The Playing Card Killer

by Russell James

  “Trouble, bro?” Tyler said. “You look stressed. Now for the cherry on this cake. Off with the blindfold so she can see who’s actually ending her life. The look on her face will be priceless.”

  Tyler pulled his knife from his pocket, the dog-killing, foster-father-slaying special, and flipped it open. He knelt and tucked the tip under Daniela’s tape blindfold.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Two houses down in his search, and panic metastasized in Weissbard like a cancer. Both had been busts. That only left him two to go. The girl’s life expectancy dropped exponentially with every second he wasted. And if, God forbid, all four were dry wells…the girl would be dead and he’d have a lot of trouble explaining following his gut and not staying at the kidnap scene and reporting it to Francisco. He didn’t even want to think about that.

  He pulled up to the third house, got out and walked up the driveway through the rain, too wet and too worried to even pay attention to the downpour. A subtle variation on every ranch house he’d stopped at, every home in the neighborhood in fact. One of the bushes by the front stoop was just a blackened, leafless skeleton. Odd. Neighborhoods like this had homeowners’ associations that harped on residents to get things like that back up to code. Unless they were part-time residents and weren’t home to fix it. He approached the garage door. The four windows were covered in newspaper. People often did that to keep the sun from fading things in the garage. But this was a north-facing door, out of indirect sunlight. And a date along one edge of the paper read that it was yesterday’s paper. He drew his weapon and flicked off the safety.

  A muffled shout came from the other side of the door. Then, softer, a female voice. Something clanked.

  The cop in him said this didn’t rise to probable cause. His gut screamed that it didn’t give a shit, and get in there.

  He ran to the front door. He reared back and kicked it. The doorjamb splintered into a dozen pieces. He charged in, pistol leveled. He ran down the hall to the kitchen, then turned right in the direction of the garage.

  The door stood open. Decades of skill doing flash-scene assessments jumped into action and he soaked up the picture in a millisecond. On the other side sat Brian Sheridan, near naked except for work boots and shorts, bound in a chair next to a home-fitness machine. He had a cord stuck in his mouth that held a brace of weights suspended over the head of a bound and blindfolded Daniela.

  Sheridan’s eye were wide, his neck craned forward, his face beet red. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His terrified look telegraphed that he was about to lose control of that cord.

  Weissbard charged in.

  * * *

  The instant the smash at the front door had rolled through the kitchen and into the garage, Tyler had reacted. He leapt like a cat to the far side of the doorway, knife at the ready for whoever came through.

  Brian’s psychic connection to his brother had grown stronger still. At this distance, he could feel Tyler’s emotional state, and it wasn’t one of fear. It was sheer predatory glee.

  Weissbard appeared in the doorway, soaked to the skin, weapon drawn. Brian first felt relief, then panicked dread. As soon as he stepped through the threshold, Tyler would slice him in two.

  Weissbard. Tyler. Daniela about to die as soon as his tenuous grip on the cord in his mouth gave way. It was all too much. Anxiety exploded from every nerve ending. His mind reeled as he involuntarily shook within the bindings. It took all his concentration to keep his mouth clamped shut and Daniela alive. He tried to warn Weissbard with his eyes, with a look, that death awaited inches away.

  Weissbard missed the message, his eyes more focused on the girl in peril. He lowered his gun and sprang for the doorway.

  His brother would have Weissbard’s throat slashed before the cop knew what hit him. Seconds later, he’d kill Daniela. His complete powerlessness amplified Brian’s anxiety.

  Brian grabbed for a straw. He could feel Tyler’s emotions stronger and stronger each day since Brian had abandoned his medications. Now they ran so powerful Brian could almost taste them. The transient link that once only sputtered when his conscious mind was at rest now crackled live all the time. Tyler made no mention of it, and God knows he would have gloated about any deeper insight into Brian’s mind. If Brian could now receive so clearly, perhaps he could send.

