The Prettiest One: A Thriller

by James Hankins

  She said, “Do you think he killed these woman after . . .”

  “No,” Bix said. “It would have been in the news if almost a dozen women went missing or turned up dead over the last fifteen months. And I didn’t hear anything like that.”

  That made sense to Josh.

  Caitlin nodded. “How had he been getting away with this for so long?” she asked.

  “He drugged them, right?” Josh said. “Some of the women may not remember anything. And even if they do, maybe they’re too embarrassed to come forward.”

  Bix added, “And maybe he threatened the hell out of the ones who did remember. Also, maybe some or even all of the women are hookers. I’m not sure how many of them would be anxious to go to the cops about something like this.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Caitlin said.

  Bix nodded. “No argument from me. Time to go now, though, I think.”

  “We can’t just leave those videos on there,” Caitlin said. “It’s not fair to the poor women in them.”

  “It’s evidence,” Josh said.

  “Evidence that might end up helping you,” Bix added, “if I can’t talk you out of your plan to go to the cops.”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s the smart thing, hon,” Josh said. Caitlin sighed, which Josh took to mean that she would relent on the issue. “I guess we leave this folder behind for the cops, too, right?” he asked.

  “Leave it,” Caitlin said. “We need them to find it. If we miraculously produce it later, it could look suspicious, right?”

  Josh nodded in agreement and Bix didn’t object.

  One by one, they headed back down the hall and through the living room. As they walked, Josh noticed that Caitlin kept her head up when she passed Bookerman’s corpse.

  At Boston’s Logan International Airport, Chops Maggert snatched his small suitcase from the baggage-claim conveyor belt. It was almost the last one down the chute, as always. Someone’s bag had to come down first. Why had that bag never belonged to Chops in his entire life? He wouldn’t have checked his bag for this trip except that he wanted to bring a couple of his favorite knives with him—just in case—and he couldn’t have done so in a carry-on bag.

  He looked for signs to the ground transportation area. He’d have to take a shuttle bus to the car rental company and pick up the midsize sedan he was renting, then drive out to Smithfield, which he could probably do in an hour and twenty minutes. As he walked, he took his phone out of his pocket and dialed his brother’s number for what felt like the twentieth time since yesterday. If he got lucky, Mike would answer and Chops could turn around and head right back to Los Angeles. He hated Massachusetts. Blood was blood, of course, so if Mike were in trouble, Chops would be there for him, but if he didn’t have to be . . . well, even better. He waited as the phone rang. Finally, the call connected and was routed to his brother’s voice mail.

  “Mike,” Chops said, “that was your last chance to answer your goddamn phone. Now I have to come and find you. And you’d better be dead, because if you’re just coked up or strung out or whatever the hell you do, you’re gonna wish you were dead.”

  He ended the call and stepped into the Boston night just in time to see the doors to the Hertz shuttle bus close and the bus pull away. He looked at his watch. Another would be along in a few minutes. Still, he was pissed that he’d missed it. Which went with his mood perfectly, because he was pissed that he’d had to leave his wife and daughter behind, and miss the circus, and fly thousands of miles just because his brother wouldn’t answer his damn phone.

  He hoped Mike wasn’t dead because if he was, Chops wasn’t sure there was much he could do about it. But if, on the other hand, he was still alive, then Chops might have to kick his ass a little, and right now, he was in the mood for a little violence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  AFTER LEAVING THE HOUSE OF Mike Bookerman—who still wasn’t and would never be Mike Maggert to Caitlin—Caitlin wanted to go straight to the police. She had wanted answers? Well, she’d found them. And she believed she now knew enough of the facts to assure her that she belonged behind bars. The guys, on the other hand, had their own opinions. Bix proposed that Caitlin let him visit his shady friend, the one who had already set her up with a false identity once, and have him do so again. He reiterated his offer to accompany her on the lam, if Josh were opposed to the idea of joining her. By contrast, Josh knew her well enough to know that if Caitlin wanted to go to the police, he wouldn’t be able to dissuade her. He proposed that she wait until morning at least and decide with a clear mind. Because Caitlin was exhausted, she agreed to Josh’s proposal. She did not agree to Bix’s. In the morning, she would march herself into the nearest police station. So tonight, she might as well get a good night’s sleep. It might be the last good one of her life.

  Bix pulled his Explorer into his driveway and they got out of the car. Caitlin’s legs were lead as she tramped up the cracked cement walkway to the porch, then up the stairs to the front door. Using his key, Bix unlocked two dead bolts.

  “Ladies first,” he said as he pushed the door open for Caitlin. She wondered if he was also referring to Josh, needling him the way he had done several times already today. When she turned to see if Josh was annoyed, she saw that he wasn’t on the porch but was walking back to the car. Must have forgotten something.

  Caitlin walked into the apartment with Bix right behind her.

  Immediately, she sensed that something wasn’t right in the dark living room, but she didn’t know what it was. Then she saw it. A shadow in the armchair. Bix saw it, too, because he said loudly, “Who the hell are you?”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” a voice said in the darkness. “I have a gun.”

