Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (94 page)

CHAPTER 31

H
arold Burke had delivered mail to the folks at Sand Creek six days a week for the previous eighteen years. Aside from a two weeks’ vacation now and then, and a few holidays, he could count the number of days he’d missed on one hand. He’d delivered even when the old back had flared up and when he’d caught a case of the creeping crud. He’d been through two Dodge station wagons and a Studebaker during that time. Now he was in the middle of wearing out a sixty-seven Plymouth GTX. It was cherry when he’d bought it six years ago. Besides putting over a hundred and twenty thousand extra miles on the engine, it was in the same cherry shape it was in when he bought it.

He crammed a Sears catalogue, an issue of
Playboy
, and an overdue electric bill into the mailbox out in front of Jake Lawrence’s house and eased up to Eldon and Pearl Bumfield’s when he heard screams, little girl screams. Burke stopped short of the mailbox and listened. It didn’t sound like little-kid,
bet-you-can’t-get-me
, play-type screams. Maybe it was the Bumfields’ granddaughter that had been staying with them this summer. Oh, what was her name—Tricia, that was it. She must be in trouble, hurt or something. Maybe she’d fallen from the swing set in the backyard or cut herself with a butcher knife in the kitchen while she tried to make herself a sandwich for lunch.

Burke stepped out of his car and took two more steps into the yard, listening to find out exactly where the screams were coming from. They came again. This time, he heard barking, too. Angry barking and growls. The commotion came from inside the Bumfields’ house.

Harold Burke angled his thin body to the direction of the front door and sprinted. He leaped the porch, flung open the screen and charged in.

“Pearl! Eldon!” he yelled frantically, not yet looking down. “Are you folks all right?”

Burke’s leather-soled black work shoes made contact with Pearl Bumfield’s drying gore, and he slipped, limbs flying, falling hard onto his shoulder and into the chest of her devastated corpse. It made a cracking, crunching, rotten-watermelon smashing noise as he landed. Several seconds passed before he understood what mess he lay in, gawking at the blood on his hands and arms and the rent carcass.

He sprang to his hands and knees and looked down at the carnage he’d landed in with disgust. Bile pumped into his mouth, but he held it back. He looked away and saw the body in the living room, guessing it to be Eldon Bumfield. He couldn’t be sure. It was as recognizable as a Thanksgiving turkey on the Friday after.

The screams came again. They came from upstairs. This was no time to puke his guts into Pearl Bumfield’s mostly bare-skull exposed face. Whatever atrocity happened to the Bumfields was happening right now to a little girl upstairs.

Burke had no idea what he would find, but, proceeding like the Korean War hero he was, he raced up the stairs with no regard for his own safety. Making the top landing, he saw Tricia swinging her arms hopelessly in the master bedroom doorway. The dogs hulked over her, and Dawg had just clamped onto her wrist.

“What in hell?” he exclaimed and ran to Tricia’s aid. He yanked the first cur off and threw it back to the stairs. Dawg released his grip on her and came back around and caught Burke on the left inner thigh, just below the groin.

Burke screamed in pain and grabbed the dog by both sides of his head, trying to push him away, but the dog held on as tenaciously as an alligator snapping turtle.

“Run, little girl. Hide!”

The Epic Center pushes up three hundred and twenty-five feet above the Kansas plains and is the state’s tallest building. It stands like a monumental monolith in the center of Wichita. A copper, diamond-cut roof caps off this beauty of architecture, its corners pointing north, south, east, and west, causing its walls to be oblique to the streets below. The highest point is the north corner, sloping down at angles to the other three corners, those at equal height. In the peak of the high north corner is a notch, made for a walkway to access the roof. A door opens out on one side of the inside of this notch. Each of the four corners of the building are flat, ten feet wide, to accommodate large corner windows on all floors all the way up the structure.

CHAPTER 32

T
he early afternoon sky, gray and brooding, framed the Epic Center as two black stretch limousines stopped at the curb. Out of the first, four young men in leather jackets, gold chains, and torn blue jeans emerged. All four men wore thick, black-framed sunglasses and had long, thoroughly teased hair of various shades. A fifth man in a suit got out of the second car with six black Dobermans on long leashes. The dogs seemed well behaved and were easily led over and handed to Roary Rapids, the most prominent member of the group. He had bright yellow hair, a long drawn face with fat puffy lips that were too full for his small mouth, and he looked to be in his late twenties to early thirties.

