The Resurrectionist

“Okay, baby. We’ll make it work somehow. We’ll figure something out.”

They walked into the bedroom and that overpowering smell made Sarah’s stomach churn. The odor of death and decay had gotten worse since the night before. There was a fly in the room. Sarah didn’t know how it had gotten in but she knew that it was just a matter of time now before the bed would be full of maggots. Josh pinched his nose and turned to look at her with a grimace on his face.

“You sure you still want to live here?”

“We need to get rid of that mattress. It will be okay. This is our home.”

“Okay. If you’re sure, then I’m sure.”

They pulled two suitcases out of the closet and began to pack. Sarah threw in her running shoes and some workout gear along with four changes of clothes. She didn’t know how long they would be at the hotel but if it was longer than four days, then she’d have to come back and get more clothes. She looked at Josh’s ice skates tucked in the corner and his hockey jersey hanging above it. She had been upset at not being able to run and here Josh hadn’t been on the ice in over two weeks and he hadn’t said a word. Sarah looked over at Josh and felt a pang of guilt. When all of this was over she had to make sure to give him more time for himself. Brawling with some bartender on the ice was just the sort of thing Josh needed to restore his manhood. Though murdering Dale with his bare hands would have probably been more effective. Sarah really hoped that could be arranged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sarah, her husband, and Detective Harry Malcovich sat in the waiting room of the hospital. Waiting for someone to swab their orifices for traces of semen and check them for tearing and bruising. Sarah studied Harry’s face. He looked more than embarrassed. He looked enraged.

One by one they were called into the room to see the nurse. Detective Lassiter was there, along with a rape crisis counselor. They walked Sarah into the examination room. Sarah disrobed and the detective helped her into her hospital gown.

The nurse busied herself preparing the rape kit while Trina Lassiter and the counselor tried their best to keep Sarah calm and relaxed. Sarah did not feel anxious at all. She felt numb. This was her second rape kit in a matter of days and she had no idea how many times Dale had actually raped her. At least three times that she knew about and probably closer to five or more. Sarah wondered if the numbness she was feeling was what sex slaves felt like after being raped by one john after another, day after day after day. Thinking about herself in terms of a sex slave made her feel even worse.

“My name is Karen Burns. I’m going to give you my card so we can talk later. Right now I’m just here to answer any questions you might have and to help the detective and the nurse guide you through this process. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal but we are here to help.”

The rape counselor was a young blonde woman in her twenties who looked like she was fresh out of college and dressed very conservatively in a plain white shirt and a long blue skirt that came almost to her ankles. Her hair was pulled back in a bun. Sarah guessed that the woman was probably Mormon. There were a lot of Mormons who worked in the hospitals in Las Vegas for some reason. Most of them were volunteers but an almost equal number were health-care professionals.

The counselor spoke calmly to Sarah, explaining everything that was about to happen. Sarah wondered if this woman had ever been raped. She doubted it but it wouldn’t have surprised her either. There had to be some reason a woman like her went into a profession like this.

“Just relax. The nurse needs to take a couple samples from your rectum and your uterus. It might be a little uncomfortable but it will be over quickly. Detective Lassiter and I will be right here holding your hands.”

“This ain’t my first rodeo,” Sarah said, borrowing a phrase from Harry. “I was just here last week.”

“Oh,” the counselor said and looked over at Detective Lassiter. She looked back over at Sarah with a different, somewhat less sympathetic expression on her face.

“She’s not a prostitute, Counselor. She’s just had one very tough week,” the detective offered by way of an explanation.

The woman was clearly confused and more than a little shocked. Sarah supposed it was shocking. But given everything else she’d seen in the last couple of days, being raped more than once in less than a week no longer felt quite so shocking, though no less degrading and humiliating. She felt no less violated than she had the first time she was here. The only difference was that now she knew what they were going to do and what they would find and she’d had time to prepare herself mentally for it. She was not going to allow herself to break down in tears again, though now would have probably been the appropriate time to do so and she certainly felt like crying, like screaming, and punching the walls. She just didn’t know if she’d ever be able to pull herself back together again if she allowed herself to fall apart now. The counselor was still looking at Sarah skeptically and somewhat judgmentally. Sarah could see all the questions on the woman’s face. She felt like telling the young counselor that she’d been murdered perhaps half a dozen times as well.

“How many rape victims do you see in here every day?”

“It’s hard to say. We see a lot of prostitutes and victims of domestic violence who we would classify as date rapes. Often, those are even more violent than the assaults from strangers. But on average I see about two or three a day.”

“Two or three a day?”

The woman nodded.

“And I’m just one counselor.”

Sarah didn’t know why she found that so surprising. Rape was one of those things she had never thought much about until she’d woken up screaming a week ago. Sarah wondered why the counselor was even there and where she’d been last week when it was just Detective Lassiter and the nurse.

“Aren’t you a rape counselor, Trina?” Sarah asked the detective.

“I’m a victims’ advocate. It’s slightly different. A lot less training.”

“So where was the counselor last week?”

“NASCAR was in town last week along with about a hundred thousand fans. It was a busy week for rape counselors.”

She said it so matter-of-factly, as if it should have been common knowledge that the incidents of rapes increased during sporting events. Sarah supposed that it should have been obvious. But that was just not ordinarily something you thought about.

The nurse busied herself lubing her rubbergloved fingers so that she could slide them more easily into Sarah’s vagina to get the sample. Detective Lassiter sprayed her with something she called luminol and scanned her with a UV light. There were glowing splotches all over Sarah’s breasts. She didn’t bother to ask what the splotches were. She was pretty certain she knew.