  Brian bit so hard on the cord it flattened between his teeth. Then he dropped his mental defenses and let the anxiety flood in. The incapacitating, overwhelming sense of impending apocalypse took over. He looked in his brother’s murderous eyes and psychically shouted “Tyler!”

  Brian sent a blast of his roiling anxiety out across the room.

  Weissbard crossed the threshold. Tyler coiled to lunge. Then his jaw dropped. His face paled. All his confidence, all his bravado seemed to drain away. His knife hand, seconds ago poised for the kill, shook like he had Parkinson’s.

  Brian’s mouth twitched. The cord slipped. He bit down harder. Molars rolled in his jaw. An image of Daniela, smiling at him outside his apartment, appeared in his head. A tendon in his neck snapped like a stretched rubber band. The cord slipped free. It scorched a burn across his tongue and slid through his mouth. The steel cable zinged through the home gym’s pulleys.

  Weissbard sprang from the kitchen threshold. With more grace than a guy that big should have, Weissbard dove for the gym. One hand grabbed a support cable. The hand holding his gun shot out under the falling weights. The impact drove his arm down. He dropped to one knee, and cocked his arm straight up under the weights. Thirty accelerating pounds of iron slammed his elbow into the stack below. Bone cracked like dropped china.

  But Weissbard held up the weight. The center pin stopped a half inch from Daniela’s duct-taped eyes. Brian nearly passed out with the rush of relief.

  Tyler slithered over the Camry’s rain-slicked hood and landed beside the red Honda. His eyes darted everywhere, driven by panic and confusion from his first full-blown encounter with Brian-level anxiety. He jumped into the Honda’s driver’s seat. Weissbard’s head jerked in Tyler’s direction at the slam of the Honda’s door.

  “Shit!” Weissbard said. He reached with his left hand to lever his right hand and his gun from under the weights.

  The Honda roared to life with a belch of black smoke against the garage door. Tires squealed and the car jumped into reverse. It crashed into the flimsy garage door and swept it out of its tracks and through the opening. The car barreled onto the driveway. A blast of the deluge outdoors blew into the garage.

  The Honda rocketed down to the street, pushing the detached door like an eight-foot-tall plow. Then the door flew up and over the car’s hood to land half-blocking the garage opening. The Honda sideswiped Weissbard’s Charger in a crash of shattered side-view mirrors. The little car hit the rain-swept street in a lateral slide, skidded to a stop, then raced forward and out of sight.

  In that moment, though Tyler was free, Brian didn’t care. He was alive. More importantly, Daniela was alive.

  Or so he hoped.

  Weissbard winced, raised the weights, and placed his gun on the floor. He slid Daniela clear of the gym and lowered the weights. She didn’t move. Brian held his breath.

  “Is she okay?” he croaked.

  Weissbard placed his fingers against Daniela’s neck. He smiled, then gave her a quick inspection. “She’s got a pulse. Strong, but slow. She may be drugged, have fainted, or both. She’s out of it, but she seems okay.”

  “He drugged her.”

  Weissbard glanced at all the zip ties holding Brian in place. He looked around the garage and his eyes rested on a pair of hand pruners. He retrieved them and snipped Brian free.

  “Now do you believe me?” Brian rasped. He started to stretch his arms and his right leg.

  “I’ve believed you for a while, just couldn’t find you.”

  Brian nodded toward where the Honda had made i
ts exit. “That was my twin brother.”

  “Yeah, I put all that together. Better late than never. How badly are you hurt?”

  “Bruised, mostly. But my left foot’s broken.”

  “I’ll call in an ambulance and we’ll get you and Daniela to a hospital.”

  “I don’t have to go back to jail now, right?”

  Weissbard thought about it. “Uh, yeah, you are an escaped prisoner on bond. You’ll need to go back to jail until the District Attorney agrees to drop the charges. Which he’ll do as soon as he sees all the evidence about what really happened.”

  “You can help make that happen?”

