Lustmord 2

by Kirk Alex

  CHAPTER 522

  He had the light back on the dancer’s face. Took in the panic-stricken look in her eyes. She did everything in her power to indicate the danger that lurked behind the locked Fun Room door, to make him aware of Cecil’s psycho crew who were lying in wait in other parts of the basement.

  Marty Roscoe collected himself. Had to. Man was in charge, and he was a man. Would take his time about things. Had a pretty good idea what he was up against, the type of sick sumbitch he always suspected the bishop to be—and he would deal with him in good time. Thing of it was: Pearleen Bell was right before him—nekkid as could be.

  “Don’t you fret.” Roscoe gestured with the revolver. “I got this.”

  Pearleen continued to strain and jerk her body, did what she could: shook her head, did things with her eyes, jerked her legs and waist desperately enough. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t this stupid hillbilly understand anything? She needed to be brought down and taken out of here. Her eyes teared for the thousandth time. With Roscoe in the basement, with her, here and now in this room, she saw this as her first real chance to be freed and taken outside, only all Marty Roscoe could do was keep ogling her privates.

  “You was after money and the Cadillac. See where it got you? My bicycle wasn’t good enough for somebody like you.”

  He holstered the firearm. Pressed his face up against her pelvis in a seeming effort to reach her ankles and the leather straps and nylon rope that held them tied to the dowel. It didn’t work. Roscoe couldn’t reach high enough.

  He took his time about it just the same. “I tried to warn you about the dingleberry. You laughed. Thought it was sooo funny.”

  He drew his bayonet and made another effort. It was obvious he would need something to stand on. There was nothing. The workbench was out of the question. There was no way to yank it out of the floor. He tried the cabinet one more time. Forget it. Squirrelly or not, Biggs was some kind of planner. Had it figured out. Ain’t no way he was going to make it possible for his victims to escape.

  There was the free-standing bathtub—nowhere near the side the window was on—with the claw feet heavily bolted into the cement.

  Roscoe’s eyes were back on Pearleen. Her wrists had been cuffed behind her back, so there was nothing to be done there. Had his hands on her waist. Ran them slowly up and down her hips. It was nearly impossible to stop contemplating all the things he would have liked to do with this good looking African heifer, especially since Pearleen Bell had never shown any real interest in him. Others had, others like her had, strippers, topless waitresses, lap dancers—the easy lays, twenty-dollar blow job hookers—but she never had—and that had always bothered him, eaten away at him, made him want her all the more. It’s what you can’t have that you crave. . . . And you got her where you want her. Do what you like to her. To hell with Biggs for the time being.

  He held his hands at either hip, staring longingly at that luscious poontang. Inches from his face that made his mouth water.

  Take a lick. That’s all you need to make you happy. A lick or two, is all it would take. Crack whore would probably like it. Do it. Get your tongue inside that pussy while she’s in this position and can’t do a thing to stop you.

  Look at her. She ain’t resisting. Even if she did, who gives a shit? Petunia’s the one you love, but this is real pussy here; this is some African pussy here staring you right in the face. Go to it. You’re the man. Chance of a lifetime. Ain’t gonna find nothin’ finer, ever. And then something within said stop being so goddamned heartless, Marty. You can’t be that cold-blooded. Show some kindness here, even though she’s always been snotty to you. Show some compassion. You have to. Look at her. Beaten and raped who knows how many times? Look at her bruises. Christ; at least get that gag off her.

  Had his fingers on one end of the duct tape and went about pulling it off slowly, gingerly, so as to cause the least amount of discomfort and pain for her.

  The duct tape came off in its entirety, and the woman sobbed quietly. He wiped some grime from her face and brushed back strands of hair out of her mouth and eyes.

  CHAPTER 523

  When Pearleen spoke at last, she did so in guarded tones.

  “Please get help while you still can. They killed Lana and Stella. . . . Rudy Perez and Olivia Duarte. . . . Dione was butchered. . . . He tortured her and then butchered her body and stuck her in the furnace. . . .” Cecil had warned her about whispering anything to anyone. To hell with that. Roscoe was her only hope in this place of No Hope at all.

