Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  “Better. Am I good to go?” She sipped more water. It was time to get out of this place. She’d checked in under the name Donna Utley, which that psycho killer now had, and she’d rather not stick around. No reason to stay in Florida anyway. She’d recover better at her home in Atlanta.

  “Go?” Morales chuckled. “You are a firecracker, aren’t you? You shouldn’t go anywhere for a while.” At her upset look he waved his hands, shaking his head in defeat. “All right, at least until that IV bag runs down. I added some broad-spectrum antibiotics to it, as well as more morphine. You need the fluids, too.”

  “So when?” she asked.

  “Two, three hours.”

  “I can live with that.” She sank back down.

  “Perhaps.” Morales stood up. He picked up two pill bottles from the table and set them down next to her on the nightstand. “The white ones are painkillers. Take them as you need to for the pain. The pinkish ones are antibiotics. Take one four times a day until they’re gone. I don’t know if it’ll save you, but it can’t hurt.”

  “I thought you saved me?” Delilah tried to focus on him. Her body wanted more sleep, exhaustion catching up to her after a day of adrenaline and pain.

  “I stitched you up, stopped the bleeding. But if your abdominal cavity was punctured, you’ll likely get peritonitus, go septic in a few days, and die. Horribly.”

  She looked at his grim face, knowing what he wasn’t saying. “I’m not going to a hospital.”

  “Not yet,” he muttered. “Look, if you get dizzy, lots of nausea, so much pain you can’t stand or even move, or a high fever, then you’ve got to get to a hospital. I realize they might call the police, but is risking death worth whatever you’re avoiding?”

  Delilah closed her eyes and thought about the one time she’d visited Benny, her father, in prison. The walls all closing in, the people staring at you all the time. The tight spaces and tiny rooms. The locked doors, so many locked doors. Rooms with only one exit and barred windows or no windows at all. Even the air had tasted like something a hundred others had breathed before her. She’d gone to see Benny because she felt a vague familial tie. He’d helped her find her calling in life, teaching her some of the best short cons, showing her how to hotwire her first car.

  But she hadn’t been back to visit. Thinking about it gave her chills and sometimes she woke from sleep shivering with the after-images of concrete walls and windows that wouldn’t open. If there was a hell for her, Delilah was sure it would look like prison.

  “Yeah,” she said softly, opening her eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Morales shrugged and packed up. Delilah pulled the yellow gold and diamond bracelets off her wrists and offered them to him. She wasn’t sure if Cardiff had worked out payment with the doctor, but Morales hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Thank you,” he said, “But I feel cruel taking payment from a dead woman.”

  “Take them anyway. For all you know, they’re fake.” She tossed the bracelets at him.

  Morales caught them easily. “God’s truth,” he said with a ghost of a smile.

  She stopped herself from asking him how he knew Cardiff, why a guy like him was even willing to patch up crooks. No questions, nothing personal. Those were the rules if you wanted to be a pro. But she couldn’t help wondering, turning over possibilities in her morphine-clouded mind.

  Delilah managed to stand long enough to relock the door after closing it behind the strange doctor, holding her IV bag up with one hand. She stumbled to the back door and flipped on the rear light, looking for Max. There was no sign of the dog. Fog clouded her head, her body begging her to lie down again.

  “Stupid mutt,” she whispered. She knew she was probably better off without him, but part of her felt guilty for dumping him outside in a strange place. Delilah hoped he’d come back. She promised herself she’d look for the dog before she left and staggered back to the bed.

  She slid back onto the mattress, replaced the IV on its hook, and dragged the coverlet over her legs. Her tired body and the morphine did the rest and she dropped into a dreamless sleep.

  Nine

  Poor yard hygiene, Ted thought, was definitely one of the markers of the lower class. The palms in this neighborhood were overgrown; the lawns more weed than grass. He cruised past the house that belonged to the dog collar, watching the neighborhood. It was quiet enough, through his open car window he could hear the occasional child’s laugh or shout, but nobody was out in the street or their dilapidated front yards.

