In Your Name, page 8
‘There, there,’ she said softly.
His nose was a bloody pulp and part of his top lip was hanging loose where his broken teeth had severed it. His right eye was closing fast and his face was swelling with purple bruises. She adjusted her position and wrapped her legs around his body, clamping him in place. Walker coughed blood onto her shirt.
‘You fucking bitch, I’ll—’
‘Shhh, not so loud.’ Her left forearm tightened across his windpipe. He struggled to pull the knife free.
‘They can get a little stuck,’ she said reaching down and curling her fingers around his. ‘It’s the serrated edge, makes it hard to get out. It needs a twist.’
She rotated the blade and yanked it free. Walker screamed as the searing pain jerked him off the floor.
Mechanic held him tight.
‘They can be such tricky little bastards,’ she said in his ear. Walker’s cries were choked off as Mechanic crushed his windpipe.
‘Now, Walker,’ she whispered sliding the blade beneath the waistband of his suit. ‘It would appear you have far too many body parts in place.’ She forced the knife upwards slicing the front of his trousers and underwear wide open. Walker’s eyes bulged from their sockets as he fought for air. His hands clawed at her arm clamped tight across his throat.
‘So I need to remedy the situation.’
The blade flashed and a stream of blood and tissue spilled across the floor.
17
Chuck Hastings scowled over the top of his half-moon glasses.
‘I thought you were suspended,’ he barked as he descended the last few steps into the basement.
‘I was, or rather I am,’ Lucas replied, not caring one way or the other.
‘Then how did you dig this lot up?’
‘Consider it the work of a concerned citizen, sir.’
‘Give us the room,’ Hastings bellowed and eight people scurried past in a blizzard of white boiler suits.
‘You’re fine in here,’ Lucas said, ‘but not in there.’ He pointed past the hinged section of wall into the room beyond. ‘It wouldn’t be good to compromise the crime scene.’
Hastings scowled at him.
‘Thanks for the unnecessary guidance. You need to have a damn good explanation for this.’
Lucas scanned the interior of the basement. ‘Pretty simple. Mechanic built this as a safe room, a place to go when things got too hot and she needed to disappear for a while. Which she did.’
‘How did you know it was here?’
‘I didn’t until an hour ago. There had to be an explanation of why we couldn’t find her after the shootout with Harper. I figured we couldn’t find her because she never left.’
‘Where is the eternal drunk Harper?’
‘Probably midway down a bottle of cheap whisky by now. Not heard from him in weeks.’ Lucas had decided he had no choice but to call the discovery into the station but there was little to be gained by implicating Harper.
‘What’s here altogether?’
‘A stash of food, cooking gear, bedding, clothes and some medical stuff. Everything you would need to hole up for a few weeks until things cooled down.’
‘Let me get this clear. You had a miraculous moment of clarity and worked all this out by yourself, did you?’
‘Pretty much,’ said Lucas. ‘Anyway the doc said it would be good therapy for me to return to the scene after what happened. You know, facing your demons and stuff like that. So I thought, why not?’
‘You did good finding this place but you have to back off, Lucas.’
‘I thought, if I could be of help then …?’
‘Goddamit you’re suspended. You need to go home, put your slippers on and reacquaint yourself with your wife and daytime television.’
‘But my mind is still full of this case, sir, I can’t seem to switch it off.’ Lucas was toying with his boss and enjoying every moment.
‘Find a way,’ Hastings said firmly. ‘That’s a direct order. You’re already in a ton of trouble, don’t make life worse for yourself.’
Lucas stopped talking and stared at the floor like a schoolboy in the principal’s study.
‘Have you found anything out of the ordinary? Anything which gives us additional leads?’ his boss asked opening the door into the room behind.
Lucas was not about to give away his prize deduction to his shit-for-brains boss. He might be a concerned citizen but he still harboured dark thoughts about killing the bitch himself.
‘Not really. You might want to take a close look at those white buckets at the back.’ Lucas threw him a pair of white overshoes. ‘SOCO were all over them, they seemed important.’