  Was he listening? Paying attention? Does he understand how serious this is? He’s no match for Cecil and his sick bunch with that gun.

  “Explains the stench. Preacher’s been killin’ folks in here all this time. Why he wouldn’t let me in. Knew I’d have it figured out sooner or later.”

  “Can you help me get down? Please.”

  He shined the light up at the ceiling. Saw that the chain hung from an iron hook that had been screwed into one of the six-by-six beams.

  Maybe, Roscoe thought, if I jumped up, grabbed at the dowel, and yanked at the thing with my two hundred twenty pounds behind it, it just might work.

  “Let me try something.”

  Roscoe leapt up. Couldn’t reach it. He kept at it with about as much success. Cursed. Had to stop to catch his breath and think of something else.

  He swallowed hard. Sweat made its way down his face. Had an idea he figured could work, possibly. It was a long shot. What if he wrapped his arms about her waist, lifted her up an inch or so, as high as he could, and swung that dowel and the chain it hung from, wiggled it, jiggled it, up and over the end of the hook?

  Far-fetched and would take some doing, but it was all he had. Nothing in the room was movable. Biggs had seen to it. Had it figured down to the minutest detail.

  Roscoe was ready to follow through on this new plan, had his muscular arms around her waist and was about to heave her up.

  “Oh my God. . . .”

  It was all she could do to warn him. Roscoe turned his head, letting her go in the process. Had to. He spun in the direction of the presently open door. Some of the geeks had begun to file in.

  CHAPTER 524

  Soon enough others had gathered. All were armed with small tools like cleavers, claw hammers, chisels, screwdrivers, or straight razors. One of them was a large-boned woman in a frayed black sweater and soiled negligee and a cupid mask over her face. She held a chainsaw in her hands.

  Roscoe looked at them, shined his flashlight on the demented-looking faces, and thought he was going to puke.

  “What do we got here? Some kind of secret retard society? No wonder you never let people see you.”

  “Condemn not then,” Miss Betty Lou Rutterschmidt stated calmly, cautiously. “What you condemn in another, you will become in yourself.”

  They moved in slowly. The fact that Marty Roscoe had a gun in his hand did not deter them any, did not matter one bit to them. Roscoe’s eyes zeroed in on the variety of tools and implements the group possessed.

  “Hey, ain’t nobody doin’ to me what was done to my lady’s critters. I ain’t got no beef with you folks. My beef is with the preacher.”

  The geeks weren’t listening. They wanted one thing: his hide.

  “I live next door. You might have heard of me: name’s Roscoe, Marty Roscoe. Somebody killed our dogs. I just want to know who did it. Where’s your leader, Bishop Biggs, and that buck Marvin he runs with? Where are they?”

  The geeks made sounds, deep-throated, unintelligible sounds, but no one spoke a word other than Roscoe.

  “I ain’t here to play games,” he said. Added under his breath: “Petunia would fit right in. . . .” He held his gun out. Cocked the hammer. “I didn’t come here to shoot nobody. Don’t make me do it. I don’t want to shoot nobody now. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Don’t matter what you do,” one of the geeks finally said. “The plague is coming. . . .”

  “The plague?
What plague?”

  “Infidel,” someone else said.

  “Infidel? That’s news to me, considering I was raised Baptist. Whole family is: Southern Baptist.”

  “Infidels,” was stated this time by an older woman with a raspy voice. “And fornicators. Fornicators and infidels.”

  “That’s how it is? So be it. I’ll blast your smelly asses to Kingdom Come. I will. If I have to. I ain’t shot nobody since the war. Smoked my share of gooks, so it ain’t that big-a-deal to me. I ain’t gonna lose no sleep over it. Promise you that much. If that’s the way you want it—that’s the way you’ll get it.” Roscoe paused long enough to clear his throat. “Where the fuck is Biggs? He cut up the dogs, didn’t he? It was Biggs, wasn’t it? Where is he?”

