Night bait, page 30
Which car do I follow?
It didn't matter which one he chose; there was no way of knowing. His chances were fifty-fifty. Vickie's life rested on the turn of a card, the toss of a coin. Heads I win, tails Vickie loses.
Chet flicked the yellow-lighted toggle on the radio in the dash, which would key his identifier circuits and signal a distress call.
He followed the car that had veered into New Jersey Avenue.
A slash of lightning zigzagged its way out of the clouds and lit up the sky with a white, alien glow. In that instant of white light, a feeling of total loss and horror converged on Chet.
What if I'm following the wrong car? What if Vickie and The Electrocutionist are in the other car? What if...
He prayed then, to a God he did not believe in.
She opened her eyes.
The first thing she noticed was the whiteness of the ceiling. She was lying face-up on a bed—not a bed really, but an old lumpy mattress covered with a plastic dropcloth. Her head throbbed wickedly, the pain concentrated to a pinpoint at the back of her skull, flaring out to her eyes. And she was dizzy, so dizzy, like a thousand drunks piled up into one. The bed seemed to be twirling.
There was a sound, too, a rushing sound, like water. She lay perfectly still and listened. The sound wasn't like water; it was water. Running water.
Running water filling a bathtub.
Then there was a light, metallic squeal, and the water stopped, only to be replaced by another sound—the sound of tempestuous rain. She could hear the dense sheets blow against the windows and batter the roof of the strange house she was in.
But the rain was the furthest thing from her mind.
Something had gone wrong, a slip-up, a foul-up, a fuck-up. For some reason, Chet hadn't followed through with the plan, and she, in turn, had been successfully abducted by The Electrocutionist. Now, Vickie was on her own.
Her vision was fuzzy, blurred. She lifted her head and surveyed the room she was in. It was a small room, containing a dresser along the next wall, a nightstand with a shaded lamp on it, another lamp in the opposite corner giving off a soft yellow glow, a closed door across from the bed, and a heavily draped window to her right. She noticed a roll of duct tape on the nightstand, and along the wall which the bed rested against, there was another door, which was open.
The bathroom door.
He was in there. She could hear his movements. Apparently, she had regained consciousness sooner than he had expected. Otherwise, he wouldn't have left her unattended.
There were only two plausible courses of action. Very quietly, she could get up and make a run for it now. Or, she could play dead, let him think that she was still knocked out, then catch him by surprise with a good hard kick to the balls. Running now provided little chance for escape. He would simply hear her, come after her, and conk her on the head again before she even made it to the door. No, she wouldn't run now. She would surprise him, stun him, incapacitate him. Then she would have the advantage. He couldn't be very strong; he was a little man. She'd kick him when he wasn't looking, or better yet, she could grab the lamp off the nightstand and break it over his head.
In the far corner of the room, she saw several grocery bags stuffed with clothing. She gulped thickly when she noticed a pair of brown leather boots next to one of the bags. Her boots. The ones she had loaned to Jennifer on the night she was murdered.
Footsteps. He was coming.
Play dead.
She dropped her head back down and kept one eye opened to an irreducible slit. The man walked slowly out of the bathroom and around to the foot of the bed. He stood there for a long time, gazing down at her with an infatuated look in his eyes. He had taken his jacket off, and the sleeves of his white shirt had been rolled up to the elbows. There was an awkward bulge in one of his pants' pockets. Both arms hung loosely at his sides; one hand held a lit cigarette, and the other a day-glow-green tennis ball.
She could hear the trace wisps of his breath, which seemed to grow more and more rapid as he continued to gape down at her. So far, he hadn't noticed that she was faking it.
He placed the tennis ball on the bed and leaned over in a slow bend. She felt his fingers fumbling with her dress, pulling the straps down over her shoulders, then peeling the dress along her waist and down her legs until it was completely off. He stopped for a moment and looked at her again. Now, all she had on was her skimpy bra and panties, her thigh-high black nylons, and her high heels. A sense of utter revulsion rippled through her body when he touched her. He worked his fingers between her legs in smooth, soft strokes. Then his hand slowly slid over the warm flesh of her abdomen and up to her chest. He cupped her breast in a gentle squeeze and rolled the nipple between his fingers through the thin material of her bra. The pressure increased to mild pain; it was difficult for her not to flinch or to move. He rested his hand in the middle of her chest and rubbed, his fingers gradually curling around the apex of the bra as he prepared to yank it off.
