Mr. Midnight

by Allan Leverone

  The woman covered her face with her hands again like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Milo almost laughed. The biddy was stupid as well as old if she thought that was going to make a damned bit of difference. He unzipped the main pocket of the backpack and retrieved one of his favorite tools. The pliers felt comfortable in his hand and he immediately began snapping them briskly, confident the staccato beat would get the woman’s attention.

  He was right. She dropped her hands and her eyes snapped open, focusing on the pliers like they had been focused on his hands a moment ago. “Get the phone number,” he said softly, his voice barely a whisper. It contained a menace that didn’t need volume to be understood.

  She shook her head mutely, terror in her eyes.

  Milo reached out, the movement lightning-quick. He grabbed her hand and held it like this was some perverted May/December Hollywood love scene. Harold and Maude for the twenty-first century. He selected a finger at random, noting with amusement that her nails were short and stubby like a dude’s. But it didn’t matter. He wasn’t concerned with aesthetics. Effectiveness was the goal.

  He dug the nose of the pliers under the nail of her pointer finger, pushing hard, burrowing into the tender flesh, making sure there was plenty of nail to grip. The woman sucked in a shocked breath and began to scream as Milo yanked, ripping the nail from the tip of her finger in one smooth motion. He clamped his hand over her mouth—he was pretty sure the neighborhood was empty, but why take chances?—and said again through gritted teeth, “I want that telephone number.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The knob turned and the door opened with a muted squeal, and Franklin Marchand stepped into the mess that constituted Strange Dude’s “home.” Trash was everywhere: fast-food burger boxes, crumpled-up candy wrappers, and empty cans and bottles were strewn over virtually every inch of the floor’s surface. It was disgusting, enough to make even a homeless man used to sleeping in a garbage-strewn alleyway retch.

  But it didn’t make Franklin retch. In fact, he barely noticed the mess, his gaze passing over the trash in the blink of an eye, settling instead on a strange contraption erected in the middle of the room. It was a chair, big and blocky, and it had been bolted to the floor with steel bracing straps.

  And secured to the chair was what looked like—

  —Oh, God, it looked like—

  —Oh good Lord, Franklin thought, because although he had stopped believing in a benevolent God just about the time he lost his job and his home and his family and his future, for the life of him he couldn’t think of another phrase that fit the situation. Oh good Lord, he thought, that’s a girl, or at least it used to be a girl until she was stabbed and slashed and, oh good Lord, skinned alive, but now she was not alive, no, she was quite obviously dead and had just as obviously died in a tremendous amount of pain, in gut-wrenching pain, in agony really, Franklin could see that as plain as day, and he took two staggering steps toward the chair without thinking because the girl, oh good Lord the girl, she was skinned alive and—

  —and Franklin’s legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees and puked up an acidy yellow concoction of partly digested chicken sandwich and the burning remains of the Mad Dog he had drunk last night. The mixture erupted out of him in a chunky spray, splattering the fast-food cartons and the empty cans and bottles and the legs of his jeans.

  He didn’t notice.

  And if he had noticed, he wouldn’t have cared. Franklin Marchand had a daughter roughly the same age as this girl, this poor, suffering soul who was once a living, breathing being and was now barely recognizable as human. She was barely recognizable but not completely unrecognizable, and Franklin knew she was the girl he had seen being forced into this piece of shit tenement building at knifepoint last night.

  And how had he reacted? What had he done while this young victim was being marched to her terrible fate? He had made a solemn promise to investigate the situation later, because he had been tired and, let’s face it, drunk off his ass and in no condition to investigate anything but his stolen wool blanket last night. And while he was working on his latest buzz, while he was busy drinking himself into a drunken stupor, this defenseless girl who could have been his daughter was being brutally tortured by Strange Dude inside the rotting building not fifty feet away.

  And now she was dead.

  Tortured.

