The Scavenger's Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery

by Mike McIntyre

  Shard finally realized that the security guard had not been looking at him, but at a spot above his head.

  He whirled and looked up. Shock registered on his face when he saw me hanging there. It was soon replaced with a smile.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  The Bandit let me go.

  I dropped through the air.

  Shard raised his gun.

  My wrists were cocked. My golf club was already on the classic inside-out swing path that I had grooved my whole life.

  Shard’s chin looked like a golf ball. It even had a dimple.

  But as I plunged toward him, I realized that my sand wedge might not reach his chin before he pulled the trigger.

  Shard ducked. His chin became a moving target.

  There was no time to adjust. I was already committed.

  The club passed harmlessly through the impact zone. A total whiff.

  Shard was squeezing the trigger.

  On the follow through, my club slammed into his hand, knocking his aim off as he fired. I felt a hot sting as the bullet grazed my side.

  I fell on Shard and we collapsed in a heap. The gun flew from his hand and clattered across the asphalt.

  I grabbed Shard, but he broke free.

  He scrambled on all fours for the gun. I chased after him.

  Shard picked up the gun and struggled to his feet.

  I swung the sand wedge.

  I didn’t need a mulligan.

  CHAPTER 116

  Shard writhed on the ground, holding his groin. I’d hit him square in the Titleists.

  I kicked the gun down the driveway.

  “Where’s Jordan?” I demanded. “Tell me, now!”

  Shard groaned and coughed. “I bet that felt good.”

  I stood over him, shaking with rage. My golf club was poised to deliver another blow.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Give in to the pleasure.”

  “Where is she?”

  He leaned on his side and wretched. Strings of vomit extended from the corner of his mouth to the asphalt. “Don’t bother thanking me. I’ve only handed you your second Pulitzer.”

  He lay back. His eyelids closed.

  “Don’t you dare pass out on me!” I said, shaking him.

  But he did.

  I threw down my club and stepped out of the harness.

  I rushed to the U-Haul.

  “Jordan?” I called, flinging open the truck’s back door.

  She wasn’t inside.

  I ran to Shard’s van and opened the rear door. Jordan wasn’t in there, either.

  But another lady was.

  I lifted the Scavenger’s Daughter from the van. It was like the one Robert Graywalls showed me at his apartment, only this one worked. An open padlock hung from a slot in the latch.

  Shard moaned. He was coming to.

  I had his neck, hands and feet inside the iron hoops of the Scavenger’s Daughter before he knew it. I closed the padlock on the latch at his ankle. He looked like a large medicine ball. Too bad the cops would come and transfer him to more comfortable restraints. He’d be spared the slow, excruciating death by compression that the medieval contraption induced.

  “That’s for Nina Tate,” I said.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, wistfully. “I’ll never forget my first…Or my last.” He laughed maniacally. “Sorry about your wife.”

  He coughed, then chuckled as he saw the horror sweep across my face.

  I grabbed my sand wedge and raised it. I swung down violently, anticipating the thud of the club head sinking into his temple.

  He looked me in the eye, cackling hysterically.

  “Ahhhh!” I screamed.

  At the last instant, I let the club sail through the air.

  I sprinted into the storage unit.

  Please!

  A third vehicle was parked inside. It was a white Ford Econoline van, identical to the one outside. It even had the same vanity license plate: AUTODFE.

  That explained how the van’s engine was cold the night the cops searched Shard’s house. He’d used the other van to dump Dick Cameron’s body. He dropped the incriminating van at his storage unit before returning home by taxi or bus. In case anyone saw him, as the Billboard Bandit had, he had a clean van to show the police.

  I found two men bound in crude wooden chairs near the van. Iron collars ringed their necks. One of them bled from the head and hip.

  I recognized the men. They were Riff and Raff, a pair of popular radio personalities.

  I unscrewed the handle behind Riff’s neck, loosening the garrote.

