“I thought cops were supposed to be trained observers. What does it feel like I’m doing? I’m sitting on you.”
More grunts. “Wh-why?”
“Because, a couple of hundred pounds bearing down on you, pressing your sternum against the hard surface of this floor, is making it impossible for you to breathe. For the moment, you can force air into your lungs using a combination of the muscles in your chest and abdomen. But the space available for that air is compressed, and it’s already putting a strain on your diaphragm. In about fifteen seconds, your ability to support my weight will start to shift from your muscles to your bones. The bones of your chest cavity, your rib cage, they’re flexible. They’ll start to sag. Each breath is taking in less air than the one before it. Feel it? You’re suffocating. And the pace is speeding up.”
“You’re out . . . of your fucking—huff—mind. You can’t . . . kill . . . a cop.”
If you only knew how wrong you were. “You’re wasting the little air you have left. Why did Fernandez have a bunch of bangers abduct me?”
Humphrey strained to get out the words. “What the hell . . . no idea . . . what . . . talking about.”
“You know, I’m willing to bet I can stay like this longer than you can.”
Hatcher felt the man take in a long, strained breath, then immediately let it out in a frantic blurt. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”
“All right then, give me something on him.”
“Huh?”
“Fernandez. Give me something. Something I can use. Dirt.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Fine. Little tip—in a minute or so, if you don’t see halos and harps and clouds, you went to the other place.”
“Ungh! Fuck! Okay! Gimme some air!”
Hatcher shifted some of his weight to his feet and arm, heard Humphrey suck in a couple of breaths. He sat back down before the man could get a third.
“Talk.”
“I know he has those spooks doing stuff for him,” Humphrey said, forcing out the words. “But Norwood and me don’t have anything to do with that. Some guys supplement.” Huff, huff. “Others look the other way.”
“Noble. But tell me something I don’t know. Something he’d never think I could know. Preferably something he doesn’t know you know.”
“What? How am I—”
Hatcher lifted his feet, pressed every ounce of weight he could down.
“Okay! Okay! But I . . . can’t . . . breathe!”
“You’re going to have to earn your next shot of air.”
“Can’t.”
Rolling his eyes, Hatcher slid off Humphrey’s back and barreled him onto his side. He clamped a hand on the man’s throat and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Now you can breathe.”
Humphrey’s face was a shade of crimson. He coughed trying to suck in air.
Hatcher tightened his grip for a moment, then let go. Humphrey coughed some more. He shook his head when Hatcher made like he was about to grab his throat again.
“I busted a tranny a couple of years ago. Solicitation, lewd and lascivious. Looked like a gal, but I realized it was a guy when I saw his DL. Offered me a blow job to let him off. I laughed, asked him what he took me for. He told me another cop had let him go a few weeks earlier for one.”
“Fernandez.”
Humphrey’s nodded.
“Confirmation?”
“It was him. I brought it up to him, told him I’d arrested a whore who turned out to be a dude and gave him the location. Showed him a phone pic. Wanted to see his reaction. He turned whiter than a sheet. Didn’t say a word.”
Hatcher chewed on the info for a moment. “Thanks. Now, tell me where there’s a closet.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not going to want to watch what happens next.”
THERE WASNʹT A CLOSET, BUT THERE WAS A BATHROOM AND A dressing room in the back of the dojo. Hatcher dumped Humphrey into the bathroom on the floor and closed the door, then found another pair of cuffs in a jacket in the dressing room. The jacket had the name NORWOOD stitched on the front left. He put those cuffs on the unconscious guy and dragged him back to the dressing room.
A schedule was tacked on the wall near the front of the dojo. According to the block for Thursday, the first class started at six fifteen. Hatcher figured some early bird or assistant instructor would probably be showing up by five thirty. Maybe earlier. That meant he had twenty to thirty minutes, barring some random walk-in or unscheduled activity. He needed to make the most of them.
Fernandez looked pretty bad. He lay on his back, motionless. His left ear dangled next to his head, just over a spill of blood.
