Key Death (A Nicholas Colt Thriller Book 4)

by Jude Hardin

  “Why did Jim Ballard kill Phineas Carter?” I said.

  It was the reason I’d come to Key West in the first place. I wanted to know.

  “Oh, yes. Let’s talk about that for a minute. Like I said, it’s a tantalizing tale of jealousy and obsession.”

  I figured there might be a connection between Jim Ballard and Daniel Chard. For one thing, they seemed to share an affinity for adult toys and bondage tools. All that kinky sex equipment. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I figured there might be a connection. Maybe Jim had been part of the porn ring.

  It took Wesley about ten minutes to tell the whole story. He told me what Jim Ballard had told him.

  As it turned out, I had it all wrong.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Alison Palmer had signed on with a traveling nurse company, and had moved to St. Augustine to get away from Jim Ballard. Before that, she had threatened Jim with a restraining order if he ever came near her again. Jim went along with it for a while, but eventually the imposed separation drove him bananas. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He went to Alison’s apartment one evening, and found Phineas Carter there in her place.

  After talking to him for a while, Jim was satisfied that Phin wasn’t Alison’s new boyfriend or anything; but, he came back later, drunk, and tried to force Phin into telling him where Alison had moved to. He tried to force him by putting a gun to his head. Phin said he didn’t know Alison’s new address, said he sent the payment for his rent to Red Parrot Realty every month.

  According to Jim, he didn’t mean to blow Phin’s brains out. The gun just went off.

  Jim buried the revolver on his way back to Jake’s Key West Saloon, where he’d been drinking before he returned to Phin’s apartment. Jim had left his tab open at Jake’s, which gave him a fairly solid alibi during the police investigation. According to the starting time and ending time on the receipt, Jim had never left the club.

  Jim didn’t know it at the time, but while all that was going on, Alison was busy meeting the love of her life up in St. Augustine.

  Robbie Asbury and Alison Palmer first met on the beach one morning, soon after Alison left Key West. It was love at first sight. They were together for a few days, and then Robbie had to leave for a weekend gig out of town. That was all he told Alison, that it was out of town. He had agreed to sub for the drummer of a band called Blue Waves, and the job just happened to be at Jake’s Key West Saloon. Jim Ballard just happened to be there having a late-morning beer when Robbie came in to set up his drums. Jim helped Robbie carry some things in, and one thing led to another, and eventually Jim overheard Robbie on his cell phone leaving Alison a voice mail. When Robbie left the phone unattended for a minute, Jim scrolled through and found Alison’s address in St. Augustine.

  Now Jim knew where she was. He confronted Robbie later that afternoon, told him that he and Alison were engaged. It was a lie, but that’s what he told him. He insisted that Robbie stay away from Alison, or there would be hell to pay.

  Later that night at the club, one of the bartenders told Robbie that Jim was full of shit. Jim and Alison had never been engaged, she said, and Alison had moved away because Jim had become physically abusive. Alison had left Key West because she was afraid of Jim Ballard.

  Now Robbie was worried. He had a feeling Jim was on his way up to St. Augustine to find Alison. After playing the final set at Jake’s, Robbie climbed into his truck and headed that way.

  It was an eight-hour drive, and when he got to Alison’s apartment Jim Ballard was indeed there.

  But so was another man.

  Robbie had carried a baseball bat with him to Alison’s door, thinking he would at least intimidate Jim with it. Robbie heard scuffling, walked in, and saw Jim on the floor wrestling with a shirtless man in white scrub pants. An instant before the shirtless man plunged a knife blade into Jim Ballard’s chest, Robbie gripped his grandfather’s Louisville Slugger and hit a home run with the man’s skull. The knife skittered to the floor, and the man collapsed forward.

  “Get this fucker off me,” Jim said, his voice muffled from the man’s belly pressing on his face.

