by David Archer
The girls used the zip ties to bind the backs of the chairs together, and then Mike told Abby to sit down in one of them. She did so, and then Mike handed a few more zip ties to Cassie. “Strap her in, good and tight. Don’t cut off the circulation, just make sure she can’t get loose.”
Cassie put one around each of Abby’s wrists, binding them to the arms of the chair, then put two more around her ankles, fastening them to the legs. When she was finished, Mike grabbed her by the arm and pushed her into the other chair, then laid his gun on the floor while he strapped her in.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” he said once they were secure. “I really did mean to get rid of those tapes—I never wanted you to see those. The trouble is, it isn’t just me who could get in trouble over this. A couple of the other guys are on the force, too. If that tape ever got out, we’d all be screwed.”
Cassie looked him in the eye. “So you’re not just going to leave us here,” she said. “Are you? You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”
Behind her, she heard Abby take in a deep breath. “Mike, please,” Abby started to say, but he cut her off.
“I don’t want to!” Mike yelled. “God, Cassie, I love you! I don’t want to do this, but if the other guys ever found out you knew… God, this is such a disaster. Why did you have to go digging in those boxes?”
“Mike, you don’t have to do this,” Cassie said calmly. “Stop and think for a minute. How long have you had those tapes—years? Why haven’t you ever gotten rid of them before? Why didn’t you get rid of them before you let me move in?”
“I meant to, I really meant to,” Mike said. He was pacing around the room, his gun in one hand and the other rubbing his forehead. “I swear to you, Cassie, that’s not who I am anymore. That was something I got dragged into, but it made me feel sick, so I quit. I never, ever wanted you to see those.”
“Actually, I think you did,” Cassie went on. “The only reason you never got rid of them is because, subconsciously, you wanted someone to know what you had done. You wanted to get caught, Mike. You wanted someone to stop you so you’d never do that again.”
“No! No, I stopped myself! It was just too much for me, but once I got in with those guys I either had to go along or die. I never wanted to really hurt anyone, and I certainly never wanted to…”
“You never wanted to kill anyone?” Cassie asked. “Mike, you have to give up. You have to turn yourself in, and…”
“Oh, no,” Mike said. “Oh, no, you don’t understand. Something like this, they won’t just lock me up. They’ll throw me into someplace where I won’t live through it. Me and the other guys, we’d never make it in prison. They don’t like ex-cops in prison.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t have to happen. The thing that makes you do this, Mike, it’s an illness. You’re not a bad person; there’s just something not wired right in your brain, and that’s what makes you want to rape and abuse women. If you turn yourself in, you could go to a hospital instead of a prison. You could get help, Mike.”
“She’s right, Mike,” Abby said. “You’ve got to listen to her.”
“Shut up!” Mike screamed at her. “Just shut up. I gotta think, I gotta think about what to do.”
Cassie stopped talking, and then the sound of a car pulling up caught their attention.
ELEVEN
“Yeah, that’s Kendall,” said Detective Larry Bergman. He had rewound the tape as soon as he saw the television and was watching as it played. “There’s at least one other man there, too, and I think it’s Lex Stuart. He works uniformed patrol downtown, and I’d swear that’s his voice.”
“Any idea who the woman is?” Detective Shirley Jacobs was Bergman’s partner. “She looks familiar, but I’m not sure I can place her.”
Bergman shook his head. “I don’t know who she is,” he said, “but…” He stopped the tape and used his phone to take a snapshot of the woman’s face. The image was grainy, but not terrible. “I’m sending this to the computer guys. I think I’ve seen that face before, but if I’m right it was on a Jane Doe. About three or four years ago, a woman’s body was found in the dumpster behind a factory. She’d been beaten like that, and then somebody put a bullet through her heart.”
Shirley shook her head. “If that’s her,” she said, “then Kendall becomes a murder suspect.”
“Yep. And that means we better find him and these women fast.” He finished sending the picture off, then dialed a number and put the phone to his ear. “Yeah, Lenny? Larry Bergman. Can you get me a GPS location on Mike Kendall’s cell phone? Yeah, like right away.”
