Shame ON You

by John W. Mefford

  “Talk, Cobb. Now,” I said.

  He didn’t say a word. He was being defiant. But I suddenly realized we were missing a person. I glanced at Ivy. “Where’s Chantel?”

  “Peeing in the weeds. She had to go real bad.”

  I threw a punch into Cobb’s kidney.

  “Fuck!”

  I continued pressing his face into the wall. “Tell me where Kate is. Is she somewhere on this property?”

  He groaned, but still no words.

  “Too slow.” Another punch in the kidney.

  He squeaked like a prepubescent boy. “Okay, okay.”

  “Where is she, Cobb?”

  “I saw her and that suave boyfriend of hers earlier. Did a little business…the old-fashioned way.”

  A boyfriend. I never got the impression she had a boyfriend.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I didn’t fingerprint the guy.”

  Before I could throw another punch, Ivy swung the board against his hand that had been on the wall. Now he wailed.

  The guys in the corner put their arms over their heads. The flashlight was now pointing out the opening I’d walked through.

  “I may not be able to stop her from really doing a number on you, Cobb. We need information. Who is this guy with Kate?”

  “Brutus.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Ivy said, about ready to swing the board again.

  “I’m telling you the truth. He calls himself Brutus. I doubt that’s his real name, but he’s always walking around saying, ‘Et tu, Brute?’ like he’s Julius Caesar or some shit. He’s just a rich prick trying to score.”

  A thought hit me square across the chin.

  “Where are he and Kate?”

  “Fuck if I know. I ain’t no rat, anyway.”

  I threw two punches into his kidney, and Ivy cracked the board off his arm.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he screamed, gasping for breath. “I give!”

  “Where are they?”

  “He told me…” He panted a few seconds. “He told me he’s got a sweet place in that swanky high-rise condo downtown, the Austonian, away from his ball-and-chain. He said that’s where he takes some of the girls if he wants to make a night of it.”

  I let go of him and turned to Ivy. “That’s our next stop.”

  “Well, get Cobb’s phone so he doesn’t call this Brutus guy,” Ivy said.

  “Good point.” I found his phone in his back pocket, dropped it to the floor, and stomped on it.

  I saw a shadow moving two feet in front of the phone. I jerked my head upward.

  It was Patterson, and he was holding a gun on us.

  40

  No one moved. Not even Cobb.

  “It’s so nice for us to meet in a social setting.” Patterson looked straight at me and then circled his eyes around the room. “Even if it’s in these wretched conditions.” He had two hands on the grip of his pistol. They were anything but steady.

  We said nothing.

  “I can see you’re shocked that I was able to follow you all around town and you never even knew it.” He chuckled loudly and fluttered his eyelashes like an Austin bat flapping its wings.

  “Are you into LSD or something?” I asked.

  He laughed derisively. “LSD? I thought you knew by looking through my window that I’m a connoisseur of the finest liquors in the world.”

  How did he know?

  He nodded. “You think I’d live the kind of lifestyle I do and not have cameras? I may not have acted right away, but I saw you. I was just a little preoccupied.”

  Preoccupied? The guy had looked like a kid who’d been spooked by the bogeyman.

  “Okay. So, we were snooping around your place. Why not call the cops and have us arrested?”

  He shook his head. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

  I had my suspicions, but I didn’t want him to stop talking now. “Seriously, we have no idea. We’re just here trying to score some drugs.”

  He leaned his head to the left and stared at Cobb; then his lip shifted upward, as if he’d just smelled something foul. “I can see you’ve beaten this miscreant, but I doubt you’re here for drugs. Well— Hey, where is she?” He shifted his feet to the right like an uncoordinated linebacker. He was trying to see around the corner, to the back part of the L-shaped concrete tube. Wasn’t sure that was possible.

  “Who? It’s just us. Me, Ivy, and the whackos.”

  “Ivy?” He said, doing a double-take on her name. “No, the girl. Chantel. She and I bonded over the last week. I’m sure she has told you all about it by now.”

