Her Last Scream (24 page)

Hours passed in the moving trailer. The pain in Rein’s cheek subsided; the blow had been a reminder her captor was not bound by any rules, except those of whoever was directing him.

The truck finally stopped and Tommy opened the door.

“You’re back home, Treeks,” he grinned. “Place needs a good cleaning.”

Fifty feet beyond him Rein saw a modular home slatted with yellow lumber. Behind, tucked into aspens and pine, were a couple broken-down vehicles. The landscape was mostly rock and the sky was a blue fire.

Tommy loosened their leg ropes enough to allow shuffling, stood above Rein and an eyes-down Treeka as they entered the cluttered living room. He stripped the tape from the women’s mouths.

“I learned from my mistake, Tommy,” Treeka said, shivering. “I learned how much I love you. It was terrible out there, babe. I’m so happy to be home.”

“Sure, hon. Sure you are.” Tommy caressed Treeka’s face with the back of his hand, then slapped her to the floor. “We’re gonna have a long talk about that, Treeks. But we got plenty of time.” He looked to Rein. “Guess your man’s comin’ pretty soon. Then Treeks and I will catch up on things. For now, I gotta run to town and provision up for the party.” He re-secured the ropes and left the house, whistling like a man without a care.

Rein turned to Treeka.

“I want you to pull my pants down,” she said.

Twenty minutes after leaving headquarters, Nautilus and Hargreaves were looking at an irritated Lawrence Krebbs.

“Come on, Larry,” Nautilus said. “We need you downtown for a conversation.”

“I’m working. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The Colorado cops are about to close the case on Lainie,” Nautilus lied. “They’ve got a couple local loonies probably did it. We just need a statement, then we can give back your receipts and stuff. You have to sign.”

“Loonies killed Lainie?”

Nautilus shrugged. “Brain-dead crackhead types. The cops are about to get out the
Case Closed
stamp.”

A grinning Krebbs followed the pair downtown. When they arrived Hargreaves walked behind as Nautilus and Krebbs passed by Lieutenant Tom Mason. Mason pulled Nautilus to the side, pointing to a door just closed. “He’s in there,” Mason whispered, loud enough for Krebbs to hear. “The hotshot lawyer. He wants to talk to you or Hargreaves.”

Nautilus nodded and shot a thumbs up.

“Who’s in there?” Krebbs asked as they continued down the hall. “What hotshot lawyer?”

“No one,” Nautilus said too fast. “Another case.”

He pointed a suddenly wary Krebbs into a small room with a table and three chairs, a large mirror on the wall. “That’s one of those special mirrors, isn’t it?” Krebbs complained. “You can see through from the other side.”

Hargreaves went to the glass, pulling a lipstick and attending her lips. “It’s a cop shop, Larry. Every third room has mirrors.”

“Have a seat, Lar,” Nautilus said.

“Where are my receipts?”

Nautilus ignored the question, instead leaning the wall with arms crossed. “Larry, Larry, Larry …” he said, shaking his head.

“What?”

Hargreaves pressed her lips tight, made a kissing face at the mirror and spun to Krebbs. Her eyes twinkled with delight. “We have an undercover operative in the women’s underground railroad, Mr Krebbs. She’s been very productive.”

Nautilus saw Krebbs freeze, a split second, nothing more. “Underground what-road? The fuck you talking about?”

“The system Lainie was yanked out of and killed,” Nautilus said, pulling Krebbs’s head his way. “You knew it would happen, right? The trip to the Keys fooled us for a while.”

“You just said she was killed by –”

“Musta been another woman named Lainie,” Hargreaves said, spinning Krebbs’s head back to her. “Sometimes Detective Nautilus gets confused.”

“I-I want my lawyer.”

Nautilus affected puzzled. “You want Nathaniel Bromley here, Larry? As your lawyer or your co-defendant?”

“Co-defendant?”

“Someone’s gonna tell the story,” Hargreaves said. “You or Mr Bromley.” She paused. “Or your friend up in Colorado.”

Krebbs’s eyes flickered with fear, covered fast.
Bingo,
Nautilus thought, registering the signals.
Colorado.

Krebbs said, “I don’t know anyone in Colo—”

“Really?” Nautilus said, throwing spaghetti as fast as he could. “Looks to us like Colorado and Mobile were where it all happened. We know about the women’s center up there, the computer network Bromley had hacked by Chet Bemis, the –”

“I don’t know a GODDAMN THING ABOUT BOULDER!”