Shirley Jacobs leaned over and hit the Play button on the TV again, and the video resumed. Bergman stepped a few feet away but kept his eyes on the little screen. “Yeah, I’m here,” he said a moment later. “Send that to my phone, will you? And while you’re at it, I need you to find a patrolman, Lex Stuart. See if you can locate him the same way. Yeah, I’ll wait.” He suddenly leaned toward the TV again. “Son of a bitch,” he said as two more men entered the scene. “The guy on the left is Pat McMahon—he was a uniform officer who got killed about a year ago. Some kind of shootout, but they never found out who did it. I don’t know the other guy.” He turned away again suddenly. “Yeah, Lenny, go ahead. What, right now? Okay, thanks.” He disconnected the call and looked at the phone, then turned to Shirley.
“What is it?” Shirley asked.
“I just had Lenny check the GPS locations on Kendall’s and Stuart’s phones, and both of them are at the same place. I’ve got an address—it’s out in the boonies somewhere.”
Shirley held up her hand and then pointed at the screen. “Look,” she said. Bergman looked at the screen and saw Mike Kendall standing there with a gun in his hand. He looked back up at his partner, then called another number.
“This is Larry Bergman, SLPD,” he said. “I need deputies to respond ASAP to 14498 South Waldron Road. They’re looking for SLPD Detective Mike Kendall and patrolman Lex Stuart, both of whom should be at that address. It’s also possible that they have two hostages, Cassandra McGraw and Abigail Jordan. Both Kendall and Stuart are wanted for questioning on murder and kidnap, and they should be considered armed and dangerous. My partner and I will be en route.” He disconnected and turned to Shirley. “Let’s go,” he said. “Jasper, you take over here.”
Jasper, the crime scene technician, nodded and waved as Bergman and Jacobs went out the door.
* * * * *
“How in the hell did this happen?” Stuart asked as he stormed into the cabin. “Damn, Mike, what kind of an idiot keeps tapes like that?”
“Hey, we all had a copy, remember? I meant to get rid of mine, I just never got around to it.”
Stuart shook his head, looking at the two girls bound to chairs in the middle of the room. “Well, we gotta get rid of them,” he said. “You sure there’s no other tapes?”
Mike nodded. “I burned the rest of them a few hours ago,” he said. “This is the one they had with them.” He brandished the tape he had taken from Abby.
Stuart snatched it out of his hand and went to the potbellied stove in the corner of the cabin. He opened it up and looked inside, then grabbed a stack of newspaper nearby and began crumpling pages up. He tossed them into the stove, lit them with a wooden match he took from a box in his pocket, and then started adding firewood. When the wood was burning steadily, he dropped the tape on top of it.
“And that takes care of that one.” He looked at the two girls and shook his head. “Couldn’t keep your noses out of things that weren’t your business, could you?”
Mike was still pacing around, but he seemed to be a bit more in control now that Stuart was there. “Lex, let’s talk about this,” he said. “You know, we don’t absolutely have to kill them.”
Stuart looked at him and rolled his eyes. “Are you nuts? You think they’re going to keep their mouths shut?”
“Yeah, I do,” Mike said. “It isn’t that hard. Cassie, she and I are getting ma
rried in just a few weeks, so she’s not gonna talk. If she does, she knows what I could do to her, or to her folks. And Abby, Abby will keep her mouth shut because of what I might do to Cassie.” He looked at Abby. “Isn’t that right, Abby? You’d stay quiet to protect her, wouldn’t you?”
Abby nodded, her eyes wide as she stared at him. “You know I would,” she said, swallowing hard.
Stuart was shaking his head. “It won’t work, Mike,” he said. “Sooner or later, she’ll get out of your sight and start talking. Even with all of the evidence gone, they’d start an investigation. If they really dig, they might find enough to tie us to some of the others.”
