by Jeff Buick
“Nobody’s parents are perfect.”
“Perfect.” Spittle flew from his lips. “I never wanted perfect. Anything but what I had.”
“My father was too busy for me. I grew up alone. No friends. No parents. No brothers or sisters.”
“Brothers,” Darvin shook his head in disgust. “This is what I got for a brother.” He waved his hand at the bloody corpse a few feet from her. “What a piece of shit he turned out to be.”
“At least you had a brother. I had no one.”
Darvin lowered his face to her level. He was merely inches from her. “I don’t care about your family. I don’t give two shits about you. Other than to kill you.”
“Why? What does it matter if you kill me?” She was shaking with anger. “I did nothing to you. Nothing. Yet you went out of your way to find me. To take me. What’s with that?”
“You’re a mouthy bitch.” The coldness returned to his eyes. “It wants to die.”
Leona’s breath quickened. She could see the shift in him—from angry to psychopathic. A veil that dropped down over his eyes, his face, his entire body. Everything in the man changed. The tenseness in his muscles disappeared, replaced by a slack body language that scared her far more than his anger. It was as if every shred of empathy had dissolved into the primordial mix. Anger she could work with, could talk to, try to reason with. But the cold, detached part of him was impossible. It. She shuddered at the word. The moment he slipped back into the detached persona, he called her it. No empathy. No chance for her to negotiate. She had to get him angry, keep him angry. He might beat her, but he wouldn’t kill her. The psychopath took care of that.
“Why did you kill your brother?”
Darvin circled her, a predator sizing up its prey. When he came back into view, he was holding a long, curved blade. “He was never much of a brother.”
“Maybe you never gave him a chance.” Leona kept her eyes from focusing on the knife.
“I watched him. I saw his life. His parents cared for him.”
Leona cocked her head slightly. “You and your brother never met? He didn’t know you?”
Darvin smiled, a crooked grin that resonated evil. “We met. He didn’t know who I was.”
“So you watched him, cherished his life, and never let him know you existed. Then you complain because he wasn’t a great brother to you. How could he be? He didn’t know you were related.”
Darvin’s mouth curled into a sneer. “Funny you should say that—it’s exactly what Derek said. If I’d known, I’d have saved you. What a crock of shit that is.” He tapped the knife against his palm and it sliced into the skin. Blood pooled in the creases but he was totally oblivious. “You think you’re smart. That you can twist things around and make me feel responsible for this.”
“Yo u are responsible,” Leona said loudly. “You killed him. You probably killed whoever that is in the other chair. And you killed a whole bunch of other people. Don’t try to pass the blame on this. People have bad childhoods. They don’t all become murderers.”
He leapt across the floor and grabbed her by the throat, the knife an inch from her eye. “I’m going to carve you into little pieces. Slowly, so you feel every bit of pain.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“I should.”
“You revolt me. There’s nothing you can do to me that will change that. Nothing.”
He lowered the blade slightly and drew it across her neck. It cut through the skin but not deep enough to slice the trachea. “It wants to die. But not yet. It has to suffer first.”
Leona felt the blade cutting into her skin. The cold, detached look flooded back into his eyes. The anger was gone. She was powerless against this part of his personality. Tied to a chair, with a madman slicing her into strips, she knew she’d lost the battle. She closed her eyes and refused to scream.
66
Eight-thirty and no response at Mike Anderson’s house. George Harvey hung up and dialed the number again. It rang and eventually went to the answering machine. Something was wrong. He swore under his breath. He should have pulled the man off the other stakeout. He knew it, felt it, and didn’t do it. Now Mike Anderson and Leona Hewitt were either dead or missing. That’s what his gut told him, and this time he was listening.
“Marnie,” he yelled across the squad room. “Take Ed with you and get to Sargent Road.” He recited the house number, then added, “Mike Anderson is the owner’s name. He’s an ex-cop. New York. Leona should be with him. If they’re still in the house and okay, they’ll answer the door. Be careful going in if there’s no answer.”
“Okay. She scribbled down the address and grabbed her keys. She and the other detective disappeared through the door into the hall.
The fax beeped and a solitary sheet glided through the printer. Harvey waited until it was all the way out, then yanked it out and scanned the contents. It was from the woman at the adoption department. His conversation with her a half hour earlier must have hit a chord. She’d moved fast to get him the information he needed.
“These are Swanson’s birth parents.” Harvey slammed the sheet of paper down on the desk. “I need everything you can get on them, and I need it now.”
One of his detectives grabbed the paper, ran it through the copy machine and handed the pages to the other detectives. They scattered to their computers and started working the names. It took less than three minutes to get a hit.
“Parents lived on a farm in West Virginia before they passed on. Address is on Oak Shade Road. Number forty-five.”
“Run the land title,” Harvey said. “See if the son still owns it.”
Again, the response time on the computer was almost immediate. “It’s in his name,” the man running the request said.
“Tony, you and Alan come with me. Alicia, you stay and watch the phones. I want to know what Marnie and Ed found at Mike Anderson’s house the moment they call in.”
“You got it.”
“Let’s go.”