After the nurse had finished taking her swabs and Trina was done photographing every square inch of her, Sarah wiped herself with wet disposable towels that reminded her of baby wipes, then dressed and walked out into the waiting room. She met her husband’s eyes as he was called into the room. He was a wreck. She reached out for his hand and squeezed it. Then she pulled him close and kissed him.

“I love you, Josh.”

“I-I love you too,” Josh stammered back. He looked so frightened that it was breaking Sarah’s heart. As big as he was she still felt like it was her job to protect him. He was fragile in so many ways.

Sarah felt terrible for her husband. She could think of very few worse things that could happen to a man like Josh than being raped by another man. She wished she could have gone into the exam room with him but knew that would have been too humiliating for him. His pride would have never allowed it. She hoped they would find nothing, for the sake of his sanity. She hoped he hadn’t been violated again.

Detective Harry Malcovich was sitting with Detective Torres. They were watching TV and Torres was flicking the strap on his gun holster on and off as if he were just itching to pull his weapon. Sarah came and sat with them. She could tell that Harry was dealing with the whole thing no better than Josh was. He looked up at her and manufactured a smile for her. It looked every bit as artificial as it was. His eyes were haunted, swimming with dark shadows.

“Did everything go okay? You okay?” he asked.

Sarah shrugged.

“As good as I can be I guess.”

“Don’t worry, Sarah. This will all be over soon. If this wasn’t personal before, it damn sure is now. And if they find that that sick fuck touched me anywhere I’m going to hurt him as much as I possibly can before I blow his fucking head off. Fuck prison and fuck this badge. If they want it they can have it but I’m going to kill that pervert. You can bet on that.”

“And don’t worry, I’ll help you,” Detective Torres said. “This weird-ass case is taking up too much of my damn time. I’m starting to dream about that little motherfucker myself.”

“What kind of dreams?” Sarah asked, showing more interest than she’d intended.

“Not those kind of dreams. No offense to either of you but ain’t nobody raping me no time soon. Just thinking about it makes me want to eat my pistol.”

“Will you shut the hell up you insensitive son of a bitch. Sarah has been raped and she doesn’t need you sitting there talking about how you’d kill yourself if it happened to you. I don’t need that shit either. I don’t know what that twisted nutcase might have done to me. I don’t even want to think about it until and unless I have to. So, just be quiet would you? Thank you.”

Harry leaned his head back, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

“Ay, look Harry, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Skip it. I know you didn’t mean it, you ignorant bastard. Just watch it. I won’t launch a complaint against you for that kind of shit but someone else might. Sarah is a victim of something no one should ever have to go through and it’s our job to try to make her feel safer, not to make her even more depressed.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah…uh…Mrs. Lincoln. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s okay.” Sarah turned away and stared at the television anchored to the wall in the corner of the room. There was a cooking show on with some chef making deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos. Sarah didn’t feel the least bit hungry and all the fried junk food flashing across the screen was making her nauseated. She knew Detective Torres hadn’t been trying to deliberately offend her but he had nonetheless. She tried her best not to stereotype him as a typical macho, chauvinistic Latino man but she had her prejudices no matter how liberal and enlightened she considered herself to be and guys like Mike Torres brought them all to the fore.

The three of them sat there in a tense, uncomfortable silence. Sarah turned to Detective Malcovich.

“Harry? When we’re done here, can you take me to see Dorothy Madigan?”

The detective turned to look at Sarah.

“Why?”

“I just need to see her. I need to speak to her. I want her to know that I believe her.”

“You’re right. We should go. Okay, I’ll take you. You sure you want to go right now? We can wait until tomorrow.”

“I think I should see her now. I think…for my sanity too.”

“Okay. We’ll go.”

Josh walked out looking shell-shocked. Sarah rushed over to her husband and wrapped her arms around him. They called Harry in next.

“Oh great. I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this. I’m going to kill this fucker when I catch him.”

He walked to the examination room, grumbling the entire way. Detective Lassiter turned to walk in behind him and he stopped her.

“You must be crazy. Go sit down, Trina. I can hold my own hand. You too,” he said to the rape counselor. He walked into the room with the nurse, leaving Trina and the counselor out in the hallway.

Sarah looked up at her husband.

“Is everything okay?”

“They’ll have the lab tests back tomorrow but they didn’t find any evidence of rape. Not that that means anything. They didn’t find any tearing or abrasions on you either. But the detective said that she didn’t see anything that looked like semen on the swabs, but you never know until the lab results come back.”

“I asked Harry to take me to see Dorothy Madigan, the woman who Dale raped before me, the one who set herself on fire.”

“Jesus. Why? I mean, are you sure?”

“I think I have to. I want to hear what he did to her. I want to tell her what he did to me. I want her to know that I believe her. And I want to make her a promise.”

“A promise?”

“I want to promise her that I won’t let Dale hurt anyone else like he hurt us. I want to promise her that I’m going to stop him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Nevada Mental Health Institute was a drab gray building with dash stucco walls, large bronze tinted windows and an eight-foot sculpture out front that looked like a cross between a brain and a solar system made out of aluminum and stainless steel. The institute sat across from Sunset Hospital on Eastern Avenue, and Sarah must have driven past it more than a dozen times since she’d lived in Las Vegas without ever realizing it was there.

It was nearly the size of the hospital itself and was surrounded by a small private park for the residents with walking paths, a bocce ball court, and even a tennis court. The parking lot in front of the building was cracked and spalling, with weeds growing up through the fissures. There were only a handful of cars in the lot, including an ambulance parked in the red fire-zone directly in front of the building. If it wasn’t for the beautifully maintained lawn surrounding the back of the building it would have looked like yet another foreclosed property.