“McMahon is dead,” Mike said, “and…”
“McMahon is dead because he was having nightmares about all this,” Stuart said. “I got the chance to shut him up when we had that big shootout with the Aryan Nation guys last year, and I took the shot.”
“Okay, fine,” Mike said. “Mac is gone, then, and Joe Mitchell quit the force two years ago and joined the Army. He’s in Afghanistan, somewhere. There isn’t anything to tie us to them.”
“Well, I’m not taking that chance,” Stuart said. “I got a pretty decent life, now, and I’m not giving it up just so you can keep your girlfriend. I’m sorry, Mike, but there’s no other way. They have to die.”
Mike stared at him for a moment, then turned and looked at Cassie. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out. Finally he just shrugged and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Mike,” Cassie said, tears flowing down her cheeks as she was pleading with him. “Mike, don’t do this. Don’t let this guy tell you what to do, please? Mike, I love you, you know that. And you’re right, I’ll never talk—I would never risk what you might do to Abby or my mom or my dad, and she won’t say anything either…”
“That’s enough,” Stuart said. He took a pistol out of his belt and held it loosely in his hand. “You can do it, or I will, up to you.”
“Mike?” Abby said suddenly. “I don’t think you want to let this happen. See, I called 911 on Cassie’s phone and left it under the bed back in the hotel room. By now, they probably sent cops out to see what’s going on, so you ought to know there was another tape, and it was in the VCR on my little portable TV back in the room. When they get there and find us missing, somebody’s going to watch that tape, wouldn’t you think? And that means it’s all over, because both of you are on that tape. Both of you.”
Mike stood there and stared at her for several seconds, then looked at Cassie again. The tears streaming down her face were obviously getting to him, but he suddenly turned his face back to Stuart. “We can’t,” he whispered.
“The hell we can’t!” Stuart gave Mike a look of contempt, then raised his gun and pointed it at Cassie. “Nothing personal,” he said, and Cassie screamed when the gunshot rang out.
It took her a second to realize that she was still alive, and then she opened her eyes. Stuart was still standing there, but he had turned the gun at the last second and shot Mike, who was lying on the floor with half his face gone. A gasp escaped her and then a sob, even though she knew that he had been, however reluctantly, willing to let her die. Even after that, she realized, she was still in love with him, still hoping beyond hope that somehow, everything would right itself and go back to normal.
That last little hope was gone, now. Mike was dead, and so was the only hope she and Abby had for getting out of this alive. Stuart wanted them dead, and now he would certainly have his way. “Oh, Mike,” she whispered. “It didn’t have to be this way…”
“Yeah,” Stuart said, “I’m afraid it did. Mike wasn’t strong enough to do what has to be done, and sooner or later he would’ve slipped up and gotten us caught. I’m not going to take those chances. Like I said, it’s nothing personal, but you’re not worth me giving up my life for.”
“But I was telling the truth,” Abby said quickly. “There really is another tape, and I really did call 911! There’s no way you can get away with this, not now.”
“The hell I can’t,” he said. “All I’ve got to do is disappear. You think I didn’t plan for something like this? I can disappear today and be someone else by morning.”
Cassie looked up at him, fully expecting that both she and Abby would be shot dead at any moment, but he put the gun back into his belt. He turned around and walked out the front door, and Cassie started to have hope that he was simply going to flee, but then he came back a moment later. He was holding something heavy in each hand, and it took a moment for her to realize that they were gasoline cans.
Without saying a word, he opened one of the cans and started pouring gasoline around the room. He made a trail from the front door to where the chairs were sitting in the middle of the room, and then splashed more all around them and over Mike’s body. When that can was empty, he took the other one and opened it, and then raised it high and poured gasoline over both of the girls.
Abby had begun crying, and Cassie screamed. Stuart dropped the empty can beside the other one and stared at the girls for a moment.