  Robbie knelt down and grabbed the man’s shoulder with one hand and his hip with the other. The man was heavy. Robbie had to strain, but he finally managed to roll the guy off to the side. Robbie felt the man’s neck for a pulse. The guy was out cold, but he was still alive.

  “Where’s Alison?” Robbie said.

  “In there,” Jim said, gesturing toward the open door on the other side of the apartment. “She’s tied up.”

  Robbie grabbed the knife from the floor and hurried into the bedroom.

  “Oh my god,” Alison said. “You guys saved my life.”

  Robbie started cutting the lengths of rope securing her wrists and ankles. Once Alison was completely free, she sat up and wrapped her arms around Robbie’s neck. He returned the hug, and they were still locked in an embrace when a voice from the bedroom doorway said, “Hey, you lovebirds. Forget about me?”

  Jim stood there with his hand pressed against his side. He was bleeding. He had been injured during the altercation.

  “Oh my god, Jim, are you all right?” Alison said.

  “I’m OK. Who was that guy, anyway?”

  “Some guy from work. A nurse. His name is Roger Englehart. He came here and attacked me last night.”

  Apparently Roger Englehart had been stalking Alison. She said she really didn’t know much about him, except that his dad was a cop.

  “Speaking of which,” Robbie said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone.

  “Wait,” Jim said. “Don’t call yet.”

  “Why not? The police need to know about the invasion, and you and the asshole in the living room need an ambulance.”

  “Just wait. Alison, you say this guy’s dad is a cop?”

  “That’s what I heard. A state trooper.”

  “Then I think we have a problem.”

  “He needs medical attention,” Robbie said. “And so do you. I’m making the call.”

  “Wait just a fucking minute,” Jim said. “He doesn’t need medical attention. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “I put a couch cushion over his face and smothered his ass.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “He was starting to stir, and I just—”

  “We could have handled him,” Robbie said. “There was no need for anyone to die today.”

  “Yeah, well, someone did die today. A cop’s kid, no less. If you call the police, I’ll be going to prison. For years. Hell, you know how cops and lawyers are. They’re all in cahoots. Roger’s father might talk to the DA and get the charge trumped up to murder one, and for that they can go for the death penalty. If you call the police, I’m going to be royally fucked.”

  “So what are you saying?” Robbie asked.

  “I’m saying I have a problem, and I need you guys to help me get rid of it.”

  “When I walked up here carrying a baseball bat, I thought you were the one I was going to be fighting. I drove up here to St. Augustine because of you.”

  “So?”

  “So now you kill a guy, and you want me to help you?”

  “You’re not exactly innocent in this whole deal,” Jim said. “You bashed the guy in the head with a baseball bat, remember?”

  “Yeah, because he was fixing to stab you in the heart.”

  “This is crazy,” Alison said. “Roger was going to kill me. He was going to rape me, and then he was going to kill me. I know he was. He deserved to die, and surely the court will rule what you guys did as self-defense. We just need to call the police and tell them the truth. Right, Robbie?”

  Robbie didn’t say anything.

  “The autopsy’s going to show that asphyxiation was the cause of death,” Jim said. “I had to press that pillow on his face for several minutes before he finally croaked. I smothered him to death. Nobody’s going to call that self-defense.”
/>   “So what do you want us to do?” Robbie asked.

  “We have to get rid of the body,” Jim said. “We have to get him out of here.”

  “They’ll find him,” Robbie said. “They always do. No matter where we hide him, they’ll find him eventually.”

  “I have an idea,” Jim said. “You guys know that serial killer they call The Zombie?”

  “Yeah,” Robbie said. “They call him that because all his victims’ brains are missing.”

  “Right,” Jim said. “And in every one of those murders, asphyxiation was the primary cause of death.”

  “So you want to make it look like The Zombie did it?” Alison said.

  “Why not? They still haven’t caught the guy. It’ll look like he did it, and we’ll be in the clear.”