Nautilus cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “I never mentioned a city, Larry. And Lainie was found in Denver. What made you say Boulder?”

Lawrence Krebbs’s mouth fell open. Nautilus put his hand on the back of Krebbs’s chair and leaned close. “Someone’s going to confirm the story, Lawrence. Whoever gets first in line with the truth becomes last in line for the needle.”

The blood drained from Krebbs’s face. “N-needle?”

Hargreaves said, “It’s like a game show called
Talk First and Live
, Mr Krebbs. You like breathing, right? Kind of gotten used to it?”

“I didn’t
do
anything.” Krebbs was sweating. Nautilus could smell the fear.

“I heard the likely judge for the case is Silas Jaynes,” Hargreaves lied. “He’s so pro-capital punishment they call him ‘Cyanide Silas’.” She looked into the mirror and winked. On the far side of the glass Tom Mason pressed the button on his phone’s speed-dial.

“One chance to tell the truth, Mr Krebbs,” Harry said. “Unless someone gets there ahead of you.”

The phone on the wall rang. Krebbs looked wild-eyed. Hargreaves picked up the receiver and pressed it to her ear. “What? He has? Oh, almost.” She looked at Krebbs like so much dead meat. “Let me know when it’s all done and we can bag it here.”

“NO!” Krebbs yelled as Hargreaves hung up the phone. “HE’LL LIE!”

“What are you talking about?” Nautilus asked.

“That was about Bromley, right? Fucker says he’ll talk? He’ll lie to cover his ass, make you fry mine instead. I’ll tell you the real story.”

“I don’t think so,” Hargreaves yawned. “Sounds like someone’s cutting a deal.”

“Nate planned it out,” Krebbs said. “Nate ordered me to take the body to the dump. He used me. Please, I’m TELLING THE TRUTH!”

Hargreaves looked at Nautilus and shrugged, like
what do you think?
She squeezed another wink at the mirror. Five seconds later the phone rang again.

“NO!” Krebbs wailed. “You want to hear ME!”

Hargreaves let the phone ring beneath her palm as sweat raced down Larry Krebbs’s forehead, veins pulsing in his head. Hargreaves picked up the phone, said, “Let me call you back in a few.”

Harry Nautilus made a big deal of adjusting his watch, turned to Hargreaves. “The timer’s set for five minutes. If we don’t like what we hear from Larry, we’ll take the call from, well, whomever.” Nautilus eyed Hargreaves. “Why don’t you take a break, Sally? Grab a coffee and hang tight.”

Hargreaves pretended reluctance at leaving the room to the two men, but closed the door behind her. Nautilus pulled his chair closer to Lawrence Krebbs and put concern in his voice. “I can’t bring myself to hate you,” Nautilus said. “My first wife left me after a year, the second wife after just three months. I’m still fighting it out with the third. It’s been tough, right? An emotional time for you?” Nautilus had been married once.

Krebbs nodded. “Three years down the drain with that bitch, not that she learned a damn thing the whole while, a fucking waste of my time. I tried my best to turn her into something useful, but she was a worthless –”

Nautilus tapped his watch. “Better get talking, Mr Krebbs. A minute’s already gone.”

Krebbs closed his eyes to collect his thoughts. “I got a call six weeks back, one of those things on the phone that distorts voices. The caller said he knew where Lainie was, did I want to know? I said, Hell yes, lemme know so I can go … deal with the bitch. The caller said there was a better way we could handle things.”

“The caller used the word
we
?”

“He called us a band of brothers, men who could make sure other bitches didn’t stray like mine did. We could start something here that would travel across the country, change things forever. He said it was a legal approach and we should talk through a lawyer.”

“The lawyer was, of course …”

Krebbs nodded. “Bromley said if we played everything right, we could fuck up all this women center shit and stop the FemiNazi dykes from stealing our women. Nate knew ’em for the grubby whores they really were.”

“How did Lainie figure in?”

“Nate said he had a brother in Colorado who thought the same way. He’d been the guy who’d tracked Lainie down. Nate said by all of us working together we could use Lainie. She could make a contribution to the betterment of men everywhere.”

“How would that happen, Larry?”

