He could do none of those things, for he was trapped like a fly in a spider’s web.
How did the killer know I would come here? Is it someone that knows me well?
Pardo gave a slight shake of his head. Even if someone knew him well, like his brother, they wouldn’t have known about the cabin. He had to have been followed there. The last time he was at the cabin was about a week earlier, with Cindy.
It gave Pardo the creeps to think someone might have been peeking through the window at them. The fact that he had engaged in the same atrocious behavior on the night he’d learned of the cabin’s location was lost on him. Keith Pardo was not that self-aware. However, he was capable of reasoning things out.
He had been certain that no one was following the taxi that had dropped him off along the highway, so the killer had set up the trap days earlier.
Pardo went back over the series of thoughts that had led him to the cabin, and he realized that he had been more predictable then he’d imagined.
Two of the victims died in their homes, while the third was killed in a police station. If you weren’t safe in your own home and even the cops couldn’t protect you, then what did you do? Paranoia had caused him to believe that he was being followed, so he had ditched anything that could be tracked, such as his phone and car. The same was true for checking into a hotel, which required using a credit card. If the killer was a cop, which was possible given that one victim died in a police station, then tracking his credit card activity was a possibility.
Friends and relatives might take you in, but what if the killer knew who they were? Staying with a friend or a family member might just get you both killed. No, you would go into hiding, at least until the deadline passed, someplace you felt was safe, safe enough that you took an underaged girl there to have sex with.
Pardo’s decision to head to the cabin seemed inevitable to him now. And if the killer had guessed wrong? He still would have had four days to carry out his threat.
Rage flooded through Pardo and he strained again to free himself. When that didn’t work, he attempted to rock the toilet from side to side, hoping to dislodge it from the floor it was bolted to. The thing didn’t budge.
Pardo doubled his effort, tried standing again, then went back to rocking. It did no good. By the time he ceased his struggles, he was panting and sweat dripped from his forehead.
Pardo drifted back to sleep, with an aching back, and a dry throat.
Chapter Thirty-Four
KINGSTON, NEW YORK, 7:43 a.m., WEDNESDAY, JULY 17th
The date listed on the black sheet of paper had arrived nearly eight hours earlier and Erica and Owens were no closer to finding Keith Pardo.
Cindy phoned Erica just before eight o’clock, while talking in a halting manner. Without going into detail or admitting that she was sleeping with Pardo, Cindy confessed that they had gone on “several rides in the country together.”
Gentle probing by Erica revealed that the bucolic trips ended with Pardo taking Cindy to a cabin in the woods.
Cindy was unable to give the exact location of the cabin, but she did know what area it was in and the exit Pardo took off the highway. After leaving the highway, Pardo had driven for miles and passed numerous side roads. Cindy said that she never paid attention to street signs.
Erica thanked her and ended the call. According to Heather Gray, Pardo was a rapist and a child molester. If he was involved with the underaged Cindy it meant he was having sex with her. Erica felt torn. The girl had spoken to her in confidence. To involve her further meant bringing her father into the discussion. When she talked to Owens about it, he told Erica that she already knew what she had to do.
“You’re right,” she said. At the moment, her job was to locate Keith Pardo and keep him alive. Revealing Cindy’s secret was a secondary consideration.
“Maybe Pardo isn’t sleeping with the girl after all,” Erica said.
“Given his history, that’s unlikely,” Owens said. “And it’s better for the girl that the truth come out before more damage can be done.”
“I still feel like I’m betraying a confidence.”
“Did you promise her that you wouldn’t tell anyone what she told you?”
“No.”
“Then your conscious should be clear.”
The head of the State Police told Erica and Owens that there were several small towns and dozens of secluded homes, including cabins, off the exit Cindy had mentioned. A search would begin immediately, and volunteers would be gathered together, but Cindy would be needed as well. She might be able to take them right to the cabin.
Cindy’s father was called. He was a single parent and had raised his daughter alone since his wife ran off with another man when Cindy was only two. Gavin Burns had just arrived at work, which was a short distance away. He returned home and Erica and Owens spoke to him.
Shock and anger were visible in his expression. Erica thought that if Keith Pardo was still alive, that Mr. Burns might kill him.
Burns went inside his apartment to speak with his daughter. He came out eight minutes later, returning to the hallway with a tearful Cindy. The hurt look of betrayal in Cindy’s reddened eyes cut through Erica. Sometimes doing the right thing didn’t feel very well.
After kissing his daughter on the forehead, Burns told her that she was to go with the police and help them locate the cabin.
“We’ll talk more when you get back.”
Cindy nodded, and went off with a male officer, and a female detective who worked sex crimes.
“I’ll get her help,” Burns said, as he watched his daughter disappear onto the elevator. “And I’ll see that bastard Pardo behind bars.”
Cindy turned out to be less useful than was hoped for. The girl was upset, stressed, and had taken the police to two cabins that were occupied by full-time residents.
Erica and Owens had driven out to join them and followed behind.
Pardo had never told Cindy who the cabin belonged to, and she didn’t have a head for details. However, after she’d directed them down another narrow, tree-lined road, Cindy pointed excitedly at a hollowed-out tree.
