by Certain Prey
'My leg is killing me,' Rolo said.
Rinker dropped the muzzle toward his other leg and Rolo lurched forward, said, 'I'm going, for Christ's sake, I'm going.'
Rinker moved with him, just behind him, the gun pointed at his spine. 'Just stretch out on the bed,' she said, when they got to the bedroom door. 'No problems...'
They'd gotten a package of lightweight chain at the hardware store, the kind used for children's swings; a roll of duct tape at a pharmacy; and four keyed padlocks and two pair of yellow plastic kitchen gloves at a K-Mart. While Rinker leaned on the end of the bed, the gun ready, Carmel took a couple of turns of chain around Rolo's neck, wrapped the chain around the end of the bed and snapped on a lock. 'And his feet,' she said. She did his feet the same way. 'His arms,' Rinker said.
'Hmm,' Carmel said, looking at him, Finally she took a tight wrap of chain around one of his wrists, snapped on a padlock, leaned over the side of the bed, threw the chain beneath it, fished it out from the opposite side, took a wrap around Rolo's other wrist, and snapped on the last padlock. 'That's it for the
chain,' Carmel said. She went back to the sack for the duct tape.
'What're you going to do with that?' Rolo asked.
'Tape up your mouth,' Carmel said.
Rolo thrashed a little against the chain, but it cut into his neck and he stopped and looked up at Carmel. 'Don't hurt me,' he said, his voice suddenly quiet.
'How many copies?' Carmel asked.
'Just the one,' Rolo said.
'And it's in your safety deposit box?'
'That's right. I'll get it for you.'
'Shut up,' Carmel said. She pulled off two feet of duct tape and wrapped it around his head, taping up his mouth.
Carmel and Rinker spent an hour ripping through the little house, working in the yellow plastic gloves. They dumped cupboards, closets, and dressers, looked through the small, dank, empty basement, poking their heads up into cobwebs and bug nests; they probed the equally empty ceiling crawl-space, which was stuffed with pink fiberglass insulation that stuck to their skin and tangled their hair. They dumped all the ice-cube trays out of the refrigerator, dumped all the boxes in the cupboard, looked in the toilet tank, ripped the covers off all the electric outlets. They found a half-dozen tapes under the television, but their labels said they were pornographic, and when they pushed them into Rolo's cheap VCR, pornography was what they got. They found two
address books; checked his billfold and found more phone numbers. The video camera was on the floor of a closet: Rinker opened it, said, 'Empty,' and tossed it on the wooden floor, where it hit hard, and rolled. They also found a few tools, a lot of clothing, and odd bits of cheap jewelry.
They checked Rolo every few minutes. The chains immobilized him, and though he grunted at them, they ignored him and went back to pulling the house apart. After an hour, it had become obvious that they weren't going to find the tape.
'It might still be here,' Rinker said finally, after she'd torn out the under-seat lining of the couch and chair. 'We can't look everyplace - we'd need a wrecking ball.'
Carmel was in the bedroom doorway, looking at Rolo.
Finally, she walked around and ripped the tape off his mouth. He sputtered, and she said, 'Last chance, Rolo; tell me where the fuck it is.'
'In the bank,' he snarled. He'd won, he thought.
'Fuck you.' Carmel got the roll of tape and reached forward to slap it over his mouth, but he turned his head away. 'Turn your head this way,' she said.
'Hey, fuck you,' he said; and there was a tone in the way he said it.
'He's just achin' to be shot a little more,' Rinker said from the doorway.
'You'll kill me if you shoot me a little more,' Rolo said. 'I'm still bleeding from my leg. And if you kill
me, the cops are going to open the safety deposit box... Hey!'
He said Hey! because Carmel had crawled on top of him. She sat on his chest, grabbed his head by the hair and pulled forward, hard, until he was choking on the chain. He thrashed some more, but had started making gargling sounds when she let his head drop. 'Keep your head straight,' she said, as he took a half-dozen rasping breaths. 'You fuckin'...'
He kept his head straight and she took a half-dozen wraps of duct tape across his mouth. 'Now what?' Rinker asked, as Carmel crawled off him.
'I'm very good at cross-examination,' Carmel said. 'One thing you could do is to get out a mop, and get the broom, and brush over every place we've walked...'
'We've walked everywhere,' Rinker said.
'Yeah, you don't have to clean it, you just have to stir it up good, so if the crime lab comes through, they won't know what's old and what's new'
'The crime lab?'
'Yeah,' Carmel said. She leaned close to Rinker. 'It's pretty clear that after I cross-examine him, we're gonna have to kill him. Eventually they'll find him, and then the crime lab will come through.'
'What about the video tape?' Rinker asked.
'We'll have the tape,' Carmel said. They were in the kitchen, and she went to the tool drawer they'd dumped, and picked up the electric drill and a box of drill bits. 'We will have the tape.'
