The Sapphire Express (18 page)

The garbageman looked at me suspiciously but started walking toward the terrace door slowly. Then he said, “I have the best alarm system money can buy. Why didn’t it alert the cops?”

“Uh, sir, I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m just a forensics guy,” I said and felt cold shivers running down my spine. “Where is your alarm unit, sir?”

“It’s right there on the wall,” the garbageman said and pointed at an inconspicuous steel cabinet that was hiding behind a silver coat rack. Then he walked to the cabinet, opened a little door that concealed a keypad and a tiny green light, and said, “It’s a silent alarm.”

I stared at the green light in disbelief and wondered why I wasn’t already in handcuffs.

Then the garbageman kicked the coat rack so hard that it fell to the floor and said, “Dammit, I forgot to turn it on. I always turn it on. Jesus Christ! The one time I forget to turn the fucking thing on I get burglarized. This is just great, just great!”

I realized that I had dodged a giant bullet, or maybe a cannonball, and asked, “Do you have a hidden video surveillance system here, too, sir?”

“No. I don’t need any extra eyes here.”

”OK, good, but please, sir, come here and take a look at your terrace door,” I said as the juices of sweet relief started flowing in my rigid muscles. “It’s pretty badly mangled. My guess is that whoever did this was a professional.”

The garbageman walked to the door and leaned down to look at the lock that had been bitten by the Condor. He seemed genuinely interested in the damn thing, and I used the opportunity to take him down. I pressed the Cheetah hard against his neck and activated the powerful cat with the push of a button. The garbageman fell to the floor as if he just had experienced a powerful epileptic seizure and started convulsing wildly. The man was out, but the clock of awakening was ticking fast.

I rushed to the Econoline, grabbed the duct tape and the plastic wrapping from the cargo area, and sprinted back to the house. The garbageman was already coughing and trying to get up, and I kicked him in the face like Eric Cantona in his glory days, and the confused man fell immediately back to the floor. Then I choked him for ten seconds for extra security and tied his hands and mouth tightly with the duct tape and wrapped his body in plastic. I performed the entire task with the efficiency of a deranged Squirrel Island postal worker, and the package was ready for delivery in no time. It was Christmas again, and I felt like this time Santa was going to fucking deliver.

I dragged the rapist through the living room and opened the front door wide. I shrugged indifferently as I kicked the package down the stairs and watched it roll all the way to the van like a runaway sausage at a Swedish midsummer festival.

I felt happy about the way I had managed to handle the logistics and was ready to finish my work, but then something interesting caught my eye. There was a brand-new Porsche 911 Carrera parked behind the Econoline. I had never owned a sports car before, and I looked at the curious vehicle pensively for a couple of mischievous seconds. Then I started walking toward it with a fabulous plan brewing in my rascal’s mind.

I peeked through the Porsche’s window and noticed that the keys were still in the ignition.
Great!
I jumped in the driver’s seat, turned the engine on, and the Porsche woke up with a powerful rumble that flushed out a pair of shorebirds that had been hiding in the reeds. I moved the car so that its headlights pointed straight at the ocean and marveled at the beauty of the coastal scenery for a brief, beautiful moment. The Porsche was still in drive, and I lifted my foot off the brake. Then I jumped out of the car quickly and watched in awe as the luxurious vehicle started rolling down the slope like a blind stallion. The poor bastard didn’t understand the horrible danger it was in as it inched closer and closer to the edge of the cliff. Then, suddenly, the sleek taillights disappeared into the emptiness, and the beautiful driving machine crashed into the sharp rocks with an eighty-thousand-dollar bang. Just like that, the marvel of German engineering was gone. I had no reason to murder the poor thing in such a cruel way, but I just couldn’t waste a juicy opportunity like that. The little kid was still alive somewhere inside me, and he was happy and excited, so why the hell not?

Crashing the Porsche was the day’s entertainment portion, and, sadly, I had to go back to work. I needed to get the garbageman inside Larry Number 2 and get the hell out of Dodge. I had no time to waste because the rapist was much bigger than I had anticipated, and the unfortunate fact was that I was in for a real workout.

I pulled the hand truck out of the Econoline and used it to drop the big man into Larry Number 2s welcoming belly. He didn’t want to settle in his first-class seat to hell without a fight, and I had to climb on top of him and jump on his chest like a carnival monkey to get him all the way in. I hadn’t been in a bouncy castle for a long time, and I had to return to the kitchen and get another bottle of water after I was done jumping. It was hard work, and I finally understood why they didn’t make those things for grown-ups.

Once Larry Number 2 had its lid secured in position, I maneuvered the hand truck under it and lifted the rapist into the van. There was plenty of room for him in the Econoline’s giant mouth, but I was still a little concerned for his well-being because the man needed to be in the box for several hours, and the bastard was already badly battered. My plan was to drive all the way to the slim man’s grave, and the inconvenient truth was that the journey was going to become the garbageman’s Via Dolorosa. I truly hoped that he would survive the ride because I wanted to talk to him about his crimes and get some answers, but I accepted that death was a real possibility. Well, c’est la vie! The man was going to be returned to his maker anyway. The product was defective beyond repair and keeping it would have been simply unwise.

I returned to the house for one last time and used bleach to wipe clean all the spots that possibly had any traces of my DNA on them. Then I went upstairs, entered the cave, put one of the DVDs in the player, and scattered the rest of them on the table next to the computers.

As I was about to leave the room, I noticed a pen and a pack of yellow Post-it Notes on the desk. I picked up a note and wrote on it: “I can’t live with myself anymore. Only the wild ocean will wash away my sins and set me free. Please forgive me.” Then I walked out of the room and left the door wide open. I figured that when the cops—or whoever would come there first—would find the DVDs and the note, they would lose interest in the investigation quickly. They had more important things to do than trying to find out if there was foul play involved in the disappearance of a child rapist—even if the terrace door had been opened with a machete, and there was a brand-new Porsche resting in peace on the rocks below.

