The Playing Card Killer

by Russell James

  “He made his own decisions,” Camilla said. “He stopped going to therapy. He stopped taking his medications. He created whatever he’s become. It’s just like I told the police.”

  That revelation sent Brian seething. Of course Camilla would paint him in the worst possible light to the cops. When a jury sent him to the electric chair, she’d probably volunteer to throw the switch.

  “Be that as it may,” Derek said, “Chance Monroe warned there was a question of personal liability. If, when he moved out of the house, we knew he wasn’t competent, we’re wide open to lawsuits from the victims’ families. We’re leaving ourselves at risk if we don’t show we’re trying to be part of a solution.”

  “So we’re going to let him live here, under the same roof as Ariana? And me? You remember he’s killing women, right?”

  “Holy hell,” Brian whispered. His so-called family wasn’t in this to defend him, they were defending themselves. They were all convinced he was guilty. If people who knew him his whole life thought he was a serial killer, what chance did he have convincing a judge or jury?

  He couldn’t deal with any more of this. He got off the couch. The monitoring bracelet slid down and rubbed his foot, as if to say ‘Hey bud, remember you aren’t going far.’ He left the den and went upstairs to his bedroom.

  Or what had once been his bedroom. Camilla had wasted no time redecorating it as soon as Brian moved out. Really all she did was clean it out. She stripped the walls bare of anything he’d left and tossed the rest in the trash. The shelves, dresser and desk were as empty as a furniture store display. The bedclothes he’d used were gone, burned he presumed, and a new set, creases still crisp from the factory two years later, covered the mattress.

  His suitcase sat on top of the dresser, as if not unpacking it meant he wasn’t really staying here. Next to it were two bottles of prescription meds, thoughtfully provided by Dr. Kaufman at Camilla’s request, and heartily recommended by Chance Monroe.

  Fat chance. No matter how lousy things got, he wasn’t backsliding and taking those. Whatever was going on with him wasn’t caused by being clean, so dissolving those toxins into his system wasn’t going to fix him.

  He kicked off his shoes and dropped onto the bed. The new, unwashed cover scratched against his skin.

  Exhaustion fell over him like a lead-lined blanket. He’d barely slept the last three days, and hadn’t slept at all last night in holding. His eyes drooped. Then fear gave him a sudden jolt back awake. Nightmares waited on the other side of consciousness, visions of murder, faces frozen in terror at the moment of death. All day, his world had fallen about him and shattered into a million pieces. He didn’t have the mental strength to subject himself to any more sick, twisted experiences.

  But his body only had so much to give. Before he could stop it again, his eyelids rolled shut, he exhaled deeply, and sleep took him somewhere else.

  Chapter Thirty

  He recognizes the pond. Even at night, he knows this place. He must be a boy in this dream, because that was when he used to sneak back here. His parents’ development borders a wildlife area, where sinkhole ponds dot the landscape. The trees are tall, long protected from a woodsman’s axe and developers, first by intervening swamps, and then by local law. This place used to be his escape from the claustrophobia of his family.

  After leaving the pond, he makes his way back to the house. He remembers the urgency he used to feel, knowing that he must be back in bed before sunrise so his parents would find him there when they woke him for school. The trail is soggy in places where a thunderstorm’s rain slowly drains to the stagnant pond. Palm fronds threaten to block his way, like giant hands with a dozen long fingers. He pushes them aside until their stems snap.

  The trail ends. He steps from the woods into the Ferguson yard. The old man living here always seemed perpetually on watch, appearing out of nowhere the second a ball or Frisbee landed on his perfect grass. Tonight that house is dark.

  He skirts the yard anyway. Motion sensor lights hang beside the garage door, and even if they don’t wake old man Ferguson, the lights shine near his parents’ bedroom, and waking them would be far worse. He had been grounded for lesser crimes than sneaking out of the house. Who knows what punishment this transgression would earn?