“Lainie was going to, uh, pass away – not by me, I never hurt anyone. I just had to go on a long vacation and make sure it was documented with receipts. Nate said the cops would show up, but it wouldn’t matter since I had a perfect alibi.”

“What’s your alibi for the woman at the Mobile dump?”

“I … I did take the skank’s body to the dump, set her up like I was told.”

“In a chair looking out over garbage?”

“The Colorado brother told Nate the women had to be made into examples. Nate liked the idea too, so that’s what I did.”

“That’s why Lainie was killed, Larry? To be an example?”

“There was more than that. She was a trade, like balancing the ledger. The Colorado brother does Lainie, Bromley does a woman down here.”

“There were two women killed down here, Larry. Are you forgetting the one in Pensacola, Rhonda Doakes? She’d escaped here from Boise and was settling into a new life. She had to be punished too, right?”

Krebbs’s eyes flickered from side to side, evasion. “I don’t know anything about that. Ask Bromley. He did it.”

In all likelihood both men had taken Doakes to the fishing camp, Nautilus thought. Either they or the Colorado connection had called James Peyton and told him where he could find his ex-girlfriend. Just as the killer in Colorado had insisted his Southern accomplices share culpability in murder, Bromley would make sure Krebbs was implicated as well. Nautilus loved it when trapped rats began eating one another.

“OK, Larry, the woman you took to the dump. How did she get to Mobile? Who abducted her?”

Krebbs shrugged. “I have to figure it was the Colorado brother. Nate and I drove to Missouri in his big-ass Benz. The woman was in a house in farmland, all tied up and ready to go.

House in farmland
, Nautilus thought. Probably the house above Branson. Roughly equidistant between Boulder and Mobile, it was likely the killer’s temporary base of operation in the locale … after he’d killed the two innocent owners and tossed them in the storm cellar. Was this the monster who now had Rein?

“You never saw who left her there, Larry?” he asked.

“No. Hell, I never even seen her until I got back to Mobile.”

Nautilus frowned. “What do you mean, you never saw her?”

Krebbs circled his hands in a wrapping motion. “She was wrapped in a tarp like a mummy. Nate and I dumped her in the trunk and drove like hell back to Mobile.”

“Who ended up killing her, Larry?” Nautilus asked quietly.

“She died on her own.”

On the far side of the mirror, Hargreaves whispered to Mason, “I think I know what’s coming. This is gonna make me sick.”

“What killed her, Larry?” Nautilus asked.

Krebbs shrugged. “I dunno. She was pretty beat up and her eyes were gone.”

On the far side of the mirror Hargreaves whispered, “God damn you, you bastard.”

“No one undid the tarp?” Nautilus said, keeping his voice level, though his stomach was turning. “You didn’t know this until …”

“Until we unwrapped her in a deep woods just north of the dump. She’d been moaning and shit as far as Vicksburg, but she stopped after we had lunch.”

Nautilus shot a glance at the mirror, a split second of disbelief, then turned back to Krebbs. “The guy in Colorado, your ‘brother’. Was he down with Bromley’s suit against the centers?” Nautilus did the money-whisk with his fingers. “Getting his slice of cake?”

Krebbs shook his head. “From what Nate said, the Colorado brother didn’t give a fuck about money, he wanted two things: To show women for the garbage they are, and to kill the system.”

“You don’t know who he is? Your Colorado brother?”

Krebbs shook his head. “I don’t know if Bromley does either. They met in a chat room, safe and secure.” Krebbs jutted his chin, his final act of defiance. “Women got safe places to go, so do we.”

“Come on, Treeka, I need you to pull my pants down. We might get my phone out.”

Rein’s companion stared at the slatted pinnacle of the ceiling as if hypnotized. The cabin was a box of shadows, the sun low behind the mountains. Somewhere outside, deep in the trees, a coyote yipped, tuning up for the coming night.

“Treeka!” Rein snapped. “Help me, dammit.” Her words seemed amplified by the log walls that surrounded them.

Treeka’s head rolled like she was waking from a dream. “We can’t do anything. Tommy’s too strong.”

“Everything in him is weak,” Rein hissed. “We’ve got to figure out how to use his weakness against him.”

“If he’s so weak, how come we’re the prisoners? I’m a dumb nobody, but you’re smart. And you’re right here beside me.”

