“Hello Trina, this is Sarah Lincoln. I just wanted you to know that I was going out for a jog. I didn’t want you to panic if you called or came by and I wasn’t here. I’ll be back in an hour. It’s almost six o’clock now. I’ll call you back when I get in.”
She called Detective Malcovich next. He didn’t answer either. Sarah guessed that they might have both been in the same meeting somewhere or working on a case or in court or whatever else cops did when they weren’t protecting her from supernatural sex murderers. She left a message for him as well.
“Hello, Harry. It’s Sarah Lincoln. I just wanted you to know that I was going out for a jog in case you dropped by to check on me. I’ll be back by seven. It’s six o’clock now.”
Sarah hung up, picked up her keys, and walked out the door. She had forgotten to pack her water bottles. Luckily, she had remembered her Garmin. She turned
it on, then waited for it to locate a satellite. She quickly keyed in a six-mile course and began jogging up Tropicana, away from the strip. She passed the Adult Superstore and tried not to think about how long it had been since she’d had sex with her husband, let alone did anything freaky with him. She didn’t know if she could ever walk into a store like that again without thinking about what that pervert had done to her. She jogged up toward the Orleans Hotel and almost got hit by a car trying to cross Arville Street. There was another sex-toy and apparel shop on the next block. Sarah had never realized before how many of these shops there were in Vegas. She guessed that it was like smoking. You never realized how many smokers there were in the city until you quit and were constantly being accosted by their smoke. That’s how she felt now, accosted by all the commercialized fetishistic sex.
She barely looked at the new strip club that had just opened up across the street from the Orleans as she picked up her pace, enjoying the feel of the wind on her face even if the air was warm and congested with car exhaust fumes. It was better than being cooped up in a motel room worried about being raped and murdered. The Garmin beeped, telling her to pick up her speed, and Sarah lengthened her stride.
Detective Lassiter was a ruin. Dale had skinned the fingers on her right hand one by one, cutting around the base of each digit with a scalpel and then jerking the skin off with a pair of Robogrip pliers like he were removing a condom. She still had not told him where Sarah was. So Dale had gotten more creative. He boiled a pot of water and stuck her other hand in it until it began to blister. Then he took the scalpel and the pliers and de-gloved her entire hand. He wished that he could have removed the gag from her mouth so he could have listened to her screams. They must have been exquisite, he thought.
The detective was strapped to the chair with silver duct tape. Her arms, legs, and head were completely immobilized. She had been almost mummified in tape. He had ripped open her shirt and torn off her bra. Then he had begun cutting on her breasts. He tried to imagine that she were Sarah but her breasts were bigger and flabbier than Sarah’s. They looked more like his mother’s, only in a different, darker color. Dale remembered what his father had done to his mother’s breasts on the night he died.
He cut a line from one shoulder to the other, then down her sides and across her belly in a perfect square. He peeled up the edges of the square with the scalpel
and began slowly flaying the skin from her torso. He lifted a flap of skin at her shoulder and grabbed it with the pliers, stripping her skin from the muscle and fat like the peel of an orange. He didn’t care if she talked or not. He was having fun now.
Over the course of an hour Dale had excoriated all the skin from Detective Lassiter’s chest. Her mammary glands were a bloody mass of fatty tissue, lobules, and connective tissue. Dale removed the tape from around her mouth and head. Mucus, saliva, and tears drooled down her face onto her exposed muscles and sinews. Her breath stuttered out in jerks and starts, spraying saliva and blood. She was shivering from shock and the loss of blood. She would be dead soon. But not before she told him where Sarah was. He didn’t care if he had to bring her back and torture her all over again.
Dale grabbed Detective Lassiter by the chin and lifted her head until her eyes met his. Her pupils had narrowed to pin dots.
“Tell me where she is.” He ran the scalpel up the detective’s inner thigh all the way to her vulva. “Or I start cutting down there.”
The sky was beginning to darken as Sarah passed Jones Street. Storm clouds rolled in from the south, blanketing the sky. Sarah considered turning back but she felt good. Her lungs felt strong, like she could run forever, and the chances of an actual rainstorm were slim. It only rained two or three weeks out of the year and this was not the season. She decided to keep running.
