communicate with Father Frank with whom, it seemed, she had developed a rapport.

  Jordan called out. “Father Frank? It’s Agent Quest. I have a couple more questions for you if you don’t mind. Would that be all right?”

  No response.

  Jordan tried again to reach out to the vagrant. “I only need a moment of your time, Father Frank.”

 
Silence.

  Chris shook his head. He looked back at Penner and indicated he and his partner would be moving forward. Penner acknowledged the plan. To Jordan, Chris mouthed his instructions: “On three.”

  Jordan nodded.

  One… two… three.

  Chris threw back the tarpaulin and stepped inside Father Frank’s shanty. “FBI!” he yelled. Jordan moved in behind him. Penner held his position momentarily, then followed the agents into the habitat.

  The shanty was empty.

  Father Frank and Biscuit were gone.

  “Good God,” Penner muttered as he holstered his weapon. “What the hell is this?”

  The walls of the homeless man’s home were wallpapered with newspaper articles. Penner read the headlines: HUDSON RIVER HORROR… CITY UNDER SIEGE… BODY COUNT RISES… SCROLL KILLER TAUNTS NYPD… TENTH VICTIM FOUND… CARNAGE IN CENTRAL PARK… WHO IS THE SCROLL KILLER?... NIGHTMARE IN NEW YORK… MAYOR SCULLIA TO TASK FORCE: FIND SCROLL!

  Chris said, “Either Father Frank has taken an abnormal level of interest in this case…”

  “This isn’t abnormal interest,” Jordan said. “This… for lack of a better way of putting it… is a shrine.”

  “You were right,” Penner said. “Father Frank is involved.”

  There was barely enough room for the agents to move past one another in the small space. Overhead, passing cars rattled soup cans stacked high on a metal shelf. Biscuit’s porcelain water bowl shimmied on the asphalt floor.

  “He knew we’d be coming back,” Chris said. “He must have left with the dog seconds after we walked away.”

  “He won’t be difficult to find,” Penner said. “A vagrant traveling with a German Shepherd is hard to miss.”

  “Father Frank and Biscuit are staples in this neighborhood,” Jordan said. “There’s a good chance people won’t believe he’s connected to Scroll. They’ll protect them first, even hide them. Father Frank already lives off the grid. No permanent address, cellphone… nothing. He probably knows a million places to disappear in this city if he wants to. We need to contact Commissioner Haley. Get him to order uniforms to canvas the area and ask around, maybe get a lead on his whereabouts.”

  “How much you want to bet the guy and his dog are already ghosts?” Chris said.

  Jordan ran her fingertips over the newspaper articles. Scenes from each of the murders played out in her mind.

  To Penner, she said, “Call in a forensics team. I want every one of these articles taken back to the office. I need to spend time with these documents. I think they can tell us how to find Scroll.”

  CHAPTER 23

  OTTO TAPPED THE PRIVACY partition and spoke to the cab driver. “Let me out,” he said.

  “But we’re still twenty minutes away,” the cabbie said.

  “I know,” Otto said. “I have an errand to run.”

  “You sure you want me to let you out here?”

  “Pull over.”

  The driver shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  Otto paid the driver, watched him speed away, walked to the back of the apartment building, looked up. The cries of children fell from an open window on the seventh floor. He had been watching the building for some time; particularly the comings and goings of the woman he had been tracking for the past two weeks. He could hear her yelling at the top of her lungs for the children to be quiet. He learned she had seven young ones, of varying ages, from different fathers. Her name was Rosalita “Loba” Sanchez. Known as The Wolf, she was the most feared and ruthless drug lord in New York City.

  In conducting his background research on Rosalita, he learned she had worked with her connections in Columbia to establish a cocaine distribution system that was the envy of the Medellin drug cartel. She could have lived well in New York, easily afforded any of the many multi-million-dollar penthouse suites the city had to offer. But she came from the streets, the slums of Juarez, and it was among the dirt and filth and cockroaches that she felt most at home.

  Otto made her sentries the second he stepped out of the cab; four thugs, stupid enough to believe that by wearing gang colors and slinging dope out in the open they wouldn’t call attention to themselves. Police spent little time in this neighborhood. There was no point. It had become a cesspool of criminal activity. He felt eyes on him as he looked up.

  “Rosalita home?” Otto asked.

  Surprised to know he had been seen peering around the corner, the kid stepped out into the open. “Who’s askin?”

  “A friend,” Otto replied without turning around.

  “Loba’s friends use the front door,” the kid said. “And only if we say so.”