Sarah and her husband parked their Saturn directly in front of the building next to the detectives’ vehicles. She was surprised when Trina and Torres stepped out of their car and began walking toward the building with Harry.

“We’re all going in?”

“Yeah, I want to hear her story. Try to make some sense of what’s going on. I still can’t believe this,” Detective Lassiter said.

“I damn sure don’t believe it,” Detective Torres offered.

“Don’t tell Dorothy that. We’re here to let her know that she’s not crazy, not to put even more doubts in her head.”

They all walked into the building together. Sarah held Josh’s hand tightly. He was still shaken after his exam and Sarah felt like he needed her strength, whatever little strength she had left.

Harry flashed his badge at the receptionist and asked to see Dorothy Madigan. Trina and Detective Torres flashed their shields as well. The obese woman behind the receptionist desk asked them all to sign in and then gave them visitor’s passes.

“Room 511. I’ll let the nurses know to expect you.”

The building looked and smelled just like a hospital except everything that would have been white in a regular hospital was either pale gray or sky blue. Sarah supposed the colors were meant to have a calming effect. She just found them depressing.

When Sarah and her entourage arrived on the second floor the sky blue theme grew increasingly dominant, replacing the gray almost entirely. Even the nurses’ uniforms were blue or green. An orderly the size of an NFL linebacker walked by carrying a mop and a bucket and even he was wearing light blue. He looked like a Smurf on steroids.

Sarah had imagined that all the patients would be locked in their rooms, maybe strapped into straitjackets but most of the doors were open and patients lingered here and there in the halls or wandered aimlessly. The few doors that were shut were not locked and Sarah jumped as a door flew open and one of the patients, an old man in his late sixties or early seventies, scurried past her mumbling to himself and scratching the flaking skin on his bald, crinkled scalp.

“Detectives?” Another overweight nurse, this one wearing light green hospital scrubs instead of the traditional nursing uniform, approached and began shaking hands even before she’d introduced herself. She was young and pretty, the kind of pretty that would have been gorgeous minus forty or fifty pounds. Sarah wondered how anyone in the health-care field could allow their own body to fall into such disrepair, but obesity seemed to be an occupational habit in this profession. She shook the woman’s hand and smiled, chiding herself for her cattiness.

“I’m Alice Douglass. I’m Dorothy’s nurse. She’s in the common area right now watching television with some of our other guests.”

“Guests” was apparently the PC term for patients.

The nurse shook Detective Torres’s hand and he practically drooled all over himself. His smile was wider and more genuine than any Sarah had ever seen on his face since making his acquaintance. He obviously liked big girls.

“Detective Mike Torres, ma’am.” He held on to her hand a moment longer than necessary and then winked at her when he released it. She smiled and blushed and when she turned around to lead them to Dorothy Madigan she put a little extra swish in her hips. Sarah looked over at Detective Lassiter and they both rolled their eyes.

Sarah, Josh, and the detectives all marched down the hall following the nurse who was still walking with a pronounced switch in her hips that sent ripples through her formidably sized buttocks. Detective Torres was smiling like he’d just hit the Megabucks jackpot.

They walked into the dayroom and the plump nurse escorted them to a woman with long dark hair sitting in the corner of the room watching a game of chess and a soap opera on the big-screen TV in the center of the room simultaneously. As they approached the woman, Sarah began to make out more of her features, or what was left of them. The pallid, mottled skin on her face and neck was wrinkled and shriveled like the skin of a raisin. Her lips had been completely burned off and despite the best attempts of a plastic surgeon to rebuild them, her mouth was still little more than a gash in her face. Her nose had nearly melted away, leaving two small holes in the center of her face where her nostrils had been, giving her an almost reptilian appearance. Both of her ears were all but gone, merely shriveled flaps of skin and cartilage above her ear canals, which were now just two holes in the side of her head. Her arms and hands had likewise shriveled under the same intense heat that had taken her facial features. Her hands were gnarled like crow’s feet and her left hand was missing all but two fingers. Sarah remembered the beautiful woman she had seen in the picture Harry kept in his pocket. That woman was completely gone now.

“Dorothy? These people are from the police department. They’re here to ask you a few questions. Is that okay?”

Dorothy looked them over. She paused first at Harry, giving him a wan smile and a nod. Then she stared at Sarah, looking her over from head to toe. Even with so much of her face destroyed, Sarah could see the distress in Dorothy’s expression. The woman turned back to look at Harry with eyes filling rapidly with tears.

“He’s at it again isn’t he? He’s doing it to her? Now do you believe me?”

Her voice was surprisingly calm and level. Not the disjointed, semiarticulate rant she had been expecting. Her voice was low and raspy as if she’d been smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey for decades. It didn’t match the woman Sarah had seen in the photograph. It was a sultry, bluesy voice, incongruous with the tragically disfigured woman sitting in the dayroom of a mental hospital.

“I’m sorry, Dorothy. I wanted to believe you. You know that. I tried to keep the case open as long as I could.”

“I know, Harry. You were great even after this.”

She gestured toward the scars on her face and the countless more hidden beneath her clothing. Sarah knelt beside Dorothy’s chair and stuck out her hand.

“My name is Sarah Lincoln. Dale McCarthy lives across the street from me. He’s been breaking into my home every night since he moved in and raping and murdering me and my husband, Josh. We’re going to catch him and we’re going to kill him.”

Dorothy stared down at Sarah’s hand and reached out for it with her good hand.

She shook hands firmly, then looked up at the other two detectives.

“Who are they?”

“Detectives Trina Lassiter and Mike Torres.”