“Listen, Treeka, we’ve got a chance. We have to try the phone.”

“I’m going to make my peace with God before I die.”

Treeka turned her head away and began mumbling. Rein stared at the square of fading twilight on the wall and floor and turned back to Treeka. “Now I understand why you stayed with Tommy.”

“Yeah?” Treeka sniffed. “Why?”

“Because you’re a stupid hick incapable of ever doing anything without a man there to tell you what to do.”

A pause. “What?”

Rein forced the sound of a chuckle. “I’ll bet when you came out of your mama she looked between her legs and wondered why she’d birthed a punching bag.”

“Fuck you,” Treeka said.

“No, fuck
you,
you ignorant hillbilly. Today’s the first day of the rest of your life?” Rein laughed. “You actually believed that shit?”

“YOU BITCH!” Treeka struggled toward Rein, trying to kick her with bound legs.

“Save your energy,
Treeks
,” Rein jeered. “Maybe when Tommy gets back he’ll let you wash his truck.”

Treeka started to scream a response but her face collapsed into crying. She curled sideways into herself, tears pooling on the pine floor.

“Come on, girl,” Rein said gently. “Maybe it won’t work, but we’ll go out like women, right?”

Robert Trotman’s face was intense as he tapped his keyboard. He sat in his tiny office with the door nearly closed and the only light coming through the window. Though the sun had dropped below the peaks west of the university, it was light enough to peck at his laptop. He cocked his head, hearing the elevator door open and shut, hard boot heels approaching at march rhythm. He looked up to see Professor Sinclair stride by, a sheaf of pages tight in his hand. He heard the heels stop across the hall, a banging on a door.

“Krupnik, you in there?”

Sinclair was banging on Liza’s door, the man’s voice a basso roar. “Krupnik?”

Trotman screwed up the courage to address Sinclair. “I haven’t seen Liza all day, sir,” he called out the door. “It’s unusual. She’s not even answering her mobile phone.”

Trotman heard an electronic key slide into the reader on Liza’s door. As departmental heads, Sinclair and the absent Bramwell had passkeys to all teaching-assistant offices. Trotman heard his colleague’s door open, followed by pages pushed around, as if Sinclair was scrabbling through materials on Liza’s desk and looking for something.

“Trotman!” Sinclair bayed. “Come here, would you?”

“What can I –?”

“Goddamit, don’t question me … come here.”

Trotman shut off his computer and closed the lid. He poked his head out the door to see the outsized Sinclair on Liza’s threshold. Heart pounding, he inched his way across the hall.

“What is it, sir?”

Sinclair jabbed his finger at Liza’s wall, the two posters of Rosie the Riveter flanking Liza’s heavily noted calendar. “What do you make of all this shit, Robert?”

“Sh-shit, sir?”

“These goddamn posters. That woman there … does she look like some kind of dyke? She does, doesn’t she? Those clothes, that hair? Trying to do a man’s job?”

Trotman pushed hair from his eyes. “I … guess so. If that’s what you think, Doctor.”

Sinclair wheeled to Trotman and studied the grad student as if he was a newly emerged form of life. “Don’t feed me what you think I want to hear. I need to hear
your
truths. Let’s start with Krupnik. Do you like her? Really like her?” Sinclair thought for several seconds, held up a massive palm. “No, wait … don’t tell me. This is not the venue. I want you to come to my house for dinner this weekend, Robert. We’ll drink fine liquor and eat good, honest red meat.”

“D-dinner?” Trotman stammered.

Sinclair glanced down the hall as if making sure they were alone. He put his hand on Trotman’s shoulder and lowered his voice to a whisper. “This department is eighty per cent female, Robert. And all the other men are goddamn fruitcakes. Emasculated. I’m a lonely man with no one to talk to, Robert.”

Trotman looked weak in the knees. “You want to t-talk to m-me?”

Sinclair’s voice continued its conspiratorial whisper. “I want to hear what fortunes led you to this university. To this very department. Why we were selected in your university search. I want to hear about your graduate thesis. I want to hear your history, Robert. I’ve been remiss in my duties and need to talk to a man.”

Sinclair slapped his thick chest with his fist, eyes glittering like a man in the throes of a vision. “Things are changing around here, Robert. Evolving. Let us drink brandy and smoke cigars and scratch our balls, as unashamed as simians. Can you come tell me your tales, my young friend?”

