Wages of Sin

by Penelope Williamson

  The bay doors were partly open, and Rourke approached them carefully with his gun drawn and held in front of him in a two-handed grip. The gap in the doors was wide enough for him to slip through silently.

  He stopped as soon as he was inside, letting his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness within the building.

  He smelled her before he saw her: urine, blood, and semen. Still, it would have taken a while for him to find her, stuffed as she was deep in a corner, if she hadn't started whimpering again.

  He made himself take his time going to her, stopping every couple of feet to sweep the dark and shrouded spaces with his gun. He could see all of the garage now, though, and Bloom wasn't here.

  The girl's naked flesh was pale as death where it wasn't battered bloody. One of her arms was bent at an unnatural angle and her wrists were wrapped up in a thick chain that was tangled up with a broken radiator.

  Rourke crouched down beside her, resting his gun hand on his bent knee, and reached with his other hand to touch her shoulder, saying, “Gilly…”

  She arched up, wild with fear, screaming and flailing at him with her legs. She kicked the gun hard out of his hand, and it slid across the floor and fell down the open shaft of what had once been an hydraulic automobile lift.

  He wrapped her up in his arms, making soft shushing noises, calling her by name and she slowly quieted. He kept holding her, most of her in his lap now, while he leaned over, working to untangle the chain from the radiator. She stared up at him, and the look on her face, in her eyes, wasn't quite human anymore…

  Eyes that suddenly bulged wide with terror.

  Rourke caught the flash of something black flaring like a bat's wing and he twisted around, instinctively flinging up his arm as a wrench slammed into the side of his head.

  “I knew,” said Otis Bloom, “that you would find my Mercedes for me, Detective.”

  Rourke blinked the sweat and blood out of his eyes and strained to focus. Then his vision blurred and darkened again, as nausea rose burning in his nose and throat. An oily rag that reeked of gasoline was stuffed in his mouth.

  A match hissed and then the dark around them was banished by a flood of yellow light. “Someone has cut off the electricity, I'm afraid,” Bloom said as he set a hurricane lantern down on a workbench. “Now I do hope you will tell me where she is without too much unpleasantness.”

  Rourke had turned his head toward the lantern, and the movement almost sent him slipping back into unconsciousness. He groaned, sagging against the ropes that held him.

  He was tied down to a tall-legged chair, with a chimney sweep's weighted rope wrapped around his chest and left arm, and another around his legs. His right arm was stretched out straight, across the flat top of a workbench, and tied down with another rope wrapped around his forearm to the bench's vise block.

  His flying jacket had been taken off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, and his arm was tied down in such a way that his wrist and hand turned were upward. And even though he knew what this meant, his mind screamed, Oh, God, no…

  Otis Bloom leaned into him, his face only inches away from Rourke's, and his stiff mustache lifted in a smile. “Regrettably, I don't have the time to tease it out of you slowly. So I'll do the one wrist without any more to-do. That should give you quite an incentive, I think, to take seriously all of my melodramatic threats and promises, and then you'll tell me what you know and we'll be done here.”

  Bloom straightened and went to the other end of the workbench, behind Rourke's back, and Rourke lifted his head, fighting down another bout of nausea. His gaze searched the deep shadows behind the hydraulic lift for what Bloom had done with the girl. She was still there, discarded by her rapist in the corner like a pile of trash. She looked dead, but then she stirred a little, and Rourke quickly looked away so that he wouldn't draw attention to her.

  For Bloom was back again with a small carpetbag that he set on the bench near Rourke's pinioned and exposed wrist. “You are wrong about me, you know,” he was saying. “You believe I'm afflicted with a mental illness, but there is a perfectly rational explanation for all of this.”

  He unsnapped the clasp and spread open the bag. “You see, when Mercedes ran away from me, I thought surely her best friend knew where she had gone. I picked up Nina Duboche just to have a little chat with her, but quite to my chagrin, as you can well imagine, I went a little too far and I had a dead girl on my hands…”

  Bloom looked up, but his gaze was turned inward, as if he were reliving the rapes, the strangling, and Rourke thought, You enjoyed it, though, didn't you, you sick bastard.