  “I don’t know who you are, mister, but you’ve got free concert tickets for life,” he gasped. “We’ll even toss in a limo. V.I.P., baby, all the way!”

  “A woman, Jordan Sinclair,” I said as I unscrewed Raff’s garrote, “have you seen her?”

  “We haven’t seen anyone else,” Riff said, rubbing his throat.

  I untied the deejays’ hands.

  Raff pointed to a hole in an interior plywood wall. “Try in there,” he choked.

  I ran to the passage and knocked a couple boards out of the way. The hole was covered with a rubber flap that reminded me of a giant doggie door.

  I crawled headfirst through the hole, and the flap dragged across my back. I dropped to the floor on the other side. The flap fell shut behind me.

  It was pitch dark.

  CHAPTER 117

  I sprang to my feet in the dark.

  “Jordan?” I called.

  There was no answer.

  The room reeked of sweat and urine and blood.

  “Jordan?” I cried out. But all I heard was my own panicked breathing.

  I extended my arms into the blackness and shuffled my feet, walking like a mummy into Friar Tom’s torture chamber.

  The cement floor gave way to a different surface—soft, fluffy. I pawed my foot. It felt like sand.

  I inched forward, groping in the dark.

  My left knee banged into something. I reached down and felt a flat, wooden table.

  I ran my hands across the rough boards and knocked something over. I grabbed it. It felt like a candle. I swept my hand across the table in an arc until I found a box of matches. I struck a match. The taper candle I lit looked like Santa Claus.

  I waited for my eyes to adjust to the light, then staggered back in revulsion.

  Friar Tom’s house of horrors was cast in an eerie golden glow.

  The surface where I had found the candle and matches was not a table, but a stretching rack.

  I turned right and saw the oak pillory Tiffany Samples had been locked in when Friar Tom snapped her photo. A woodsman’s saw leaned against it. The saw’s large jagged teeth held bits of bloody flesh and hair.

  Nearby, stood a hulking interrogation chair, its spikes covered with blood.

  The soundproofed room was filled with the same barbaric instruments of pain displayed at the Museum of Medieval History: breast rippers, branding irons, chain flails, spiked collars, a head crusher, a skull-splitter, a Cat’s Paw, a Spanish Spider, a Heretic’s Fork.

  The sand around the ax and block was dark and crusty with blood.

  “Jordan?” I cried out.

  I stepped farther into the torture chamber.

  I saw a small refrigerator and a hot plate. Friar Tom had nourished his victims as he slowly tortured them to death.

  I opened the refrigerator and gagged. I had found Friar Tom’s trophy case. It was stocked with fingers and toes. An ear. A nose. A tongue. Two breasts.

  “Jordan, please answer me!”

  I choked back tears.

  My eyes fell on the Judas Cradle. A rope ran through a pulley in the ceiling down to an iron waist ring. The victim could be suspended and dropped onto the point of the wooden pyramid below. The pyramid was smeared with blood.

  I aimed the candle in the direction of the far wall and squinted.

  A body lay still on the floor.

  CHAPTER 118

&
nbsp; The woman on the floor wasn’t moving.

  “Jordan!” I cried.

  She didn’t stir.

  “No, Jordan, please, no!”

  A strange metal helmet covered her head.

  I rushed to her, yelling, “Jordan! Jordan!”

  She wouldn’t budge.

  I dropped to the floor beside her. Her hands were tied behind her back and one of her ankles was chained to the wall.

  I traced the light of the candle along her lifeless body.

  “Jordan,” I bawled, sticking the candle in the sand. “Oh, Jordan, no, no, no!”

  I clutched my stomach and rocked back and forth. Tears streamed down my face and fell to the sand.

  “Jordan,” I choked, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder.

  She jerked away and swiftly shifted upright.

  I fell back, stunned.

  “Jordan!” I gasped.

  I scrambled back to her. She sat with her back to the wall. She bent her free leg and kicked me, catching me in the chest.

