by Linda Ladd
“Whad you give me?” I said, and heard my own words slur out of my mouth. I shut my eyes, couldn’t hold them open, but I could hear her voice.
“It’s just a couple of my sleeping pills. I put them in that last glass of lemonade. It’s not enough to hurt you, but you’ll probably go to sleep for a while. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Claire, but I had to do it. He told me to do it or else. He made me, I swear.”
I knew about sleeping pills, especially when you took more than one; Black had given me a prescription to help me cope with my nightmares. It was supposed to make me fall asleep fast but it didn’t affect me so much that way, took me a long time to fall asleep, anyway. Maybe I could beat it, stay awake and get back in control, but I was feeling groggy and messed up and sick to my stomach, and her words kept echoing farther and farther away as the drug sped its way through my bloodstream. Clarity of mind was slipping, thoughts flitting around the edges of my mind like some kind of butterfly dancing. I tried to speak, ask her who made her do it, but my tongue wouldn’t move anymore, felt like a thick, warm worm asleep in my mouth. I was losing consciousness, and I tried to will myself to awake. I could not go to sleep. I could not let her get by with this.
Khur-Vay was still talking. “He told me that if I didn’t help him find out what you knew, he’d get to my little girl, Chloe, that he had people who could find her and kill her, all he had to do was give them a trigger. That’s what he called it, a trigger. He said you were getting too close to him, that he wanted to talk to you and find out what you know. He’s gonna let you go after that, Claire, I swear, he promised me. So I called him up when I went inside with Li He, and he told me he was out here at Mikey’s place with some friends and to bring you here. He’s not gonna hurt you. He promised me he wouldn’t hurt you.”
Yeah, right, I thought, that’s about as likely as a spaceship landing on top of my car. Then I laid my head back on the headrest and closed my eyes.
Vaguely, fighting sleep, I heard Khur-Vay get out of the passenger door and run around to my side. I felt myself being pushed across the seat and out of the way, and ended up with my head leaning on the passenger’s window as I fought to stay aware of what was going on. I could not let myself go completely out. The motor fired, and I blinked and shook my head, forcing my eyes open as she drove us along the main road for a while, then took a sharp left.
More riding, bumping down an uneven surface, gravel crunching under the tires. Branches were whipping against the windows, and the sleep took me briefly until the car pulled to a stop again. I forced myself awake enough to see a weathered gray warehouse sitting directly in the glare of the headlights. When Khur-Vay opened the door and got out, I could hear the loud rush of the river again, gurgling and splashing its way downstream. Then somebody came out the front door, and I tried to see who it was as they walked out to the car, but couldn’t focus my eyes long enough, and the pills finally got me.
I woke up again when they dragged me out of the car. I was going in and out of sleep, but I was mostly semiconscious. I felt the adrenaline surge as a man’s hands touched my body, picked me up, and I hoped to God I could somehow counteract the sleeping pills. Then we were inside the building, in a dimly lit room, and they were talking together, but I couldn’t quite understand the words. I was dumped onto the floor, and then I felt nothing and saw nothing for a while.
Later, I don’t know how long, I awakened to loud voices. I forced my eyes open, tried to focus, had a lot of trouble doing it. Now I was slumped in some kind of lawn chair, but I could make out other chairs, too, all in a circle. There were people sitting in them, but dark shadows hugging the edges of the room obliterated their faces. An old crate sat in the middle of the circle with an electric lantern on top that gave out the only light in the room. I could hear Khur-Vay now, crying. She was saying, “Please, Tee, please, don’t hurt me, I did what you said. I’ll do whatever you want me to.”
“Yes, Blossom, you sure the hell will.”
The voice was familiar, I knew who it was, but I couldn’t get my mind to recognize it. But I could see the man bending down and taping Khur-Vay to a chair. He straightened up and picked up my red crocodile purse off the floor. He rummaged inside it, then pulled out the plastic evidence bag containing Mikey Murphy’s key.