Her speed surprised her. Just as he was about to pull off her bra, her right hand came to life, grabbed the base of the lamp on the nightstand, and crashed it over his head in one sweeping arc. There was a blinding white flash, a loud pop, and a jingling clunk as the broken lamp fell to the floor. The man grunted in pain and toppled back into the wall with his hand to his head. It was a good, solid whack. Vickie thought sure that he would crumple to the carpet and pass out.
But he didn't.
He shook off the ramifications of the blow with ease, and before Vickie even had time to get up from the bed, he had pounced on her. Her arms and legs flailed wildly at him, but with no effect. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her to her feet, shaking her around like a stuffed teddy bear. He threw her head-first into the dense wood of the dresser. Her teeth clacked together, and her eyes pinched shut when she heard the cruel thunk of her own head smacking against one of the drawers. She collapsed and landed on her chest, then managed to pick herself up to all fours. But before she could scamper away, he grabbed her by the hair again, this time with both hands, and he rattled her head ruthlessly into the wall several times, bloodying her forehead, leaving crimson smears on the plasterboard. Now, she was too dazed to resist. Her neck went slack and spongy, and her head tossed back and forth as the man shoved her through the doorway to the bathroom. She wilted to the tile floor, her arms and legs splayed out like an inflatable doll with only half the air in it. Outside, the rain showered down ceaselessly; the lightning and thunder cracked and boomed as she summoned all of her strength to lift herself up. The man towered over her, and he allowed her to struggle up to her hands and knees. Then he bridged his arms under her waist and flipped her over into the bathtub. One leg hung over the side, and the rest of her sank into the water, her head completely submersed. The cold water on her face seemed to rejuvenate her a little; she pushed her head up, blowing water out of her mouth, and her hand reached out and feebly clung to the rim of the tub.
In what she thought would be the final second of her life, she looked up in fuddled terror and stared at The Electrocutionist. He stood poised by the sink, with his hand resting over the electrical switch on the same plate as two light sockets on the wall. A green extension cord had been plugged into one of the sockets, and it looped up and over the doorway, where the bare copper strands hung into the tubwater. Her body tried to move, but her spirit had long since given up. The house shook violently as another volley of thunder and lightning exploded nearby. The man cast her a last goodbye grin, and he flicked the power switch on.
Blackout.
At the same instant that the man turned on the power switch which would have electrocuted Vickie, all the power in the house went off. Everything went dark, and the man cursed out loud in the blackness of the bathroom. And a few seconds later, when the lights snapped back on, Vickie was no longer in the tub. The man looked around madly to see her half-running, half-crawling across the bedroom.
"You leave me no choice but to kill you the bland way," he said, pulling a snubnose revolver out of his pocket. "You're being too difficult to tolerate."
Vickie didn't hear what he was saying. With animal stubbornness, she trampled across the carpet, trying to get to the other side of the bed, if only to preserve a few more seconds of her life.
The man aimed quickly at his moving target and fired. The bullet whizzed toward the floor, but missed her completely. She let out a whimpering scream at the sound of the shot.
There was another sound, then, the sound of splintering wood.
The bedroom door barreled out; its hinges tore instantly from their mounts, and the door dropped flat. It hadn't been kicked open, it had been kicked down, and she looked up in her confusion to see Chet standing in the doorway, one eye opened wide behind the sights of his huge revolver. He squeezed off two rounds, but the man had already ducked back into the bathroom for cover. Chet jumped down to the floor, wrapping an arm around Vickie, and pushing her against the wall on the other side of the bed. She was wedged between the wall and Chet's back; he seemed to be trying to shield her with as much of his own body as he could.
