by James Swain
“Broward County Sheriff’s Department,” a police operator said.
“I need to report a murder.”
“Where are you calling from?” the operator asked.
I gave the operator the details while searching Vorbe’s desk. In one of the drawers I found a brown paper bag. It contained a bottle of clear liquid, a white cloth, and a pair of night vision goggles. I twisted the top off the bottle, and sniffed its contents.
Chloroform.
I had found Vorbe’s kill kit.
“There’s a cruiser on the way,” the operator said.
I took the paper bag off the desk, and went outside to meet it.
By the back doors I found a male employee of the store lying on the floor. He’d been stabbed in the shoulder, and was holding his hand against the bloody wound. He seemed more bewildered than hurt.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The boss attacked me in the parking lot,” the employee explained. “He tried to go through my pockets, so I kicked him in the nuts.”
“What does his car look like?”
“His car is in the shop. He’s been walking to work.”
“Does he live nearby?”
“He lives in the development behind the store.”
I went to the open back door and stuck my head out. It faced the Dumpsters, the sight of so much death and misery. I couldn’t see Vorbe, but I could hear him stumbling through the woods, his feet dragging across the ground.
I removed the handcuffs from the paper bag, and slipped them into my pocket. Then I fitted on the night goggles, and chased after him.
The night goggles turned the world a sickly green, and made me feel like I was a character in a low-budget horror movie. Buster had picked up Vorbe’s scent, and was racing down a path littered with cans and broken bottles. I struggled to keep up with him.
Vorbe appeared a hundred yards ahead of me. He was running while clutching his groin. I saw him hop over an embankment and disappear. My legs picked up speed.
I came over the embankment running almost as fast as my dog. The woods had ended, and a housing development begun, with six-foot picket fences lining the backyards of cookie-cutter tract houses. Vorbe was gone.
I stood at the top of the embankment, and let my eyes scan the fences for an opening. There were none.
“Find the man,” I said to my dog.
Buster ran along the fence, bumping it with his shoulder. A gate popped open, and my dog went in. I drew my Colt and followed him.
The property had a plastic swimming pool and lawn furniture. Reaching the back of the house, I stopped at a pair of glass sliders. Inside I spotted the figure of a man lurking in the darkened living room. It was Vorbe, holding a single-barrel shotgun in one hand, a box of bullets in the other. If he got the shotgun loaded, I was history. I aimed my Colt at the slider and fired.
The sound of my gun ripped through the still night air. I watched the slider turn into a spiderweb, then disintegrate. I kicked out the remaining shards and went inside. Vorbe stood in the living room, trying to load the shotgun. The bullets I’d fired had penetrated the wall behind him. He acted oblivious to them, and to me.
“Put down the shotgun,” I said.
Vorbe kept trying to load. The box slipped out of his fingers, and the bullets scattered across the floor. He dove to his knees.
“Did you hear me?” I asked.
His breathing was loud and frantic.
“Put the gun down,” I ordered him.
He didn’t respond. There was a name for this behavior: kill or be killed. I had never experienced it before, and it was scaring the hell out of me.
“Now!” I said.
I didn’t want to shoot him, so I kicked him instead. Vorbe fell on his side, still clutching the shotgun. Then he let out a scream. Buster had grabbed his leg, and was giving it a good gnaw.
“Do it now, or my dog will eat you.”
I had once read that the death people were most afraid of was being eaten alive. The shotgun slipped from his fingers. I grabbed its barrel and tossed it onto a couch.
“Your dog is hurting me,” Vorbe said.
“Not enough,” I said.
I made Buster back off, then told Vorbe to stand. He rose on rubbery legs, and I made him touch the ceiling. He hesitated, then obeyed my command.
“Where’s your knife?” I asked.
“I dropped it in the woods,” Vorbe said.
I made him go into the kitchen. It was small, with a breakfast table and a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. I removed the handcuffs from my pocket, and tossed them to him. I pointed at the refrigerator.
“Handcuff yourself to the door,” I said.
Again Vorbe hesitated. Buster was beside me, and I nudged him with my foot. My dog snarled, and Vorbe jumped.
“Keep him away from me!” Vorbe said.
“Only if you start doing what I tell you,” I said.
Vorbe handcuffed himself to the refrigerator door. I made him put his other hand on the door, and frisked him. From his pocket I removed the curved knife and tossed it to the table. It was still covered with the meat manager’s blood.
“Guess you didn’t lose your knife,” I said.
I grabbed Vorbe’s handcuffed wrist, and squeezed the cuff. Then I checked the cuff locked to the door. He wasn’t going anywhere.
But I was.
CHAPTER SIXTY
T here was a prize for the work that I did. I got to see things first.
I quickly searched the interior of Vorbe’s house. Like most houses in south Florida, it did not have a basement, or an attic, and the rooms were relatively small.
The living room and dining room, which were connected, held nothing of significance. In the back were two bedrooms. The first contained an unmade single bed, a chest of drawers, and a picture of the Virgin Mary hanging above the bed’s headboard. I banged on the closet door, but did not find any hidden spaces.