He laughed with triumph. “So here’s the key to Mikey’s little hidey hole, wherever it is. Now all we need to know is where he and Orchid hid my tapes. I tell you, Blossom, our little friend Mikey turned out to be a brave little shit. More than I ever thought he would. He never did give up the location of the tapes to me, not even when I put the noose around his neck. In fact, he threatened to destroy me even as I shoved him off that bridge support. You should’ve heard his neck snap, but he still kicked and twisted before he gave it up.”
I tried to think clearly. My weapon was gone from my shoulder holster, I could tell that much. Very slightly, I shifted my right foot, trying to see if I could feel the heft of the .38 revolver strapped to my ankle. There wasn’t any weight there; he’d taken it. When he heard me moving, he picked up the lantern and moved toward me. “Oh, good, our famous little detective’s awake. I’ve got the surprise of her lifetime in store for her.”
Then I knew. It was Pete, Happy Pete, always so eager to please. Oh, God. He was grinning like a kid with a new toy. I realized he hadn’t tied me up yet, obviously thought I was too drugged up to fight back. Wrong. I blinked and tried to look dazed as I attempted to clear my head. He bent down low and held the lantern up close to my face. I kept my eyes half-closed, struggling with murky thoughts. It was Happy Pete, all right, and he was down leering into my face big-time. He was smiling, still top-of-the-morning and enjoying his power over me. When he stripped off a piece of tape, I tried to struggle, but he held me down and taped my forearms to the chair and my calves to the legs. Then he stood up and looked down at me.
“Just a little insurance to keep you nice and quiet. A couple fast-acting sleeping pills, not exactly enough to keep you down for the count, now is it, Detective? You should’ve just left good enough alone but thank you kindly for bringing me the key. You see, don’t you? If those tapes of my experiments get into the wrong hands, I’d be called unethical and my budding career would be ruined, and right now, too, when I’m just now making a name for myself. Even your boyfriend seemed impressed with my therapies. They are mine, did you know that? Collins tried to steal my thunder with his new book, but he’s already regretting that. Nobody double-crosses me and gets by with it.”
I tried to talk, found my voice thick and drunken. “You’re going down. People know where I am. You can’t get away with this.”
“Yeah, sure they do.” He sat on his haunches beside me and chatted as if we were having a latte at Starbucks. “I Googled you, Detective Morgan, and you simply would not believe all the newspaper articles that have been written about you. It’s amazing how trouble always seems to find you, and here we go again, what’d you know, trouble found you. But know what? It’s not gonna work out so well for you tonight. This time you’re done for. Nobody’s coming. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody knows any of us are here. The chips are definitely down.”
Except for Black, I thought, as Happy Pete stood up. He laughed. “You can thank yourself, you know. I never would’ve gotten you over here tonight if you hadn’t showed up at Blossom’s house when you did. Wrong move, Detective. I came down here tonight to wrap up some loose ends before I moved on, but I sure as heck didn’t think I’d get a chance to get rid of you, too. Guess it was just meant to be. I’m lucky that way, always have been.”
Keep talking, you bastard, waste some more time, give Black time to track me down.
“I’ve got another little surprise for you, Detective,” Happy Pete was saying to me, all his words sounding long and drawn out and vibrating like a kettle drum. “We’re down here to have our last little therapy session, and guess who’s new to the group? An old friend of yours, but first, let me introduce you all around.”
Almost rubbing his palms together in glee, Happy Pete said, “I believe you’ve already met old Marty, right? He’s been my best buddy ever since I showed up at Oak Haven. But guess what? He’s been one of the best subjects in my mind control experiments. In fact, he’s in a trance right now, just like everybody else in this room. My own little band of assassins, all waiting for me to tell them who to kill. We’re more organized than the CIA.”
He was showing off, I realized. He wanted to demonstrate to me his power over others, his genius. But that was good; it’d give me more time to stop him. Black would be getting closer. He had the GPS in the Humvee, and he’d zero in on my Explorer. Even if he went to Khur-Vay’s place first, eventually he could track us out here. Not much time had passed yet, at least I didn’t think so. I was waking up pretty good now. Khur-Vay wasn’t crying anymore, but I could make her out in the dim light, and she looked absolutely terrified. What had he called her? Blossom?