"Hang in there," he whispered back to her. "Just keep behind me."
A shot from the bathroom zipped over them and punched into the wall; they both ducked reflexively, and an instant later came a rush of footsteps. The man had darted out of the bathroom, was making a break for the bedroom door.
Chet sprang up from behind the bed, his pistol already positioned and cocked. Vickie couldn't see much from where she was hunched, but then she pulled her arms and legs into herself, and her body shook from the percussion of a quick series of pistol shots.
Three bullets slammed into Chet's chest before he could get off one of his own. His gun fell, and his hand went to his heart. The impact of the bullets which socked into the middle of his chest knocked him off his feet and threw him down into the corner of the room, where he lay heaped and still like a discarded corpse.
Grinning now, the man looked over at Chet's mangled, motionless form. Then he looked down at Vickie, and in slow deliberate steps, he walked over to her. She stared back at him, almost casually, as he raised the pistol to her head, paused, and squeezed the trigger. Vickie's body jerked at the series of sharp clicks; apparently, the man didn't realize that his small five-shot pistol was empty. Vickie, still on the floor, leaped forward beside the man's legs, reached for Chet's revolver in the opposite corner, and screamed when her fingers fell short of it, the man grabbing her again by the hair and pulling her back away from the gun. He picked her up, then rammed her against the wall so hard that some of the plaster gave way. His hands clamped onto her throat, tightened, and he began choking her, his fingers digging into the meat of her neck like steel hose clamps. She tried to inhale, but nothing happened; no air was getting to her lungs. Errant thoughts flashed through her mind, just a mishmash of horror and confusion, but through it all, she realized that she was going to die, and that there was nothing she could do about it. Her face seemed to be throbbing. Fuzzy black dots formed in front of her eyes, and they began to grow larger with every second of strangulation. Through the holes in her broken field of vision, she saw the face of The Electrocutionist—the complacent line of the lips, the sweat-glazed cheeks, and eyes like large marbles,—the countenance of absolute insanity.
Everything began to fade into black, but before her senses dimmed to the point of no return, something happened to her, something that she was in no position to understand—a last dwindling spark of self-preservation, or perhaps animal instinct in its dying moments. And for an instant, she had strength that had not been there before. Her hands reached up and grabbed the man's wrists. Pulled outward, and the pressure decreased noticeably, his death-grip on her throat slackening enough for her to suck in one precious breath of air. She could feel a dangerous energy building up, an alien strength that surged through every fiber of muscle in her body, mounting and mounting.
And with what seemed all the strength she had ever summoned in her life, she lashed her foot up and out, kicked him between the legs with such force that his feet seemed to actually leave the ground, the thud of the blow sounding like a baseball bat striking a sandbag. His cheeks blew out, his eyes bulged, and his body buckled over at the waist. When his hands fell away from her throat, she gulped for air. Then, in a single motion, she grabbed onto his collar with her left hand, pushed him back, then jerked him forward, at the same time driving her small right fist into his mouth with all her weight behind it. His head whipped back, a cord of red saliva swinging across his cheek, and he fell backwards onto the floor. Several broken teeth spilled out of his mouth like bloody pills.
Vickie staggered back into the corner of the room, breathing in whistling shrieks. Her hands felt out blindly behind her, bracing her against the wall as she continued to suck down more air. Her thoughts began to solidify again. She could see, she could see the man slouched on the floor, groaning and cradling his crotch.
He looked up at her with a kind of sick desperation in his eyes. Vickie's mouth hung slack, and she drooled as the man began to gather himself to his feet and move toward her. When he was in a crouching position, halfway up, he lunged for her, his strangling hands reaching for her throat.
