“ Goddammit, Gamble, get it done!” cried out the man who struggled to keep hold of her. She recognized the voice as that of the man who had telephoned from a booth earlier, claiming to be Teach. She fought as best she could, at one point grabbing the phone and sending it colliding into the skull over her shoulder, bruising herself as well in the bargain. But the little one scrambled to his feet, scurried ratlike to the syringe which had cascaded into a corner and now rushed around to her and her assailant's side. The other man shouted, “You stick me with that damned thing and I'll kill you, Gamble!”
She felt the needle plunge into her thigh and she screamed, but her scream was stifled by a thick hand with a surgical glove over it. Her eyes went to the cracked door with what little light was streaming through before she was forced into the adjoining room, where only darkness reigned.
“ She wanted a little light, Gamble, so give her a little light-
She somehow sensed that there was something or someone other than her two assailants in the room with them, as if the presence of evil were palpable and breathing. The drug was taking rapid effect and she wasn't sure what was real and what was imaginary any longer, but she smelled death in the darkness; she smelled an odor like that in the cabin in Wekosha and wherever else she had found the drained bodies of this madman's appetite.
Gamble was laughing, taunting her in the darkness from some distance measured in either feet or the miles created by the drug that'd made her malleable and easy to conduct. Her brain tried to fight the conductors, knowing where she was being transported to. “A little light… a little light…” Gamble was chanting without a stutter, as if he now were calmed and relaxed, now that he had his prize within his grasp.
A pair of candles or a kerosene lamp, she could not be sure, cast shadows like demons all around her. Her own shadow melded with Gamble's stubby form against one wall, and towering behind her was that of a thing that seemed for all the world to be a giant vampire bat, the man who still held her in his grasp. But there was another black shadow also, a strange, upset shadow, the shadow of a dangling body, upside down, at the center of the room.
Her face was forced suddenly into the dead face of Lyle Kaseem's, a strange, tubular object jutting from his throat.
Gamble had not lied. It was him. It was the man she had searched for since Wekosha. It was Candy Copeland's vicious, sadistic killer; Janel McDonell's torturer; the bloodsucker who had taken the lives of so many others.
As if reading her mind, Teach said in a raspy voice, his rubber-gloved hands feeling like the touch of an alien, “And you're next, Doctor…”
She felt a numbness grip her body and her mind, the powerful grip of the sedative doing its work; likely the way that Kaseem had been rendered helpless. She only half heard Gamble stutter the name of the other. “M-m-mad… Mad M-m-mat… M-m-meet Mad Matt Matisak.” His keening, sickening giggle followed.
“ Just a little of her blood, Hillary, and you can have the body, just like I promised you.”
More digusting laughter erupted from Hillary Gamble moments before she lost all sensory perception. She found herself in a dark place, somewhat shattering in its complete blackness, and yet somewhat comforting. She didn't feel anything… and yet the darkness into which she was thrust was surrounded by fear all about the periphery, like demons waiting to come get her…
Boutine and Brewer remained at Matisak's house and each moment they stayed revealed something further about the madman. Brewer, after Boutine had gone to the car to radio for assistance and news of Jessica, had inched closer and closer to the bathroom, smelling a heady, pungent odor as he did so; it was the metallic smell of blood. He had drawn his own weapon more for something to hold onto than anything else. As he neared the bathroom, he extended a hand to a hallway light, but it didn't extend into the little room at the end of the hall to do much good. Brewer felt as if he were in the haunted house at Disneyland. A chill feeling of creepiness extended along his spine to the hairs on his neck.
At the door. Brewer wheeled, but there was no one there.
He saw that the bathtub was filled with a dark, soupy mixture which looked purple. He feared the worst, got a grip on his senses and called for Boutine several times. But Boutine was still out at the car.
He gritted his teeth, placed his fingers on the light switch and closed his eyes for a moment.
He hit the switch and the room was bathed in a soft red glow, just as the living room had been. The bathwater was also a deep crimson color, almost matching the shower curtain.