“Detectives? Why? How? How did you make them believe?”

“I have a video.”

The woman’s eyes widened.

“You-you have a video? I want to see it. Can I see it? What’s on it?”

“It shows Dale breaking into their house, clubbing Sarah and Josh in the head with a hammer, raping them both, and then stabbing them both to death. Then he apparently resuscitated them both or resurrected them.”

“Both of you?”

Dorothy looked at Josh, who looked away.

“How? I mean, how did he bring them back to life? How does he do it?”

“He breathed into their mouths like he was doing pulmonary resuscitation, mouth-to-mouth, and they both just healed up. Their wounds went away and they were alive again.”

“You have that on tape? All of it?”

“Yes. It’s all on tape.”

“But he got away. He’s still out there?”

“Yes.”

“So, why are you here then? He’s not here is he?”

Dorothy looked around. Her eyes widened in panic and she tried to lift herself from her chair. Harry put his hand on her shoulder and eased her back into her chair.

“No. He’s not here. I just wanted you to know that I was wrong and that I’m sorry and I’m going to make it right. I’m going to catch him. I’m going to finally put a stop to this.”

“Can I ask you a question, Dorothy?”

Dorothy looked down at Sarah, who was still crouched beside her chair.

“Yes?”

“What did he do to you?”

“I don’t remember. I can’t remember hardly any of it. I would wake up with these pictures in my head, these terrible images of being raped, being stabbed, being skinned alive. Then they would just go away and I wouldn’t be able to remember anything. I would walk around all day feeling violated and wounded but not knowing why. I was terrified, especially when I would see Dale at work. Then I started keeping a dream diary. I would write down everything I could remember as soon as I woke up. Some of the things were…they were just unimaginable. I would have never thought anyone capable…it was inhuman some of the things I dreamed. Then one night I put a tape recorder under my bed and I caught it all on tape. It was just the audio but I had written it down that morning too. I wrote that he had skinned me alive and that’s what I heard on the tape. I heard myself screaming, I heard the sound of flesh and skin tearing. And I heard him laughing.”

Sarah didn’t know what to say. She didn’t think anything could have been worse than what she’d seen on that tape but the tape had been silent. She couldn’t imagine what it must have sounded like. She couldn’t imagine hearing herself being skinned alive and remembering it.

“That’s terrible. My God.”

“It’s in the past now. Or at least it was until you five walked in here.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to make you relive all of that.”

“Like I said, it’s all in the past now.”

Sarah wondered if she should ask the next question. She tried to think of how to phrase it or if she should ask it all. She knew that it would worry her if she didn’t.

“Do you mind if I ask you one more question?”

Dorothy looked fearful. She was still recomposing herself from the last question. She took a long, deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Sarah picked her words carefully.

“You just…you sound so sane. I mean, you don’t sound…you don’t seem, you know, mentally disturbed. Why are you here? Why did you do this to yourself?”

Dorothy turned away. She looked down at her fingers, then drew her hands up into the sleeves of her robe and looked over at the TV, where a clip of Barack Obama was on talking about economic recovery.

“Was it because I didn’t believe you?” Harry asked. “Did you have some sort of nervous breakdown or something?”

Dorothy shook her head. Tears began to run down her face, traveling the maze of crinkled skin to the corner of her mouth.

“I didn’t want him to touch me again. I figured I would either die or look like this. Either way he’d never touch me again. I was right. I haven’t seen him since.”

Sarah stood, smiling bitterly.

“I’ve seen him. He left you and came straight to me.”

Detective Lassiter shook her head.

“No, he didn’t. There were six years between the two of you. I’m pretty sure he didn’t stop for six years.”

“No way a guy like that takes a six-year hiatus,” Torres added.

“You’re right. There are other victims out there,” Harry said. “And they probably don’t even know it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

When the detectives dropped Sarah and Josh off at the “safe house,” she had been expecting at least one of them to stay. She was quite surprised when they all left.

“Torres will be back to drive Josh to work.”

“I need to call in to make sure I’m working. I don’t have a set schedule yet.”

“Okay, just let Trina know,” Harry said.

“Um, excuse me. Trina?”

“Yes?”

“Who’s staying with us?”

Detective Lassiter looked at Harry and Torres before she answered, and Sarah knew that no one had been assigned to them. They were being left on their own.

“Unfortunately, we all have other cases we’re working on as well as this one so we can’t stay here with you but I assure you that you’re safe. We need to be out there hitting the street looking for McCarthy anyway. The sooner we catch him the sooner you can go back to your home. We can’t catch him sitting around here. Besides, he’s not the Mafia. He has no way of finding out where you’re staying unless he follows one of you back here. As long as you’re cautious, you’ll be safe,” Lassiter said.

“Okay.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll catch him,” Harry said and then, just like that, they all filed out of the apartment, leaving Sarah alone with her husband and their combined fears and anxieties.

True to the detective’s word, the Extended Vacation Suites was a brand-new sprawling motel that looked more like an apartment complex. It rented out rooms by the week and the month and there were more families and couples living there than she ever would have expected. Most of them, Sarah guessed, had probably lost their homes to foreclosure. Looking at the single moms, the single dads, the married couples with two, three, four, and five kids all crammed into these little rooms, Sarah made up her mind that she would not abandon her home.

In addition to the families there were the obvious prostitutes, the drug dealers, the gamblers, and con men, the solitary men and women living transient, secretive lives better suited to motel life than permanent residence. They made Sarah nervous but curious in a voyeuristic way. She knew she’d be spending many days peeking through the curtains to spy on her neighbors. She never thought of herself as one of those types of people but then she hadn’t lived in an apartment since college.

