“Dear Lord,” she said in a whisper, “forgive my sins. Help me to withstand this pain. Help me to find a clear vision. Lead me out of this darkness. In the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.” And then she sat in the corner farthest from the door and composed her thoughts, steeling herself for whatever would come.
At eleven the door opened and Leonard Land was standing there. The harsh fluorescent lights turned his pale, rash-reddened skin an ugly purple. His grotesque body filled the opening, his ghastly bald features glowering. Then he reached behind him and turned a dimmer rheostat, bringing the lights low so that he was no longer clearly visible, only a huge outline in the doorway. His smell reached across the small room, gagging her.
“Don’t stare at me, you bitch, turn your eyes away. You cannot conceive my glory, for you have told many lies.” His voice was thin and high and his speech was singsongy.
She struggled to get to her feet, and, once standing, she pressed her back against the cold concrete wall. “I haven’t lied to you. I’ve never met you before.”
“You were sent by Shirley. In her likeness, and with her message.” He smiled but the smile was leering. “I will use that against you after you become part of the Beast.”
Karen listened carefully and finally she nodded. She had to get him to talk. Information was power. She thought he was constructing a woman in his mother’s likeness but she needed to find out why to gain leverage. “Go on,” she said.
“You told me there was one God, one personal glorified being … but you lied.”
“I lied?” she said, watching closely.
“You spoke of the Devil, but never defined his glory. He is also Lord, the Anti-Christ. In the numerous chain of prophecies only the closing scenes are hidden … and you will tell me what they are and how to avoid the Journey of Redemption.”
“I see,” she said. Her legs were quivering with fear, but she tried to hide it from him.
“You told me that the doctrine of the world’s conversion and the terminal millennium is a fable of these last days. But you lied about that too. It is written that this doctrine is calculated to lull men into a state of carnal security and causes them to be overtaken by the great day of the Lord as if by a thief in the night,” he said.
He was reciting. She could tell by the monotonous phrasing that this was memorized doctrine … but from where? She didn’t recognize it.
“You said the wheat and tares grow together,” he continued in the same voice, “and that evil men and the seducers wax worse and worse. You said the inevitable day of cleansing is coming. You told me God had given you the message and told you. how to avoid the Redemptive Journey. You must tell me the secret. I will not walk through the Hall of Sleeping Spiders or take a twothousand-threehundred-day Journey of Redemption through hell.” He lumbered ominously toward her.
“Okay, I will give you the truth,” she said quickly.
“It is not so easy,” he said and took a syringe out of his pocket. “Before you speak I must place your head on the Beast. The Beast, it is written, will tell the truth. She cannot lie. The Beast will tell me how to avoid the fires of hell.”
Karen knew he was completely delusional, lost in some apocalyptic religious struggle. She couldn’t quite get a handle on why, but she was out of time. She had to make a move. He took another step toward her.
“Stop!” she commanded in a loud voice and he flinched, throwing a hand up to protect his face almost as if she had hit him. Then he straightened and glowered at her.
“You are not Shirley. I don’t have to do what you say.”
It sounded to Karen as if he didn’t quite believe that. She decided to take her one last shot. “On the Sabbath,” she said firmly, “the Lord has commanded all to rest.” Her legs were unsteady, her chest heaving, her teeth killing her.
“I don’t give a fuck what He wants!” The Wind Minstrel shouted.
“Then you are a fool,” she said. “The Lord will not countenance this crime on his special day. He will seek double vengeance against you. He will find you, and He will double the Journey of Redemption.” She didn’t know what the hell the Journey of Redemption was, but it sure had an effect on Leonard, because he took a step back and covered his ears.
“I will not listen to more of your lies. The Rat hides in daylight. God doesn’t know where I am.”
“God has seen you. You went to Robbie’s in the daylight. God knows all about Robbie; Shirley told him. He’s been watching Robbie, waiting. He has followed you here and he knows what you are doing. Do not make the mistake of desecrating the Sabbath. If you do, you will take his full redemptive wrath. The fires he will use on you will burn slowly. You will roast for a thousand years.” She was trying to use the same meter; give the content of her words biblical proportion.
