Binge Killer

by Chris Bauer

  “I’m the sugar daddy with the money,” he parroted, nodding his head in agreement.

  “Interesting. How about this, then? We make some calls, we track her down, we convince her to stop in. In return, you let us do our thing here, but only after we finish cuffing you to the bed—arms and legs, honey—so my friends and I get to play with this monster pecker we hear you have in your pants, and Regina gets to hear about the money. Deal?”

  He was already partly immobilized, would be stuck in this room attached to this heavy bedrail until they let him out of the cuffs. Worst case, he’d enjoy some orgiastic sex then Regina never shows, which would make him no worse off than where he was now. Best case, orgy sex, then Regina, then by extension, one way or another, her kid. His progeny. What could go wrong?

  “Deal.”

  “Excellent. Let’s get you comfortable,” Dody said, “and secure.”

  Howard struggled through one-handing the removal of his belt, the women closing the cuffs around his pant legs, the small one giggling while she lifted his fumbling hand away from his waist, snapping the last cuff around his wrist. “Leave the undressing to us, Howard, we’re, like, into bodice-ripping and other raw savagery…”

  “Sure, Peggy, whatever you say.” He was now spread-eagle on the bed, his hands and feet attached to it at top and bottom.

  “Penny,” Dody said while inspecting their handiwork. “Her name is Penny.” She was no longer smiling. “But what do you care what her name is, right? Just like I don’t much care whatever name you go by either, Howard, or Stephen, or maybe by now it’s mister multiple PBA champion Norm Duke himself.” Her headshake scolded him. “Two-thirty-two bowling average my ass. Norm’s best year topped him out at, what was it again, Penny?”

  “Two-twenty-eight, back in oh-seven.”

  “Right. Thanks.” Dody’s face brightened. “Oh. There’s also this, Howard.”

  Wherever her gun came from, from under her bowling shirt or the bed or thin air, Randall wasn’t sure, but it was now pointed at his eye socket.

  “So right now,” Dody offered, “you’re pretty much expecting us old bitches to either fuck your brains out or do something else with you, and you’d be right. About the something else part. Let’s relieve you of your hardware.”

  Penny carefully reached into a vest pocket in his sport coat, located a handgun and removed it, did likewise with the second, larger handgun from his other vest pocket.

  “A Rhino magnum,” Penny muttered, admiring it. She smelled the barrel. “And it’s been fired recently. Rosie’s got one like this.”

  “And you were with her this afternoon, weren’t you, Howard?” Dody said. “Not good.”

  The door to the bedroom opened. He lifted his head, watched a wheelchair roll in, accompanied by a sheepish chubby kid with a bandaged nose, his eyes black as a raccoon’s. The woman in the wheelchair was the decrepit bitch cheerleader from the bowling alley. She looked no less senile here than she did earlier.

  “You know Charlie, Howard? Andy’s mom? My nephew Trevor brought her here. Great-nephew, I should say. Trevor’s got a broken nose and a swollen jaw underneath all that tape. It’s from a beating he got this afternoon, so he doesn’t much look like himself right now. He’s here just so he could see you.” Dody turned to the boy. “Trevor? Over here please.”

  The boy slid in front of his aunt, alongside the bed. His eyes narrowed, surveying all four sets of handcuffs. She was right; Trevor was a mess. He met Randall’s stare. Randall rattled his handcuffs and lurched at him, just for grins. Trevor flinched.

  The kid steeled himself and leaned into Randall’s face. “That’s him,” Trevor said, his teeth gritted. “His hair’s a different color and his beard is gone, but that’s him.”

  “Thank you for the ID, Trevor. We’re good here. Time for you to call it a night. Go get some sleep, honey.”

  Trevor’s sweet schoolboy expression soured. He sucker-punched Randall in the face with a quick, meaty hand before his aunt could react.

  “I told you they’d find you!” Trevor shrieked, his spit spraying Randall’s eyes. “You are dead, asshole!”