  He works his way back into his own backyard. The grass crushes thick and cushiony beneath his feet, silent. He realizes this whole dream is silent as well. The neighborhood is always quiet at this hour, but he should have heard the thrum of insects and the bellow of frogs down by the pond. Perhaps he had, and it hadn’t registered.

  At the back door, he wipes his feet on the bristly mat. He taps the access code into the security keypad and the red light turns green. He opens the door and waits. The house is dark. He enters.

  In the kitchen, he pauses beside a wooden block full of carving knives. He selects a mid-size knife, one with a sharp, serrated blade. He tucks it into his belt, but isn’t at all sure why he’ll need this when he goes to bed. He leaves the kitchen.

  He walks down the hall, then up the stairs, and stops outside his bedroom. Once inside, he will calm his racing pulse, ditch the wet shoes that are rapidly dampening his socks, and slide back into bed. An hour or two of sleep will take off some of the edge before going to school.

  He pushes open the bedroom door and waits. For what he doesn’t know. He reaches in his pockets, extracts a bottle and a white cotton rag, like a tiny diaper. He pours the contents of the bottle on the rag.

  This part of the dream confuses him. He doesn’t know what these items are, why he has them. He walks forward to the bed. In the murky darkness, he can make out a lump under the covers. Someone, something is already in his bed. It moves under the covers.

  He starts to scream.

  * * *

  Brian woke up with a shudder. Goddamn nightmare! He’d pulled his covers up over his head in his sleep. He whipped them down to his waist.

  His heart leapt into his throat. A face loomed over him, pale against the darkness. His terror reached even deeper inside him, his fear for his own sanity reached an epic height. The face, inches away, was his own.

  “Hello, brother,” the intruder said.

  The intruder jammed a soft, white cloth over Brian’s face. Brian struggled, but the cloth reeked of some sharp chemical, and the scent invaded and weakened him. The face above him, his face above him, smiled, and Brian went unconscious.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Detective Weissbard cursed every mile of the way to the Sheridan house. He thought it was stupid to let any murder suspect out on bail to begin with, and even stupider to let Sheridan out. As soon as that media-whore sleazeball Chance Monroe took the case, Weissbard knew it was going to turn into a total zoo. The call that woke him thirty minutes ago confirmed it.

  Francisco himself had ordered Weissbard to report on Sheridan’s escape. Weissbard had crawled out alone on the limb to pluck Sheridan as the suspect. The second that fruit turned sour, Francisco was ready to chop off that limb, with Weissbard still on it.

  He pulled down the Sheridan driveway and stopped behind the black-and-white that had responded first. Every outside light was on, but this was the kind of neighborhood where everyone did that all the time anyway. Oh, the irony of people in a secure little enclave like this keeping security lights on all night, while crime-ridden neighborhoods on the other side of Tampa were all shadows and darkness. Weissbard stuffed his tiny flashlight into his pocket and went to the front door.

  A uniformed cop opened it before he could knock. Weissbard recognized him from the precinct.

  “Diaz,” he said. “What’s the story?”

  “Hey, Detective. Call came in just after three a.m. that Sheridan’s ankle monitor broke contact. The monitor and the parents are upstairs.”

  Weissbard slogged upstairs, every riser reminding him he carried too much weight and managed o
n too little sleep. He stopped in the first open doorway. The bedroom wasn’t much more than that, a room with a twin bed and an empty desk. A wad of sheets and a blanket lay snarled at the foot of the bed. The ankle monitor lay in the bed’s center, its strap sawed through. A mid-size carving knife lay beside it. Derek and Camilla stood at opposite sides of the bed looking down at the monitor. They displayed the same disgusted look they’d have if someone left a steaming pile of shit there. They both turned to Weissbard.

  “I don’t understand,” Derek said. “How did the officer know Brian was gone? The monitor is still here.”

  “It sends a signal if it senses it’s been taken off,” Weissbard said. “Not just its location.”

  “Oh, I see,” Derek said, as if the revelation was something profound.

  “When was the last time someone saw Brian?” Weissbard said.

  “At dinner,” Derek said. “Then he came up here. We went to bed at eleven p.m.”

