Rise of The Iron Eagle (The Iron Eagle Series Book 1) (33 page)

She walked over to the table where John had set several items and grabbed a long black board with holes in it and started beating Walter’s genitals. He screamed and John stood by watching, saying nothing. “That’s for what you did to my best friend, you sick fuck!” He screamed and begged for mercy. John walked over to Sara and took the board from her hands; she was shaking and crying. “You may not want to be here for what I’m going to do next.” She didn’t move. He pushed a button on the remote that raised the table. He released the restraints from Walter’s wrists and ankles, and he fell crying to the floor. He crawled toward John only to be kicked in the face as he reset the restraints. Sara looked around. “Where is the room?” He pointed to the bedroom where she had been restrained, and she left them. John called out to her not to touch anything. He picked Walter up and placed him face first against the wood and wire of the rack and restrained his wrists and ankles again. He lowered the table back down. Walter had his head to the right, looking over at John who was pulling a long tube with a plug on it out of his bag. “I have been carrying this item with me for nearly ten years. I’ve been saving this for when I found the killer of my wife. Walter recognized the curling iron and started screaming. “I read my wife’s autopsy report and what was done to her by her killer. This is a very special modified unit, and it is just for YOU, Walter!” He took out an orange extension cord and plugged it into the wall between the two rooms.

Sara walked through the now destroyed bedroom and into the closet. She looked at the photographs. The women and young girls all nailed to pieces of wood on a boat with Walter smiling in every picture. She looked carefully and noticed that there were many photographs of water with bubbles on the surface. She yelled to John, “I know why no one ever caught on to Mr. Cruthers as a serial killer, John.” There was no response. She walked back into the room as John was putting petroleum jelly on Walter’s rectum and all over the curling iron he had in his hands. “After he killed Amber, he figured out that he needed to dump the bodies where no one would find them.” John nodded. Walter was still. “You’re going to feel a little bit of pressure, Walter,” and he inserted the curling iron into his rectum. Walter yelped as the ten inch long oversized barrel was forced deep into his anus. John took a belt and strapped it to each side of the table across Walter’s ass and then attached it to the curling iron to make sure that it would stay in place. He then took the two cords, walked up to Walter’s face with the sockets in hand and said, “Things are going to get really HOT for you! Doctor Cook and I are going to step into your bedroom to prepare for your departure.” He plugged the cords together, and the two walked out as Walter began to scream.

John closed the door to the cellar and went into the small closet where Walter liked to watch his victims. He took out the frequency jammer and turned it off. Suddenly all of the monitors came to life, and they could see and hear Walter thrashing on the rack. “At least here I can control the volume.” He turned it down, and they watched him scream and squirm. “You know the rectum is very vitreous; he could bleed out,” Sara said coldly. “He won’t. I made some modifications to the unit. It’ll get twice as hot, nine hundred degrees to be exact, and I have it programmed to shut off after two minutes. Any bleeding will be cauterized as it happens.” “He’ll bleed out when you remove it. All of the tissues will adhere to it. He’ll die almost instantly.” He smiled. “Who said anything about removing it?” She smiled back at him. “You know this type of torture is urban legend?” John looked at Walter thrashing and screaming on the monitor. “Well, perhaps, BUTT…you and I know it has been done.” Sara looked coldly at the screen and Walter and asked what now. “We need to prepare Mr. Cruthers’ boat, so we can take him ‘free diving.’” She smiled and took John’s hand as they opened the walls of Walter’s bedroom and walked down to the boat house.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘She was walking between the stairwell
and the parking pillar where her car was
parked when the call was dropped.’

I
t was three p.m. when Molly left with Gail for the airport. Steve had so much work to do that he couldn’t go with them to see Gail off. She grabbed him and laid a huge kiss on him and said, “This has been the most fun I’ve had in a long time. We have to do it again the next time I’m out.” Steve got a big smile on his face and asked when she was coming back. Molly frowned at him. “I told you this was a one time thing, mister. When Gail comes back again, we sleep in our separate beds.” He lost some of the gleam in his eye, but Gail winked at him and made a lewd gesture with her hands. He hugged Molly and winked at Gail. The girls left for LAX, and Steve went in to read John’s profile of The Eagle. As he read, he started to see a pattern. John proposed that The Eagle was in search of justice for someone who had wronged him or someone that he loved. “Here’s a newsflash, this does not explain nor does it create a serial killer with a desire for revenge. The two don’t translate into violent behavior toward multiple victims.” He continued reading the profile until he nodded off in the chair in his study.

Gail and Molly talked the whole way to the airport about the adventures of her visit. Gail said she had a great time. They laughed together as they drove down the 405 Freeway toward LAX. Gail looked serious and asked Molly, “When are you going to break the news to him?” Molly stared straight ahead at the freeway. “He knows.” “How much does he know, Moll? Don’t leave him out in the cold. You’ve been together too many years to do that to him.” “Gail, I’ve been talking to Howard Cohen. He’s been my lawyer and best friend for forty years. I’ve asked him to handle things, and Steve knows that.” Gail got a somber look on her face. “You’ve spoken of Howard at great length through the years, and I know how much you love him. Have you told him?” She nodded. “What stage are you?” There were tears in Molly’s eyes, and she wiped them away while trying to drive. “Four.” Gail started to cry. She whispered under her breath, “Oh my God…how long?” Molly couldn’t speak and just shrugged her shoulders, fighting with every ounce of strength to hold it together. Tears streamed down Gail’s face as the car exited the 405 at Century Boulevard. She pulled her cell out of her purse, and called the airline to check on her flight status. The automated voice relayed a flight delay due to weather. “Well, it looks like you and I are going to have a little more time together, Moll. Will you stay with me and have a beer and talk?” She nodded, her eyes filled with tears as she gripped the steering wheel for dear life, gasping and sniffling as they headed to the airport’s short-term parking and a conversation that Molly didn’t want to have but needed to.

