Cheated By Death

by L. L. Bartlett

  Ray yelped. “You little bitch!”

  A slap.

  Patty cried out.

  A dull thunk—flesh and bone slammed onto concrete. The sounds of struggle subsided. Only Richard’s haggard breathing broke the terrible quiet.

  Shuffling noises. Ray’s zipper. Booted feet on concrete scuffed past Richard. Ray. Sweaty. Sated. Blood welling along a deep scratch across his cheek.

  He took the video camera off the tripod, rewound the tape. He pressed play, shoved the previewer under Richard’s nose. “That’s what I’m gonna do to your woman—before I off her.”

  Richard swung his head aside, but Ray grabbed a hank of his hair.

  “You sonuvabitch. You goddamn sonuvabitch.” Richard’s voice was a harsh whisper.

  Ray laughed. “I haven’t even started yet.”

  Richard sagged, pulling the door—and me—off balance.

  Ray went into the tool crib, grabbed more cable ties, went back to Patty’s still form, bound her hands behind her back, then her feet.

  I looked away—impotent rage like acid on my soul—and noticed the phone. Hope surged. If he planned to leave us—to go after Brenda—somehow I’d get to it. Somehow I’d—

  He stepped back into my line of vision, noticed what I was staring at. He pivoted, yanked the phone wire from the wall. “Does that spoil your plans, big brother?”

  I ground my teeth to keep from answering, and Ray laughed at my stifled fury.

  “I got a lot to do before the day is done,” he said.

  Before the supply house workers came back the next morning, I thought. Had he thought through how he’d dispose of three bodies? Or didn’t it matter?

  Ray went back to the bench, carefully rewrapping all but one of his knives. He grabbed his jacket from a nail in a support stud, and donned it, shoved the deadly bundle into the right pocket. He walked around me and stood in front of Richard. Metal chinked. I craned my neck. Ray pocketed Richard’s keys. Knife poised at face level, he leaned close to my brother.

  “When I come back, I’ll bring you a souvenir. How about yer old lady’s heart?”

  “If you hurt her, I swear I’ll kill you,” Richard grated. I’d never heard such murderous fury.

  Ray’s laughter echoed in the cavernous room. He raised the knife, slashed Richard’s face. My brother fell back with a yelp, pushing me into the crib, the door clanging on its metal frame. I stumbled back, regaining my balance.

  “That’s just a taste,” Ray said, wiping the bloodied knife on the back of his thigh, staining his jeans. He grabbed the rifle and the camcorder from the bench and strode off into the darkness, his footfalls echoing hollowly before fading.

  “Did he cut you?” I asked.

  Richard was shaking. “My chin.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad enough,” he said, head thrashing to his left, apparently trying to staunch the flow of blood on his shoulder.

  I glanced at the clock—one thirteen—and yanked at the bindings on my wrists.

  There was no way out. No way.

  Unless . . . .

  “Patty? Patty can you hear me?” I called. “Patty!”

  Somewhere behind me I heard movement and quiet sniffling.

  “Patty. Get up. Now! You’ve got to help us. Do you hear me?” I said, venom in my voice.

  “Don’t be so goddamned hard on her,” Richard growled.

  “If you wanna save Brenda, Patty’s our only hope. Patty!” I tried again.

  She wormed her way to her knees. “What?”

  “Get over here. Now!”

  “He hurt me. God—he hurt me.”

  “I know,” I said more kindly, trying to level my voice. “Patty, Ray’s going to kill Brenda and Maggie if we don’t stop him. Please, please help us get out of here.”

  She sidled to the support beam, shimmied her bound hands past her backside, pulled her legs through, then pushed herself onto unsteady feet. “Wha—wha’d you want me to do?”

  “Get the tin snips. Here, in the tool crib.”

  Pale and shaky, she had to hop to the workbench, then slumped against it to catch her breath. The muscles in my neck went into spasms, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from her. Pushing off again, she hobbled forward, crashed into Richard, burying her head against his shoulder.

  “Patty, don’t,” he whispered.