  “And you’re sure he didn’t leave the house?”

  “The alarm was set even before dinner,” Camilla said. “We’re quite concerned about the press and whatnot. All this unwelcome attention.”

  Not to mention victims’ families wanting to string up your son, Weissbard thought.

  “Opening any door or window would have set it off,” Derek added. “It was on when we went to sleep, but off when the police officer woke us up.”

  Weissbard checked the bedroom window. The upper right-hand corner had a wireless alarm sensor. The window was locked from the inside. He looked out and down from the window. A straight drop onto undamaged holly bushes. Sheridan hadn’t escaped that way.

  He looked at the monitor on the bed. The kitchen knife beside it didn’t make sense. If Sheridan was going to bolt in the middle of the night, why not just go to the kitchen, cut himself free, and leave? Maybe he needed the privacy to saw through it. It wasn’t easy work.

  A look around the room confirmed that Sheridan hadn’t made any effort to move in. Some clothes and basic toiletries sat in an open suitcase on a dresser. An open, lightweight backpack lay on the floor underneath the chair. The rest of the room seemed sterile, like no one had gotten around to decorating it.

  The pile of personal articles didn’t sit well either with Weissbard. Who goes on the run and brings nothing with him? Especially with a convenient backpack available and plenty of prep time to pack it?

  “I’m going to look around,” Weissbard said. “Don’t touch that monitor or the knife.”

  He checked the interior perimeter of the house. Other than the front door, only the back door was unlocked. He stepped out onto the patio. The next-door neighbor’s yard backed up to some woods. If Sheridan was going to make a break for it, that would be the way to go, not wandering out through the development’s front gate.

  Weissbard snapped on his flashlight and checked the grass between the patio and the fence. It looked like there were footsteps crushed into the thick turf. Nothing he could get an impression of, just bent blades that were already bouncing back into the upright perfection this place’s home owner’s association probably mandated.

  Derek walked up behind him. “Did you find anything?”

  Why, yes, Weissbard thought. And my first inclination is to share it with the idiots who freed their son to jump bail.

  “What’s that woods back there?” he said instead.

  “A swampy wildlife preserve. Highway 58 runs on the other side of it.”

  And that was that. Sheridan would be through there without being seen and out on the highway. Thumbing a ride, picked up by a friend. Wherever he was, he wouldn’t be anywhere near here by now. But Weissbard needed to check anyway. He went back inside and found Diaz. He told him to get some backup and search the area between the house and Highway 58.

  Weissbard went to his car for two evidence bags for the knife and the monitor. He contemplated showing them to a certain bail-granting judge before booking them as evidence.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Brian’s head slammed against hard metal. He came to, blinked, and tried to focus. His brain felt like it was covered in shredded paper and rolling inside his skull. His fuzziness dissipated, but the motion didn’t stop. He was moving in the darkness.

  Thick, humid air enveloped him. It reeked with the chemical smell of new vinyl. A blindfold covered his eyes. He tried to reach for it, and found that his hands were bound behind him. His ankles were as well. He lay upon a thick, plastic drop cloth. It felt sticky against his face and hands. Duct tape covered his mouth.The road noise of cars and the rumble of tires surrounded him. He bounced up and down. He had a bad feeling he was in the trunk of a car.

  He rubbed the side of his head against the plastic over and over, until millimeter by millimeter he inched the blindfold up over his eyes. Enough light leaked into his enclosure to tell him more than he wanted to know.

  He wasn’t just in a car trunk. He was in the car trunk. The inside of the trunk lid had a big reflective safety decal on it. The same one from his vision, the one where he saw Carla Alessandro before the Playing Card Killer set her corpse adrift in Tampa Bay. That sure as hell didn’t make him feel good about his potential next stop.

  He was still wearing the sweat pants, socks and T-shirt he’d fallen asleep in. He remembered being drugged and taken from his bedroom. He remembered a flash of the kidnapper’s face. Of his own face?