The second bedroom had been converted into a photographer’s studio. The windows were covered by blinds, the walls by black backdrops, which made the space unusually dark. A tripod and camera sat in the room’s center, and photographer lights were mounted on the walls and the ceiling.
I searched the den last. A wide-screen TV consumed one wall, a bookcase the other. The bookcase’s shelves were lined with cheap knickknacks. I tried to pick one up, and discovered it was glued down. So were the others. Grabbing the bookcase with both hands, I pulled it away from the wall.
There was a hidden door behind the bookcase, and it was dead-bolted. Buster stuck his nose to the sill, and let out a whine. I took the door down with a kick.
Buster started to go in. I hooked him by the collar, and pulled him back. I didn’t want him contaminating whatever was inside the room.
I pulled the broken door out of the way, then cautiously entered. The room’s interior was black, and I scratched the wall for a light switch. Finding none, I took another step forward, then heard a static-filled voice.
I listened hard. It was a police operator talking to a cop in a cruiser. Vorbe had been using a scanner to monitor patrol cars in the area.
I moved forward, the darkness as frightening as any imagined monster. Something touched the tip of my nose, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I reached out, and grabbed the thing that had touched me. It was a beaded metal cord that hung from the ceiling. I tugged on it, and a fluorescent light flickered to life.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I found myself standing in a two-car garage. The garage door had been replaced by a brick wall, while the other three walls had been lined with cork, soundproofing the interior.
I did a slow one-eighty. On the other side of the garage was a long wooden table with a young woman lying across it, her arms and legs bound by leather straps. Her skin was pale and white, and her eyes were tightly shut.
It was Heather Rinker.
I crossed the room and stood beside her. My ha
nd gently touched her forehead. Her skin was ice cold, her body lifeless. The memory of Heather playing one-on-one with Jessie in the driveway of my old house flashed through my mind.
Buster jumped up on the table. Before I could pull him down, he began to lick Heather’s face. Her eyes snapped open, and she stared up at me.
“Oh, my God, Mr. Carpenter,” she whispered.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. My fingers undid the straps holding her prisoner. Heather tried to sit up, only to fall back on the table.
“Take it easy,” I said.
“Where is Mr. Vorbe?” she asked.
“In the other room.”
“Did you shoot him?”
“He’s not going anywhere. Tell me what happened.”
“I went to the grocery to buy some food, and he invited me back to his office for coffee. The next thing I remembered was waking up here.”
“Where’s Sampson?”
“In the closet. Sampson wouldn’t stop fighting with him, so Mr. Vorbe tied him up. He tried to save me, Mr. Carpenter. My baby tried to save me.”
Going to the closet, I opened the door. Sampson sat on a chair inside the closet, his arms and legs tied down with twine. A piece of duct tape covered his mouth. I had seen people die this way, and I choked back the rage building inside me.
“Hi, Sampson. My name is Jack,” I said.
Sampson looked at me, blinking tears. I put away my gun so as not to scare him any further, and gently pulled away the duct tape. Buster appeared by my side.
“This is my dog. His name is Buster. Do you like dogs?”
Sampson nodded. Buster entered the closet, and licked Sampson’s face.
“Where’s my mommy?” he asked.
“She’s right here. I’m going to take you to her.”
“Mommy!”
“I’m here, honey,” Heather called back. “Everything’s okay.”
I undid the twine while looking into his perfect little face. Every stupid thing I’d said and done in the last several days now seemed worthwhile. Sampson crawled into my arms, and I carried him across the garage to his mother. It was a perfect ending, until I heard Vorbe scream from the other side of the house.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“ P lease don’t leave us, Mr. Carpenter,” Heather begged me.
I heard a second scream, louder, more intense. I had to find out what he was doing. I snapped my fingers, and Buster lay dutifully on the floor.
“My dog will protect you and your son,” I said.
I ran back into the house. Passing through the living room, I saw dots of blood on the tiled floor that hadn’t been there before. The shotgun was missing from the couch, as was the box of bullets.
My eyes followed the bloody trail. It went through the living room to the broken slider, and out to the backyard. I nearly let out a yell. I’d handcuffed Vorbe to the refrigerator, something I’d done with countless suspects. He couldn’t have freed himself.
I entered the kitchen clutching my Colt with both hands. The handcuffs were still attached to the handle on the refrigerator door. Lying on the floor beneath them was Vorbe’s blood-soaked hand, along with the butcher knife he’d used to cut it off.
I made it into the living room before I threw up. Through the broken slider I could hear the shrill cry of police sirens carrying through the warm night air. They were too far away to bring me any comfort.
I took several deep breaths, and tried to get my strength back. My eyes fell upon a photo album lying on the coffee table. There had been no examples of Vorbe’s work hanging in the studio, and I flipped the album open to the first page. A young woman stared back at me. Her eyes were shut tight, her mouth wide open. She was dead.
I riffled through the album. It was filled with head shots of other dead women, their poses identical to the woman on the first page. There appeared to be two dozen photos in all, although there could have been more.
I went outside, and tried to determine where Vorbe had gone. I didn’t think he’d gone back to the supermarket, and I went around the side of the house to the front yard.
