Phineas Troutt Series - Three Thriller Novels (Dead On My Feet #1, Dying Breath #2, Everybody Dies #3)

by J. A. Konrath

  Hugo removed his hands. “I want my eighth tear. I’ve been waiting a long time.”

  “I know you do. That’s why I called you here.”

  Hugo tensed his whole body. “You found him?”

  “We have a job coming. A big one. Remember the business a while back, with the Chemist?”

  Hugo nodded. “We paid him a lot of money.”

  “Well, after years of planning, we’re finally ready. We have a date, and it’s approaching fast. If this all comes together, you’ll earn your eighth tear, and the Great Race War will finally begin.”

  “How many people do I get to kill?” Hugo asked.

  “Six thousand. Maybe more.”

  The Man with Seven Tears smiled.

  Six thousand. Maybe more. That was a number worthy of him.

  But there was only one murder that he truly cared about.

  “Tell me where my brother is,” Hugo said. “Tell me where I can find Phin.”

  PASHA

  The day had been molasses slow. Only five scheduled patients and three walk-ins. Dr. Bipasha Kapoor let her assistant go home early and began making her way through the never-ending pile of paperwork that always seemed to be on her desk. Dealing with inventory. Dealing with billing. Dealing with insurance companies. Pasha did well enough to hire others to do this kind of thing, but a combination of stubbornness and a need to maintain complete control over every aspect of her business meant she would just wind up double-checking their work. It was the strength, and the curse, of having a Type A personality.

  Pasha absentmindedly picked at a hangnail, and when it began to bleed she found a pair of cuticle scissors and snipped it away. After an hour, she’d made enough of a dent to justify treating herself to dinner. Pasha checked her cell phone, to see if she’d somehow missed a message from her boyfriend, but Phin hadn’t called. He was involved in something serious, and when she’d pressed him on it, Phin did what he always did; pushed her away.

  Such a hot-and-cold relationship. Incredible, dramatic, emotional highs, and then parts that were heart-wrenching, difficult, and seemingly impossible.

  Pasha had been wondering, more and more, if the plusses were worth the minuses.

  So tonight would be dinner for one. Maybe Thai food. Flutesburg had a good carryout place. Then maybe curl up and watch some TV. She’d been recording a show called Breaking Bad, centered around a guy who turned to a life of crime after being diagnosed with cancer. It sounded a lot like Phin. Her boyfriend had cancer, and his condition seemed directly related to how often he broke the law. The worse he got, the worse he got.

  Bad boys break your heart in so many ways. But it’s quite the ride.

  Pasha was taking her keys from her purse to lock up for the evening when a woman surprised her at the clinic’s front door.

  She appeared… off. It wasn’t an unusual look for patients. Pasha dealt with troubled women on a daily basis. Women with cancer. With addiction problems. With abusive partners. With STDs. Women who were worried they were pregnant, or could never get pregnant. Virgins with questions about sex and birth control, and sex workers with PTSD.

  “We’re closed,” Pasha told her. “I’m sorry.”

  The woman was rail thin, eyes sunken, in need of a shower. “I… uh… think I might be pregnant.”

  “Can you come back tomorrow?” When the words left Pasha’s lips, she knew it wouldn’t fly. No woman would put off waiting for a day.

  “I… I really need to know.”

  “Did you take a home pregnancy test? They’re almost as reliable as blood tests.”

  “I took two. One negative, one positive.”

  Pasha hesitated for another few seconds then said, “Come on in.”

  She led her into the waiting room and picked up a new patient form clipboard behind the receptionist’s desk.

  “Please have a seat and fill this out.”

  The woman made no move to take the clipboard. After an awkward moment she asked, “Where is everybody?”

  “Slow day in the burbs. I need you to fill all of this out before we can do a pregnancy test.”

  “So you’re all alone?”

  An odd question. Was this woman nervous, because she was possibly pregnant?

  Or was it something else?

