by Rob Ashman
Mechanic didn’t struggle, she slackened her grip on the eighteen-inch knurled metal bar concealed in her sleeve and slowly slid it down. When she felt the burred serrations at the end she tightened her grip.
Tall guy shifted his gaze and saw the weapon.
‘Hey what the f—’
Mechanic jerked forward from the waist causing dancing boy to lean over the top of her. Then she snapped her head backwards, smashing him square in the face. Blood sprayed in the air as his nose burst open. She repeated the move and the back of her head caught him on the side of the jaw as he tried to pull away. He yelled in pain and clutched at his shattered features with both hands. She raised her right arm and slammed the metal bar down hard against his right knee. There was a loud crack as his leg bucked and he collapsed in a heap.
Tall guy levelled his gun and moved in close. Mechanic darted to the side and smashed the bar into his forearm sending the weapon clattering to the floor. She spun and kicked him in the chest. A rasping gasp of air escaped as he staggered backwards under the force of the blow.
Tall guy screamed in pain as his splintered arm sent delayed pain signals to his brain. She stepped forward and swung the metal bar again, striking his left collarbone. He fell to the ground as his legs gave way.
Mechanic turned to face dancing boy who was struggling to right himself with only one working leg. The bar swished through the air and cut a deep corrugated groove in the top of his head.
He catapulted backwards. Dead before he hit the ground. Staring at the sky with his mouth gaping open.
Mechanic kicked the gun to one side and approached tall guy who was kneeling on the floor. His eyes were the size of pool balls as he tried to get his useless arms to do something to protect himself. They flapped at his sides, dripping flecks of blood onto the sidewalk.
She surveyed the damage. ‘You’re not quite done are you? One more I think.’ The jagged end of the bar ripped through his throat as she swung it horizontally. He keeled over sideways with the same look as his partner. A halo of dark blood grew around his head.
Mechanic fixed fat man with a stare that made a trickle of piss stain the crotch of his pants. He was stuck in his chair.
She picked up the gun and walked towards him with the grip outstretched.
‘Take it.’
He tried to free himself from the plastic sticking to his skin.
‘You obviously don’t have one, so take it.’ She offered him the butt of the revolver. ‘Take it.’
He reached out with a shaking, fat hand and took the weapon. His flabby fingers curled around the contoured grip. She watched as fat man’s cogs turned, trying to figure out what was happening.
‘You are in bad need of exercise,’ she said looking at his ass poking through the slats in the chair.
Fat man pointed the muzzle at Mechanic.
‘So I’m going to do you a favour.’ She snaked out her right hand, seized the barrel and yanked the gun from his grasp. He screamed as his finger snapped against the trigger guard.
‘I always like to give people a chance, and you just blew yours.’ Fat man stared at his finger sticking out at right angles to the back of his hand.
‘It’s dislocated and broken. That will hurt like a bastard,’ Mechanic said casually. ‘No time for that now, it’s time for your run.’ She stamped the sole of her boot into the side of his head sending him sprawling to the ground. He landed on the sidewalk with a sweaty splat, crying out as he landed on his busted hand.
‘Go on, run,’ she chanted, ‘run, fat boy, run.’ Mechanic waved her hands in front of her as if she was shooing away a cat about to crap on her lawn.
He scrambled to his feet and heaved himself into an unsteady walk. Mechanic let him go, watching him waddle and flap his way up the road.
She bent down and unclipped the knives attached to her ankle. She stood up, took a calming breath and hurled the first blade. It buzzed through the air and embedded itself deep into the middle of fat man’s back.
He stopped and let out a high-pitched shriek. His short arms flailed around trying to locate the knife but without success. He could hear the second one coming but it was too late. The silver blade buried itself below his left shoulder. He let out another scream and fell forward, cracking his face on the sidewalk.
Mechanic walked to her victim and could hear his breath rattling as his windpipe filled with blood. He floundered around on his enormous belly like a landed fish, trying to retrieve the blades from his back. Mechanic knelt beside him.