Standing on the curb, I gazed up and down the street. It was lit up by streetlights, and I saw a gang of long-haired kids trying to break their necks on skateboards and a few older couples walking dogs. Then it hit me what Vorbe was going to do.
He was going to steal a car.
With a car, he could hit the highways and disappear in rush-hour traffic. Florida had thousands of miles of back roads, and most criminals knew how to navigate them. I was going to lose him if I didn’t act fast.
I looked in the street for blood. I found a few drops and followed them to an intersection at the block’s end, where I saw a mob of men in shorts and T-shirts standing in a driveway, beating the daylights out of someone. As I ran toward them, my cell phone rang. It was Burrell.
“I got your message. What’s going on?” she asked.
“I found our killer. It’s the grocery store manager.”
“Where are you?”
I looked over my shoulder, and read the names off the signs on the corner.
“I’ll be right there,” Burrell said.
The men had surrounded Vorbe, and were trying to capture him. Two of the men were pointing handguns at him, the rest throwing punches and kicks. Vorbe was fighting back using a Brazilian form of martial arts called capoeira, his body spinning like a top. His bloody stump was wrapped in a towel, the wrist tied with an electrical cord in a makeshift tourniquet. It didn’t seem to be slowing him down.
I edged into the crowd. These guys didn’t know me, nor I them.
“Where’s his shotgun?” I asked.
A blond guy chugging a beer nodded toward the grass. “Son-of-a-bitch knocked my wife down as she was getting out of her car with the groceries. I came out, and took his gun away. Then the fun started.”
I watched Vorbe take his punishment. He continued to swirl around the mob, using his one good hand and his feet to fight back. For each blow he delivered, he got three in return. It was suicide.
Then I realized what Vorbe was trying to do. Each time he got near one of the men with a handgun, his hand darted out. He was trying to steal a weapon, and each time he tried, he got a little closer to succeeding.
I couldn’t let him get a gun. Or kill someone.
Or escape.
Everything happened for a reason. Mine was to be here and stop Vorbe.
I aimed my Colt at his legs and fired.
The mob jumped back in unison. Vorbe stopped spinning and stared at the blood gushing out of his right thigh. He screamed and grabbed his leg.
I tackled Vorbe to the pavement and held him down. The wound in his leg was flowing freely. He struggled, making it worse.
“Take it easy,” I told him.
He stopped fighting back. I tore off a piece of my shirt, folded it into a square, and pressed it against the wound. Then I looked into his eyes. I have stared at evil before, and it’s always the same. Cold, hard, unfeeling.
“I want you to talk to me,” I said.
Vorbe was trying to fight back the pain, and didn’t reply.
“I want you to tell me about the women in the album in your living room,” I said.
Still no reply.
“The police will be here soon. I want you to tell me about them.”
He laughed under his breath, taunting me.
I could hear sirens circling the neighborhood. Soon the cruisers were going to find us. I knew what would happen next. The police would arrest Vorbe, and he’d lawyer up, and never say another word to anyone again. It was how evil men tortured those who hunted them. I’d come too far to let that happen.
“Last chance,” I said.
Vorbe stared at me, not understanding.
I lifted the compress from his wound. Blood gushed out like a geyser and flowed freely down the driveway. Fear flowed through his eyes.
“My leg,” Vorbe gasped.
“First tell me about the wo
men in the album,” I said.
I held the bloody compress in front of his face. It was the only thing that was going to stop the bleeding, and keep him alive. I wasn’t going to let him die, just like I hadn’t let Cheeks die, only Vorbe didn’t know that. It was my last card, and I was going to play it.
“Tell me about the women, or I’m walking away,” I said.
“But I’ll die,” he gasped.
“Shit happens.”
Vorbe blinked, and then he blinked again.
I used my cell phone to tape Vorbe’s confession. The phone let me record Vorbe while filming him at the same time. It was hard to believe what Vorbe was saying, and I didn’t think I would have believed it, had I not been inside his house, and seen his garage and photo album with my own eyes.
Burrell pulled up in her Mustang. An ambulance soon followed. I waited until the medics were wheeling Vorbe into the back of the ambulance before I pulled Burrell aside, and played Vorbe’s confession for her. When it was done, she shook her head.
“But this can’t be true,” she said.
“You think he’s lying?” I said.
“He has to be.”
I took Burrell back to Vorbe’s house, and showed her what I’d found.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
I awoke early the next morning, and drove to Starke Prison with a headache that no amount of Advil seemed to shake. I could have stayed home, and let the prison officials do what needed to be done. But my conscience wouldn’t let me, so I made the trip.
At a few minutes past noon, a prison escort led me down a long hallway in death row, and slid back a cell door. I entered to find two men waiting for me. One was tall and trim, and wore a starched white shirt, gray slacks, and a black necktie. The other was small and round, and wore a dark suit with a turned white collar. Hanging from his shoulder was a sash with the faces of black, white, and yellow children.
“You must be Father Kelly,” I said.
Father Kelly pumped my hand. “Good job, Jack.”
The taller man also shook my hand. “I’m Warden Jackson. Yes, a fine job.”
