CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (55 page)

"Will you untie my hands and feet so I can go to the bathroom?" she asked.

"Maybe." He fiddled with several loose bones he held in the palm of his hand.

"When?"

"When I get ready. Shut up a minute."

He stood and walked to one of the wooden crates. Carla watched him curiously. He reached in and returned to the skeleton. He went to his knees. It was then she saw what he had retrieved from the crate. A roll of Scotch tape. He was Scotch-taping the finger bones onto the corpse's hands.

"This lasts just about as long as glue," he said. "The damp makes it work loose, but it's all I've got."

Carla found the spectacle so deplorable, so crazy, so misguided, and so pitiable, she had to look away.

"Listen, I need to go to the bathroom."

"Okay, all right. In a minute. I'm almost through."

"Great. Meanwhile, I'll lie here and shit myself. That should make you happy. Anyone who can carry around a dead body until it's a mummy can't be bothered with sanitation problems, can he, Lansing?"

He continued rattling the bones together as if they were marbles he meant to play a game with.

She sighed and lay her head on the rough dirt floor. She thought she would never, if she lived to be a hundred, get the scent of the clammy clay out of her mind. Half an hour later, after he wandered around the ledge outside, squinting into the forest below with a pair of binoculars, Lansing came to where she lay and took off the ropes. In the brighter light she could see his face more clearly than before when he fed her. The side of his head that was partially bandaged had swollen and turned purple as a ripe eggplant. The white sterile patch over his eye was already stained with pink and orange leakage. He looked skinnier than he had two days ago, and his pants hung baggy from projecting hipbones to cover the tops of his leather sneakers.

He had to guide her outdoors and to the left of the entrance. He even had to help lower her into a squat and catch her as she leaned precariously sideways. Her hands and feet did not work properly from tack of circulation and she moved woodenly, a store dummy whose limbs could be set to any angle. She was beyond caring how humiliating it was to carry out her bodily functions in front of him. It was either do it this way, forsaking modesty, or lie in her own filth, and she was determined not to die like a comatose old woman with shit in her underwear.

"Here's some paper." He handed over a roll of toilet paper. "I'll leave you by yourself and come back to get you."

She began to laugh, his fastidiousness terribly funny to her considering what he had spent a lifetime doing to the beauty and sacredness of the human body. "You aren't afraid I'll jump?"

"Suit yourself. It's all rock down below. You want to smash your skull open, go ahead."

When he left her, she had to balance herself by spread fingers of both hands to keep from toppling onto her face. Her calves throbbed and her bowels cramped. She had to lower her head to keep from fainting. When the spell passed and she was done excreting onto the warm rock, she cleaned herself and came slowly to her feet, pulling her jeans up as she did so.

She could see out over the rim into the green vastness of the treetops below. She recognized the copse of birches, their white bark trunks lined up like sentinels. She put one foot forward, steadied her gait, took another step. She neared the edge. Lansing probably watched her, waiting for her to step out into the air and land three stories below. She thought about screaming for help, but common sense stopped her. She did not mean to die before it was necessary. She would not jump and she would not be pushed for yelling.

As she stood inspecting the drop-off and the clear golden water running at the bottom over shallow gullies filled with stone, a sudden movement drew her attention to the trees. From out of the deep mauve shadows stepped a figure. Carla caught her breath in a gasp and held it.

Sully.

Her heart thrummed so hard she thought it might escape from its ribbed prison. Lightheadedness swept over her, and she swayed on the back of her heels.

Sully brought one warning finger to his lips to insure her silence. Nevertheless, her lips formed words that came out as a low moan. She glanced down at the coiled, knotted rope lying near the edge, looked over her shoulder, saw Lansing with his back to her and immediately her foot snaked out. She pushed the rope with the toe of her boot until it flopped over the edge and dangled down the cliff face.

She staggered back off balance and windmilled her arms to stay upright. She put a hand over her heart and walked unsteadily toward the cave entrance. Her wrists burned as if on fire, and her damaged ankles shot pains up her legs each time the cuff of her jeans rubbed against the open wounds circling her flesh. As she passed her own excrement, her nose wrinkled at the smell. Animal. He had her living like a goddamned animal. She hoped Sully would hurt him so badly, would kill him with a dagger, with a wood ax...