  Dody pulled Trevor back, admonished him for his tantrum. Randall stayed quiet, watched as the boy exited, leaving him with Dody, Penny, and Charlotte, black Iota Jean unaccounted for. He tugged at the handcuffs, same result as before. He sized Dody up again, also glared at the smaller Penny. He guessed Penny was in her midfifties, went no more than 140. Charlotte, in the wheelchair, was in her eighties if she was a day, seemed shaky as hell. Iota Jean re-entered the room, clad in what looked like a nurse’s whites. Big-boned, like Dody she was large enough to give him trouble.

  “This is false imprisonment,” Randall said through swelling lips. “You could all go to jail for this. Why don’t you sweet ladies just let me out of these cuffs and I’ll find my way back to my car and leave. We’ll call it even.”

  Dody tilted her head and pushed out her lower lip in seeming consideration of his offer. Randall tried to will her into cooperating.

  Do it, bitch. Call it off. You women aren’t killers. I’m the killer. Let me loose and I’ll fucking show you…

  Dody turned to face her friends, her finger still on the trigger of her large handgun, its cold steel barrel still rudely pressed against Randall’s eye socket. When she turned back he heard a click. The gun’s hammer was now cocked.

  “That doesn’t work for us, Howard.”

  Three more clicks found him facing four handguns, shaky Charlotte’s included.

  56

  I woke up in a hospital gown in an ER bed, a familiar voice speaking to me, my head cottony.

  “Hey,” Andy said, hovering. “Finally awake. Feeling any better?”

  “Hey,” I said. Andy’s face came into focus. Not sure if my foggy eyes conveyed it, but I was happy to see him. “No. Maybe. You tell me. Where am I?”

  “Wayne Memorial Hospital. Carbondale.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Three fifty-five. In the a.m., in case you’re wondering.”

  “Your mom? My dogs?”

  “Fungo and Tess are in your van. They’re fine, resting as best they can without their mommy. My mom’s fine too. She’s in her glory. She and tonight’s trophy are at Dody’s place. The van, your dogs, my mom, they’re all at Dody’s condo.”

  “So your team won.”

  “A close match, and emotional, but yes, the Fighting Cadavers prevailed.”

  “Agent Van Impe?”

  “He’s here, in serious condition but stabilized. A gunshot wound to the head. He lost an ear but he’ll survive. The other agent…”

  I let him tell me about McQuarters. He didn’t mention anything about Fungo’s post-mortem work on his head, and I didn’t bring it up. I looked at the cast on my left arm. It reached from above the elbow down almost to the tips of my fingers. “’Sup with this?”

  “Three displaced fractures in your forearm. A broken thumb, some dislocated knuckles. The easiest types of fractures to fix, Counsel, so relax. A cast, some rehab, and you should be good as new. Cuts, bruises, but they found nothing else broken, no internal bleeding, no other injuries. You bitched big time about needing your clothes back on, so they compromised and put your jeans on under the hospital gown.”

  I wiggled my toes, then I chanced swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I sat up. “Then get me out of here, Andy. Linkletter—”

  I moved too fast. No pain in the arm but I got slammed with a massive headache. I stood up anyway—a bad idea getting worse. Tough shit, Linkletter was still out there—

  “Not yet, Counsel,” he said, pushing at me. “You need more rest. For your own good. Just lie back down…”

  I sat, closed my eyes, let the room stop spinning. “Where’s my stuff? My keys, my phone? Who drove my van?”

  “What they found with you in the coal mine rubble is in the bin under the bed. The feds have your guns. Your keys were in your pocket. Your phone, no, sorry. The sheriff d
rove your van to Dody’s.”

  “A mine collapse? Not a sinkhole?”

  “Pretty much. You might have heard,” he said, a coy smile emerging, “there are a few old coal mines around here.”

  No guns, no dogs, and I was shakier than a jailed junkie. Shit. No choice but to chill here. I laid my head back on the pillow. The more it cleared, the more anxious I got. I groped for the talisman on my belt loop. It wasn’t there. A shit-storm of slurred profanity was about to hit. This was going to get ugly.

  Andy moved in, slid my probing hand out of the way, checked out my eyes while I tried to will the panic out of them. His big hands worked gently at my waist, where my hand was, and I heard a tiny snap, the sound recognizable, not made on my person by anyone other than by me or my husband when he was alive. Andy dropped my hand back onto my belt loop so I could feel what he’d done. Reattached there was my fuzzy dog keychain. My nerves steadied.

