A black Crown Victoria pulled into the parking lot and as soon as it passed Dale’s car he spotted the ponytailed silhouette. It was the old cop, the one whose throat he had cut in Sarah’s living room. Dale tried to restrain himself from running across the street and tackling him in the parking lot. He watched the old cop walk into the station and Dale sat back and waited a bit
longer. The man would be coming out again soon and Dale would have to be ready when he did.
Dale hadn’t really thought of a plan. He didn’t know how he planned on kidnapping the cop or getting the Lincolns’ whereabouts out of him. He didn’t have a gun and he didn’t know if he could get close enough to use the knife. The old detective would shoot him on sight. He still had the hammer but that again meant getting close. Even if he did manage to ambush him again he would still have to drag him off the street and into his car without being seen or stopped. Dale hoped that he could simply follow him right to where Sarah was staying without having to confront the old detective at all. That would have been far easier. Dale was still sitting there trying to figure out how he would get close enough to make the detective tell him where Sarah was when the detective walked out of the station and climbed into an old gray F-150.
The truck left the police station and Dale followed in his Hyundai, wishing that he’d had the foresight to tint the windows or at least wear some sort of disguise. His mind was not working right. He still could not figure out how he was going to get what he wanted from the old detective. He looked at the savage-looking diver’s blade sitting on the seat beside him, rusting with dried blood, the hammer on the floor with bits of skull and brain matter matted onto it. He followed two car lengths behind the old Ford, even though the detective seemed completely oblivious to everyone around him.
The old detective pulled into the parking lot of a bar and grill, hopped out of the truck, slamming the door behind him, and strode toward the bar, eyes fixed like lasers, like a man on a mission. Dale followed. The old
hippie cop was either going to pull his old lady out of the bar by her hair or he was a drunk about to go on a serious binge. Dale sincerely hoped it was the latter. It would make his job so much easier if the old detective was barely conscious when he left the bar. The only drawback was that it meant another long wait. Dale turned the radio to an oldies station and laughed when they began playing a tune by the Spice Girls.
Who would have ever thought that they would be considered oldies?
Dale wondered. Two songs later Milli Vanilli came on the radio, blaming it on the rain. Dale wanted to take the knife and pierce his own eardrums with it. Dale had never been into goth music but when Depeche Mode came on and declared that they gave in to sin because they had to make this life livable, he couldn’t help but sing along. He knew exactly how they felt. Dale’s eyes closed and he sat back and listened to the music. Before the end of the song he was dreaming again.
His mother was standing above him. He could see the claw hammer pull back, raised high above her head. There was blood on the hammer. It was saturated in it. And there were bits of brain, his brain. The ham-mer began to fall again. Everything went black. Dale woke up.
There were tears on his face, and his clothes were drenched in sweat. Run DMC was playing on the car radio and the old detective was leaving the bar. Dale drove the Sonata over to the detective’s truck. His hand gripped the hammer as he inched closer. He was perspiring again, hoping the detective wouldn’t turn around and see him behind the wheel and start shooting. He pulled up beside the detective’s truck, watching as the
old cop staggered as if sleepwalking to his car. Dale slipped out of his SUV with the hammer in his hand. The old cop had his back turned, fumbling with his keys, trying to find the key to the truck. Dale hit him once with the hammer at the base of the skull and the detective folded and went down.
The detective lay on the gravel-top parking lot, snoring loudly as if he had just fallen peacefully asleep. Dale dragged him into the SUV, fished in the detective’s pockets for handcuffs, and locked his wrists together behind his back; then he took the detective’s gun out of the shoulder holster and placed it under the driver’s seat along with the hammer and the knife. He reached across the detective and strapped his seat belt across his chest.
Dale put the car in drive and headed back to the abandoned house. He pulled the pistol from beneath the seat and sat it on his lap as he passed Lossee Road, heading back up Washburn Street. Dale checked the rearview mirrors repeatedly. If a police officer tried to pull him over he would have gunned him down without hesitation. He was so close now. Soon he would be back in the cold, dead arms of the woman he loved.
