by Dianne Emley
Her assailant again squeezed the Taser’s trigger.
She yelled and was again clawing the floor.
“Officer Vining, the more you fight me, the more I’ll have to hurt you.”
Officer Vining. Those were the words and that was the voice that had infiltrated her nightmares and haunted her waking moments for over a year. She’d always felt she’d hear them again, but in her fantasies, their roles were reversed. How had this happened? How was she again being victimized by T. B. Mann?
He released the Taser’s trigger and repeated what he’d said, knowing she’d been unable to absorb it the first time. “Officer Vining, the more you fight me, the more I’ll have to hurt you.”
She gasped for breath. He had her pinned with his knees on either side of her back. He retrieved her right wrist, grabbed her left, pulled it behind her, and snapped on the other handcuff, saying, “I knew you’d walk around the cabin first.”
Now that she was handcuffed, he patted her down, remaining astride her.
She bowed and arched her back, working her shoulders, trying to dislodge the darts. She grabbed her jacket and yanked the fabric. She felt the dart that was over her right shoulder blade move. Her skin where it had pierced her and delivered its voltage was so sore, she couldn’t tell if she’d knocked it out or not.
He found her backup Walther. She felt him remove it from her ankle holster.
The pang of losing her Walther was nearly as severe to Vining as being Tased. That gun had saved her life.
“I’ve just gotta love you, Officer Vining. So by the book right up until the moment you’re not. But that’s been happening a lot lately hasn’t it?”
She raised her head and craned her neck as far as she could. Out of the corners of her eyes, she caught his glance. This was the first time since he’d stabbed her that she’d faced those eyes again in person. In her nightmares, they had been dark brown. That’s the color they were that day at 835 El Alisal Road. She’d wondered whether he’d been wearing tinted lenses. Now she saw why he would have.
His eyes were remarkable. Deep-set and ice blue, as chilly as the soul behind them. His scalp had been recently shaved clean as not a speck of hair was visible. His eyebrows were light brown. His face, lengthened by his bald dome, was a perfect oval. His ears were compact and neat. His nose was slightly broad, but suited his face. His upper lip was thin, the bottom lip full. He was as ordinary as she’d remembered. But for his striking eyes, he could walk through life without attracting a second glance.
He took his time searching her, which felt more like an adolescent’s awkward petting than an attempt to find weapons. After what he’d done to her in the kitchen at 835 El Alisal Road, his timid touch felt innocent.
She continued looking him over. He was dressed up, wearing a white dress shirt and a blue-and-red-striped tie. The shirt was tucked into navy-blue slacks with a plain leather belt. He had on black dress shoes with black socks. A nylon holster for the Taser was attached to the belt with Velcro. A small nylon pouch next to it probably held Taser cartridges.
He was beefier than in her memory. A belly protruded over his belt. His cheeks were fuller and he had the beginning of a double chin. She guessed he’d gained forty pounds. She took delight in the thought of him drowning his troubles in cookies, ice cream, and potato chips. She, however, was more physically fit than ever, and wiser.
Who was she kidding? She was the one prone on the floor, handcuffed, with Taser darts embedded in her back. Still, she remained calm. He would take his time setting the scene. That was his M.O.
She saw that while he’d stuck her small Walther into his already snug waistband, he’d set her Glock on the floor near him. There wasn’t enough room beneath that belt for two guns.
He finished patting her down and sat erect astride her. He seemed to recognize the momentousness of this moment because he took a few seconds to sit quietly, taking it all in.
They were together again. At long last. All her precautions and planning, all her vicious thoughts of revenge, had been undone by a single trusting act. Had Betsy Gilroy set her up or had she been forced to tell her to come here? Gilroy had sounded under duress when she’d made the phone call. Her car was here. Where was she?
Vining twisted to look at him again. His gaze was like a lover’s. She remembered that from before. More than adoring, his gaze was all-consuming. Hungry. Looking at her was not sufficient. Touching her was not sufficient. He wanted it all. He wanted everything.
Straddling her, he could have easily made a sexual move. While she felt obsession in his stare, she didn’t feel a sexual charge. She thought about the story Axel Holcomb had told former Colina Vista Police sergeant Mike Iverson about watching Cookie Silva’s murderer masturbate while torturing and killing her. Intercourse didn’t get him off. Terror and murder did. Now he was engaged in housekeeping. He was saving the good stuff for later.
He kept those ice blue eyes locked on hers. His eyes were familiar to her. They were the same light blue as Nitro’s.
“Asshole,” she said. “The proper way to address me is either Corporal or Detective Vining.”
He depressed the Taser’s trigger with no effect. He looked at the gun with surprise.
She’d broken the contact of one of the darts. She took advantage of the moment to retract her elbows, ball her fists, and shoot them down her back into his groin.
He inhaled wretchedly and rolled to the side, pulling his knees to his chest. He struggled to breathe.
She shoved herself away, digging her feet against the linoleum. On her knees, she scampered toward the Glock that he’d foolishly left on the floor nearby.