  I strained to see behind me. She straightened, raised her hands to gently caress his face, and looked him in the eye. “I’d do anything for you, Richard. Anything.”

  “Please, get the tin snips,” he said.

  She gazed into his eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. Then she leaned forward, kissing him on the mouth.

  And he let her.

  “Patty, please!” I begged.

  She pulled away, her lips trembling, a smear of Richard’s blood on her chin. Then she shouldered past me, and awkwardly hopped into the crib. “Where?” she asked, voice hard.

  “Above you,” I said. “Hanging from the pegboard.”

  Patty pulled uselessly at the bindings on her wrists.

  “How can I—?”

  “Pull out a drawer, stand on it!”

  She flexed her hands, wincing at the pain from her broken finger, and tried to yank open a drawer, became wedged between it and the narrow bench behind her. “I can’t,” she whimpered.

  “Yes, you can,” Richard said.

  She drew in a ragged breath, moved aside, grasped the metal pull. The drawer jerked forward, toppled under its own weight, its contents clattering on the concrete floor.

  The sweep hand on the clock finished another circuit.

  Four minutes.

  Patty climbed onto the overturned drawer, wood splintering under her bare feet. She raised her elbows to chest level, cried out in pain. She’d been tied up too long.

  “Use the yard stick—to your right. You can knock it down with the yard stick,” I told her.

  She groped for the long slender ruler. Her short skirt didn’t hide the bruises on her blood-streaked thighs. I looked away. If I hadn’t goaded Ray, if she hadn’t called him off me—

  Biting her lip, Patty scraped the ruler across the pegboard, hitting the hanging tools.

  “To your left. Higher,” I told her.

  She batted at the wall. “This’ll never work! I can’t do it. I can’t!”

  “You can, Patty. I know you can,” Richard said.

  Another minute. Five down.

  Tools rained onto the floor, clunking dully. The heavy tin snips tumbled forward, smacking her shoulder. She caught them, dropping the stick.

  “You've got it! Fantastic!” I cheered. “Come on, Patty. Hurry!”

  Grasping them clumsily, Patty shuffle-hopped closer to us. Now if she could just use them without slicing off our fingers.

  She pressed close to the chain link door, fumbling for a better hold on the snips. “What if I cut you?”

  “You won’t,” Richard said.

  “Just go slow,” I warned.

  I couldn’t see her hands as she maneuvered the snips into place. Her cold skin touched mine.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Go for it,” I said, and balled my fists.

  She drew the pincers shut, wincing with effort, tried again, hacking at the chain link. Her breath caught as her broken finger brushed mine. Chink went the snipped metal.

  “Keep going,” I encouraged her.

  She was shaking with effort, quietly sobbing, I realized, pain, misery and fear taking its toll. Another chink and I pitched forward from the sudden release—but I was only free of the chain link. My hands and feet were still bound, although now I could at least twist around.

  “Hold it. Open them up, don’t close them ‘til I tell you.” I fumbled the electrical tie into position. “Okay, cut.”

  She closed the snips.

  Metal sliced skin.

  I jumped.

  “Jesus!”

  Patty backed off. “Ohmigod! Did I hurt you?”

&
nbsp; I bit my lip to keep from swearing.

  “Jeff?” Richard asked, anxious.

  “Again,” I told her.

  “No,” she cried.

  “Patty we’re wasting time. Do it!”

  She pressed closer, jabbing my back with the snip’s sharp tips, let me maneuver the tie on my wrist into position. “Do it.”

  She lopped away, and my hands came loose. I flexed them and yanked the snips from her and freed my feet, then I cut her hands loose. “You did great, baby sister,” I said, brushed a kiss on her cheek, then went for Richard’s bindings.

  It had been ten minutes since Ray left.

  Richard rubbed the circulation back into his hands. Blood still oozed down his chin. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

  “Show us the way,” I told Patty, grabbing her arm and hauling her along the painted walkway.

  Richard caught up, and we dragged Patty between us, running for the exit.

  CHAPTER

  23

  We burst through the building’s unlocked double doors into cold fresh air and found Richard’s Lincoln gone. Panting, he and I stared at one another.

