Shaken (44 page)

Coming upon some horrific crime scene, seeing what some psycho had done to a fellow human being, was difficult for me to cope with. Because I could put myself in their place.

I could see their last moments. The struggling. The fighting. The final breath. I could hear their pleas for mercy. I could feel their fear, their agony, sense their helplessness, imagine their horror so deeply it had led to a lifetime of nightmares. That is, when I could get to sleep at all.

Thinking back over the victims I’d encountered, two stood out as the absolute worst ways a person could die. Both were at the merciless hands of Mr. K.

One was known as the Guinea Worm.

The other, the Catherine Wheel.

Lying there in the storage locker, eyes closed, I couldn’t help but shudder at the horrible images they induced.

I also couldn’t help but wonder what was making that ominous humming noise next to me.

Chapter 4

“H
ey, Phin. It’s Harry.”

Phineas Troutt rubbed his bleary eyes, wishing he’d checked the caller ID before picking up. He didn’t really like Harry McGlade. No one really liked Harry McGlade. But the private detective was bearable in small doses, and they had enough of a history that Phin had a grudging respect for the guy.

Plus, Harry was Jack’s new partner, and Jack had told Phin to be nice. While Phin couldn’t see how Jack could have gone into the private sector with someone so fundamentally flawed—especially since Jack hated being Harry’s partner when they’d been rookies on the force twenty years ago—he respected her wishes. Phin was still adjusting to suburban life, being Jack’s live-in boyfriend. It was her house, and she paid all the bills, including paying for his latest round of chemotherapy. If she found some warped sort of satisfaction being McGlade’s partner again, Phin wouldn’t try to talk her out of it. Even though it personally would have driven him nuts.

“What’s up, Harry?”

“Is Jack there?”

“No. She was gone when I woke up this afternoon.” Phin still felt a bit nauseous from his treatment yesterday, along with having a whopper of a headache, and was thinking about climbing back into bed as soon as he got off the phone.

“She was supposed to stop by the office so we could divvy up the latest cases. Got one where this guy wants to find out if his mother is cheating on his father with his brother. You can’t make shit like that up. Ugly as hell, too. Mom looks like a fat, pink gorilla, but with bigger feet. The son has a face like a carp. I swear, I want to throw a hook in it every time he starts talking. I think people below a certain minimum standard of beauty should have to get a license before they reproduce. A minimum standard of intelligence, too.”

He was one to talk on both counts. “I’ll tell Jack you called when she gets in touch.”

Phin raised his thumb to hit the disconnect button, but Harry’s voice continued to drone on.

“I called her four times. Her phone isn’t on. Goes right to voice mail.”

“Maybe it isn’t charged.”
Or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to you.

“You sure she’s not there?”

“I’m sure, Harry. I’m alone in the house.”

“Did you guys buy a second car?”

“No.”

The only car they had was Jack’s, a new SUV to replace the Chevy Nova she’d owned for almost half her life. Phin hadn’t owned a legitimate car in a while. Before moving in with Jack, the only vehicles he drove were illegally obtained. After being diagnosed with cancer, Phin’s concept of morality had become a bit…
skewed
for a time. The only people who knew he lived with Jack were Harry, Jack’s mom, and Jack’s old partner, Herb Benedict. There were several warrants out for Phin’s arrest.

Funny he should wind up falling for a cop.

“Well, you know I put a tracker in Jack’s car,”
Harry said.
“Doesn’t hurt to play it safe, especially with her history. According to my GPS, it’s still parked in your garage.”

Phin felt a jolt of concern course through him. That same sensation he had while on the street, right before trouble started. He walked through the living room, opened the garage door, and stared at the SUV. In three more steps his hand was on the hood. The engine was cold. But that wasn’t what made Phin’s heart rate double. The back security door, the one leading to the yard, was missing a section of glass. A neat circle had been cut through it, carefully avoiding the foiled edges that would have set off the house alarm.

“The car is here,” Phin said. “When was the last time you talked to Jack?”

“Yesterday.”

“Call Herb.”

“Herb? I hate that guy. He’s like a big, mean walrus.”

