by Murcer, Rick
A single drop of perspiration fell to the carpet, unnoticed. None of his surroundings mattered. Not right now. Not this moment. Not even the nosy, old broad across the hall. He was lost in deep, intricate thought, reflecting on the complicated journey that had begun fourteen long months before.
*****
After his prison release, Robert Peppercorn had been deemed cured from the multiple personality and duality shit that the doctor and his staff had diagnosed. He had certainly changed—more accurately, evolved.
Dr. Fredrick Argyle had spouted on and on that, supposedly, a person could hide in his own mind, become another person with a different personality, and not be aware of his actions. They called it Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Argyle said it could have been brought on by certain traumatic experiences during childhood.
Would wonders never cease? The messed-up quack had finally got one right. The cords tightened in his thick neck.
What the hell did they know about traumatic experiences?
Robert Peppercorn had been released from the prison, but Eli Jenkins was the one who was now truly free. He had promptly taken over the simpleton’s mind and body, as was his right. He’d loathed his imprisonment, both physical and mental, but now he was in charge. This was Eli’s time.
He took the waiting cab to the halfway house on Maple Avenue in downtown Lansing. The one assigned by the parole board. He checked in, went to his room, and tossed his meager belongings on the U-shaped bed.
No one noticed that he had changed. That he was different. That Eli Jenkins was in control. And why would they? None of these people had ever met him. The hypocrites didn’t care anyway. Even Peppercorn’s parole officer wouldn’t notice. The system didn’t give a rat’s ass about ex-cons, no one did.
The room was simple and clean. A three-drawer dresser supported an old twenty-inch TV. To the left of the bed was a diminutive oak nightstand that supported a simple brass lamp with a lavender-flowered shade. A small two-paned window faced west. The sun had set, and slow-dancing pixels of pink and purple layered the spring sky. But what was around him was secondary to what he had been planning. His plan was his motive for living. His purpose.
He reached into his left front pocket and removed a small, yellow piece of paper with the name and address of the man he was to meet tomorrow. His face broadened into a full smirk. Some visits were better than others.
The bulge in his jean pocket disappeared when he pulled out the wad of cash. The $1,245 was all the money he had. But it would be enough for what was planned for the next day, more than enough.
He stretched his huge frame out on the bed, and rusty bed springs creaked tired resistance as hate-filled eyes stared at the water-stained ceiling.
Tomorrow it starts. The beginning was just on the horizon. No more waiting. No more hiding.
Jenkins finally drifted toward a keyed-up slumber.
It was going to be a wondrous visit.
CHAPTER-14
The next morning, Jenkins fulfilled Peppercorn’s legal obligations, including a quick call to his parole officer, and then took a cab to the address written on the small piece of paper. The house was in the middle of Lansing’s seediest area, and the taxi driver made a hasty exit after dropping off his larger-than-life fare.
Jenkins knocked on the door of the run-down brick ranch and, after a short wait, watched it crack open with the thick safety chain pulled taut.
“What do ya want?”
“Are you Fixer Holmes?”
“Who wants ta know?”
“I got out yesterday. Sly Fredrick said you could help me.”
“Sly, huh? Not that I give a flyin’ shit, but how’s that old black bastard doing?”
Jenkins smirked. “You know he ain’t black. He’s almost as white as me. Are you screwing with me? ‘Cause if you can’t help me, I got another name . . .”
He waited, knowing that Fixer was mulling over whether he was on the level or not. No problem. Patience was a close friend of his. Finally the faded door closed, and Jenkins heard the rattle of chain against wood. The door creaked open leisurely, like some melodramatic scene in a grade B horror film.
The small, wiry man, with a wad of snuff bulging from his right cheek, sized him up. Fixer stood in the semi-lit opening that led toward steep basement steps, not really hiding the long switchblade clenched in his bony fingers.
“What are you gonna do with that? Give me an enema?”
“Maybe. If’n I had to.” Fixer continued to look him over. “You’re a big mother huncher, aren’t ya? If I had a mind to do it, I guess I might need help with that there enema.”
“Would a sloppy-ass kiss come with that butt-reamin’?” he charmed.
Fixer snorted a laugh and spit tobacco juice a few inches from his foot.
“You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
“No, I’m guessin’ you don’t. Just covering my ass. You got money?”
He pulled the roll of cash from his pocket. “This enough?”
“It’ll do. Come on down.”
They emerged from the bottom of the narrow stairs and entered what appeared to be a photo studio with lights and blue-dappled backdrops. There was also an old print press, two hi-tech copiers, two computers, and reams of colored paper stacked five boxes across and four deep. The basement reeked of musty Michigan cellar and harsh chemicals.
“Well, what do you need? I don’t have all damn day.”
“I need everything. Driver’s license, birth certificate, passport, social security card, the works.”
Fixer looked at him with rat-like eyes, “You sure you got twelve hundred in that wad?”
“You want to count it, dickface?”
The forger spit another glob of tobacco juice on the concrete floor and motioned Jenkins over to the tripod and camera. Fixer then put his magic machinery in motion. Two hours later, all of the paperwork Jenkins would ever need to travel, get a job, or move to another country was completed. He could do whatever he wanted to do. Fixer was a genius, just like old Sly had said.
