Shaken (33 page)

I listened, hearing some machine hum in the background. Sniffing the air, I detected something foul. Beneath the mildew and dampness there was a cloying, rotten meat smell that reminded me of the morgue.

Thinking of the morgue made me remember the last time I was there, with Harry and Herb and Shell.

Shell.

It came back in snatches, like short movie clips. Sitting in a theater, watching Jeroen sing along with the show. Driving in the limousine. Walking down the street and getting into Shell’s car. Listening to blues.

Did I drink too much? Pass out?

My head felt big, stuffy. Not a hangover feeling. More like when I was young and had a bad cold and Mom kept spooning cough medicine into me.

Drugged. I’d been drugged.

I got on all fours, began to crawl in the direction I was facing, moving slowly and reaching out ahead of me so I didn’t bump into anything. My arms and legs felt heavy, and they didn’t respond well to my mental commands. After traversing a few feet, I came to a wall. Concrete again, confirming my suspicion this was a basement.

Bracing myself against the wall, I managed to get onto my feet. My head didn’t want to stay upright on my neck, and my eyes didn’t want to stay open. I forced myself to hyperventilate, thinking the influx of oxygen might help make the drug wear off faster. Once I was confident I wouldn’t topple over, I began to follow the wall to my right, toward the machine sound. I was cautious, afraid of hitting my head or tripping over something. My fears were unwarranted; the basement seemed to be completely empty.

I reached a corner, getting my fingers snared in the world’s largest spider web, rubbing my palms together to get it off while trying not to imagine black widows jumping into my hair. Adjusting my direction, following the new wall, I closed in on the mechanical hum.

The sound was familiar. I was pretty sure I knew what it was. A few steps later, I touched it. Big. Square. Vibrating slightly beneath my palms.

A refrigerator.

Actually, two refrigerators, side by side.

This was good. Fridges had lights. If I opened the doors, I’d be able to see.

I sought the handle of the closer one, stepped back, and pulled.

No light came on. And the rancid meat smell got worse.

Reaching a tentative hand inside, fearful I’d touch something awful, I began to explore the fridge.

It was empty. Even the drawers and the racks were gone. I thought back to the morgue, to Phil Blasky and his assertion that the body had been kept in a refrigerator.

Shivering, I reached for its companion.

I really didn’t want to open it. But at the same time, I knew I had to.

Filling my lungs, blowing out a deep breath, I stood in front of the second fridge.

Just do it.

I yanked the door open, staring inside.

Ten sets of eyes stared back at me, belonging to the ten human heads stacked neatly on the refrigerator’s wire shelves.

Chapter 15

T
he severed heads were all female, lined up carefully on the refrigerator shelves so they all stared at me. Some were more decomposed than others, the bluing flesh decaying and clinging to the bone, making them appear mummified. Others were so fresh they almost looked ready to start speaking.

Each of their faces was grotesquely slathered with makeup. Fire-engine red lipstick, thickly applied and wider than the actual mouth. Pink rouge bright on the pale cheeks. Their wide eyes—their most shocking feature—were missing eyelids, the sockets framed in dark eyeliner. Some of the eyes were milky white. Others had begun to shrivel, like raisins.

The stench blasted over me, prompting a gag. I slammed the fridge closed and backed up, once again plunging the basement into darkness. Every square inch of my naked body had broken out in goosebumps. I stood there for a moment, my mind wrestling with the horror I’d just seen, the implications of it. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too tight. This was so far removed from anything I considered reality, I felt a mental break, a disconnect. Like I was watching someone else go through this, instead of experiencing it myself.

I blew out a big breath, so hard my cheeks puffed out. Awful as it was, I knew what I needed to do.

I had to escape, and get help.

In order to do that, I needed light.

Reaching out through the darkness, I groped for the refrigerator door handle. My fingers locked around it, and I questioned my will to actually open it again, to view the obscenity once more.

I pulled.

The heads stared back, their dead eyes boring into me.