There were twelve buildings separated by a parking lot and landscaped courtyards. There was a gated pool just a few buildings away and a clubhouse with a modest fitness center that was just two treadmills, an exercise bike, an elliptical machine, and some free weights.

The buildings were only two stories high, stucco, painted tan with orange accents. If it wasn’t for the marquee-size neon sign at the front of the complex it would have looked like just another apartment or condominium complex. Sarah sat on the bed staring at her suitcases. It was still hard to believe everything that had happened to her in the last few days. It seemed like only yesterday that she was waking up to the smell of burned pancakes and frying bacon, eager to finish breakfast so she could have sex with her husband. Now, sex was the furthest thing from her mind and she was hiding out in a motel from a sadistic psychopath with the power to resurrect the dead. It was hard to believe and even harder to accept. She looked over at Josh, who was sitting beside her, staring at the blank TV screen with vacant eyes. She wondered if Josh would ever recover from what he had seen on that tape. She wondered if either of them would.

She stood up from the bed and began to undress. Sarah needed a shower. Her muscles felt tired and achy. She could feel the tension bound up in her sinews like coiled springs. She felt dirty. She imagined that she could still feel Dale’s sweat and semen on her. She could feel blood in her hair, on her skin. She knew it was all in her head but that did not change the fact that she felt grimy.

Standing there naked in front of Josh, she wondered if they would ever regain their sex drives. Josh was not even looking at her. He continued to stare off into space. A week ago Sarah would have been offended and probably would have given him head just to prove to herself that he still found her desirable. Today she was relieved that he wasn’t interested.

Sarah walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The water was hot almost immediately and Sarah stepped in. She closed the shower curtain, but then memories of all the horror movies she’d watched as a kid came flooding back, along with the very real fact that she was now being stalked by her very own psycho, and she ripped the curtain open again. Water sprayed all over the bathroom tiles as Sarah scrubbed the memory of her assault from her skin. Taking a shower with the curtain closed was yet one more thing she knew she would not be able to do again for some time.

When she walked out of the bathroom wrapped in towels, Sarah found Josh sitting on the edge of the bed with his nine-millimeter in his hand. It was cocked and Sarah could only assume that it was loaded. The way he stared at the gun, Sarah knew she had come out of the shower just in time.

“Josh? What are you doing with that gun? What were you about to do, Josh? Were you going to leave me?”

“I can’t take this. I’m sorry.” Josh raised the gun to his head and tears began to stream from his eyes.

“Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you fucking dare, Josh! Don’t! Don’t!”

Sarah held out her hands for the gun as she rushed forward, dropping her towel and pausing just short of snatching the gun away from his head. She was afraid he would pull the trigger if she tried to take the gun from him and one of them might get hit.

“You don’t know, Sarah. You don’t know what it’s like. That twisted fucker, what he did to me. I can’t get it out of my head. I keep thinking about…about…”

Sarah shook her head. Her eyes were wide, staring, unblinking at Josh, darting from the gun in his hand to his eyes and back to the gun. “No, Josh. No. Put the gun down.”

She inched closer and sat beside him. She placed a hand on his thigh and turned to look at his face.

“Let’s talk about it, Josh. Talk to me. But you can’t leave, okay? We have to stay together. I need you, Josh. I can’t go through this alone. You’re supposed to protect me.”

“But I can’t! I can’t protect you! That skinny little geek walked right into our house and raped you while I was lying right beside you. He raped me, Sarah! He raped me! I can’t even protect myself.”

Josh’s eyes were wild. He looked scared. But more than that, he was ashamed. Sarah could see the humiliation written all over him. Dale had shattered his pride, his self-esteem that he had worked so hard to rebuild after what had happened to him as a boy. Dale had huffed and puffed and blown it all away. He had broken him, just like he had set out to do.

“When I was a kid, I was a baseball player, a good one. Did I ever tell you that?”

Sarah nodded. He had.

“That priest, Father Steve. That’s what we called him, Father Steve. Steve Miller was his name. He was the head camp counselor and coach of our baseball team. I was the star. I was better at baseball than I ever was at hockey. Father Steve would always try to get me to stay after practice or after the game to work on my pitch or my swing or help put away the equipment. He would try to touch me but he was a little guy, about five-four. A little skinny guy like Dale. I was almost as big as he was when I was ten. I would just push him away and tell him to stop playing. I would even laugh about it. I laughed about it with the other guys at camp too. He had tried stuff with most of them too. We thought it was a joke. We used to talk about how we would kick his scrawny ass if he ever tried anything. Then one day, we were alone after a game, and he just attacked me. I tried to fight him off but he was too strong. He raped me. I couldn’t stop him. After that I left baseball. When I got back home at the end of the summer I left the church. I didn’t tell anyone what happened at first. I was too embarrassed. I started lifting weights when I was eleven. I used to dream about finding Father Steve and strangling him to death. But I never did. I never confronted him. Then one day I told my parents. My dad slapped me and yelled at me. They put me in reform school where I was raped by a bigger boy and one of the counselors. I started lifting weights until I was too big for anyone to fuck with. I started playing hockey in high school and power-lifting to make myself even bigger and stronger.

“When I was in college, there was a news story about a Father Steve Miller who’d been indicted for child molestation. He was accused of molesting over a hundred boys over the course of twenty years with the church. They were asking for other victims to come forward to testify. I recognized a couple of the witnesses from summer camp. They had been on the baseball team with me. I turned the TV off. I couldn’t watch it and I never came forward. I just tried to forget it all. I started drinking. I was a roaring drunk when you met me. That’s why I started skating so badly. It wasn’t because I didn’t have the killer instinct. It was because I was usually playing drunk. That’s why I got kicked off the team. I started going to AA while we were dating. I wanted to get better for you. I didn’t want to lose you.”

