by Jonas Saul
She shook her head but it didn’t make things any clearer. Did she have a concussion? How many times had she been hit—even shot in the head—and came out of it quick? Maybe that was the problem: a head can only take so many hits before the skull decides it’s had enough.
The man released her arm suddenly. A groan escaped her lips. She tried to curl into a ball to see if she would feel the gun in her waistband. She did. It was still there. The handcuffs were tucked snuggly by her leg, still clinging to her belt loop. He hadn’t searched her nor relieved her of the weapon. That would cost him.
She slipped a hand along her side as the man busied himself something behind her.
“Sarah Roberts,” he said. “We meet again.”
Thirio. Her hand hesitated a moment. That voice. From the grocery store.
“You know,” he continued, “I don’t hate you.” He moved behind her and adjusted something. “I don’t like you, but I don’t hate you.” His voice strained as he dragged something across the floor. She moved her hand again. This time her fingertips made contact with the butt of the weapon. “In fact, I don’t like anyone. Wait!” He raised his voice. Her hand stopped as it settled over the weapon. “Tonight is called My Denouement. So I would like to extend a formal welcome for you to witness the final act.”
The very second she squeezed the butt of the weapon and began to withdraw it from her waistband, he gripped under her shoulders and yanked her upward. The gun tumbled from her hand, bounced once on the cement floor and was kicked aside when she scrambled to regain balance.
“Shit,” she stammered, then grunted with the strain of being manhandled.
He let go of her when she was almost upright. A brief moment of panic swept over her as she fell backward but then she landed safely on a plush armchair.
He stepped in close and jammed his face an inch from hers. “Don’t move,” he shouted. “You’re sitting on a bomb.”
Sarah gasped and reached under her legs to feel around the cushion.
He eased away about a foot from her. “It’s like in a mine field. A landmine. Your ass depressed the Belleville spring. Stand and you release the firing pin that was forced down into the detonator when your ass activated the mine. One second later, my Bouncing Betty rises to its glorious conclusion.” He stood up and shone the light on his face. “Well, I think you get the picture.”
The cobwebs in her head dissipated rather quickly. “Bouncing Betty?” she asked, leaning back on the chair and trying not to move her butt.
“They’re referred to as a Bouncing Betty. It’s simple. The ignitor sets off a propelling charge. This lifts the mine out of the chair about a meter high. The main charge then ignites causing severe damage to the chest and head of anyone close by.” He slapped his hands together, apparently not thinking about what would happen to him if Sarah fainted and slipped off the chair. “My Bouncing Betty is an anti-personnel mine, modified in several ways, one in which is fragmentation.”
Sweat had beaded on her forehead and ran down the center of her back. How the hell was she supposed to walk away from this if she couldn’t even get off the chair?
“I’ll bite,” she said. Better to keep him talking so she could keep thinking. “Fragmentation?”
“Think shrapnel. I’ve added shards of metal and glass to this lovely piece of art under your pretty little ass so when it launches into the air, it shoots out that shit and injures people at a distance of two hundred meters. Basically kills everyone around.” He raised his arms outward and twisted his upper body back and forth. “Look around. We’re in a basement. The windows will be blown out, but the interior of the basement will take the most of the fragmentation.” With one index finger raised to make a point, he continued, “But whosoever happens to be in the basement will never make it upstairs.”
“Thirio?” Sarah whispered.
He stopped the histrionics and stood to his full height. “What?”
“Do you want to die?”
“Of course I do.” He grinned.
Insanity had many names, many faces. If Sarah could ever compile a picture book of smiles from all the madmen she’d dealt with in her lifetime, Thirio’s grin would look the most insane. Even Charles Manson smiling would look like a loving father watching his children play in the park on a Sunday afternoon compared to Thirio’s level of insanity.
“But I don’t want to die yet,” Thirio added, that incessant finger raised to make a point. “Not yet. Must have the Campbells here first.” He stuttered something under his breath. “Did you bring someone with you?”
Sarah didn’t answer him. After several heartbeats, Thirio peered at her sideways. He grinned that I’m-insane-and-I-love-it smile again. A body shiver jolted her. She tensed and waited for the bomb to propel upward, but nothing happened.
“I saw that,” he whispered, as if it was their little secret. “Don’t worry. You’re what, a hundred and twenty pounds wet?”
“You should never ask a girl her weight, but I’m one hundred, thirty-one. Wet.”
“Right. Well, for this device to kill us both, you would have to take all of your weight off it.” He held up his cell phone. On the screen, a window appeared with six slots where a code could be added. “I have set several seconds’ delay in case I accidentally triggered the device while working on it. The code entered into this phone sends a signal to cancel the explosion.” He lowered the phone and slipped it into his pocket. “It acts like a delay element burning for a few moments, then igniting. In this case, the code deactivates the burning phase and renders the bomb a dud, momentarily.” He rolled his hand in circles. “That only happens once, though. The next person who sits on the donut-shaped Belleville spring will die instantly upon standing.”
