Bound (2 page)

“Sadly, no. She wasn’t the type to run away. My husband and I decided to move on. If and when she does come home, then we would turn her old room back to the way it was.”

That’s odd. Mrs. Walsh knows more about Kelly’s disappearance than she’s letting on. Something is very wrong here.

Kramer heard a soft whisper. She looked over as Kelly was mouthing the words ‘
where the deer play
’.

“Was there a certain area where Kelly set up her glass deer?”

“Oh, my, you really are psychic.” Mrs. Walsh walked over to the closet and stood beside it, pointing into the corner of the room. “Before this bookcase was here, we had set up a circular rug in the corner. When she was little, Kelly would play for hours on that rug, so none of her glass figures would break. She always played with her deer right here.”

Kramer walked over, being careful now to keep a little distance from Mrs. Walsh. Every sense she had screamed to
RUN
. She had to leave, to come back with Bruce or never again.

To look like she was onto something, Kramer used her hands to inspect the bookcase. She ran her hand down the side of the wall and felt a slight depression in the drywall.

She heard someone coming as footsteps resounded along the outside corridor. She turned to see who it was. Mrs. Walsh’s facial expression had changed. She looked angry.

The footsteps stopped outside Kelly’s bedroom door.

“Everything okay Mrs. Walsh? Have I offended you?” Kramer asked.

She hadn’t seen the rubber mallet in Mrs. Walsh’s hand before. Now it dangled from her grip.

“You big city bitch.” Her voice had taken on a high-pitched squeal, as if this was her real voice, and she had deliberately deepened it earlier to converse at the door. “You come here and want to start shit. Who do you think you are?”

Kramer had felt it. She should have run. She regretted getting this involved in the first place.

She turned at looked at the chair where Kelly sat. Kelly was crying, her face red, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was shaking her head back and forth, and mouthing the word ‘
No
’.

Kramer’s stomach dropped even further. She stepped back, leaning against the bookcase.

A man stepped into the room behind Mrs. Walsh. His physical features led Kramer to believe that she was now standing in the presence of Kelly’s parents.

“I’ll leave. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Oh no. You won’t be leaving. Ever,” Mrs. Walsh spat the last word and lunged.

Kramer ducked out of reflex. The mallet hit the bookcase above her head, stopping its descent. Kramer looked for an escape. She felt trapped, locked in the corner of the bedroom, both Kelly’s parents blocking her in.

Before Mrs. Walsh could raise the mallet again, Kramer dove past her legs and tried to crawl through the door.

A large hand grabbed her from behind. As much as she writhed and protested, Mr. Walsh held firm and lifted her as if she was weightless.

“We got us here a pretty one,” he said, his breath smelling of onions and garlic.

“No one knows she’s here,” Mrs. Walsh added. “Take her to the basement and do what you do best. Treat her to a little Kelly treatment.”

Kramer grabbed hold of the doorframe and tried to arch herself in a quick twist to dislodge his grip, but it was too tight. The man had to be at least six and a half feet tall.

Then Mrs. Walsh dropped the mallet again, this time connecting with Kramer’s wrist where she held the doorframe, breaking it.

Kramer screamed. The pain was more intense than anything she had ever felt.

“That’ll teach you to go nosing around in other people’s business,” Mrs. Walsh shouted in Kramer’s face. “Who do you think you are? Now you’re gonna pay, you little bitch.”

Mr. Walsh dragged Kramer out of Kelly’s bedroom, but not before Kramer caught a glimpse of Kelly, still sitting on the chair in the corner, her head in her hands, crying, her body wracked with sobs. The pain became too much. Blackness covered her peripheral vision and then moved inward until Kramer slumped, completely out.

#

Kramer woke to a massive amount of pain. The basement was dark and smelled of oil. A little light shone out of a single bulb that dangled from the ceiling.

She looked over at the source of her pain. A rope tied her swollen wrist to a long nail protruding out of the wall. The injury looked horrid. It was a dark purple, her hand sitting at a bad angle. She looked at her other arm and then down her body. Nothing else damaged yet.

Then she tried to look around the basement as best she could in the little light she had. It was a mess. Tools scattered around different makeshift tables told her the guy wasn’t organized. Something hung from the ceiling to her right. It had chains, and a small black strip that looked like a seat.

Then it hit her. She looked back at the tools on the tables. They weren’t just any tools. They were items used in some kind of fetish. She was sure of it. The thing hanging from the ceiling was a swing of some kind. Behind a beam, barely visible in the light from the bulb, she saw a medieval stockade, with the hole for a head and two smaller holes for the hands. Black ropes could be seen dangling around the side of it.

What the hell is this place?

Footsteps started down the stairs. Mr. Walsh came into view. He was wearing shorts and a wife-beater shirt, white and stained.

They couldn’t hold her for long. Bruce would miss her at dinner and wonder what happened. He knew she wouldn’t stand him up. They’d had a deal. But would he come to the Walsh house and expect to find her tied up in the basement?

“I see you’re finally awake.”

He stepped up close and sniffed her. It was repulsive and at the same time reminded her of a dog doing the same thing.

“Good, I smell fear.”

He lifted the edge of his shirt and wiped his nose, snorting as he did it.

In all her experiences with the dead and working with the police, she had never been in such a bad place.

“What are you going to do? Whatever it is, there will be no going back. You won’t be able to undo it.” Kramer hated that her voice sounded so weak.

He looked up at her and stared for a moment before responding. “I never
want
to undo nothing.”

“What about Kelly? Wouldn’t you want to change that?” She had nothing to go on. She had to try to keep him talking.

“Never. Kelly was good. One of the best. I left her locked in that stockade over there for almost a week once and she still begged for me to do it to her. The more they beg, the faster I release them. You’ll learn this rule because you’re a bitch too. You’ll learn.”

