Our Honored Dead (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 4) (13 page)

“I’ve given up absolutely everything that’s bad for me,” Twain replied. “I was getting too indulgent.” He patted his stomach, which by the way was as flat as a washboard. “I’m getting to that age where I have to pay more attention to what I put in my mouth.”

“No pot?”

“Not a puff.”

“No absinthe?’

“Not a sip.”

“Sounds pretty boring.”

“Oh, it’s bloody tedious and going to the gym is even worse. I much prefer imbibing, indulging, and carrying on.”

“You left out cavorting.”

“That word does not deserve a place in an English gentleman’s vocabulary.”

“English gentleman, really? Is that how you see yourself?” Twain smirked. “You look like you’re holding up pretty well.” Twain had been a wild one, all right—he had experimented with LSD in his younger days as a method to better understand the human psyche. He was obsessive-compulsive when I first met him—and germophobic to the nth degree. He’s much better these days, but who really knew what was going on in his head. I’d learned to look past all that. Twain was a sincere and loyal friend with a mind equaled by few. Oh by the way, the scent of his truffle-infused mashed potatoes was driving me out of my mind. “Can I steal some of those?”

Twain looked down at his plate. “The beef or the potatoes?”

“The potatoes. The aroma is driving me wild.”

Twain was generous to a fault. He hesitated, and I immediately understood why—he wouldn’t be able to go near his food once I had touched it with my fork. I guess a few of those germy little bugs were still scurrying around inside his head. I grabbed a sparkling clean fork from the next table. “Spotless—can I? Just one bite. I promise.” Twain gestured to his plate. Those heavenly potatoes were in my mouth and caressing my taste buds within seconds. “Oh my God, those are incredible.”

Twain plopped a pile on my dish. “Never let it be said that Nigel Twain deprived an expectant mother. Better,
mum
?”

“Much. You’re a real friend.” I was scoffing down his potatoes along with my macadamia-encrusted chicken. It was so good, I think in some ways it qualified as a religious experience.

“A pity that Gus couldn’t tag along. I haven’t seen him in ages,” Twain said.

I couldn’t tell Twain about this, but Gus was a little jealous of him. Gus once caught me talking about Twain in my sleep while in the midst of a hot and steamy fantasy. It caused hurt feelings, and to this day, Gus still looks at Twain as an opponent. Nothing has ever happened between the two of us, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I found him incredibly desirable. Twain was the flickering flame, and I had to be extra careful not to dance too close to the fire. “He’s reviewing the crime scene findings back at the station house . . . while I probe you about the psychological aspects of the case.”
Probe, now that was a word I could have easily left out of our conversation—practice better self-control, girl.
“Do you want to look at the crime scene photos now, or do you want to wait until after we’ve finished eating? They’re pretty bad.”

“I didn’t think you asked me here to look at Disney World snapshots. Let’s have at ‘em.”

I pulled a folder out of my bag and slid it across the table. Twain cut a piece of steak and examined the photos while he ate. I watched his expression. He didn’t seem overly distressed. I didn’t break stride either—I was still munching away on the heavenly combination of chicken and mashed potatoes.

“May I ask the caliber of the bullet that was used?”

“9mm.”

“Anything special about the slug?”

“Special?” Twain knew little about bullets and guns, so I was surprised by the question. “There’s only limited information back from the lab—what are you looking for?”

“Just the basics.”

“I see. The slugs are hollow points, soft metal, unjacketed.”

“That’s what I was looking for.”

“Really? When did you become a ballistics expert?”

“Only one of the victims had an exit wound—follow?”

I understood immediately. I smiled at Twain to acknowledge the fact that he had impressed me. Bullets made of soft metal and bullets that are unjacketed tend to flatten out upon impact. They transfer their energy more efficiently than hard metal, jacketed bullets, which are more likely to keep on going until they exit the body. Whoever killed the Jacoby family had committed four murders and used only four bullets in the process. “So you believe that the killer specifically chose hollow points, knowing that they do the most internal damage?”

“There’s more to it than that, love—small entrance wound, less chance of an exit wound, and all the damage occurs inside the body.”

“Meaning?”