‘You really are unfit,’ she tutted, pulling the knives from his body. His bulky frame juddered as the blades exited his flesh. He let out a scream and coughed up blood. Crimson blotches oozed across the back of his shirt.
‘Please don’t,’ fat man pleaded as he thrashed his arms around trying to roll over.
‘Don’t what?’ Mechanic clasped her hand to the back of his head and ground his face into the sidewalk, enjoying the sound of his teeth grating on the concrete. She let him up for air.
‘Don’t kill me. They make me do drug runs, I don’t have a choice.’
‘That sounds bad. You should be more careful with the company you keep.’
‘Let me go, I need a hospital. I can’t breathe. Please let me go. I won’t tell. I promise.’
‘Are you sure you won’t tell if I let you go?’ She jerked his head back then smacked it into the floor pushing hard on the back of his head.
‘I won’t. I promise. Just please …’
Mechanic rolled him onto his back. Leaning over him she stared into his grazed puffy face. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I promise I won’t say a word.’
‘Let’s fix you up then.’
Mechanic heaved him up with his back against the wall. His head lolled forward and blood spilled from his mouth down his front. ‘Wait here, I’ll go get help,’ she said.
Fat man nodded and wiped his chin.
Mechanic returned to the two bodies lying in the road and picked up the knurled metal bar. Concrete-reinforcing steel made a great weapon. She pushed it up her sleeve and walked back to fat man.
‘They coming?’ he choked his words out.
‘Yes, they’ll be here shortly.’
‘I can’t breathe.’
‘They said for me to check your airways to see if they’re clear.’
Fat man nodded.
Mechanic knelt beside him and tilted his head back, peering inside his mouth.
‘If I let you live, are you sure you won’t tell anyone?’
‘Ggyesss.’
‘Are you sure? Because you don’t sound so sure.’
‘Ggyess I won’t—’
Mechanic jammed his head against the wall face up and forced his jaw down.
‘I can’t see anything obstructing your airways. You should be able to breathe fine. Can you breathe fine there, fat boy?’
‘Grrnoo,’ he said with his mouth wide open.
‘Then you must be lying and if you’ll lie about something as easy as breathing then you’ll definitely lie about not telling.’
‘Grrnoo I wunt.’ His eyes bulged.
‘Are … you … sure?’ she said banging his head against the brickwork as she pronounced each word.
He winced at each impact. ‘Ggyess …’
‘Wait a minute, you’re right, there is something there, I can see it stuck in your throat.’
Mechanic stood up and shoved her knee into his chest. ‘I’ll get it out.’
She kept his head tight against the wall and forced her hand into his mouth. She loosened her grip on the bar. It protruded from her sleeve.
‘Look at me, fat boy. Keep still now,’ she said as his hands tried to relieve the pressure on his chest.
Mechanic drove the bar into his gaping mouth.
The ragged end tore its way through his oesophagus. Fat man’s arms lashed out trying to grasp Mechanic’s hands. He let out a gagging, choking sound as blood erupted into his mouth.
&
nbsp; She rammed it deeper down his throat.
His teeth splintered as he bit into the metal.
Fat man’s body convulsed. His hands clawing at her sweatshirt. Then nothing. He was still.
His eyeballs bulged from their sockets, stained red from the rupturing blood vessels.
Mechanic stopped pushing.
She stared into fat man’s contorted face, his head tilted back with eight inches of metal protruding from his mouth. Wiping the knives clean, Mechanic snapped them into the leather straps around her ankle and walked back to the other two bodies.
Back at the car she stripped off her clothes, towelled herself down and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. The gloves, sweatshirt, jogging pants and towel were bundled into a white plastic laundry bag marked Hacienda.
Mechanic sat in the car and surveyed her handiwork from a distance. She could just make out fat man sitting against the wall, his head pinned back by what looked like a giant cocktail stick.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
Big day tomorrow.
That felt better.