“You need to tell Steve. You need to tell him everything. You owe him that.” There was a tense moment of silence. “You’ll take care of him, Gail. I know that. I will tell him soon. Let’s leave it at that.” They didn’t speak the rest of the way to the airport; Gail just nodded in understanding and that was all.

Jim and Barbara finally got out of bed about three p.m. They prepared a meal together in the kitchen and talked about old times. He confessed to her that he was hopelessly in love with her; she agreed that he was hopeless, but that she was hopeful that the two of them could build on their newfound relationship and perhaps have a life together again. He told her that he loved her, and she reciprocated the feeling as the two sat down to a late afternoon lunch of porterhouse steaks, baked potatoes, and asparagus. Barbara opened a wonderful Cabernet, and they toasted to new beginnings and old flames with a clink of crystal and the sound of cutlery on fine china.

Molly saw Gail off and walked back to the parking lot. She hit the unlock button on her car as she walked across short-term parking at LAX and looked back at the planes taking off, knowing that Gail was on one of them. She pulled her cell phone from her purse and hit speed dial. “Howard, it’s Molly. How are you?” She was walking between the stairwell and the parking pillar where her car was parked when the call was dropped.

Steve reported Molly missing at ten p.m. that night. Her car was found unlocked and untouched at midnight in short-term parking. Her phone and purse were on the passenger seat, but there was no sign of her. Molly Hoffman was missing.

John and Sara carried Walter, half conscious and moaning, down to his boat. They threw him on the floor in the back face down, the belt and iron still securely in place. They pulled the boat out, closed the doors, and sped out into the late afternoon sun. John drove on the open sea following Walter’s preprogrammed GPS favorites in the Garmin mounted on the dash. Walter had named the spot ’Free Diving.’ The location was a mile and a half off shore, and there was a strong breeze, and the water was choppy. John stopped the boat and pulled out one of the precut planks that Walter had in his boathouse. He took the bucket from under the seat where Walter laid and threw the piece of wood down onto his back. He heaved at the weight of the wood and labored for breath. “I have to admit, Walter, you put a hell of a lot of thought into this. I like the touch of using a deep router to make a nice deep groove around the whole piece of wood then filling it with molten lead. You have made your own anchor.” Sara chimed in, “It was also an added bonus nailing the twenty pound sinker weights to the sides after you affixed your victim to the wood.” John flipped Walter onto his back, the hot steel iron now cured into his rectum. He screamed from the agony of the iron pushing deeper into him and the reality of what he was about to endure. “Well, we would love to chat with you all night, but we have dinner plans.”

He took Walter’s left arm and pulled it tight against the wood. Sara handed him one of the horseshoe-shaped pieces of steel, and John slammed the hammer down onto the steel, pinning Walter’s arm to the wood. He did the same to his right arm, stretching Walter so hard and flat that he pulled his arm out of its socket. He looked Walter in the eye, as he wailed in pain and said, “I just want to make sure that you get the whole experience.” Walter screamed as the first spike was driven through his lower forearm. Sara laughed as John drove the second in and pulled his body over to the open side of the boat. He nailed the two weights to the sides of the board and then untied his ankles. “Okay then, I’m not one for mementos, Walter, so there will be no pictures. However, you won’t be needing these anymore.” He grabbed Walter’s scrotum and penis in his hand and swept over his anatomy with his field knife, removing them in one quick motion. With blood squirting from the hole where his manhood had been, John smiled, showing Walter his bloody penis and testicles as he threw them into the sea.

“Enjoy the water. You might make a meal for the local sharks before you hit the deep water.” John took the knife and cut the arteries in Walter’s arms and legs then hung him over the side of the boat, allowing the blood to flow down into the water. “I’m not going to let you have the peaceful death of bleeding out, Walter. I want you to feel everything that your victims felt. Then, I’m going to watch your body sink down below the surface with the satisfaction of knowing that you will drown while looking up at this boat and seeing me wave goodbye.” And with those words, he looked Walter in the eye and said, “May God not have mercy on your soul.” He threw Walter into the sea face up, so that he could see John’s face as he hit the water as his anchor carried him to his deep, watery grave.

John and Sara stood on the upper deck as Walter’s body sank beneath the choppy sea. They could see his feet fluttering as if trying to swim to the surface, but all that returned were residual air bubbles from Walter’s lungs. The two sat side by side as John drove the boat back to Walter’s home. They scrubbed the house for any sign that Sara was ever there and then called 911 from the home phone, leaving all of the evidence in plain sight. The two got into John’s truck and headed back to Sara’s. “So, what’s my story?” “You were at my place in Long Beach waiting for me to come home.” “How did I get to your place?” “Your old friend and new employer, Walter Cruthers, offered you a ride and dropped you off before he went home for the evening.” “I guess it’s true what they say.” “What’s that?” John asked. “The devil is in the details.”