Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
Hess tried to think and to
think clearly. He left her unfinished, he thought, he did all the work and
left her for us to see. Because he's got Merci, and two are too many to handle.
He traded this one for Merci, and he's going to start in on her next.
Where?
He needs privacy. He needs
somewhere to hang her. He needs electricity to run the Porti-Boy.
Back in his car he got
Dispatch to patch him through to Brighton. When he got the sheriff he requested
a helicopter search of the Ortega Highway for the silver panel van or a man on
foot; Riverside County units to the Rose Garden Home and Lee LaLonde's old
address in Lake Elsinore; and the coroner to Merci Rayborn's home.
"Christ, Tim. We've
got another homicide in Irvine, just came in. Goddamn county park."
"Look, can we get
Mike McNally and the dogs out here to Rayborn's house? It's a long shot but the
scent's fresh."
"They can't
track someone in a vehicle."
"They can't
track someone in a
kennel.
It's worth a try."
"You've got
it."
He sat there in his car
for a moment, the morning heat coming through the windows at him. He lifted the
hat, wiped the sweat off his head. Through the dusty garage window he could see
the pale shape of Trudy Powers suspended in the air.
Somewhere to hang
her. Privacy. Electricity.
The Ortega was too
obvious, no outlets, and covered. The Rose Garden Home was covered. LaLonde's
place was covered. Colesceau had figured someone would look here for Merci, so
he left in a hurry.
Somewhere close.
Somewhere private. Somewhere familiar.
He thought of the high bay
at Pratt's, where the old cars
come here dogs and leave here dolls,
and
started up the car at the same time. The heavy sedan fishtailed around the
driveway, straightening out on the dirt road leading to the street. The ruts
crunched the shocks and threw the tires up. Hess clamped the wheel like a
captain in a storm.
He was calling dispatch
for a Costa Mesa PD assist when he got the Chevy airborne over a rise, landed
hard and cranked a turn onto the asphalt.
She saw the room through pressure and pain. It was an
upside-down world of chrome wheels, spray guns and canisters, the walls lined
with Peg Board and hung with hand tools and posters of women, a concrete floor—directly
below her, just out of reach of her fingertips—stained with layers of paint and
oil and fluid. It was all flushed in red.
When she turned to her
right she could see the grill and headlights and tires of a silver panel van.
She was too far away to see the tread patterns. Near the van was a gleaming
yellow-and-black convertible of some kind. If she tightened her stomach and
neck muscles and strained into a sit-up she could see her legs all the way up
to her boots, which were lashed together with orange rope and tied to a
platform that was elevated high off the ground. Merci had heard Ike in the
impound yard call such a platform a "rack."
The pain was excruciating and inescapable. It was
like having your head pumped with molten lead. The swollen flesh of her face
pushed against the tape that was cinched over her mouth. She could feel it
cutting in. If she folded up at the waist and got her head level the pressure
would stop growing for as long as she could hold it. But that wasn't long. And
it sapped her strength, with the five pounds of body armor choking off her
breath and sending the sweat running in a steady stream off her chest and down
into her eyes. The muscles in her armpits were burning and stretched. Her
wrists were locked together with tape and her fingers, dangling almost to the
floor, felt like they'd been scorched and split and rubbed with salt. Her
ankles throbbed with the pain of constant strangulation. She felt nothing in
her feet at all.
And through it all she
smelled the gagging sweet smell of chloroform, which she remembered from
chemistry class was a simple CHCl3 chain once popular as an anesthetic. So far
the bastard had hit her twice with it while she dangled here, plus at least
once in her car and God knew how many times while they were in transit.
Her H&K was gone—she'd
seen him handling it over by one of the workbenches. Her ankle cannon was gone,
too. He had laughed at it, then put the tiny thing in his pocket. Her only
undiscovered secret was the Chinese-made Italian stiletto, which was in the
bottom of her purse. And her phone. But her purse remained just out of the
reach of her outstretched hands, purposefully placed on the floor like some
ideal, something she could strive after for the rest of her life and never
quite get. She wondered if she could get herself swinging like a pendulum the
arc might bring her within reach of it.
"Time's a running
short," he said. His voice was calm, accented lightly in a strangely
indefinable American manner—kind of western but southern, too, a hint of Texas
and maybe Arkansas and even California. There was another influence floating
around in his voice and Merci assumed it was the Romanian inflection learned
early in life by Matamoros Colesceau.
"I don't like to work
fast," he said. "Because you know, honey, it's the process that's
important."
Merci had no voice. The
tape choked off her words and left her with only grunts and growls. And there
was the damned roaring of blood in her head. It was like standing next to a
waterfall or a jet.
What she thought was,
important for who, shitbird? But even her own thoughts sounded feeble and far
away.
"So I am going to
have to move things along. Don't want the owners getting here at nine, and us
still around."
Merci looked at him: a
short, chubby man in boots and tight jeans, a boldly striped country-singer
shirt and black leather vest. And flowing blond hair and a thick blond mustache
that she knew to be fake, though in spite of her knowledge looked undeniably
authentic. But under it all she recognized Colesceau, even upside-down like he
was, something in his posture, the shoulders hunched to hide the budding
breasts, the sad, untrusting eyes. Yes, this was the man she had talked to just
a few days before.
The one she'd bullied and
disrespected and dismissed. Called stupid on TV.
The one Hess understood
but couldn't explain to her. Or even to himself.
