Broken (19 page)

She shook her head, “No, I can’t, Michael, he’ll run. He said if I told the police it would be the last straw and he’d know he can’t trust me! And he’d run and hurt more people and it would be MY fault. Michael, I have to! I have to… oh, God, I’ve hurt him so much,” she paced frantically, her hands twining helplessly in her hair. “I never meant to hurt him, I swear, I didn’t, I just, I was afraid. He loved Eric so much and they were so good together, so beautiful, and I felt left out.” She tried to explain. “And I was jealous sometimes, I was, and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt my sweet little boy,” she pounded the heels of her hands against her head.

Michael guided her to the couch and sat her down, “Fact is you DID, and now he wants to kill you.” He crouched in front of her and tried to talk some sense into the woman who he once thought he knew. “Listen to me, if we’re smart, you, me, dad, and Eric are going to survive this. If Randy really wants to turn himself in, he will and
he’ll
survive this, too; but, if you go, my guts are telling me he’s gonna kill you, and then maybe, ‘cause isn’t it what people like him wind up doing? Kill himself? You don’t want your son to die, do you?” he asked.

Cupping his face in her hands, with tears streaming down her cheeks she shook her head, “No, not my little boy, not my sweet little Randy.”

“
Randy rhymes with candy, and tastes just as sweet, doesn’t he?”
Mike could hear Sandy sing-song as she served dinner, or brought snacks into the family room,
and the tiny saying, with it’s never before considered entendre, made his stomach turn.

She leaned forward, her arms over his shoulders, pressing her face to his neck. Even though the last thing he wanted was to be near her in any way, he couldn’t stop himself from attempting to comfort the sobbing woman.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered pressing their cheeks together before turning her head and pressing her mouth hard and desperately onto his.

“Ooooh, GOD!” he shoved her back onto the couch while he crab-crawled away. “Jesus Christ, Mother, what the FUCK is wrong with you! Sick…” he lurched to his feet, wiping his mouth, throwing a disparaging look at her as he stepped into the bathroom. “Fucking TONGUE!” he spat rinsing his mouth. Leaning on the sink he shook his head, “You have a serious,” the front door slammed shut, “problem.” He whipped his head around to find the couch empty. “Mother!” he screamed, gritting his teeth.
Why am I bothering?
he wondered, stepping carefully over the dead policeman, getting to the front door just in time to watch her car speeding down the street. “Son of a BITCH!” Once more, he pulled his cell phone and dialed Captain Zegler.

--

Randy watched her cross the uneven field until she stood shaking just a few feet away.

He held out his hand, “Give me your cell.”

Sandy did as she was told then wrapped her arms around herself, “Randy, please,” she nearly whispered, watching him destroy the piece of technology.

He shook his head, “I need, WE, we need to talk. I can’t go on like this,” he frowned tremulously. “I could have killed my little be… Eric.”

She shook her head, reaching for him, “He’s going to be fine. The doctors say he’ll be one hundred percent in no time, and he knows you didn’t mean it, he knows, baby, you’d never hurt him on purpose,” she tried to soothe, moving closer, wrapping her arm around him, drawing him close.

“Before I finish this, I need you to help me. There’s things I can’t be sure can be trusted to anyone else to do, and I need to know you’ll do them for me?” he asked holding her apart from himself.

“Sure, baby, of course, anything,” she nodded, then gasped when he drew her in, devouring her mouth with his while his hands roamed her hungrily, sliding under her shirt, over and between her breasts, under her bra then up and down her back.

“Oh, God,” he gasped, “it’s been so long.” then she was pressing herself to him, moaning into his mouth as his hands slid down the back of her pants, around and finally into the front of them making her squeal with delight and longing.

Once he was sure she wasn’t wearing any kind of wire, he gently broke apart from her and nodded solemnly, motioning through the trees on the far side of the clearing. “I’ve got everything together at the motel I’ve been hiding at. You didn’t call the police right? Tell me you did as I asked, mom? Tell me you’re gonna let me have the one dignity of doing this my way?”

“I didn’t. Michael did, but I left before they got to the house, just like you asked baby, just like you asked,” she stroked his face and drew him in with hot desperate kisses that sent shockwaves through him.