Carmel went back to the bedroom, and as Rolo strained to watch, plugged the drill into an electric outlet and said to Rolo, 'Did I ever tell you that I was crazy? I mean, absolutely fuckin' nuts? Well, I am, and I'm gonna prove it,' she said. She climbed back on the bed and sat on his legs: 'This is an eighth-inch drill bit,' she said. 'I'm now going to drill a hole through your knee cap.'
He flopped and strained against the chains and grunted, and she shook her head: 'No, no, no. No negotiation. We'd just waste more time screwing around. So I'll drill first.'
And she did it. He bucked against her, but with his neck and feet tightly chained, was unable to move enough to lose her. She rode his legs, and with brutal efficiency drove the drill bit through his knee cap, the drill whining and sputtering, bringing up flakes of white bone, and black blood, driving it in until the drill chuck touched his jeans. Rolo bucked against it, his screams muffled by the tape; at the end, with the drill silent, he made an eerie dying-animal sound, a high keening groan. Across the room, Rinker turned away, finally walking to the living room, where she sat down on a chair and put her hands over her ears.
When the drill bit had gone in as far as it would go, Carmel wiggled it, and said, 'Feel good, fucker? Feel good? Tape is in the bank? What a crock of shit...' A little spot of white saliva appeared at one corner of Carmel's eyes; Rolo fainted.
'Now, you probably think I'm just gonna take the tape off and ask you again; but I'm not gonna,' Carmel said, conversationally, when he was conscious again. 'I'm gonna drill a hole in your other knee instead.'
And she did it all over again, Rolo strangling himself on the chain, kicking his heels, Carmel riding his legs.
Then, 'You know what I bet would really hurt? A hole in your heels.'
And she drilled a hole through both of his heels, taking her time, developing a technique. Halfway through the first heel, Rolo fainted again; and again, halfway through the second.
'Get me some ice cubes out of the sink,' Carmel called to Rinker. 'If there are any left...'
There were a few, and Carmel dumped a bowl ofice water and cubes on Rolo's face. A minute later, his eyes flickered open.
Carmel said, 'A guy like you, you know what would really hurt? What would hurt a lot?' Her fingers went to his belt line and she unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and started to drag them down. Rolo lay limp, unresisting. Carmel got his pants down on his thighs and then the animal keening began again, and Carmel stopped and said, 'What?You won't want me to drill out your dick? I'd be happy to do it...'
He went, 'Uh-uh, Uh-uh,' and Carmel asked, 'Are you gonna tell us where the tape really is?'
'Uh-huh, uh-huh.'
Carmel pulled the tape off his face and he turned toward her, his eyes glazed, and groaned. 'I'm dying,' he said. 'My heart busted.'
'Look, if
you're gonna bullshit us, I'll put the tape back on and start the drill again. I could do this all night.'
'Tape's in the car,' Rolo said. 'In with the spare.'
Carmel looked at Rinker and she said, 'Oh, shit. How could we be that stupid?'
'I'll go get it,' Rinker said. 'You've got some blood...' Carmel looked down at her blouse: the droplets of blood looked like fine embroidery.
Rinker went out; another nice evening. She could hear music playing up the block, through an open window somewhere. She stopped to listen, but couldn't identify the music, then went to Rolo's car, popped the trunk, and pulled the cover off the limited-use spare. The tape was tucked behind it. She looked at it, weighed it in her hands, sighed, and went back inside.
'Get it?' Carmel asked.
'Got a tape,' Rinker said. She pushed it into the VCR. The picture came up immediately: and Carmel came to watch.
'Good light,' Rinker grunted.
'He had all the windows open. That's another thing I should have noticed. He's not an open-windows guy.'
'Boy...' Rinker said, as the tape wound out. 'You were gone, if the cops got this.'
"That's why I had to get it back.,' Carmel said.
'You think this is it?' Rinker asked.
'I don't know. I could go drill him some more,' Carmel said.
Rinker looked toward the bedroom. 'He looked pretty rough in there... I don't think he could take any more, and I don't think we'll get any more out of him. More'n what we've got.'
'So we gotta call it,' Carmel said.
'It's your face on the tape.'
Carmel looked at the bedroom door for a moment, then said. 'All right. We're done. If there's a copy, we'll have to deal with it later. But I think we're still gonna have to kill him. After the drill, he might be so pissed he'd go to the cops,' Carmel said.
'You wanna do it?' Rinker asked. 'I mean, you yourself?'
'Sure. If you want,' Carmel said.
'Not if you'd feel bad,' Rinker said.
'No, no, I don't think I would, not really,' Carmel said. "What do I do?'
Rinker explained as they went back into the kitchen. Rolo saw them coming with the gun and didn't bother to struggle. 'See you in hell,' he said.
'There's nothing as silly as hell,' Carmel said. 'Don't you know that yet?' And then to Rinker, 'What, I just put it at his head, and pull the trigger?'
'Easy as that.'
Rolo turned his head away, and Carmel put the muzzle of the pistol at his temple and then waited a few seconds.
'Do it,' Rolo said.
'Made you sweat, didn't I?' Carmel asked. Rolo started to turn his head back; a little hope? She could see it in his eyes.