“This looks real good, real good,” said Jenkins.
The smallish man shrugged his shoulders as if to say what did you expect?
Fixer handed him a wrap-around file folder containing the counterfeit documents and held out his hand. Jenkins counted out the money and gave it to him.
“You can let yourself out,” he said. Then Fixer Holmes made the last mistake of his life. He turned his back and headed for the half-open Keystone safe hidden behind the printing press.
“And you can kiss your ass goodbye,” sneered Jenkins.
The forger tried to move, get out of the ex-con’s way, but it wasn’t in the cards.
The killer lifted the small man by his head and neck and twisted violently. Fixer convulsed as his third and fourth vertebrae were reduced to shattered bits of calcium. Jenkins had wrenched Fixer’s head with such force that they were virtually eye-to-eye when he dropped the lifeless forger to the stained floor. Small runnels of tobacco juice mingled with scarlet trickled down Fixer’s unshaven chin and stained the back of his shirt.
After giving his handiwork a curious look, Jenkins strode over to the steel safe and pulled out all of the stashed money. He stared at the pile of dead presidents, and they stared back. Almost twenty-two thousand dollars in all. Jenkins laughed. Old Sly had told the truth about the money too. Fixer had never trusted banks. He should have.
Jenkins would have to send the old lifer a thank-you note someday—if gratitude ever seeped into his consciousness, that is.
He put most of the cash in his folder, some in his pocket, and started up the stairs. He hit the first step, paused, then stopped. Her stare was hot, full of reproach.
Fixer’s wife stood halfway down the steps and was looking at him with eyes the size of tires. “My God! What did you do?” she cried.
Her expression prompted him to flash a wide smile. “Well, darling,” he said, putting his foot on the se
cond step. “What does it look like I did? And too bad you saw it.”
Jenkins saw revulsion turn to panic. She scrambled up the four remaining stairs, but leaned too far at the last one and stumbled, skidding to her chubby knees. Crying and cursing, she hurried to get up and had almost made it when Jenkins reached her. He unceremoniously jerked her to her feet. Spinning her around, their eyes met, and he knew she was mesmerized like a bird captured by a cobra’s stare.
What could match this feeling? He held sway over the woman's most precious commodity, the gift above all gifts. He laughed again, only harder.
She screamed, but he clamped her mouth shut with his right hand so nothing more came out. And nothing would again.
The folder fell from his grasp, and he clutched her white throat with his powerful left hand, squeezing with all of his strength. Ninety seconds later, she let out a soughed breath and left this world, windpipe crushed like a twig in a vice. He threw her plump, lifeless body down the steps, reuniting her with her husband.
How poetic.
Jenkins grabbed his folder, locked up the house, and walked to the nearest bus stop. He took the next white-and-blue downtown to the Washington Avenue hub, then a cab to the train station in East Lansing. An hour later, he boarded the train that would sweep him away from Michigan, at least for now.
As the locomotive rolled away, his thoughts turned to the future, both immediate and distant. He had work to do, preparations to make, a body to change. There were months of research to do. He needed time and a place to be as inconspicuous as someone his size could be. Jenkins would be a white rabbit for the next year. Then all hell would break loose.
*****
The blaring announcement concerning the evening’s lifeboat drill filled the cabin and began to bring Jenkins out of his trance. Lucidity replaced reflection as he traveled back to the here and now.
It was really happening. The time had come. No more lying awake at night in some flea-bitten hotel waiting for this day.
He flipped the newspaper clipping around and around with his strong fingers. The motion became more energetic, more truculent as the paper became a hypnotic blur. Suddenly, he stopped the mind-boggling spin and placed his black-and-white treasure on the small table.
Jenkins was in complete control, and he always won, always.
CHAPTER-15
Sophie rested tanned, wiry arms on the wooden rail that ran the length of the room’s verandah. It was impossible to not be geeked about her first trip to sunny paradise, not to mention her first cruise.
She watched in childlike wonder as a dark patch of thunder clouds loped over the ocean toward Puerto Rico’s highest point. Seemingly with a mind of their own, the clouds settled on the mountaintop that housed one of the Caribbean’s largest rain forests, El Yunque, and loosed their moist cargo. Minutes later, as the Puerto Rican breeze freshened, she could smell the rain as it prattled against the mountain, transforming the summit into a hazy shadow.
Within a few seconds, a vivid, amorphous rainbow dominated the skyscape. She recalled from Sunday school class that rainbows were proof of God’s promise to never destroy mankind with water again. (She smiled at remembering something from Bible lessons.) It was a striking symbol and an even greater promise.
“Good call, God,” she whispered.
As she shifted position, searing pain shot from her hip and throbbed at her tailbone. She bit her lip until the ache dimmed to a dull roar. The source of her hurting—two deep, purple contusions shaped like whips—were strategically hidden by her red-flowered, one-piece swimsuit.
Tears slipped down her face. Not because of the pain, but because of her shame . . . and what she had gotten herself into, especially with him.