Good girl, you finally did something right
. “Thank you,” he nodded once more. “C’mon, I’ve got a room.”

14

Shaking his head and looking as if he hadn’t slept in months, instead of just one night, Mike bit hard on his thumb nail. “It’s been over twenty-four hours since she went to him detective, do you really think she’s still alive?”

“It’s hard to say, Mr. Custon. All his behavior,” Jase shook his head, “your brother’s quite an enigma when it comes to his drives and behaviors so far, with normal serial killers, a lot of their behavior is predictable, almost textbook, I mean, that’s why there’s a textbook, y’know? But,” he shook his head, “Sam tried to tell me Randy was different.”

“How’s she doing, by the way?” Mike asked. “I’d like to be able to give Eric SOME good news when I go see him later,” his eyes overflowed with the last vision of his baby brother in his head. Eric curled on his side, holding his old nested teddy bears to his chest with the snapshot of Randy from his wallet cupped in his hand. “He’s terrified Randy’s gonna wind up dead.”

Reluctantly, the detective nodded, “If he doesn’t surrender when we find him, he might.”

“He’s still in love with him,” Mike muttered. “How does that happen?” he asked, still unable to wrap his mind around it. “He’s his
brother,
how do you fall in love with your own brother?” he whispered urgently.

Jase shook his head.

Mike swallowed hard, the shy, athletic and electronic wunderkind that was his middle brother, virtually impossible to reconcile. The furious and tortured young man who’d coldly killed two police officers and a dozen women that they knew about, wasn’t the brother he knew.

“I didn’t know,” Mike shook his head. “There were marks in the beams from the chains. How do I hope he lets her live? How do I hope for that when I know now what she did to him? What she did to
them
?”

Jase shook his head, moved by the young man’s distress, he’d been in the crawl space himself and seen the markings. He’d seen the odd couple hairs that had been pulled out by rough spots in the over head beams and the cobwebs and egg sacks that littered the room.

“I don’t know, Mike. What I do know is that, if you want to talk, whenever you’re ready, we’ll get you, Eric, and your father all the help you need. Randy and your mom, too, if they let us.”

15

Two Days Later.

“…
love you, Ran, always have. Didn’t I stop when you asked me to? I didn’t want to.”

“
Randy’s selfish,”

“
No, please don’t,” Randy’s childhood voice pleaded.

His head snapped up, hitting the wall behind him. His eyes bulged wide, darting through the darkened room as he gasped a deep breath.

Scrubbing the beard and moustache he hadn’t even noticed over the last few days, a buzzing sound caught his attention, drawing his gaze across the room to the bed.

The comforter, when he checked in, had been some faded version of sea green with garish swirls of hideously vibrant color that was meant to be an artistic flair.
Just one BIG splash of color now,
he thought, noting the pattern that looked like fingers wrapped around the bed from above as the blood had soaked into the comforter.
Flies. More than just one, how long?
He wondered, turning his wrist to check his watch, “Wow,” he shook his head. Again, his hands came up to rub his face and brought the voices back, too.

“
I’m sorry! I’m SORRY! Don’t….” he’d screamed on so many occasions.

“…
maybe he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, he doesn’t you know. He doesn’t love you anymore, maybe he never did…” she taunted.

“No! I do! I always did!” he shouted at the body on the bed.

“
Maybe he’s broken,” she mused, “can’t make love like we can.”

“Yes I can! I can little bear, You KNOW I can. I promise.” Tears slid into his moustache, wetting his lips. His tongue swept them back inside while his bloodshot eyes fixed on the woman,. “You’re a FUCKING LIAR!” he screamed, hitting his forehead with the gun in his hand.

“
Oh yeah, that’s right…” she moaned, “Goood, now when he stands up, you’ll know your little soldier’s ready…” even her voice was smiling.

“
But we’re special, Ran. What we have, it makes US special!” Eric protested, still too young to understand what his big brother really wanted.

“
Shhh, it’s alright, just be a good boy and do what I say,” she soothed.

“
It hurts!” Randy cried. “No, please! You’re HURTING ME!” he shrieked.