  Ivy took a step forward and started to lift her board. I raised my arm to stop her.

  “No?” he said, a wide smile splitting his face. “Don’t tell me she was babbling on and on about that sister of hers.” He rolled his eyes. “Damn, she would just never shut up about her, droning on about her sister being buried in the cemetery.”

  I knew he hadn’t killed Ally—if we were to believe Chantel. Even if the whole story had been created by her imagination, I was glad she wasn’t in this concrete bunker. Hopefully, she’d heard or seen Patterson and was running for help.

  “Why did you kidnap her?”

  “Why does a chicken cross the road, asshole?” he scoffed, shaking his head. “It was a weekend. She was just standing outside the gate at the hospital. She looked like a zombie ghost. I figured it was another patient who had escaped but who’d quickly realized it was safer on the inside than the outside. She got in my car, and I drove toward the hospital parking lot. But in about thirty seconds, she rattled off all this shit about her sister and ten years ago and a train crash. It really mattered very little to me until she said that she needed to see all the records for who was buried in what grave in the cemetery. Yep, that’s when I tapped the brakes—on the vehicle and the plan to get her inside the hospital.”

  He smiled, wiggled his shoulders, apparently quite impressed with his wit.

  “What’s so special about the cemetery?”

  He glared at me as he adjusted the gun in his hand.

  “Afraid to talk about it, Charles?”

  “I’m Dr. Patterson to you.”

  “What about to your patients?” I asked. “You practiced in the same hospital a few years ago. Did you hurt one of your patients?”

  He set his jaw and barked, “They were mental degenerates. Incurable. Nothing more than scabs on society.”

  “What did you do to them?”

  He lifted his chin ever so slightly. “I’m a trained doctor. I know when someone is beyond repair. I gave them every opportunity to help themselves. I could only do so much.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “That place stunk like shit. They were animals. I tried every approach possible, even some I developed on my own.”

  “Like?”

  “I call it the Shaming System. Essentially, patients need to understand the shame they are putting on themselves and on their families and to start being accountable for their behavior.”

  If I didn’t think it before, I certainly did now: this guy was certifiable.

  “Now, before I start putting bullets in heads, someone needs to tell me where the skinny addict is!”

  I blinked, and Cobb bolted toward the back entrance. Patterson fired his gun. Ivy and I both jumped back. Cobb was facedown on the floor. Blood bubbled at the base of his skull and then slowly poured onto his neck like warm, thick syrup.

  “Who wants to be next?” Patterson yelled.

  I’d backed up so far my leg hit one of the two guys in the corner. I could feel him shaking like a wet dog after a bath.

  Patterson raked his hair to one side and released a calm breath. “Where is Chantel?”

  “Honestly, she’s a pain in the ass. I guess you weren’t paying much attention, but we dropped her off in the alley back in the city. She was begging us for a hit of acid. Finally, I had enough and told her to get out.”

 
; He blinked a few times, studying my facial expression. I put on my best lawyer game face.

  “I’m telling you, we aren’t here for her. We’re trying to find someone else, if you really want to know. And now that you’ve killed Cobb, I guess we’ll never know.”

  Patterson shrugged. “Believe me, I did the world another favor. He just won’t get the privilege of being buried in the ASH cemetery like the twelve others. Tsk, tsk.”

  The number—which, to me, signified the count of people he’d killed and buried in that cemetery—threw me off guard. I hoped my expression didn’t show it. I tried like hell to maintain my game face.

  “But if I’m going to make this all work…” He looked off, tapping a finger to his chin.

  I thought about making a rush for the gun. He might shoot me, but maybe Ivy could smash his face with the board and grab the gun.

  Do you really want Mackenzie growing up without a father? Need a new plan, Oz.

  “Actually, this will work out perfectly,” Patterson said. “I’ll bury all of you out here in this abandoned cement plant. No one will find you for years.”

  “You sure you want to do that? I’m sure Chantel will call me back later,” Ivy said. “And when she can’t find us, she’ll go to the cops.”