“Come on, guys, let’s go see about this bullshit. Madonna can’t sign us to open for her, then tell us to take a hike, just like that,” the blond man said, leading the dogs and the other three men to the revolving-door entrance.

“That’s right, Roary, you tell ‘em,” one of the others said.

They helped each of the dogs through and went in.

“Wait a minute, son,” Gus Spillman, a middle-aged security guard said as they barged on and hit the up button for the elevators. “You can’t bring those dogs in here.”

“What? Hey man, we’ve done it before. These are seeing-eye dogs, you know!” Rapids said, staring through his sunglasses over the security guard’s shoulder as if blind.

Spillman frowned and put his hands on his hips as the elevator door opened. “Now, see here…,” he began as people coming off the elevator stepped to the side, making way for the pack of Dobermans. The strange bunch crowded inside.

Rapids waved to Gus Spillman with his fingers and gave a big smile, looking over his sunglasses as the door closed.

*-*-*

Tony Parker checked in at the shelter at one o’clock, and Sarah Hill showed up at two. She’d only had four hours sleep but decided to come in early after hearing of the latest attack. Parker was happy to see her.

Parker had been trying Rapids’ number since he came in. But with no answer yet, he began to get concerned something might have happened. Something bad. At two thirty, he had decided to go to Rapid’s home to investigate when he tried one last time and finally got a busy signal. On the next try, the housekeeper answered.

After explaining the situation, Parker was told Rapids had just left with his dogs to see his attorney in an office at the Epic Center. The housekeeper also told him that, only moments before Parker’s call, someone had called anonymously asking as to Rapids’ whereabouts and that of his dogs. Parker wasn’t sure what this information meant in the scheme of things but sensed it to be another piece to his puzzle. A very troublesome piece.

The Epic Center was only a couple of miles away. Parker and Hill decided to drive over immediately, hopefully to catch Rapids before he went inside.

As they ran out to the truck, one of those spur-of-the-moment storm fronts began to roll in. It looked like this, the second cold front in as many days, would finally bring the needed rain. Dark thunderheads reached up to the heavens, flashes of lightning dancing in its black headdress, and claps of thunder announced its arrival. The wind had picked up and blew a chilling sixty-five degrees, compared to the late morning ninety-six only hours before. With emergency lights flickering, they left.

*-*-*

“Mr. Rapids, please, we’ve asked you before. Don’t bring your dogs in with you when you come!” Doris Carney, a neatly dressed, professional-looking young receptionist said, as Rapids and his entourage approached.

“Sorry, babe,” Rapids said. “Like I told you last time, these dogs go everywhere I go, whether on stage or to my attorney’s office. So sue me. I’m here to see Spencer.”

He sat on the corner of her desk, picked up a rubber band and shot it at a picture of the US President on the far wall.

“Do you have an appointment, Mr. Rapids?” she asked.

“Hell no! I don’t need an appointment. This is Roary Rapids you’re talking to. I suggest you get off your tight little ass and tell him I’m here.”

Doris hesitated but obeyed. She picked up her phone and punched a button as Gus Spillman came in.

“Mr. Spencer, I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but Roary Rapids is here and insists on seeing you. . . . Yessir, I know he doesn’t have an appointment. . . . Yessir, I know he is. . . . All right, Mr. Spencer.” She put the phone down and looked up at Rapids. “Mr. Spencer asked that you allow him just a couple of minutes to finish up some very important business. Would you please have a seat?”

“Well, all right, then,” Rapids said, “as long as it’s no more than two minutes.”

Doris Carney looked to the security guard glaring at Rapids and said, “It’s all right, Gus. Mr. Rapids has promised me he wouldn’t bring his dogs in again.”

“Yeah, right. When monkeys fly out my butt,” Rapids sneered.

The other band members chuckled at their leader’s borrowed wit.

Gus Spillman frowned and shook his head. He turned back toward the elevator.

