Dead On

by Robert W. Walker

  “Look, I saw firsthand what this lunatic did to Larry Milton. It’s an ugly, horrible way to die this so-called man plans for us all.”

  “How the hell do we know you’re not luring us here to use as bait?” erupted Nora, suddenly mouthing something, no doubt Carl had put in her mind. Nora’s residual anger at Marcus for “letting Stan die” remained strong. In fact, the anger in her eyes recalled the anger there the day he’d had to tell her of Stan’s death.

  “You know better’n that Nora.”

  “Do I? Do I?”

  “I’d never knowingly put you or Stan’s kids in harm’s way, damn it. You know that.”

  Katrina jumped in. “Nora, we believe at the moment this house is the only safe place.” She knew this wasn’t completely so, but she believed for the moment that it was so. “We’re hoping he—Cantu—knows nothing about it.”

  “So far as you know?” she countered.

  “So far as we know, yes.”

  “But you can’t know that, now can you?” Nora replied.

  “We can fly you and the children out at a moment’s notice if it comes to that,” said Marcus, downing another beer.

  “All the same,” countered Carl, “I think the local authorities here in—what’s the name of this place?”

  “Blue Ridge Lake,” said Nora. “Stan and I used to come up here summers for a weekend getaway with Marcus and his family and parents. Whatever’s become of Bev, Marcus, and the little ones?”

  “Ohio became of them.”

  “She called me sometime after the divorce, but we lost track.” Nora said to Katrina, “Beverly was such a sweet person, and she had the nicest kids on the planet.”

  “You got that right,” muttered Marcus, pacing now, uncomfortable with the direction things had gone in. “I’ve got the nicest kids on the planet.”

  “Of course, I meant you, too,” said Nora.

  “Maybe we should all be in Ohio,” commented Carl.

  Marcus abruptly said, “Kids can take my old room downstairs. I’ll quick pack. Camp out on the sofa. You two can have the second bedroom upstairs left. With this Marcus left the room, a hurt obviously shadowing him.

  “That man has issues,” said Nora after Marcus left.

  “I’ve learned to trust him,” replied Katrina.

  “You two ahhh…have a thing going, honey? If so, let me warn you right now. That one’s trouble. Always has been. Got my Stan killed and your man as well. You might’ve forgiven the bastard but not me, never.”

  “I’ll forgive him when he kills Cantu.”

  Carl attempted to console Nora with an arm around her shoulder, but Nora pushed away. “Get our bags upstairs and put down that swill,” she said of the Sam Adams he’d been sipping at like a choirboy.

  Katrina looked into the other room where the children had taken up a puzzle of all things and were working assiduously at finding all the border and corner pieces. On closer inspection, she saw that the puzzle was a gay scene of people at a fair, perhaps a county fair with all manner of farm animals, rides and roller-coasters. Beside this, lay a Parcheesi board with game pieces strewn about.

  Katrina snapped on the TV and found a news anchorwoman with fine features, coiffed blonde hair, and a button nose above a bright smile was going on at length about a horrendous murder. The reporter’s bone-gnashing details about how Milton had died seemed to Katrina something out of a B-horror film. She then warned viewers to take children from the room but instantly a grainy film began to play—a frightful close up depiction of Lawrence Milton’s corpse dangling like a sack of potatoes from the school flagpole. The footage, the reporter said, had come from a cell phone owned by a citizen onlooker.

  Katrina snapped the TV off for fear the children might see. She inwardly quaked, feeling like a child herself.

  *

  Iden Cantu had a fair idea where Katrina Mallory and Marcus Rydell were, the cabin home of Rydell’s unfortunately deceased parents—unfortunate because Cantu could not use them to harm Rydell. They’d escaped his plans during the past four years through death by natural causes, and this disturbed him. He’d dreamed of a far different sort of death for Momma and Poppa Rydell, to really twist the psychic knife he’d plunged into Marcus on their first meeting.

  Rydell could wait, he decided when he’d watched the plane take off that night Milton’s body had become everyone’s central focus. Instead, Cantu concentrated his efforts on the remaining Mierskys tonight.