More disturbing than his
appearance was the gleaming contraption over which he stood: an embalming
machine, likely the one delivered to the Rose Garden Home. She wondered if the
mother was in on all this. She tried to get herself swinging in the direction
of the purse. She might be able to grasp it with her blood-bloated fingers,
get to the knife and ... what? At first she hoped to be covert about it, but soon
understood that just getting some momentum took a lot of work. She flexed her
legs, bent at the stomach, swung her aching head. When she felt the first small
kinetic glide of energy kick in, she turned her head to look at him. He had one
of the embalming machine tubes in his hand, but he was watching her.
She watched him back and
kept pumping with her shoulders and hands, and tightening her calves to create
sway. It was amazing how much effort you could put into something for so small
a result. He dropped the end of the tube and picked up a half-gallon bottle of
something and began pouring it into the canister on the machine.
She had to slow him down
long enough to let someone in the world find her, but it was hard to imagine
someone finding you when you had no idea where you were.
A shiver of fear broke
over her. It was like drowning— no oxygen and a need to scream. She told
herself to be calm. Calm but alert. She estimated how far her body was swinging
now, in each direction away from center. It seemed to be about four feet. The
purse was still at least a yard away from her hands. Through the red panic and
a sudden clutch of nausea Merci tried to counsel herself: I
will
you to
stay calm. I
will
you to overcome this situation. I
will
you to
prevail.
But it was extremely hard
to draw extra breath with your mouth taped shut.
"That's funny,"
he said. "Hold on now, honey. I'm gonna hit the brakes."
He came around behind her
and Merci felt the rope stiffen, breaking her momentum and slowing her.
Something inside her panicked, then broke.
She flailed blindly with
her bound wrists, in hope of catching any part of him. What she wanted most
right then was just to make him hurt somehow.
She heard fluid splashing
into fluid. She turned her head—God, it was just a throbbing ball of pain—and
watched Colesceau swing into view. He plugged an orange extension cord into the
wall. He carried the contraption toward her, setting it down on the stained
concrete floor.
Merci felt her body
settling into a little circular orbit now. The dregs of her energy were all
that was left. As she swung slowly on the rope she tried to think of how to
best stall Colesceau, give him something to worry about, give her companions
in law enforcement time to find her.
She watched him approach
her, upside down, blond waves on his shoulders, boots shining, vest taut.
"Nice try," he
said. He steadied the rope. "I don't see anything else you could have
done, little woman."
Then he reached out his
hand. He seemed to be offering her one of those faded red shop rags sold in
bunches of fifty. It was folded neatly and cupped in his palm.
She felt his boots press
her fingers against the floor. She knew if he put all his weight on them she'd
lose a knuckle or two, maybe more. But the smell of the CHCI3 hit her and she
couldn't help herself. All the panic rose inside her and it put up a ferocious
struggle to get out. She tried to pull her hands free of his weight but it was
useless. She screamed against the tape. She felt him grab her hair hard and
press the cloth up tight to her face. For the first time in her life Merci
thought of heaven as a place with a door, and the door would not open.
And back she fell
into the soft black nowhere.
Colesceau unfolded one of
the big gray blankets used to protect newly chromed or painted automobile
parts, and laid it down over the stained floor. Then he lowered the unconscious
Merci to the blanket. He cut away her blouse. He unfastened the heavy
bulletproof vest and cut her bra off and set them aside. He ran his fingers
lightly over her pale skin and kissed each nipple and was pleased to feel them
harden between his teeth. Then off with her boots and pants and undies. He was
efficient but not hurried. He arranged her hair up, a crown of dark lavish
curls.
He stood and looked down
at her. She was more beautiful than he'd thought she'd be: large, well
proportioned, strong but smooth, like a mare. Powerful legs, but shaped well.
Not very hairy, considering that dark-haired women often had extra. Big
knockers, as the Americans liked to say. The way her beauty marks contrasted
with her skin was exhilarating.
He regretted that he'd
have to drain and preserve her simultaneously—standard operating procedure
taught at mortician school—but for Colesceau a hurrying of what should be a
calm, meditative and often erotic procedure. Still, an hour and a half should
be plenty of time. If push came to shove he could load her into the
yellow-and-black Shelby Cobra, squeeze the Porti-Boy into the trunk and check
into a motel somewhere to finish his saving. A little TV volume would be enough
to disguise the chugging of his machine. Maybe he could find an old western on.
He touched the red
ligature marks around her ankles. They would restore easily. Same with the tape
marks on her wrists, but it wasn't prudent to cut that tape away just yet. Or
the mouth tape, for that matter. He moved the Porti-Boy up close and hit the
"on" button just to test it. The motor whirred assumingly and he
turned it off.
Well, he thought: cut
in, hook out the carotid and install the insertion tube. When everything was up
and running he could start massaging the life out of her and the preserving
fluid in. Inject her with eternity.
He took the blade
from his instrument book and started pushing his fingertips down into the
gristle around her clavicle. And there it was, lovely carotid, throbbing
against his finger like a snake. What a weird thing to be doing, he thought,
going to so much trouble to preserve a cop.
Hess made a left on Palmetto, gunning the Chevy
through the light industrial zone of Costa Mesa, past a boatyard and a liquid
propane distributor and a wrecking yard for German imports and a surfboard
maker and a custom motorcycle shop. At intervals, large dogs regarded him
through chain link. Then the brick and windows of Pratt Automotive. He cranked
a hard right at the next comer and came around the backside behind the bay.
There it was, sheltered
behind two metal doors that opened from the ground up. Into each big slider was
built a man-sized convenience door. No van in sight. Hess planted his sedan to
block the use of either doorway, then cut the engine and called his position
into Dispatch. Hess said there wasn't a Costa Mesa prowl car in sight and Dispatch
told him there was a 211, armed robbery, going down on the east side, all area
units requested. But the real news was Sheriffs deputies had pulled over a
panel van eastbound on the Ortega Highway, stand by.