Leaving the door open, I turned around, taking in my surroundings, needing to concentrate. The overhead metal girders and steel support beams confirmed that I was in a basement. A small basement, with two windows sealed with glass blocks. There was a wooden staircase in the near corner, leading up to a closed door. A water heater and furnace stood against the far wall.

I needed a weapon, but nothing jumped out at me. Wincing, I once again focused on the refrigerator. The freezer door was still closed. Much as I didn’t want to, perhaps there was something in there that could help me. I crept up to it, braced myself, and tugged the door open.

Empty.

Then, from upstairs, I head a soul-shattering, mind-blowing scream.

Chapter 16

T
he scream came from directly above me. A high-pitched shrill cry of pure agony. It went on for over a minute, pausing only long enough for quick gulps of breath.

Then, abruptly, it stopped.

My mind betrayed me, casting images of torture and pain so extreme I was paralyzed with inaction. I kept seeing that slideshow from the police academy, of the atrocities committed upon that woman at the hands of Mr. K.

Could that be Mr. K above me? Plying his skills upon some poor victim?

Maybe the only reason the screaming stopped was because his victim was now gagged.

Or maybe the victim had died. Which meant he’d be coming for me next.

I thought about Shell. Could he be a part of this somehow? He’d had the opportunity to drug my drink.

I thought about Herb. Could he have known we’d gone to Buddy Guy’s? Was there a chance he was outside right now, about to come storming in?

Or maybe Herb had already stormed in. That scream could have been male.

Forcing myself to move, I went to the nearest window. The glass blocks were thick—no way I’d break them with anything less than a hammer. Creeping to the stairs, giving the refrigerator a wide berth, I knelt down and pried at the bottom wooden step, trying to lift it. No good; it was on too tight.

Peering up at the door at the top of the flight, I wondered if there was any chance at all it might be open. Whatever drug I’d been given was strong. It knocked me out in just two sips. But perhaps my abductor was used to his victims being unconscious for longer than I was, and there was no need to lock them in the basement.

Buoyed by the possibility, I slowly ascended the staircase. I felt each creak of the wood in my teeth. Every step was a battle between wanting to hurry, wanting to retreat, and forcing myself to go slow and steady to minimize the noise. By the time I reached the top of the flight, I was shivering, covered in cold sweat, my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow.

I put my ear to the door, listening.

Silence.

My shaking hand fit itself around the doorknob. Softly, carefully, I attempted to turn it—

—and the sucker actually turned.

It took the remaining bit of self-control I had left not to throw the door open and run like hell. I was naked, and had no idea where I was, or what time it was, or who had me. My best chance would be to find my gun, or a phone.

Setting my jaw, I eased the door open, praying for oiled hinges. It moved with minimal whining, and I stuck my sweaty head through the doorway and squinted down a dimly lit hall. The house was quiet. No movement. No human sounds. I stepped onto the tile floor, passing a crucifix hanging on the wall, passing a framed Nagel poster, passing a light switch that I desperately wanted to flip on.

The basement had been a hostile, foreign environment. But upstairs was an average, normal home. Horrible things shouldn’t happen in a house like this, which made it even more frightening. Anyone walking into this modest dwelling couldn’t possible guess that the basement had a refrigerator full of severed heads, or that the person who lived here liked to abduct and dismember women.

The hallway opened up into another room. I paused again, forcing myself to go slow, gingerly peering around the corner and seeing a living room.

There was a TV. A sofa. A floor lamp, the low-watt bulb under the shade glowing soft yellow. The window had curtains pulled shut, but I could see through the cracks it was night out. On a coffee table were several textbooks, including one that had
Social Studies: Teacher’s Edition
written on the cover.

Then I heard something. A low, male voice, from someplace in the house. Too faint to make out any specific words.

I decided to run for it. Moving quickly, I found an adjacent hallway, located the front door, and gripped the knob.

It wouldn’t budge. The door was solid, heavy wood, and the deadbolt was key activated.

Turning around, I went back into the living room, kneeling on the sofa, sweeping back the curtains.

The windows had bars over them, chained shut. I stared outside and saw I could have been in any number of Chicago neighborhoods. There were cars parked along both sides of the street. A sidewalk. Trees. My abductor had a neatly trimmed front lawn and a small flower garden with violets.