  Weissbard smiled, as if stoked by more than just job satisfaction. “Oh, yeah. I’ll take this right to my sergeant and all the way up to the mayor. Trust me.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Weissbard’s call from the garage actually brought two sets of EMTs. One went straight to Daniela. The tension on their faces and the urgency in their acts dissipated as soon as they’d checked her vitals. Brian relaxed as well.

  The second set approached Weissbard as he cradled his injured arm. He waved them off and over to Brian. They gave Brian a quick line of questions, then eased him from his chair and onto a gurney. As he lost sight of Daniela behind the tail of the Camry, he wondered if he’d ever see her again.

  Between the lack of sleep, the beatings, and the anxiety relief, the rest of the ride to the hospital turned into a blur. As he passed in and out of various levels of consciousness, he experienced a swirling mix of anger, frustration and fear. But the emotions weren’t his. All carried the bitter aftertaste of his brother. He could sense Tyler on the run.

  * * *

  As his hospital stay progressed, Brian was able to make some uncomfortable comparisons to his Palm Bay Preserve confinement. Bad food, long days alone, and his throbbing left foot in a sling that kept him damn near immobilized. But adding insult to literal injury, he had an ankle monitor on his right leg. He was, after all, still on bond from the Florida state penal system. The truth hadn’t set him free as rapidly as Weissbard had promised. A uniformed police officer guarded the door to his room around the clock in case Tyler returned.

  The doctors had reassembled his foot and said that with the right therapy he’d be up and about in a few weeks. When they were a bit evasive about any permanent damage, Brian flashed back to Tyler’s signature foot drag, and hoped he’d end up nowhere near that bad off.

  On his sixth day, while Brian was forcing down a lunch of limp vegetables and unknown meat, someone knocked against his open door. He looked over to see Daniela, wearing pink scrubs that had a pattern of tiny puppies. She gave a tentative wave.

  “Hey, Bri.”

  She hadn’t been to see him since their rescue. He wasn’t sure that she would ever visit, given everything that had happened. Seeing her engendered a sense of relief, tinged with sadness. “Daniela, come in.”

  She came as close as the end of his bed, as if a communicable disease afflicted him, not traumatic injuries. She didn’t say a word.

  “The police said Tyler didn’t hurt you,” Brian said to break the awkward silence.

  “No. A few bruises from the struggle but that’s all. I don’t remember anything clearly after that, until I was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

  Brian thought that was a very good thing.

  “You look good,” she offered.

  He knew that he was a bruised, swollen mess, but he appreciated the lie. “Thanks. See, no harm done at all getting off my meds.”

  Daniela managed a weak smile.

  “I guess you know the truth. My twin brother and all.”

  “Yes, Detective Weissbard explained it all to me, and the whole story’s blown up all over the internet. Totally bizarre, right?”

  “To say the least.”

  Silence hung in the air like a guillotine.

  “Look, Bri.…” Daniela started.

  “Don’t worry,” Brian said. “I know that everything that’s happened the last two weeks has ruined whatever we might have had.”

  Relief spread over Daniela’s face. “Oh, good. I mean, you’re a good dude, Bri. But when Tyler kidnapped me, I really thought it was you with a dye job. He was your twin and all. I just don’t know if I can get past that image.”

  “Hey, I appreciate you coming to clear the air about it,” Brian said.

  Daniela stepped back from the bed. “Okay, great. I’m glad you’ve gotten through this. I really hope everything works out for you.”

  “Same for you.”

  She flashed the same timid wave she made when she’d entered the room, and then backed out the door.

  Brian hadn’t really expected anything more from her. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised by far less. What she’d been through would likely kill a strong relationship, and theirs had been far from that to begin with. It was nice of her, and a bit brave, to not leave the whole thing hanging.

  Two deep voices began a low, professional-level conversation in the hall. Then there was a second knock on his door. Brian had been practically alone for six days, now he was the most popular guy in the hospital.

  Detective Weissbard walked in, beaming. One arm was in a sling. Brian hadn’t seen him since making a statement that first day he’d been admitted. He didn’t think he’d ever seen him smiling.