  He’d gone by night to their Marietta address, cursing his short-sightedness in not having gotten to them earlier. He feared Rydell would telephone ahead, warn Nora Miersky, and she might flee with the children. He’d sped northward on I-75 like a man possessed, weaving in and out of heavy traffic in the old battered Dodge pickup he had taken from a day laborer who’d traded his life for a cigarette. A quick, painless death. One snap of the neck in Cantu’s arms.

  A pummeling rain had begun slapping at the windshield like wet gloves, and when he’d turned on the wipers, he found them broken and all but worthless. As a result, he’d had to pull over, wait for the rain to calm, and as he did so, he’d fallen asleep and was roused by a pair of curious cops banging with their flashlights the top of the cab, sending a shock through the killer this late afternoon. He rolled down his window to a beefy Atlanta State Patrol officer who unceremoniously told to be on his way. “Sign says No Shoulder here! Wanna get somebody killed?”

  “’Course not, sir…sorry officer,” replied Cantu, who had grown enough facial hair to rival Grizzly Adams after four years of hiding out in the mountains. “Just thought it safer to pull over than fall asleep at the wheel.”

  “I agree, better safe than dead,” replied the male officer.

  “Couldn’t see in the storm, actually. Pulled over, got bored, fell asleep.”

  The other cop was checking the license on the truck, and this one was now reading the big adhesive sign on the door. “Funny, you don’t look like your name’d be Hor-hey.”

  “Hor-hey?”

  “The truck. Says right below your arm: Jorge’s Cesspool Cleaning and Repair…Jorge, you know, Spanish for George.”

  “Oh, yeah, George! Jorge likes to be called George. We’re close.”

  The cop hadn’t changed expression one iota. “Fact is, you look like a Fred or a Tom, maybe a Bill. Think I wanna see some ID.”

  Cantu had his hand on a snub-nosed .38 kept at the ready and about to blow this pig’s head off when the female partner shouted, “Earl! We’ve got a serious call! A homicide. Needed elsewhere—now!”

  “Name is Mark Bowers,” Cantu lied to the officer. “Just bought Jorge out, you see, and the truck and the pump in back is pretty much the business.”

  “Awww-right, Mr. Bowers. Push off.”

  Not wishing to draw any further attention to himself, Cantu took the warning in stride and was thankful the cop hadn’t pushed him further for registration and license, neither of which he had.

  He found a room after this, still in need of sleep. By daybreak the next day, he’d finally located the correct address in an affluent neighborhood in Marietta, and his pickup with pump stood out like a beacon that someone in the area had a cesspool meltdown. The truck’s doors were plastered with a sign that read : Jorge’s Cesspool Cleaning & Repair. Even so, careful to draw as little attention as possible to himself, he pulled into the winding drive and parked beneath shade trees. He went to the Miersky’s door and knocked.

  No answer. Lights on inside but no answer.

  Again he knocked and he rang the bell.

  No answer.

  It felt like no one home.

  He thought of breaking in; waiting for them on the inside when they returned from wherever they might be. But suppose that were days from now?

  Cantu searched the neighborhood for any prying eyes. Sound of footfalls. A white haired old lady with her dog stood eyeballing him from the curb, staring down the driveway to where he stood on the porch. She kept going.

&nbs
p; He located a cloudy garage window. Two-car garage with only a small sedan inside. He turned to find the lady with the white puff of a dog coming at him, straight past his Junker to stand before him. “They’re on a trip,” said the feisty old woman. “If you’re looking to do some yard work or tree trimming, come down three doors on the left, my place. I’m Mabel Watson and this here is Snowball. She needlessly pointed to her yipping dog.

  The dog, a Pomeranian, ran around in circles on his tight leash and wildly barked in a high-pitched-last-nerve shrill tone. “I don’t understand why Snowy is so agitated,” she said.

  “Do the Mierskys live here?” he asked for lack of anything else to say.

  “Oh, no, they’re the Schramicks.”

  “I got a note to see a Mrs. Nora Miersky, this address.”

  “You know, I think she must’ve given you her maiden name. Strange. I wonder then.”

