"Patti?" he said softly with his gloved hand on the doorknob. "Patti?"
He heard her crossing the room.
"Is everything all right?" she said, standing back from the door, still insisting to herself that everything was perfectly fine.
Lipton emitted a nervous chuckle and said, "The door, it's stuck. I can't get out. Is there a trick to this?"
Patti stood where she was.
"Patti?" he said. "Help me, will you?"
"All right."
Lipton held the doorknob tight until he could sense her pressing against the door, putting all her strength into it. With one swift motion, he twisted the knob, yanked it open, and caught her by the throat as she fell toward him.
For almost two seconds, the shock was too much for Patti to overcome. In that time he'd thrown her down to the floor and mounted her with all his weight bearing down on her chest. Then she began to fight, and in that area she didn't disappoint him. Wildly she clawed and kicked, her nails falling harmlessly on his nylon suit and her feet striking nothing but air. Then she began to punch, tight little fists thrown with remarkable ferocity, but waning by the second.
Lipton bore down with all his strength, cutting off the blood to her brain, but at the same time keeping his thumbs on either side of her larynx to maximize the pressure on her carotid arteries. Soon her limbs did nothing more than twitch, and he felt a thrill run through him as her eyes rolled back in her head. Immediately, he let go of her neck and scrambled into the bathroom for his kit. Within seconds, he had stripped her naked and bound her wrists, ankles, and mouth tightly with his tape. Once she was secured, he took the time to neatly fold her clothes and set them on the back of the couch, saving the underwear for himself. Those he would use to clean his knife and save as a trophy of his conquest.
After all, she was his now. Her essence belonged to him. It was waiting there for him. But he wanted her awake. He wanted her to know just how much power he had. All the whispering between her and Casey during the trial, he'd seen that. He knew they talked about him. He knew they made jokes between themselves about his impotence. Strong women loved to emasculate a man, especially a man of his great intellect. They paled next to his mental brilliance and they were bitter about it. Now she would know. She would know that he was a sexual beast and that he would use her own sexual essence as a fuel for his latent passions.
Lipton whipped off his mask and stuffed it into the bag with his other things. He stood over her, waiting and staring hungrily at her naked figure until he felt a remote stirring within his groin. Part of him wanted her badly, but he would not risk that. He needed his powder, and he needed a woman who would not only succumb to him, but beg him for it. He conjured up the image of his little whore downtown and turned that over in his mind until Patti began to stir. Soon her eyelids would flutter to life and she would see him there, standing over her in complete control.
Lipton bent down and took the long, cruel-looking knife from his bag. Lovingly, he unsheathed it. When her eyes finally opened, they were wide with horror. Lipton began to talk and as he explained to her what he was going to do and why, he also chortled quietly but uncontrollably at the pitifully smothered shrieks and moans that escaped her injured throat.
"Are you crying now?" he asked, mimicking concern. Then with venom he added, "You should have thought of that when you were mocking me! When you were laughing at me and looking like a little slut and thinking that there was nothing I could do about it. But there is something I can do! I can do this!"
Lipton bent down over her thrashing body and pinned her with his knees. Expertly, he inserted the point of his knife just below her rib cage and slipped it down toward her belly, opening a hideous bloody gash in her torso. Her terrified strangled screams mingled with Lipton's laughter, filling the room with inhuman noise.
CHAPTER 35
Casey raced into the parking lot. Over the scream of tires, Sales asked her which unit belonged to Patti.
"Three-C," Casey said, remembering the first week Patti moved in and proudly invited her for a spaghetti dinner. "The top corner at the far end of the building!"
Sales pointed toward a white van at the other end of the lot and said, "He's here!"
Casey slammed on her brakes, sending the car in a sideways skid. Sales leapt from the vehicle before it had even stopped. Casey slammed the car into park and chased Sales up the stairs as fast as she could. When Sales got to 3-C, he tried the door's handle once before kicking it. The door shuddered from the blow but stood strong. Spinning around, Sales leaned forward and kicked back like a mule, bursting the door from its frame in a cascade of splintered wood.
With Casey now just behind him, Sales sprang into the hallway in a crouched position. Lipton, warned by the first kick at the door, welcomed him with a deafening hail of bullets from his Tech-9 sending Sales back out the doorway as quickly as he'd come. When the gunfire stopped, Sales waved a hand up high and came in low again. This time there was no gunfire. He edged into the apartment, knees bent, his Glock extended with both hands in a shooting position.
After a moment of silence, Casey peeked in after Sales. He had reached the living room now, and as he ducked into the bedroom gun first, Casey rushed toward Patti's inert body. A dreadful shriek escaped her lips at the sight of the gore. Blood was everywhere. She rushed for the phone and dialed 911. Her mind barely registered Sales as he burst from the bedroom and out onto the terrace. Gunfire cut through her shock, and she realized that Sales was firing over the edge of the railing.
Lipton had climbed down the outside of the building, hanging and jumping from terrace to terrace until he reached the ground. Sales caught only a glimpse of him as he raced across the grass and rounded the corner of the building. After two wild shots, he dashed back into the apartment and past Casey to the outside stairway without a glance. From there, he couldn't see Lipton's van. He took the steps three at a time, cursing loudly when he saw the van shoot across the lot and out into the street. Seconds later, Sales was at the wheel of the Mercedes and, with tires shrieking, fast on Lipton's trail.
A squad car was next to arrive. Having come from the opposite direction, the patrolmen had no idea that they'd missed Sales's wild chase of Lipton by thirty seconds. Bolinger wasn't far behind the cruiser. He knew from his radio that a 911 call had been made from the girl's apartment and that an ambulance was on its way. When he and Unger pushed through the crowd of onlookers and walked through the apartment's shattered doorway, they were struck by the scene of Casey, bloody to the elbows, bent over Patti's body. She was sobbing hysterically, with the two officers on either side of her not knowing what to do.
"Seal this place off," Bolinger told them. "Get all those people the hell out of here."
Relieved to have some direction, the patrolmen exited the apartment. As Bolinger got closer, he gasped at what he saw. The girl had been opened in exactly the same manner as Frank Castle and Marcia Sales before him.
"My God," he said. "Lipton."
Unger saw it, too, and suddenly bolted for the kitchen sink, where he began to vomit what was left of his lunch.
Bolinger knelt down next to Casey, but like her, he had no idea what to do. The grisly wound was so extensive that he couldn't imagine how he could stop the bleeding. With Patti's insides exposed, he was afraid to apply pressure to anything. With the tips of his fingers, he felt for a pulse in her neck.
"She's alive," he said in wonderment.
Casey looked down at him in disbelief.
"Get some towels," he told her. "Look in the bathroom."