Lansing was now watching. Had he seen what she'd done with the rope? Nothing showed in his face. His one eye glittered like coal struck from the earth. His lips went slack as if he were daydreaming, lost to the world.

She must keep his attention riveted on her, provide Sully enough time to climb the ledge.

"What is it about me going to the bathroom that bothers you, Lansing? If it doesn't bother me, why should it bother you? You have some kind of anal hang-up or what? You like to slice the girls, but not monkey with the stuff that comes down the intestinal tract? You got something against body wastes?"

As she expected, her attack was too close to the crux of his madness. He came toward her, his mouth set in a definite line. "Turn around, I'm going to tie you up."

"Fuck, no, Lansing, I'm tired of your game. If you're going to tie me again, you'll have to fight me to do it just like before. This time I might get lucky and take out your other eye. Or maybe I should go for your balls?" This kind of talk disgusted her, but she knew it disgusted him even more. Anything referring to the human body's functions or sexual proclivities caused him extreme anxiety. He was a prude! It made little sense to her, but she realized she could never understand what went on in this man's mind.

She veered away as he reached for her. She was steadier on her feet, though far from nimble. She used the muscles of her legs to move her and hoped her numbed feet would follow commands.

He came for her again, but slowly, his movement calculated and suddenly very frightening. He changed into the predator. Hunkering down, rounding the shoulders, narrowing the mean black eye.

"I'm through with games, too, Carla." The menacing tone of his voice left no mistake that he meant it. Carla forced herself not to look behind them to see if Sully was there yet.

"Where's your knife?" she asked, searching for something to delay him.

His hand went to his pocket. He dipped his fingers down and came up with the switchblade. He hit the latch mechanism and the blade slid into view like the pop of a whip. He turned it this way and that to show her exactly where his knife was. The metal shaft glowed dully in the muted cave light. She wrenched away her gaze. If she stared at it too long, she would go mad with fear. She shouldn't have spoken of the knife. She shouldn't have goaded him into taking it from his pocket. Damn her, why wasn't she thinking?

"I'm not afraid." She was afraid. So afraid she might scream hysterically any second. So afraid she was choking as the hairs rose in the follicles covering her arms. She felt behind her for a weapon.

"I'm glad. I don't want you to be afraid. The old witch wasn't afraid, either. Just like you, Carla. She wanted to 'help' a poor soul. She was a sentimental silly old fool. She was a 'good' person, a Christian, and a lover of her fellow man. She was worthless stinking garbage. She was a sack of shit." His voice had risen with each pronouncement.

"You gave her a way out of her delusions? Is that what you did?" Now she meant to goad him, push him, rush him toward a collision with his own madness.

"I gave them all a way out. Now I'll give you yours."

He was in no hurry, the stalking like a prologue to his rage, fueling it. A necessary part of the ritual.

Carla kept moving in circles around the packed earthen floor trying to keep him at bay. Each time she had his back to the ledge, she looked past him, every fiber in her being psychically willing Sully into view. How long could it take him to climb the rope? How long?

"Are you going to carry me around in car trunks, too?"

"You won't know if I do."

"You're really in love with me, Lansing." She was desperate. She would say any inane thing that came to her if it caused him confusion. She knew now she had gone too far and her life was moments from being snuffed out. In all the time she had spent with him, he had never looked so rabidly insane, so ready to commit murder. Insanity was something that came out of the eye, the one eye, and it opened into a door in Hell.

"That's it, isn't it?" she asked. "You're actually in love with me, aren't you?"

He stood perfectly still. He was in position with his back again to the cave entrance. He blocked most of the light from outdoors, and she could not see his expression. Had she by chance hit on the truth?

"You do love me in some upside down perverted way, don't you? You loved her, too, and that's why you couldn't stand her because...because love scares you, love scares the Hell out of you, doesn't it?" She pointed at the old woman's corpse without taking her eyes from him.