  The house was a run-down ranch, lacking pride of ownership. The chain-link fence looked like it belonged more in a junkyard than a suburb. Ted doubted that there was a man in that house. No real man would let his domain look so slovenly.

  Ted parked his Mercedes down the street and walked to the front door, casually holding the dog collar. He had tucked the Beretta into the back of his pants, letting his shirt billow over it. Ted knocked, then pressed the doorbell. He heard the sound of tinny chimes ringing inside.

  An older, overweight Hispanic woman opened the door, peering up at him with suspicious dark eyes. She took in his pressed shirt, shiny leather shoes, and the opal cufflinks and her expression shifted to confusion.

  He put on his best and brightest smile for her, swallowing his disgust.

  “Excuse me, Ma’am, but did you lose a dog?” Ted held up the collar.

  Before the woman could answer, a bouncy teenaged girl ducked into view and peered over the fat lady’s shoulder.

  “Bobo? Did you find him?”

  Heat suffused Ted’s face, spreading down into his chest and then his groin. The girl had large dark eyes and beautiful chestnut hair. Her nose was straight, her skin cinnamon and clear. She wore a tiny pink tank-top with a built-in shelf bra that did little to disguise the tips of her plump young breasts.

  She was glorious, just like those perky girls who’d taunted him for so many years. She was perfect. The universe had handed him another gift, as good as an angel coming down and saying he was on the right path.

  “May I come in?” Ted asked. “I’d like to talk to you about your dog.”

  The woman glared at him for a second, evaluating his looks, and then sighed. “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “Is Bobo okay? Where is he? We got home and he was just gone.” The perky girl crowded in on Ted, reaching for the dog collar.

  Ted let her have it. So Donna had stolen the dog. Dead end here.

  He smiled at the teenager. Or perhaps not. She smelled of strawberries and baby powder. He cursed himself for not having made up a new kit. He had no ropes, no knives.

  Oh well. He’d just have to make do.

  “Where did you get this collar?” the fat woman asked.

  Ted nearly snarled at the distraction. He didn’t want to deal with this overgrown hag, he wanted to focus and enjoy the bouncy young creature enchanting him with her lovely eyes and smooth skin. With a quick gesture he drew the gun from behind his back, flicking the safety off.

  Both women shrieked, eyes going wide. They crowded together, the hag putting the girl behind her.

  “Don’t,” she whimpered. “We don’t have anything. You can have it. Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt my Estrellita.”

  Estrellita. Little star. She’d be his little star soon enough.

  “It’s okay, ladies. No one has to get hurt.” Ted kept his voice calm, soothing. No need to sound mean, he’d learned it just made things worse. People liked to have a little hope; they liked to cling to the lies. Ted could let them do that, he wasn’t cruel. Let them keep their delusions until the end. It made them more cooperative.

  He moved them into the crowded little dining area, made the mother sit down. Estrellita pointed to a drawer in the kitchen that held duct tape and he had her bind her mother up. The girl’s hands shook and Ted smiled, his blood singing at her fear.

  She was a good girl though. No heroics in this one, no real fight. She still believed that everything would turn out just fin
e.

  “Sit down on the floor, Estrellita,” Ted told her once the mother was bound and gagged to his satisfaction.

  “Please,” she begged, “Please, we won’t do anything. We won’t tell. Just go. We don’t have anything.”

  “You do,” Ted said soothingly as he moved around the galley kitchen, picking out the knife he wanted. “It’s okay. Now, Estrellita, where’s your father?”

  Ted glanced at the old woman as he said this, noting the lack of a wedding ring on her clenched left hand.

  “He’s going to be home any minute now, so you’d better go,” Estrellita said, showing a small amount of pluck.

  “Don’t lie to me.” Ted let a little edge tinge his voice, pointing the knife at her while he tapped the gun against his thigh.

  “He lives in Miami,” she said, tears sliding down her plump young cheeks.

  “Siblings?” Ted wanted to make sure they weren’t disturbed, though his heart sped up at the thought of sisters, pretty girls like his little star.

