Mimicry, page 15
A pause. Nothing but heavy breaths and thick tension. Mason watched, waited, as Wendell made the one decision that could drastically change tonight’s outcome. His hands were up in surrender. His heart beat like a drum.
“All right,” Wendell said. He shoved Amelia to one side and turned his aim to Mason. Slowly, he reached for the RV’s driver’s-side door and pulled it open, then motioned toward it. “Get in. You’re driving. And if you make one wrong move, you’re a dead man.”
Mason finally exhaled and did as he was told. Whatever happened next was fine by him—Diane and Amelia were both safe. Where he had failed to protect Amy and cost her her life, at least he could die knowing he had redeemed himself tonight. Even if just a little.
Now he could die satisfied.
Chapter Eighty-Eight
The girls and the Explorer shrunk in the wing mirror. Mason handled the large steering wheel, navigating through the dark and the stream of smoke that emanated from the engine. Beside him, Marvin Wendell sat pointing a gun at his side.
“Where are we going?” Mason asked.
“You’ll see. Shut up and drive.”
They went for miles. It was a dark and lonely road. With time, he came to believe that he didn’t have to die tonight. His family was safe, and that was all he’d wanted, but if an opportunity arose to defend himself, Mason was sure going to take it.
“You know, I’ve waited so long for this,” Wendell said with an almost audible smile. “Ever since you left me to die, all I could think about was hovering over your body as you bled out. I made plans for you—so many different plans. My only regret is that I had to pick just one. I had to make you suffer, watching people around you die and knowing it was all your fault. Then… this. You’re a survivor, aren’t you?”
“I’ve lived to tell a tale or two,” Mason said.
“But not tonight.”
“Sure. I mean, you shoved me off a cliff—twice—and here I am.”
“Because you had help,” Wendell said.
Mason went quiet then. Aggravating him wasn’t going to do him any favors. The best he could do was focus on making it down this long road, staying alive long enough to drive far, far away from the family he’d left behind him.
“You pissed me off,” Wendell continued. “You pushed your luck and my buttons. So now you’ll get a chance to see some of my other ideas, and trust me, you won’t like them. Now pull over on the left past this tree.”
Nodding, Mason did as he was told. The breeze carried the smoke in the other direction, clearing his view of the woods. He stopped past the tall tree just like instructed. When he saw the location they’d arrived at, horror and dread wormed their way into his skull.
He had been here before.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
Her ears rung. Her vision was a foggy haze. Evie craned her stiff neck up toward the people standing over her. Amelia and Kylie were standing to one side with Diane in the middle, all wearing worried frowns that weren’t meant for her.
“Where’s Mason?” she asked.
“The killer took him in that direction.” Kylie pointed.
Evie sat up, wondering if she would be okay to drive. Even a slow and winding drive would be better than none at all. Mason was her brother, and she couldn’t let him get hurt. Even if he was capable of taking care of himself, she didn’t like his odds.
“All right,” she said, climbing to her feet and shrugging off the helping hands that came for her. “Diane, can you do us a favor and get far away from here? The whole point of coming out here was to make sure you were safe.”
“I can go,” she said, nodding.
“Good. Kylie will drive you. Take Mason’s car. The keys should still be in the ignition.” Evie turned back to her car, studying the damage. Despite the speed she had been going when hitting on impact, the Explorer seemed to be in fair condition. Not aesthetically, of course, but when Evie eased her way back into the driver’s seat and tried the engine, she was relieved to find it started.
The plan was set, no matter how bad. Evie was ready to go. She reached out for the door but instead found her daughter’s hip as she stood blocking the handle.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“No, you’re not.” Evie shook her head frantically from side to side.
“Hey, he’s my family, too. He wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t haul him off the side of a cliff. Besides, you promised to let me in. This feels like the opposite. Please, just stop playing the concerned mother, and let me come with you.”
While she stood there stubbornly, proving once and for all that they shared blood, Evie ground her teeth so hard she felt they could snap at any moment. Was it really such a bad idea to bring an extra pair of hands, or was she right in feeling protective? All she knew was that every second wasted put Mason in more danger.
“Fine, get in.”
Amelia rushed around the car and struggled to force open the buckled car door.
“You got your phone on you?” Evie asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because it’s time we gave Bill a call.”
“Mason said not to contact the police.”
“That was when Diane was in danger. Now it’s my brother’s life hanging in the balance, and he doesn’t get to make that decision. Let me reverse this hunk o’ junk, and I’ll tell you the number. But get ready, because we don’t have much time.”
Evie slammed into reverse, narrowly missing the Mustang that zoomed past her at lightning speed. Now all she could think about was Mason as she headed the opposite direction down the dirt road, praying she wasn’t too late.
Chapter Ninety
Mason stood frozen in place, his gaze roaming over Alison Wendell’s cabin. It had been unclaimed since the disturbing events some years ago, and here it had stood, rotting, while time came to decay it. Moss grew up the sides, the windows smashed in, presumably by young hooligans throwing rocks at “the old Wendell place.”