“Someone broke into the house. I think someone took our girl, Harry. You and Herb meet me here soon as you can. Bring everything you and Jack have been working on lately, and every case going back six months. And tell Herb to bring a list of everyone Jack arrested who just got out of prison.”

“I’m on it.”

Phin hung up, examining the hole in the window. Jack’s home had been invaded before, and she had since beefed up her security. That included foiling the windows—running a paper-thin strip of metal along the perimeter that was hooked up to electricity. If the window was shattered, the alarm went off. The doors also had magnetic sensors, which were supposed to go off if they were opened without a key. A quick look on the outside doorjamb revealed why it hadn’t worked; a larger ceramic magnet was stuck to the frame, preventing the mechanism from springing.

Fighting nausea, Phin hurried back into the house. He grabbed the .45 ACP he kept on top of the fridge, jacked a round into the chamber, and shoved it down the back of his jeans. Then he marched down the hallway to the bedroom. The sheets were still tousled from their night of sleep. Phin remembered popping some Compazine for nausea and codeine for pain, half asleep and groggy when Jack finally came to bed—late as she always did, watching infomercials until three a.m.

“How are you feeling, hon?”
she’d asked.

“Better, now.”

He fell asleep holding her hand.

Staring at the bed now, he tried to imagine someone coming in the room and grabbing Jack while he slept off the effects of the drugs. Why hadn’t she struggled? Screamed? The antiemetic and painkillers he took were strong, but if she’d woken him coming to bed, why hadn’t she roused him while being dragged off?

Phin rubbed his eyes, then extended the motion down his face and chin, trying to imagine how he would abduct a woman with her lover sleeping beside her. Especially a woman who was a former cop and no doubt had guns in the house.

He examined the bed, the blankets, the pillows, then scanned the carpeting, following it out into the hallway.

There. A smudge of dirt. Faint, no more than two inches long. It repeated, a foot later, and a foot after that, the dash-dash-dash pattern continuing into the kitchen. Phin went back into the hallway and saw the smudge had gotten longer, now a continuous, muddy line. He walked out the back door and into the yard, spying the narrow wheel track in the patch of dirt where the grass had been thin. It hadn’t rained last night, but dew collected on the lawn prior to dawn, making it damp.

Phin walked into the tree line, where the grass ended, into a copse of trees. Plenty of places to hide and watch and wait for Jack and her boyfriend to fall asleep.

He folded his arms across his chest, feeling a chill even though it was warm. Then he went back inside and got on Jack’s computer. First he checked her e-mail, including her deleted files and spam folder. Without finding anything out of the ordinary, he logged onto Jack’s cell phone account and printed out a list of all her recent calls, going back a week. Most of the numbers he recognized, but a few he didn’t. Using an online reverse directory, Phin worked his way through several restaurants, cable TV shopping channels, and two unknown numbers that either Herb or Harry could help with.

Then he opened up Firefox and looked at Jack’s browsing history. Netflix. Amazon. Clothing retailers. A planned parenthood site.

Phin accessed that and quickly read the page. It was about pregnancy in women over forty.

He left the computer and went to the bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet. He found Jack’s birth control pills, ten still left in the pack. Then he checked the garbage can next to the toilet.

An empty box that read “EPT,” along with a wrapper for one of the tests.

Phin dug deeper, but the pregnancy test wasn’t in there. He went into the kitchen and checked the garbage can under the sink. Nothing.

Where was it? And where was Jack?

Chapter 5

C
ontrolling my breathing was the first step. Once I slowed that down, I was able to stop crying, relax my cramping muscles, and think through the panic.

My wrists were ridiculously sore, as if someone had branded them with hot irons. I wiggled my fingers, keeping the circulation going, and then tried to reason out my situation.

Mr. K had me. That was obvious. But I didn’t see how that could be possible. Too much didn’t make sense.

Could it be a copycat? Someone imitating Mr. K?

I wished I could remember how I got into the storage locker. My last memory was watching infomercials in the living room, Phin asleep in bed. He was doing another round of chemo after an ultrasound had found another tumor on his pancreas. How long ago was that? A few hours? A day?