  Big Tex Leo Nix responded by flinging a meat cleaver at him, and was not pleased with himself when he saw Roscoe duck his head in time and the cleaver fly past his neck without inflicting so much as a scratch.

  Marty had fired and hit the tall, cadaverous geek in the left arm, but the geek kept right on coming and Marty kept firing until he had expended four more bullets, none of which hit the intended target. Blame it on the MD 20/20 he’d had in his kitchen before coming here, or the situation itself. Only there was no time for blame.

  The others ganged up on him and started swinging away and wildly stabbing at the air. Sooner or later they were bound to get lucky. This was the idea.

  One of the psychos, the large woman in the Cupid mask, had that chainsaw going and nicked his right knee cap. Someone else came at him and drove something like a steel bit through his right arm; another stabbed him in the left shoulder area of his chest with a mason’s trowel. Seemed to want a second go at him and Roscoe put a stop to it by whacking him across the face with his flashlight hard enough to send the geek tumbling back against the others.

  That hardly altered their plans. They came at him and came at him.

  CHAPTER 525

  Blood flowed: his, as well as theirs, as he fended them off with the flashlight, crushing noses in some cases and cracking cheekbones in others. He split a lip or two and shattered some teeth.

  Petunia’s husband fired another round and saw a body go down. Using the flashlight like a billy, he continued to whack away at the maniacs with it. Saw bodies drop. Heard screams and laughter, and then disco; loud disco mixed-in with funk and rock blasted the house. Sounded like Donna Summer, Bee Gees, and others. There was something sung by a woman about a bell: ring my bell, or ring your bell/our bell? Didn’t know. He preferred Lefty Frizzel and Willie Nelson; he preferred Tom T. Hall, Patsy Cline—even a shine like Charley Pride. Only what he heard next was screwy and could have been from the damned ’30s or ’40s and sounded like flat foot floogie with the floy floy, whatever the hell that meant.

  Music was annoying. The least of his worries. Knew why it was being played: so no one would hear the commotion, so that no one on the outside would know what was taking place, that he was in the process, just about, of being done in.

  Someone from behind hit him with a spade across the back of his neck and everything suddenly went black. He’d seen his share of fist fights and brawls over the years and this was how it usually went. Your skull throbbed with crippling pain, while inside it became as dark as the darkest night and your vision took a temporary leave of absence. When his sight faded back in seconds later it was anything but sharp. Shaky was a fairly good way to describe it; his sight was shaky—and so was he.

  He fired one more time and the gun was empty. There was no way to dig in his pants for bullets to reload. He holstered the six-shooter. Since the lens and bulb housing part of the flashlight were both damaged and the flashlight no longer of any use to him as an instrument of illumination, he hammered at someone’s Adam’s apple with it, and tossed it aside. He drew the bayonet from the scabbard. Crossing his arms and keeping his head and upper body bent in, leaning, he rolled out of there like a human wagon wheel spinning through a gauntlet. Attribute it to desperation. You were willing to try just about anything when your life was at stake.

  CHAPTER 526

  He was out of the room. Had rolled into darkness. Roscoe staggered to his feet, fighting grogginess and intermittent fainting episodes. He suspected the black stripper had been nothing more than bait with which to lure him with—and he had been dumb enough to fall for it. Chalk one up for Cecil’s side. Only it wasn’t over yet. He still had plenty of fight left in him. His mama and daddy didn’t raise no weakling. Didn’t raise no sissy. He was a good ole boy with real balls. You didn’t come from a place like Arkansas to let a cooter like Cecil get the best of you.

  His knee was a concern. The pain in his left shoulder was a reminder that they’d stabbed him pretty good with that trowel, too. Thought of his heart. Anywhere else wouldn’t have worried him as much. How close to the heart was the wound? How much blood was gone? How much longer could he last in this condition?

  Reload. You have to reload. And get back at them. None of them seemed to have firearms. Biggs was sure to have a few guns on hand. At least the retarded ones weren’t armed. Didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be eventually. At least, for now, they weren’t.