  Robbie and Alison were reluctant, but they finally agreed to help Jim make it appear as though The Zombie had killed Roger Englehart. They agreed, and then they made a pact to take the secret to their graves.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Wesley West had been pacing the floor as he told the story. He stopped, folded his arms across his chest, and stared into space.

  “They copied me,” he said. “They screwed up my entire order of operations. That’s why I had to deal with them. Do you understand now?”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Jim Ballard was trying to get Phineas Carter to tell him where Alison had moved to, and while he was doing that he accidentally shot Phin in the head.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then Jim and Alison and Robbie and Roger Englehart all ended up in Alison’s apartment in St. Augustine, and Jim and Alison and Robbie conspired to make it look as though you killed Roger, who had been stalking Alison and was in the process of assaulting her when Jim arrived.”

  “Correct.”

  “So you somehow figured out that Jim and Robbie and Alison were the ones who copycatted you. Once you were sure of that, you moved into Alison’s apartment complex to have a nice, convenient home base. Then you went after them one by one. First Alison, and then Jim. Robbie would have been next, but the police got to him first. Now they think he’s responsible for all the Zombie killings.”

  “Correct. And it’s just not fair. Robbie Asbury is going to get credit for all my hard work. He has inadvertently stolen my moment in the sun. I can’t let that go on. Soon, the world will know that I am the real Zombie. The one and only original. I’ve decided, just now, to make you my final victim, Nicholas. My swan song, so to speak.”

  “How will the cops know that you’re not the copycat?” I said.

  “Because I’ll confess to all the murders except Roger Englehart’s. They’ll be able to verify that I was in all those locations.”

  Because Freak Willy was in all those locations, I thought.

  They say truth is stranger than fiction, and Wesley West’s story was certainly more bizarre than any novel I’d ever read or any movie I’d ever seen. It had a little bit of everything, including cannibalism.

  “If you’re going to turn yourself in anyway, why don’t you just let me go?” I said. “What’s the point of a swan song? I thought we were friends.”

  He didn’t respond. He kept staring into space. He seemed to be in some sort of trance now. He seemed to be in his own little depraved universe.

  Without saying another word, he put his shoes on and walked out of the bedroom, pulling the door shut on his way out. I heard the front door open and close. I assumed he was going down to his car, to look for the saw he’d mentioned. The saw he would use to remove the top of my skull.

  I knew I didn’t have much time. If the tool was in the car, it would only take him a few minutes to retrieve it and come back to the apartment. Then he would go to work on me.

  I stared at the bottle of acetone Wesley had left on the floor by the dresser. It was only a couple of feet away from me, but it might as well have been a mile. My hands and feet were hopelessly stuck to the floor.

  The only way for me to move, the only possible way out of this predicament, was to do myself bodily harm. They say a coyote will chew its own leg off to free itself from a steel trap. In essence, that’s what I was going to have to do.

  I looked down at my right foot. It was the one closest to the dresser. Closest to the bottle of acetone. I tried to lift it gently, a little at a time, and right away I felt the delicate skin near my little toe start to tear. I clenched my teeth and growled. Not really a growl, more of a sustained guttural moan from deep in my chest. The pain was unbearable. I didn’t think I could do it. Not even to save my life.

  I wondered if it would be better to just rip my foot from the floor in a single rapid motion, the way you tear off a Band-Aid. The pain would be severe for a second, but then it would quickly subside. That was the theory. I decided to go for it. I closed my eyes, tensed every muscle in my body, and yanked my foot away from the floor with a quick jerk.

  A bright light exploded behind my eyeballs as a red-hot bolus of molten pain seared through every nerve in my body. I thought I was going to hurl for sure this time, but I managed to swallow it back. I looked down at my foot. There was skin and tissue missing from the side, and it was bleeding profusely. The pain was intense, and it got more and more severe as the seconds ticked by. The Band-Aid theory hadn’t panned out. The reverse was happening. The pain was getting worse.