I must have been drugged. That would explain the loss of memory.

Could Mr. K somehow have tracked me down and—

The loud
CLICK!
was accompanied by an explosion of light. I slammed my eyelids closed, but the glare still burned my corneas, causing an instant headache. After a few seconds, I peeked through the painful brightness, squinting at the spotlight hanging on the wall.

Blinking away motes and halos, I began to look around. I was in a storage locker, as I’d guessed. Metal walls. A metal door. The concrete block I was tethered to was larger than I’d assumed, at few hundred pounds at least. I swiveled my head around, looking for the machine making the whirring noise.

When I saw it, my whole body puckered.

It was a wheel. A large, spinning wheel, with straps for a person’s arms and legs.

The Catherine Wheel.

But this one was unlike any I’d seen before. Attached to it was a metal pole, which looked like the rotating spit from a gas grill.

I immediately knew what it was. I remembered John Dalton’s description of the Guinea Worm, and I could picture someone strapped to the wheel, their broken bones grinding together, while the turning metal bar slowly disemboweled them.

Next to the wheel, on the floor, was a digital clock. It was counting down the seconds.

1:59:43…1:59:42…1:59:41…

After a brief, internal battle to squelch panic, panic won out. I screamed into the gag. Screamed until my throat was raw, until the tears came again, until I was hyperventilating so badly that I passed out.

Chapter 6

P
hin showed Herb Benedict and Harry McGlade the mud lines on the carpeting in the hallway.

“He must have wheeled in a gas canister on a hand truck,” Phin said. “Stuck the tube under the door and filled the bedroom. That’s why he didn’t wake us up when he took Jack.”

“So he’s a doctor?” Herb asked. He was jotting things down in his notebook. “He has access to anesthetics?”

“Not necessarily,” Phin said. “You can get nitrous oxide—laughing gas—at any welding supply store. When I woke up, I had a metallic taste in my mouth that could have been nitrous.”

Herb blinked at McGlade, who was staring at him. “What?”

“Every time I see you, you have another chin,” Harry said.

Herb scowled. “Have you taken your pill today?” he asked.

“What pill?”

“Your
shut the fuck up
pill.”

Harry’s brow crinkled. “Where did I hear that before?”

“Guys, stay focused,” Phin said.

Herb gave McGlade a lingering glare, then turned back to Phin. “How did he know when you went to sleep?”

“He was watching the house. Or maybe a listening device.”

“I’ll check for bugs,” McGlade said. “I brought my spy gear.”

He set a metal suitcase on the floor and opened it up, spilling contents all over the carpet. One of the items that rolled away was a sex toy.

“That’s spy gear?” Herb said, pointing at the pink dildo.

“It’s got a listening device in it. I swapped it with a woman’s vibrator and put it in her desk drawer, trying to catch her cheating on her husband.”

“Did it work?” Phin asked.

McGlade frowned. “I got the switches mixed up. All I recorded was three hours of
bzzzz-zzzz…oh God…bzzzz…oh my God…bzzzz
. I should have put a camera in it, too.”

“You’re an idiot,” Herb said.

“And you’re a miracle of evolution,” Harry replied. “Somehow a sea cow grew limbs and learned how to talk.”

Phin stepped between them. “Harry, put away the dildo microphone. Herb, unclench your fists. Do either of you have any idea who could have Jack?”

Herb let out a slow breath, then shook his head. “Not so far. We normally get alerts when someone we put away gets out. All the major ones are still in there. Got a few baddies who were up for parole recently, but they were all denied.”

“Were there any cases Jack was working on before she quit? Any open cases?”

Herb’s brow crinkled. “Only one. But it couldn’t be him.”

“Harry? Were you and Jack working on anything?”

“Nothing big.” McGlade picked up a slim black case with an antenna sticking out of it. “Bug detector,” he said. Then he held it next to Herb and said, “Beep, beep, beep! Crab lice alert!”

Herb shoved the device away, then got behind Harry and roughly pressed him up against the wall. “You keep it up, and the next thing your magic dildo is going to record is you going
pbbthhhh
when I shove it up your—”