The killer reaches into the trunk and lays a hand on her arm to help her sit up. She jerks away. Angered at her rebuff, he grabs a handful of her hair and jerks her into a sitting position. A few seconds later, she screams.
He basks in her pain as he imagines blood rushing back into the cramped, oxygen-starved muscles of her legs that have been twisted like pretzels for hours.
She begins to sob. Her face is streaked with tears and saliva, and her nose and lips are crusted with snot. She looks half-dead, except for her eyes. They are wide open and filled with abject terror.
The killer picks up the plastic shopping bag. “I brought food and something to drink.” He pulls out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and a bottle of water. He tries to hand them to her, but she won’t take them.
“I… I don’t want anything from you,” she says through her sobs. “Please, just let me go home. I want to go home.”
He continues to hold the sandwich and water out to her.
“Will you just let me go home?” she begs. “Please, just let me go home.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
In his mind he sees her father, His Honor, the mayor, at that press conference, arrogantly dismissing him as some kind of sexually dysfunctional freak. “Because of your father.”
She stops crying. “My father?” Her voice is a dry rasp. “What’s my father got to do with this?”
“Everything.”
With her taped hands she starts massaging the muscles of her thighs.
The killer drops the sandwich and the water bottle into the trunk. She can eat them later, or not at all. The choice is hers.
His gaze falls to her hands as she squeezes the front of her left thigh. Her knuckles are covered with cuts and dried blood. After he locked her in the trunk, she kicked and pounded against the lid, screaming. He thought she would tire quickly, but after an hour she had not weakened. So he poured a thin stream of ether into one of the airholes. Within minutes, she was still.
How long she remained unconscious, he has no idea. He left the house as soon as she got quiet. Eventually, she must have woken up and been terrified by the dark confined space in which she found herself, perhaps thinking he had buried her alive. That probably triggered more kicking and screaming. He is glad he was not here for that.
The trunk held up well, as expected. He selected it carefully. It was circa 1890s, built to carry heavy loads over long distances, built to withstand being dropped from stagecoaches and thrown into ships’ holds. Eventually, she must have exhausted herself and fallen asleep.
“Tell me why you’re doing this,” she says.
“I told you, it’s your father’s fault.”
She was massaging her right leg now. “Are you the serial killer everybody’s been talking about?”
“Your father insulted me.”
She nods. “He does that sometimes.” Her eyes seem less terrified.
“Your father is going to find out that I don’t easily suffer the sins of fools like him.”
“Are you the killer?” she asks again as she moves her legs around inside the tight space of the trunk.
“I am the Lamb of God.”
She locks eyes with him. “Are you going to kill me?”
The killer opens his mouth to answer, intending to be honest with her. Yes, I am going to kill you. But he doesn’t get the chance. Before the first word leaves his mouth, she springs from the trunk and launches herself at him, the fingers of her bound hands curved like talons and clawing at his eyes.
Still kneeling beside the steamer trunk, the killer recoils. He throws his hands in front of his face in a pathetic attempt to ward off her attack, but he is too late. She is already on him. Her nails rake his face. Then she wraps her hands around his throat.
The killer falls backward onto the floor. She is on top of him, her fingers attempting to crush his trachea. He sees her open mouth reaching for him, like the start of a crazed kiss. A second later he feels an explosion of pain below his left eye.
She is biting my face!
Her knee pounds his testicles.
He screams.
The scream triggers something in his brain. He must fight back. This little tart cannot stop him. He grabs a handful of her hair and wrenches her head away. He feels a chunk of flesh tear loose from his cheek. The pain nearly paralyzes him. Somehow, he manages to roll to his right. He scrambles on top of her, then straddles her. But her hands are still locked on to his throat. The light is fading. His world is going dim.
He sweeps an arm across his body and knocks her hands away. Air pours into his starving lungs. It tastes sweet, like victory. He drives his forearm into her throat and presses his weight behind it. She tries to dig her fingers into his eyes, but he clinches them shut.
Rolling forward with his forearm still pressed against her windpipe, the killer slams his other elbow down onto her face. Her eyes bulge from their sockets. Her arms sag. With the tenacity of a cage fighter, he pounds her head with his elbow again and again until she goes limp. Then, like a spent lover, he takes a deep breath and collapses on top of her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sunday, August 5, 11:05 PM
It was raining hard when Murphy finally made it home. According to a radio report he had heard in the car, the storm was moving much faster than any of the computer models had predicted. One news commentator said the mayor had waited too long to pull the trigger on the city’s first evacuation since Katrina.
As soon as Murphy unlocked his apartment door, his cell phone rang. It was Mother.
“Where have you been?” she screeched in his ear, sounding drunker than usual. “They’re evacuating the city. When were you going to tell me?”
He pushed the door open with his foot and stepped over an envelope lying on the floor just inside the threshold. He stared down at it, only half listening as his mother continued her rant.
When she paused for breath, he said, “Everything is all set, Mother. I called the manager, Mr. Dugas, today. He has three buses lined up to take everybody to Baton Rouge.”
“I don’t want to ride on a bus full of old people,” she said.
The envelope on the floor had Murphy’s name typed on the front. Just his name, not his address.
“It’s only eighty miles, Mother.”
“I don’t care if it’s eight miles or eight hundred miles. I have a son. I shouldn’t have to take a bus to Baton Rouge.”
Murphy set his briefcase down and picked up the envelope. It was thin, just a single sheet of folded paper inside. His name had not been printed from a computer. It had been typed with a typewriter.
“… are you listening to me?”
He hadn’t been. “Mother, I’m a detective. I’m trying to catch a serial killer and find the mayor’s kidnapped daughter. I don’t have time to drive you to Baton Rouge.” He flipped his phone closed and walked into the kitchen.
Glancing across the bar into the den, he saw the empty Knob Creek bottle on the coffee table, and the sofa on which he had sat just twenty hours ago, alternately throwing back gulps of whiskey and jamming the muzzle of his pistol in his mouth.
His phone rang. Mother again. He flipped the phone open and jammed his finger on the ignore button. He laid the envelope on the counter and stared at it.
What could it be? Shoved under his door like that, with no address on it. An eviction notice? A rent increase? No. It smelled more sinister than that.
And from whom?
His landlord? One of his neighbors? Had he made too much noise this morning during his drunken, suicidal binge? Did he rattle the walls with his Warren Zevon songs?
Murphy knew what the envelope contained and who it was from.
He picked it up by its edges. From his right front pocket he pulled his folding knife. He thumbed the blade open and sliced through the envelope’s flap. Using the tips of his fingers, he slipped the typed letter out. He unfolded it and used the envelope to press the page flat on the kitchen counter. My Dear Detektive Murphhy: This is the Lamb of God speaking. first let me say that i am an admirer of yourrs. you are a worthy opponennt and the only one who recognizzed my work, though you have only scratched the surface. regarding wingate, you and i know that i did not kill marccy edwardds. you have SCRUPULOUSLY kept my signature-log-hidden from the public. imagine my surprise today (sunday) when I heard i had left my “telltale signature” at this most recent “crime scene.” I don’t know what “game” you are playing, but did you really think you could “pin” that on me? shame, shame, detektive. i admirre your ENTHUSIASM but your work is sloppy. how did it feel, by the way, to take her life, to watch it drain from her eyes? your faithful servant, log p.s. i hope you were careful-no fingerprinTts, no fiberrs, no dnna! p.p.s. we really should get togethher. i sense a kindred spirrit. you are a killer like me.