“Type in the six-digit code,” Sarah said, her voice cool, even. She blinked sweat from her right eye, glaring at him. Her moist hands gripped the armrests of the chair.
“Now, why would I do that?” he asked. “You don’t want to die, Sarah. I get it. But I do.” That raised finger again was maddening. “So don’t get up from the chair until I return.”
“Where are you going?”
“To have the Campbell family join us down here.”
“Then what?”
“Then I want your soul.”
“My soul?” She frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I want your soul before I die. Offer that to me, and I’ll let you live.”
“How do you propose I offer you my soul?”
Thirio moved to the right, dangerously close to the fallen gun, pivoted and walked to her left. As he paced, he wagged that damned finger.
“When I return with the Campbell family, I will type in the code and deactivate the mine. You will stand from the chair and have your life. Then you will persuade Mr. James Campbell—or force him—makes no difference to me, to have a seat in the chair. Once you’ve completed that, you are free to leave. Mr. Campbell and I will have a talk about all the bad things he’s done in his life. This isn’t atonement. This is a gift to Lucifer, my God. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to leave the building. I have much to say to the asshole Campbell patriarch.” Thirio skipped two steps, spun around, and hopped once. “Don’t you think this is a damned good idea?” He laughed like Sheri Moon Zombie laughed in The Devil’s Rejects, that high-pitched giggle. “Get it? Damned good idea?”
“You want me to be complicit in murder so I can live, which forfeits my soul to you?”
“Correct.”
“And how exactly do you propose to take my soul when you will be dead and I will be alive?” She pulled her hands closer to her chest. Not a word from Vivian came in Sarah’s time of need. For some reason, the pattern had been to see someone from the other side and Vivian gets blocked afterward for what seemed like forever.
“Sarah,” he whispered. “You fail to see my objective. I’m surprised by that.”
“Isn’t your objective to randomly kill as many people as you can withou
t regard? To hurt, poison, and maim as many people as possible until caught. Basically, your objective has been to be an asshole who’s fucked in the head and deserves nothing better than a plush-lined coffin under six feet of dirt.”
“Oh, Sarah.” He smiled wickedly. “You and I will make quite a pair when we arrive home to our master.”
“I don’t have a master. Only the mad do. It’s called delusion and they follow that until it takes them to a rubber room or a coffin.”
“No, Sarah, you’ve got a master. He’s the prettiest angel. Man, wait until you see his wings. They’re glorious.” Thirio thrust out his arms and flapped his hands. “Lucifer, my Lord, is who I’m collecting souls for. And the Campbell family are the last souls, other than yours, that I’m here to take.”
“Sorry to burst that bubble but there’s no such thing as the devil. He’s what we decide he is. The pain and suffering we cause each other on this plane. You’re delusional just like the rest of the insane people ranting about religion and then killing others because they won’t conform. Trust me. I have the information from a qualified source. There is no Lucifer. He’s a fable perpetrated on people before the days of a regular police force. Organized religion isn’t needed in our world anymore. That’s why it’s fighting to stick around. You’re a dying breed whether you’re Christian, atheist, agnostic, or a Satanist.”
Her hands were on the armrests of the chair now, elbows thrust outward. She was ready and hoped her idea would work. If it didn’t, she would be shredded by Thirio’s fragmentation device.
“Thirio’s not even my real name.” He spoke as if he hadn’t heard a word she said. “My Christian name,” he slapped his hands together and guffawed. “Isn’t that a riot? Christian name?” He turned back to her. “My given name was Leonard Martin. But when I killed myself—well, my twin brother actually—I renamed myself Thirio. Do you want to know why, Sarah?”
“No, I don’t.” She was almost ready.
“Thirio is the Greek word for beast. That’s what I am, am I not? A beast?”
“I’d agree. You’re a beast.”
“I’m a beast and I want to hasten my arrival in Hell.”
“How about without the Campbells?” Sarah asked. “You could die right now.”
He stopped moving and glared at her. His eyes lowered to her legs, then back to her face. “You wouldn’t stand up. You’d die, too.”
She shrugged. “Do I care?”
He stepped closer. “Sarah, stay seated.”
“And if I don’t?”
He moved even closer. “But you have to. No one wants to die and this isn’t over. I need the Campbells in here first.”
“I want to die, Thirio,” she said, her voice gravelly and hoarse.
“Wait.” He moved within distance.
Sarah jerked upwards, trying to keep a modicum of weight on the device below the seat of her pants.
Thirio acted as she suspected he would. His hands rammed down on her shoulders to force her back into the chair. Deftly, with years of practice in close quarters combat, Sarah snatched the handcuffs off her belt loop, flipped one of the cuffs up and jammed it onto Thirio’s wrist. The cuff’s loop closed, flipped around itself, and came back down over his wrist, locking in place. By the time it clicked, she was already affixing the other cuff to her wrist. In seconds, they were cuffed together.