“What do you think?” Marvin Wendell said.
“I think you’re sick.”
Wendell shoved him away from the RV and toward the cabin. Only they weren’t going toward the front door. They were heading to the secret location only their disturbed family had known about. The place where his entire family had almost died.
They walked around the outside of the cabin. Mason had his hands up, proof that he had no intention of making any sudden movements. At this point, he could barely conceive the idea of an escape plan, but who would want to? He was finally getting all the secrets from the killer, even if he had nobody to tell them to before he bit the proverbial bullet.
When they reached a large brush of foliage, they stopped.
“Open it,” Wendell said abruptly.
Mason knew what to do. He hunkered down to his haunches and grabbed a handful of the thick foliage that lay on the ground. It shifted as one, and he quickly understood that it was all tied to a hidden piece of chain-link fencing about the size of a manhole cover. He shifted it to one side, nicking his hand on a protruding piece of wire. But his focus was fixed on the wooden trapdoor that revealed itself. He quickly pulled that up, too.
“Start walking,” Wendell said from behind.
Mason took the steps down into darkness. Just by memory, he knew there was a door at the bottom, so he put his hands out, ready to meet it. When he got there—the killer stomping down the steps close behind him—he licked his dry lips and reached for the handle, revealing the candlelit interior of Alison Wendell’s psycho dungeon.
They moved to the center of the room, where dirt had been packed in hard to form walls. There were thick wooden beams structurally settling the place, the large room divided only by a wooden wall at the back. In the middle of the room was a rotting wooden table, where the killer’s sister had once chained his family up and forced them into an edited game of Russian Roulette. The very memory of it messed with his head.
“Now, look at me,” Wendell demanded.
Thinking nothing of it at first, Mason spun around on the spot. He looked Marvin Wendell in the eye, seeing him for the first time in a well-lit room. There were no shadows this time—no darkness to hide every inch of his face. For once, the killer’s face was revealed to him in full candlelight, and when he saw it, Mason’s mouth hung open in shock.
It wasn’t Marvin Wendell after all.
Chapter Ninety-One
It was just too difficult to devour. All the time this man had spent killing people to get at him—all the pain he’d put those people through—and it wasn’t even Marvin Wendell after all. This was the face of a man he had never seen before. The jaw and nose were the same, at least in profile, but everything else was a far cry from the man he’d left to die.
“Surprised?” the man said. “I thought you might be.”
“Who…” Mason struggled to breathe as anger and confusion worked together to take their toll on him. The results left him feeling weak and hopeless. “Who are you?”
“Oh, I go by two names. To my parents, I was always just Simon Griffin. Pretty decent upbringing, if you can see past the physical abuse. But that was a long time ago, before I decided to live off the grid. Since then, I’ve been roaming the West Coast without a name, simply enjoying my freedom and living off the bare minimum.”
Mason watched his face as he spoke, still too shocked to speak. He didn’t know what to say. There were endless questions buzzing around in his head, and it was too hard to just reach out and grab one. It was like he was frozen in time, staring as the killer spoke.
“You’re not saying anything,” Wendell said.
“I just… Who are you?”
“Weren’t you listening? I’m Simon.”
“But why come after me? Why do everything you’ve done?”
Simon jerked his head back, pulling the face of somebody who had been emotionally stung. “Because I took a strong interest in the Lullaby Killer. Who couldn’t? That guy was fascinating. I followed his every movement, right down to a certain shipping container. Which means I saw everything you ever did, including that thing. From then on, I guess I found my place in the world. I spent my time studying the case, following you closely as you tracked down other killers. I knew the whole time that I would have to bring you to your knees, avenging the evil genius of Mr. Wendell. Sadly for you, you fell for it all.”
Mason shook his head. “It’s not possible. We dug up the body. It wasn’t there.”
“And there’s good reason for that.”
Simon waved him on, this time leading the way as he went toward the wooden panels at the back. Mason spent this time wondering if he should try to attack, but he didn’t like his odds. Instead, he just watched as Simon opened the door, bringing them into yet another small room. It was even more disturbing than the last.
Shelves were decorated along the walls, each holding jars of pinkies floating in yellow fluid. There were battery-powered lamps glowing to show off a collection of mementoes: a wall of newspaper clippings detailing the Lullaby Killer, a whiteboard with the Wendell family history on it. There were even pictures of Luke—Alison’s son, who had survived the entire ordeal. But all of this was nothing compared to what lay in the middle of the room.
Mason approached it slowly, struggling to believe it was real. A sickening knot tied in his stomach as he got closer and closer to the table. A box of glass surrounded it, encasing it like a relic from a museum, not to be touched by human hands. Mason’s solid stare rolled up and down the skeleton, noticing immediately that the pinkie finger was missing. It wasn’t hard for him to put two and two together, even in his current shocked state.
It’s him, he thought, unable to articulate for fear of throwing up.