  I looked at the floor. There was a thin strip of bloody flesh where my foot had been. Seconds earlier it had been part of me, but now it appeared foreign. Like a cut of raw meat in a butcher’s case.

  My peripheral vision narrowed. I thought I was going to pass out. There was no way I could rip my other foot away from the floor, or my hands. It wasn’t going to happen. I would lose consciousness from the pain, and Wesley West would make sure I never woke up.

  My eyes stung from the sweat dripping into them, and my foot felt as though someone had taken a cheese grater to it. I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to muster the strength to carry on.

  I stretched my leg to the right and tried to hook my foot around the can of acetone. With every heartbeat, a trillion needles pierced the side of my sole. With every second that passed, my mind came closer to shutting down. I stretched and stretched until the skin on my other foot was on the verge of tearing, but it was no use. The acetone was a couple of inches beyond my reach.

  I heard the click of the deadbolt, and I knew this was it. The Zombie was back, and I was going to die.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Marshal Mack Chillin walks through the swinging saloon doors. Everyone in the town has abandoned him. He alone must face the ruthless gang of thugs now. They’re all sitting at the bar, drinking beer and whiskey and having a hooting good time. There’s laughter and backslapping and a guy wearing a white shirt and suspenders playing an upbeat tune on the piano.

  A hush falls over the room as Mack steps forward.

  “I told you boys to move along,” Mack says. “I’m going to give you one more chance to leave peacefully.”

  “And I told you we were going to have a beer first,” says Rex. He stands and faces Mack.

  We see a close-up of Mack’s right hand, his fingers rock steady and only inches from the stag grips on his nickel-plated revolver.

  We see a close-up of Rex’s hand, his fingers twitching and only inches from the rosewood grips on his black steel revolver…

  Wesley West didn’t come back to the bedroom right away. He was talking to someone on the phone.

  “Can’t do it tonight. There’s no way. I’m busy with something else.”

  I decided to make one last push. I stretched for all I was worth, and the tip of my big toe touched the lip of the metal acetone can. The pain shooting through me was like nothing I’d ever felt. I imagined it was similar to being eaten alive by fire ants. It was impossible to ignore, but I blocked it best I could and focused on pressing my toe against the can.

  Stretching, straining, sweating, hurting, I finally got the right amount
of leverage. The can tilted, and then toppled sideways. Now I could reach it with my foot.

  “I’m telling you, Felix. I can’t do it. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  Felix was the manager at the hotel lounge. He must have been trying to get Wesley to come in and play. Josie and the Pussycats must have canceled.

  Through the feverish haze of the worst pain of my life, I kicked the acetone can with my heel. It slid freely on the hardwood floor, spinning and coming to a stop inches from my face. I leaned toward it and used my tongue to position it, and then I bit down hard on the plastic pouring spout. I hoped it wouldn’t open and spill out into my mouth. That would have been the most ironic thing ever. I would have died from ingesting the solvent. I would have died trying to save myself. But I got lucky. The spout didn’t open and the acetone didn’t trickle down my throat and kill me. I lifted the can, my jaw and neck muscles burning against the strain, and nestled it into my right armpit.

  “You can’t fire me for not coming in on one of my nights off. I have a contract. I’ll sue your ass.”

  I was breathing hard, and my foot felt as though someone had jammed a box of razor blades into it. I leaned over and bit down on the little plastic tab that was supposed to pop the little plastic lid off the little plastic pouring spout. I bit down on it with all my might. I pulled and tugged and jerked until I thought my front teeth were going to break off at the gumlines. Finally, the lid popped open, and the beautiful noxious fumes of acetone filled the air.

  I used my neck and shoulder muscles to tilt the spout away from my face, and seconds later I felt the cold liquid spilling along my right side. It oozed around my hand, and I felt the skin on my palm start to loosen from its adherence to the floor. I rocked my hand back and forth and made a massaging motion with it and enough of the acetone seeped in and suddenly my right hand was free. I quickly snatched the can and doused the areas around my left hand and left foot.