Kiss of Death Page 21

  Before I went upstairs, I had to find something that would quiet those door hinges. Swinging the light along the shelves on the wall, I examined the usual tools and jars found in practically every cellar and garage, looking for WD 40. There wasn’t any, but I did find a dirty old oilcan. Taking it down, I shook it. There was a little oil inside. Not much, but maybe just enough.

  With the chair leg clamped under my arm and the oilcan in my hand, I crept up the stairs. I was careful to place my feet on the opposite sides of each plank, to avoid the noise made when a person puts a foot in the middle of an old wooden step. I couldn’t risk having him hear a creak on the stairs because that was a sound a rat could not have made.

  For a moment, it was like being back in Africa with Ian, sneaking through the bush to get wildlife pictures. It’s not true that stepping on a twig will spook an animal, because that’s a sound that other animals can make. Nothing alarming about that. I had to learn to cradle my cameras in my arms and against my chest in a way that kept metal from touching metal. A metallic clink was one sound no animal could make. It could send a herd into a stampede, or frighten away a lone creature we’d spent hours tracking.

  At the top of the stairs I pressed an ear against the crack, and listened.

  He was coughing, the kind of deep, wheezing cough that seemed to heave up from the soles of his feet. That was definitely coming from the direction of the living room. When the coughing subsided, I heard voices.

  My heart sank at the thought that he wasn’t alone, but as my hearing grew more acute, I realized that he’d only turned on the TV. Fervently, I hoped that the set was placed so that his back was to the basement door.

  In the darkness, I used my fingers to trace a path to the noisy hinges. I shook drops of oil onto them. In a few seconds, the can was empty.

  I put the oilcan down at the far edge of the top step and … very carefully … turned the handle on the basement door.

  An inch at a time, I eased the door open. Thanks to the precious oil, there was only a tiny squeak, and it was drowned out by the soundtrack laughter coming from the television set. I stood still against the door on the cellar side for a few seconds, then, hefting the broken chair leg, I stepped into the house.

  I was in a small kitchen. Shapes of a stove and sink and refrigerator were faintly visible, courtesy of a feeble night-light plugged into an outlet on the back wall.

  Through the half-opened door to the living room, I made out the shape of a big chair with a high, rounded back. Probably a recliner. It faced a TV set which was spilling light around it.

  Before my mind processed the fact that I didn’t see the top of a head in that chair, an arm shot out and caught me around the throat. He had realized someone was in the cellar. Like a wary animal used to being hunted, he’d lurked in the darkness, waiting to spring at whoever appeared.

  The chair leg and flashlight clattered to the floor as I tried to pry his arm away, but his other hand was clamped around his wrist. It was like pulling at cement. With the side of his head pressed against mine, I was forced to breathe the foul alcoholic fumes coming from his mouth. His forearm was squeezing my neck so hard I was afraid he’d crush my larynx!

  Exploding with primal fury, I twisted my torso, trying to jerk him off balance. The hand that anchored his wrist slipped just enough for me to make one desperate maneuver. I torpedoed my left elbow into his chest so hard I heard a rib crack! It broke his grip. Reverberation from the blow I landed sent a spike of pain up into my shoulder, but I was so crazed by the rush of adrenaline that it barely registered.

  He uttered a sharp, wounded grunt, then straightened up and grabbed at me again. Using a self-defense action that Matt Phoenix had taught me, I rammed the heel of my right hand up under his nose. His head snapped backward and blood spurted from his nostrils. With a gurgling cry, he fell to the floor, hit his head … and lay still.

  Standing over him, pointing the pistol at one of his knees, and taking air in deep gasps, my mind began to clear. The bright red veil of madness dissolved from in front of my eyes.

  I stared down at the crumpled figure on the floor.

  He had seemed so much bigger when I was small.

  That was my first thought. My second was, Dear God, please don’t let me have killed him!

  After giving him a kick in the side, sharp enough to prove he really was unconscious and not faking, I knelt down and felt at the base of his throat for a pulse.