It’s Marvin Wendell.
Chapter Ninety-Two
“I know what you’re thinking,” Simon said. “You’re thinking I’m an obsessed maniac. Some kind of fanatic who couldn’t just let it go. But what you’re looking at is an important part of San Francisco’s history. Forget the Zodiac—this is the real deal.”
Mason’s breathing became hard and labored. “Is this really him?”
“Yep. I followed your buddy to the burial site and watched him do what he did. All that nonsense about using chemicals to preserve a body was beyond me, so I just waited for the earth to do its job. Decomposition, bugs eating the flesh. A quick internet search told me to just wait a couple years and it should be skeletonized naturally. Imagine being lucky enough to have such an artifact. Impressive, isn’t it?”
Mason didn’t know what to say. This man had clearly lost his mind in his admiration of Marvin Wendell. He should have been thankful, for that was the only reason he was still alive—so he could brag about the things he had done like some dumbass James Bond villain. He didn’t know how long he could postpone his own murder, but if he could just keep him talking, there was hope he could find an opportunity and seize it.
“Why not Bill? Why wasn’t he a target in all of this?”
“Detective Harvey? Pfft.” Simon stood back with the gun, placed it down, and slowly removed the black leather gloves from his hands. “Please, he wasn’t a threat to Marvin. It was your name all over the papers. It was your case back when you were with the police. What I mean is that you brought this guy down to his knees, so it only seems right that you should suffer. In short, you’re to blame.”
“What did Wendell ever do that was so special?”
Simon snickered and finished removing his gloves. He wrapped his bony hands back around the gun and pointed it at Mason. There was something smug and amused about his expression then, but as something loud and shrill sounded from outside the basement, his face soon turned to a look of horror and cold rage.
There were sirens.
“Oh, you better not have,” he said, moving toward the door frantically. “If you did, you’re in for a world of pain. Wait right there. Don’t fucking move, or I’ll blow your head clean off right now. Understood?”
Mason nodded, his heart racing. How did the police know he was here? They should never have come, because now he wasn’t just dealing with Marvin Wendell. He was face-to-face with a madman who’d obsessed over a lunatic, and now he was at his worst. The gun was only the promise of a quick, merciful death.
Somehow, Mason didn’t think it would be that easy.
Chapter Ninety-Three
White-hot fury burned through every inch of his body as he ripped open the door and stormed up the steps leading to the side of the cabin. Blood-red and ocean-blue lights flickered up into the night sky, painting it with their own shade of misery. It occurred to him then that he was caught—that there was no way out but to go down swinging.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
As he ascended the stairs and let his head emerge from ground level, the first thing he saw were three police cars. All their lights were on full beam, blasting out toward the basement. That was his first thought as he saw them—that they were not aimed at the cabin itself. Next, there was a sedan he couldn’t quite identify, one man stepping out from behind the driver’s seat. Beside that was what took his rage to a whole new level—the smoking Ford Explorer that had busted up his RV. Beside it, Mason Black’s sister and the young girl he’d almost shot.
“Son of a…”
Simon turned and hurried back down the steps, rushing back to his position of power. They were all here for him, to arrest him and to save Mason. But it was against his very clear instructions not to involve the police, and they had violated that rule. This meant one thing, and one thing only.
It was time to change the game.
Chapter Ninety-Four
Mason hadn’t dared move. He was unarmed, and his body was at its weakest. Perhaps it was age doing a number on him, but the paralysis of fear was a great contribution to his lack of movement. It was somehow clearer to him now than ever before that all he wanted to do was survive, and rushing the grim sicko was too much of a risk.
Simon returned from beyond the door, his face red with the extremity of anger. The sirens had quietened, but judging from the reaction, Mason thought it safe to assume that there was more than just one officer out there. He watched, curious, as Simon rushed back into the room. Mason winced as the gun was raised, aiming between his eyes.
“I said no police.”
Mason stepped back quickly, raising his hands like a white flag. He rushed out his words, hating himself for how cowardly he sounded. “Whoa, wait a minute. I didn’t call anyone. I’ve been here with you the whole time, remember?”
“Yeah? Then turn out your pockets. Slowly.”
Mason made a move to do so, perspiration soaking through his shirt as he tugged at the inner fabric of his pockets. He had expected to find his cell phone there, realizing how guilty it would make him seem, but there was no sign of it. It must have fallen out when he’d been hanging from the cliff, he thought.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
Simon narrowed his eyes, suspicion lurking in them. He twitched the gun, telling him to move back into the main room. Mason had no problem with that—it took a lot to creep him out these days, but there was nothing he wanted more than to step away from that museum of horrors. He couldn’t have moved quicker if he’d tried.
“Now we’re going to do something a little different,” Simon said, reaching into his own pocket. He produced a cell phone of his own and tossed it toward Mason, who fumbled before catching it by pinning it to his chest. “You’re going to call your sister and make some demands.”
“What kind of demands?” Mason asked skeptically.