Happy Pete was still strutting his stuff. I was feeling stronger all the time. I pulled at the tapes, but there was no way I could pull them loose. Black was gonna have to show up soon.
“Ready to meet another of my excellent successes? Roy’s his name, but that’s right, you already interviewed him, didn’t you?”
The lamplight revealed Roy’s young face, and he stared straight out into the room with the same hypnotic trance that Marty Young had. How had Happy Pete managed this? How had he gotten them to come here and cooperate in this madness?
Seemingly reading my mind, Happy Pete answered my questions. “They all trust me, you see, agreed to let me do my therapies on them, came to me like lambs to the slaughter, poor stupid fools. No offense, but so did you. I really thought you were smarter than that. Don’t feel bad, even Boyce got involved in this stuff up to his neck. He’s sitting right over there. He made a big mistake when he let me do all the research and work, then cashed in on it as his own. He succumbed to my light and sound waves, too, just like you did. Remember when he was showing you the light panel, you were out so fast and then he called me in and I worked my magic inside your head. You were easy, just a few suggestions about your son and that’s all it took. You were already royally screwed up, so it didn’t take much.
Happy Pete smiled down at me. “Tonight, Detective, is clean-up time. Best of all, all of my friends here trust me. All I had to do was call them, give the trigger, and ask them to come down here again for another one of our special group therapy sessions. They’ve all been here before, and so has Mikey. He told us about this place, told me I could use it. Too bad he didn’t tell me what this key goes to, but it doesn’t matter now. Not after I get done here tonight. Yes, ma’am, it’s a brilliant call of mine, actually, to get rid of everybody in one fell swoop. Maybe I’ll even burn this place down, so it’ll take the police forever to identify who’s who. But first, I want you to see what I’ve accomplished all these years working on mind control techniques. You barely scratched the surface in your investigation. You have no idea what I’ve managed to accomplish.”
I said nothing, but panic was lurking just beneath the surface, pushing hard, ready to come out. I wasn’t sure yet what he was going to make these people do, but I knew it wasn’t going to be much fun to watch.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot, one more thing. I’ve got my latest and very best subject to introduce to you. It’s that old friend of yours that I was telling you about. You’re going to be so glad to see him. Luckily, I managed to help him break his way out of the hospital you locked him up in. He can’t be too pleased with you about that. He turned out to be highly suggestible, just like all of you. You see, I had to pick my subjects very well; not every patient would work for me. Your friend’s in a trance right now, but not for long. You ready? It’s reunion time.”
Shuddering, I tensed up and waited, because I knew who he was talking about. Even so, when he turned the light on Thomas Landers’s face, bile as bitter as acid slid up the back of my throat. Thomas Landers, the main star in most of my ongoing nightmares, the childhood friend who’d stalked me for years and killed my relatives and cut off their heads with a meat cleaver and almost killed me before I got away and had him locked up with other criminally insane psychos. But he was out now, staring straight ahead, handsome face blank of emotion, just like all Happy Pete’s other victims. How did he do this to people? Had he done it to me? Or had Black cleansed his poisonous venom out of my brain? Oh, God, if Black hadn’t done it, this maniac could make me do anything he wanted, anything thing at all. He could make me kill people, kill myself.
“You see, Detective, after reading all those newspaper headlines about Thomas, here, I realized the perfect assassin I was looking for had finally come along. I’m sure you know what I mean, right? Your friend, Thomas, just loves to kill people, does it with great aplomb, too, I’ve gotta say. Can’t beat a meat cleaver for getting the job done. Yeah, it’s rare to find a guy who gets so much pleasure chopping off heads and keeping them around for souvenirs. Uh huh, he’s a real gem. He and I are gonna have some fun in the future. We’ll go places together and if anybody gets in my way, I’ll trigger him. Like you, you’re in my way big-time. I’ve already told him that he can keep your head, if he wants it. He can have everybody’s head here, if he wants. No skin off my nose. He told me he loves you, and as long as you’re with him, dead or alive, he’ll be happy. And if he’s happy, I can keep him in line and killing for me. And to think that you’re the one who introduced us in a roundabout way. I thank you for that. Thomas and I make a helluva killing team.”