  There was a beat. He was alive.

  I switched on the light at the top of the cellar stairs, shoved the flashlight into my pocket, and picked up the broken chair leg. Clasping the weapon beneath one arm, I used both hands to grab Ray Wilson by the collar of his shirt. One step at a time, I dragged him down into his rat-infested basement.

  Chapter 40

  RAY WILSON STIRRED, and awoke to find his mouth shut with duct tape and his body spread-eagled. His wrists and ankles were fastened securely—very securely—to the four edges of the metal bed.

  And then he saw me standing over him, with a pair of needle-nose pliers in one hand and a Glock 19 in the other.

  Wilson’s eyes popped wide open. He struggled to speak and struggled against his bonds. I let him go at it until the effort exhausted him. When he realized it was futile, he stopped trying to wrench himself free.

  “That’s better.” Frightening people wasn’t something I was used to doing, so I imitated a scary character I’d created for the kidnapping-of-Jillian storyline we did a couple of years ago. In a menacing tone, I said, “Now you understand that you can’t get away.”

  Guttural sounds from his throat.

  “Are you asking what I’m going to do to you? You’re helpless and alone. I can do any terrible thing. Unless you give me what I want, this will not be a pleasant experience.”

  He began struggling again. I leaned in close and waved the Glock in front of his face. He stopped moving.

  I had taken away his shoes while he was unconscious. His feet were dirty, and about as revolting as feet could be, but I made myself do it because it was important that he feel completely vulnerable.

  Moving down to the end of the bed, to his exposed soles, I trailed the barrel of the pistol from his heel up to his toes. His body began to tremble.

  Straightening, I told him, “I’m not going to shoot you … yet. I want something from you. If you don’t give it to me, in a little while you’ll be begging for a bullet in the head.”

  I had to steel myself so that I wouldn’t gag on the next bit of business I’d planned. Waving the pliers in front of him, I moved next to his midsection and pointed the nasty-looking implement down toward the zipper on his pants.

  A primitive gurgle of terror came from deep in his throat as I grasped the metal tab with the tip of the pliers and started to pull the zipper down.

  “It won’t do any good to try to scream. No one can hear you.” Before I’d undone his pants more than an inch—I hadn’t planned to go more than two inches—he wet himself.

  Suddenly an awful stench assailed my nostrils. He had done more than simply urinate.

  Ewww, gross! Revolting. He’s soiled himself, and I have to smell it. The good news is that he’s probably ready to talk now, and I hadn’t given him so much as a pinch with the pliers. Of course, his nose looks broken, and I heard one of his ribs crack in our struggle, but he started that fight. I’d never intended to make him bleed. My plan was to surprise him while he was asleep and force him downstairs by poking the Glock in his back.

  I admit that years ago I’d fantasized about hurting him physically, but I knew that I would never have been able to do it, except in self-defense. I’d suffered at his hands, but it hadn’t turned me into someone who could inflict physical pain on purpose. Bluffing was my game. It was time to see if my bluff would win the pot.

  “You’ve got information I want.”

  He shook his head violently.

  Tears rolled down his sallow, sunken cheeks, coursing through the rough
stubble of beard. Just as I remembered, his shoulders were wide, but below his short-sleeved shirt, I saw that his flesh was loose, and creped with age. Beneath his tan cotton trousers, his legs looked thin, but there was a roll of flab around his waist. He’d lost most of his greasy brown hair. In spite of some changes in his appearance, I had not a fraction of a doubt that this miserable, weeping coward was the man from whom Walter had rescued me.

  “You have one way out of this situation, and that’s to tell me what I want to know.”

  He stopped moving and stared up at me, a flicker of hope in his eyes.

  “Think of this encounter of ours as a TV game show. You give me the right answers—and you’ll win your life.” I let that sink in, then added, “But if you lie to me …” I snapped the tips of the pliers together a few times and was satisfied to see him flinch.