She leaned back into the corner and brought her foot way up till her knee almost touched her chin, then reversed the motion and planted the spike of her high heel into the middle of his forehead with the impact of the piledriver. She threw herself into it, and after she landed the blow, she lost her balance and fell forward. The two of them lay askew on the floor, their limbs entwined, groveling like retarded lovers. The man's hand was splayed onto his forehead, worms of blood running between his fingers. He writhed around on the carpet like a snake in boiling water, his teeth clenched and his eyes pinched shut in pain. Vickie scrambled over him on her hands and knees, and she snatched up her purse, which he had dropped by the bed earlier. She snapped it open, found the can of mace, and released the safety without thinking. Then, still on her knees, she held the can up to the man's face and pressed the button down. There was a hissing sound, and a one-man crescendo of screams. The mace spurted all over him, into his mouth and eyes. She held the button down mercilessly, as if using the can of spray paint. He began to thrash and flip-flop on the floor until the pain was so great that he fell into a state of semiconsciousness. She didn't stop until the can of mace was empty.
Silence fell over the room like a curtain-drop.
Using the side of the bed for support, she struggled up to her feet and stood for a moment in the odd quietude. The streaks of blood on her face were beginning to dry. Her hair hung limp in front of her eyes. Her bra and panties and stockings felt like tissue paper stuck to her skin. She breathed smoothly now, aware only of the defeated murderer who lay at her feet. Suddenly, the entire situation seemed absurd, that she had reduced this man who had killed seven women into something as harmless as a blind baby. She had beaten him at his own game. She had won.
She asked herself if this end was worth it, and the answer was no. She picked up Chet's gun, with every intention of sticking the barrel into her ear and pulling the trigger. But there was something else to do first, something crazy, and she didn't think twice about it because if anybody had earned the right to a moment of madness, it was her. She only knew that she would have to act fast before sanity came back and she changed her mind.
The Electrocutionist was curled up by the baseboard, apparently coming in and out of consciousness. Gun in hand, she walked over to him and very calmly kicked him between the legs. She spat on him. She stepped on him. She tromped him. She rammed the pointed toe of her heel into his chest. Her face was totally without expression.
She knelt down in front of him, grabbed onto his hair, and shook his head around. His lip hung down to expose a line of crimson teeth. He drooled blood. His eyes were half-open, the whites gone completely red from the mace. She waved the pistol in his face.
Sirens wailed from far off, but she didn't hear them.
"Hey," she said, and shook his head around some more. "Hey, you fuck. Wake up. Wake up."
She leveled the gun to his right eyeball and held it there. She knew what she was about to do was bad, but she decided to do it anyway. Her hand was shaking wildly, more from the surprising weight of the pistol than anything else; she had trouble steadying the barrel. She didn't hear the footsteps pounding up the stairs.
Her finger very slowly pulled back on the trigger, and the hammer began to move back at the same time.
She didn't seem to hear the sound of the shot until after it was over. The gun went off and bucked violently in her hand. A glistening hole appeared in the man's eye, emptying the socket. Then a contrail of blood siphoned out the back of his head like a dolphin spurt, laying a dark scarlet line across the wall that held there, then began to run down toward the baseboard.
And that was all.
Cordite wafted into her nostrils, and she could still taste the lingering fumes of mace in the air.
Dignazio stood frozen in the doorway. "Oh, Jesus, Vickie ..." He came up to her, hoisted her to her feet, took the gun out of her hand.
She hadn't seen them enter the room, Elliot and Dignazio and a uniformed man.
"Christ, she's a mess," Dignazio said. "She's bleeding like hell."
More sirens could be heard now, armies of them. Quickly, Dignazio picked up Vickie's purse, her black dress, and the spent mace can. "Take her to the hospital, and I mean fast."
Elliot draped a gray overcoat across her shoulders. Then he took her things from Dignazio and ushered her downstairs and outside to the front lawn. The rain had stopped. Dignazio's car was parked on the grass. A magnetic blue and red revolving light on the car's roof spun lethargically, throwing queer crazy colors over the adjacent trees and houses. The sirens were screaming now, and an avalanche of police cars turned the corner and tore down the street when Elliot helped Vickie into his unmarked. As he started the ignition and pulled away, Vickie watched out the back window. Cars screeched to a halt, some driving right up to the front door of the house. Doors flew open. Men piled out and rushed inside with their guns drawn. She noticed that some of the cars, as well as some of the men's uniforms, were different.
