But instead of furniture, in the room’s exact center was a massive four-poster bed. The incongruity of it reminded me of the gurney they’d strapped Justin Harris to in the death chamber. That wasn’t the only similarity, I realized. From all four posts dangled dark metal circles. Handcuffs, I realized, as I was dropped onto the bed.
“Welcome to the Jungle Room,” the Jump Killer said. “This is where all the magic happens.”
I noticed what I was wearing for the first time as my wrists and then my ankles were cuffed. I stared down at myself and began to weep.
I was in some kind of see-through bra and underwear, a garter belt, stockings. My arms and legs had been moisturized with a sickeningly sweet cherry-scented lotion. I realized then that I was wearing makeup. Gobs of it were greased onto my cheeks, smeared on my lips, caking my eyes.
“Please,” I said through my slimy lips. “Please don’t… don’t kill me.”
“That’s funny. That’s exactly what Tara Foster said all those years ago. Right before I strangled her to death with her bra,” the Jump Killer said, folding his meaty arms. “Maybe if you’d been smart and let Harris take the fall for it, you wouldn’t be in this pickle.”
That’s when I noticed there was another door in the room’s corner. From behind it suddenly came Mexican pop music, loud, frenzied racing horns. There was the clop of stamping feet, excited voices, drunken laughter. The Mexican music was cut short to howls and then a rap song started up and there was more stomping and howling.
“What is this? Who are they?” I said.
“They’re drug dealers,” the Jump Killer said. “Top Mexican cartel guys. Real big shots. I get their women for them. Don’t worry. You’re going to get to know them all very soon, very intimately.”
My mind whited out for a moment. Sizzling fuzz filled my head like a lost TV signal.
“I’m not a prostitute!” I cried.
“They don’t want a prostitute, silly,” he said. “This is a special celebration. These boys just closed a huge deal for very, very big money. They risked their lives, their freedom, and came out on top. They’re ready to party till you drop. In your case, party till they get sick of raping you and drop you dead in the water.”
There it was. The most horrible thing of all. It explained why there were so many disappearances, why some of the missing women’s bodies were never found.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of money these guys spend. Not that I don’t deserve every penny, with all the cleanup. Sometimes I think some of these fellas must be half Mayan or Aztec because after they’re done, you’d think it was a human sacrifice in here with all the blood. I have to wash the goddang sangre off of the ceiling.” The Jump Killer smiled.
“I’m getting your attention now. I can see it in your face. You’re a little long in the tooth for them, but I’m offering you as a special, a half-price appetizer. Those are my orders, and I’m not going to screw them up this time. After all, they came straight from the big man himself.”
Orders?
“What are you talking about?” I mumbled. “From who?”
The Jump Killer started laughing then. “You still don’t know what the hell is going on, do you? Even now. Of course not. Precious little Jeanine always kept in the dark.”
What!?
“My orders come from Peter, Jeanine. Remember him? Your husband? My best friend. There is no Jump Killer. There never was one. There’s just Peter. Peter and me.”
Chapter 106
THE HILARITY NEXT DOOR hit a fever pitch as the old-school rap classic “Wild Thing” by Tone-Loc started up. The volume suddenly blasted twice as loud as I lay there staring up at the coffered ceiling.
“You know Peter used to talk about you all the time,” the Jump Killer said, sitting in the chair by the side of the bed and checking his watch. “The silly things you guys used to do together. He really thought you were a good kid. I wanted to meet you, but of course Peter said no way. I think he might have really even loved you. That’s why I was so surprised when he asked me to kill you.”
I looked at his face. He was still smiling.
“You never figured this out?” he said, shaking his head. “Peter hired me to kill you, Jeanine, while he was off on his fishing trip. Make you disappear. Sell you to our drug-running friends like all the others. I was going to do it, too, when I saw you leave the house.
“I followed you around all goddamn day, watched you cut yourself on the beach, watched you dye your hair. I didn’t know what the hell you were doing until you hit the Overseas Highway and I realized you were exiting stage left. That’s when I pulled up and gave you a lift. But then you pulled that trick with the Mercedes and you got away. At first, I didn’t know what to do. But it looked like you weren’t coming back anyway, so I just lied and said I killed you.”
The cotton ball effect of the drug began to wear off and was replaced by a dull head-to-toe ache. I moved my right arm. It went a foot before the handcuff got painfully taut against my wrists. I stared at the bed’s heavy wooden posts inside the steel cuffs. They were scratched and worn from use, as if chewed. I gagged as I realized it was from women rattling them as they struggled.
When I looked back, the Jump Killer was picking at something in his perfectly capped teeth with his pinkie.
“I should have told Peter the truth, but frankly I was afraid to,” he said. “You think I’m bad? Peter’s like the Tony Soprano of Key West, except without the sense of humor.” The Jump Killer shrugged. “But he never showed you that side, did he? With me, it was always death threats and slapping me around for forgetting something, but not you. With you, it was always flowers and rainbows and love notes.”
He stood and yawned.
“See, Jeanine, women, even wives, come and go, but friends are forever. Best friends, anyway. We were in the Rangers together. When he needed someone to watch his back, I was the one he called. I’ll admit that he really wasn’t too happy with me when he saw you in New York. But he finally relented and gave me a second chance to take you out. I almost had you at your hotel room, too.”
The Jump Killer walked to the door and opened it.
“Don’t worry, though. I’m not going to blow it this time. When these boys are finished with you, before your burial at sea, I’m going to put two bullets in the back of your head to make sure you stay dead. Once and for all.”
Chapter 107
THE DOOR CLOSED. A quotation popped into my head as the electric guitar riffed between hip-hop bass thumps next door.
The hard way is the only way.
Whether it was from a writer or the Bible, I couldn’t quite recall. All I remembered was that I never understood it. Why would someone choose for things to be hard?
But as I lay there, my face drenched with tears, an ironlike fear clenching every sinew of my body, I finally knew what it meant.
It meant there were no shortcuts. You had to pay for things. Sometimes, it was your job to go down no matter how unfair things were. Meeting Peter had allowed me to avoid my fate for killing Ramón Peña, at least up until now. Today I was going to pay for that crime with interest.
I remembered how shocked I’d been when I’d seen how resigned to die Justin Harris had been. I wasn’t shocked anymore.
Someone knocked on the door.
But instead of stiffening with a soldierly stoicism like Justin, I went into a full-body twinge of revulsion and horror. My tendons felt like they were about to pop.