  “I believe we understand each other well enough to start the game.” I ejected the clip from my pistol and showed it to him. “See. Full magazine. Fifteen rounds. If I have to shoot you, I’m going to start with your knees.” I snapped the clip back into the Glock.

  “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth so you can talk, but if you lie, or try to scream, I’ll shoot you in the knees. You’ll be in terrible agony, but you’ll still be able to talk. Tell the truth, or you’ll never be able to walk again. It’s your choice.”

  Keeping the Glock aimed at his knees, I leaned down and ripped the tape from his mouth. He licked his lips, swallowed several times, and gulped in air. But he didn’t yell.

  “What do you want to know?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “Twenty-four years ago, in Downsville, West Virginia, the sheriff found a little girl in the back of your van.”

  He stared at me, wide-eyed. His lips moved, but no sound came out. I think he guessed who I was. Fresh tears glistened in his eyes. Fresh fear.

  “Who was that child?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer.” I aimed the Glock at his right kneecap.

  “No—don’t! What I mean—I never knew her real name. I got the kid from the mother.”

  Muscles in my stomach clenched, but I ignored the sudden ache. “Tell me,” I said. Those words came out of my mouth, but the voice sounded like that of a stranger.

  “She was a real good-looking hooker—” The expression on my face must have frightened him, because he started to talk faster, explaining, “I mean, she wasn’t exactly a hooker, but she was dancing in a strip club, out in Los Angeles. Sometimes she did … ah … private dances … in one of the back rooms. She had a heavy accent, said her name was Soya, that she’d come over from Russia to get married …”

  The story I got in bits and pieces was that the Russian woman told Wilson she was dancing in that place to earn money because she had a child to take care of. A little girl, three years old …

  “The guy she married—an American—picked her out of a kind of catalogue with pictures of Russian gals who wanted to marry an American and live in the U.S. She said he was mean to her, an’ when she had the baby, he didn’t believe it was his. She said he beat her and threatened to kill them both. One day she couldn’t take it anymore, took the kid, an’ ran away …”

  Wilson said that Soya and her child lived in a room in the motel near the strip club. She told him she gave the little girl a pill to make her sleep while she was working. But it was getting too hard for Soya to take care of her.

  “She said she wanted to get shed of the kid so she could go somewhere an’ make an ‘American life’ for herself—that was her words: ‘American life.’ She asked me if I knew a couple who were good people an’ wanted a kid.”

  The pain in my stomach was getting worse. Cold perspiration was breaking out on my skull and dampening my hair, but I forced him to keep on with the story.

  “I saw a chance to make a buck an’ told her that in America, good couples wouldn’t just take any kid—they had to get money, too. She said she could pay two hundred dollars. Swore that was all she had. I told her I knew somebody nice who might take the kid for two hundred, but I had to get a look at the goods—in case something was wrong with it. She let me come to her room to see for myself. I looked. The kid was asleep. So pretty … I told her I’d see what kind of a deal I could make for her. Next night I came back, told her I had a great couple—young but they couldn’t have any kids of their own. I showed her a picture of them. It was a picture I took out of a wallet, the kind they sell in drugstores. She was a dumb foreigner, didn’t know the difference. I said this couple, they wanted the girl right away because they were moving to … ah, someplace, I forgot where I said. After work that night, she gave me the two hundred an’ the kid. She was packing a little bag when I left, so I guess she was getting out.”

  “What was her full name?”

  “All she told me was Soya—wouldn’t say any more. She was scared.”

  “What did she call—what was the child’s name?”

  “Something Russian. Sounded like E-cat-arena.”

  Ekaterina. That was a Russian name; the American form of it was Katherine. I knew that from the What to Name the Baby book most writers owned. “Go on,” I said.

  “There weren’t no couple. I took the kid—you, I guess—while you was asleep. When you woke up, I told you your mom was dead. You cried a lot, then you stopped. I got you food. You stayed real quiet. We lived in my van, washed up at gas stations. I made sure you always brushed your teeth. We traveled around. I stole some cars and sold ’em. When my van broke down an’ I couldn’t get it fixed, I copped another one, switched plates. But then we got stopped by that fat guy sheriff in West Virginia. I knew the jig was up, an’ I ran.”

