Her Last Scream

by J. A. Kerley

  “I’m not getting it,” I said.

  “I sure as hell am,” Cruz said. “Nederland.”

  “What?”

  “Nederland is a small town fifteen miles west of here, famous for Frozen Dead Guy Days – a festival where there’s actually a frozen dead man on display.”

  “Trotman’s making word play?” I said. “The live guy in Neverland?”

  “Or the dead man about to be awakened,” Sinclair suggested. “There are metaphors aplenty.”

  Cruz said, “I’ll get the Trotster’s pic sent to the local constabulary.”

  We waited for two hours, Sinclair continuing to pore over his messages, finding other allusions: “There are no bleeding whores in Neverland.” “When I am in Neverland I am at True Home.” Sinclair read passages from the Trotman/Drifter chat rooms. Sometimes Drifter sounded like a commando on steroids, sometimes a whiney child.

  Cruz’s phone rang, one of her colleagues who had been in Nederland for ninety minutes, checking computer records. She spoke, looked at me with a thumbs-up, rang off.

  “Robert Trotman owns eight acres of land southwest of Mud Lake. Purchased eleven months back. His piece of Neverland.”

  “Where the Lost Boys never grow up,” Sinclair said, recalling the Barrie tale about Peter Pan.

  Harry Nautilus and Sally Hargreaves were one hundred feet behind the bumper of Nathaniel Bromley’s Benz, bent low in the seats and watching. Bromley had exited the car, strutting down the block twenty paces before returning, his eyes always on the building, as if measuring something.

  “Ready?” Nautilus said.

  Hargreaves nodded. They pulled past the lawyer, who didn’t notice. The pair exited the car, walking quietly to the man’s back. “Getting ready for the big show, Mr Bromley?” Nautilus asked. “Figuring out the camera angles?”

  Bromley spun, frowned. “Our stalwart detectives. Are you following me? Do I have to call your chief?”

  “I was simply checking on the center, Mr Bromley,” Hargreaves said. “I have friends there.”

  The man’s frown turned to a grin. “No doubt. You seem the type.”

  “What type is that, sir?”

  Bromley grinned and ignored the question, turning to the center and giving the detectives his back. He bounced on his heels, a contented man. “You mentioned camera angles, Detective. I’m thinking the TV people could grab an establishing shot of the logo, pan to me for a close-up. Sound good?”

  “When do the fire trucks come in?” Hargreaves asked.

  “Fire trucks?”

  “You’re about to burn down a crucial service that women’s centers offer.”

  “Just the ones that engage in brainwashing. It’s been going on far too long.”

  Nautilus stepped into Bromley’s view. “How about your buddy Larry Krebbs? He gonna be part of things?”

  “Larry’s our plaintiff. He has a story to tell.”

  “Our plaintiff? You’re representing some kind of group? Like a class-action suit?”

  Bromley paused. “A figure of speech. The plaintiff.”

  “Playing the part of the man who lost his wife to the women’s underground railroad?” Hargreaves said, stepping forward. “That sisterhood of death?”

  “Come watch the show, hon,” Bromley winked. “Or stay home. It’ll be on all the channels.”

  “How about your wife, Nate?” Nautilus asked. “Will she be here to balance the story?” He watched as Bromley’s smile flickered. It was less than a microbeat before the teeth returned. The man did a credible perplexed, Nautilus thought.

  “I’m not married. What do you mean, balance?”

  “The woman who escaped her scumbucket abuser and made it to safety,” Hargreaves said. “I hear she’s a happy woman these days.”

  “Who the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your wife, Nate,” Nautilus said. “You and Larry sure are forgetful about women.”

  “I just told you, I’m not –”

  “How about the company party?” Hargreaves interrupted. “Dribbling your date’s head on the desk like a basketball? That still in the ol’ memory box?”

  Bromley spun to Hargreaves. “There are laws against slander, girly. You better be damn ready to prove what you say. And it sounds to me like you’ve got nothing more than a big leaky pail of hearsay.”

  Nautilus crowded closer. “We know about the woman in Pensacola, Nate. And Utah. We know about Boulder and Trotman.”