  Pasha had been robbed once, a junkie who came in demanding drugs. Pasha had no Schedule IV samples, but she offered to write the agitated man a prescription, and he actually gave her his name. The police picked him up twenty minutes later at a local pharmacy. The robbery hadn’t been a pleasant experience, and for several months afterward Pasha had been justifiably paranoid it would happen again. But like all bad memories it faded with time.

  The paranoia came rushing back while staring into this woman’s sunken eyes.

  “My assistant is in his office,” Pasha said.

  “I thought you were closing.”

  “We are closing. But he and I are going over the books. Going to be a late night.”

  “It’s your assistant? Or your boyfriend?”

  Pasha considered her next move. Her threat-meter had gone from three to six, and she’d learned to trust it.

  “My assistant. My boyfriend is coming by in a few minutes.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s bringing dinner.”

  Pasha took a step back as the woman quickly dug a hand into her purse—

  —and pulled out a cell phone.

  Not a weapon, but Pasha was done with this weirdo. She stood straighter and kept her tone even and firm. “I really do have to get a lot of work done. We’re closed. You can come back tomorrow.”

  No wiggle room there. It was an order.

  “She said he’s coming,” the woman told the cell.

  Pasha’s threat meter jumped from six to ten. She was no longer worried this was a robbery. Instead, she feared it was something worse. Perhaps related to the incident she’d hired Phin to take care of. A few months ago, a powerful man had tried to close her clinic, and Phin had helped Pasha make the problem go away. Maybe the man’s friends had come for some kind of revenge.

  This woman was slight; Pasha had two inches and thirty pounds on her. She could push past, get outside, run up the street to the coffee shop, just three doors down. If she was overreacting, she could laugh about it later. But both her gut instinct and her logical mind told her to get out of there.

  Don’t think, just do it.

  Pasha walked past the woman, reaching for the front door just as it opened and two men came in. One was a boy, a teenager, with a shaved head and army pants. The other—

  The other was a monster. Several inches above six feet, his shoulders so broad he had to come in sideways. He locked the door behind him and then stared at Pasha like she was a mosquito he was ready to swat.

  “Tell me where he is,” the giant said, his voice so low it rumbled.

  Pasha considered the back exit, and she turned around and almost ran into the gun that the woman was pointing. A second later, two enormous hands grabbed her arms and actually lifted her up, her feet dangling off the ground.

  “Phineas,” he said. “Where is my brother, Phin?”

  After that dramatic entrance, Pasha had been thrown into her leather office chair, tossed as easily as a child might mistreat a doll, her hands bound behind her with duct tape.

  Hugo hadn’t hurt her. Yet. He’d only asked two questions. Where was Phin? When was she seeing him again?

  Pasha answered honestly. She had no idea where he was, or when he’d be back.

  Then Hugo did something strange. After he put Pasha in the chair, he sat across the desk from her. Not talking. Not even moving. Just staring.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Twenty.

  Sitting and staring, a robot being recharged.

  After half an hour, he made a call on Pasha’s cell phone, and hung up without saying anything.

  It was creepy as hell.

  Hugo bore little resemblance to his younger sibling. Ph
in was lean, wiry, angular. Hugo was a gigantic lump of bulging flesh, sculpted into some grotesque parody of a body builder. Phin’s head looked good without hair, Hugo had a giant brow ridge, with fat rolls on the back of his neck thick as hot dogs, and except for the thin mohawk on top, his scalp was unnaturally shiny and shrouded with hate tattoos, just like the rest of his body. Phin’s eyes, deep-set and intense, showed intelligence, kindness, even humor. Hugo’s eyes were like staring at oiled marbles.

  There was some sense of shared genetics. The nose. The jutting chin. But Hugo was to Phin what a timber wolf was to a terrier.

  When Pasha had first met her boyfriend, she’d thought him as tough and as formidable as a man could get. But Hugo would tear Phin apart without even breaking a sweat.

  In the lobby, Pasha heard the TV. Hugo’s accomplices, the boy and the woman, were watching some reality show where people yelled at each other.

  Hugo remained seated. His eyes fixed on her.

