“I see him!” she said, pointing. “He must have crashed too!”
“Serves the fucker right.”
Tony tooted the horn in farewell while Charlotte watched Luke watch them speed away into the night.
CHAPTER 7
Charlotte called 911 on her cell phone and asked to be patched through to Officer Dunn in Asheville. After she described to him what happened, he told her he would ask the Colombia police to comb the highway for Luke and his van. In the meantime, they were free to continue to Charleston, given there hadn’t been any serious injuries or deaths in the altercation. He ended the call by saying he would be in touch.
She told Tony, “The Colombia police are going to check the highway for Luke.”
Tony nodded. “And what about us? Don’t we need to give them statements or something?”
“Guess not right now. But if you think the damage to your car is over a grand, he suggested you fill out some forms at the police station in Charleston, for your insurance.”
“This fucking car’s not even worth a grand.” He looked at her. “Hey, you okay?”
She held her hands out before her. “I’m still shaking.”
“He’s gone. He can’t follow us anymore. Forget about him.”
“Forget about him? How do I forget about him, Tony? He just tried to run us off the freaking road.”
“You still think he’s a good guy?” Tony said, repeating what she’d told him back at the Lexington Avenue Brewery. “Don’t want him locked up?”
“I don’t know,” she replied after several moment’s reflection. “I want him to get help.”
“You gotta press charges when they catch him. You know that, right?”
“And get him sent back to prison?”
“You gotta do it, Char. You have to.”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
***
At a little past 10 p.m. Charlotte and Tony were driving through Charleston’s French Quarter, searching for a hotel. They passed a number of lively restaurants and warehouse buildings before finding a boutique inn that had a vacancy. They checked in under Tony’s name, then went to their room on the second floor. Tony raided the minibar for beer and snacks. Charlotte wanted neither. It might not be very late, but she was emotionally drained.
While Tony flicked on the TV, she lay facedown on the bed, fully clothed, and was asleep in seconds.
CHAPTER 8
Amy woke in the middle of the night in a dimly lit room she didn’t recognize—until she saw the trashy Amazonian women posters taped to the walls. She sat up on the green sofa and felt sick to her stomach. God, why had she drunk so much? She couldn’t even recall what time she’d passed out. Steve and John had left by then, she remembered that much. She and Jenny and Ben had remained out by the swimming pool while she ranted about Tony and his slut and—oh, no. She’d puked, hadn’t she? Yes, by the fence.
Amy groaned with embarrassment and rubbed her temples. She spotted her pumps on the floor a few feet away. Her embarrassment increased tenfold. Who did that bitch think she was, calling her out for dressing up? True, she had worn the skirt and the pumps for Tony—but, jeez, what the fuck? You don’t go pointing that out. At least she’d gotten the bitch back by pushing her in the pool.
Giggling to herself, Amy stood. The room spun, and she fell back on her butt to the sofa. She stood a second time and remained on her feet. She made her way to the guest bathroom off the kitchen. She peed, glanced at her tired face in the mirror, then stepped back into the kitchen, where she practically ran over Ben. At least she’d thought it was Ben at first—but she’d never seen the guy standing before her in her life.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said, backing up into a counter.
He moved quickly, squeezing her cheeks between his thumb and fingers and pinning her head to a cupboard. “There was a girl here earlier,” he said, his mouth inches from her face, his breath hot and reeking of booze. “Her name was Charlotte.”
Amy’s eyes widened with fear. “Yes,” she croaked, forcing the word from between her puckered lips. “She…here,” she added, though it sounded like, Ee ear.
“Where’d they go?”
“Charleston.”
“Why?”
“Play. Watch play.”
“What was the name of it?”
“Please, let…go.”
He squeezed harder. “What was the name of the fucking play?”
“Frank’stein.”
“Frankenstein?”
She nodded.
“Where are they staying?”
She shook her head.
He stared at her for a long moment, and his eyes terrified her. She’d never seen anything like them, anything so hard and cold.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Let me go!” Et ee oh!
He reached for something on the counter and swung it at her face.
A burst of white filled her vision. She didn’t feel any pain and wondered what happened even as she collapsed to the floor. She was still wondering what happened when she died a few seconds later with a paring knife protruding from her right eye.
CHAPTER 9
Charlotte had haunting dreams all night. During the current one she was at the house party where she and Luke had first met. Luke, however, was sitting on a sofa across the room, chatting with Amy, who was tickling her finger over his chest and trying to kiss him. Charlotte watched them from the corner of her eye and burned with jealously. Finally she confronted them, accusing Luke of being unfaithful. He laughed at her, then dragged her to a swimming pool out back, even though there had never been one at the house in real life. He shoved her in the water, jumped in after her, and submerged her head, drowning her.
Charlotte jerked away, gasping for air.
She nearly swooned with relief when she realized she wasn’t really dying. Then she remembered with dread Luke attacking her and Tony in the brewery, trying to run them off the road. Once again she felt sorry for him, for what he was going through, but that pity soon vanished. He had problems, yes, but that gave him no right to take them out on her—least of all try to kill her. Tony was right. She would have to press charges, send him back to prison. She had no other choice. She needed him out of her life.