Restraining him posed a momentary challenge. Hatcher was short a pair of cuffs and didn’t have any zip ties or cord. After thinking about it for a few seconds, he removed Fernandez’s rank belt. The floppy gi would only get in the way, so he took that off him, too. The white of it was splattered with bright blood.
The choke Hatcher had used was actually a strangulation, since it didn’t cut off his airway but instead compressed the carotid artery. Shutting off the blood flow to the brain deprived it of oxygen, causing him to pass out. Even though the brain was getting sufficient oxygen now, that kind of choke induced a state of unconscious that tended to last. Hatcher was going to have to revive him.
Hatcher tied the belt around one wrist, then raised Fernandez to a sitting position. Kneeling behind him, he lifted the man’s other arm over his lolling head, laid the forearm across his crown. He slipped his arms in a hug around the man’s torso, hands meeting right beneath the breast bone. He straightened his back and he lifted and squeezed, lifted and squeezed, lifted and squeezed. He counted to ten, then repeated. After the second time around, Fernandez’s hand started to twitch, then his head began to move. Hatcher could hear the rough gasp of a waking breath.
Fernandez groaned, made a noise like he was trying to say something. Hatcher shoved him forward onto his stomach and yanked his arm down and behind him. He wrapped it snug against the other arm with the belt, wrists crossed. Tied it off with a tight square knot. A bit bulky, but it would have to do.
There was a bottled water fountain near the changing room. Hatcher walked over to it, filled a paper cup from a dispenser. He started to return to Fernandez, stopped. He glanced over to the exercise area, then to Fernandez, who was stirring slightly but clearly not ready to move on his own. Hatcher placed the cup down and went into the changing room. Norwood was still out. Hatcher untied his rank belt and pulled it from around the man’s body, flopping it over his shoulder. Looking around, he grabbed two others, one brown, one green, from wall hooks before returning to Fernandez with the water.
He took one of the belts and knotted the end around Fernandez’s ankles. Then he pulled Fernandez up into a sitting position and put the cup to his lips.
“Drink it,” he said.
Fernandez took one sip, followed with a larger one. He blinked his eyes, choking on some of the water. A few more sips and the cup was empty. Hatcher crumbled it and tossed across the room in the general direction of a wastebasket.
“Your ear is detached. A hospital can reattach it and you’ll barely show a scar, other than one no one will see unless you show it to them. But you’ve only got about a half hour before the tissue will be too far gone. So you’d better talk.”
The man blinked again. His eyes were straining sideways, trying to see the side of his head. His ear hung there, swinging slightly with every movement. Hatcher was sure Fernandez could feel it brushing against the side of his jaw and neck.
“It’s still there,” Hatcher said. “For now.”
“You’re fucking crazy!” Fernandez took a few more breaths, his eyes clearing. “Attacking three cops? You’ll do twenty years. You hear me? Your life is over. Over.”
“I don’t think so, but right now let’s talk about you. Why did you come after me the other day?”
“
I don’t have to answer shit.”
Hatcher said nothing. He locked his gaze on Fernandez’s eyes, raised a hand slowly toward the dangling ear.
“You were assaulting someone,” Fernandez said, jerking his head away. “I thought I’d teach you a lesson. Now let me go, before you’re looking at twenty-five to life.”
Hatcher frowned, wagged his chin in a slow pantomime of disappointment. “Even if I wasn’t able to tell you were lying from giveaways like the movement of your eyelids right before you spoke, or the way you swallowed midway through, or the tension in your vocal cords, I would still know. Because you’ve got to be the lamest-ass liar ever.”
“Says you.” Fernandez swallowed to clear his throat. “That’s what happened.”
Hatcher stood and stepped behind Fernandez, leaning down to grab the man’s bound wrists. He clamped down on the knotted clump of belt and dragged Fernandez toward the exercise area.
“Sunuva . . . ! Jesus! That hurts!”