  It was nice that he was here, the cherry on top of my soothing drug sundae, but I was also getting a different vibe while I chilled. I’d had broken bones before, but the last time I felt this woozy I was in a straitjacket, the drugs meant to incapacitate me. Plus Andy was here, with me, instead of with his mother.

  Here, keeping tabs on me. I wanted him being here to mean something other than what I now thought it meant.

  “What am I on?” I asked. An innocent question, delivered innocently.

  “Something local so they could reset your arm. Something else for your anxiety, and something for the pain when you came to. Just go with it, Counsel.”

  Too much shit in me, and Andy conveniently here to let it go down that way. I focused as best I could on his face, then I formulated another question. “You drive here?”

  “What? Yes. They wouldn’t let me go with you in the ambulance. They wanted me out of the way.”

  I could relate. Before he could do anything about it I got to my feet again and concentrated, did my best to play through my wobbly legs and the spinning walls, squinting against the dizzying overhead lights.

  “Counsel, listen to me, I’m a nurse…”

  I found my boots, shambled to a chair and struggled with the pain of lacing them up. I struggled with my pullover, grabbed the rest of my shit from the bin under the bed.

  “You’re in no condition—”

  “And that’s why you’re driving. Let’s go. Linkletter’s out there on a mission, looking for a woman, your friends are in the way, and he’s armed. Take me to my dogs.”

  57

  This was what it had come to for Randall. More than thirty murders over thirty years, young and old victims alike. Ten of them over the last three days. Multiple identity thefts. Rapes. Anonymous cities. Constantly on the move. The FBI, State Police, city cops, local Barney Fifes: as far as Randall knew, no one had ever gotten even remotely close to catching him. Until now. Until these women, in this small town. These old women.

  “I have pancreatic cancer,” Randall said.

  “You seem pretty healthy to me,” Dody said, hovering, her big gun still pointed at his head.

  “It’s localized. So far. I still have time. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Not a lawyer?”

  “Not a lawyer. No safe deposit box, no money.”

  “What you are is a bail-jumping pedophile. And a motherfucking murdering monster.”

  “I… I… I just want to see my kid before the cancer spreads. Regina was pregnant…”

  “Sorry, no Regina. Checked out fifteen years ago. You have a real name, Howard?”

  A hesitation, then a move toward some quid pro quo. “Randall. Randall Burton. No fucking way. She’s here, somewhere near here.”

  “Not believing me is your prerogative, Randall Burton, but still no Regina.”

  Enough begging. Much as Randall wanted them to be, he also knew them to be wrong. Their next move—what would it be? Hold him until their Barney Fife showed?

  He could stay bashful, or he could share. No law enforcement present. Time to gross the hell out of them.

  “Chances are, ladies,” Randall said, his charm returning, “you’ll be proud of yourselves once it gets out just how difficult a person I’ve been over the years.”

  “And how’s that, Randall?” Some shuffling went on behind Dody while she kept him engaged.

  He was enjoying the audience; it restored some semblance of control to him. “Truth is, I did kill people. For real. And quite a bit more than I told your sexy nurse friend here.”

  He gave them a real number: including today’s carnage, thirty-one. Only lately had he been so careless, so cavalier, too many chances, no attempt at being discreet. He’d been leaving quite a trail. All cries for help, the courtroom shrinks for sure would call it. All necessary for one final, grand stroke to his ego, this trip to Rancor being his swan song, him being sick and all. When the cancer’s endgame hit, he wanted to be somewhere where something could be done about it: prison. Three hots, a cot, and unlimited medical. Not a bad place to be, medically speaking, right about now. Oh, there was also the possibility of the death penalty. The instant, permanent cure to his disease.

  “Fitting that I get caught here, right? In a town with a perfect no-crime record. Only downside for you guys is, the town’s record is fucked but good.” He gave a sarcastic oh-well shrug. “Still, look at it this way. The media loves this shit. When they hear about it, you’ll have them eating out of your hands.”