  She nodded toward the far living room wall, curling her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “They don’t live here anymore.”

  Ted glanced at the fake fireplace. Pictures in cheap frames lined the fake mantel. The girls in the pictures looked like their mother more than the sister on the floor at his feet. One stuffed wedding cake into her fat mouth, the moment of disgusting gluttony frozen forever in its frame.

  Cows. And not yet past their twenties if Ted guessed right. Estrellita should be thanking him for sparing her their obese fate. She would forever be young and fresh and smiling in those picture frames, caught in youth and preserved. A lily among weeds.

  Ted set the safety on his gun and laid it down on the fake wood dining table. He touched the knife blade as Estrellita stared up at him with bloodshot eyes, her face wet from crying. Her slender body, just growing into itself, shook. She was so brave, so beautiful. She didn’t scream or beg.

  Not like her slovenly worn out mother. Even with the layers of tape, the cow’s protests and cries bled through, marring the peace and quiet of Ted’s perfect afternoon.

  His little star didn’t struggle until he cut her mother’s throat. After that she fought him for a moment. But not long.

  Ted cut away the dying girl’s clothing, enjoying the heavy rasp of her breath as she struggled for air around the wound in her ribs. Her breasts were as lovely as he’d expected, better than Moira Stafford’s in tenth grade when he’d been caught in the girl’s locker room peeking.

  His little star. Strawberries and baby powder. Ted swallowed her weak cries into his mouth and thanked the universe for giving him such a lovely present.

  Ten

  Ted washed the blood from his hands, the pink water swirling around the stainless metal of the kitchen sink before draining away. Outside the ranch house, the sky darkened with clouds as the afternoon sun dipped toward an orange and grey horizon.

  This had been a nice interlude, a little gift of the universe to affirm he was on track in his new life, but Ted felt the hunt awaken in his blood. The dead teenager was an appetizer to the real prey.

  Donna was still out there, taunting him by living on while he was forced to abandon his carefully constructed existence.

  After wiping his hands clean and rolling his sleeves back down, Ted pulled the opal cufflinks out of his pocket and replaced them. He rubbed a thumb over the brilliant red, purple, and greenish gems. Donna had stolen these. Where was she?

  Ted left the ranch house, walking back to his car. He opened the trunk and took out the plastic bag with the bloody glove and towel. Time for more fun with the police, though he imagined that Donna would be long gone and dead before all the evidence was sorted out. The cops were so slow about things like DNA and fingerprints, reality being nothing like the TV shows, for which Ted was always grateful.

  The neighborhood had more cars in it than earlier, more lights shone from the surrounding houses, but no one gave Ted a second glance as he walked casually back to the house and entered. He removed the towel and glove from the bag. The blood had dried to a thick brown and black paste on both. He dropped the glove on Estrellita’s still body, admiring the curve of her breast and the dizzying scent of her skin one last time as he bent down and rolled her over onto her face, careful to keep his hands out of the sticky mess.

  Ted smeared the towel around in the pool of blood under the dead mother and then hung it in the hall bathroom. He turned up the air-conditioning on the window unit in the living room and left the house.

  He drove toward Daytona Beach and pulled off the highway, circling until he found a pawn shop. He parked, watching as a man in a loud floral-print shirt emerged from the shop and got slowly into Mustang and drove away, head down, shoulders slumped.

  Ted opened Donna’s shoulder bag and looked more closely at the contents, tucking his face near the bag and inhaling, hoping somehow this might reveal the fatal clue to her whereabouts.

  The purse smelled like a purse, the absence of perfumes or noticeable female items bothering Ted. This woman didn’t behave like a woman should. She’d worn such nice jewelry, yet no perfume? Her bag held no make-up, no keys, no personal items at all. Cool and professional.

  Ted took a deep breath and forced his mind to calm. She was just another girl, though a different type than he usually hunted. He had to relax, to think more like her.

  The jewelry in the boxes was expensive, the handful of earrings dumped carelessly in the bottom of the purse less so. She had to have broken into a safe. So, a good thief. The address on the driver’s license listed her as living in Nashville, but Ted guessed that with what he knew about her, that address was fake.