3
Tallahassee, Florida
Lucas’s every waking moment was consumed with finding Mechanic and killing the psychotic bitch, though in public he tended to use the phrase ‘bring her to justice’. This was a big day for him and, to put it bluntly, he was shitting his pants.
It had been two weeks since his return to work and two weeks since that damn package from Mechanic landed on his desk. It was postmarked the very day he started back at the precinct, 21 March 1983.
He was pleased to be back but knew he wasn’t the same man. He wasn’t the same police lieutenant who had cracked Mechanic’s true identity and had so nearly taken her down. The murdering bitch had broken his body and his spirit – quite literally. She’d beaten him to within a hair’s breadth of death and, if it hadn’t been for Harper’s intervention, Lucas would be dead. He’d spent six months in and out of hospital getting his body put back together and a further two in therapy putting his head back together. Neither of which had been entirely successful.
Despite the best intentions of the force to rehabilitate him back to work, he knew he was damaged goods. He walked with a stick to support his shattered leg, his left lung operated at thirty percent capacity and his right arm shook with tremors caused by the nerve damage he sustained while being hung from the steam pipe.
While his wounds served as painful reminders, they paled into insignificance compared to the demons that played inside his head.
Lucas had become a single-issue cop. He disregarded his wider duties to focus on the single pursuit of catching Mechanic. Nothing else mattered. Nothing even came close, not even his wife.
The demons were fuelled by guilt and he channelled his guilt into a boiling rage. Rage that there was now a ragged hole deep inside where his friend and partner used to be. Chris Bassano was still very much alive, but the man whom Lucas had worked so closely with was most definitely dead.
Mechanic had attacked Bassano when he cornered her in his car. She tore him to pieces. She smashed his head to a pulp against the dashboard, then almost severed his arm.
Bassano’s pretty boy looks were gone, replaced with a misshapen forehead and a spider’s web of deep lacerations criss-crossing his face. His arm could not be saved and the amputation ensured he would never again be a cop.
It had changed Bassano irrevocably.
He had become withdrawn, a shadow of his former self. He could no longer cope with living on his own and his parents moved him out of his apartment in Tallahassee and into the family home in New Jersey. He now lived a reclusive lifestyle, refusing to return Lucas’s calls or respond to his letters. Lucas blamed himself for what had happened and grieved the loss of the friend he once knew.
Killing the bitch was the only thing that mattered.
He took a deep breath and collected himself. This was a big day.
Lucas tapped on the dark oak door with the inscription ‘Commander Chuck Hastings’ emblazoned across the top. He hated his boss’s office, nothing good ever happened there. He hated his boss even more, though to his annoyance, during Lucas’s recuperation he had been a model of support and compassion. Lucas cursed the man’s inconsistency.
‘Come,’ said the detached voice. Lucas entered the room, clasping a red box under his arm.
Chuck Hastings was a large oval man, sitting at a large oval conference table. He was pouring steaming coffee into an oversized cup for a man with short, cropped hair and thick-rimmed glasses whom Lucas didn’t recognise.
‘Ah, Lucas, glad you could join us,’ he said in a frighteningly cheery manner. Lucas noted his boss’s shirt buttons were under more stress than usual – the product of too many corporate dinners. ‘Let me introduce Jeff Chambers from the FBI.’ Lucas shook the man’s hand. His name sounded strangely familiar.
‘Sir, I …’ Lucas stumbled over his words. This was the first high level meeting he’d had since returning to work and he was a little unsteady. The presence of the new guy unnerved him.
‘Have some coffee.’ Hastings poured another without waiting for a reply. ‘Shall we get down to business?’ He gestured towards a vacant chair and Lucas did as he was told. He placed the box on the table.
‘Sir, I just wanted to—’ Lucas blurted out, but his boss expertly cut him off.
‘You have a request for us to consider, Lucas, one which is a little off protocol.’ Lucas nodded and made a sound which could equally be interpreted as yes or no.