  She might have died this morning while Franklin sat smoking cigarettes and waiting for Strange Dude to leave. And he was too late! He was too late, and this girl had died and it was mostly Strange Dude’s fault—he had tortured and killed her, after all—but it was also at least partly Franklin’s fault because he had known something was wrong and had done nothing about it until it was too late to make a difference.

  Franklin hung his head. He thought about Samantha and how this could have been her and almost puked again but swallowed hard and choked it back.

  He stood shakily, suddenly very tired, and forced himself to look at the torture chair and the fresh human corpse fastened to it. Strips of skin hung off her body where they had been peeled, presumably while she was still alive, some of them eighteen inches or more in length. Bones were visible beneath the oozing pinkish mess, an ulna here, a kneecap there. A hint of pubic bone.

  Veins and blood vessels and unidentifiable gore crisscrossed the areas where the strips of skin had been carved and peeled away. Blood still dripped obscenely off some of the longer strips of skin, pooling on the clear plastic tarp placed around and under the chair. The blood was beginning to congeal around the outermost edges of the puddles, appearing almost black in the dim light struggling through the filthy windows of the apartment, a ghoulish lake lapping at a horrifying shore.

  Franklin stumbled to his feet, suddenly sure Strange Dude would return at any moment and find him here. And he now knew who Strange Dude really was. Mr. Midnight—Franklin had heard the name whispered hundreds of times over the last several months, all over the city and by all classes of people, and he knew immediately he was looking at Mr. Midnight’s handiwork—would walk through the door and pull a knife, blood and gristle and human tissue still hanging off it, and he would hold Franklin at knifepoint while he unstrapped the dead girl from the chair. Then he would roll her mutilated corpse onto the floor, and he would replace her with Franklin and he would begin, oh good Lord he would begin peeling, and oh, good Lord he would—

  —Franklin forced himself to slow his breathing, to choke back the rising tide of panic like he had choked back the vomit a few moments ago. He had to get ahold of himself. If Mr. Midnight did come back right now, Franklin would rush him before he could get his knife out of his pocket or his scabbard or wherever the hell he kept it. If Mr. Midnight came back, Franklin would deal, as Samantha would say. He would deal somehow.

  Right now, the priority was getting to a telephone. He had to get the police here. The very same authorities Franklin had developed a serious mistrust and even hatred of since becoming homeless now looked to him like angels of mercy, like the very guardians of sanity.

  He took one last look at the girl—he didn’t want to, wanted nothing more than to drink the memory of the last few minutes out of his brain, to wash it into oblivion with a fifty-five-gallon drum of Mad Dog, and he promised himself he would do exactly that as soon as his task was complete—but he just couldn’t help himself. He took one last look and then he turned and stumbled out of the killing room. He had to get to a phone, to call the police, and he certainly didn’t own a cell phone anymore and there was no earthly way the telephone lines into this piece of shit building were still active.

  He staggered into the dingy hallway and realized he was holding his breath. He breathed deeply and yanked the door closed behind him with much more force than was necessary. Then he moved blindly toward the stairs, determined to find someone, anyone, a passerby or maybe a fellow vagrant who had stolen a cell phone. He would grab it and use it to dial 911.

  Franklin paused at the top of the stairs as anothe
r wave of nausea overtook him. He bent over, hands on his knees, and somehow managed to avoid losing what was left in his stomach, if anything even was left, and then he ran down the stairs, moving much too fast for a shaky homeless alcoholic who had just seen a mutilated dead girl, taking them three at a time, risking a violent fall and a broken neck.

  He burst out of the cursed tenement at a dead run—that’s a good one, he thought crazily, a “dead run,” I’ll have to remember that the next time I stumble onto a carved-up human corpse—and turned into the alleyway. It had never looked as inviting as it did right this minute. He sprinted the length of the crumbling pavement toward the front of the building, panting and gasping, trying desperately not to puke again.