  Bromley cocked his head, seemingly amused. “Is there a reason you’re reciting a list of names and locales that have no meaning to me? I’ve already said I’m a frequent visitor to Colorado. I’ve met dozens, no hundreds, of folks up there. In bars, restaurants, on the ski slopes. So many I can’t begin to remember them all, much less what we may or may not have talked about. Are you trying to gin up some kind of circumstantial evidence? Good luck. I eat that kind of thing for breakfast.”

  “Your buddy Trotman’s holding a woman,” Nautilus said, tiring of the game. “We need you to tell us where to find him.”

  “What is a Trotman?” Bromley sneered. “Does it have to do with horses?”

  “Trotman’s the guy who brought you and Larry Krebbs a woman in Missouri, remember? Wrapped in a tarp. Her name was Judith Bramwell, a professor at the University of Colorado. She died in your trunk in Vicksburg while you and Larry were having lunch.”

  “Tarps? Vicksburg? Lunch? What are you babbling about?”

  “Your good brother Larry confessed to everything, Nate,” Nautilus said quietly. “It seems he’s having you for lunch.”

  Bromley froze for a millisecond, then shook his head and flicked a piece of lint from his lapel. Nautilus knew the lawyer’s mind was moving at warp speed, weighing the angles. “Larry Krebbs is a loser’s loser and a congenital liar, Detective. Whatever he’s lying about has nothing to do with me. The man’s sick in the head.”

  Hargreaves looked up the street and waved her hand in the air. A block distant a big Jerr-Dan car carrier roared from the curb toward the center, stopping in front of a gleaming black Mercedes.

  “What’s that for?” Bromley demanded.

  “We’re gonna haul your pretty car to our forensics bureau, Nate,” Nautilus said. “Go through your trunk with a microscope.”

  Hargreaves stepped to Bromley, false concern dripping in her voice. “Did you clean the trunk real good after you got rid of Dr Bramwell, Nate? Or did you do a half-ass job, thinking a day like this could never come?”

  She winked. Beads of sweat formed on the lawyer’s brow as the carrier operator flipped a switch and the Mercedes rolled on to the transport platform.

  “You better talk to me now, Nate,” Nautilus said, pulling out the cuffs. “Otherwise it won’t mean a thing.”

  “I … might have heard of a Bob Trotman,” Bromley said, his voice a dry rasp. “I think he works at the University of Colorado.”

  “We know that,” Nautilus said. “Where is Trotman right now?”

  The lawyer could only shake his head, No idea.

  Chapter 62

  Cruz and I raced to Nederland at a hundred miles an hour, a State Police vehicle leading the way. It occurred to me that this was how everything started: racing to the morgue as Rein cleared the path.

  “Bromley didn’t know anything?” Cruz asked.

  “Not about Trotman’s whereabouts. At least, that’s what he claims. I figure it’s right.”

  “Have you got enough to hold him?”

  “The current charge is conspiracy to commit murder. The judge took a look at the evidence and denied bail.”

  “A hotshot like Bromley got remanded to custody?”

  “It seems the first thing the forensics people saw when they popped his trunk was a smear of blood beneath the carpet. Human blood that’s now being tested for DNA.”

  “He didn’t clean up? He had that much ego?”

  “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first exalt,” I said. “What’s the plan?�
��

  Cruz shot a glance at her watch. “Strather’s got his team moving, gonna direct the operation from above, says we’re welcome to fly along.”

  “Nice of him to offer,” I said.

  “I think he’s doing it to keep you in sight,” she said. “Given how you started freelancing at Flood’s place.”

  Rein opened her eyes to see a rectangular cavern, large, perhaps ten paces by eight. There was a table, a chair and ottoman, three lamps hung from beams, the light low and amber. Heat poured from a kerosene heater in a corner. Strips of plastic covered one end of the room, keeping the heat from escaping.

  Living in a big cave, Rein thought. Like the fucking Flintstones.

  There was a bookcase. A cedar chest. Atop a table in a corner sat a bowl and pitcher like in antique stores. But it was the décor that pulled Rein’s awakening eyes: a huge poster from the movie High Plains Drifter centered the far wall, Clint Eastwood under a fiery sky, gun in one hand, whip in the other. Freakier were the half-dozen posters from the movie 300, bands of rock-bodied Spartans with weapons drawn.