“ Sick bastard,” muttered Brewer, who went to the sink and turned on the tap, half expecting blood to flow from it. He repeatedly threw cold water into his face, trying desperately to accept what his eyes had presented to him.
Boutine reentered with no further news on Jessica, except that she was still not answering at the hotel. Boutine's agitation was near crippling. Brewer stumbled from the bathroom, visibly quaking.
“ I know how you feel about her. Otto, but we've got to believe she's okay.” Brewer's voice was shaking unevenly.
“ What'd you see back there?” he asked. “You're white as a ghost.”
“ Fucking bathtub is filled with blood.”
“ Christ.” Otto stepped around Brewer to see for himself.
“ We've got to do a top-to-bottom of this place. Find every scrap of evidence so the break-in won't be held against us. We'll need to take samples of the bath”-Joe Brewer was about to say water, then blood, but he was unable to know what to call it-”the stuff in the bathtub.”
Brewer had been transfixed. Now Otto came back ashen as well. “Just imagine how many people have provided this bastard with his kicks. Imagine him using your blood for his bloody bath.”
“ The kitchen, Otto. Let's check the fridge.”
“ Be my guest.”
They toured the kitchen and found the refrigerator near empty, with no jars filled with blood.
“ Not much of an eater, is he?” said Brewer.
“ What's down here?” asked Boutine, locating a door to a basement area. It was dark and dirty below, and once more the bulb light that flickered on did so beneath a curtain of streaked-on blood. The basement floor was dirt, the shelving laced here and there with cobwebs, but the shelves clear of dust. There were no power tools to be found, and the centerpiece of the room was a large, floor-model freezer, quite old, with the word Philco nearly invisible on its front.
“ Must've taken the tools with him,” Brewer was saying when Boutine, ahead of him, said, “The freezer.”
Boutine pulled the top back and stared down at a handful of blood packs and a few jars of frozen blood. “He's cleaned out his stock. This tears it. He knows we're on to him, and he's cleared out.”
“ But how? How'd he know?”
“ Earlier conclusion. From the papers, from something Jess said to the press, who knows? Overplayed his hand killing Lowenthal, knew we were close on his ass, panicked, rushed outta here in one hell of a hurry.”
“ Yeah, left his tub full of blood, left his cat, too, all locked up. I don't know. Seems to me he plans to come back.”
“ Should've listened to Jess. Should've known better,” Otto lamented.
“ Hey, the bastard had us all fooled with Lowenthal's suicide.”
“ Not Jess. She knew. She knew it was phony, and she tried to tell me so. And somehow he knows that she knew, that she is a threat to him.”
“ You're jumping to wild conclusions, Otto.”
“ Am I? Christ, I wish I were.”
More cars arrived outside, both police and FBI, strobe lights alerting the entire neighborhood to their presence. Boutine turned to Brewer and sadly said, “If I only knew where she was.”
“ Sit this one out, Otto. Take my car. Get out to Lincolnshire and find her. You'll see, she'll be fine.”
“ I've already sent cars out there, dammit. No one can locate her.”
In Matisak's den, where he had written his letter to Jessica Cora
n, there were blood splotches on the pad over the huge oaken desk, and a pen like the one found at Lowenthal's.”
“ Don't touch anything,” said Otto. “Bag it all. It'll prove to be the same blood used in the letter to Jess.”
“ The inkwell,” said Brewer, recalling the story of the blood letter. They had found the same paraphernalia at Lowenthal's.
Boutine used a handkerchief to lift it and sniff. “Blood, all right.”
“ Real raving maniac, this guy.”
“ Able to work a nine-to-five when he wasn't bloodletting.” Boutine had had enough. He replaced the inkwell on the blotter and said, “Be sure our guys get it all and take complete care with everything. Get the usual-”
“ We'll take care of it, Otto.”
“ And the telephone records. They might tell us a lot.”
“ Will do.”
Boutine, his shoulders slumped, feeling defeated by the vampire once more, went through the house the way he had come and out into the air where he could breathe. The house had been warm, like a Turkish bath, Matisak's disease-as Jess had said-requiring warmth. Well, now things were going to be really hot for the bastard, he thought. But the fear and worry for Jessica beat back all other thoughts, and so he found Brewer's car and called once again into central to learn if anyone anywhere in the city had heard word one from Jessica Coran.