  CHAPTER 32

  Patience had never been one of Cait’s strong points, and it was especially hard to maintain now. The crush of travelers waiting to board the plane was almost as massive as the line for the metal detectors had been. She was tired and dispirited and wanted nothing more than to be back in Tampa, where she could begin to resume a normal life, or at least what passed for a normal life for someone blessed—or cursed—with the ability to receive Flickers.

  They had waited seemingly for hours, shuffling forward a couple of feet every few minutes, just for the opportunity to empty her pockets and step through a metal detector while some TSA drone leered at her underwear as her bag rolled through the X-ray machine. That humiliating experience would be followed by hours inside a crowded airplane with a bunch of other tired, dispirited people. The prospect seemed almost too much to bear.

  She sighed and leaned against Kevin. “What’s taking so long?” she said, not really expecting an answer.

  His arm was draped over her shoulder and he hugged her tightly. He seemed immune to her mood and was making an obvious effort to raise her spirits. “I know you’re vertically challenged, but I can see over the crowd and believe me, we’re getting close to our goal. At least our short-term goal. Before you know it, we’ll be snuggled up with a good in-flight magazine, chomping on our complimentary bag of stale peanuts, winging our way down the East Coast back to paradise. Or at least Tampa.”

  “Hmmph. Sounds so romantic.”

  Kevin laughed. “Maybe not romantic, exactly, but at least you’ll be getting where you want to go.”

  “I suppose,” she said morosely. Cait felt badly for raining on Kevin’s parade, but she just didn’t have the energy to put on a happy face. This trip had been a disaster from the get-go, and at the moment it felt like it was never going to end. Dinner at the airport steak house had been good, better than she had expected, but it had also been exorbitantly expensive, and Cait had felt extra guilty when Kevin picked up the check. She knew his salary as a Tampa police officer, knew what a strain this ill-fated trip had put on his wallet, and yet he refused to complain.

  She tried to smile up at him and assumed she had failed when he took one look at her and burst out laughing. “What’s the matter, suffering from gas?” he asked, and she giggled despite her foul mood. She just couldn’t stay upset around Kevin no matter how crappy she felt. It was one of the many reasons she loved him.

  “No, it’s not gas,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to compete in your area of expertise.”

  “Thanks. And now that you mention it…”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Cait answered, wrinkling her nose. “None of these unsuspecting travelers ever did anything to you, there’s no reason to put them through that kind of torture.” She laughed now, her bad mood forgotten, at least temporarily. The line moved forward and they shoved their carry-on bags ahead with their feet.

  Finally they arrived at the front of the line and trudged down the jetway into the Boeing 757. Their seats were located toward the back of the plane, the penalty for purchasing tickets only moments before a flight. Cait didn’t give a damn where they had to sit. At least they were getting the hell out of there. They moved single-file down the narrow walkway, stopping next to every row to allow passengers to load their belongings into the overhead bins. Finally they reached their allotted seats, located just north of the lavatory.

  Kevin hefted the two duffel bags up to the bin. They barely fit. He struggled with the plastic door, finally slamming it down, and they slid into their seats. Cait sighed wearily. She was still so exhausted she thought she might be asleep before the airplane reached the runway. She hoped the flight attendant wouldn’t be too insulted when she slept through the entire preflight song and dance.

  She squeezed Kevin’s hand and closed her eyes. And that was when her cell phone rang.

  CHAPTER 33

  Milo was astonished when it took more than one fingernail to convince the old bat to part with the information. That crap she tried to sling about not having the number was total bullshit, and he knew it, yet the first nail he ripped out with his trusty pliers accomplished nothing more than establishing that the bitch possessed one hell of a strong set of lungs.

  He held the fingernail in front of the broad’s eyes, dripping blood onto her lap, until she opened them and stared at it in horrified appreciation. Then he said, “What’s the number?” and to his utter amazement she shook her head again.