Thirio gasped and tried to pull away but only succeeded in yanking Sarah’s arm upward.
“Go ahead,” she screamed. “Pull me right off this chair. We’ll see who wants to die then.”
“Oh, Sarah,” he cried. “Why did you do this? You’ve ruined everything.”
“Punch in the deactivation code on that phone and we’ll both go to my car where I’ve got the keys.”
He shook his head back and forth. “No, no, no. Can’t do that.”
He raised his index finger and was about to say more when she yanked him toward her. He teetered off balance, then dropped to one knee in front of her. She drove her left hand, open-palmed, into the tip of his nose. Thirio’s head shot back. Before he fell, she slipped her fingers into his hair, yanked his head downward and shot her knee up at the same time. Head met knee, then his face jerked away from her.
He fell to the floor beside the chair, pulling on her cuffed wrist until her arm dangled off the side of the chair. His eyes rolled back in his head and Thirio’s lights dimmed. Until Vivian made an appearance, Sarah would sit on the plush armchair and wait. Vivian would know the deactivation code.
She had better know the code. Or Sarah would die in an armchair. Not a very fitting way to go.
Chapter 41
Mason stayed by the front door. “Who else is in the house, Mr. Campbell?” he asked.
Calder had provided James Campbell with his police ID as he moved deeper into the foyer to inspect the kitchen to the right and the living room to the left. Calder turned back to Mason as Campbell watched the two of them.
“You want to explain this intrusion,” Mr. Campbell said. “Am I to believe that I have prowlers on my property? Is that why you two approached in stealth? Or are you the prowlers?”
“There is no cause for alarm,” Mason said. “Yet,” he added. He wished his voice was less nasally and more authoritative. “We are hunting a suspect in a series of murders.”
Calder shot him a hard glance, his face skewed in confusion. When Campbell turned to Calder, his face relaxed instantly.
“Hunting a suspect?” Campbell said. “As in one?”
Mason moved closer to Campbell. “Show us your security screens. Where do you monitor your property from?” If Sarah was already inside the house, she would have tasked Campbell to get rid of them. Mason waited for Campbell’s response to gauge whether or not Sarah was there.
“Gentlemen, it’s late.” Campbell waved his hands toward the door. “I bid you farewell. I must head to bed soon.”
Mason edged up intimidatingly close to Campbell. “You need to understand this fugitive is quite dangerous and we have reason to believe she was heading to this address. Or is she already here?”
James Campbell took a step back and bumped the wall.
“There is no woman here.” He spat the words. “I’m alone.”
“If you would be so kind as to show us your surveillance room,” Mason said. “Then we’ll be on our way.”
Campbell’s lips compressed into a white slash. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Mason and Calder shared a look. Sarah had to be inside the house. Campbell was stalling to concoct a plan to get them out of the house.
Finally, Campbell released a heavy sigh, then gave an I-give-up gesture.
“Follow me,” Campbell said, then stomped away.
Mason and Calder stepped in behind him, shoulder to shoulder, slowing at each doorway before crossing it. If Sarah lurked behind a door, neither one wanted to be surprised by her.
“After this one courtesy, I want you both to leave.”
“We will,” Calder said. “We’ll watch for the fugitive from the outside the house.”
“The fugitive, the fugitive,” Campbell rambled on in front of them. “Who is this sought after female? That Sarah Roberts girl?” Mason and Calder stopped. Campbell slowed, then stopped outside a small door that led to a darkened room. “What, you don’t think I watch the news? Sarah Roberts saved a lot of people from the coffee shop bomb. It was all over the news. I remember what happened to that double-dealing cop when Sarah was here the last time. Everyone knows.”
Mason was too stunned to respond. Calder stepped forward. “The security room, sir.”
“In here.” Campbell pointed to the darkened room.
“After you,” Calder said.
Campbell disappeared inside and Calder followed him. Mason stood in the doorway where he could watch what the old man was showing his partner but still keep an eye on the corridor in case Sarah popped out of a doorway.
“These twelve screens access our three quad camer
a systems,” Campbell explained. “Every square inch of the perimeter of the house is monitored for motion. If a camera is off, there’s no motion. Detectors are set to roughly fifty pounds so rabbits, small coyotes, and rodents don’t activate the system.”
Campbell glanced back at Mason, a cold expression on his face.
“You two showed up on this camera,” he pointed, “when the car stopped. As you both approached the house, this camera and this one triggered your movements and recorded everything. Time and date stamped it as well.”
“Erasable?” Mason asked.
“Everything’s erasable,” Campbell responded. “As you can see, no fugitive has been with one-hundred meters of my property this evening except you two.”