“I remember that! I think the cabin is down this way.”
She was right. Cindy was told to stay inside the car with the driver as the detective and another officer approached the front door of the cabin with Erica and Owens. They all had their hands on their weapons and were on alert.
“I hear a TV,” the detective said.
“I’ll check around back,” said the uniformed officer.
When he returned with the news that he’d seen nothing odd and no broken windows or smashed in doors, Owens gave a loud knock. There was no answer, and after trying the knob, the door opened.
Chapter Thirty-Five
OUTSIDE KINGSTON, NEW YORK, DAY THREE, TUESDAY, JULY 16th
Pardo didn’t stir again until it was nearly noon and the cabin was warm and getting hotter. He felt horrible, and fiery inside, like he had a fever.
His headache was worse, his mouth was drier, and he marveled that he didn’t have to pee. He couldn’t remember not having to pee upon waking up in the morning.
A loud, yet hoarse, groan escaped him when he shifted his weight. His back was in agony and there was another damn leg cramp. As for his thirst, it was greater than any he had ever known. At one point, desperation had gripped him, and he had looked down between his legs at the urine he’d released the day before. Much of it had evaporated or slid farther down into the bowl. What remained was a dark yellow blob against the bottom of the basin. Pardo was contemplating sticking his fingers in it, then bringing them to his mouth. He didn’t do it but thought he might eventually.
The drip, drip, drip of the faucet seemed louder than before, and with a start, he realized that it actually was. Before, the drips were hitting the basin and going down the drain, but something had changed. Pardo couldn’t see down into the sink, but he could hear the drops splashing into water.
His head
ached, his mind was fuzzy, and he felt dizzy. Still, after two hours of thinking about it, he figured out what had happened. It was the magazine pages, the ones that had fallen into the sink. They had become soggy and were blocking the drain.
Drip by drip the sink was filling with water; eventually it would overflow, and water would puddle onto the floor. In time, the puddle would grow, and Pardo might be able to reach down and wet his fingers.
Fresh hope brought a smile to his parched, cracked lips, and he silently cheered each new drop as it joined its fellows. After a while, his vision blurred, then it began to shrink until it was just a dot, and he passed out.
Pardo regained consciousness a short time later and realized that he was no longer hungry. His heart was beating fast, as if he had just stopped running, while the skin on his hands appeared shriveled.
He went back to watching the drip while sitting slumped upon the toilet seat. If he lived, he thought he’d never shit while sitting down again.
He’d either fainted again or had fallen asleep, but when he woke, water was dripping onto the floor. A cackle, which had been intended to be a chuckle, drifted from Pardo. If he could just hold on a little longer, he would soon have water.
That assessment was wrong. Three hours later, the small puddle in front of the sink hadn’t spread or come closer to him.
Why? Damn it, why?
There was a drain beneath the sink. It was positioned in the floor behind a white wicker waste basket with a rose decal on its front. The floor had also been designed with a slight gradient that sent the water toward the drain. Pardo was only able to make out a rounded edge of the stainless steel drain cover, as the rest was blocked from view by the waste basket.
After taking off his clothes, he had tossed them into the tub, believing he would never put them on again, as the temperature was high and the room stifling. Tears of regret would have moistened his eyes if he’d had any moisture to spare. He could have tied his clothes together and thrown an end into the puddle beneath the sink, then sucked out the dampness.
Pardo looked for something else to use and removed the roll of toilet paper. He unrolled a long section of it, doubled it, then twisted it until it resembled rope. He wrapped more toilet paper around one end to give it weight, then flung it toward the puddle. The effort made him dizzy, and he passed out again.
This time, he was out for less than a minute and came to with a start. Whatever was playing on the TV was loud and had a lot of music in it; perhaps it was a movie.
Pardo looked down at his right hand and saw that he was holding something. It was toilet paper.
Why am I holding a wad of toilet paper?
His brain was growing foggier but when he followed the path of the paper, he recalled what he’d been doing. The other end of the improvised rope was a wet ball. Pardo pulled on his end slowly, as he attempted to drag the wet mass toward him. The weight was too much, the toilet tissue too weak, and the rope tore. Pardo reeled in the wet stump and stuffed it into his mouth. The toilet paper had absorbed far less than an ounce and it wasn’t even enough to wet Pardo’s tongue.
He unspooled the rest of the toilet paper and tried once more. He was less successful, and the length of paper broke between two dry sheets.
Pardo spent the rest of the third day hovering between a stupefied state or writhing in pain from the resultant agony of his organs shutting down.
During the moments when Erica and Owens entered his apartment and discovered the black envelope and letter, Keith Pardo was learning that sin had a price, and that vengeance demanded payment. By the time the sun rose on the fourth day, Pardo was well on his way to becoming the latest victim of The Appointment Killer.
Chapter Thirty-Six
OUTSIDE KINGSTON, NEW YORK, DAY FOUR, WEDNESDAY, JULY 17th
It’s hot in here, was Erica’s first thought as they entered the cabin. Owens pointed down at the gun and cigarettes that were on a coffee table. Afterward, he found the remote and shut off the TV.