  “Brian, looks like the hospital is about to release you and make you a free man.”

  Brian glanced at his ankle monitor. “Freer, at least.”

  “I can take care of the rest.” Weissbard pulled the unlock device for the monitor out of his back pocket. “The DA has officially withdrawn all the charges related to the Playing Card killings and bail violations. He’s even expunged your record so the arrests won’t come up in background checks.”

  That solved about half of Brian’s problems. As Weissbard bent over Brian’s leg and began to unlock the monitor, Brian asked the question he wished Weissbard had already answered. The fact that the detective hadn’t meant Brian wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.

  “Has Tyler been caught?” Brian said.

  Weissbard’s smile dwindled to nothing. “Still in the wind, but likely far away. His car was found abandoned at a Wal-Mart in Valdosta, Georgia three days ago. Two cars were stolen in town that day. He might have taken one of them, he might have hitched a ride, he might have stowed away on a freight train for all we know. He’s got no credit cards and no cell phone, so he’d going to be tough to find. But we’ll find him. He’ll surface somewhere. But trust me, it will be a long way from here. The whole state of Florida is on the lookout for him.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Brian said.

  Weissbard zipped the monitor’s band into two and pulled it off Brian’s leg. “There you go. You had a crazy story from the start. But you understand why I thought you were the killer?”

  Brian definitely understood that was as close as he was going to get to a Weissbard apology. “The evidence was stacked in that direction. I’m just glad that you changed your mind and got to that house in time.”

  A commotion echoed in the hallway. Then in strode Chance Monroe, resplendent in a light gray suit and bright yellow tie. He pushed an empty hospital wheelchair in front of him. His artificial broad smile seemed glued in place. Brian swore he’d whitened his teeth for today.

  “Detective! Good to see you’ve removed that unconstitutional monitor. Brian, time to get you home, a free man.”

  Weissbard’s eyes narrowed. “Monroe, let the kid go home in peace. He doesn’t need to be one of your media spectacles.”

  “Oh, yes he does. Son, a media spectacle is exactly what you need. If you don’t publicize the shit out of your exoneration, the rest of the world is going to keep looking at you as the Playing Card Killer. Everyone remembers your arrest. I’ll mak
e certain everyone remembers your vindication from the Tampa Bay PD’s witch hunt.”

  Weissbard balled his fists. Brian touched the cop’s arm with his fingertips.

  “No, it’s fine,” Brian said. “He’s right.”

  Thinking about how this whole event was going to impact the rest of his life had hatched a few spells of anxiety the last two days. The falsely accused often carried the undeserved mark of the guilty in the public’s eye. What appeared to be Chance Monroe’s uncharacteristic altruism was likely just a reach for more publicity. But Brian was still going to take advantage of it.

  A pretty young woman in a sharp, dark blue pants suit and heels walked in carrying a new men’s suit on a hanger.

  “My assistant coincidentally has appropriate clothes in just your size. Now get yourself dressed to impress.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Twenty minutes later, Chance checked his hair one last time in the reflection of the glass doors, then wheeled Brian out of the hospital exit. A wall of local and national media greeted them. Still cameras clicked and flashed white strobes. Red lights lit up on video cameras. An unintelligible tangle of shouted questions arose from the crowd.

  Chance rolled Brian up beside a set of microphones on the hospital sidewalk. He held up a hand and the crowd went quiet.

  “Today you see the righting of another miscarriage of the justice system as Brian Sheridan goes home a free and vindicated man.”

  Seemingly from out of nowhere, Derek and Camilla suddenly appeared behind Brian’s wheelchair. It appeared that Camilla had her teeth whitened for the day as well, and perhaps endured a few shots of Botox.

  “After all my years practicing law,” Chance continued, “I pride myself on being able to immediately identify an innocent man. I represent no other. This case once again proves me correct.”

  Brian stifled a moan. Chance had conveniently forgotten that just after he’d been released on bail, he’d told his parents that Brian was most likely guilty.