  “I see you,” said a voice from the far side of the strips. He entered with a collapsible sawhorse in one hand, a pair of boards in the other, spaghetti-strand muscles laboring against the weight.

  “Your stench is about to make me puke,” he said, setting up the sawhorses and laying boards between them. He left the room, returning a minute later with a cloth tool bag, setting it on the table at his back. “If you try to hurt me again I will shoot you in your guts and piss on you while you squirm. You will lay on this table and do exactly what I say.”

  He pulled the knife and sliced the tape. Rein felt blood flow back into her hands and feet.

  “Take off your clothes. Don’t look at me like that. DO IT!”

  Rein stood naked before her captor. He stared with disgust. “Don’t stand with your feet apart. Keep them tight.”

  Rein shuffled her feet together. “Lay on the board,” he commanded, opening the tool bag and producing a roll of duct tape, binding Rein’s ankles to the board. She expected her hands to be next and wondered if she could get her nails to his eyes. Instead, he produced a square of black oilcloth the size of a bandana. He set the cloth and tape on her belly.

  “Tape the cloth to your stomach so the cloth goes over your thing.”

  Rein looked down at herself. “I don’t understand.”

  “TAPE THE CLOTH OVER YOUR FILTHY CUNT, YOU STUPID COW!”

  Dr Kavanaugh was right, Rein thought, stripping off a length of tape, her mind pushing free of the chloroform and thinking from a dozen directions at once. He’s terrified of my vagina. She laid the swatch of plastic over her groin, taped it down. Trotman produced a length of rope, snapping it between his hands. He reached into the bag and found a spoon, its edges polished bright, sharpened.

  The rope will tie my torso down, Rein realized. The spoon will remove my eyes.

  Rein’s mind remembered something Carson had said about psychopaths: When all else fails, and there’s nothing between you and death, fuck with them.

  “Did you ever get that espresso machine?” she asked, fighting to keep the fright from her voice.

  “What?”

  “You were Astra,” Rein said. “I see it now. You had me convinced you were a woman.”

  “I did what was necessary,” Trotman grunted, pulling a bottle of alcohol from the bag.

  “I’ll bet you like being a woman. Wearing a big wig, putting on the make-up. It’s fun, isn’t it?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You sure talked about sex a lot. Tantric sex with men? A transgendered partner? You ever get confused about just what –”

  Trotman snarled and punched her face. “Wearing a wig,” Rein continued, shaking off the blow. “A dress. Make-up. You liked being a woman, you freak. But you’re a lousy woman and a worse man.”

  He hit her again, his fist bouncing off Rein’s forehead. She saw stars.

  “Eunuch,” she spat. “Ball-less little scumba—”

  Trotman roared and kicked at her head. The impromptu table tipped over, spilling Rein to the floor, feet bound to the wood. “LOOK WHAT YOU DID!” he screamed. “YOUR SICKNESS IS ALL OVER!”

  Rein looked down. Her menstrual release was in full flow, blood running down the board from beneath her, smeared by her buttocks. The plastic was askew, her pubic hair in view.

  “COVER YOURSELF!” he yelled, waving the gun. “COVER IT!”

  Was it a fear of female genitalia? Rein wondered. Or was it the menses? She ran her hands across her labia, felt the wetness in her palms as he crouched and checked her bindings. Rein sprung forward, her gymnastics-trained body pushing the limits. She reached out, her hands wiping across his face and hair.

  Trotman stumbled back grabbing at his face. He saw Rein’s blood on his fingers. “I’M GOING TO DIG YOUR HEART OUT THROUGH YOUR EYES,” he screamed, beginning to gag, running to the pitcher in the corner and pouring the bowl full, dunking his head in the water as if his face were on fire.

  Chapter 63

  The helicopter skimmed the treetops, the snow-covered peaks of the high Rockies in the distance. We were heading toward Trotman’s Neverland, Cruz and I in back, Strather and the pilot up front. The SWAT team was racing in from below, a couple miles behind us, moving along dirt roads.