“Shhhh,” he pressed his finger to his lips, scanning the room again, making sure they were there alone, “Please…” he whimpered shaking his head.

“
Take off your clothes nice and slow, you know how your brother likes it, Eric, then you can help him with his,” she instructed, watching Randy’s eyes flick from her fingers sliding inside herself, then back to his little brother. There was disappointment on her face when his gaze lingered hungrily on the younger boy sliding his jeans with tantalizing slowness down over his hips.

“
Not here,” Randy was barely able to breathe as a sweat and flush of desire pinballed back and forth inside his young body, “not like this.”

“
It can’t be wrong if everybody does it,” Eric protested.

“
Of course it’s not wrong, love is the only thing that matters,” she agreed.

“
Get me the Big One,” she ordered angrily while her knee dug into his belly.

“
No! NO PLEASE!” Randy cried, trying to squirm away, kicking, hitting, doing everything he could, even as she grasped his arms and pinned them behind his back, using her weight to keep him over her knee. Eric’s face was red and tear streaked, his slim little chest hiccoughing as he knelt on the other side of her knee just as the buzzing started. He felt her finger press against him and cried, pleading again just before the tip of that monstrosity was forced into him, burning and ripping the tender flesh of his backside. He screamed. Then Eric was there, his hands on the sides of his face, his warm wet lips against his scream, taking it in, sharing it with him as best as he could. He could feel that gentle little hand between his legs trying to ease the pain with a hint of pleasure only his little bear could bring, while together they cried their way through his torture.

“It hurts,” he groaned, rocking.

“
No! Eric, if you really love me, you’ll stop right now!”

“
Love you, Ran, always have. Didn’t I stop when you asked me to? Didn’t I? I never wanted to,” then, “This has gotta stop man, you can’t do this,” he pleaded.

“
I can’t,” Randy pressed their mouths together, tasting his saline, “Oh, God, Eric, I can’t!”

“
It’s okay,” he felt Eric stroke his face tenderly “you don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

He gasped his way back from sleep once again, but this time, a sense of calm certainty swaddled him comfortably.

Randy pushed himself up, his body protesting harshly until some of the stiffness dissipated. He looked down. Judging by the thick peeling streaks of meat and blood, and the flecks that simply dropped off, he might’ve been on the floor for quite a while.
Couple days maybe.

Every part of him that he could see, from his toes, to even the side of his nose had been splattered or streaked with blood from the corpse on the bed.
Did I really finally do it?
he wondered, feeling something sticky tear away from his inner thigh. Looking down he plucked away a string of meat that seemed to have coagulated between his thigh and his penis. A not unpleasant shiver worked up his spine with the odd sensation as he flicked the sticky strand across the room where it slapped onto the TV screen.

The buzzing grew more noticeable as he approached the bed. His head cocked to the side. He’d left her face alone, but the rest was barely recognizable as having once been human.
I did it. I really fucking did it!
At the side of the bed he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face once more as he wrapped his arm over what was left of her, trying to embrace her one last time, “I loved you so much and all you could do was hurt me over and over and over again, well I got you back, you bitch! I finally got you back!” her head came away from the rest of the body, angling toward him, her eyes wide and milky now, her once peachy lips long since blue and rubbery feeling.

Sniffling hard, he flicked away a maggot then pressed his lips to hers. “I’m so sorry,” he rolled the head back to where it belonged and stood up straight catching sight of himself in the mirror. “Oh shit,” he drew close to his reflection, wondering if he’d killed her, before, during or after they had sex, disturbed by his inability to remember.

“Not a good sign,” he told himself, gazing hard into those bright green eyes, “One more, just one more, this time for my boy. One more for Eric and then it’ll be done,” he nodded at himself. “Okay,” he agreed. “Better clean up first, though; won’t get very far all covered in mom bits.” Again he nodded, “Good point,” and entered the bathroom.

16

“It’s been four days since anyone’s seen hide or hair of him, Jase. I’m gonna go insane unless I can get a breath of fresh air, stretch my legs a little bit, or something,” she eased herself off of him and the couch where they’d been nestled, so she could pace the front room.