  “Where’s the nearest phone?” I asked Patty.

  “I don’t know,” she cried.

  “We could break into one of the offices,” Richard said.

  “It won’t do any good,” Patty said. “Ray messed with the system last night. No outgoing calls. He said it was insurance.”

  “Christ, everything in the area’s closed. We’re at least half a mile from anywhere. There’re no houses—nothing!” Richard said.

  “Why can’t we just take my car?” Patty asked.

  “Have you got keys?” I asked.

  “Ray took them. But there’s an extra ignition key in the front left wheel well. Daddy made me put it there ’cause I kept locking myself out.”

  I sprinted to the car, knelt on the tarmac, pawing behind the tire, and found a little plastic box attached to the firewall.

  “Thank you, Chet. Get in!” I called.

  Richard helped Patty into the back seat. I jumped in the driver’s side, started the car, tires squealing as I hit the gas.

  “Stop at the first pay phone,” Richard said. “We gotta let the cops know what’s happening.”

  “He’s got a ten-minute head start, but they could still get to the house in plenty of time,” I said.

  Did I believe it?

  I had no intuitive assurances. Nothing but fear.

  We roared onto Transit Road, scanning for a pay phone.

  “There.” Richard pointed at a strip mall up the next block.

  The car jumped the curb. I stomped on the brakes. The seat belts locked, and stopped Richard from sailing through the windshield, but sent Patty slamming into the back of my seat. She howled as Richard jerked open the door and spilled from the car.

  Patty pulled herself up, her face only inches from mine. “He really loves Brenda, doesn’t he?” she asked, gazing after Richard.

  ‘Of course he does!’ I wanted to yell, but seeing her swollen face, smeared make-up and torn clothes—a testament to what she’d endured—made me soften my voice.

  “Yeah, he does.”

  “Maybe,” she said, her voice childlike, “maybe one day somebody will love me like that.”

  Guilt washed over me. She was my sister, and I hadn’t protected her. Yet she’d saved me from Ray’s lethal hands—and at a terrible cost.

  I tore my gaze away and honked the horn. We were losing precious time.

  Richard hung up, jumped back in the car, slammed the door and punched the dash. “Go!”

  Shoving the car in gear, I wheeled back into traffic, just missing a pick up, and was rewarded with a one-finger salute.

  “Are they gonna meet us?” I asked.

  “I didn’t hang around to find out. I gave them the address—told them we were on our way. Then I called the house. There was no answer.”

  Patty patted Richard’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”

  I glanced over to see his worried gaze meet hers—and couldn’t identify the mingled emotions in his expression. He reached back to squeeze her hand.

  I turned my attention back to the road.

  Thank God traffic was light. I drove like a maniac, running red lights, careening around other vehicles, and not once did I see a cop lying in wait for speeders.

  “Where the hell are the cops when you need them?” Richard grated, echoing my thoughts.

  “It’s Sunday—they’re all watching the Bills on TV.”

  The dashboard’s digital clock read one thirty three. It had been twenty minutes since Ray left us.

  The cops will get there in time, I told myself. Maggie and Brenda will be safe. And they’re not alone. There’s a guard at the end of the driveway, goddamn it. There was no way Ray could get through those kinds of defenses.

  Yeah, a guard. A pro . . . who probably made a buck or two over minimum wage. What the hell were we thinking leaving Brenda and Maggie alone?

  One thirty eight p.m.

  Twenty-five minutes down.

  Folded into the Mustang’s cramped interior, Richard had little room to fidget, yet he couldn’t seem to keep still, his right hand absently pounded the dash. A horn blasted as I turned onto Main Street. I cut off a Lexus and zipped between a Jeep Cherokee and a Stratus, looking for my next break.

  “Come on,” Richard urged.

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I know. It’s just—”

  “Don’t torture yourself,” I said, taking in his grim expression. “You’re not responsible for freaks who—”

  “But I am. My God, Jean Newcomb’s dead. Ray tried to kill you, he raped Patty, and now—”

  “We’ll get there.” I wanted to say more, to reassure him, but how could I when I couldn’t reassure myself?