  He snorted out a laugh. “I knew your boyfriend was lying. She’s around here somewhere, probably shriveled up in the weeds as she gets high again. Damn, she’s a pathetic loser. I want to take her back home with me, to resume our little case study. Down on your knees. Now! All of you.”

  My knees touched the floor at the same moment I saw a white blur race up behind Patterson. It was Chantel, and she had something gripped tightly in her hand. She whipped her arm forward, like it held a javelin, and stabbed a metal shiv into the side of Patterson’s neck. His eyes bulged, and he dropped the gun.

  “Shame on you, Dr. Fucking Patterson!” She tugged on her hair.

  “Chantel!” Ivy yelled.

  We jumped up, ran over to the pair. Patterson had just fallen to the floor. Blood spewed from his neck like a volcanic eruption.

  Chantel was seething, but Ivy pushed her back. I looked around for something to plug the hole, but it was too late. Patterson’s eyes had stopped moving. The shiv had punctured a major artery.

  “He’s the fucking lunatic, Ivy. He is,” Chantel said as Ivy tried to comfort her. “I saw him writing in his little notebook. He sat in front of my cage sometimes, writing the same thing over and over again. Sometimes he’d whisper it to himself as he’d sit there and write it. ‘Shame on you. Shame on you.’”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “If anyone deserved to die, it was him. And I don’t care if you put me in jail for it.”

  “It’s okay. We can get you a good lawyer. Nothing will happen,” Ivy said.

  “He killed twelve people. Did you hear him say that? When he had me locked up in a dog cage under his steps, I knew he was going to kill me.”

  I turned to the guys in the corner. “That was self-defense—hear me?”

  They nodded.

  It took a few minutes, but, slowly, Chantel calmed down. Ivy turned toward me. “You going to call Brook now?”

  “No need. The bad guys are dead. Well, two of them. Nothing we can do now except try to save Kate.”

  I walked out, then realized they weren’t following me. “We’re going to see this through until the end. We need to save one more girl. Are you with me, or do you want to stand around and worry about two dead degenerates?”

  They followed me to the car. This time, the Prius created a dust storm as I tore out of the cement plant.

  41

  With one hand on the steering wheel, I drove to the Austonian. With the opposite hand, I made a phone call.

  “Calling Brook finally?” Ivy jabbed both feet into the floorboard. “Look out!”

  I’d already seen the black SUV pull out from the curb and leaned forward to check my blind spot. All clear. At almost four a.m., there were only a handful of cars on the road. I eased the car left, and we passed the SUV with no issues. I was pushing almost sixty miles per hour as I reached Tito on the phone. He sounded groggy. Again, not surprising considering the only people out at this hour were people on booty calls or returning from booty calls. Oh, and then those who were assaulting college girls.

  As Tito jostled around, apparently gaining his faculties, Ivy turned back to Chantel. They were talking about some type of text she’d just received from Cristina. I struggled to hear in the best of conditions. With others speaking around me, it took a lot of focus and a fair number of “Huh?” and “What did you say?” questions.

  Fortunately, Tito quickly confirmed my suspicion about whom I might find in a condo with Kate. On another matter, I knew the Austonian, while not just the tallest building in Texas, was first class all the way, including their security. I needed information without having to call in the cops and get a warrant. The Austonian boasted a rather select art collection from the best Austin-area artists. Tito was a member of that select group. He said he’d call his contact and get back to me.

  I could see the building from more than a mile away—maybe taller than fifty stories; I couldn’t remember exactly. It seemed even more massive when I whipped the wheel to the right onto Congress and jerked the car to a stop. A valet approached, but I didn’t hear him. I didn’t want to hear him. I only looked at my phone as the three of us ascended a flight of stone steps. Just as we got to the door, Tito’s text came in. It was one word—a name—but that was all I needed.