I got out of the living room, rounding another corner, stopping abruptly when I saw the phone hanging on the wall. I picked it up, and the male voice I heard grew in volume tenfold, a foreign accent coming out of the receiver.

“—take care of her soon. In fact, I’ll do it right now. I just heard a click. I think she’s awake and listening to us.”

I let the phone fall, then turned and ran, rushing down the hall, finding the kitchen, skidding to a stop and then slipping on a slick, plastic tarp that had been set on the floor, my feet losing their grip, my ass hitting the ground, sliding forward into Shell.

He was lying on his back, clutching several coils of rope to his chest.

I was thinking to myself that I had to get out of there, that I didn’t have time to untie him, and then I realized that it wasn’t rope at all, it was his intestines, and I tried to crab-walk backwards but Shell’s blood was all over me and I couldn’t get any kind of traction, couldn’t get away. His dead, open eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth forever frozen with his final scream. Once he’d been a living, talking human being. I liked him. I’d kissed him. And now he was a cooling hunk of meat, profanely slaughtered, no trace left of the man I’d known.

Then someone walked in, filling the doorway. He was naked, thick, his hairy chest matted with blood. Slavic features, a dark, five o’clock shadow on his chubby face, which regarded me with amusement.

“My little cop girlfriend is awake,” he said, his English tinged with a slight Russian accent. “My name is Victor Brotsky. We will have some fun, you and I. Yes?”

Then he raised up one of his meaty hands, and I noticed he was holding a butcher knife.

Chapter 17

I
scrambled backward, away from Victor Brotsky, who loomed over me with a butcher knife. His naked body was blood-soaked, with bits of what must have been Shell sticking to his matted, curly hairs, covering him neck to toes.

In my effort to get away, I got tangled up—in Shell. I pushed away warm innards, which looped around my wrists, scooting over his dead body, off the plastic tarp, and over to the back door. It was locked, with a key-entry deadbolt, the same kind as the front door.

“Where you going to, little girl cop? There is no place to run from Victor Brotsky. My house is locked tight.”

I reached for the cheap dinette set against the wall, picking up one of the kitchen chairs. It was rolled aluminum and flimsy pressboard, insubstantial, but I threw it with all that I had.

Brotsky batted it harmlessly away, like he was swatting a bothersome mosquito. I followed up with the other, matching chair, and then upended the brown, Formica table, using it as a shield.

“You are a fighter,” Brotsky said. He grinned, exposing a cavern of yellow, crooked teeth. “I like. This is a fun job for me. Kill whores. Get paid. Now I get to kill pretty girlie cop. They pay me extra for you.”

While I’d never fought for my life before, I had been in plenty of fights. I was a black belt, tae kwon do, and had been practicing the martial art since I was a girl. Squaring off against someone wasn’t foreign to me—in fact, my forte was sparring. Even against a larger opponent, I was used to confrontation, and it didn’t paralyze me.

Rather than try to control the fear, I used it, letting it fuel my muscles. When Brotsky stepped onto the tarp, I rushed him, leaping over Shell, lifting the table and ramming it into the knife. Brotsky hadn’t been ready for the attack, and he stumbled backward, falling onto his backside. I rode the table over him, like a surfboard, the slashing blade missing me as I landed on my knees in the kitchen doorway.

I ran in a direction I hadn’t gone before, hoping to find a weapon or an exit. Hurrying over the carpeted floor, I passed a bathroom—glass blocks on the window—and found a bedroom. I slammed the door behind me, pressing the cheap push-button lock, jumping onto Brotsky’s unmade bed, and pulling back the drapes.

Another barred window.

Quickly looking around, I reached for the table lamp, which was made of brass and looked heavy. Next to the bed was one of those huge cellular radio phones, a Motorola DynaTAC. I reached for it, then, on the floor, I spotted something better.

My purse, on top of a pile of my clothes.

I reached for it, hoping my gun was still inside, dumping the contents onto the bed, grabbing my Beretta and jacking a round into the chamber just as the door burst inward.