  She stole the dog as a decoy, a disguise to blend in. No one would question a nicely dressed woman out walking a friendly dog. Ted could appreciate that, he’d used puppies bought with cash at pet stores to lure in victims before. Women did stupid things for pets and children, put themselves in danger in ways they’d never consider if faced with just a man by himself.

  Donna was a professional, and from out of town. Ted thought about the trips he’d made, the hunting he’d done in other cities. His neighborhood, the one Donna had chosen to rob, was wealthy, and right off a main freeway. Easy access, easy escape.

  Mulling that over, working out how to narrow his search of hotels, Ted left the car and went into the pawn shop. He blinked in the dimmer interior, grimacing at the sudden assault of musty foreign scents. This place was full of the discards of others, curios and bright jewelry, guns and even a crossbow, relics of lives that couldn’t hang on to what they had.

  An older man, with crooked teeth and bright green eyes that were lively and incongruous with his age-spotted tan skin and straggling salt and pepper hair, sat behind the counter. There was plate-glass around him, but the half-door was open, slid aside for the business day.

  “Evening,” Ted said and put the purse down on the counter.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got,” the man said. He looked at the women’s shoulder bag and his bright green eyes narrowed.

  Ted didn’t care how suspicious it looked. Theodore Whitechapel was still a good ID and Ted would get the mileage out of it before he disappeared. Knowing how much these things might be worth could help him define his prey, sort out how good of a thief she was.

  He upended the purse onto the counter, stacking the velvet boxes to one side. He’d removed the cash already, leaving only the jewelry and watches.

  The man got out a magnifying glass and turned on a brighter light. He spent a long time looking over each piece, enough that Ted had to fight not to shift around or glance too often at the door. It would do no good to look suspicious.

  “High quality stuff,” the man said at last. “But you know that, being the owner and all, right?”

  Ted chuckled, though there wasn’t much mirth in it. He thought about the stupid little thief and her escape from him, her wide brown eyes and the blood smeared all over his house.
A house he couldn’t go back to, because of her.

  “Bitch thinks she’s leaving me, wants a divorce,” he said, staring right into the emerald gaze of the clerk. Ire tinged his voice, his eyes, just as he wanted it to.

  The man blinked and then a slow smile bared his uneven teeth. “Guess she won’t need these anymore then. I’ll just need some ID from you.”

  Ted relaxed a hair, the tension draining from his shoulders. “No problem,” he said.

  The amount was less than Ted thought it should be, but he was a few grand richer now and didn’t care. Besides, it wouldn’t have fit the persona he’d taken on to argue about the price. Angry, hurt husbands wouldn’t quibble over sold gifts.

  He punched on the phone in his car and hid the money in the glove box. Hotels near easy egresses. That’s where he’d stay. Places small enough to take cash, maybe rent by the week, places without cameras or requiring too much ID.

  He started calling hotels again, asking for Donna Utley, focusing on ones in the vicinity of the Daytona Beach airport. If she’d left town already, he was going to have to let her go. It twisted his gut to think about losing her, about her out there, surviving while Theodore Whitechapel had to disappear and re-invent. Donna going on living, his one failure.

  If, of course, she survived the gut wound he’d given her. But the thought of her dying alone and unmarked made him even angrier. She wouldn’t know why she was dying, who he was, how she’d ruined everything. She wouldn’t be able to appreciate his power in her final moments.

  “Let her be in Daytona Beach still,” he murmured, and called information.

  Ted got a hit on the eighth one, a place called the Sunrise Lodge. Donna Utley, staying in room 159 and had she not answered when he’d called before? Would he like to leave a message?

  Ted swallowed a laugh, beating one fist against the steering wheel. Someone had called for her before? That was interesting. It meant she was likely still in town. He asked to be put through, let the phone ring once, and then hung up. His heart raced, blood pumping into his arms, rushing in his ears. So close, only twenty minutes away with the evening traffic.