Sinclair took Trotman’s dropped jaw as assent and wrapped the dazzled Trotman in a hug, the grad student’s pale and scrubby face buried in the professor’s dense beard. Sinclair released the woozy student, patted his skinny hindquarters like he was a football player who’d just made the big catch, and turned toward the elevator, clapping sonic booms of delight from his palms.

Treeka bit one side of Rein’s panties and pulled them down three inches, squirmed to the other side, teeth-tugged the panties lower. The jeans were snap-closed, a piece of luck. Treeka paused, puffing after the effort.

“That’s as far as I can get unless I pull your jeans down more.”

“Let me try this …” Rein called upon moves from her gymnastics classes, planting heels and head on the floor, bowing upward in an arc. She bounced her feet, heels thumping the floor. Her pounding shook the windowpanes.

A clatter as the small black phone slipped free and skittered on the floor. Rein caught her breath as Treeka wormed to the phone.

“There’s a smear of blood on it.”

“I’m, uh, starting my –”

“I understand,” Treeka said. “What do I do?”

Rein thought through the sequence. “Press Contacts. There are three: AC, CR and HN. Press …” It didn’t matter who she called, if the message got through, it would get to all of them. But if it got through, Harry needed it the most.

“Press HN,” Rein said. “Then press Call, that’s it. I’ll take it from there.”

Treeka pressed at the phone with her face, licked at it. “I can’t push the buttons. My nose is too soft, so is my tongue. Let me see if there’s anything around here to use.”

“Hurry!”

Treeka spotted the bottle cap from Tommy’s beer. She flipped it into her mouth with her tongue, wiggled it until tight in her teeth, pecked at the phone.

“It’s too short. I can’t see what to press.” She spit out the cap, rolled across the floor, stopping after each roll to scout the darkened floor. Dust motes sparkled in the blue twilight.

“Fuck! I can’t see nothing.”

“The fireplace,” Rein said. “The wood.”

Treeka rolled to the hearth. “I got a piece of kindling,” she said, excitement in her voice. She wriggled back to the phone. The stick was the size of a pencil. She held it in her teeth and pressed Contacts.

The screen lit, flickered. Went black. Flickered on again.

“Hit Call,” Rein said. Treeka pressed Call. “Push it here,” Rein said. Treeka chinned the phone across two foot of floor.

“It’s ringing,” Treeka said.

There was no time for conversation and Rein had nothing but slender facts to present. Hopefully they would put Harry and Carson on to Tommy Flood.

“Another ring,” Treeka said. Rein counted heartbeats. Ten beats passed without a ring. Then another.

Rein heard Harry’s voice. “Yes?” he asked, a whisper.

“Held by a Thomas Flood,” she said at auctioneer speed. “In Colorado, probably by Boulder. Armed and dangerous and –”

Treeka stared at the phone, looked up. “It’s dead, Rein.”

“Do you think he ran?” Hargreaves asked, spooning sugar into a cup of coffee. “My buddy Bromley?”

A confused Larry Krebbs was in the Mobile county jail. He’d called a lawyer, not Nathaniel Bromley. Nautilus and Hargreaves had done two checks of Bromley’s home, the man had disappeared. After putting a surveillance unit down the block from the lawyer’s house, the pair had retreated to the comfort of Nautilus’s home, the dining-room table overlaid with copies of files.

Nautilus thought a moment and shook his head. “Bromley thinks the Krebbster is still his good buddy. Less than ten people know Krebbs turned.”

“That was scary. Krebbs could have clammed up any moment. I’m surprised he came to the station.”

Nautilus laughed darkly. “Larry Krebbs is one-half pure ego, and one-half pure stupid. He really thinks he’s gonna get a couple years because he didn’t strangle the poor woman with his bare hands.”

Hargreaves cradled the mug in both hands and shook her head. “Well, she’s just a woman, after all.”

Nautilus’s phone rang from the table. He lifted and opened it in one move. He said,
Yes?
then said,
Rein? Rein?
He stared at the phone. “It was Rein. Her phone cut out.”

“My God. What’d she say?”

Nautilus looked bewildered. “Held by Tah …” he said. “Then it went out.”

“Tod?” Hargreaves said. “Tom?”

“I’ll get the phone techs on the location,” Nautilus said, snapping into action and dialing furiously.