  Bix said, “Take it easy,” as he shut the door behind them. That left Josh outside . . . which Caitlin realized was the point.

  “Where’s the other guy?” the voice asked.

  “What other guy?”

  “See, you’re already doing something stupid. You’re lying. I heard there was another guy with you tonight.”

  “We dropped him at his place,” Bix said, no doubt hoping, as Caitlin was, that Josh had heard Bix say, “Who the hell are you?” and realized there was trouble. Caitlin further hoped that Josh was on the phone with the police at that very moment.

  Josh had been on his way back to the Explorer to retrieve his tablet, which he had left on Bix’s backseat, when he heard Bix say, “Who the hell are you?” Someone had broken in and was waiting for them. Josh forgot about his tablet and hurried into the shadow of the building. His first instinct was to call the police. It was probably the safest thing to do. It would be what Caitlin wanted. Josh wasn’t quite as ready as she was for her to turn herself in just yet, but for all he knew, her life could be in immediate jeopardy, so he had no choice. He reached into his back pocket for his phone and found nothing but an empty pocket. He checked his others. No phone. With a quick glance at the still-dark living room window near the front door, he dashed to the rear door of the Explorer and peered through the window. There was his cell phone, on the backseat right next to his tablet. He tugged on the door handle quietly . . . and without success. Bix must have used a remote to lock the car.

  That changed everything. Josh couldn’t afford to waste the time it would take to knock quietly on neighbors’ doors until he found one willing to call the police for him. In this neighborhood, that could take hours. In fact, in this neighborhood, he was likely to be shot for sneaking around their houses at night. Or one of the neighborhood dogs would start barking at him, alerting the intruder in Bix’s house, who might then act rashly.

  Josh had to move fast. For all he knew, the intruder intended to kill Caitlin in the next few seconds. And Bix, too, though Josh wasn’t terribly focused on that aspect of the situation. He hurried around the side of the house toward the back of the building. Thankfully, the mangy pit bull that lived next door must have been inside th
e neighbor’s house, because it didn’t bark its ugly square head off as Josh made his way around to the backyard and over to the window he had left cracked open that morning. He pulled over a plastic lawn chair, stood on it, and slid the window farther up as silently as he could. He slipped quietly through it and into the bedroom where he and Caitlin had spent last night, then moved through the dark room over to the closet and eased open the door. Right where he’d seen it that morning, leaning in one corner of the closet, was a black wooden baseball bat.

  The shadow in the chair reached up and turned on a light on the end table beside him, which illuminated the intruder. Though Bix had never seen the man before, he knew him at once. It wasn’t difficult. How many men with long blond hair and an eye patch could there be running around Smithfield? One-Eyed Jack hadn’t lied; he had a gun in his hand, which rested in his lap. Bix had one, too, which rested in the glove compartment of his truck, where he’d left it like an idiot.

  “I guess we found Jack,” Bix said to Caitlin.

  “My name’s not Jack,” the guy said as he stood and, with a wave of his gun, motioned them toward the sofa.

  “It’ll be okay, Katie,” Bix said as he took Caitlin’s hand and together they walked to the sofa and sat. Bix was mildly surprised that her hand wasn’t trembling. Nor did she grip his hand tightly with panic. No, her hand was cool and calm, like she seemed to be.

  The man had remained standing. He looked at them. The room was still only dimly lit, but Bix could see his one eye going back and forth between them, before settling on Caitlin.

  “I recognize you,” he said. “And you recognize me, don’t you?”

  Caitlin didn’t respond.

  “I remember you from the bar the other night. And maybe from the fight club, too, I think. It’s hard to forget seeing a face like yours in places like those.”

  Still, Caitlin said nothing.

  “Most importantly, you were at the warehouse, weren’t you?”

  Bix thought that Caitlin should probably say something soon . . . anything . . . or the guy with the gun was going to get mad. He might get mad enough to shoot somebody, and even if he intended only to wound one of them—probably Bix—in order to make Caitlin talk, who knew how good his aim was with just the one eye? He might aim for a knee and put his bullet in a heart or, worse, a crotch. Bix hoped when Josh had called 911, he was able to convince the cops that they should probably hurry. Bix had been opposed to the notion of involving the police, but at the moment, it seemed like a fantastic idea. He had no doubt that Josh would see it as the safest course of action, too.

  “You really need to start talking,” the guy said. “What did you see at the warehouse the other night?”

  Finally, Caitlin spoke. Her answer surprised Bix.

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  It looked like One-Eye was even more shocked than Bix. His eye widened in surprise. Then their surprise multiplied tenfold as a shadow raced from the hallway. The man heard or sensed the movement and turned as Josh charged at him with a baseball bat cocked. The guy threw an arm up to block his head as Josh swung and the bat connected with his shoulder, eliciting a howl but apparently doing little in the way of serious damage, because not only did the man remain standing, but he immediately lowered the shoulder that had been struck and rammed into Josh, knocking him back against a wall and overturning a table and knocking the lamp to the floor, where it flickered before going out. Josh’s head smacked off the plaster behind him and he dropped the bat. Unfortunately, the other guy didn’t drop his gun. He pointed it down at Josh and looked as though he was debating pulling the trigger.