  Pasha didn’t know what to do. Try to talk to him? Ask questions? She’d met all kinds of personality types on the job, including many with emotional and mental problems, but never anyone like this. Some people on the autism spectrum didn’t like to converse, but they didn’t make eye contact, either. Hugo was silent, but very much alert and aware of her. Staring. Unblinking. Unmoving.

  Like a spider in the middle of a web. Waiting to strike.

  Human communication and interaction involved a lot of social cues, courtesies, and silent interactions. Being stared at violated them all. The discomfort factor was off the charts, and Pasha feared she was going to start crying.

  But she reeled it in, forced herself to stay calm. She was in serious trouble, but thus far unharmed. Her mind still worked. So did her body.

  There had to be a way out of this.

  Pasha tested the duct tape, flexing her wrists and arms, trying not to reveal what she was doing. She wouldn’t be able to break it. But there, on her desk, was the pair of cuticle scissors she’d been using earlier. Less than half a meter in front of her.

  She didn’t stare, fearing Hugo would follow her gaze.

  She didn’t speak, fearing what that might lead to.

  He wanted to silently stare? Fine. She could do that.

  Pasha inhaled through her nose, blew it out through her mouth. Pranayama. Yoga breathing. Slowing her heartbeat. Fighting the panic.

  An hour dripped past, as evidenced by the clock on the wall behind him. An endless, frightening, count-the-heartbeats hour where she felt every single second of every single minute.

  Hugo made another call, using her phone. She heard a ring. No one picked up. Hugo disconnected.

  He was calling Phin.

  And Pasha wondered where Phin was, every bit as much as Hugo.

  She tried to stay in the moment. To be aware of any opportunities that arose, or any change in Hugo’s demeanor. But her mind invariably began to drift. While the silence wasn’t comfortable, the fact that Hugo hadn’t tried to hurt her made him less and less of a threat. Evolution was pretty clear about familiarity. If you could recognize something, it lowered your stress levels. The biological reason for this was simple; if it hadn’t killed you yet, how bad can it be?

  So rather than remain in a state of adrenaline-fueled panic, Pasha’s thoughts meandered to what Phin had mentioned about his brother. He’d told Pasha his parents were dead. Dad was an abusive alcoholic. Mom took drugs and died when he was young. And older brother Hugo was a monster.

  Pasha tried, on a few occasions, to get further details. Phin never provided them.

  “He abused you?”

  “Yeah,” Phin had told her.

  “Sexually?”

  Her boyfriend hadn’t answered, leaving Pasha to guess what had happened. She assumed the worst.

  “Most people can’t wait.” Hugo’s deep voice startled her so badly that Pasha almost yelped. “You’ve been quiet for a whole hour. Usually, they start to whine after only a few seconds. They ask questions. They tell me about themselves, as if me knowing their mother’s name will change the inevitable. Then, eventually, they beg.”

  Pasha stayed silent.

  “I can see you’re trying to be brave,” Hugo said. “Maybe looking for a way out. Waiting for a chance to run away. Or to grab those scissors on the desk. It’s a good thing you didn’t try, because I’d use the rest of the tape to wrap up your whole head and stick it to the floor.”

  Pasha had a deep fear of suffocation, dating back to her childhood. She’d been four years old, and had gotten her head stuck under the sofa while reaching for a fallen toy. It was one of those older couches, that had flaps of fabric that hung to carpet-level, and though there was plenty of air, and her predicament hadn’t lasted any longer than a few seconds before her screaming prompted a quick rescue, Pasha distinctly remembered the feeling of being trapped in the dark, unable to breathe.

  No, having her entire head mummified in duct tape wasn’t something she wanted to have happen. She stayed quiet, kept still, and didn’t look away.

  After a minute passed, Hugo asked, “Where did you meet my brother?”

  Answer? Or not?

  Answering was probably the wiser move.

  “I hired him.”

  “What for?”

  “He solved a problem I was having.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “I… hired him to take care of some people who were trying to run me out of business.”

  “Now who would want to run you out of business, a baby-killing whore like you?”