Harvey ran from the squad room. He was too late. There was nothing telling him why, but he knew it. Knew that he had failed Leona Hewitt. The question now was whether she would die because of his miscalculation. He should have shifted the man to watch Anderson’s house. Then a second thought hit him. If he had, there was a good chance one of his detectives would have been on a slab this morning. There was little consolation with the revelation.
Mike saw the house on his left, a white clapboard two-story with dark shutters framing the windows. Trees surrounded the house and the graveled area between the main residence and two oversize sheds that probably functioned as workshops. Parked on the gravel, near the entrance to the house, was the car that had pulled away from his place the night before. A decrepit barn, the roof in disrepair, sat a hundred yards from the house and sheds. He drove past the entrance to the farm, to a spot where there were enough trees between him and the house to block anyone from seeing him pull over. He switched off the ignition and slid out of the vehicle, every sense on high alert. Between the intermittent chirping of unseen birds, it was deathly quiet.
His wife’s face flashed through his mind. She was smiling, a warm glow in her eyes. And then, in a single millisecond, it hit him. He still loved her, couldn’t shake the connection to a woman who was no longer in his life, but that was okay. He didn’t love her as a husband loves a wife, but as a friend who cares for someone so deeply it hurts. The same kind of love he felt for Leona. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and her image dissipated into the blackness. He felt the closure and knew that her memory would stay with him forever, but he would never feel the pain of separation again. He opened his eyes, pushed off from his car and started walking back toward the house on the edge of the asphalt.
His balance was better and the pain from the bullet that had scorched the side of his head was gone, courtesy of the Advil. He angled off the road into the woods and headed toward the house. Where would he keep her? The barn was in such poor condition that
he doubted the killer would choose that building. Not when he had three others to pick from. That left the house, or possibly one of the workshops. The woods were thick, which slowed him but gave good cover in case the son of a bitch was watching.
Mike reached the tree line and stopped. Ahead of him were the three buildings, and from his angle he could see the front entrances to all three. Luck more than planning. He squinted at the oversize sheds. One of them had a padlock on the front door. Unless there was a back entrance, there was no way anyone could go inside and lock the door behind them. He looked hard at the second shed, but the distance was too far and he couldn’t tell if it was locked.
What were his options? Running across the open area was dangerous. Staying in the trees and skirting the house was his best option, but it would take time and at some point he’d still be racing across open ground to the house. He estimated the distance from the trees to the front porch to be ninety, maybe a hundred feet. Four to five seconds in the open, then his body would be hidden from view by hugging the house. He slipped his gun from its holster and checked the chambers. Loaded and ready. He flipped off the safety and took a deep breath.
Mike pushed out of the undergrowth and ran across the gravel, his feet making light crunching sounds. He reached the house in less than five seconds and flattened himself against the siding. The boards were warm from the sun and he could feel the heat through his shirt. Ten feet to his right and elevated about five feet from ground level was the end of the front porch. He watched for a face to poke around the corner. His gun was aimed at the point where someone of normal height would appear. Nothing. Not a sound. He inched forward to the edge of the deck and peered around the corner. The porch was empty. He glanced across the graveled area to the second shed. He was close enough now to see the front latch. It was also secured with a padlock. The killer was in the house. He knew it—he felt it.
And he felt Leona. She was here. Alive or dead, he didn’t know.
Mike slipped his revolver into his waistband, grabbed the porch spindles and pulled himself up high enough to hook his foot on the wood deck. He scurried over the railing and crouched, the gun back in his hand. He duck-waddled the length of the deck and set his hand on the front door handle. He slowly twisted and it turned. The door pushed in a fraction of an inch. He sucked in a deep breath to calm his nerves. It was time.
67
The darkness was as terrifying to Leona as the knife.
Her captor had untied her from the chair and dragged her down the center stairwell, past the main floor to the basement. She wanted to scream, to beg him to take her back up to that horrible room, filled with death. Anywhere but in the black confines of the basement. She did nothing. Just sat on the chair that he had lashed her to and stared at him in the dim glow from the single twenty-five watt bulb swinging from the ceiling on the other side of the room. The shadows moved back and forth as the bulb moved—inanimate monsters as sure to get her as the one with the knife.
“You don’t like it down here, do you?” Darvin said. “You’re shaking now. You liked it more in the room with Derek and Mom.” He walked across the room to a table and rummaged through a few rusted garden tools. “You didn’t think I was going to kill you up there, did you? That room is reserved for family. Dirty things like you get the basement.”
“I am not a thing,” Leona said, struggling to find the air to form the words. “I am a person.”
“You’re nothing,” Darvin said cheerfully. “A corpse that still talks. It won’t be alive long now.”
“Fuck, you’re totally insane.” Anything to get the anger back. The anger may slow the inevitable.
“You have a dirty mouth,” he said disgustedly. “Girls aren’t supposed to say fuck.”
“Now I’m a girl. Thanks for that.”
He moved close to her and leaned over, his breath in her face. It smelled of rancid meat. “I’m going to carve you into a lot of small pieces. You’re going to beg me to kill you.”
“Never,” she said, her words braver than her thoughts. “You’ll never get that satisfaction.”