Lucas left the basement as his boss entered the room to conduct his own forensic investigation.
Two thousand miles away Mechanic sat quietly in Silverton’s hotel suite. She flicked through a newspaper with an overwhelming feeling of calm. Butchering Walker had gone completely to plan and the psycho-bitch side of her personality was very contented indeed.
She summarised her position. There were no loose ends, she had a new employer who liked her and the money was good. Unusually for Mechanic, all was well.
Killing Walker was a piece of cake, but disposing of his body had been another matter. He was a big guy and the hole in the cavity wall which she’d planned to use wasn’t big enough to conceal the body. She’d contemplated cutting him up and feeding him into the recess one piece at a time but that needed tools which she didn’t have. In the end she resorted to a tried and tested method, a dousing of gasoline and Walker’s lighter.
It was six thirty in the evening. She had only seen Silverton briefly to say ‘Hi’ before he buried himself in the office with the phone grafted to his head. Then in true Broadway style he burst through the double doors, his hands held aloft in triumph.
‘Nailed the bastard!’ he said, crossing the room towards the drinks trolley.
‘That’s excellent, Mr Silverton. Does that mean we’re back on the party trail?’
‘Sure does, Ms Hudson, it sure does. Where the hell is Walker? I tried to get hold of him but no one has seen him.’
‘Don’t know, sir, he didn’t say anything to me, but then I think he’s still brooding a little since you took me onto the payroll.’
‘He’ll get over it, and I don’t need him anyway, I have you.’ Silverton reached into a closet and retrieved his Stetson. ‘Saddle up girl, I’m feeling mighty lucky.’ He galloped around the room waving his hat in the air, riding an imaginary horse.
Mechanic smiled and flinched at the ‘saddle up girl’ reference. She had no idea how good a businessman he was, but in his spare time Harry acted like he was in a John Wayne movie.
She glanced at her watch. ‘I need to make a quick call, Mr Silverton.’
‘Sure thing, take your time. Get your shit together cause it’s gonna be a late one.’ He belly-laughed his way through the bedroom to the shower.
Mechanic cursed under her breath. It was Thursday and she couldn’t miss another visit. She reconsidered.
‘Mr Silverton, sorry about this but can I take a couple of hours off? I have some personal stuff which needs my attention.’
‘Sure, I can live with that. Meet me back here when you’re done. Make it quick.’
Mechanic thanked him and left. She was already late.
18
Honeydew House sat at the very outskirts of the city. It was a quaint, well-maintained property with a white picket fence set in a couple of acres of land. Its nearest neighbour was three hundred yards away and you had to drive to get anywhere.
It was as far out of town as you could go, located on the boundary of the city limits. Sitting on the front step you looked at the sprawling city of Las Vegas, and sitting on the back step you looked out across the Mojave Desert.
Mechanic pulled her car off the dirt road and steeled herself for what was coming next. No matter how many times she did this, it always tore her apart.
The house belonged to Jeb and Jenny-Jay Huxton who until four years ago were a normal married couple with a socially awkward daughter who seemed unable to date guys. But being gay in a God-fearing family was never going to be an easy option.
Jenny-Jay was a retired nurse with thirty years’ clinical service. She’d worked in every department a busy hospital had to offer including midwifery, which she enjoyed the least, saying it was too damn noisy. Trauma was her speciality and the care of the terminally ill.
She was an excellent nurse and shunned the numerous opportunities for promotion which came her way. She would throw her head back and laugh at the very suggestion, saying, ‘You can’t do the Lord’s work pushing a pen.’
She would have continued past her thirty years’ service if it wasn’t for a young drunk who, one cold November night, fell out of a bar and into his car. He drove five miles up the road, lost control and ploughed his vehicle headlong into another one travelling in the opposite direction. That car was driven by her daughter.
The collision propelled him through his windshield, killing him instantly. Mary-Jay Huxton was much less fortunate.