When I was done with the cleaning, I closed the front door and looked at the house thoughtfully. It felt somewhat unnerving that a total stranger could just arrive there with his creepy van and take away its owner. I wasn’t sure if the garbageman had ever fully realized how easy it was to hurt him. Maybe he thought that he was invincible because of all his success and wealth, but the fact was that he didn’t have a bulletproof skin or a heart that just kept on beating when it was cut in half with a field skinner.

When I thought about the whole thing more carefully, it felt almost unfair that a man with such a tremendous fortune and clout was physically as vulnerable as any homeless man sleeping on a dirty park bench. He probably regretted that he hadn’t been born a little later in the century because it was only a matter of time before a man with his resources would be able to buy some real security. A synthetic, unstoppable heart and a skin that was, in fact, bulletproof were perhaps waiting for him in the future. How sad it was that a man like that was stuck in a world that was so rudimentary and manual that the future children would one day be laughing at us so hard that their bellies would ache. They would laugh exactly as hard as their own children would one day laugh at them.

I arrived at the slim man’s grave in total darkness after a long and tedious drive. It was eerie out there, and the fact that I had buried the bones of two men in the forest already, had transformed it into something quite unexpected. It was now the land of the dead, and for the first time, I started to feel its hate in my heart. It wasn’t a particularly strong hate, but it was still heavy and suffocating, and I knew that the forest was disappointed in me. A wise man could have said that it was just a mindless collection of trees, but to me, it was much more than that. There was something in those woods that made me shiver in fear, and that something was now watching me with insulted eyes.

I parked the Econoline under the mighty oak and went to check on the garbageman. I figured that there was a 50 percent chance that he was still alive. The truth was that he was a big, overweight man, and his mouth had been taped shut for hours. The holes I had drilled in the box had probably helped him to breathe a little better, but there wasn’t much spare air in the Econoline’s cargo space to begin with.

I opened the rear doors quickly and jumped into the van like a nimble shadow cat. Then I removed the lid from the box with the help of the machete and was pleased to see that the doomed man was still breathing. He was, however, unconscious, and his face was swollen, and it had an unhealthy blue hue. I knew immediately that there was no time to waste if I wanted to keep him alive. The man was already pounding on the gates of hell like an enraged mountain ape, and I could hear the devil’s keys rattling in the distance.

I poured two bottles of water on his head and pulled off the tape that covered his mouth. Then I removed all the plastic wrappings around his body with the field skinner and put the rapist on the chair and cuffed him carefully. The man was still unconscious, but it was time to wake up now. I let the Cheetah bite him hard on his left arm, and it seemed to activate his senses. His eyes started spinning, and saliva was dripping from his hanging tongue like he had no care in the world. The garbageman was going to make it.

I waited patiently for him to return to the real world and forced water into his open mouth every ten minutes or so. He drank it all like a good boy, and after about forty-five minutes into the revival session, the rapist started waking and was soon spitting and coughing like a man who had ascended to the ocean surface from sixty feet without scuba gear. I slapped him gently on his right cheek, and the tired man uttered quietly, “What, what happened? Have I been in an accident?”

I looked at him and said, “Yes, sort of. You got bitten by a cheetah.”

He shook his head and said in a slurred voice, “Bitten by a cheetah…what, why?”

I got up and slapped him hard on his left cheek and said, “Look, it’s wakey-wakey time now, garbageman. This is the great Day of Atonement, and you have a chance to confess your crimes against humanity and the environment. Yes, I know about the toxic barrels in the bottom of the ocean just off Cape Verde. I also know what you like to do to young African girls in your free time. I know it all, so you don’t have to lie to me. Only truth will set you free, understood?”

The garbageman raised his head slowly and asked, “Am I a prisoner?”

“Yes, you are. I kidnapped you from your vacation home and brought you here so I can kill you.”

He was quiet for a moment and said, “Where are we?”

“We are in a national forest far away from your beautiful cliffside home. You will never go back there again. It’s a pity because it truly is a wonderful place for a man who loves the ocean so much. I especially liked the man cave. Well, let’s just call it a cave because I don’t think you are a man.”

“Why are you torturing me?” he asked quietly.

“I am not torturing you. At least that was not my intention. I don’t believe in torture. The ride from your house was rough, I know, and I’m sorry that it had to go down like that.”

The garbageman looked straight into my eyes and asked, “Why does a man who kidnapped me and beat me like a dog apologize for anything?”

I didn’t answer, but I had to agree that it was somewhat caustic to apologize for anything at that point. The obvious conclusion was, therefore, to stop apologizing.

The garbageman lowered his sweaty head, and I studied him carefully. He wasn’t a tough man in spite of his proven evilness. He wasn’t the kind of beast that I had seen in my dreams. He was like an overgrown child who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong. The picture that Ramses had shown me at Johnny D’s had depicted a much more confident man, a man who was powerful and arrogant. But this one was a coward, a creation of another man. There was no question about that.

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, I am going to kill you tonight, but I would like to wait a little while before doing it. I wanna hear your side of the story, if that’s OK with you. Or do you want me to take your life now? I can do that if you insist.”

The garbageman raised his head and said, “I don’t really care.”

I was surprised to hear that, and I said, “If I were you, I would talk to me for thirty minutes. You know, the cops may come and save your sorry ass. There might even be an earthquake that will flip this van over and kill me. Who knows what will happen in thirty minutes, but if I kill you now, you have absolutely no chance of surviving. You have nothing to lose, man. Don’t fold your hand before at least looking at your cards.”