It was Erica and Owens who discovered Pardo inside the bathroom. His eyes were shrunken, and his skin was shriveled as if he were a prune that had been left out in the sun too long. Both of them were certain he was dead, but they were wrong. Pardo’s heart still beat, albeit erratically, and he was taking ragged breaths.
When Owens and the uniformed officer tried to lift him off the toilet, they discovered that he was a part of it. The cop radioed for an ambulance and help with getting Pardo free.
Owens got down on the floor and took a closer look.
“I think he’s been glued to it somehow, and the seat is pasted to the commode. This… this is sick. He must have been stuck here for days.”
The detective grabbed a towel from a rack by the sink and used it to cover up Pardo’s private parts. When she saw that Erica had noticed, she explained. “That wasn’t concern for his modesty; I got tired of looking at it, considering it’s been inside that child, Cindy.”
Owens tried rousing Pardo but had no success.
The ambulance arrived first, and the paramedic started Pardo on intravenous fluids. Emergency services arrived shortly thereafter. They separated the seat from the toilet within five minutes but were unwilling to attempt removing it from Pardo’s posterior.
Keith Pardo was ferried to the hospital inside the ambulance while lying facedown atop a gurney.
Erica and Owens left the cabin when the forensic team arrived. They wanted to be at the hospital in case Pardo regained consciousness.
The doctors met with them and said that Pardo was in critical condition with kidney failure, and that they would keep them updated.
The agents went down to the cafeteria and grabbed a meal; they hadn’t eaten since before leaving for Kingston. They also hadn’t slept, and both napped while seated in a chair as they waited for news.
Erica’s phone woke her, then Owens’ went off a second later. They were being informed that a new email had been sent to Ted Marx.
That revived both of them, and when the email followed, they were wide awake.
I HAVE KILLED AGAIN. I SENT A LETTER TELLING A MAN THAT HE WAS GOING TO DIE TODAY, AND THEN I KILLED HIM. HE WAS A MAN NAMED KEITH PARDO WHO LIVES IN KINGSTON, NEW YORK. OTHERS TO FOLLOW.
The message told Ted Marx where he could find Keith Pardo. It was the address of the cabin.
“Should we call Marx and tell him not to waste his time going to the cabin?” Owens asked.
“Let him spin his wheels locating it, that is, if he hasn’t already been there before.”
“You really suspect him of being our perp?”
“Enough to add him to the list and remove Frank Vann. I also wonder if we’re not dealing with more than one person here.”
“Maybe Heather Gray and Marx are working together. She gets revenge and Marx gets a million more viewers for his channel.”
“Speaking of Heather Gray, I think I’ll try her again,” Erica said, as she took out her phone.
NEW YORK CITY
Heather was lying in Jason Warwick’s bed, having barely left it in the past eighteen hours. She was stretched out beneath a sheet and wore only a smile. Jason was up and getting dressed. Ted Marx had called and told him that he needed him, and that they were headed to Kingston.
“That whack job killer has bagged another one, Jason, and he gave me the scoop. Pick me up in five minutes,” Marx had told him. Jason heard excitement in the man’s voice that sounded like glee.
Heather’s phone rang as Jason was about to leave. She pouted when she saw that it was Erica calling.
“It’s the FBI again; I don’t know why they want to talk to me.”
“Answer it and find out,” Jason said.
Heather did so, then frowned.
“You want to interview me, why?”
“We’ll discuss that at the interview; can you meet with us tomorrow, let’s say two p.m.?” Erica said.
“Yes, but I wish you would tell me what this is about.”
“Tha
nk you, Miss Gray; we’ll see you at Federal Plaza tomorrow at two. Goodbye.”
Heather lowered the phone and looked at Jason.
“They want to interview me. Do you think this has something to do with that serial killer?”
“It might, or they might want to talk with you about Mr. Marx… and your relationship.”
“Why would they care about that?”
Jason walked back over to the bed after stuffing his wallet, phone, and keys in his pocket.
“I think they might suspect him of being the killer, and, um, I may have mentioned your name to them as well.”
“What?”
Jason made a pained expression. “I told them I thought I saw you in Pennsylvania… on the day Luis Cantrell was killed.”
“I told you I wasn’t there.”
“I know, I know, and I’ll talk to them again and say I was mistaken.”
“Why did you even mention my name to them?”
Jason hung his head. “I was jealous. I was angry with you because I thought you were teasing me while sleeping with Ted Marx.”
Anger seeped from Heather’s eyes as a smile crossed her lips. “You were really jealous?”
“Of course, and I no longer think you’re teasing me, not after last night.”
Heather rose from the bed naked and pressed herself against Jason.
“Hurry back as soon as you can. I’m not done with you yet.”
Jason kissed her, while running his hands over her, then he remembered that Marx was waiting for him and broke off the kiss.
“I’ve got to go.”
“You need a new job; I don’t like having Ted in our lives.”
“Our lives?”
“Does that scare you, the thought of us being a couple?”
The Appointment Killer Page 15