  He had to get out of this trunk. Now. Trunks had an interior release. One pull and he’d be out. He struggled against his bindings. They didn’t flex. He realized he shouldn’t have wasted his strength. The Playing Card Killer had way too much practice to be sloppy there.

  He remembered scenes in mystery novels where the kidnapped person told the cops about what he heard or felt during his kidnapping, and the cops used it to track down the killer. Nice idea, but nothing around him sounded unique, and anyway he’d have to live through this experience before he could ever talk to the cops. His bound legs shuddered as an anxiety attack began to gather steam.

  Something bumped against Brian’s knees.

  “Road trip!” screamed Mr. Jitters.

  His cry echoed inside the trunk like a cannon shot. Brian slithered backwards like a sidewinding snake until he hit the sides of the trunk.

  Mr. Jitters’ disembodied head sat in the corner of the trunk. Without the hat, he looked even more like a living skull, completely hairless, skin painted white everywhere with only the black skull pattern marking his face. The creepy painted smile now stretched up and back below his ears. The two eye sockets looked like black abysses.

  Panic clamped Brian into paralysis and constricted his chest so tightly that he could barely breathe.

  Mr. Jitters’ eyes popped open. Two unbelievably wide, unbelievably white eyeballs stared into Brian’s soul.

  “Face the facts, buddy.” The red in his mouth was the color of fresh blood. “Your clock is ticking down fast. This guy kills everyone he kidnaps. He has to. Can’t leave a witness. And you’re officially a witness.”

  Mr. Jitters’ detached hand appeared beside Brian’s neck. It grabbed his throat and squeezed. Brian choked behind the duct tape gag.

  “Can’t you feel it already? That velvet rope you felt in your hand now tightening around your neck? Choking you off from the land of the living?”

  Brian wanted to flail around the trunk, to shake free the hand and drive the head into the side of the trunk with his knees. But between the bindings and his panic, he was helpless.

  The hand released him.

  Then the head began to spin. In an instant, it became a blur of flashing black and white. Like a child’s top, it zipped across the trunk. It jerked to a stop inches from Brian’s face. Mr. Jitters’ eyes locked onto Brian’s. He exhaled a stink like percolating summer garbage.

  “Of course you may not live that long,” Mr. Jitters laughed. “The
trunk here isn’t exactly first class seating. So cramped, no air. You could suffocate before he even opens this rolling coffin.”

  The air had turned stale, hot, thick. Brian’s breathing had humidified the tiny space and now his heart labored in his chest under a sweat-soaked shirt. The rising heat of the day would only make this worse.

  “Now let’s get cozy,” Mr. Jitters said.

  Mr. Jitters’ head began to swell. Like an expanding balloon it filled the space between Brian’s face and knees. It kept growing and pressed him hard, squeezing him into the sides of the trunk. The deck lid hinge gouged the back of his head. Mr. Jitters’ cheek pressed against Brian’s nose and cut off his air. The rest of the swelling head blotted out any remaining light and enveloped Brian’s body. The pressure squeezed the last bit of air from his lungs.

  The car hit a pothole and lurched hard down, then up. Mr. Jitters popped like a soap bubble. The pressure disappeared. With relief, Brian sucked air in through his nose so hard it made his head hurt.

  The vehicle slowed. Brian bounced a few more times in the trunk and then the car stopped. Somewhere in front of the car, a garage door screeched open. The car drove forward a bit, stopped, and the door screeched downward again. The engine cut off.

  The car door opened and slammed closed. A car remote chirped and the trunk lid popped open. Brian blinked against the brighter light. A man’s shadow blocked it. Brian’s mouth went dry and he quaked, waiting to feel a velvet rope around his neck.

  “Awake!” the killer said. “Wonderful!”

  He pulled the blindfold from Brian’s forehead. He moved to the side and Brian could make out his face. He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t imagined the last fleeting image he’d had in his parents’ house. Except for the shorter, spiky blond hair, this guy was Brian’s dead ringer. He looked over Brian’s wet shirt and damp hair with derision.

  “Dude, you looked way better when I put you in here.”