Eric Spencer, a tall, distinguished-looking bald man with thin lips and an eagle beak came out of his office. Before Rapids had a chance to say anything, Spencer began scolding.

“Mr. Rapids, I suggest you find yourself another attorney. Maybe someone out in LA or New York, more familiar with the entertainment business. Maybe your agent could recommend someone. That is, if he hasn’t dumped you, too. And you might even consider moving there yourself.”

“You listen here, you pompous bastard, my dad owns you. You’d better treat me with the respect I deserve,” Rapids insisted.

“You’re right, your father does
own
me, but I just got off the phone with him. He says he’s even tired of fooling with you. You’re on your own. If it weren’t for the fortune he’s made in oil, you wouldn’t have this little hobby of yours. So, I would suggest you go crawling back to him on your hands and knees and beg him for an honest job. Of course, then he may insist on you changing your name back to Jubal Bugerman.”

The phone rang, and Doris answered, “Hello. . . . Ah, yes, he is here, now. Can I say who’s calling?” she said looking over at Rapids. “Well, yes he does have his dogs. . . . Yes. . . . Uh, I guess that would be all right.” She laid the handset down, turned on the speakerphone and looked up at Rapids. “It’s for you.”

Everyone in the office waited in silence for a voice. Suddenly, all six dogs, previously well behaved and passive, became restless.

Then came the growls. All of the dogs growled. They looked at one another. At the people in the room. They paced.

Doris Carney stood up from her desk and backed to Spencer’s door. The unarmed security guard watched from the open hall and began punching the down button on the elevator. Rapids and the other three men sat up and stared at the dogs. Everyone in the city knew of the numerous dog attacks. It was the first thing to Rapids’ mind when the dogs began to growl.

“Now, what the hell’s gotten into all of you?” Rapids asked of the dogs.

The dogs growled again, this time even more enthusiastically. Their muscles tensed. They held their jaws open, fangs exposed. The question seemed to set them off like dynamite. Rapids threw the leashes in the air, and the dogs attacked.

Spencer, Doris Carney and the three men pushed into Spencer’s office, slamming the door behind. Rapids climbed the back of a black leather chair, leaped over the dogs and ran for Gus Spillman at the elevator.

“Oh, shit!” Spillman said, turning to see Rapids racing at him with all six dogs in pursuit.

“They’ve all gone mad! Quick, do something!” Rapids said, running, arms flying.

Spillman gave a few more pokes at the button and then ran to the nearest doorway. The door led out to the stairway, leading up to the mechanical room under the roof or down to the floors below. He threw the door open and ran in.

“Close it behind you, dumb ass!” Spillman yelled, not bothering to slow even long enough to see that Rapids made it.

Rapids came through with the dogs too close to shut the door behind him. One of them caught Rapids in the doorway and ripped into the seat of his pants. A tremendous pain shot through his hip as the dog took a big chunk of flesh from Rapids’ ass.

He trapped the dog, midway through the door, grabbed its snout and finally managed to break away. Rapids shoved the murderous canine back through and slammed the door quickly, but too quickly for it to latch. He ran after Spillman.

The door popped open and the first dog came through, pushing the door wide. Rapids followed Spillman up two flights of stairs, where the guard yanked a key ring, laden with at least two-dozen keys, from his pocket.

Rapids stood watching the keys, Spillman, then the keys again in horror as Spillman searched for the correct one. There was no place to go. The dogs were coming. The door was locked, and this bungling goof was going to get him killed.

Spillman selected a key, slid it into the knob and unlocked and opened the door quicker than Rapids thought possible. But now, it was every man for himself. Rapids thought nothing of running through like a linebacker, knocking Spillman to the floor in the middle of the doorway. All six dogs hit the small landing to the door as Rapids ran over Spillman.

Rapids ran into the large mechanical room. The only light came from a large corner window just below a giant, louvered vent and the high, north corner of the roof. He glanced back and saw the dogs pause, attacking Spillman as he lay prostrate on the floor screaming, flailing his arms. The dogs took slashing bites, tearing at his face, neck, hands and body until Gus Spillman no longer moved.

With the job finished, the dogs darted off one at a time. Spillman’s body blocked the door open.