Hastings continued, ‘That’s why I’ve invited Jeff. He heads up the Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico and has a great deal of experience in this field.’ Lucas nodded in Chambers’ direction and the cogs began to whir. ‘Would you like to take us through your proposal?’ Hastings sat back giving Lucas the floor.
‘Sir, two weeks ago I received this.’ He opened the box and removed a collection of sealed evidence bags. He held up the largest one which contained a document-sized envelope. ‘It’s addressed to me and was posted from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When I opened it these were inside.’ Lucas placed the envelope on the desk and held up a number of smaller evidence bags, each one containing a flat white square of paper. ‘There are ten in total. The envelope also contained this.’ Lucas held up another plastic bag with white granules in it. ‘It’s sugar, which came from these opened packets. All of this might seem unimportant, and a little screwy, but it relates directly to the Mechanic case.’ Lucas paused.
‘Go on,’ said Hastings.
‘You will no doubt have read the case files about Jessica Sells, aka Mechanic, and the slaughter of twenty-four people over two killing sprees – the first in 1979 and the second just eight months ago. She was helped by her sister, Dr Jo Sells, who worked for the FBI. Jo was drafted in to support my investigation but worked against us. Mechanic was never caught and Dr Jo Sells was never apprehended either. There is strong evidence to suggest one of the women is dead, shot in the head by Dick Harper. They are identical twins and the big unanswered question is: which one did Harper shoot? What we do know is Jo Sells had a sugar addiction which embarrassed her. To conceal how many she used, she twisted the packets together like this …’ Lucas picked up three sugar packets from the coffee tray, emptied the contents into a spare cup and twisted them together to form a double helix. ‘She called them sugar twists and made them automatically every time she had coffee. And she drank a lot of coffee.’ Lucas rolled the paper spiral along the table top towards his boss.
Lucas took a deep breath, collecting himself for what he was about to say. ‘This letter contained flat sugar packets. When Mechanic tortured me we talked about sugar twists and Jo’s addiction. I believe this,’ he said holding up the envelope, ‘is from Mechanic. She’s telling me she’s still alive.’
The men on the other side of the table looked at each other and shook their heads.
Lucas’s words were spilling out. ‘It’s postmarked the twenty-first of March, the day
I came back to work. She sent me this as a sign. This says she is still at large. It’s a reminder that she won in the end. She’s taunting me. She’s taunting us.’
Both men were silent, looking at the evidence pouches spread out before them. Jeff Chambers broke the silence. ‘So you’re asking for what exactly, Lucas?’ It was a pointless question as he already knew the answer.
‘I want to take a team of people to Baton Rouge where this letter came from. I want to track Mechanic down before she kills again.’ Lucas could feel the trickle of cold sweat running down the back of his neck.
‘This doesn’t prove Mechanic is alive, Lucas,’ said Chambers. ‘It is unusual, I admit, but it doesn’t constitute a good reason to mobilise an expensive team to go tramping around Louisiana.’
Lucas stared at him in disbelief. This was fast becoming his nightmare outcome.
‘But I disagree—’
‘Lucas,’ Hastings interrupted, ‘we threw everything at that manhunt and found nothing. It was a nationwide alert and we drew a blank. We need something concrete to go on if we are going to start running about the country again. This …’ He lifted the bag of sugar from the table, ‘doesn’t constitute hard evidence, now does it?’
‘I know this murdering bitch, sir, and this is just the type of thing she would do. Harper led the first case and Mechanic sent him notes, taunting him that he would never catch her. It destroyed him and his investigation. She tried to do the same to me. She has form for doing this type of thing. I disagree, sir – the sugar packets are a significant development.’ He held up the evidence bags, his hands shaking. ‘She’s sending me a message, sir, I know it. A message that says: ‘I’m still alive’. This is her MO, I’m convinced of it. She’s fucking taunting us.’ Lucas was coming apart at the seams.
‘Lucas, I understand your frustration,’ said Hastings. ‘You’ve shown extraordinary courage getting back to work and we admire you for doing so, but this isn’t concrete enough for us. I’m sorry.’