  I’ll bet you wonder then, you old bitty, he thought but said, “She said over the phone she had kids and needed the work done now—yesterday, in fact.”

  “She has two kids,” volunteered the neighbor. “Danny and Jennifer, lovely kids.” She giggled. The dog continued to yip at Cantu.

  “Took an instant dislike, didn’t ya, Snowy? He’s a bother. Never you mind, Mr. ahhh…” The old woman was thinking that Snowball knew character, and this was not good, his taking a distinct displeasure in this ‘contractor’s’ odor and appearance.

  “I’ll have to come back,” he said.

  “Maybe a couple of days.”

  “Why, you know where they went?”

  “No, no I don’t.”

  He studied her eyes for any sign of guile but found none. Still he summed up people as cunning, deceitful, and treacherous with skills in trickery. That much Muther had taught him for sure.

  “No one in the whole damn neighborhood tells an old crow like me anything, Mr. ahhh…”

  He wanted to drag her into the nearest bushes but there were too many windows all round, and from any one of them someone could be watching. “Bowers, ma’am, Mark Bowers,”

  “So who is Jorge?”

  He gritted his teeth. The woman had long before become exasperating. “Company name, ma’am—Jorge’s. Came with the truck, so I kept it for business, see. Real name is Mark.”

  “Good Christian name is Mark. Good and solid. Well, I’d best get home now. Come on, Snowy.” She turned and made her way back to the street, the dog intermittently fighting the leash, turning and barking at Cantu aka Mark Bowers.

  Cantu watched the woman and her do until she returned to her normal route. He wondered if anything had been said that shouldn’t’ve been said, and if the old crone was going straight for a phone to call the local cops. He’d be an easy target with that cesspool sign on the truck. He wondered if he oughtn’t to get in his truck and run down the old lady and her dog, Snowball, too. But he thought better of it. He would have to return to find the Schramicks home one night. This just wasn’t that night.

  The drive back to Atlanta felt like depression personified. He’d really wanted to do Nora Miersky and her kids. Do them up in the manner he’d done Milton. Announce to the world a killer worse than the infamous BTK killer, worse than any old Boston or Hillside Strangler. No other serial killer did his victims the way he did. Who else “smoked” the broken, tortured bodies of his victims in an ancient Indian ritual.

  And he wouldn’t balk at killing children.

  Then it dawned on Iden Cantu. “Damn me. Hard to think like Rydell. Hard to think like a man with concern for others and none whatsoever for himself or for living. Like his concern for the little Oriental girl that Iden had sold into bondage while pretending to be a cop.

  Where’s Rydell right this moment if not protecting those children? The offspring of Stan Miersky, his best friend and partner?

  Of course, he’d want them close.

  Cantu found the next off-ramp, drove up and through the light, crossing the bridge and going back the way he’d come. He needed to watch for the exit taking him northeast on 19. He needed to stop, get gas, something to drink and eat, maybe find a room for the day, catch some real sleep. But he also wanted to pick up and study a map of the Blue Ridge Lake region, including a topographical map of the area. This he’d find at the closest forestry department. It’d all take time, but he had time.

  If he figured right, Rydell had gotten to Nora Miersky and had taken them to the old homestead, the one he’d read about in Georgia Living thanks to Google dot com.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d visited the lake home at Blue Ridge. In fact, his last visit was a mere week before when he’d dropped off Big, his large German Shepherd wished him well. Big was trained to feed himself on vermin and snakes and whatever rabbits he could catch; Big had helped Cantu stay alive the entire time he’d been in the mountains. Big was a great animal, a worthy dog, and he was likeable, affable. Cantu had left the dog with a mission, and if any dog could complete this mission, it was Big.

  Cantu’s master plan appeared to be coming to fruition even better than he’d expected. Every carefully laid out detail had not come to pass, for sure, but a man must adapt; it was adapting on the fly to change that had kept Cantu alive all this time.

  Yes, things were on course. Even better as he’d not foreseen Rydell taking in the Mierskys, but that seems to have been the case…hopefully. All the better if true. Each target now in one place, kept company by Big. One order from Cantu and the dog turned into Cujo.