Happy Pete gave me a cold smile, and in his boyish face I saw the dark light of pure evil. Thomas Landers had committed horrible gruesome acts, that was true, but he wasn’t wired right in the head, warped from years of child abuse, but not so for Happy Pete. Happy Pete was just a stone-cold natural-born psychopath.
“Okay, lemme show you how this works, Detective. You’re a smart woman, I admire that in you, and I hate it that Thomas is gonna have to kill you in a minute. I’d love getting inside your head and messing you up even more than you already are, but somehow I knew I just had to let you get one last glimpse of your nemesis. Don’t be afraid. He’s really quite harmless until I trigger him.”
Fear gripped me. What was he going to do? I was awake and scared because Black should have shown up by now. What had happened to him? I couldn’t count on him anymore. It was up to me. I had to make a move as soon as I got the chance, or everybody in this room was going to be dead, and soon.
Happy Pete moved to the center of the room and put the lantern down on top of the crate. He turned up the wick to the highest intensity, and then I could see the weapons lying on the table. My Glock 9 mm, my .38 snubnose revolver, an eight-inch meat cleaver, and a garrote. Three cans of gasoline sat nearby. All the props were ready. The show was about to begin.
“I can put you under in a trance any time I wish, you do know that, don’t you, Detective? But not yet. Still, I’m gonna warn you not to try anything. All I have to do is say your trigger and you’ll be a zombie just like the rest of these poor folks. Here let me show you how simple it is.” He turned to Khur-Vay, leaned down, and whispered something into her ear.
I watched Khur-Vay go into a trance, just like that, eyes staring straight ahead like all the others. Oh, God, he could do that to me, too. I swallowed down burgeoning terror.
“Okay, here we go. We’ll start with some light entertainment, just to give you an idea of what I’ve been able to accomplish with my subjects through the years. Why don’t you pick out our first contestant?”
I said nothing.
“All right. Let’s go with Roy. He’s a particularly susceptible young man. Watch and learn, Detective, because you’re gonna get your turn to play soon enough.”
Happy Pete picked up my .38 and emptied it of ammunition. He held up one bullet for me to see, then put it inside a chamber, spun the cylinder, and snapped it closed. “Ever heard of Russian Roulette, Detective?”
“Don’t do this. Roy’s just a kid.”
“Yes, most of my subjects are. But he’s also one of those loose ends I was telling you about. Thanks to you, things are getting too hot at the clinic with your department snooping through our files and looking for dirt. So I’ve decided to move on, just me and Thomas. I can’t leave all these freaks around for you to put on the witness stand, now can I?” He knelt down in front of the young boy beside me and whispered and said, “Take this gun, Roy, put it up against your temple, and pull the trigger.”
“Stop it, no, Roy, don’t do it,” I cried, but I knew he was going to do it.
Roy took the gun, put it to his temple, just like that. I shut my eyes as he pulled the trigger, and then I sagged in relief when the gun clicked on an empty chamber.
“Roy’s always been a lucky bastard, I’ll say that for him,” Happy Pete said. “Okay, scenario number two. We’ll use my pretty little Blossom for this one.” He slit the tape binding her with a penknife and placed the .38 in her hand. “Take this gun, Blossom, and shoot Detective Morgan in the forehead.”
I froze. Face blank, Khur-Vay rose to her feet and walked over to me. She looked at me with unseeing dead green eyes, then without hesitation put the end of the barrel against my forehead. I began to sweat, felt it pop out on my forehead and run down my temples, as I sat in mind-numbing terror and watched her finger pull back on the trigger. It clicked again, and I collapsed weakly against my bindings.