  “What made the woman confide in you, turn her child over to you?”

  “She said it was ’cause I was polite—didn’t try to grab at her. Said I seemed like a gentleman.”

  It took a monumental effort to keep from retching. I knew what kind of a “gentleman” this creep really was.

  I MADE HIM go over the story again and again, to be certain what he told me was consistent. We’d been at it for several hours and the details had remained constant.

  In spite of the rustling of rats in the shadows, and the horrible stench from his body waste, I wanted more.

  “Tell me about Soya.”

  “Aww, come on,” he whined. “I only saw her twice, an’ it was long time ago.”

  I gestured with the Glock. “Describe her again.”

  He shook his head as though trying to rattle loose a long-forgotten image. “Good body. ’Course she hadda have that—bein’ a stripper an’ all. Sort of dark blonde hair, cut real short. Made me think of a cartoon—Peter Pan. When she danced she wore a long red wig.”

  “Eye color?”

  “I tole you before, I don’ remember eyes! They weren’t brown—that’s all I can say.”

  Before I could ask another question, I heard a sound coming from the floor above us.

  Footsteps!

  My heart started doing acrobatics in my chest!

  Chapter 41

  WILSON HEARD THE footsteps, too. He opened his mouth to yell, but I waved the Glock at him and whatever sound he was going to make died in his throat.

  What now? Bobby said Wilson lived alone!

  At the top of the stairs, the cellar door banged open.

  My hand tightened around the Glock. Of course I wouldn’t shoot the intruder. My hope was to throw a sufficient scare into the person so I could get away without being arrested.

  I had a good reason—if not the right—to unlawfully detain the man who knew where I came from. There was no moral argument I could make for holding a stranger just because he wandered into the cellar, but nevertheless I was going to have to take another prisoner.

  The cuffs of a man’s trousers and a pair of heavy black shoes appeared on the top step. The legs started to descend …

  Before I could order the man to stop and raise his hands, he leaned forward, into the
circle of light from the hanging bulb.

  “Come up and talk to me.”

  I didn’t know I’d been holding my breath until I let it out with a whoosh of relief.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Walter Maysfield.

  “I guessed where you were going.” He jerked a thumb backward. “Upstairs.”

  When Wilson realized that this new person was not going to rescue him, he let loose another stream of curses. I retaped his mouth.

  After checking to be sure that the strips holding him to the bed were still too taut for escape, I followed Walter up into the kitchen.

  The room was long and narrow. Curling linoleum on the floor was sticky beneath my shoes, and looked as though it had never felt the touch of a mop. The sink was rust-stained. Dishes encrusted with bits of food were piled on the counter next to it. A pair of cabinets had front panels with missing knobs. Opposite the sink was an old refrigerator that was making a sound like the rough idling of an ancient car. The place was so filthy I was sure a thousand roaches lurked just out of sight.

  It surprised me to see early morning light coming through the dirty window. Down in that cellar, I’d lost track of time.

  Facing Walter, I said, “You knew what I was up to, and you didn’t try to stop me?”

  He shook his head. “Somebody wanting to find their parents—that’s a pretty basic drive. Wasn’t my place to keep you from it, but I wasn’t going to let you do something foolish.”

  I gave him a weak laugh. “Too late for that.”

  “No, it isn’t. The bastard’s still alive.”

  A new worry hit me. “Magic! What about—”

  “Don’t worry. After you left this morning, I called Nancy. Told her I had an emergency. She came over to stay with him until one of us gets back.” He gave my shoulder a comforting pat. “I think of that little guy as sort of my ‘grand-cat.’”

  When Bobby located him, Walter was a widower without children. Now we’d become a kind of little family. I had treasured friends, but never having had a family, I was just beginning to realize how much I’d missed. The family scenes I’d written for the show were created out of my imagination, and a ton of wishful thinking.