“Okay, let me explain how this works,” Hatcher said. He stopped just beneath the pull-up bar, dumped Fernandez on his stomach. “What you’re about to experience is called strappado.”
“What? Hey! What the fuck!”
“Strappado. Should I spell it?”
Hatcher removed a forty-five-pound plate from a weight rack and balanced it on its edge near Fernandez’s feet. The cop tried to roll onto his buttocks, but Hatcher shoved him back onto his chest. He took the loose end of the cloth belt he’d tied around the man’s ankles and threaded it through the center hole of the weight. There wasn’t much slack left after he finished tying it off, with the plate almost touching Fernandez’s feet, but after he saw how it looked he decided that was probably ideal.
“This was very popular during the Inquisition,” he continued. “It was one of the few ways to break a body, but still leave the person alive to confess. And it was simple.”
“What the . . . ?” Fernandez twisted to look back over his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”
Hatcher knelt next to Fernandez and slid the remaining belts off his shoulder. He secured the end of one to the end of the other with a sheet-bend knot. It was clunky to use a nautical knot with thick cloth, but he knew it would do the job. When he was done, he fed one end of the double length belt between the man’s forearms.
“At the moment, I’m tying this belt around the one holding your wrists. Then, I’m gonna toss it over this bar here and lift you by your arms, still reversed and tied behind you, just as they are now.”
“What? You can’t—”
“Eh, no need to worry. Other than twist your joints and pop your arms out of their sockets, stretch your tendons and ligaments beyond tolerances, and probably cause significant, irreversible nerve damage, it probably won’t do anything except cause more pain than you’ve ever experienced in your life. Oh, and there is a real chance some of that damage will be to the brachial plexus nerve cluster, which would likely result in permanent paralysis. But other than that, you should be fine.”
“You can’t fucking do this!”
Hatcher shrugged. “Call a cop.”
With the belt secure, Hatcher stood and fed the other end over the bar. He pulled down on it with all his weight, checking the hold. Fernandez’s body pulled up, hips rising and legs sliding across the floor. The bar looked like it could handle the weight with no problem.
The knot connecting the belts seemed solid, too. Hatcher paused, leaning his weight against the rope but not pulling. Anticipation was crucial. The mind was the ultimate instrument of torture. Bodies could only be broken. Minds could be manipulated in a thousand different ways.
“I mean it! You better fucking stop!”
Hatcher yanked again on the belt, one hand climbing over the other, pulling down using his weight. Fernandez’s arms extended and his body pitched forward. He rolled to his knees to keep from being lifted, then hopped to his bound feet, standing as quickly and as tall as he could, supporting his weight with his legs as long as possible.
“Generally speaking, there are two types of torture. The first type is to inflict pain. It’s punitive. The goal of that torture is to simply heap as much suffering on the individual as possible.”
“Ahhh! Christ! My shoulders! That hurts!”
“No kidding. That’s sort of what people in my line of work call ‘the point.’”
The heavy plate anchored Fernandez’s legs, keeping him from flipping forward. That forced his reversed arms to lift his entire body weight from behind his back, pulling them in ways they weren’t meant to rotate. Something popped audibly in one of Fernandez’s shoulders and he screamed.
“The other type of torture is designed to break the individual’s resistance. This is the type that requires an understanding of the human psyche. Ya see, it’s not pain that causes someone’s will, their spirit, to break. It’s fear. Pain can be endured. But it’s the fear that there will never be anything else that really gets them. That this will become a permanent condition, one that can only worsen. Repeated over and over and over forever. It’s the anticipation of that, of the repetition, of the worsening, of the permanence—that’s what causes people to crack. Funny thing is, that happens even though they know it can’t go on much longer.”
Hatcher lowered him back to the floor. Fernandez slumped onto his side, clenching his teeth.
“Almost forgot,” Hatcher said.
He walked over to the reception area, rummaged through a small wooden desk in the corner. He returned a moment later with a letter opener.