  Pasha didn’t answer.

  Hugo shook his head, as if Pasha was a child who did something bad. “We were having such a nice conversation, and now your lips are sealed? I know someone who can help with that.”

  He reached down into his massive combat boot , and pulled out something that looked like a comb.

  Then he flicked it open, and Pasha saw the blade.

  “This is Göth. Göth can unseal any lips.”

  The razor’s blade caught the overhead light and glinted.

  Pasha tried to push herself backward into the chair, her whole body starting to shake.

  “Do you think my brother will still like you after Göth has sliced your mouth off?”

  “You’ve… you’ve been to jail,” Pasha said.

  Hugo brought the razor closer, until it almost touched her nose.

  “What do they call the ones… the ones in jail… who rat people out. Tattlers….” No, not tattlers. What was the damn word? “The ones who talk. Snitchers. Snitches.”

  “Squealers,” Hugo said.

  The cold steel tapped Pasha on the chin. She almost wet her pants.

  “Squealers. Are they respected in jail?”

  “No. They’re garbage.”

  “Phin… when he helped me… he did something illegal. If I say what he did, I’d be a squealer. Garbage. Like you said.”

  Hugo hesitated, seeming to think it over. “But you already squealed. You told me where he was and when you expected him back.”

  “I said I didn’t know,” she quickly added, “which is true. You can’t squeal if you don’t know anything.”

  “So what did my brother do that was illegal? Did he rough up those mean men who were trying to shut you down?”

  Pasha pursed her lips together.

  “Did he kill them?”

  Pasha tried to maintain eye-contact, but briefly looked away.

  Hugo crinkled his eyes, the seven tattooed tears rising up on his cheek, making him appear almost jovial.

  “Little brother Phineas. A killer. But then, he was always a tough little shit. I broke his arm once. Compound fracture. Bone came right through the skin. He didn’t even shed a tear.”

  Pasha chanced a look at the razor. “I… I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. I admire you for not squealing. I know many men who have said more, when threatened with less.”

  Though Hugo seemed amused, the raz
or stayed directly under Pasha’s nose.

  “But I’m not the one you have to please. Göth really wanted to cut your lips off. Maybe if you apologize to Göth, he’ll forgive you.”

  Pasha had no idea what to do. Hugo wanted her to treat the straight razor like it was a person, and apologize? Would doing that make the situation better? Or worse?

  Encouraging psychosis wasn’t good medical practice. And so far, she’d stayed strong, and Hugo seemed to respect that. If she started apologizing, it could very well diminish her in Hugo’s mind. She knew what those blue tears meant. He was a killer. And all it took to kill without regret was a very specific type of detachment. She didn’t want the tiny rapport she’d built to vanish.

  At the same time, she didn’t want her mouth cut off with a razor.

  Pasha forced the fear deep down inside of herself, and tried to appear aloof. “You want me to apologize to a shaver?”

  “I don’t. Göth does. Can’t you see how hurt he looks?”

  Pasha sucked in a quick, deep breath, then said. “Okay. Göth, I’m truly sorry.”

  The razor touched her lips.

  “I don’t think he accepted your apology,” Hugo said. “Maybe you should give him a kiss.”

  As awful as the hour of silent staring had been, this was much, much worse.

  “I don’t… kiss… strangers.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll make introductions. Bipasha, this is Göth. Göth, this is Bipasha.”

  The flat of the blade pressed against her mouth. Tears formed in her eyes, and she blinked them away. Then she pursed her lips—

  —and kissed the razor.

  “Okay, I—”

  And then the razor was in Pasha’s mouth. She opened wide, so she wouldn’t get cut, and Hugo tapped it against her upper teeth, making a clink-clink-clink sound.

  Then he touched the spine to her tongue.

  “Göth,” Hugo warned, “don’t do anything crazy. We need her to talk. Remember?”

  But rather than remove the blade, Hugo pushed it in deeper, sliding it across the back of her tongue like a doctor with a tongue depressor. He inserted it all the way to the handle, so the tip almost touched her epiglottis.