He rubbed his eyes and looked undecided. He was still holding the syringe in front of him. Then he moved toward her. She tried to get out of the way but the room was small; he grabbed her arm and threw her back into the wall, then pressed his corpulent body against hers, pinning her. His stench was overpowering. Her stomach leapt and she almost vomited. For a moment she thought he might try to rape her, but then he grabbed her arm, shoved the needle in, and depressed the plunger. She fought for several seconds, knocking the empty syringe out of his hand onto the floor … and then, for the third time that day, she was fast asleep.
Chapter 41
Sarasota County Real Estate Tax Board records indicated that Shirley’s property had been sold in 1989 to Joseph Allen. He had died two years ago and the Allen family had put the place up for sale. Because of the bad Sun Coast real-estate market, they had not received an offer, and the house was now boarded up and empty. The lot wasn’t technically in Bradenton but lay across the city line in Sarasota, at the end of a lowland island known as Siesta Key. It was only thirty miles south of the mouth of the Little Manatee River where, a few days before, Lockwood, Malavida, and Karen had piloted the rented boat—all three of them still in relative good health. The week that followed had exacted a heavy toll.
Lockwood and Malavida drove the gray Lincoln back across the tip of Florida to the west. They turned north on Interstate 75 and began the two-hour drive up the Gulf Coast. Malavida had been getting progressively worse. Lockwood had to stop the car twice so Mal could lean out and throw up. When Lockwood had tried to convince him to go to a hospital, he flatly refused.
“Listen, Zanzo,” he’d said through clenched, shivering jaws, “I’m doing this. Okay? You’re just John Q. Dickhead now. You can’t order me around. So shut up.”
That was the last thing the two had said to each other until they reached the outskirts of Sarasota. Lockwood had the map on his knees as he drove. He turned left on Clark Road and followed the humpbacked two-lane highway across the low wetlands; then he drove over the single-span Stickney Bridge onto Siesta Key.
The islet was low and sparsely populated. The road was dark with no streetlamps. They moved along looking for a shell road called Lower Key Road.
After driving for about two miles, Lockwood found it and made a right turn, heading west now toward the Gulf. The road narrowed and finally came to a stop at a crude cul-de-sac. The foliage was dense and reedy. Lockwood looked at his watch: It was 11:45 Sunday night. An almost full moon had climbed out of the eastern sky and hung there like a wedge of pale lime on the edge of dark black glass. Lockwood could see two driveways with mailboxes. He looked over at Malavida, who was slumped against the door of the car. His eyes were open but he was obviously out of the play.
Lockwood got out of the car and stumbled on unsteady legs to the mailboxes. He looked inside both and found nothing except ad brochures. The Allen house was supposed to be at 2464 Lower Key Road. He found an ad brochure with that address “To Occupant” and followed the driveway halfway down until he could see the house. It was a one-story stucco job with a slate roof. It looked like it had once been painted yellow but had faded to an off-white. The roof seemed to lean slightly. The yar
d was in a losing battle with the dense Florida undergrowth.
Lockwood slowly headed back up the drive to the car. He thought he was moving with slightly better coordination, but he still didn’t trust himself to run or throw a punch. Maybe he could still swing a tire iron. He opened the trunk and pulled out the tool, hobbled up to the passenger side of the car, and looked in at Malavida, whose head was leaning against the half-open window.
“Stay here. Call the cops if I’m not back in five minutes.”
“I’m coming …” Malavida said and opened the door, but that was as far as he got. He couldn’t get out of the car. He tried to put his legs on the ground, but gave up and just slumped back with his head on the seat.
“Like I said, call the cops if I’m not back in five minutes.” Lockwood took the phone out of Malavida’s pocket, flipped it open, and put it in his hand. Malavida barely held on to it. Lockwood then walked carefully on uncooperative legs toward the house. Before he got ten feet, he heard Malavida’s voice.