  Fists clenching the steering wheel, I ran the red light at LeBrun, took the corner and gunned the engine.

  I broke into a cold sweat when I saw no swarm of cop cars surrounding Richard's house—just the Amherst Security cruiser stationed at the end of the driveway, the guard still behind the wheel. Richard’s silver Lincoln was parked half on the grass, half on the sidewalk—with the driver’s door open.

  Where the hell were the cops?

  I jammed on the brakes, slammed the car in park, left it running in the street and bolted for the rent-a-cop. I yanked open the car door, ready to ream him a new asshole, and saw the flood of scarlet staining his uniform, his throat a jagged mess, the microphone still clutched in his hand, its cord dangling.

  I hitched a breath, backed up a step. “He’s dead,” I yelled.

  “Stay here,” Richard told Patty.

  We ran for the house. Richard paused at the locked, front door. I raced for the back door. Hunks of glass still clung to the window frame; the woodwork around the door was splintered where Ray must have kicked it in.

  I yanked open the door, and barreled through the kitchen to the main entry.

  “Maggie! Brenda!”

  Smeared, bloody handprints marred the walls.

  Bolting through the hallway, I made for the stairs.

  Where the hell was Maggie?

  I rounded the corner, a blue mound blocked my way.

  It moved.

  “Maggie!”

  She raised a bloodied hand, reaching for the banister. I crouched beside her, noticed a welling cut along her scalp.

  Enraged male screams from above shattered the quiet.

  “He hit me with a camcorder—went after Brenda. He’s up there now,” Maggie cried. “Go!”

  “Find a phone—call the cops!” I stepped over her and took the stairs two at a time.

  Topping the landing, I skidded past the master bedroom, nearly tripping on the discarded video recorder—saw only the empty rumpled bed in the room.

  Sounds crashed above me: Ray’s frustrated yelling, splintering wood, and breaking glass.

  The attic!


  I sprinted for the back stairs at the end of the hall. Flinging open the door, I dashed up the narrow steps, stopped at the top, taking in the pack rat’s paradise of stacked boxes and discarded furniture.

  I saw no one.

  A gale blew through the open door to the room on the left. Had Brenda gotten out—scrambled to safety on the sunroom’s roof below?

  I sprang into the doorway. Ray had climbed out the gaping hole where the window had been—one leg in, one leg out. Chunks of shattered glass still stuck to the frame.

  “Goddamn you, bitch,” he screamed, oblivious to me. He drew back to throw a knife—the others, still wrapped in flannel, were clenched in his other hand.

  I plowed through the junk, the noise distracting him. The knives fell with a dull thunk as I knocked him off balance, sending him through the opening. But he caught my jacket sleeve, jerking me with him. I crashed into the wall. My right knee jammed against the sill and stopped me from tumbling after him.

  Richard hollered somewhere below.

  Panicked, Ray scrabbled for purchase against the house’s brick exterior. He clutched the sill and hauled himself up. Our eyes locked as my jacket ripped.

  “Let go!” I yelled, yanking my arm back.

  Thrown further off balance, Ray shrieked and we slammed—my shoulder, his wrist—against the jagged glass. A spray of crimson wet my face.

  “Patty!” he snarled, grinding the last of the glass into my bicep.

  He teetered and I pushed myself from the window frame. My knees smashed into the studs. Ray’s flailing hand found my collar, his fingers clawing my throat.

  “Kill him, Patty, kill him!” he shouted.

  I looked back, and saw Patty’s silhouette filling the doorway. Ray held on, his feet still slipping.

  “He stole your father’s love—he cut you out of the will!” Ray hollered.

  “Liar!” I managed.

  I slid to my knees, pulling him back into the attic. Had Brenda gotten away?

  Ray toppled onto me, his elbow smashing the mangled flesh on my chest. Blinding pain choked me. Ray righted himself, pinned my right shoulder with his left hand, his right methodically smashing my sternum.

  “Do him—do him—do him!” Ray chanted with every punch.

  “Patty!” I grated, through clenched teeth.