It was the most Josh had ever told her about what had happened. Sarah was sobbing hard when he was done. She hugged him as he lowered the gun from his temple and dropped it into his lap. She could feel him sobbing hard against her. They sat like that for several minutes, releasing all of their pain.

“If you didn’t want to lose me, then don’t lose me now. Stay with me. Let’s fight this thing together.”

Josh sat back and uncocked his pistol.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Not knowing where to find Sarah was driving Dale crazy. He had become obsessed with her. He kept sneaking back to her house to check for her, wary of the police who drove by periodically to check the house, sometimes parking in front for hours at a time, watching his house as well. Dale would simply wait until dark and sneak around back and jimmy one of the windows.

At night they would shine the big spotlight on their side mirror on his house as they drove by, looking for Dale. Sometimes they would get out and check the backyard with a flashlight. Luckily, the yard adjacent to theirs belonged to a house that had been foreclosed on. It was abandoned and Dale would sit in the window behind a sheet he had tacked up as a curtain, watching until the cops went away. Then he would break in. He’d gone into the house three times before he was convinced they had fled. Their luggage was gone and Dale wondered if they had taken some kind of emergency vacation. But something didn’t seem right about that. If the cops had managed to catch Dale they would need a witness. They would have ordered them to stay in town. They had to still be in Vegas somewhere. They were probably in witness protection. Somewhere where only the police knew where to find them.

Dale slipped back out of the Lincolns’ house and hopped back over into the adjoining yard just as the next patrol car pulled up. By the time the police officer wandered around the rear of the house with his flashlight, Dale was back in the abandoned house, watching him from the window. The car sat in front of Sarah’s house for nearly an hour. When it finally drove off, Dale watched its headlights turn the corner, then watched until its taillights disappeared down the street. He waited another ten minutes to be certain that no other patrol cars would be coming to take its place before he climbed into the new Hyundai Sonata he’d picked up at the auction and drove off toward the police station. If the police were the only people who knew where Sarah was, then that’s where he would start.

Dale drove up Washburn Street doing thirty-five miles an hour, and not a mile over. His eyes repeatedly checked the rearview mirror for police cruisers. Getting caught now would ruin everything. He would never see Sarah again if he went to prison.

Crossing Lossee Street was nerve-racking both because of the number of police cars that traveled this stretch of road, breaking the very speeding laws they were sworn to protect, and because of the traffic and the lack of a stoplight. Crossing the four lanes of traffic became a game of high-speed chicken. Dale got lucky and drove across all four lanes without stopping, narrowly missing a battered old truck full of construction workers.

Dale pulled up outside of the North Las Vegas police headquarters on Washburn, parked across the street from the police parking lot, and waited. He watched as police officers, a couple of ATF agents, and even one car that he could have sworn was marked FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION came and went. After an hour neither the black woman nor the old detective with the ponytail had appeared. Dale was growing impatient. The thought of walking into the station and asking for them crossed his mind several times and he might have been desperate enough to try if he had remembered either of their names. He sat there for a moment trying to recall the name the black woman had given him when she’d come to his house to arrest him. He could even picture the business card she’d left him sitting on the top of his desktop computer. He just could not make out the name.

Another hour went by. Dale watched policemen dragging in spitting, cursing, fighting, drunken prisoners. He watched them leave in their civilian clothes and head home to their wives, girlfriends, or a bar stool and a bottle. Dale was getting anxious. Patience had never been one of his virtues and this waiting was testing every ounce of will he possessed. He wished that he had a gun. He wanted to grab any cop at random and force them to tell him where Sarah was. The only thing holding him back was not knowing whether just any cop would know where they were or would even be able to locate them. He’d watched Law & Order enough to know that when the police took someone into protective custody, they kept the location of the witness secret from all but a very limited few.

A black Crown Victoria pulled into the parking lot and as soon as it passed Dale’s car he spotted the ponytailed silhouette. It was the old cop, the one whose throat he had cut in Sarah’s living room. Dale tried to restrain himself from running across the street and tackling him in the parking lot. He watched the old cop walk into the station and Dale sat back and waited a bit longer. The man would be coming out again soon and Dale would have to be ready when he did.

Dale hadn’t really thought of a plan. He didn’t know how he planned on kidnapping the cop or getting the Lincolns’ whereabouts out of him. He didn’t have a gun and he didn’t know if he could get close enough to use the knife. The old detective would shoot him on sight. He still had the hammer but that again meant getting close. Even if he did manage to ambush him again he would still have to drag him off the street and into his car without being seen or stopped. Dale hoped that he could simply follow him right to where Sarah was staying without having to confront the old detective at all. That would have been far easier. Dale was still sitting there trying to figure out how he would get close enough to make the detective tell him where Sarah was when the detective walked out of the station and climbed into an old gray F-150.

The truck left the police station and Dale followed in his Hyundai, wishing that he’d had the foresight to tint the windows or at least wear some sort of disguise. His mind was not working right. He still could not figure out how he was going to get what he wanted from the old detective. He looked at the savage-looking diver’s blade sitting on the seat beside him, rusting with dried blood, the hammer on the floor with bits of skull and brain matter matted onto it. He followed two car lengths behind the old Ford, even though the detective seemed completely oblivious to everyone around him.