  The furious blow knocked me backward.

  I scampered for her, ducking and dodging her kicking foot. I grabbed her by the shoulders as she kneed me in the gut.

  “Jordan, it’s me!”

  She struggled violently as I tried to calm her.

  “Jordan! What are you doing? It’s me, Ty!”

  She flailed.

  She wore a Scold’s Bridle, a grotesque iron mask with exaggerated animal features. Metal replicas of a boar’s snout, teeth and ears protruded from it.

  I realized that she couldn’t see or hear. The mask blocked her eyes and ears.

  She was screaming, but no words came out. Muted moans echoed inside the mask.

  I recalled the severed tongue I’d seen in the refrigerator.

  “Oh, Jordan, you poor thing. What has he done to you?”

  She kept battling, certain I was her captor. How long had he left her here—deaf, dumb and blind? How many times had she fought him off?

  I struggled to remove the hideous mask, afraid of what I would find underneath. However badly he had disfigured her, Jordan was alive. I would help her adjust. I’d work the rest of my life to make it up to her.

  She kicked and thrashed as I pulled the mask from her head.

  She stopped when she saw it was me.

  I stared into her eyes. She stared back with joy and love.

  Duct tape covered her ears. I was afraid to look, but I had to. I pulled the tape back gently, careful not to rip her hair.

  Her ears were still intact. No cuts, no blood. I removed the little foam earplugs.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” I whispered into her ear. “I’m here.”

  Her reply was muffled.

  I tilted my head back and saw the band of metal covering her mouth. I reached behind her head and unclasped the band. I slowly pulled it from her face. The iron gag came from her mouth, forced out by her beautiful pink tongue.

  “Ty,” she rasped.

  I threw my arms around her and hugged her, then quickly untied her hands. She rested her head against my cheek.

  “Heather?” she asked.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “She’s with Lisa. Everyone’s okay.”

  “I never gave up hope,” she said.

  “Shhh,” I said, stroking her hair, “don’t try to speak.”

  “I never stopped thinking of you,” she murmured, hugging me back. “You were always with me.”

  But I knew otherwise. I had run out on her a dozen years earlier in Washington, D.C. None of this would have ever happened if I’d stayed with her.

  “I’m sorry, Jordan,” I wept. “I never should have left you.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she whispered. “I always knew you’d come back to me.”

  We held each other as the candle burned down, flickering against the walls of Friar Tom’s torture chamber.

  CHAPTER 119

  The keys to the leg irons were on the stretching rack. I freed Jordan’s ankle and pulled her to her feet.

  “I’ve got you, honey. Lean on me.”

  I put one arm around her waist and carried the candle in my other hand. We shuffled across the sand toward the front of the storage unit.

  I was helping her through the hole in the wall when we heard the gunshot.

  He has the gun!

  “Wait here!” I said, propping Jordan against the soundproofed wall.

  I tumbled through the passageway into the front of the storage unit.

  “Ty, no.”

  I looked back. I hated to leave her in Friar Tom’s torture chamber, but it was the only safe place.

  “I’ll be back, I promise.”

  I scrambled on my hands and knees across the room. Riff and Raff had cleared out. The shock jocks were probably already on the air, hyping their encounter with Friar Tom.

  When I reached the edge of the doorway, I kept low and peered into the semi-darkness. Across the way, the security guard crouched between two storage units and pointed.

  I looked to where I’d left Shard locked in the Scavenger’s Daughter.

  He was gone.

  Had he managed to roll down the hill to the gun and shoot off the lock on the Scavenger’s Daughter?

  I scrambled behind the U-Haul and I peeked around the bumper. Shard was ten or so yards down the drive, still locked in the device. He moaned.

  The iron hand hoops of the Scavenger’s Daughter had thrown off his aim. He’d missed the padlock by his ankle and shot himself in the foot.

  I crept up behind him, aware that the torture slayer might try one last fatal trick.