Crouching next to Fernandez’s head, he said, “Couldn’t find scissors, so this will have to do.”
The cop tried to pull away, but Hatcher yanked him back. “What the fuck?”
“Your ear. Since you don’t seem interested in saving it, I figured I’d just remove it and flush it down the john. Permanent disfigurement is a good way to make sure you don’t harbor any illusions about how far I’m willing to take this. Don’t worry, once I flush it, I’ll hoist you back up.”
Hatcher reached down and picked up the loose flap of ear. It was connected by little more than the earlobe, looking rubbery and fake and every bit as detached as it was. He moved the letter opener toward it.
“No! Okay! I’ll tell you!”
“Tell me what? That you were doing your duty as a public servant, protecting a pedestrian?”
Fernandez huffed several times. His jaw was bulging, the muscles of it visibly working beneath the surface.
“Speaking of permanence,” Hatcher said. He shot a glance over to the camcorder. “This is being recorded. If you don’t want to answer these questions, soon as I’m done introducing your ear to the L.A. sewer system we could talk about the hummer you got from a dude in drag.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, yeah, I know all about that. All about it. And by the time we’re through here, I’ll know a lot more.”
“You’re crazy. I didn’t get a hummer from no fucking guy.”
“Fitting double negative. Save your denials. Bottom line is, I can make you talk. Question is, do you want to talk about things like why you had a bunch of bangers kidnap me and why you beat a rendition of ‘Wipe Out’ on me with your tonfa the other day, or should we explore how you let some swingin’ dickwearing lipstick blow you in your squad car. Either way, the camera’s running. And my patience is, too. Out.”
Fernandez sucked in a hard breath, whiffling it through his teeth. “I did it for some gal, okay? Happy?”
“Afraid you’re gonna have to be more specific. Let’s start with the gal. Who is she?”
“Some chick. Met her a couple of months ago. We’ve been going out.”
“What does she look like?”
“Brunette. Smokin’ hot.”
“Name?”
“Deborah.”
Second time he’d heard her name, Hatcher thought. Had to be the same one. Her and Soliya, both in L.A. Him in L.A. Not a coincidence, t
hat was for sure.
“How hot?”
“Eat-a-bucket-of-shit-just-to-sniff-her-asshole hot.” Hatcher let the information sink in. That sounded like her, all right.
“What did she tell you?”
“First time, said she needed someone picked up. That he wouldn’t go peacefully. Needed to be done clean and controlled. Told me to have it ready to go, then called with the when and where. Bronson Caves.”
“Why?”
Fernandez rolled his head, grimacing. “You did something to my shoulder, you asshole. It hurts like hell.”
“Given where you’re headed, my advice would be to get used to it. Now, I asked you a question. Why?”
“She didn’t say,” Fernandez said, sneering. “And I didn’t fucking ask.”
“And that shit with me on the sidewalk?”
Blinking at the ceiling, Fernandez huffed out some halting breaths. Talking was clearly a chore. The pain and overall discomfort were causing his respiration to be labored.
“She wanted me to roust you. Said a guy was going to be with you. She told me to make sure he could walk away, not get roughed up or followed.”
“Who is he?”
“No idea.” Fernandez glared up at Hatcher, his chest heaving. “What about my ear? I need a doctor!”
“What’s she got on you?”
“Got on me? I don’t know what you mean. Look, if you don’t call me an fucking amb—”
“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I mean. Those kinds of favors don’t just get asked out of the blue.”
Fernandez said nothing, just kept huffing. He stared at the floor, crunching his eyes in pain every few seconds.
“Okay. If this dislocates your other shoulder, just scream the way you did before. I won’t let you down, but it’ll make me feel good.”
“Hey!”
Hatcher grabbed the end of the belt that tied off Fernandez’s wrists. “Hope the skin and muscle on that one are strong. There are stories about arms ripping off.”
“No! Wait! Jesus! She’s got a bunch of girls who hire out as escorts, all right? Top dollar. I provide security.”
Diabolical Page 21