  I must have said the name “Marek” about a dozen times in the lobby of the building. People scurried about as if I’d just announced that the Queen of England was about to arrive. Marek appeared from behind a wall, dressed in a black wrinkle-free suit and a black pressed shirt. He spoke with a French accent. He eyed our attire, spending an extra second on Chantel, but took us to the side and quietly gave me the room number I was seeking.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a card key from him.

  He gripped my arm as I tried to pull away.

  “Tito said I could trust you. Don’t make me regret this, Ozzie.”

  I had so much I could tell him, wanted to tell him, but that would take time. Just like calling in the cops back at the cement plant. All explanations could wait. Kate’s safety was paramount.

  “You won’t.” Those words echoed in my head as Ivy, Chantel, and I took the elevator up to the eighteenth floor. As the pressure built in my sinuses—I had to open my mouth to get my ears to pop—my brain ran through about a dozen scenarios on what we might find.

  The doors dinged open. The room was to my right. I took off in a jog down the hallway. Yes, my hip hurt. But I kept thinking about what Chantel had experienced and what Kate might be experiencing. My pain paled in comparison. The building was an enormous circle. With each door that I passed, my speed increased, as if I were rounding the corner on the track back in high school. I always came off that last turn with a burst. This time would be no different. I finally approached room 1849. I came to a jump-stop in front of the door. My heart was pounding, my breath panting like a horse. But I was in complete control. I turned and saw Ivy and Chantel rounding the bend. I didn’t wait on them. I slid in the key, saw the light turn green, and pushed open the door.

  It opened only about three inches. A chain lock stopped it from opening all the way.

  “Who’s there? Get out!”

  It was him. The man with the voice fit for radio. But he also had that chiseled chin, the well-coiffed hair, the fake-white teeth. He had the looks of a Hollywood leading man and the cockiness of a member of Entourage.

  I backed up three steps as Ivy and Chantel pulled to a stop.

  “What are you doing, Oz?” Ivy asked.

  “I said to get the fuck out!” the man said from behind the door. “Do you want me to call security?”

  I thought I heard something about a gun, but I wasn’t going to second-guess my next move. I lunged forward and plowed my size-
fourteen into the meat of the door. The chain flew off the frame, and the door slammed against the wall.

  I walked in and immediately saw Kate covered in a sheet, makeup running down her face. She was curled up on a chair, trembling. Four lines of cocaine were displayed in front of her. Where the hell was…?

  A fist flew at me from behind a wall. I dropped my head back like I was doing the limbo. Somehow, my feet stayed underneath me. He had something in his hand. I grabbed his arm and used the momentum of his weight to toss him across my body, both of us hitting the floor. I saw a glint of metal—a razor blade—in Chase’s hand.

  Yes, Chase. My former classmate. Brutus.

  I jumped to my feet, assuming a fighting position. He did the same, but he had the blade. I had nothing.

  “Oswald, my man, what in God’s name are you doing here in the Austonian? I thought they kept out all the commies.” He laughed the kind of a laugh that made me know he was off his rocker or, more likely, just high. He was barefoot but wearing slacks with his dress shirt unbuttoned all the way.

  “Wanted to hang out, talk old times. Why don’t you put down that razor and we can order up room service?” I looked beyond Chase and saw Ivy holding Chantel near the door. They were wide-eyed, both probably waiting for me to implement my master plan of attack.

  If only I had one. I’d let my emotions drive my actions. Wasn’t the first time. As soon as I’d heard Cobb mention the name Brutus, my radar had gone up. And then, when Cobb mentioned him saying “Et tu, Brute?” over and over again…that had sent me straight back to high school. Chase had starred in the senior school play. Everyone thought he did it just to show he was a stud at everything he tried. Maybe, though, he was looking for a backup plan if his football career flopped or his daddy’s startup companies didn’t take off. It turned out that one of the startups, an IT network consulting company, launched like a rocket. Chase hit the big time at an age when most were still figuring out their first entry-level job. And he’d married his high-school sweetheart.

  Apparently, it wasn’t enough. None of it was.