  He shoved the bayonet back in the scabbard. Reloaded the six-shooter. Moved down through the unlighted basement, and had no idea where he was headed.

  CHAPTER 527

  Petunia found herself having to rummage through a considerable pile of practically useless junk in the living room closet that, for the most part, belonged to her husband Marty and included stacks of old country-western records, Hulk Hogan wrestling tapes, phone books, gym shoes, cowboy boots, balled-up socks that needed washing, dated clocks and radios, sweat-stained jockstraps, stacks of books on UFOs and psychic phenomena, Penthouse magazines and a volume entitled IDIOT’S GUIDE TO EATING PUSSY by someone named Dr. Hans Schietz, before she was able to get her hands on a ball bat and extricate it from the heap. She turned, made it out of the closet, and the lights went out in the house.

  Petunia froze where she stood, her heart pounding. Faint sounds could be heard. In the kitchen somewhere, or moving toward it from the hallway in back? Was she imagining things? It all made her feel uncertain and afraid and she did not like feeling this way.

  “Marty? Is that you, Marty?”

  She couldn’t tell what was going on? Was Marty back? There was noise coming from Biggs’s place that only complicated matters: loud music, as usual; music and screams, people shouting; she couldn’t tell.

  Was Marty hurt and needed her? Jesus Christ; I tried to tell him not to go in that nut’s place. I tried to talk sense into him. It just never worked. Marty’s got to do what Marty’s got to do.

  “That had better be you, Marty. Say something, dammit. Marty?”

  Petunia moved with caution: from where she stood in the living room toward the dining area, and hopefully on toward the kitchen. She was fairly certain she saw something like the shadow of a man move in there.

  Beads of perspiration formed across her forehead as well as in and around the cleavage area. Wiping her clammy palms against her dress, she gripped the baseball bat, and proceeded to take another step, paused and listened, wincing, straining to determine if there truly was someone there and not her imagination gone haywire.

  She braved an additional step. Did her best to fight off the sudden need to use the bathroom. That would have to wait. As difficult as it might be, she would force herself to postpone it. No choice. For the time being. Hold it in, Petunia. You can’t go on your kitchen floor. You can’t. You better not.

  She entered the kitchen. Stopped there. Possibly heard, possibly sensed the intruder’s presence on the far side. Somewhere along the kitchen sink on the left, the cabinets. Whoever it was must have entered through the back porch door and bedroom, made it down the hallway and was here now. It was more than enough to compound the anxiety and fear, enough to intensify the great urgency to make it to the bathroom that one had to go halfway down that same hallway to get to and reliev
e herself in time—and yet she knew she dared not budge just then.

  Move, and reveal your exact location to the home invader. That’s what this was, as far as she was concerned: home invasion. She was dealing with a home invader.

  Sweat stung her eyes. To make matters worse, the inevitable took place: she felt and heard urine trickle down her leg onto the linoleum.

  Lord, was she that scared? A grown, independent woman that she prided herself on being, so unnerved that she was actually peeing on her kitchen floor?

  What would Marty say if he found out? She’d never hear the last of it. Too bad. He should have been here to look after her, instead of poking around in the weirdo’s basement.

  Where the hell was he? Marty? Never around when you need him. She had suspected he broke in next door hoping to get closer to those sluts with the big tits and used what was done to the dogs as an excuse. And just as the insane thought crossed her mind, there was no denying guilt followed. She knew he loved those dogs nearly as much as she did, even if he didn’t always show it.

  She saw the shape again. Saw it move. Took a deep breath, and went after it. Attacked it with the ball bat. She heard a grunt. A man went down. She dug up a candle in one of the drawers. Lit it. Traded the baseball bat for a bread knife, not exactly sure why, because in her heart of hearts she knew there was no way she had it in her to use it on anyone, intruder or not.

  CHAPTER 528

  Petunia Roscoe neared the sprawled figure on the kitchen floor. It was Monroe Perez. Rudy’s older brother.