  “I can’t do it,” she began, her voice thick with fear and pain, and before she had completed the sentence Milo grabbed her hand again, yanking it out from under her armpit where it had only recently taken up residence. He repeated the impromptu surgical procedure he had just performed on her pointer finger, this time taking the nail from her middle digit. Again she offered up a lusty scream and again he slapped his free hand over her mouth until she lost her enthusiasm. It took even longer this time than it had the last.

  “What’s the number?”

  The woman let out a groan of misery and this time just nodded.

  Milo smiled. “Good girl. I’d like to remind you that this is your own fault. You could have saved yourself all that pain—not to mention saving me precious time—if you had only done what I asked at the beginning, but that’s okay. We all need to learn the hard way sometimes.” He took her by the elbow and helped her to her feet and she staggered to the trash can in the corner of the kitchen.

  She reached into the bin and plucked a slip of paper off the top of the garbage with her good hand. Then she passed it to Milo, still without uttering a word besides the occasional soft moan. He looked at it and handed it back to her. “Is this the number I asked for?”

  “Yes.” The woman bent over in agony, her face chalk-white, her injured hand once again tucked away in the folds of her armpit. She refused to look at Milo, not that he cared. He was finally getting what he wanted and that was all that mattered.

  He placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face until she was forced to look into his eyes. “I don’t need the fucking number,” he said. “You do. Call the little bitch and get her back here.”

  Milo snapped his pliers open and shut in front of her face for effect. She reached for the telephone and began punching numbers awkwardly, holding the handset with her good hand and using her thumb to press the buttons. Her injured hand stayed out of sight.

  Milo watched carefully. He didn’t think this shriveled old bitch would dare pull something stupid, like calling 911 or the local police, but you could never be too careful, and taking care was what had enabled him to stay one step ahead of the authorities with over a dozen grisly murders under his belt.

  She punched the numbers faithfully into the phone and when she finished, Milo said, “I don’t care what you have to say to get that chick back here, but your life depends on your success. Don’t fuck this up or what I did to your fingers will be just the beginning. You’ll wish you were dead a hundred times before it actually happens. Do you understand me?”

  The woman nodded and Milo told her to hold the telephone’s handset at an angle so he could listen in. Seconds later a tinny voice came through the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Cait,” the woman began, her
voice wavering and paper-thin from pain and barely controlled hysteria. “This is…” Milo held his pliers in front of her face and she continued. “This is your mother.”

  “I—I know who it is,” the tinny voice said. “What’s wrong?”

  Milo narrowed his eyes at her. She hesitated and then said, “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

  “Well, I’m a little surprised to hear from you, given what you said earlier. You know, about never coming back and forgetting we ever met. Why are you calling me?”

  “I’m so sorry.” Tears began to fall as the woman’s tenuous grip on her emotions loosened. Milo shook his head, his eyes lasering into hers, and she took a deep breath and continued. “I—I think we have more to discuss. A lot more. Would you consider coming to see me again?”

  “Of course,” the little bitch replied. “I would love that. I may not be able to make it back up here for a while, though. Money’s a little tight, you know.”

  “I don’t mean some time in the future, I mean we need to talk now. Right now.”

  “But Kevin and I are on our way back to Tampa. We’ve bought our tickets and we’re sitting on the airplane. We should be pushing back from the gate and taxiing for departure at any moment.”

  Milo covered the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand and whispered fiercely, “You do whatever you have to do to get her here!” Then he released his grip and nodded toward the phone.

  The woman’s shoulders slumped and she began to cry again, but somehow she kept her voice relatively steady. Milo hoped the bitch on the other end of the conversation couldn’t hear the pain and regret in the woman’s words. He thought the poor quality of the connection might mask it enough to be successful. “No,” she said. “You can’t leave. Please don’t leave yet. Come here, just for the night. We’ll talk and if you still want to leave right away, you can fly back to Florida tomorrow morning. I can pay for your tickets if that’s a problem. Would that be all right?”