  “I had killed her very dead, Detective, but that was easily enough dealt with. My Mercedes likes to talk in bed, so I knew the girl had been fucking that nigger chimney sweep. I simply framed the boy for her murder and that was that. But as for getting my Mercedes back…well, I was at an impasse.”

  He reached in the carpetbag and took out a mallet, whose grip was about a foot long, and it had a steel-capped head. He hefted the mallet in his hand, looked over at Rourke, and smiled.

  “So you can imagine my delight and surprise when one night I learn from my sweet and accommodating wife how it was that stupid, interfering priest had helped my girl to run away. I did so want to kill him for that, but what I wanted most from him was a simple answer to a simple question.”

  Bloom was tossing the mallet from hand to hand, taunting Rourke with it. In the soft glow of the lantern light, his eyes seemed to be gleaming with an unholy delight.

  “Now I did amuse myself, I admit it—and in a rather ingenious way if I do say so myself. The saintly father's palms started bleeding at Mass one day, did you know? I was there, serving him at the altar, and I saw it with my own eyes. It might have been a true miracle, what was going on there, but I rather doubt it. I told him he should've taken the time to look it up in a book and see how a crucifixion is properly done. And then I showed him.”

  He caught the mallet on the last toss with a flourish and set it with slow deliberation on the bench next to Rourke's wrist. Rourke felt his throat swallow convulsively. He didn't want to be scared of what was coming, but he was.

  Bloom, feeling his fear, leaned close and looked deep into Rourke's eyes, feeding off it.

  Then he sighed and straightened. “Where was I? Oh yes…Unfortunately, not only did the saintly Father Pat turn out to be much more stubborn than one could ever imagine, but I was interrupted by that whimpering boy. And so—another impasse.”

  He reached in the carpetbag and took out the nails, and Rourke's guts clenched hard around his fear.

  “Another impasse, that is, until I thought of you, Detective,” Bloom was saying. “You see, I am quite the admirer of yours. Indeed I've made rather a project out of studying you. You have one of those minds that can leap across chasms, but you're addicted to risk. And you won't ever quit or back down before a threat, because you see that as a weakness and you're terrified of being weak.”

  Bloom had set the nails down next to the mallet and now he'd turned and was leaning against the bench with his elbows braced behind him and his legs crossed at the ankles, as if they were just two guys shooting the breeze.

  “And as I studied you,” he went on, “it occurred to me that perhaps you would succeed where I had not. That all I needed to do was start murdering more Fantastics, and you would dig and dig and dig until you found out why, and the why would lead you to my Mercedes.”

  He took Rourke's chin in his hand and turned his face up. “So you see, we have made these sins together, Detective Daman Rourke.”

  He held Rourke's chin a moment longer, and then let it go and turned back to the bench. “I do believe we are ready now,” he said. “May I suggest you look away. It's going to be bad enough for you without you having to watch it.”

  Rourke didn't want to watch, but he'd be damned before he let the son of a bitch know it. Still, his fingers twitched when Bloom pressed the point of the nail into his flesh, then sprang straight in a
horror of anticipation as Bloom brought the mallet down on the head of the nail.

  It must have been making some noise—the steel head of the mallet striking the nail as Bloom drove it through his wrist and into the bench top with four solid blows. But Rourke didn't hear it through the screams in his head.

  Sweat ran down his face like tears. His breath came in harsh tearing gasps. His mind kept saying, no, no, no, even as he was looking at the black head of the nail protruding from the flesh of his wrist and the rivulets of blood trickling onto the grease-marred wood.

  Bloom set the mallet down and looked at his handiwork with pride, then bent down and cupped Rourke's chin, turning his face toward the lantern light. Bloom's own face was dreamy, his eyes gentle and far away. “That was bad, wasn't it?” he said. “Yes, I can see that it was.”