“He didn’t want the bodies mutilated. He wanted them to appear pristine in death. He wanted them to appear serene and peaceful.”

“Why?”

“Any number of possible reasons, but right now I’ll have to go with
I don’t know
.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“But you’ve got a hunch, don’t you?”

“Most certainly.” Twain finished chewing his bite of food and then met my gaze straight on. “You take good care of the things you want to keep. My guess is that these victims are the assailant’s trophies. Whoever did this wants to retain the image of this family as they were in life and didn’t want that image tarnished with a lot of blood and exposed flesh.”

“Do you think he took pictures of them?”

“He may have indeed. Then again I’m not sure. The diseased mind doesn’t work like yours or mine. The image of this family may already be burned into his memory.”

Brian
Spano awoke in a large field. The morning sun had just begun to rise. The first few rays burned his eyes as he squinted to see where he was. It took a second for him to settle in. “Oh thank God,” he said aloud. “I’m alive.” He scanned the large field and saw that he was alone. He began to breathe nervously as one thought linked to the next and to the next. A face filled his mind and terrorized him. He began to breathe frantically. It was the giant’s face. The face of a man so large and frightening that it caused him to tremble.
But I’m alive,
he told himself.
Take it easy, Brian. You’ll be all right.
His rapid breathing began to slow down. He tested his legs and then stood. As he did, a terrible pain shot through his neck and restored the memory of a huge hand encircling his throat and a mammoth arm lifting him into the air. He rubbed his neck to soothe the pain, but it did not help.

Where the hell am I?
Brian looked around and saw that the field was littered with trash. The air smelled with a putrid odor. He felt something sting him and saw that red fire ants were swarming on one of his shoes and crawling up his leg. “Shit.” He brushed them off as best he could but the ants continued to bite him all the while.
This is the least of my problems.