Kramer’s insides twisted. She almost lost her bowels as her urine, warm and sudden, rushed down her leg.

Mr. Walsh looked over at her feet. “Good,” he smiled. “That’s a start.”

He stepped over and bent down, placing his hand, palm open in the small puddle that formed at her feet. She leaned into the wall as hard as she could to get away from him, but it was no use.

He lifted his hand and sniffed again. Then he opened his mouth and licked her urine off his fingers.

He looked up at her and smiled his evil smile again. “You taste good.”

For a large man, he stood up with ease and speed. One second he was on his knees and the next he was standing, his chin coming to her forehead.

“You’ll do fine. One or two months of being my pet and then I’ll bury you in the wall like all the others.”

Kramer couldn’t help herself: she spat at his face, the phlegm landing beside his mouth in a glob.

He stepped back, licked around his lips, caught a piece of her saliva, and dragged it into his mouth.

“Damn, do you taste good.”

Then with the quickness and deft speed of an athlete, he lunged forward, grabbed her jeans on both sides, and yanked with his vise-grip hands. They snapped and dropped, leaving her exposed to him, her panties the only thing separating her privacy from his insanity. Kramer screamed as long and as loud as she could.

“Oh, you are going to be fun. Maybe later, my wife could join us. I usually leave her out in the beginning. I love all the bodily fluids except blood.” He turned and tossed her jeans away and then looked back at her. “My wife only likes blood. When she joins us, you end up minus a finger or a toe. After a few weeks, you’ll never walk again and then, eventually she takes too many pieces and I’m left with a dead trunk, and that’s no fun. Well, maybe for a few days, but that doesn’t concern you, because you’re already gone by then.”

He laughed. Then he guffawed and slapped his knee. The laugh grated on her already raw nerves. Kramer cried. Was this it? Could it be that easy?

A loud bang from upstairs made her jump, pain rushing through her wrist.

Mr. Walsh looked up at the ceiling.

“Wait here,” he said.

Where am I going to go, asshole?

 As Mr. Walsh reached the bottom of the stairs, Kramer heard a gunshot somewhere above. He heard it too, and stopped. In the dim light, she thought she could actually see doubt on his face.

He ran from the bottom of the stairs to a table that was littered with gadgets, lifted one and walked over to stand beside her.

The door opened above. Light shone down the stairs. It looked like someone was holding a flashlight.

“Kramer? You down there?”

“Help!” she yelled, but only half the word escaped her lips before Mr. Walsh clamped a hand over her mouth. Breathing became a chore she couldn’t accomplish.

The tool in his hand was a metal OBGYN-type speculum with the ends shaved down to points like knife-tips. Mr. Walsh turned the sharpened ends toward Kramer’s chest and pushed it forward with all his strength.

Between his grip and the ropes on her wrists, she had little wiggle room, but it was enough to arch her back and spin her chest away. One of the pointed ends of the speculum entered between two rib bones and punctured her right lung, which caused immediate stress in her breathing ability.

A gun went off somewhere in the basement.

Mr. Walsh’s hand came away from her mouth and nose. Breathing was even more difficult than before. It seemed like the one bulb in the basement went out for Kramer.

#

Kramer regained consciousness as she was being loaded onto a stretcher. An officer was standing over her.

“What happened?” she managed to ask.

“We got ‘em, thanks to you. You’re going to make. You’ll be okay.”

“Got who?” she asked, feeling slightly out of it. “You mean, Mr. Walsh?”

Bruce nodded. “You didn’t show for dinner. The great Kramer would never stand me up. I figured you’d come to the Walsh house, so I thought I’d do a drive-by tonight. I found your car parked a block down. The engine was cold when I touched the hood. It set off my internal radar. When I came to the door, Mrs. Walsh was acting weird. Then I heard someone screaming from the basement. I asked to check it out but Mrs. Walsh said no. I called for backup and explained that I had probable cause and entered the house anyway. I cuffed Mrs. Walsh and then got startled and fired my weapon by mistake. I found you in the basement.”

A paramedic stepped forward and tried to push Bruce away. “Sir, we have to get her to the hospital.”

Kramer lifted her good hand and touched Bruce’s arm. He turned back.

She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“What? What are you trying to tell me?” Bruce asked.

“The…” she waited, breathed in, cringed with the pain, and said, “wall.”

“The wall? Is that what you’re saying?”

Kramer nodded.

“What about the wall? Is there something in the wall?”

Kramer nodded.

Bruce went to ask something again and then stopped, stared down the street, then looked back at her.

“Is Kelly in the wall?”

Kramer nodded.

“Okay. Thank you.” He looked at the paramedic. “Take her away and bring her back in one piece. Nothing happens to this one, you hear?”

Kramer was lifted into the back of the waiting ambulance, where Kelly sat beside her all the way to the hospital, smiling and mouthing the words, ‘
Thank you’.

The Numbers Game - A Preview

An excerpt from The Numbers Game.

I never thought I’d be up on first degree murder charges. The proof is in the numbers. I know this. But they don’t.

I’m a vacuum cleaner salesman. I used to sell shoes, but now I sell Kirby’s. I run door to door and try to sell my G8 Kirby upright vacuums. The killing has nothing to do with me, but one of the people I had just done a presentation for was murdered minutes after I left their house. I’m innocent.

This is my story. Call it a diary. I won’t lock it. Besides, I don’t have a lock or anything metal in my prison cell. They don’t allow those things. So I will write my tale and let everyone know what I do and how I do it so they can see that I’m not a murderer. I can’t afford a lawyer from the money I make selling vacuums, but I’ve got legal aid, although that’s worth nothing. Maybe the Judge will read this.