  Otto turned. “We haven’t seen one another for quite a while,” he lied. “I doubt she’d even recognize me.”

  “Then that wouldn’t make you her friend, would it?”

  Otto smiled. “It’s important that I see her. We have unfinished business.”

  The kid put one hand behind his back. Otto knew what that meant. “This ain’t no place for you, mister,” the kid said. “Go home while you can still walk.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Otto replied. “Will you please do me a favor?”

  “Leave. Now.”

  Otto continued. “I need you to go upstairs and ask Rosalita to call a sitter for the children. What we have to discuss is not suitable for tender ears.”

  The kid removed the gun from his back, held it at his side. “Where you want it?” he said.

  “Trust me, son,” Otto said as he removed his backpack. “You don’t want to do this. I’ve already been shot once today.” He showed the kid his bloody, wounded shoulder. “Twice would really piss me off.”

  The kid was cold. “That scratch?” he said. “Let me show you what a real hole looks like.” As he raised the gun a glint of light caught his eye. The blade sailed through the air, caught him in his throat, buried itself deep. Wide-eyed, dumbfounded at the instantaneous counterattack, the kid fell to his knees. His weapon clattered on the ground beside him. He tried to breathe, gurgled instead.

  Otto walked up to him, put his hand on the blade, turned it quickly. The light in the kid’s eyes began to fade. “You should have checked me for a weapon, dumbass,” he said. He wrenched out the knife, cleaned it on the kid’s shirt, then returned it to its secret sheath on the back of his knapsack.

  He pulled the kid’s dead body out of the middle of the alleyway, dragged it around the corner, leaned it against the wall, placed the gun in his hand.

  Eventually he would be found.

  No one would care.

  One less drug-dealing punk to worry about.

  A cockroach of a different kind.

  With his wounded shoulder, accessing the fire ladder on the side of the building proved to be difficult. Otto grabbed the access rung and pulled hard. The section lowered to the ground with a clang. He looked up, wary of the noise he had made, stayed under the ladder, out of sight, and waited. All clear. Slowly, he ascended the ladder to Rosalita’s balcony on the seventh floor. The children were screaming as was Rosalita. Otto stepped onto the balcony and peered into the apartment.

  The woman’s seven children were seated on the floor. The smell of urine and feces wafting out through the window assaulted his senses to the degree he thought he might wretch. The reason for the children’s cried were obvious now. Rosalita had left them to sit in their own filth.

  Some people were meant to die.

  Rosalita Sanchez was one.

  Otto slipped into the living room through the open window, drew his knife from his backpack, moved quickly through the apartment and surprised Rosalita in her bathroom. The drug lord was preparing to sample a line of her own product when he burst through the door, slit her throat with the knife, then threw her body in the bathtub and cut open her stomach. Hundreds of bags of cocaine, prepared for sale, were stacked on bathroom shelves around her.

  Otto shoved the drugs into her stomach cavity, packing the woman as full of the deadly product
as her small frame would permit, then broke open several of the bags and shook them over her body. The powder fell on her face, arms and hands. Satisfied he had made a suitable example out of her, he stood back and observed his work.

  Everything had gone exactly as planned.

  He was proud of himself. If killing was an artform, he was Picasso.

  The military had taught him well.

  He retrieved his favorite quill pen from the backpack, dipped it in her blood, withdrew a section of skin he had previously harvested and cured and crafted a beautiful note:

  Dear Commissioner Haley,

  Today I give you the Wolf and her seven young cubs.

  The children are innocent.

  The woman is not.

  This is the start.

  There will be more.

  You’re welcome.

  He rolled the note into a scroll, bound it with a length of red ribbon and shoved it up Rosalita’s left nostril.

  Otto left the apartment as silently as he had entered it, but not before picking up Rosalita’s cellphone from the kitchen counter and placing a call.

  “NYPD. How may I direct your call?”

  “Office of the Commissioner, please.”

  “One moment.”

  Otto wiped the phone with a dishtowel, set it down, slipped out through the window to the fire escape and descended the ladder.

  The kid’s body had not been disturbed. Par for the neighborhood, he thought.

  Back on the street he hailed a cab. “Manhattan,” he told the driver.

  “Yes, sir.”

  In Rosalita Sanchez’s apartment, repeated requests for the caller to identify himself went unanswered.

  As the taxicab sped away from the curb Otto knew the call was already being traced, the police dispatched. The children would be found. Child Protective Services would intervene. Perhaps one day each of them would find a safe and happy home. He thought about the alternative and came to a simple conclusion: better to be a ward of the state than another cub in Sanchez’s pack.