Tropicana was a long, slow, steady incline, not a steep hill but a gradual ascent that filled your quadriceps with lactic acid and kept the burn going through the entire run. Sarah ignored the persistent burn in her thighs and ran another long block to Rainbow Boulevard. She slowed down for just a moment and checked the clouds above. The sky was completely gray now but still not a drop of rain had fallen. The Garmin began to beep again, urging her on. Sarah took one more glance at the skies, then charged forward. It had been a week since her last run and she had missed it more than she knew. She continued running up Tropicana Avenue another mile. She could see Buffalo ahead, less than a block away.
A black BMW pulled up beside her. Sarah spotted it out of the corner of her eye but ignored it. The Garmin was beeping again, telling her to speed up. She broke into a full sprint for the last block. She knew that
she would still have to turn around and run the four miles back to the motel once she reached Buffalo but right now she didn’t care. Pushing herself to her limit felt good.
Sarah reached Decatur Boulevard with her lungs feeling like they were about to burst. She checked her time on her Garmin. It was a personal record. Four miles in thirty-one minutes. She leaned up against the street sign to catch her breath and celebrate her victory. She was just about to begin that long jog back down Tropicana when that same black BMW she had spotted out of the corner of her eye stopped at the corner. An alarm went off in her head too late to escape as the car door opened and Dale stepped out of the BMW aiming a pistol at Sarah’s head.
“Get in the car.”
Sarah looked down Tropicana Boulevard and considered running. The street was packed with traffic. She could take a chance and hope that Dale wouldn’t shoot her in front of so many witnesses. Then she remembered that he was already wanted by the police. There was no longer any need for him to be discreet. If she ran maybe a police car would happen by before he could catch her again. Maybe someone would stop their car and help her. Dale was already coming around the car toward her. It was too late now. He had the gun pointed at her face now.
“If you run I will shoot you dead. Now get in the car.”
He opened the car door and grabbed Sarah by the arm, dragging her inside. Sarah began to scream and punch at Dale. There was blood leaking from Dale’s head and Sarah tried to aim a punch at the wound. Someone shouted something at Dale from a passing
car and Sarah hoped that they would call the police, that someone would save her before he got her alone. Sarah felt Dale crack her over the head with the pistol and her legs wobbled. She was thrown into the car and the door was slammed shut behind her. Dale ran around the car and Sarah tried to reach up and lock the door before he could open it. Dale ripped open the door and pushed her back into her seat. He shoved the pistol into her ribs and pulled the BMW back out into traffic.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know. Shut up. Don’t talk.”
There was a desperation to Dale’s movement that Sarah hadn’t noticed before. This was not the careful, meticulous killer who had bathed her and her husband after murdering them both, washed her sheets, and scrubbed the walls and floor. The impulsive madman who had just snatched her off a busy street in the middle of rush hour was an entirely different breed of killer. Something had changed him.
“You could have gotten away. The police let you go. They didn’t have anything on you. Why did you come back?”
“I said shut the fuck up!” Dale slapped her and Sarah’s head spun.
Sarah knew that she was going to be raped and tortured no matter what she did. There was nothing he could threaten her with. No matter what she did the pain would be the same.
“Why me? You could have any woman you wanted, a woman of your own who would love you. I’m married. Why do you want me?”
Dale turned quickly and Sarah braced for another blow but instead he gritted his teeth and answered her
question. His face was twisted in anger and some deep emotional pain.
“Any woman? Is that what you think? I can have any woman? Women hate me. My own mother hated me. This is the only way I have ever gotten anyone to pay attention to me. That’s why God gave me this power, so I wouldn’t be alone, so I could make whores like you love me without violating his law. Thou shalt not kill. I can bring them back.”
Dale smiled smugly, proudly.
“But the Bible also says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’ I’m married. I have a husband. You’re sinning right now, Dale. You’ve been sinning all along. You have to let me go and turn yourself in. You need help.” Sarah was trying her best to control her panic. Tears were streaming from her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter. God will forgive me. He knows what I feel.”