TWENTY-NINE
Jessica fought the effects of the sedative, knowing somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind that the madman would prefer a mild sedative to a strong one, that he'd prefer to see some life in her as he drained it away to no life. It would be his way.
Images of the ugly Gamble and the dark, taller figure pawing over her body now played in her fevered mind, as if flashing on a screen at the back of her retinas. She clawed her way back, back, back toward consciousness, praying against hope that they had not found and removed her gun from her.
As she did so, she began to feel something.
She felt claustrophobic; she felt a heavy weight against her chest. She felt an animal presence over her like the stifling creature in a nightmare painting that might sit upon a woman's breast and suck the breath from her mouth. She felt Gamble at her breasts, pleasing himself over her where he had torn away her blouse.
She inwardly cringed and heard the other man saying, “That's enough, Gamble.”
“ I'm n-n-not fin-finished with her.”
She felt her slacks being undone and tugged over her hips. “Oh, Ch-Ch-Christ.” moaned Gamble, “w-w-what's this?”
“ It's a gun, you idiot. She's had it right along.”
“ I–I-I coulda been-been shot?”
“ Get off and get the gun. Give it to me,” the vampire demanded.
Gamble snatched at the leather pouch just as she tried to grab the gun. She was hit across the face with something feeling like a brick-a shoe with a foot in it-and it sent her back to the depths of confusion.
“ Make her ready,” said Matisak.
'Tmmmmmmm n-n-not finished w-with-”
“ You're finished, damn you. Gamble? Gamble? Put the fucking gun down.”
“ Y-y-you pro-misssssed mmm-me.”
“ All right, all right, but we don't have all night, Gamble.”
Matisak didn't want Gamble's semen in her. He didn't want another hotshot criminalist to question why the final victim of the Chicago vampire would be raped. Matisak had worked out a neat formula. The vampire was, in fact, two men: Lowenthal and Gamble. Now, with Lowenthal gone, Gamble finds himself unable to carry on, despite a valiant effort to do so with Dr. Coran. If the little prick penetrated her and left his DNA all over her, one or more of Coran's associates might simply pick up where she left off, too nosy for his or her own good.
But now Gamble, standing nude with his disgusting shape and his even more vile erection pointed at Matisak, along with the woman's. 38 Police Special, had the upper hand, and the man was downright crazy. For a moment, Matisak believed he was going to fire.
It hadn't taken much to talk the weak-minded fool into “sharing” a woman. Matisak knew all about Gamble's fantasies and proclivities and perversion. His was a sexual perversion, unlike Matisak, who had no interest in sex for sex's sake.
“ All right, all right, Hillary. You're right.”
“ And I don't want you here when I do it!” He was asserting himself with his big guns pointed, and the stutter had suddenly disappeared. “Wait in the other room.” Sure, sure, Hillary.” Matisak turned and did as he was told. “Take whatever time you feel is necessary.”
“ This is going to be the best night of my life,” Hillary Gamble explained. “She is beautiful.”
“ Yes, yes, she is.”
He closed the door behind him, giving Gamble enough time to begin to feel comfortable, pacing as he did so, rubbing his chin with his gloved hands. He then found his own gun, a Beretta. He located the stubby silencer, and he screwed this onto the gun slowly.
When he reentered the room, Gamble was at the woman again like a pig over the trough. He made of himself an easy target, but it must be done exactly right. He scanned for the other gun, but it must be below the sofa beside which lay Gamble across the woman on the floor. She was beginning to fight back, coming around again, when suddenly she pulled over a lamp and it came crashing down on Gamble's head.
She then pushed him off and slithered toward a back hallway. Matisak gave pursuit, telling her to halt or he would put a bullet into her back. She turned and looked up at him from across the room, still in a dazed state of mind, yet terrified of the blood-drinker. However, somehow she managed to call his bluff.