  He took the gag out of Rourke's mouth and used it to wipe the sweat and tears of pain out of Rourke's eyes, his touch obscenely gentle. “I'm not going to insult your intelligence by making promises I can't keep,” he said. “You know I'm going to have to kill you in the end, there simply is no way around it. But there's no need to make a crucible of your death, Detective. Tell me where she is, and I'll murder you gently.”

  Rourke moved his dry lips, letting out the barest sound, forcing Bloom to lean in close. “Fuck you,” he said, shooting out as much spit as he could with the words.

  Bloom reared up and pulled his arm back, as if he would slap Rourke across the face with the flat of his hand, but then he let it fall and he laughed. “The very words Father Pat said, and you wouldn't think a priest would know such language, let alone make use of it. But then people are often not themselves when they are in extremity.”

  The pain, which had been ebbing some, returned now with a ferocity that almost made Rourke faint. Blood was spreading out from his nailed wrist. Too much blood.

  “Shall we go then to the threat of a nail to the other wrist?” Bloom said. “Or do I make you a few promises first?”

  Those times in the past months when they had talked, Bloom seemed to have to work at pulling words out of himself, but now he just went on and on. He was talking as he went back to the carpetbag—after more nails, Rourke supposed, and he wanted to laugh because Bloom was going to be at another impasse soon. He hadn't been so careful this time. Rourke thought he must have nicked an artery with the nail, and at the rate that the blood was coming out of the hole in Rourke's wrist, Rourke would probably bleed to death long before Bloom would ever let him get a word in edgewise.

  Bloom came back to him, but with a brandy flask, not another nail. He grabbed Rourke roughly by the chin, opening his jaw and pouring a hefty dose of it down Rourke's throat, and it went down so fast Rourke almost strangled on it. “I want you aware, Detective,” Bloom said. “And listening to my promises.”

  Rourke's laugh was more like a hacking cough, but it was real. “What're you trying to do, Bloom—talk me to death?”

  Bloom snatched up the mallet and slammed it down on the nail in Rourke's wrist, and Rourke's scream echoed off the open rafters.

  Bloom's face was dark with blood-rage, his eyes wide. “You find this amusing, do you? Well, we shall see who laughs last…I've been watching your woman, Detective. Following her in my taxi, spying on her every move. Perhaps she's noticed. Don't you think she's been looking a little scared lately?”

  The pain was like an electrical fire in Rourke's wrist, snapping and crackling, but his slowly leaking blood had gone cold. He knew now that he could endure any pain through to the end, but he wasn't going to be able to bear dying with the image in his mind of Remy lying on a riverbank, naked and violated and with a rope wrapped around her neck.

  “Every cop in the city is out looking for you,” he said, the words rasping in his raw throat.

  “And quite efficiently, too, considering that only a couple of hours ago I walked right into your squad room, had a little conversation with your daughter, and walked back out again…She's a tough little nut, by the way. Your Katie. I'm not going to mind fucking her either.”

  Rage, pure and blinding, surged through Rourke with such force that he would have exploded out of the chair if he hadn't been tied down. Every sinew and muscle in his body surged upward with that fury…and he felt a give in the flesh of his wrist as it pulled against the nail.

  He sagged back against the chair, his heart tripping over every other beat. He had a way out now, a way out…To get loose, he didn't have to pull the nail out of his wrist. He could pull his wrist off the nail.

  Bloom was smiling as he leaned into him, his voice low and soft like a lover's, caught up in their pas de deux of pain and pride. “So do think about that, Detective. I could take them both, your Remy and your little girl. Anytime. Anywhere.”

  He straightened and stepped back, and Rourke lifted his head. He forced his eyes to open wide against a wave of enveloping darkness and he saw a naked and bloodied girl rise up out of the dark with the wrench lifted high above her head by the arm that wasn't broken.

  Bloom felt, or heard her, and he whirled just as the girl let fly with the wrench, and it struck him with a solid thunk on the side of his head. For a moment, Bloom seemed to be half suspended in the air, as if he were being held there by strings, and then he collapsed onto the floor.