She looked around the dimly lit hotel room but didn’t see Tony. She glanced at the digital clock—7:12 a.m.—then called Tony’s name, thinking he might be in the bathroom. There was no reply. She was just getting worried when she spotted a note on the bedside table.
He’d gone for food.
Charlotte got out of bed, opened the blinds to let in the bright morning light, and checked her phone for any missed calls. There were none. The police hadn’t called while she’d been sleeping—which, she knew, meant Luke was still out there somewhere.
***
Tony returned twenty minutes later with McDonald’s, and it was the best breakfast Charlotte had eaten in recent memory, considering she hadn’t had a bite since lunch the day before. After she showered and made herself up, she felt almost normal again. Reluctantly she pulled on her crumpled underwear and clothes, which still smelled faintly of chlorine, and exited the bathroom.
“Don’t you ever change?” Tony joked. He was lying on the bed, surrounded by junk food wrappers and playing a video game on his phone.
“Get up, geek-boy,” she said, collecting her handbag from the armchair. “It’s time to take the girlfriend shopping.”
“Girlfriend?” he said, grinning. “Is that what you are now?”
“After almost dying together, I figured it was time to up the relationship status.”
“Girlfriend,” he repeated, as if testing out the word. “Does this mean you’re going to start leaving a toothbrush at my place?”
“I already do.”
“Well then,” he said, hoping off the bed, “girlfriend and boyfriend it is.”
CHAPTER 10
2:33 p.m.
Luke sat behind the wheel of the pickup t
ruck on Church Street one hundred feet from the theater, where he could still command a view of the entrance. The truck belonged to the lanky motherfucker who’d been with the brunette the night before. He’d slit both their throats in the upstairs bedroom. They made a hell of a bloody mess before they died, and he had to shower and borrow some of the dead guy’s clothes. Nevertheless, killing them was necessary. He couldn’t have them find the blonde in the kitchen in the morning. They would call the cops, who would alert Charlotte. She wouldn’t go to the musical, and this game of cat and mouse would drag on.
He tilted the bottle of Jack to his lips and spotted Charlotte and the dickhead emerge from a side street. He watched them talking and holding hands. He watched them ask a woman to take their picture in front of the tall brownstone columns along the façade of the theater. He watched them enter the lobby.
Originally Luke’s idea had been to wait until the matinee showing of Young Frankenstein finished, follow them back to the hotel where they were staying, and kill them there. He’d been looking forward to fucking Charlotte one last time with the boyfriend looking on with a crushed skull. But sitting in the truck, watching the flow of well-dressed people enter the theater, he had come up with something a bit more dramatic, something that would make the news and maybe garner enough attention that guys like him, guys who put their lives on the line for their country, would stop getting royally fucked by the shitheads back on Capitol Hill who’d never done anything for their country except smile for a camera.
Luke opened the glove compartment, found a pen and scrap of paper, and began scratching out a suicide note.
CHAPTER 11
You live and learn, that was Pandu’s motto. You take your beatings, you get back up, and you do better. It was this philosophy that had seen him rise above the Sri Lanka slums in which he grew up by working two jobs to pay for his education while saving enough money to become eligible for a United States green card, which he was granted in 1985. This December would mark his thirtieth anniversary in the country. He now had a loving wife, three successful children, and an equal number of adorable grandchildren.
He’d worked in kitchens and drove taxis for his first ten years in America, getting treated like third-world trash by his superiors, until he purchased the Church Street 7-Eleven franchise and became his own boss. Since then he had seen every type of customer imaginable walk through his doors, and he’d become adept at spotting trouble. Mostly the worst he had to deal with were drunks and shoplifters, but twice he’d been held up. The first time the thief got away with more than nine hundred dollars from the cash register. But you live and learn, isn’t that right, and the following day Pandu purchased a SIG Sauer P226. When he was held up the second time, he shoved the pistol in the thief’s face. The scumbag ran, but not before Pandu pumped two rounds into his back. The scumbag still managed to flee on foot, but the police arrested him two hours later after he showed up at a hospital missing a quart of blood.
That had been in 2008. Pandu had not had any more attempted robberies since, though he nevertheless kept the pistol at close reach beneath the counter.
He was thinking about all this now because he did not like the look of the large man who had just entered the store. The scumbag was dressed in clean jogging pants and a clean sweatshirt. But everything else about him seemed off. His hard face, his bloodshot eyes, his stiff gait, the way practiced drunks walk.
He came straight to the counter, which meant he either wanted to buy cigarettes—or steal the cash in the register. Pandu lowered his hand to the pistol.
“Good,” the man said, smiling at him.
“Good?” Pandu frowned. “I don’t understand you, my friend.”
“I was hoping you had a gun.”
The scumbag yanked Pandu across the counter with surprising speed and strength and tossed him to the floor Pandu had recently spent an hour mopping. In the next moment a combat boot struck him in the face. Pandu saw stars and tasted blood. The strength left his body. The SIG dropped from his hand.
The man retrieved the pistol and aimed it between Pandu’s eyes.