“They say,” he said softly, “that once the fire really gets to you, it doesn’t even hurt anymore. They say it’s like finding yourself transported out of your body. If that’s true, then this probably won’t hurt very badly.” He winked. “Personally, I don’t believe it. I think it’s going to hurt like all hell, and I mean that literally.” He took a box of wooden matches out of his pocket and turned to walk to the door. As he stepped out onto the porch, he turned around and took a match out. He held it against the striker as he looked directly at the two girls and then scratched it into life.
“Freeze! This is Deputy Rogers of the sheriff’s office. Blow out the match and turn around.”
Cassie was looking at Stuart, and she saw the sadistic glee in his face turn to a look of resignation as he turned to look over his shoulder. In that split second, she knew that the thoughts going through his mind were about Abby and her 911 call, about the tape back in the hotel room, about the absolute impossibility that he was going to walk away from this situation, about the utter certainty that, no matter what he did, his life was already over. She saw all of this in the brief second that it took for his expression to change, and then he looked back into the cabin at the girls, and then his eyes narrowed and his face contorted into what Cassie would always remember as a Satanic smile.
And he dropped the match.
She saw him raise his hands and drop the matchbox, but she knew it was too late for her and Abby. The match hit the puddle of gasoline by the door, and the flames leapt up and began racing across the floor toward them. There were voices shouting outside, but the only thing she could hear was the roar of the fire and Abby sobbing.
Stuart had drenched Mike’s body with gasoline, and she saw it erupt into flames. For that brief moment, she envied him the fact that he was already dead, that he could not feel the utter destruction that the fire was causing to his flesh, to his tissues.
She had a fleeting memory of the time, when she was only ten, when she had tried to use a little bit of gasoline while starting a fire to burn trash and a few drops had splashed onto her hand. They caught fire, of course, and she had never forgotten the pain of those burns. As bad as it was at that time, she knew that it would be nothing compared to what she was about to feel.
And then the fire reached her. Stuart had not done as good a job of dousing her with gas, but her entire left side was soaked with it. Flames came across the floor and jumped onto her shoe, up her pant leg, and onto her arm and shoulder. Her hair—the hair she had always been so proud of—suddenly caught fire and was crackling and stinking, and then the fire got through her clothing and reached her skin.
Cassie screamed, and behind her she could hear Abby screaming just as loudly. Abby, the friend who had come running when Cassie was faced with a horrible nightmare, would now pay the ultimate price for her own loyalty. Cassie closed her eyes and uttered a prayer that her friend would die quickly so
that her torment would not last long.
The pain was excruciating, and she suddenly felt it reaching into her very core. It seemed like she wasn’t just feeling the pain; she was literally becoming the pain, becoming the agony of burning flesh. Nothing, she was certain, nothing else on earth could ever feel so horrible, and yet—and yet, there were other sensations. There was almost a numbness under the pain, as if the nerves were being burned away and were no longer capable of telling the brain about the damage being done.
Maybe that was what Stuart had been talking about, Cassie thought. She was amazed that she was able to think at all, and even more amazed that her thoughts were so mundane at a moment like this. Perhaps Stuart had been right—perhaps fire didn’t really hurt once it got past a certain point, and she found herself paying attention to the pain to see if it began to subside. She wasn’t sure if it did or not, but those strange numbing sensations were still spreading throughout her.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” she screamed out aloud, but there was no indication that her friend ever heard her. The fire behind her seemed even hotter than the fire around her, hotter than the fire that was consuming what was left of her clothes and her skin. She opened her right eye, the only one that would open, and was surprised to see that her right hand was still unburned, that the fire was still concentrated on her left. She turned her head slightly in that direction and realized that her left hand looked like merely a charred mass, but there, in the midst of ashes and ruin, the diamond on her engagement ring was sparkling, reflecting the light of the flames that were even now taking her life.
It’s beautiful, she thought. The sparkling colors, the way it reflects all the light. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful, Abby? Abby?
She suddenly realized that she wasn’t speaking aloud and tried to turn her head to look at her friend, but the searing pain as the burning flesh on her neck began to tear was the last thing she felt.