  His manacled hands fumbled with the gun. He squeezed off another round and howled like a wounded animal when the bullet hit his bent leg.

  Blood ran down the asphalt in the moonlight. He let go of the gun. I stepped in swiftly and grabbed it from his heaving chest.

  “It’s over, Shard.”

  He grunted. “Finish me.”

  I shook my head.

  “Prison…now that’s torture,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure your stay on death row will be brief.”

  “I kept my word, now you keep yours,” he panted. “When they stick that needle in me, I want the longest obituary this city’s ever seen. Twice as long as the mayor’s and Tiffany Samples’ and the rest of those heretics. Make sure San Diego never forgets me, West.”

  Shard closed his eyes and grimaced. The blood loss sapped his strength, speeding the work of the Scavenger’s Daughter. His legs shook, his chest convulsed. The violent abdominal and rectal cramps seized him. He was an epileptic bloody red ball.

  His eyes shot open in wonder. He almost looked serene. The Scavenger’s Daughter had delivered him to an epiphany.

  “The pain,” he gasped. “I had no idea.”

  CHAPTER 120

  Police cars blew through the gate at the bottom of the hill, sirens blaring. I left Shard twitching on the asphalt and rushed back inside.

  “It’s me,” I called to Jordan.

  I climbed through the passage. We dropped to our knees in the sand and held each other.

  “Is he dead?” Jordan said.

  “He only wishes he was.”

  I heard footsteps on the other side of the wall. “West, you in there?” Walton said.

  “I’ve got her,” I said. “She’s okay.”

  Walton poked his head through the hole. He helped Jordan out, then I climbed through. Before the rubber flap closed, Walton shined his flashlight around the torture chamber. “Well I’ll be go to hell,” he said.

  Walton pointed toward the open door of his car. “Ms. Sinclair, sit over here and take it easy. An ambulance is on the way.”

  “I’m fine, Detective. I just want to see my daughter.”

  “Ma’am, I have to insist that you wait and get checked by the paramedics.”

  “Insist all you want, but I’m going home.”

  Jo
rdan took a few wobbly steps. I caught up, and she draped an arm over my neck.

  We stepped out into the night. The storage complex teemed with police cruisers, their red and blue lights flashing against the cinder-block buildings.

  Helicopters circled overhead. Jordan shielded her eyes from the floodlights.

  A media horde clamored in the streets. SDPD had blocked the gate. Reporters and cameramen scaled the fence, seeking a better view.

  Shard convulsed on the ground, bathed in television lights.

  “Luther, look over this way,” a cameraman called.

  Friar Tom obliged. “I’m famous,” he said.

  “Get him out of here!” Walton said.

  Two uniformed cops picked Shard up by the ends of the Scavenger’s Daughter and carried him off like a pig on a spit.

  Jordan and I continued down the hill.

  I ticked off the Five W’s in my head: Who, What, When, Where and Why. I’d nailed them all. The story would write itself.

  “Who matters most,” I said to myself. I don’t know how I ever forgot that. And I’m not talking about the story that led to my suspension. I got it wrong twelve years ago.

  Life is like journalism. Who matters most. I vowed to always remember who matters most: Jordan.

  I drew her in close. We headed for the gate at the bottom of the hill.

  The golf cart pulled alongside us.

  “You folks need a lift?” the security guard said.

  “Sure, we’re parked about a nine iron from here,” I said.

  “Hop in,” he said, “maybe you can tell me how to fix my slice on the way.”

  I helped Jordan into the cart.

  “West, where do you think you’re going?” Walton said. “I still need a statement from you.”

  “You can read it in tomorrow’s Wire.”

  I stepped into the cart.

  “West! Come back here!”

  I told the security guard we were ready anytime he was.

  “West! At least tell me one thing.”

  I turned around.

  “How did you find him?”

  I glanced at the SeaWorld sign towering above. The lights were back on. The giant image of Shamu was beaming for all to see.