Something moved in the brush nearby that startled him. It didn’t take long for him to see that a rat was gnawing on a discarded box of crackers. He walked in the opposite direction, brushing the ants from his leg every few steps. He heard a noise that he had recently learned to detest. It was the sound a sanitation truck makes when its hydraulic winch engages to lift the trash dumpster. The bedroom of his new apartment was on a busy street, and the sanitation trucks woke him prematurely two to three days a week.
Jesus, I’m in a goddamn garbage dump.
The sanitation truck was a quarter mile off in the distance, and the path to it was blocked with refuse and vermin. He took a deep breath and hurried toward salvation.

~~~

Spano was strapped to a gurney. He was wearing a neck brace, and an IV line had been inserted into his arm. He was staring up at the roof of the ambulance when a uniformed cop got into the ambulance and sat down next to him.

“How are you doing, buddy?” the cop asked.

Spano spoke in a hoarse voice. “Okay, I suppose.”

“I’m Officer Nowicki, Stan Nowicki. The EMS guys said someone dumped you here at the kills. Jesus, what the hell happened?” Nowicki took out a pad and began to make notes.

“I’m an inventory clerk at Vicor Pharmaceuticals.”

“Oh yeah,” Nowicki said. “I’ve seen that place, over by the Outer Bridge Crossing. They tell me your name is Brian. Is that right?”

“Brian Spano.”

“So how’d you get here, Brian?”

“I don’t know.” Spano sighed. He tried to move, but he was strapped down securely. “I’d just finished my dinner break. I was about to go back on duty when I heard noises coming from the storeroom. Next thing I know, some giant monkey has me by the throat and—”

“And?”

“The guy was a monster. He lifted me up in the air. I started to black out, and then I woke up in the dump.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

“That’s all I remember, that big fucking head of his. Shit, I thought I was gonna die.”

“Well you’re still here, Brian. The emergency service guys are taking good care of you. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute, and they’ll take you over to the hospital to get checked out.”

“Which one?”

“Which hospital? Staten Island University Hospital. Good place. They’ll check out your neck and make sure it’s not broken.” Nowicki saw his partner walking by outside the ambulance. “Hey, Ray, can you get on the horn? Find out if a break-in was reported over at Vicor, okay?

“Got it,” Ray said.

“You’ll have to give us a full statement, but a detective can get that from you in the hospital. Anyone you want us to notify?”

A lump formed in Spano’s throat while he thought about his ex-wife and whether she would care that he had been attacked. “I just got divorced.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that. Look, I’m sure she’ll want to know. Got any kids?”

“Yeah, my son Alex.”

Nowicki smiled. “Your son will tie the two of you together forever. Trust me,
I know
.”

Tillerman
hoisted the body of the mammoth Russian onto his shoulder, closed the doors of his panel van, and trudged back to the funeral parlor. The Russian was heavy on his shoulders, not because of the weight but because the body continued to shift back and forth as he walked down the steps to the basement crematorium. Tillerman routinely cleaned and jerked more than four hundred pounds, and the Russian by his estimation was scarcely over three hundred.

He missed a step on the way down. His legged slipped out from under him, and he felt a hard pop in his left thigh. The pain was severe and far worse than any physical pain he had ever felt before. He regained his footing but not before the Russian’s head smacked into the staircase wall. “Ah shit!” Pain coursed up his leg and into his gut. He stopped momentarily to compose himself. He pressed the Russian between his shoulder and the brick staircase wall. His right hand was now free, and he used it to rub his face and calm himself while he fought off the overwhelming desire to vomit. He waited a moment and hoped that the pain would subside, but it didn’t, and the weight of the Russian did not help. He could feel his injured leg begin to cramp as the huge muscles attempted to lock in spasm.
Move! Move
. He attempted to step down with his uninjured leg, but the left leg buckled, and he went down. The Russian hit the stairs with a thud and rolled down to the basement floor. He cursed himself. The abductor group of muscles was one of the few muscle groups he ignored—most men did. It was for sissies. The exercise for the abductors was performed on a “ladies machine,” a machine that women used to tone and slim their thighs.

He sat down on the steps, rested with his head in his hands, and gazed between his open fingers at the body sprawled out on the stone floor in front of him. It felt like the muscle tear went all the way down to the bone. Pain seared his leg—it was as if a red-hot branding iron was pressed against his inner thigh.

“Fire, fire, fire, fire,” he began to chant, a loud guttural chant.
Think past the pain!
“Fire, fire, fire.” He clenched his fist and continued to chant “fire,” making it a mantra to see him through the pain and allow him to continue on his quest. “Fire!” Tillerman exploded off the steps, hopping on his one strong leg until he had reached the body. He knelt down alongside the Russian and used his immense upper-body strength to lift him and roll him back onto his shoulder. He stood and balanced in a way as to not put any pressure on his damaged leg. He began a series of short hops—one excruciating thrust after another. Moments later, he slammed the body into a cremation container, much in the same way he would cast away a heavy barbell after completing a set of heavy lifts.

Tillerman was completely spent and laid on top of the open cremation container for a moment. He reached into his back pocket and fished out the Russian’s wallet. The name on the drivers’ license read
Marat Vetrov. The picture on the drivers’ license was dark and shadowy. It made Vetrov appear even more menacing than he actually was. Vetrov was a huge man, taller than Tillerman and heavier. He did not have Tillerman’s body-builder physique, but he was massive in every respect. It would normally have taken three men to bring him down, but Tillerman caught him off guard and snapped his neck with one violent twist. He compared the drivers’ license photo to the face of the man lying in the cremation box.
A big hairy bear
, Tillerman mused,
a monstrous grizzly bear
. A word formed on his lips. It was a word he had heard only once, but it had stuck with him and rolled smoothly off his tongue:
“
Медведь
(med-ved).” It was the word the Russian woman had used to describe Tillerman, but the description better suited Vetrov. “So that’s how you got into Vicor.” Tillerman said aloud. “That’s how you came to steal my pills.” He brought the image of Anya Kozakova to mind. He had not been with a woman since his wife’s murder, but Anya’s contours roused him. She was formidable and strong in appearance with large pillows for breasts and a thin, cruel mouth that intrigued him. He thought he had seen her for the last time, but he now knew that he would have to see her again, if for no other reason but to complete the ritual. Vetrov was number three. He needed just one more. “She betrayed me. Why? For more money? What does she need with my pills?” He closed the wallet and tossed it haphazardly into the cremation box.