“ You won't shoot me,” she said. “You don't want to waste my blood.”
“ I will if I must.”
She took her chances, knowing that remaining inside this madhouse meant certain death; she leapt to her feet and raced for the back door, tearing it open, expecting the death shot to come any moment. She felt the cool night air on her bare legs and torso, and she screamed again and again before she felt his weight descend like a boulder over her, knocking her into the patchy, weedy grass and dirt of Gamble's backyard where she caught a momentary glance at the van used to lure her into the trap. She'd had the wind knocked from her and now she tried to catch her breath, but at the same time his gloved hand smothered her and he spit into her ear, saying, “Bitch! Damnable bitch!”
He forced her to her feet and guided her roughly back toward the maw of the death house, propelling her through the entryway, but never letting go of the grip he had on her arm, twisting it until she thought it would come off.
Inside, facing Gamble, who was still in pain, his forehead bleeding, Matisak shouted at the small man, “You stupid little bastard! Maybe you'll listen to me now! Now we do things my way! Now, get the rope. We string her up. Now!”
He then said into Jessica's ear, “You won't be doing any more running after I cut your ankle tendons.” Gamble came around her with the rope, a ferret that made her skin crawl. As soon as her hands were tied, both men relaxed, and the one called Matisak, remaining in charge, shouted, “Get that black soldier out of here. It's time we went to work on her.”
“ Please… please,” she pleaded uselessly.
Gamble said, “I love to hear a woman plead.”
She felt the quick slashes to her ankles like bee stings when Matisak used his scalpel on her. She felt the first loss of blood trickling from her wounds and realized for the first time that she was going to die here. Her mind flashed on the horrible thoughts Candy Copeland's death had awakened in her that first night in Wekosha: It's different when you know you are dying… when you die badly… when suffering is prolonged… Just knowing your own death is at hand…
Worse still was knowing that Matisak could succeed with his diabolical cover-up, and no one would ever know the truth she would take to her grave…
She could hear them grunting as they worked to lower Kaseem's body so that she could take his place. Matisak must have had second thou
ghts about the police finding two bodies at the same location, for now he was ordering Gamble to help him carry the body to his van, saying, “I'll dispose of this problem later.”
Gamble, like an obedient lapdog, trailed out with the monster, an Igor to his Frankenstein. She shouted after them for Gamble to come to his senses and to realize that the other man was using him.
But they were gone and she was left to struggle against her bonds. When she did so, she came to realize that her bleeding, numb ankles had already been placed in the noose from which she would soon be dangling. Her heart raced as she fought to bring herself up to a sitting position. Tearful, dirty, all but her underclothes torn from her, she forced herself to be calm, relaxing her every muscle. She was double-jointed and she knew if she could concentrate, she could bring her arms overhead and at least get her hands out in front of her. Tied or not, they could be used as a deadly weapon, as she had learned at the academy. But her attempt was short-circuited when she heard them barging back through the kitchen, coming for her.
Gamble entered alone, coming for her, stretching his grimy hands out to her breasts as she shouted, “Dammit, Gamble, he's setting you up! Like he did Lowenthal!”
“ Lowenthal k-k-killed him-s-s-self,” he said to reassure himself, and she knew now that the thought had at least once been entertained by the retarded Gamble.
“ Don't be a fool, Gamble. He intends to kill us both. “
Suddenly Matisak was forcing something into Gamble's hand. It was the Beretta, pointed directly at the little man's temple. Matisak stood firmly behind Gamble with complete control over the shorter man.
“ Good night. Gamble,” said Matisak as he pulled the trigger.
Gamble's body fell with a sound like potatoes rolling from a gunnysack. Brain matter and blood sprayed Jessica where she sat, attempting to scurry from Matisak. Her hands still behind her back, her ankles bound in the tightened noose, she could offer no resistance beyond flailing and an attempted weak-kneed kick or two. He smiled down at her before jamming a gag into her mouth, his rubber-gloved hand almost breaking her jaw. He tied a gauze bandage around the gag to hold it in place, and he spoke as he worked.
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