Even before he pulled the trigger a second later, Pandu knew he was done living and learning.
CHAPTER 12
The interior of the Dock Street Theater resembled an eighteenth-century London playhouse. The seats on the main floor were set in long benches, like church pews, while the balcony level featured boxes with individual chairs. Charlotte and Tony shared the first row of one box with an elderly couple.
Charlotte was looking forward to the show. Her parents had been theater enthusiasts, and she must have seen a half-dozen musicals as a child. She had fond memories of Phantom of the Opera and The Lion King and buying snacks in the concession areas during the intermissions. After her parents died, however, she never went to another production. She didn’t know why. She supposed she’d never had a reason to attend one.
The older gentleman sitting next to her leaned close and said, “Have you been here before?”
“No, never,” she said.
“Where are you from?”
“Oh, leave them alone, Gregory,” said the woman to his right, presumably his wife.
“It’s all right,” Charlotte said. “I’m from New York. My friend here’s from Colombia. We’re going to college in Asheville.”
“Hi,” Tony said.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Tony.”
“Did you know, Tony, that this is the oldest theater in the country? Well, almost. The original burned down in The Great Fire of—Lord if I can remember. A hotel was built on the same spot, which became the present theater, and it used to employ none other than Junius Brutus Booth. He was the father of John Wilkes Booth. You know who John Wilkes Booth is, don’t you?”
Charlotte said, “My high school history teacher would kill me if I didn’t.”
“The whole family was crazy. Son was the craziest, of course. But his father was missing a few screws as well. Tried to kill his manager in this very building.”
For the first time in hours Charlotte thought of Luke, and she frowned.
“Oh, I don’t mean to upset you, my girl. That happened a dog’s age ago—”
“Shush now, Gregory,” said the woman to his left as the lights dimmed. “It’s starting.”
***
Mel Brooks’ reinvention of Frankenstein followed a young Dr. Frankenstein (who the actors pronounced “Fronkensteen”), inheriting his grandfather’s castle and trying to duplicate the steps of his grandfather and bring a corpse back to life. The bumbling servant Igor (“Eye-gore”) and the buxom assistant Inga both got a lot of laughs from the audience. Nevertheless, the real star of the show was Frankenstein’s madcap fiancée, Elizabeth, played by Tony’s sister, Maria. She was not only a gorgeously exotic woman but wonderfully talented, and Charlotte could barely take her eyes off her.
During the latter part of the play, while the townspeople were hunting for the reanimated monster, a shout originated from backstage. Charlotte was so mesmerized by the production she barely noticed. A second shout, however, caused her to frown. The actors, who were in the middle of a musical number, faltered and looked at each other.
Then, a moment later, Luke emerged on the stage, brandishing a gun.
Charlotte was so surprised she thought she had to be mistaken. She wasn’t. Luke was right there. On the stage. Looking for her.
She stared in disbelief and fear, a sickening wave of unreality washing over her. She was repeating “no” over and over, though she was barely aware of this.
The actors, Tony’s sister included, stopped singing completely. The orchestra fizzled to a halt. Gasps swept through the audience.
Luke aimed the pistol at Igor and said, “No one fucking move, or I blow his brains out!”
More gasps from the audience, some whimpers, though no one tried to leave.
“Where are you, Char?” Luke said. “I know you’re here.”
Charlotte couldn’
t move.
Luke stepped threateningly toward Igor. “You got three seconds!”
Charlotte shot to her feet. “Luke!” she shouted idiotically. It was all she could think to say.
Shielding his eyes from the spotlights with one hand, he trained the gun on her. “Will you look at you two,” he said. “Ain’t you just adorable up there.”
Charlotte realized Tony had gotten to his feet next to her.
Luke said, “Tell me, dickhead, she worth it? A few fucks worth your life?”
Tony held up his hands. “Luke…”
“There you go again, pretending you know me. Don’t you fucking learn?”
He fired the gun.
***
The spell of shocked silence that had fallen over the audience shattered. All at once everyone leapt to their feet, stampeding toward the doors, bumping, shouting. It was instant chaos.
Charlotte tried to catch Tony as he sank to his knees. She ended up on her rear, his upper body slumped in her lap.
From below came the staccato cadence of more gunshots, punctuated by screams of terror. She didn’t know if Luke was aiming at her or at the fleeing audience. For the moment, however, she was shielded by the balcony wall.
“Tony?” she said. She couldn’t find where he’d been shot. “Tony? Can you hear me?”
His face was deathly pale. “Can’t…feel my body.”
Those were the four most devastating words Charlotte had ever heard.
“You’re going to be okay, Tony. Hang in there. You’re going to be okay.” As tears filled her eyes she adjusted her position so she could cradle his head. That’s when her fingers brushed a warm and sticky clump of hair. She tilted his head and gasped.
She’d found the gunshot wound.
***
Officer James Brady and his partner of thirteen years, Murphy Peterson, fought past the swarm of manic people flowing out of the Dock Street Theater. Inside the box office lobby they stopped to assist an elderly man dragging an equally elderly woman by the hands.
Dark Hearts: Four Novellas of Dark Suspense Page 18