The detective woke up as Dale pulled into the driveway. Dale pointed the gun in his face and put a finger to his lips.
“Shhhhh. You stay nice and quiet or this gun is going to start making a lot of noise. Now, we’re going to get out of the car. I mean, you’re going to get out first. No. I’m going to get out first. Then I’ll come around and get you out. If you yell or scream I’m going to shoot you in the face and leave you bleeding on the sidewalk.
Then I’m going to go after that black detective with the big tits and the big ass. Do you understand?”
The old detective looked at Dale without speaking, his bloodshot eyes out of focus and uncomprehending.
“Where is Sarah? You can tell me now and avoid a lot of pain. I know all about pain. I’ve killed more people than anyone you’ve ever met. No serial killer in history has murdered more often than I have. I just bring them back to life. No harm. No foul. But before I bring them back, I make them scream, just like I’m going to make you scream. I’m going to skin you alive, Detective. I’m going to tear you apart piece by piece. But if you just tell me where Sarah is I’ll kill you quickly and then I’ll bring you back and you won’t remember a thing. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
“Fuck off, you little twerp.”
The detective spit in Dale’s face and Dale lashed out and smashed him across the face with the butt of the pistol. This time, the detective took it well. He spit blood onto the windshield and then turned and smiled at Dale with his teeth stained red with blood.
“I was in Vietnam in the seventies and Grenada in the eighties. I have killed a lot of people too and I’ve seen even more death. You, my friend, are a lightweight, a pussy. And you can kiss my ass.”
Dale hopped out of the car and ran over to open the passenger-side door. The detective fell out of the car and Dale caught him. Just as the detective fell into his arms, Dale felt searing pain in his neck and shoulder. Dale tried his best not to scream.
“Stop. Stop. Stop it! Fuck. Stop it!”
The cop was biting him, trying to tear out his jugular with his teeth. Dale cocked the pistol and placed it under the detective’s chin.
“I
will
kill you. And this time I won’t bring you back. Now, let go.”
The detective released his hold on Dale’s throat. His bite had broken the skin and blood dripped down Dale’s chest and shoulder. Dale wiped the blood from his neck. He was okay. The old detective hadn’t gnawed through any major arteries.
Dale wanted to beat down the detective right on the driveway but he didn’t know if the neighbors were watching and he didn’t want to have to drag the big man into the house by himself. There were also cops still patrolling the neighborhood so the sooner he could get the big man inside the better. Dale walked the detective around to the side of the garage at gunpoint. There was a service door put there by the previous owners that was unlocked. Dale pushed the big man inside.
He walked the long-haired detective into the kitchen where Dale had set up a card table and a couple of chairs.
“Sit down, Detective.”
“Harry. My name is Harry.”
“I don’t give a fuck what your name is. All I want to know is where Sarah is.”
Detective Harry Malcovich laughed.
“So, what are you going to do? Beat it out of me? Waterboard me? Shove toothpicks under my fingernails?”
Harry laughed again. Dale felt his anger rising, taking over.
“What if I do to you what I did to Sarah’s husband?”
The old detective snorted.
“What if I fuckin’ enjoy it, you sick piece of shit?”
“I promise you, Detective, whatever I decide to do to you, you will not enjoy it.”
Dale sat Harry down in the chair and began wrapping his ankles with duct tape. He wound the tape around Harry’s chest a few times, strapping him to the chair. He put another piece of tape over the detective’s mouth. Once Harry was tied tight to the chair, Dale pulled out his diver’s blade, straddled Harry’s lap, and began sawing off the detective’s nose with the serrated knife. Even Dale winced at the sound of the knife ripping through flesh and cartilage. He was disappointed that he couldn’t hear the detective’s screams. Even muffled, they were excruciating.
Blood poured from Harry’s face in a steady downpour. The ragged hole where Harry’s nose had been was now a bleeding crater in the center of the detective’s face.
“You ready to talk now, Detective Harry? Or do I have to pull out my cock and fuck that hole in your face? With all that blood and mucus, I bet it feels just like pussy. Come on, Detective. Don’t make me keep hurting you. Just tell me what I want to know. Tell me where Sarah is.”