Still bent over, in a ball on the floor, he managed to throw out his hand and snag her left leg.
She kicked violently at him with her right foot, smacking him in the face, slamming his nose. She kept at it, landing solid blows. He let go.
As she scrambled toward her gun on the floor, not sure how she would fire it with her hands cuffed, he jammed the Taser directly against her buttock and fired. The “drive-stun” had the same effect as a cattle prod.
She yelled and dropped face-first, grimacing, against the linoleum. Grit from the floor adhered to her lips.
He bolted out of range of her feet, stood, and picked up the Glock.
“I know your rank is corporal and that you’re a detective,” he said with annoyance. He touched his nose, bloody from her kicking.
She was sorry that she hadn’t broken it.
He studied the blood on his fingers, almost with a look of wonder. “But you were Officer Vining when I first saw you on television after you’d rid the world of a rat— that has-been rock star. A television reporter and a cameraman were after you and the idiot reporter kept saying, ‘Officer Vining, Officer Vining, a word please.’ You just kept walking. You didn’t run. You didn’t turn around. You kept walking to your car, got in, and drove away without even looking at them.” He touched his nose again and his eyes grew hazy as he looked at the blood. “For me, you will always be Officer Vining. Guess I’m sentimental that way. Get up.”
She unsteadily climbed to her feet. She tried not to stagger and cursed herself for having to take a single sideways step to keep her balance.
He grabbed the second Taser dart from her back and gathered up the cartridge he’d ejected. He shoved her toward the log cabin’s main room.
She walked until he ordered her to stop. She still didn’t see any sign of Betsy Gilroy
He took a wooden chair from behind the bar where the museum docents rang up sales of souvenirs on the old cash register. On top of the bar was a black nylon duffel bag like the ones PPD officers used to carry their gear.
He set the chair in the middle of the floor. “Sit there. Wait.” He snatched her badge off her belt. He looked at it with satisfaction, tossing it in his hand, feeling the weight.
She wasn’t completely surprised when he returned it to the same spot on her belt. He could have taken her badge at the
El Alisal house and hadn’t. She guessed that it gave him a charge to see her wearing it. She had so many questions, but she didn’t want to tip her hand. She didn’t want him to know how much she’d found out, how much she cared, how obsessed she was. Information was power and her power was in short supply right now.
“Now sit.”
Her legs were shaky, but she was careful to lower herself onto the seat without plopping down. She was committed not to show weakness or fear. She refused to give him that satisfaction. She refused to feed that wolf.
He had a satisfied smile on his stupid bland face. She thought about how much she’d like to wipe off that smile. No. Tear it off.
His translucent blue eyes glittered. “You … You’re really something, you know that?”
He extended his fingers toward her and gently pulled her hair away from the left side of her neck, smoothing it over her shoulder. She maintained her sangfroid, coolly keeping her eyes on his face, as he drew his index finger down the entire length of her scar, starting from behind her ear and disappearing beneath her shirt collar. His finger felt moist and clammy. She did not recoil. She didn’t move a muscle, even when a sadistic grin toyed with the corners of his lips.
Having his fill, he pulled his hand away from her skin and moved it to her hair, drawing it between his fingers from the roots to the tips. A single strand came free. Caught on his hand, the hair reflected the light as he waved it in the beam from the overhead lamp. He playfully tossed the strand toward her. It landed on her slacks.
He told her, “You weren’t supposed to live, you know. You messed things up for me.”
She remained motionless.
“What’s it like, a pretty woman like you going through life with a big scar on your neck?”
“What’s it like for you, a young guy who can only get off when he’s killing policewomen? Get many dates?”
He punched her in the jaw with his fist, pitching her sideways. The chair tipped and almost fell. Stars burst before her eyes.
He smiled fully for the first time that night, revealing small, even teeth and low gums, like a rodent’s.
In spite of herself, she inhaled a shuddering breath. She worked her jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken.
He went to the duffel bag. From inside, he took out a blue-and-white printed kerchief. He tied it around her eyes.
“Stay there,” he told her.
Not being able to see scared her more than anything else he’d done to her that night. She closed her eyes, finding that being blindfolded wasn’t as terrifying that way and focused on staying calm. It was the hardest work she’d ever done.
She heard him moving about the cabin. She dared to open her eyes and realized that she could see a little beneath the bottom of the kerchief. He was turning off lights. She heard him securing the back door. There was the rip of Velcro and the sound of something mechanical clicking into place. He’d replaced the cartridge in the Taser.
“Where’s Chief Gilroy?” she asked.
“Chief Gilroy” he repeated, slathering the name with as much honey as when he said “Officer Vining.” He sighed. “Yes … Good Chief Gilroy.”
“What did you do to her?”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth, suggesting a sad situation that couldn’t be helped. “Nothing that she hasn’t earned.”
FORTY-SEVEN
VINING FELT A PAIN IN THE PIT OF HER STOMACH. “WHAT DOES that mean?”
“Don’t ask so many questions. Especially when you might not want to know the answers.”