The old detective pulled into the parking lot of a bar and grill, hopped out of the truck, slamming the door behind him, and strode toward the bar, eyes fixed like lasers, like a man on a mission. Dale followed. The old hippie cop was either going to pull his old lady out of the bar by her hair or he was a drunk about to go on a serious binge. Dale sincerely hoped it was the latter. It would make his job so much easier if the old detective was barely conscious when he left the bar. The only drawback was that it meant another long wait. Dale turned the radio to an oldies station and laughed when they began playing a tune by the Spice Girls. Who would have ever thought that they would be considered oldies? Dale wondered. Two songs later Milli Vanilli came on the radio, blaming it on the rain. Dale wanted to take the knife and pierce his own eardrums with it. Dale had never been into goth music but when Depeche Mode came on and declared that they gave in to sin because they had to make this life livable, he couldn’t help but sing along. He knew exactly how they felt. Dale’s eyes closed and he sat back and listened to the music. Before the end of the song he was dreaming again.

His mother was standing above him. He could see the claw hammer pull back, raised high above her head. There was blood on the hammer. It was saturated in it. And there were bits of brain, his brain. The ham-mer began to fall again. Everything went black. Dale woke up.

There were tears on his face, and his clothes were drenched in sweat. Run DMC was playing on the car radio and the old detective was leaving the bar. Dale drove the Sonata over to the detective’s truck. His hand gripped the hammer as he inched closer. He was perspiring again, hoping the detective wouldn’t turn around and see him behind the wheel and start shooting. He pulled up beside the detective’s truck, watching as the old cop staggered as if sleepwalking to his car. Dale slipped out of his SUV with the hammer in his hand. The old cop had his back turned, fumbling with his keys, trying to find the key to the truck. Dale hit him once with the hammer at the base of the skull and the detective folded and went down.

The detective lay on the gravel-top parking lot, snoring loudly as if he had just fallen peacefully asleep. Dale dragged him into the SUV, fished in the detective’s pockets for handcuffs, and locked his wrists together behind his back; then he took the detective’s gun out of the shoulder holster and placed it under the driver’s seat along with the hammer and the knife. He reached across the detective and strapped his seat belt across his chest.

Dale put the car in drive and headed back to the abandoned house. He pulled the pistol from beneath the seat and sat it on his lap as he passed Lossee Road, heading back up Washburn Street. Dale checked the rearview mirrors repeatedly. If a police officer tried to pull him over he would have gunned him down without hesitation. He was so close now. Soon he would be back in the cold, dead arms of the woman he loved.

The detective woke up as Dale pulled into the driveway. Dale pointed the gun in his face and put a finger to his lips.

“Shhhhh. You stay nice and quiet or this gun is going to start making a lot of noise. Now, we’re going to get out of the car. I mean, you’re going to get out first. No. I’m going to get out first. Then I’ll come around and get you out. If you yell or scream I’m going to shoot you in the face and leave you bleeding on the sidewalk. Then I’m going to go after that black detective with the big tits and the big ass. Do you understand?”

The old detective looked at Dale without speaking, his bloodshot eyes out of focus and uncomprehending.

“Where is Sarah? You can tell me now and avoid a lot of pain. I know all about pain. I’ve killed more people than anyone you’ve ever met. No serial killer in history has murdered more often than I have. I just bring them back to life. No harm. No foul. But before I bring them back, I make them scream, just like I’m going to make you scream. I’m going to skin you alive, Detective. I’m going to tear you apart piece by piece. But if you just tell me where Sarah is I’ll kill you quickly and then I’ll bring you back and you won’t remember a thing. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

“Fuck off, you little twerp.”

The detective spit in Dale’s face and Dale lashed out and smashed him across the face with the butt of the pistol. This time, the detective took it well. He spit blood onto the windshield and then turned and smiled at Dale with his teeth stained red with blood.

“I was in Vietnam in the seventies and Grenada in the eighties. I have killed a lot of people too and I’ve seen even more death. You, my friend, are a lightweight, a pussy. And you can kiss my ass.”

Dale hopped out of the car and ran over to open the passenger-side door. The detective fell out of the car and Dale caught him. Just as the detective fell into his arms, Dale felt searing pain in his neck and shoulder. Dale tried his best not to scream.

“Stop. Stop. Stop it! Fuck. Stop it!”

The cop was biting him, trying to tear out his jugular with his teeth. Dale cocked the pistol and placed it under the detective’s chin.

“I will kill you. And this time I won’t bring you back. Now, let go.”

The detective released his hold on Dale’s throat. His bite had broken the skin and blood dripped down Dale’s chest and shoulder. Dale wiped the blood from his neck. He was okay. The old detective hadn’t gnawed through any major arteries.

Dale wanted to beat down the detective right on the driveway but he didn’t know if the neighbors were watching and he didn’t want to have to drag the big man into the house by himself. There were also cops still patrolling the neighborhood so the sooner he could get the big man inside the better. Dale walked the detective around to the side of the garage at gunpoint. There was a service door put there by the previous owners that was unlocked. Dale pushed the big man inside.

He walked the long-haired detective into the kitchen where Dale had set up a card table and a couple of chairs.

“Sit down, Detective.”

“Harry. My name is Harry.”

“I don’t give a fuck what your name is. All I want to know is where Sarah is.”

Detective Harry Malcovich laughed.

“So, what are you going to do? Beat it out of me? Waterboard me? Shove toothpicks under my fingernails?”

Harry laughed again. Dale felt his anger rising, taking over.

“What if I do to you what I did to Sarah’s husband?”

The old detective snorted.

“What if I fuckin’ enjoy it, you sick piece of shit?”

“I promise you, Detective, whatever I decide to do to you, you will not enjoy it.”