“What do you feel, Dale?”
Dale’s face twitched. He licked his lips and stared straight ahead through the windshield, avoiding Sarah’s inquisitive eyes.
“Do you love me, Dale? Do you think you actually love me? This isn’t love. You don’t hurt the people you love. This is sick. This is twisted and evil.”
“You have to be quiet now.”
“I want to know, Dale. I want you to tell me what you think you feel for me.”
“I loved my mother. She was the first person I ever brought back to life. My dad murdered her right in front of me. But I brought her back. She hated me ever since. She hated what I could do. She kept trying to kill herself and I kept bringing her back. Then she tried to kill me, beat me to death with a hammer. I mean, she
tried to. She tried again on the day she died. She poured gasoline all over herself and burned herself up. She tried to take me with her. She poured gasoline outside my bedroom door while I was sleeping and set it and herself on fire.” He turned to look at Sarah again; his face was a riot of twitches and tics as he struggled to suppress his pain. “That’s it. No more talking now. I’ll shoot you if I have to. I can always bring you back. But no more talking.”
This time Sarah listened. She recognized the neighborhood as they pulled up to the gate. She even knew the code on the keypad. One, two, four, three. He was taking her home.
“How do you see this ending, Dale? You see us being together forever or are you just going to fuck me one last time and run?”
Sarah was trying to get under his skin. She wanted to ruin whatever sick fantasy was driving him. Take away any satisfaction she could from what he was about to do to her. He seemed to be coming unhinged. Nothing about what he was doing made any sense. He had taken her back to her own house to do what? Rape her? And then what?
“Shut the fuck up and get out of the car.”
“You haven’t thought about it, have you? You’re just making this all up as you go, aren’t you? What are you going to do? The cops will be looking for me. They’ll put you in prison. Then you’ll be the one getting raped every night. You’ll be the one waking up screaming.”
“Get the fuck in the house!”
He grabbed her by the hair and shoved the barrel of the Glock against her temple. Sarah walked with him to her front door, knowing that she was in for unfathomable pain once that door shut behind her. She considered trying to fight him, forcing Dale to kill her now before he could hurt her, but that would only stall the pain. He would just drag her back into the house, revive her, and torture and rape her anyway. She stepped
through the door into her home, hoping that someone would find her before Dale could hurt her.
Dale took her up to her own bedroom and pushed her down on the bed. The mattress seethed beneath her, crawling with thousands of maggots and flies. The entire room smelled like death and madness.
“You’ve never had a real woman, have you, Dale?”
Dale clamped his hands over his ears and winced. Blood trickled down his face from the wound in his head, which had started to bleed again. He wiped it away quickly. He squinted and swayed a little. For a moment, Sarah thought he was about to faint or perhaps even die on the spot. She rose from the bed.
“What the fuck are you doing? Get back on the bed!”
He pointed the gun at her and for a moment Sarah thought he was going to pull the trigger. Then he winced and grabbed his head with his left hand, still pointing the gun at her with the right. Blood was seeping from the wound and trickling down his forehead steadily now. He blinked repeatedly, trying to keep the blood out of his eye.
“I’m getting ready for you, Dale. You can’t fuck me if I’m fully dressed. Isn’t this what you wanted? You don’t have to rape me. I’ll let you have whatever you want. Maybe I’ll even rape you.”
She reached out for his belt buckle and he pulled away from her. She guessed he probably couldn’t get it up with a woman he hadn’t tortured and abused. That was part of his ritual, his fantasy. A willing victim ruined the fantasy for him.
“Come on, don’t you want to cum on my tits? Isn’t that what you told the detectives you wanted to do to me? Here I am, Dale. Let’s fuck!”
She reached out for him again and he pulled away again.
“Stop that! Not like that. Get back on the bed.”
Sarah heard a tire screech outside. She glanced out the window and saw Detective Torres pull into the driveway of Dale’s house, throw open his car door, and charge up the walkway to Dale’s front door, his gun pulled. He kicked down the front door and went inside.