Behind her closed eyes, she envisioned his face. Not the face she recalled from 835 El Alisal Road with the dark wig and brown contact lenses, but this face, the chubby version with the shaved head, double chin, and plump cheeks. She’d seen this face before, and recently.
She thought she heard him rummaging inside the duffel bag. “I have a question I would like the answer to. What’s your name?”
“My name … You don’t even know my name and here I know so much about you. You don’t know where I live or what I do or even something as simple as my name.”
The pride in his voice sickened her.
“You must have called me something, all this time. You cops love to give guys like me nicknames. Do you have a nickname for me?”
Now he sounded hopeful, in a pathetic way, like the wallflower waiting to be asked to dance.
“What do you want me to call you?” she asked, refusing to give him the pleasure of knowing what a large role he’d played in her life. How she and Emily had given him a powerful, awe-inspiring name: The Bad Man. Thinking of him now, she thought, What a dweeb. He doesn’t deserve the name T. B. Mann. She wasn’t about to elevate him by revealing it.
“Don’t you and your colleagues have a name for me around the police station? You have to refer to me somehow, right? You know, like guys like the Night Stalker and the Hillside Strangler.”
She didn’t respond.
She felt him move beside her. His hand brushed the hair over her ear.
A chill went down her spine.
“You don’t think I’m in the big league, like those other guys.”
He continued stroking her hair in a wispy, tentative way that tingled and annoyed her, yet sent icy shivers through her body.
“Officer Vining, I think you know that I’m better than those guys. What sort of planning did they do? Throw a half-assed murder kit into the trunk of the car? Drive around looking for some girl to lure with a fake badge or for an open bedroom window? For that, they get nicknames and everyone in the city is afraid of them?”
He continued stroking her hair.
She focused on shutting herself off from his touch, on withdrawing and separating from her skin. It was working. She could almost not feel him, but it had the effect of making his voice more resonant, as if it was the only sound in a sealed room, vibrating through her ears and tickling the gray matter of her brain.
“You know I’m better than those guys, Officer Vining.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Oh, Officer Vining. I have it on good authority that you are very familiar with the caliber of my work.”
How could he know that? She thought of Betsy Gilroy Had he tortured her? Forced her to tell him what she knew about Nitro’s drawings, the necklaces, and the other victims?
She heard a metallic “snick” noise. She thought it sounded like a retractable knife blade being ejected. She was right. He pressed the tip against her neck, against the scar that told the story of how he’d stabbed her.
“Your resistance makes me think that you do have a nickname for me. I want to know what it is.”
She gritted her teeth, waiting for him to cut her. She felt hot tears in the corners of her eyes.
“What’s the matter, Officer Vining? Cat got your tongue?”
Seconds passed like hours. She again tried to remove herself from her body, but the sharp pain against that most vulnerable part of her kept drawing her back inside her skin. It stung brutally. Had he cut her? He must have broken the skin. She grappled for control over her emotions. She could not give in to him or she’d be lost for sure.
There was a second part to his show. Whatever he had planned, it wasn’t going to happen here. He had been closing up, preparing to move out. Opportunities to get away would present themselves. Just hold on. Hold on …
Her cell phone rang.
She heard him close the knife, pressing the blade back until it locked.
He grabbed the phone from her belt. “Kissick is calling. He must be wondering where you are. He must be so worried about you.” He added with a sneer, “Isn’t that special?” After another two rings, it stopped. He did not return the phone to her belt.
She heard him walk a few steps and then heard a rip, like tape being yanked from a roll. He returned to her and she felt him press a wide piece of tape across her mouth. He walked away.
She was glad it was just a piece of what felt like duct tape. He hadn’t s
tuffed something inside her mouth or wrapped the tape around her head.
She heard another ripping noise. The zipper on the duffel bag? She thought she heard him slide the heavy bag off the bar. He was again beside her, grabbing her by the arm. “Get up.”
They were entering the second phase of his plan. She recalled personal safety talks she’d given to women’s groups. Her own words came back to her. If you’re abducted, the harm won’t occur at the site of the abduction, but at the place the bad guy will take you to— the remote country road, the cheap motel room. Do not go to the second place. Do whatever you can to avoid being taken to the second place.
When she didn’t budge, he moved in front of her and tried to raise her with his hands beneath her armpits. She drove her head into his belly. He was already unbalanced by the weight of the duffel bag and she knocked him off his feet. Tilting her head back to see beneath the kerchief, she saw him on his back. She kicked his head, stunning him. She was about to stomp on it when, through animal instinct, he grabbed her raised foot and rolled, pulling her standing leg out from under her. She landed on top of him, partially knocking off the blindfold. Her hands handcuffed behind her, she spread her legs, pinning him.
He reached for her hair, but she was still able to rear her head back and deliver a resounding head butt.
It stunned her, but stunned him more. He lay back, blinking.
Getting to her knees, she again reared back her head, intending to cram his nose into his skull. When she heard the snick of the switchblade and felt the tip of the knife pierce her neck in the same spot he’d cut before, she froze.