“Hey, Zanzo …”
Lockwood turned.
“I got your back.”
“I can see,” Lockwood said, then moved up the drive toward the darkened house.
The house was foreboding. Lockwood searching around slowly, trying desperately not to make any noise. He had been pumping adrenaline for hours to keep going, and now, when he needed an edge, he felt dull and used up. He leaned on the railing of the stucco house for a minute. He could see dust on the front porch. It covered the wood deck like a sprinkle of fine brown sugar. He could see in the pale moonlight that nobody had been on that porch for a long time. He looked around for the VW. The yard was empty, the house unused. He realized this had been just a long, time-consuming dead end. Karen wasn’t here. He had failed her.
He slumped down and sat on the wood steps of the porch and stared at the dense, overgrown foliage. They had come close but they had lost her. He didn’t think Karen could still be alive after the chase down Twenty-seventh Avenue. Leonard Land and Satan T. Bone would have to kill her to silence her. He sat there, used up, in the warm night .. . and then, suddenly, he started to cry. He tried to rein in his emotions, but he couldn’t. The tears ran down his cheeks and fell on the tangled grass at his feet.
Lockwood had not cried since he was a ten-year-old boy at the orphanage. He had been pounded silly for showing his tears back then. It was perceived as weakness. In the world he was raised in, the meek didn’t inherit the earth—they got the shit kicked out of them. He had not cried when he’d been sentenced to St. Charles Academy five years later or when Claire had divorced him or even when she’d been murdered. Despite the anguish of that loss, he had held himself in strict control. But he could no longer hold back the tears; he was physically and emotionally spent, and they now spilled out in silence.
He struggled to regain control of himself. He knew he was crying for all of them … for Claire and Heather, for Karen, for Larry Heath and Alex Hixon, even for Malavida, who, despite Lockwood’s earlier harsh appraisals, had now gained his total respect. What he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, admit to himself was that he was also crying for John Lockwood, for all he had missed and all he had refused to experience.
Sitting on that Florida porch step after thirty years, John Lockwood finally lowered his guard … and it almost cost him his life.
She didn’t know where the table had come from, but it was now in the center of the concrete room. She was strapped on top of it, her arms and legs tied with ropes to each corner. She tried to rock her body but the table didn’t move. It was either very heavy or affixed to the floor.
“Stop that, you cunt,” a voice said.
She looked up into the harsh overhead light, and then into view came Bob Shiff. He looked down at her; his ghoulish black-tattooed eyes glistened with a mixture of fear and excitement.
“Help me,” Karen said softly.
He shook his head. His expression was grim. “He’d kill me. I’d rather he killed you. That was pretty smart, telling him God would punish him for killing on the Sabbath. Made him all nutty, though. He says he has to punish you. He says he wants to see into your eyes when he cuts your throat. Then this will all be over. Once the Beast is made, there is no more need. You’re the final victim.”
“You’re wrong, Bob. This killing is a compulsion. He won’t stop. He’ll find another reason. This isn’t over.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What about Tashay? She got away. She’ll tell the cops,” Karen said. “I won’t be here. I’m going to Europe. I’m going to see Satan Wolf before he’s executed.”
Then Karen heard what sounded like a metal ladder, and in a few seconds Leonard Land came into her limited field of vision. He never looked at her but started unpacking his coroner’s tools. He had changed into a silk kimono and his pasty white skin radiated in the harsh light. He had rubbed Vaseline over his entire body; she smelled its medicinal odor. He was selecting his scalpels now and he slowly laid them out on the concrete floor. She couldn’t see them being arranged, but she could hear the metal handles ring slightly as they were laid at his feet.
Then he raised his kimono and grabbed his penis and slowly started to rock in silence, attempting to masturbate over his tools. But he did not get an erection. He remained limp and grew angry, yanking at himself with uncontrolled rage.