The seat belt kept her in place but couldn’t prevent the steering column crushing her chest and the engine block smashing her legs. Her broken body was fixed over time but the lack of oxygen to her brain could not be healed. It left her with locked-in syndrome at the age of twenty-six.
Her mother quit her job, set up a critical care unit at home and devoted herself to nursing Mary-Jay. Her father, Jeb Huxton, set about every member of the drunk guy’s family with a baseball bat when they were eating lunch one Sunday afternoon after church. He received a six month spell in jail and Jenny-Jay began her slide into depression and denial.
She didn’t visit him once, instead she devoted her energies to administering to her daughter in their remote farmhouse and carrying on as though nothing had happened. After all, the events of that fateful November night were the Lord’s will, and He sends trials to test the true believers. And the Huxton family were the truest of believers.
Jeb did his time and came back home to a completely different woman. To put it in non-clinical terms, she’d gone batshit crazy. She had totally lost her grasp on reality and was in full blown denial. Jeb found the best way to deal with this was to go back to work, attended church on Sundays and pretended all was well.
Medicines, dressings and personal hygiene items don’t come cheap. Jeb earned enough to pay the bills but it was tough. So when the nice young woman offered to pay handsomely for Jenny-Jay’s services, it was the Lord sending her a saviour. The new girl who came to stay was about the same age as her daughter and so well-mannered.
She and Mary-Jay got on like a house on fire. You couldn’t stop them chatting and laughing together. They both had the same wicked sense of humour and the new girl was a great companion. After a brief trial they agreed as a family to let the new girl stay – it was a wonderful arrangement, things couldn’t be better.
It was a damn shame both women were largely brain dead. Each one was locked in her own silent world and looked after by her ever-attentive nurse.
Mechanic visited every other Thursday and sat with the family as they played cards and watched television. In reality Jenny-Jay played cards on behalf of Mary-Jay and her new-found friend. The women sat in identical wheelchairs while Jeb watched his favourite game shows, shouting answers at the TV.
Jenny-Jay conducted imaginary conversations between the two women. It was like the world’s worst ventriloquist act.
Mechanic stepped onto the front porch and peered around the curtain into the living room. The wheelchair women were parked in front of the TV while Jeb and his wife sat side by side on the sofa. She could barely make out the surreal conversation being conducted inside.
‘Jenny-Jay said she saw some rabbits today playing out in the field. I told her it was that time of year when the bucks and the does are courting ready to get hitched and have little ones. What’s that Jenny-Jay? You saw a hundred of them! Now don’t you go telling tall tales in front of our guest. You are a one, Mary-Jay, isn’t she Jeb?’ Jenny-Jay was in a talkative mood this evening.
‘Hell I knew that one! I said Duelling Banjos in the film Deliverance,’ shouted Jeb. ‘Didn’t I say that, girls, didn’t I just say that.’
The girls sat upright in their chairs. One was thin, her skin the colour of undercooked pastry. She wore a surgical skullcap and her eyes were open, her face completely expressionless. The other was fatter, with eyes partially closed and her mouth gaping open. Drool ran down her chin, which Jenny-Jay occasionally wiped away with a towel. A food tube ran into her open shirt, feeding tonight’s liquidised dinner directly into her stomach. Both were dressed in baggy jeans and identical checked shirts. One wore blue sneakers and the other wore yellow.
‘Now don’t you go ribbing your father, Mary-Jay. He did say Deliverance – you are sassy today, missy.’ She laughed and slapped Jeb’s leg.
‘Who fancies some homemade lemonade? Girls, are you having some? I made it special this afternoon.’ Jenny-Jay sang the last few words and went to the kitchen. She emerged carrying a wicker tray with four glasses and a jug of lemonade. She set a glass down in front of each person. ‘Made with fresh lemons,’ she announced and began pouring.
Mechanic tore her gaze away and walked back to the porch. She knocked on the front door.
Jenny-Jay answered it.
‘Hi Mrs Huxton, sorry I’m a little late,’ Mechanic said cheerily.
‘Well hi to you, honey child.’ She shook her hand. ‘Now if I told you once I told you a million times, you must call me Jenny-Jay. Come in, come in.’
