Kork pulled the .45, pointing it at Orson’s face.
Simultaneously, Luther pulled a gun of his own.
“I’ll bet,” Orson said, “that when you were a kid, you were the type of little shit who played in his own corner of the sandbox and didn’t share his toys with anyone. Am I getting warm?”
Kork didn’t like having a gun pointed at him, but it did have the effect of capping his boiling temper. “Who the fuck are you?”
“We’re just a couple of guys heading to a mystery book convention in Indianapolis. Looking for a little fun on the way. To be honest, we were kind of hoping your name was Ben. Because we have Ben’s partner in the trunk.”
Kork couldn’t tell if Orson was kidding or not. The man was seriously hard to read. “You’ve got a man in your trunk?”
“Well, I’m not sitting him in the back seat where he’ll bloody up the leather.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
Orson raised an index finger and drew an X across his chest. “Cross my heart. Winston and Ben were a couple of predators. Like Luther and I. And like you, judging from the corpse in the field. Only they made the mistake of hurting Luther and his family when he was a kid. So now Luther’s exacting a bit of well-deserved revenge.”
A faint smile curled across Charles’s mouth. “Prove it.”
Orson nodded to Luther, who walked to the rear of the Lexus.
“Keys,” Luther said.
Orson slowly took a key ring out of his pants and tossed it to the pale man. Luther caught the keys and tucked the gun away. Kork walked over, covering Orson, who had his hands at his sides.
Luther popped open the trunk.
“Fuck me,” Kork said.
Inside the compartment lay a man, completely naked, his body wrapped tightly in cellophane, all except for his head. His lips bulged wide around a ball-gag. He was older, in his fifties, white and hairy. His green eyes were wide with fear.
“Think those crows are still hungry?” Luther said, his mouth twitching.
Kork lowered his gun. He wondered what the chances were of running into these two kindred spirits in the middle of Indiana. Then again, he’d heard that the FBI estimated there could be as many as five hundred active serial killers in the U.S., so maybe the odds weren’t as high as he might have guessed.
Luther walked around to the rear passenger door on the shoulder-side of the Lexus and pulled it open. He fumbled around for a moment inside, and then returned to the trunk.
“You want in on this, Kork?” Luther asked.
Kork was staring at the wide-eyed man, thinking that aside from wrapping him in cellophane, it didn’t appear that they’d so much as laid a finger on him yet.
Fresh, untouched meat.
“Kork?”
“Yeah. For sure. You guys planning on doing him right now? Right here?”
“That’s up to Luther. I know he’s been itching to get to it ever since we picked Winston up in Gary.” Orson looked at Luther. “Luther, you sure you’re all right with bringing him in on this?”
Luther stared at Charles. He had eyes like black pits.
“As long as he shuts the fuck up, and doesn’t do anything until he’s offered the chance.”
“Charles?” Orson asked. “You cool with that?”
Kork had killed many people on his own, but the ones that were most memorable, and the most fun, were the ones he did with his sister, Alex. Orson had nailed it when he said Charles didn’t like to share. But with murder, it was different. Sharing made it more exciting.
“So when you pulled over to help me,” Kork said, “were you thinking I’d wind up in your trunk as well?”
“It crossed our minds,” Orson said. “We hate to pass up low-hanging fruit. How about that body in the field?”
“Blow torch versus whore.”
“I thought I caught a whiff of BBQ in the air. So do you want to join in the fun?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
Luther seemed distracted. He was kneeling against the back bumper, leaning over the terrified man wrapped in plastic, staring down into his eyes with a brutal, predatory intensity.
“What you did to my family,” Luther whispered. “To my sister…” He pulled something out of his pocket. “…is something you’re going to pay for with more pain than anyone could endure.”
“What’s he doing?” Kork asked.
“Just give him a moment,” Orson said.
Luther’s face was inches from the man in plastic. “You killed my sister, didn’t you?”
The man wildly shook his head.
“No? So you deny it?”
Wild nodding.
“That just made it worse for you.”
Now Luther held up whatever he’d taken out of his pocket—a small, metal cylinder with six tiny blades on the end.
“This is called an artificial leech. Old-school medical instrument. It’s for poking holes in skin.”
Orson put a hand on Luther’s shoulder. “Not in the trunk.”
“Help me get him…Winston…out.”
The two men wrestled the package from the trunk, one at the head, the other at the feet. Charles joined in, cinching an arm around the wiggling man’s waste. He was screaming around his ball gag, and Kork felt himself becoming aroused.
They set him down on the shoulder-side of the car, and Luther sat on top of him.
“Look at me, Green Eyes,” he said. “I still dream about your eyes, about your friend walking up the beach at night toward our bonfire. You’re going to tell me the truth. Do you understand that?”
Frantic nodding.
“If I take out your gag, you’ll tell me the truth?”
Nodding.
“And do you know what will happen if you tell me the truth?”
Shaking.
“I’ll let you go. I just want to hear you say what happened to my sister. I never saw her again, never heard from her again after that night you and Ben came along and destroyed my family. I just want to know what you did to her. Are you ready?”
The man nodded.
Luther reached around behind his head and unstrapped the ball-gag.
Winston’s chest rising and falling.
The man’s gray hair slicked back with sweat.
“Please,” he said, “please don’t do this—”
Luther silenced him by simply holding up a finger.
“I don’t want to hear a single word come out of your mouth except for your explanation of what happened to my Katie.”
“Katie?”
Kork saw Luther shut his eyes for a moment, then open them again.
“Winston, this is your last chance. Then I’m going to stick you with this artificial leech about five thousand times and feed you to the crows.”
“Just tell me what it is you want me to say. I’ll say it. I’ll say anything.”
The wind was whipping Luther’s long, black hair around his face.
He tucked it back behind his ears.
“What did you do to my sister?”
“I…I…I’m sorry.”
“Where is her body?”
“It’s…I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Did you kill her?”
Tears streamed out of the man’s eyes.
“Did you kill her, Winston? Tell me you killed her and how you did it, and I won’t kill you.”
“I…I did it.”
“You did. Okay. How?”
“With um…with a knife.”
“You killed my eight-year-old sister with a knife?”
He nodded.
“Did you rape her first, Winston?”
“I…”
“Like you raped my mother. Tell me if you raped her before you killed her.”
“No…I didn’t…”
“You didn’t rape my sister? Or my mother? Because I saw you, Winston. I watched you do it. Don’t you fucking lie to me.”
“If I tell you…admit…that I raped her, you won’t kill me?”