“We’ll see. Let’s get started.” He ran his index finger along the side of the blade.
The smell of death hit Mike Anderson the moment he pushed the door open. He involuntarily gagged, then swallowed back the bile. Death was no stranger, and he moved into the house, ready for the worst.
The main floor was divided into numerous rooms with a central staircase leading to the upper floor. He bypassed the living room and headed to the rear of the house, walking on tiptoes and feeling every footstep with the ball of his foot before applying weight. A squeaky floorboard could spell disaster. The kitchen was clean and empty. Beyond it was a mudroom and laundry. He retraced his steps to the foyer and started up the stairs, the revolver gripped tightly in his hand. At the top of the stairs, a hallway stretched in both directions, giving access to the bedrooms and bath. All the doors were open but one. Anderson stood still, listening for an indication someone was in one of the rooms. Nothing. He crept down the hall, away from the closed door, and checked the other rooms. Each was empty. He reached the final door and gripped the handle with his left hand, the gun leveled at chest height. He twisted the handle, then pushed hard.
The door swung open, revealing the entire room. He stared, his chest heaving as his lungs labored to feed oxygen to his tense body. Before him was a slaughter. The remains of a human being were tied to a chair, stripped of skin. He could tell from the size of the form that it had been a man. Blood was spattered and streaked around the chair, the outline of footprints dried onto the hardwood. A few feet from the rotting flesh was another body, a mummified woman frozen in a moment of agony. An empty chair sat a few feet to one side. Fresh drops of blood stained the floorboards close to the chair legs.
Mike wrestled his eyes from the scene, his stomach still churning. Leona had been here, recently by the look of the blood, but the killer had taken her. Where? The car was still parked out front and both the sheds appeared to be locked. That left the barn or the basement. His money was on the basement. He retraced his steps to the main floor and walked on his toes to the kitchen, to where there was a door directly under the central staircase. Access to the basement. He sucked in a couple of deep breaths and slowly pulled it open.
“It doesn’t bleed much,” Darvin said, a touch of drool on his lips.
Leona’s head swayed from side to side as he rocked it back and forth, surveying the cuts he had made to her neck. Her eyes were almost closed, slits in a bloodied face. She stared beyond him, at the far wall where an open door led back to the staircase. To freedom. To the warmth of the sun and the gentle caress of soft winds. Simple things she would never feel again. Something in the room behind the door changed for a second. A dim shaft of light, a movement, then the light was gone. What was that? Concentrate. What could have caused that? She forced her brain to move beyond the pain and piece together what had just happened. Light, shadow, then darkness. The stairwell he had dragged her down was out that door. And the kitchen was filled with sunshine.
Someone had come through the door to the basement, then shut it behind them.
She felt a surge of adrenaline as what she had seen hit her. Someone was here. Someone who didn’t want Darvin to know they had arrived. But subtly, and alone. That eliminated the police. They would never send in one man against an armed psychopath. The only other person who could possibly know she was here was Mike Anderson. She had seen him shot at his house, go down hard against the wall, but nothing else made sense. It had to be. Mike Anderson was here and coming for her.
“It’s waking up,” Darvin said as he felt the difference in her body.
“I’m not going to die,” she said softly. Talk to him, mask any noise Mike may make coming in. “I’m going to live through this.”
“I don’t think so,” he hissed, working the knife.
She could hardly feel the cuts anymore and had no idea how badly injured she was. He had sli
ced her throat once upstairs, and was toying with her in the basement. She felt the cold steel against her skin, but had no idea if it was cutting, or if it was, how deeply. He was in tight to her and she was able to work the ropes that bound her hands without him noticing. His knots weren’t as tight as in the chair upstairs and there was some movement.
“Your mother was an ugly bitch,” she said.
His head snapped back, and even in the almost nonexistent light she could see the loathing in his eyes. “What did you say?”
“I said, your mother was ugly. Small chin, wide face. You can tell what dead people looked like from their bone structure. I saw it on Discovery Channel.”
“You fucking whore,” he roared. “You think you have the right to tell me anything about my mother?”
“Simply stating a fact,” she said, locking eyes with him. Keep him focused. Make noise. Give the rescuer a chance.
His hand snaked out toward her face and she ducked. The fist hit nothing but air and he stumbled to the side. At exactly that moment a figure appeared in the doorway, less than fifteen feet away. Leona could see the man’s features. It was Mike Anderson. Darvin saw him at the same time. He spun sideways and dived behind her chair. Anderson’s gun was leveled, his finger on the trigger, but she was between him and the killer. Instinct took over and without thinking, she tipped the chair on its side, crashing onto the cement and exposing the hidden man.
Two flashes lit up the room for a fraction of a second, then the surreal darkness settled in. The roar of both guns going off simultaneously was deafening, but the sounds of the slugs tearing into flesh was still discernable. Anderson’s gun flew out of his hand and he dropped to the floor, his hands clutching at his side. Darvin struggled to stand, a rapidly expanding red splotch on his left shoulder. He walked unsteadily toward Mike Anderson.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he yelled. He reached Anderson and stared down at him. “In fact, what are you doing alive?”