  She looked down at him a moment, then, moving like a wraith, her battered face strangely serene, she turned away and came to Rourke where he was tied to the chair. He wasn't sure she was even in this world anymore, but then she threw the wrench on the floor, knelt before the chair, and began to pick one-handed at the knots in the ropes.

  Rourke didn't know that he was blacking in and out now, until he revived long enough to realize that the ropes were off him and she was staring down at his wrist nailed to the workbench, crying silent tears, and saying over and over. “How do I get it out? How do I get it out?”

  Unconsciousness pulled at Rourke again, and his whole body felt drained of blood, but through the blackening edges of his vision, he could see Bloom stirring on the floor.

  “Gilly…run,” he tried to shout, but it came out as a croaking whisper. “Run now.”

  The girl jerked around to look at Bloom just as he reared up like some creature coming out of a grave. She tried to run, but he was on her. He tossed her to the floor and she landed in a heap, as if she were made of sticks and strings. He loomed over her and wrapped his hands around her throat.

  Rourke gathered his feet beneath him, thrusting up off the chair, and his wrist came off the nail with a sucking, bloody pop.

  Bloom lurched up off the girl and spun around, lashing out with his heavy brogan, catching Rourke in the belly and sending him crashing back into the workbench.

  Bloom laughed and bent over, snatching up the chimney sweep's rope. He wrapped each end of it around his two hands and snapped it taut. “You and I, Detective,” he said, breathing heavily, “have some unfinished business.”

  The pain in Rourke's wrist was like a white-hot flame in front of his eyes so that he could barely see. His legs slid out from underneath him and he slowly sagged to the floor, and the wrench was where he'd hoped it would be, where the girl had dropped it, and he wrapped the fingers of his good hand around the hard metal handle.

  He heard Bloom's laughter and the snap of the rope. He saw the flare of the black duster as Bloom came at him.

  Rourke surged to his feet and he smashed the wrench in Bloom's face, right between the eyes.

  Rourke was waiting for Bloom's eyes to open.

  He had wrapped the chimney sweep's rope around the man's neck and wedged the wrench in the loop like you would do to make a tourniquet, and now he was waiting for Bloom's eyes to open before he tightened it.

  Rourke was lying on top of him, close as lovers. And when his eyelashes stirred and lifted, Rourke put his lips up to the man's ear. “You're gonna die, Bloom,” he said and he smiled.

  Bloom flailed beneath him, but weakly. He was too far gone.

  Gilly, who ha
d been kneeling next to them, started to scramble away. Rourke was afraid she was going for help, so he grabbed her leg with his free hand and pain shot through him from the gaping, bleeding hole in his wrist.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  She could have broken away from him, but she didn't. Instead she came closer, so that she, too, could look into Bloom's eyes. “Is he dead?” she said.

  “Getting there,” Rourke said, and he began to tighten the rope.

  “Good.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Rourke drifted out of a black swell to the feel of strong arms lifting him, and a voice rough and thick with feeling. “Aw, man, Day. What have you gone and done to yourself?”

  Then a moment, an eternity later, he was in a white place, everything was white, even the air, and Paulie was there, making the sign of the cross on his forehead with holy oil.

  I am dying, he thought, and he laughed because it seemed too much that he would die now after just having lived through all of that.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was in a bed in a hospital room and he knew he wasn't going to die after all.

  Remy was sitting on the edge of the bed and she leaned over and laid her head on his chest. “You must never do that to me again, Day.”

  “I won't,” he said. “I'll try not to.”

  He must have fallen asleep for a while, because he heard Remy say, “Okay, honey, he's awake now.” And then his Katie was leaning over the bed and planting a big wet one on his cheek, and he laughed and said, “Hey, baby.”

  She laughed back and kissed him again, and this time the front of her school uniform jumper crackled.

  “What you got there?” he said. “A present for me?”

  She pulled a piece of white construction paper out from beneath the flap in her jumper and gave it to him. “I drew you a picture of our cat,” she said.

  “That's real pretty, honey. But since when do we have a cat?”

  “He adopted us,” Remy said.