  “No!” Caitlin cried.

  The single eye stared down at Josh a moment longer, and then the guy kicked him.

  “Get over onto the sofa, next to them.”

  Josh climbed to his feet, touching the back of his head gingerly, and sat on one end of the couch, next to Caitlin. His eyes were down. Bix followed them to Caitlin’s lap, where his own hand was still holding Caitlin’s. He withdrew it.

  “Please tell me you called the cops before you came charging in here,” Bix said.

  After the slightest hesitation, Josh said, “Of course. You think I’m stupid?”

  After a slight hesitation of his own, One-Eye said, “You’re lying. If you called the cops, you would have waited outside for them. Lie to me again and I’ll shoot out your knees.”

  The man was right, Bix knew. For some reason Bix couldn’t fathom, Josh hadn’t called the cops. Instead, he’d snuck into the house and, armed only with a baseball bat, attacked a guy with a gun. Stupid. But ballsy, too. Bix had to give him that.

  “And don’t think I don’t know that you lied to me, too,” One-Eye said to Bix. “You said you dropped this guy off at his place.”

  “I did,” Bix said. “He’s been staying here. That makes this his place.”

  The man squinted his eye menacingly. “I should blow out your knee just for being a dick.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Bix said.

  The guy seemed to be considering it for a moment that felt far too long to Bix. Finally, he said, “Turn on that light.”

  Bix turned on the lamp on the end table beside him. The bad guy looked at Caitlin. “I’ll ask you again. What did you see at the warehouse?”

  “And I’ll ask you again,” Caitlin said. “What did you see?”

  One-Eye seemed just as surprised by Caitlin’s response this time as he had the first time. Then he looked angry. “Last chance to tell me what you saw before I hurt someone.”

  “She can’t,” Josh said.

  “Shut up,” One-Eye snapped.

  “You don’t get it. She can’t tell you what she saw. She can’t remember.”

  With the gun still in his hand, the man turned his palms up as though asking the others, Am I the crazy one here?

  “She has amnesia,” Josh said. “If she saw something the other night, she can’t remember it. She can’t remember anything.”

  “Seriously?” One-Eye said. “That’s what you want to go with here?”

  “It’s the truth,” Josh said.

  “It is,” Bix confirmed.

  The man took a deep breath and pointed his gun toward them, at knee level, and swept it back and forth. “Who gets it first?” he asked Caitlin. “How many knees have to die before you talk?”

  “They’re telling you the truth,” Caitlin said. “I can’t remember the other night. I can’t remember anything from the last seven months.”

  “What, we’re in a soap opera? You expect me to believe that bullshit?”

  Caitlin shrugged. “I can’t make you believe it, but it’s the truth. Just out of curiosity, though, what is it you think I saw?”

  Bix couldn’t believe the balls on this girl. If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have laughed at her brazenness. One-Eye looked as though he had no clue how to handle her.

  “Why do you keep asking me that?” he said.

  “Because I don’t remember what happened at the warehouse and I . . . need to remember. Did I . . . kill someone there?”

  The blond man blinked a few times. “Did you—?”

  “Did you see me kill someone?”

  One-Eye shook his head. “Is she for real?” he asked, looking at Bix.

  Bix nodded. “We’re telling you, she doesn’t remember a thing from that night.”

  The man scratched his head with his free hand, frowning. It looked to Bix like a debate was raging inside that blond head. Finally, he said, “I can’t take the chance. I can’t go back to prison. Besides, this sounds like total bullshit.”

  “It’s not,” Bix said.

  The guy frowned for another few seconds, then shook his head emphatically. “I can’t do it. I can’t believe you. I’d like to, but I can’t. I can’t go back to prison. No way.”

  To Bix, it sounded as though the man’s voice had cycled from cocky to unsure to frightened. Bix wondered if it was time to make his
move. He might be shot, but he was probably going to be shot anyway. Taking a run at the guy might be their only chance.

  “I can’t go back,” One-Eye said. “Not after what they did to me there.”

  “She’s telling you the truth,” Josh said.

  The man shook his head again. “I won’t go back. I won’t. I won’t let them take my other eye. I’d rather die.”

  “Your other eye?” Caitlin said.

  When she spoke, the man stopped shaking his head and glared at her for a moment. Then he lifted the eye patch, exposing lids that had been sewn together. The skin was unnaturally flat. The eyeball was gone completely, leaving behind an empty socket covered by taut skin.

  “They took it out with a spoon,” he said. “I’m never going back to prison.” He let the patch fall back into place and shook his head, sadly this time, it seemed. “I think I have to kill you all. I don’t want to. I really don’t. But I just can’t take the chance. Besides, that amnesia story sounds like bullshit.”