How could I be so stupid? Why was I drawn to these men? It can be fixed in a New York minute; I’m a cop, for God’s sake. I’d helped plenty of women in this same situation, although mine is a little more complicated, maybe.
Physician, heal thyself.
Randy was belting out a love song—in a key that Bach wouldn’t recognize—while he showered, causing her to laugh in spite of everything. He wasn’t the type of man most people thought she would marry, but he loved her beyond reproof, and she was lucky to have landed him. His sun rose and set with her. Randy said as much. And he made her laugh. Really laugh.
After the divorce, she never thought that would be possible: to laugh, to love again. She supposed most people felt it inconceivable for broken-hearted pain to ever truly be vanquished. But new love proved to be a special kind of medicine, nectar in which she had desperately imbibed. How could she have betrayed that? She wiped away a fresh gush of tears.
It was becoming harder and harder to hide the marks. But what could she do? Maybe she could tell Manny. He was a good listener, but he would be pissed that she hadn’t told him sooner. He might even go after him.
What of poor Randy? What would he do? How could she tell him that she was having an affair? Let alone with a sadist prick. How could Randy’s “faithful” wife tell him she didn’t have the strength to end the affair? That she wasn’t even sure she wanted to. That part of her even liked it?
Randy emerged from the bathroom looking like a soaked Buddha. “I’ll be ready in a few, baby. I want to see the ship. Just you and me. Okay?”
“Whatever you want, honey. I’m up for anything. But I think you’ll have to get dressed first . . . they have some rules here.”
“Deal.” He dropped his towel. “Once the women on this cruise got a load of this, they’d divorce their men on the spot.”
“What if they were lesbians?”
“They’d give it up, return to the land of boy-toy wonders. I have that kind of thing going on.”
“Just remember who brought you, boy toy.”
He grinned and stepped back into the bathroom.
Sophie turned back to the balcony and looked at her hands without seeing them. She hated herself for the game she was playing, the liar she had become. But the time was approaching to come clean, to get real. Soon, maybe sooner than she imagined. Lies always take on a life of their own. That made them harder to kill and impossible to forget.
There were ways to run and hide. And right now, all of them seemed better alternatives than facing this truth.
CHAPTER-16
All she had wanted was some help with her bag. It was so heavy, and the last heart attack had robbed her of more strength than she wanted to admit, if the truth be known.
The whole truth, so help me God.
How ironic was that? God wasn’t going to help her here, not this time. He had bailed her out often, maybe more than she had coming, but she had made one mistake too many. The very last in a long line of misjudgments, ill-advised trusts, and displaced compassion that had caused her life to be tougher than it should have been.
But this one mistake topped all the rest.
The man across the hall was a big one, but had seemed nice and his smile was . . . sexy, even to an eighty-two-year-old woman. So asking him for help wasn’t a problem, but rather enjoyable. Didn’t cruise ships thrive on friendly?
How could she have known what she would smell when he opened his door? Her forty-five years as a nurse had always been a good thing, but not today. Today it was a curse. Most people wouldn’t recognize the odor of chloroform, faint or otherwise. Not only that, she saw the twelve-ounce bottle resting on the dresser. No one would bring that on a cruise unless they were up to something, something no good.
If only she had left then . . .
He had been so fast, and she had been so slow to react. She hadn’t been able to get her door shut in time. Forget about screaming, not with that big mitt over her mouth.
Now Rose Charles lay on her bed, his hand snug around her throat, and wondered what he was waiting for. But she thought she knew. This needed to look like a natural thing, or at worst, an accident.
Was that a smile?
Evil was relative, but she thought that smile the most unholy thing s
he had ever seen.
With no wasted motion, he reached for the cushion from the loveseat and pressed it to her face.
That’s when the first pain hit, like an elephant stomping on her chest. She hardly felt the second one. This was the big man’s lucky day. Her exhausted ticker was going to take care of his dilemma.
CHAPTER-17
It was almost time to head to the Lido Deck for the Sail Away Party, and Manny was ready. Louise primped inside the tiny bathroom, putting on her final touches of makeup. As if she needed to. She was even more attractive approaching forty than at thirty. He was indeed a very fortunate man.
What a day today had been. Lingering thoughts of how he and Louise had investigated the Ocean Duchess, deck by deck, came back to him with amazing clarity. With first-time cruiser enthusiasm, they had entered every brightly colored bar and dazzling public room. Most ships have a particular theme, and the Ocean Duchess decor represented royalty from every major country.
Manny had taken special note of the jazz bar called the Sapphire Room. Nothing like jazz to get the juices flowing. He might actually relax in that kind of a venue.
The couple had browsed every shop window of the ship’s surprisingly complete mall. Fine clothes and stylish, expensive gems from every persuasion called to them.
They’d sat in the thick velour chairs of the Palace Theater and Lounge and wondered what would be the night’s main attraction. The stage was shrouded with a purple rhinestone-studded design that resembled the Taj Mahal.
They’d checked out the brightly lit Las Vegas-style casino on Deck Five where one-armed bandits and a dozen or so gaming tables waited like sophisticated muggers. But like the shops, the Casino of Kings remained closed while the ship was in port.