The detective shook his head. Dale began to unzip his pants and unbuckle his belt.
“I guess you’re going to get skull-fucked then. Please, don’t think I’m enjoying this. Well, actually, I’m loving every fucking minute of it.”
The detective began thrashing his head back and forth and trying to break free from his bonds. The chair rocked forward and backward and then fell over. Dale straddled the chair and looked down at Harry. The detective was still shaking his head back and forth. Dale knelt on the detective’s chest with his stubby, stiffening cock bobbing above the old cop’s face.
“Don’t worry. I cum quick.”
Dale grabbed Harry’s face in both hands and held it still. The old detective’s screams vibrated up through his nostrils sending tremors up through Dale’s organ. True to his word, Dale ejaculated after a few quick strokes. The detective began gagging and choking as Dale’s seed obstructed his breathing. With the tape still covering his mouth the detective could not spit out Dale’s semen, neither could he breathe through his mouth. First he tried to sneeze out but without nostrils he only succeeded in making cum bubbles. He began making a snorting sound and Dale realized that the detective was trying to suck Dale’s semen down his throat and swallow it so he could breathe again. As Dale watched, the old detective began to heave and wretch. He regurgitated with the tape still covering his mouth and began to spasm and convulse. Dale stood up and tucked his blood- and mucus-slickened cock back into his pants. He started to reach down and pull the tape off the detective’s mouth but then he hesitated.
There was no way the detective was going to tell him where Sarah was. If he hadn’t talked after getting his nose cut off, then he wasn’t going to talk no matter what Dale did to him. He would hunt him down and tell the rest of the police where to find him. But not if he was dead. All Dale had to do was let him choke on his own vomit and he would be out of the way. Dale knew that he could always bring him back to life later, after he had Sarah back.
Dale stood silently, watching. The old cop thrashed about on the floor, slowly asphyxiating, lungs filling with vomit, drowning, arms still handcuffed behind him, still bound to the chair with duct tape, unable to
move. His struggles increased in their intensity, then came to a halt. His chest ceased its rise and fall. Dale checked Harry’s pulse. Nothing. He removed the handcuffs from the detective’s wrists, picked up the pistol, and walked back out the door, hoping that he would have better luck with the black detective.
He drove slowly back up Washburn Street to the police station, wondering if he could be stopped for driving too slowly. He speeded up a bit so that he was just a mile or two over the speed limit. The night shift and morning shift were just changing when he arrived. He wasn’t sure what shift the black woman worked or if she even had any set hours. On TV, it looked like the detectives were always on duty. If that was the case, Dale knew that he could be waiting all day. She could be anywhere in North Las Vegas, probably out looking for him.
Hours went by. Dale sat still for a while listening to everything from Stevie Wonder to The Doors to Guns N’ Roses to Michael Jackson on the oldies station. Every once in a while a cop would start eyeing his car suspiciously and Dale would drive off and circle the block once or twice before parking again. There was no sign of the black detective and Dale was getting anxious again. Several times a black woman would leave the police station and Dale would start up his car and prepare to follow, only to realize that it wasn’t her. The longer he sat there the more he began to wonder if he would recognize the detective from every other black lady cop that came out of the station. Luckily, there weren’t many of them.
Maybe that black cunt isn’t even working today,
Dale thought and he felt a sudden pang of sorrow. Tears filled his eyes and he wiped them away with the back
of his hand.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
He wondered if he was falling in love with Sarah Lincoln but knew that was impossible. He barely knew her, except for the glimpses of her life he stole hiding out in her laundry room and the feel of her flesh, the sound of her screams. Certainly not enough to fall in love with but yet that’s what it felt like. The very fact that the cops were scouring the street looking for him and he was risking his freedom by parking in front of a police station waiting to kidnap one of the detectives assigned to track him down was proof enough that he had developed a dangerous obsession. He couldn’t help himself though. He had to have her. But if he couldn’t find the black detective he’d never find Sarah. He would have to leave town without her or stay and continue looking for her himself and risk getting caught. If he got caught there would be no more Sarah and no hope of finding a replacement for her.