Mechanic stepped inside to be met with the soft, warm aroma of fresh bread and pot roast.
Every time she came here it sliced Mechanic to the core, a graphic reminder that Lucas and Harper were still alive and they shouldn’t be.
‘Sit yourself down and I’ll get you some lemonade. Look Jo, your sister’s here.’
19
Silverton needed to relieve himself from the stresses of his business crisis. And for him that meant running around like a teenage boy in a whorehouse.
He was a man possessed, on a personal mission to visit the entire complement of casinos and bars that Vegas had to offer, intent on sucking each one of them dry of gambling pleasure. Making up for lost time didn’t quite describe it, he went berserk.
It also meant his alcohol consumption was in overdrive, along with his painfully friendly personality. The nicer side of Harry, brought on by being almost killed, had worn off and he was back to being rich, objectionable, pain-in-the-ass Harry James Silverton III.
The days blurred into one. Mechanic could barely keep up with him and had her work cut out for sure. She could no longer maintain a watching brief from a respectable distance, she was forced to stay close and shut down minor conflicts as they occurred. Of which there were many.
There was the guy who had his stack of chips knocked down every time Harry leaned forward to scatter his bet onto the table. Then there was the woman who was knocked sideways off her stool as Harry celebrated a spectacular win, which turned out to be a catastrophic loss, owing to him not having placed his bet correctly. And there was the waitress who had a full tray of drinks knocked flying from her hand, the result of another overly exuberant celebration.
Mechanic dealt with each situation with a deft hand and confident manner. The in-house security watched her and Harry like a hawk but she had it under control. Anyway Harry was splashing enough cash to make it worth the hotel turning a blind eye to his misdemeanours.
It usually resulted in Harry’s pot of money being depleted by gifts of compensatory chips or ‘sorry money’ as Mechanic christened them. She reckoned one particularly vigorous game of blackjack must have cost him over three hundred bucks. To Harry he was still everyone’s friend and extremely popular, but the truth was people were drawn to the social carnage which followed his every move. Harry was definitely a spectator sport but one to be enjoyed at a safe distance.
He occasionally had flashes of rational behaviour. ‘You heard from Walker?’ he asked several times. She always replied the same way. ‘Nope nothing,’ which seemed to suffice. Harry showed little concern for Walker’s vanishing act and carried on as normal. Well, normal for him anyway.
On one occasion during the three-day bender, Silverton was at the craps table at the MGM Grand and had drawn a bigger than usual crowd. His ‘drinks for everyone’ tab was totalling over three and fifty bucks and the in-house security was getting twitchy. Harry was completely over the top, throwing the dice down the table with massive shows of bravado. The women loved it. They crowded around him, each one trying to outdo the other in how far their breasts could fall out of their dresses before they were asked to leave.
A red-faced guy dressed in a rhinestone shirt took a real dislike to Harry. He was very agitated and hurled abuse at every opportunity but Harry ignored it. After a while it became clear to Mechanic why the man was so worked up. One of the women preventing Harry from throwing the dice by shoving her tits in the way was supposed to be with him. But for the time being she preferred to be with Harry. It also seemed that out of all the women around the table, Harry preferred her too.
Harry announced to his entourage he needed to take a leak and fought his way to the restroom, closely followed by rhinestone guy.
There are times when being a female minder has its disadvantages and a male restroom situation does pose an etiquette issue. Mechanic stood outside and listened. Raised voices soon resonated off the marble interior and one of them was Harry’s.
She entered the room to find rhinestone guy giving Harry the up-close-and-personal treatment, yelling in his face something about leaving his girl alone or else he would rip his head off. Probably a speech he’d be better off delivering to his girl, Mechanic thought as she walked past the line of men stood against the urinals.
She grabbed the man’s right hand, shoved it up behind his back and kicked his legs from under him. He crumpled face first to the floor with a thud, her knee jammed hard between his shoulder blades. She gripped his other hand to hold him stationary.