"I don't love you," he denied. "I don't care about you."

"That's a deliberate damn lie, and you know it, deep down where you haven't looked, Lansing, that's where love is. You might have killed that woman over there who's turning to dust, but you loved her first. You don't carry around a ghost on your back for fifteen years if you hate it."

"You're wrong." He moved in now rather than circling.

"Ask the people in your head, the ones who aren't your enemies, the ones you say are behind the palace window with you. They'll tell you how true it is, Lansing. Maybe you never loved anyone else because no one else really cared. But you loved the fat woman who tried to stop you before it was too late. She was trying to save you, wasn't she? She was trying to reach you. And you didn't want to be saved. You love both of us--that's the bald truth." The whole theory revolted her, but it might be true, and if it were true she could find an escape from his knife.

He stalled again, and confusion clouded his features. She regarded his scowling face. He blinked. His free hand came up to rub at the bandaged scalp. He broke out into a sweat even as she watched, beads dotting his forehead and upper lip. "No." It was an uttered denial without confidence. She had hit on it! She almost understood now...almost... He loved the old woman. He loved her for some reason, too. She might be able to understand finally. By accident she had sounded a ringing verity. The bell of truth. It was crazier than she could ever have imagined, and that was why it had not come to her before. A madman in love with women who fought him without fear, women who honestly wished to help him if only they could.

He stumbled mechanically forward, and she moved away until her back was in contact with the sloping damp stone wall. The strong cloying scent of wet musty clay filled her nostrils. She was pinned, and there was nowhere to flee and nowhere to hide from him.
Oh, Sully, hurry, you must hurry.

"Lansing, don't kill me. You don't kill people you love."

"But I have to." The hand wielding the switchblade extended itself toward her trembling body. "I have to, Carla, it's all I know. I don't want to love you. There's no room for you in the palace. I live there all alone. Don't you see?"

CHAPTER 3

"It is clear that as our walking is admittedly nothing but a constantly prevented falling, so the life of our bodies is nothing but a constantly prevented dying, an ever-postponed death.”

Schopenhauer

Counsels and Maxims

Flap insisted he climb first. He stuck the loaded hogleg pistol in the deep pocket of his overalls and reached for the hanging rope. Sully could see that climbing a rope up a rock face was not going to be easy for the older man. His forearms bulged against his shirt, ready to explode the material. He sucked air through an open mouth, and hand over hand, his boot's rubber soles flat against the impediment, he moved strenuously to the ledge top.

If it's hard for him, how am I going to make it? Sully wondered. But he would. If he had to scale the rock with his fingernails, he would do it.

After what seemed a very long time, Flap had made it halfway up the rope. Sully caught hold above his head as far as he could reach and lifted his weight off the slippery rocks in the running brook. He had the revolver stuck into the waist of his jeans and prayed it would not work loose. He could feel the barrel of the cold metal working its way through the tail of his shirt to press against the warm dampness of his lower abdomen.

Above him, Flap let out a low grunt. Sully hoped the rope would hold their combined weights as they climbed. He was several feet off the ground now and catching up with the old man. If the rope were to snap, the two of them would plummet one on top the other as they hit bottom. He just couldn't let Flap face the killer up there without immediate help. He couldn't wait at the bottom of the cliff and let him take all the risk.

The climb seemed to go on for days. The wound hemp of the thick rope scorched Sully's hands, his feet sometimes slipped from their purchase, and he dangled dead weight until he could secure another footing. He saw Flap reaching over the top, hefting his muscular upper body onto the ledge. Sully reached hand over hand faster now. If Lansing saw them coming...

If Lansing were waiting for them...

Then he was at the ledge top, too, and Flap's wide, strong hand took his own to lift him onto level rock. Sully tried to see into the cave, but Flap blocked his view.

Flap turned in his squat, stood, his attention on the deadly confrontation taking place inside the cave. Sully appeared beside him. Flap removed the hogleg pistol from his pocket, squinted at the shadowy maw in the mountainside. He put one hand flat against Sully's chest to stay him.