Carmel shot him six times; then the bullets ran out.
Rinker and Carmel spent another ten minutes in the house, closing up, obscuring anything that might even theoretically provide evidence against them.
'We can drop the guns in the Mississippi - I know a good spot down by the dam,' Carmel said.
'And burn the tape,' Rinker said.
'As soon as we get back to my place. We oughta go back to my place and change, and get rid of these clothes, and get showered off and everything.'
'Maybe we could go out someplace tonight,' Rinker said. 'My plane isn't until the day after tomorrow.'
'That'd be fun,' Carmel said. 'Maybe we could rent a movie or..."
She stopped in mid-sentence, looking back at the kitchen. 'What?' Rinker asked.
Without answering, Carmel went back to the kitchen, squatted next to the video camera that Rinker had tossed on the floor. Touched it, turned it over.
'What?' Rinker asked again.
'That fuckin' Rolo. This camera is a VHS-C. This tape...' She held up the tape they'd found. '... this tape is a full-sized VHS tape. If you were making a copy using your cheap-ass VCR and the camera, this
is what you'd use to pick up the copy. So there's another tape - aVHS-C
'You're sure?' Rinker asked.
'Look,' Carmel said. She picked up the camera, turned it over, opened the cartridge compartment. The tape they had was at least twice as big as the compartment.
'Bad news,' Rinker said.
Carmel glanced at her, sideways and quickly: if Rinker were to shoot her now, at least all of Rinker's troubles would be over. She could walk away and not have to worry at all.
'You worry too much,' Rinker said.
'I anticipate,' Carmel said. She looked at Rinker. 'Let's get back to my place. Do you still have those address books?'
'Yeah.'
'And let's get his wallet and the phone book and whatever else that might have names in it... I've got to think about this.'
'You don't think it's in a safe-deposit box?'
'He's a drug dealer. He'd never have a safe-deposit box, not under his own name, anyway. We didn't find any fake IDs that he could use to get to a box under a different name, and we didn't find any keys... I suspect he did what drug dealers usually do: he left it with somebody he trusts.'
'Like who?'
'Like a lawyer. Except that I'm his lawyer. He could have another one, I suppose; I can find out. But he's
a spic, so it's probably a relative. Anyway, we've got to do some research. In a hurry...'
'I'll cancel my plane ticket,' Rinker said. 'I guess we keep the guns.'
On the way back to Carmel's, Rinker glanced at her and asked, 'How much did you enjoy that? Back there?'
Carmel started to answer, then changed directions and asked a question of her own: 'Have you been to school? To college?'
'Well, yeah.'
'Really? I didn't think... you know'
'Professional killer and all,' Rinker said.
'Yeah.' Carmel nodded. 'What'd you major in?'
'Psychology. Actually, I'm about eight credits away from my B.A. I should have it finished next spring.'
'Good school?'
'Okay school.'
'But you're not going to tell me which.'
'Well...'
'That's okay,' Carmel said. 'Anyway, I did sort of enjoy it, just a little bit, maybe. Whether I did or not, he had to go.'
'You enjoyed it just a little bit? Maybe?'
'Didn't you?' Carmel asked.
'No. I couldn't stand that sound he was making. That smell when he... you know. I didn't like it at all.'
Now Carmel took her eyes off the road for a
moment, to look at Rinker. 'Don't worry, I'm just a sociopath. Like you. I'm not a psychopath or anything.'
'How do you know I'm not a psychopath?'
'From what Rolo told me - what he'd heard about you. Quiet, professional, clean. You do it because you can, and because you can make money at it, and because you're good at it; not because you have some slobbering lust to kill people.'
'Slobbering lust?'
'Listen, I've handled a couple of cases...'
Carmel had Rinker laughing by the time they got back to her place. And as they got out of the car, Rinker looked at her over the roof and said, 'Wichita State.'
'What?'
'That's where I go to school.'
Carmel had the sense that Rinker had told her something important. After a few moments, realized that she had. She'd told Carmel where she could be found.
Where home was.
Chapter Six
Three St. Paul cop cars and a crime-scene van were parked outside the Frogtown house when Lucas arrived. Up and down the street, people sat on their short wooden stoops, looking down at Rolo's house, watching the cops come and go. Lucas parked, climbed out of the Porsche, and started toward the house. A St. Paul uniformed cop saw him coming and squared off to stop him, but a plainclothes cop stuck his head out the door and yelled, 'Hey, Dick. Let that guy in.'
'You're in,' Dick said, and Lucas nodded and went up the steps. Sherrill was standing just inside the door. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed madonna in a crisp yellow blouse, with a grey skirt in place of her usual slacks, and a black silk jacket to cov
er the.357 she carried under her arm.
'AH dressed up,' Lucas said.
'A girl's gotta do what she can, if she wants to catch a guy,' Sherrill said, batting her eyes at him.
'Too early in the morning for bullshit,' Lucas muttered. He looked past her into the house, which had been ransacked. 'What's going on?'