“I need music! Get fucking music!” he yelled at Bob Shiff, who ran quickly from the room. Karen heard him climb the metal ladder.
The Wind Minstrel moved slowly and picked up the Stryker oscillating bone saw. He plugged it in and turned it on. He held it over Karen, bringing it within inches of her face. The sawtoothed lateral blade growled ominously as it oscillated back and forth, vibrating the flesh on The Wind Minstrel’s corpulent forearm.
Bob Shiff saw something on the edge of the porch and for a moment, in the pale moonlight, couldn’t make out what it was. As he silently crept closer, he saw it was a man. Then he recognized him. It was the same cop who had come to the Loomis Theater and showed him Leonard’s picture, the one who had attacked them this afternoon at the garage in East Miami and chased them. When he crept closer, he thought he could hear the man crying, sobbing softly as he sat on the porch. Bob Shiff moved slowly and deliberately back to the VW van, which was hidden in the middle of the dense underbrush, away from the house. He opened the door silently and retrieved the same bat he had used on Karen Dawson in the Bayfront Park toilet. He then moved back toward the house and looked again at the crying man. He was afraid to tell Leonard, because Leonard was strange. Lately anything could send him into a homicidal rage. Shiff decided it wouldn’t be hard to get around behind the man if he went to the back of the house and came up on the far side, so that the man’s back was to him. The grass there would muffle the sound of his approach.
It took Shiff almost three minutes before he was standing behind Lockwood. The cop was crying, his head bowed, not paying attention. Shiff silently brought the bat back and, with all of his might, he swung it… .
Lockwood didn’t know what warned him. Maybe it was his battle training in the Marines or an instinct from all the police work. Maybe it was moon shadows or a change in the sound of the keening insects. Maybe it was the ghost of Wyatt Earp—but he instinctively moved to his right seconds before he felt the stinging blow glance off his right shoulder. Bob Shiff saw him move and chased him with his swing. But it threw off his timing and he missed Lockwood’s head by a fraction. Lockwood rolled on the ground to gain distance; he saw Shiff move toward him, bat raised high for a final strike. Lockwood was sprawled on the grass, his right leg under him, his right hand touching his left shoe. He was in a horrible position, unable to push off or gain leverage. He was two heartbeats from getting creamed.
Shiff moved in on him with the bat high over his head; then Lockwood snatched off his black loafer and, grabbing it with both hands in a two-handed shooting position, pointed it at Shiff. The moonlight glinted off the black patent leather and it froze Shiff mom
entarily.
“Drop it or you’re dead, cocksucker!” Lockwood barked out an adrenaline-filled complete sentence and prayed this speedballing dust-bunny would go for the lame trick. In a bluff like this, attitude was everything. Then, miraculously, Shiff dropped the bat. “On stomach,” Lockwood commanded. Shiff started to go to his knees but, from this position, he could see more clearly.
“It’s a fucking shoe,” he said in dismay and he lunged again for the bat.
Lockwood was now untangled and threw himself sideways, also grabbing for the wooden bat. The two of them struggled on the ground. In his weakened condition, Lockwood could not even control this tiny 120-pound heroin addict. He was slow and uncoordinated, and in seconds Shiff had the bat away from him. Lockwood lunged forward and awkwardly hit Shiff in the face with both hands. The blow rocked him back but didn’t take him down. Lockwood now dove at him, trying to get his hands on Shift’s throat. The two men went down in the wet grass, and then Lockwood rolled over the tire iron he had brought with him but had completely forgotten. Shiff pulled free and jumped up with the bat in his hand. Then, grinning, he moved in on Lockwood, who struggled up on his knees, the tire iron in his right hand hidden behind his back. Shiff swung the bat at Lockwood’s head but didn’t see the tire iron coming from his left. Lockwood ducked under the Louisville Slugger and followed through with the tire iron, hitting Bob Shiff in the side of the head.
Final Victim (1995) Page 32
