INSIDE A KILLER’S LAIR
Markham felt a cool breeze rush past, and after a moment heard a clanging sound coming from another part of the cellar. He cracked open his eyes and quickly scanned his body. He was tied up, but not down to anything; he could roll over onto his back if he wished. Yes, he had to be in the Impaler’s cellar—the cement walls, the trickling sound of the blood and water running down the floor drain.
Footsteps approaching again and Markham shut his eyes—another cool breeze and the sense of movement behind him. His mind spun furiously; he was starting to panic, felt as if any second he would open his eyes and try to bolt—when all of a sudden he felt the Impaler’s arms slipping underneath his torso.
Markham’s muscles tensed. He thought surely the Im-paler had to have felt them tense, too—but a moment later he was being lifted off the workbench.
I’m to be next, he thought. Whatever the Impaler did to the others before he skewered them he intends to do to me …
Books by Gregory Funaro
THE SCULPTOR
THE IMPALER
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
THE
IMPALER
GREGORY
FUNARO
For John Scognamiglio and Michael Combs
O mighty lord! O exalted god of battle!
Thou art brilliant in the bright heavens!
Let me proclaim thy greatness!
Let me bow in humility before thee!
—Ancient Babylonian prayer
Prologue
Criminal defense attorney Randall Donovan had really stepped in it this time—was in the shit way over his head and sinking fast. The man in the ski mask would not answer, would not even listen to him.
“I’m begging you!” Donovan screamed. “This hasn’t gone so far that there’s no turning back. I don’t know who you are—who your people are—but your beef isn’t with me. I swear, whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it!”
Nothing. Only the flashing strobe light above his head; only the deafening pump of eighties music and occasionally what sounded like power tools coming from the next room. He recognized the tune from way-back-when in law school—Depeche Mode or New Order or some other shit band like that—but he couldn’t remember the name of the song or the band that sang the cover; didn’t even know there was a cover until he met the man in the ski mask. For the man in the ski mask had been cranking the two versions back to back for days, and now Randall Donovan knew all the lyrics by heart.
“How could you think I ’d let you get away?
When I came out of the darkness and told you who you are.”
He was in the man’s cellar, naked and strapped to a chair. Of that much he was sure. The room was cold, the chair soft and cushiony like a dentist’s chair. Indeed, when he first woke up, Donovan thought for a moment that he was at the dentist’s—his senses dull, his vision cloudy as the steady pulse of the strobe light brought him slowly back to consciousness. Then the smell hit him. Two smells, really. A bitter, chemically smell—close, in his nostrils—and another underneath it: something foul, like rotting garbage.
But now, days later, even though Randall Donovan’s senses were sharp, he could smell nothing but the vague odor of his own feces. His arms and legs were tied down, and there was a strap across his waist. And then there was the pain, the dull, heavy pain in the back of his head that throbbed like the drumbeat surrounding him. Despite the chilly temperature he was sweating badly, and the lines of strange symbols that the man had drawn all over his body were now all runny and drippy-looking.
“I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heard me speak.
Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”
“I understand,” Donovan called out. “I get it. You think I’ve wronged you in some way. But I swear to you, on my kids, I don’t know what I did. Let’s talk this out! I’ll give you whatever you want!”
“There were many who came before me, but now I’ve come at last,
From the past into the future, I’m standing at your door.”
Donovan let out a cry of frustration and struggled against the straps. He could move only his head, but the sharp pain at the base of his skull made him stop immediately. He didn’t remember the man in the ski mask hitting him at home in his driveway. Never even saw him coming. But when he awoke to the music and the strobe light some time later, the man in the ski mask gave him two Tylenols and a glass of water. They did nothing.
That had been days ago now. How many days? He could not be sure. The man had given him Gatorade and some oatmeal to eat. He’d also adjusted the chair a few times so the cushion dropped out from underneath the lawyer’s buttocks. “Move your bowels,” was all he said, and placed a bucket underneath. Donovan tried pleading with him each time, but the man ignored him. And so Donovan moved his bowels. He’d also pissed himself many times, but the man in the ski mask didn’t seem too concerned about that.
“I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heard me speak.
Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”
The spoken part was next—“Your body is the doorway,” the lead singer said—and then came the brief drum break. An opening, Donovan had learned.
“Please listen to me!” he shouted.
But then the chorus kicked in and Donovan was silent.
“How could you think I ’d let you get away?
Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”
He had long ago given up calling for help; he knew that his only chance was to reason with the man in the ski mask. But how? Who was this guy? He couldn’t be one of Galotti’s boys. No, he’d gotten that greaseball guinea a sweet deal; got him back in the Witness Protection Program despite the stupid fuck’s narcotics rap. And he certainly couldn’t be a friend of the Colombian. Yeah, the Colombian’s buddies hacked up their enemies with machetes and fed them their own testicles. But the eighties music? The hieroglyphics all over his body? It didn’t add up. No, even though he hadn’t gotten the Colombian off, he’d prevented his family from being deported—and the motherfucker loved him for it!
“Look for my light in the nighttime; I’ll look for your dark in the day.
Let me stand inside your doorway and tell you who you are.”
Donovan heard the sound of hammering coming from the next room, and all at once he felt the panic beginning to overwhelm him again—felt his chest tighten and his breathing quicken.