  And the media would hear about it, if he had to mention it himself during the questioning or profiling or whatever the authorities did to build their cases. They’d attempt to deconstruct him, and the darlings of evening cable TV and tabloid journalism would chew on his legal fight for months, would make this a media circus. He could feel the excitement even now. The overnight fame, the glory. Wow, what a rush…

  The four women remained stone-faced. His smile dissolved a bit.

  They’re in shock, he decided. This had to be traumatic for them, close to giving them coronaries.

  The oldest one powered her wheelchair over to the side of the bed, next to Dody. Behind them, some foot shuffling ended with the bedroom door closing. Dody helped the old woman out of her wheelchair, steadied her. She was taller than Randall realized, her permed stack of flaming red hair threatening to topple. She laid her gun, an antique-looking six-shooter, on his chest.

  “Don’t worry, this isn’t meant to tempt you. They don’t let me have bullets anymore,” Charlotte said, her voice cracking. “So what will it be, dearie? Dylan, Lightfoot, Denver, or maybe some Muddy Waters?”

  His face pinched. “What?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m in the mood for. I’m giving you a choice. They’re all such incredibly talented young men.”

  And two were dead, Randall knew, yet she spoke of all of them like they were newly minted and on tour. Randall reminded himself that she was the senile one. He’d humor her. “Hell, I don’t like any of them. How about Metallica?”

  “Dylan it is.”

  A pair of bookcase speakers above the bed came to life, Bob Dylan’s twang now delivering the poetic, dissenting lyrics of “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

  “My being here at three in the morning,” Charlotte said, her smooth-skinned, pinkish cheeks dimpling into a smile, “and my probing you on your music preference presupposes your answer to the next question.”

  Fairly lucid comments, Randall thought. The woman must have her moments. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Your secrets about your indiscretions, past and present, are safe with us, mister whoever you are. You have but one more decision to make.”

  He grew impatient. “Look, this has been fun, but seriously, let’s cut to the chase. You guys say Regina’s gone. Fine; I’ll need to accept that. But the only real decision I’ll need to make is what my plea will be once I’m charged, and I can tell you right now it’ll be not guilty. To everything. More fun that way for everyone involved, right? The media, the police, the lawyers
, everyone gets a piece of the action. Everyone gets a piece of the murdering degenerate Randall Burton, aka Howard Isaacs, aka so many others. Inquiring minds will eat it up. And so will I.”

  He heard the click before he felt the barrel. Dody’s handgun again, this time against his temple. He froze.

  “Fact number one,” said the hovering Charlotte, “as a reminder: Rancor has a police force of one. An elected position. A kind of figurehead who runs interference when other law enforcement types get in the way. Keeps us from having to play by the rules when it comes to dealing with violent crimes. That means no arrest, no plea, no analysis, no trial. Fact number two, about our enviable string of year after year with no reported violent crime: we do, unfortunately, suffer from crime here. Like everywhere else, we’ve had too many politicians doing too little about too many misdeeds. So very frustrating to us older ladies. So crimes like yours are reported, shall I say, elsewhere, off the jurisdictional radar, and have been, for many, many years.”

  Iota Jean, the one in the uniform, appeared alongside Charlotte. Her new nurse whites radiated brightly in the light from the bulbs affixed to the ceiling fan.

  “Why just today—well, you see, someone, ah—” Charlotte faltered, her lively face pinching up. Her perky eyes became lost, apprehensive.

  Dody finished for her. “Here’s what you need to know about this gun against your temple. It and another one like it took out two punks in a steakhouse men’s room in Scranton today, for a robbery and an assault that put a Rancor resident into a coma. Blew their heads right the fuck off. No cops. No jury. No remorse. Just bullets and body bags. The end.”

  Charlotte recovered, stepped into a surgical gown. Iota Jean shimmied it upward, covered the elderly woman’s long legs, then her arms and shoulders. The nurse tied the gown off. Penny sidled up, joined them on the other side of the bed, rolling up the sleeves of her bowling shirt.

  Charlotte lifted a hand waist-high; it shook. She narrowed her eyes and stared the tremors down, willing her hand into perfect stillness. Her smile relaxed. Her cheeks drooped to become fleshy parentheses around thin, all-business, straight lips.