  “It looks like the middle of nowhere,” Cruz yelled over the roar of the engine. “But it’s twenty minutes to downtown Boulder.”

  Strather alternately studied the map in his hands and looked out the window through massive binoculars. “ETA is four minutes,” he said, frowning down at the verdant ridge top. “I’m not seeing a place to set down.”

  Her captor gagging and splashing water over himself in the far corner of the room, Rein’s eyes frantically searched the dirt. She saw the upended bottle of alcohol, the roll of tape …

  Where is it?

  There! In the dust at her feet. Rein snatched the sharpened silver spoon from the dirt. It took two strokes to cleave the tape from her ankles. The man was hunched over the bowl splashing soap and water across his face.

  “This FILTH is ALL OVER ME!”

  Rein considered attacking with the spoon, but he had a gun. He lifted the bowl in both hands, pouring water over his head. She slipped between the plastic slats, bolted down the tunnel, lit by lamps hung every dozen or so feet. And then, to the side, another plastic-slatted opening. She poked her head through the plastic, looking for a way out.

  His bedroom: a mattress on a log frame, a stump for a bedside table. Another fucking Eastwood poster. Two more 300 posters. An elk head above the bed. The kerosene heater. In the corner, a gun safe, sized for at least a dozen long guns. Rein dashed to the metal box. Please, she implored, be open.

  The safe was locked. She spun back toward the tunnel. Saw a bottle of Hoppe’s solvent beside the low bed, a box of barrel patches. Had he been cleaning …? A pistol! A .22 revolver on the floor, magazine snapped open. Rein grabbed it and ran. A howl of rage echoed through the mine. The bowl shattering, thrown.

  “GET BACK HERE,” the man screamed.

  Rein vaulted back into the tunnel. The floor elevated to her right, angling up. She ran like wolves were on her heels.

  “The property is around here somewhere,” Strather said, the chopper hovering three hundred feet above fir and aspen and jagged outcroppings of gray rock. My heart was as loud as the roar of the engine.

  “When will the team catch up?” I yelled, two feet from Strather.

  “Ten minutes,” Strather said. “But I don’t see any dwellings.”

  I looked down. The trees were evenly and thinly distributed. There weren’t many places a cabin could be built.

  “Over there,” I said, catching a line through the green. “Is that a road?”

  Strather lifted the binocs. “Good eyes,” he said, giving a thumbs-up. “Not much more than a trail.” He gestured for the pilot to track the road below and radioed directions to the on-racing te
am of warriors and medics.

  Rein saw a pile of beams. A dead-end? She dashed to the pile of rotting wood, not a dead-end, but a subterranean crossroads. Darkness in both directions. Rein listened into the space at her back.

  Nothing. What was he doing?

  Rock chips exploded from the wall, stinging her face, the rifle shot cutting through the mine like a sonic knife. The man had visited his gun locker. Her captor loosed another shot and Rein heard the ugly tup as the slug sizzled past her ear. She dove to the ground as a half-dozen more rounds clattered through the tunnel.

  Then quiet. Reloading?

  Rein had two directions she could go. She started to the left, stopped as the echoes of the gunshots faded. Was that the sound of a helicopter? No way. Still, she zigged to the right, shots starting again. He was running after her. The tunnel veered, almost black now. In her path lay a wall of boulders the size of appliances. Rein patted until finding an opening, pushed through. Rounds screamed into the rocks. But there, up ahead, was that light?

  And dammit, that was a helicopter.

  Chapter 64

  We followed the road, the pilot ascending to avoid a pillar of rock jutting past the trees. Strather was leaning forward, the lenses tight to his face. I saw his hand point before his voice spoke. “A vehicle, two o’clock, about five hundred yards. Looks like an Explorer. Black.”

  “What Trotman drives,” Cruz confirmed.

  The pilot banked and we were there in seconds, Strather sucking in detail, barking into his helmet mic, relaying the info to his team leader: “… road veers past creek bed, small ravine, cut to north another quarter mile. Truck against outcropping, west side. No subjects visible.”

  “It’s mining country,” Cruz said. “The ground is probably like a honeycomb.”