  S E V E N T E E N

  Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country, Marcus Rydell thought where he sat out on his deck in the dark, the only light painting his face coming off the G-5 Mac in his lap. The old practice your typing skills utilized very nearly every key. It was a standard by which to learn when Marcus had a Remington with a roll bar, even before electronic typewriters much less computers. Long before PC’s became permanent fixtures in homes.

  He now used Katrina’s Mac to send an E-mail to JT, asking for details and any information on Cantu. Were his prints, his signature, all over Lawrence Milton’s murder or not? If so had they come up with any leads, any clue as to the madman’s whereabouts, any sightings? In the Atlanta area, Iden Cantu’s features were as familiar as those of Elvis Presley. However, he could and obviously had altered his appearance much like a showman.

  Finishing his inquiry with a thank you in advance, Marcus looked out over the night-painted lake from the polished deck of his family home. He wondered at the wisdom of holding up here, wondered if they should not all get into the Cessna and take it tonight as far as Alaska—run! It made sense to do so.

  He also wondered at his and Katrina’s ability to locate and corner the lunatic Cantu before he located and cornered them.

  For the time being, he believed Cantu still in Atlanta, hold up in some rat hole there. Why Cantu had come out of hiding, stepping from the ancient forests surrounding the city to come after him in this fashion, to further twist the knife he’d placed in his back years before, escaped Rydell; all he could imagine in the way of reasoning in a chaotic, monstrous mind was a fixation. Some weirdly wired vengeance. Perhaps it was that Marcus represented authority in the body of one man, and that Cantu had set his sights on Marcus in order to snub his nose at all authority. It apparently didn’t matter to Cantu’s fevered brain that Marcus had already lost so much—his job, his wife, his children, no this was not enough. Enough would only come at Marcus’s seeing Katrina and the Miersky’s murdered before him.

  This certainly seemed to be Iden Cantu’s game plan from his letters and the recent binding, torturing, and killing of Lawrence Milton. One death too many already in this new “war” between Cantu and Rydell, a war not of Marcus’s choosing, but one he’d become fully engaged in.

  “What next?” Kat asked, stepping out onto the deck. She’d changed, showered, and her perfume was easy on the nostrils.

  “The others bedded down for the night?”

  “They
are.” She sat across from him at the outdoor table. Around them fireflies danced on air to the night sounds of the forests, which acted as a natural jukebox. “Organic music,” she called it. “So…what’s our next move?” she pressed.

  He explained his E-mail to JT. See if we can get any sort of idea where he might be roaming the city. We don’t hold back; we go on the offensive.”

  “Go back to Atlanta?”

  “I know the city brick for brick. I grew up there, and for over a decade, it’s been my hunting grounds.”

  “My research told me you were part Native American.”

  “Cherokee on my mother’s mother’s side.”

  “And the forests right here?” She indicated the darkness around them. “How well do you know the lay of the land here?”

  “Well enough to get lost.”

  “What? Lost?”

  “I’m no boy scout and these woods are thick and trust me there’re no signs pointing this way home.”

  “But it’s home, or was a second home…summers, right?”

  “Not really. I spent most of my time swimming, fishing, boating, and up in the air with Dad. Never even carved my name on a tree.”

  “Some Cherokee you’d make.”

  “I agree. I know my limitations. Do you?”

  She frowned and ignored the question. “But Marc, you’ve gotta know something of the terrain.”

  “Generally know what direction I’m going in, but believe me, the woods here are so dense that even a seasoned veteran game warden can get turned around. Park rangers have gotten themselves lost for days.”

  “How embarrassing for them.”

  “One was never found.”

  “I’ve heard the tales of kids who’ve been lost to the forests.” She said it as if he were out simply to frighten her and she was having none of it.

  “Once when I was maybe eleven, twelve and I was with my dad,” he sipped at a Coke, “Dad was cutting wood with a chainsaw. He put the chainsaw down, walked off maybe ten paces to take in the air, drink a bit of water, relax, and me at his side, maybe more like nine, ten. Any rate, he turns to me and says, “Marc, where’s my new Stil? What’d you do with it? Nothing, I told him, but looking around, it was gone.”