Dale sat Harry down in the chair and began wrapping his ankles with duct tape. He wound the tape around Harry’s chest a few times, strapping him to the chair. He put another piece of tape over the detective’s mouth. Once Harry was tied tight to the chair, Dale pulled out his diver’s blade, straddled Harry’s lap, and began sawing off the detective’s nose with the serrated knife. Even Dale winced at the sound of the knife ripping through flesh and cartilage. He was disappointed that he couldn’t hear the detective’s screams. Even muffled, they were excruciating.

Blood poured from Harry’s face in a steady downpour. The ragged hole where Harry’s nose had been was now a bleeding crater in the center of the detective’s face.

“You ready to talk now, Detective Harry? Or do I have to pull out my cock and fuck that hole in your face? With all that blood and mucus, I bet it feels just like pussy. Come on, Detective. Don’t make me keep hurting you. Just tell me what I want to know. Tell me where Sarah is.”

The detective shook his head. Dale began to unzip his pants and unbuckle his belt.

“I guess you’re going to get skull-fucked then. Please, don’t think I’m enjoying this. Well, actually, I’m loving every fucking minute of it.”

The detective began thrashing his head back and forth and trying to break free from his bonds. The chair rocked forward and backward and then fell over. Dale straddled the chair and looked down at Harry. The detective was still shaking his head back and forth. Dale knelt on the detective’s chest with his stubby, stiffening cock bobbing above the old cop’s face.

“Don’t worry. I cum quick.”

Dale grabbed Harry’s face in both hands and held it still. The old detective’s screams vibrated up through his nostrils sending tremors up through Dale’s organ. True to his word, Dale ejaculated after a few quick strokes. The detective began gagging and choking as Dale’s seed obstructed his breathing. With the tape still covering his mouth the detective could not spit out Dale’s semen, neither could he breathe through his mouth. First he tried to sneeze out but without nostrils he only succeeded in making cum bubbles. He began making a snorting sound and Dale realized that the detective was trying to suck Dale’s semen down his throat and swallow it so he could breathe again. As Dale watched, the old detective began to heave and wretch. He regurgitated with the tape still covering his mouth and began to spasm and convulse. Dale stood up and tucked his blood- and mucus-slickened cock back into his pants. He started to reach down and pull the tape off the detective’s mouth but then he hesitated.

There was no way the detective was going to tell him where Sarah was. If he hadn’t talked after getting his nose cut off, then he wasn’t going to talk no matter what Dale did to him. He would hunt him down and tell the rest of the police where to find him. But not if he was dead. All Dale had to do was let him choke on his own vomit and he would be out of the way. Dale knew that he could always bring him back to life later, after he had Sarah back.

Dale stood silently, watching. The old cop thrashed about on the floor, slowly asphyxiating, lungs filling with vomit, drowning, arms still handcuffed behind him, still bound to the chair with duct tape, unable to move. His struggles increased in their intensity, then came to a halt. His chest ceased its rise and fall. Dale checked Harry’s pulse. Nothing. He removed the handcuffs from the detective’s wrists, picked up the pistol, and walked back out the door, hoping that he would have better luck with the black detective.

He drove slowly back up Washburn Street to the police station, wondering if he could be stopped for driving too slowly. He speeded up a bit so that he was just a mile or two over the speed limit. The night shift and morning shift were just changing when he arrived. He wasn’t sure what shift the black woman worked or if she even had any set hours. On TV, it looked like the detectives were always on duty. If that was the case, Dale knew that he could be waiting all day. She could be anywhere in North Las Vegas, probably out looking for him.

Hours went by. Dale sat still for a while listening to everything from Stevie Wonder to The Doors to Guns N’ Roses to Michael Jackson on the oldies station. Every once in a while a cop would start eyeing his car suspiciously and Dale would drive off and circle the block once or twice before parking again. There was no sign of the black detective and Dale was getting anxious again. Several times a black woman would leave the police station and Dale would start up his car and prepare to follow, only to realize that it wasn’t her. The longer he sat there the more he began to wonder if he would recognize the detective from every other black lady cop that came out of the station. Luckily, there weren’t many of them.

Maybe that black cunt isn’t even working today, Dale thought and he felt a sudden pang of sorrow. Tears filled his eyes and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. What the fuck is wrong with me? He wondered if he was falling in love with Sarah Lincoln but knew that was impossible. He barely knew her, except for the glimpses of her life he stole hiding out in her laundry room and the feel of her flesh, the sound of her screams. Certainly not enough to fall in love with but yet that’s what it felt like. The very fact that the cops were scouring the street looking for him and he was risking his freedom by parking in front of a police station waiting to kidnap one of the detectives assigned to track him down was proof enough that he had developed a dangerous obsession. He couldn’t help himself though. He had to have her. But if he couldn’t find the black detective he’d never find Sarah. He would have to leave town without her or stay and continue looking for her himself and risk getting caught. If he got caught there would be no more Sarah and no hope of finding a replacement for her.

There are a lot of fish in the sea, Dale thought. If I leave now I might find someone even more beautiful than Sarah. But Dale had never seen a woman more beautiful than Sarah, not even on television. She should be mine, Dale thought. It isn’t fair. Why can’t I have a woman like that? Why does that big hockey-playing blackjack dealer get to have her? It isn’t fair!

Dale punched the dashboard and wiped more tears from his eyes. He knew he was falling apart, losing his grip. All he needed was Sarah and he would be okay. Everything would be good again. Maybe he could kidnap her and take her away with him somewhere. Maybe he would just make love to her one last time. No violence this time. At least not until the end. Then he would strangle her sweetly, lovingly and this time when she woke up, Dale would be gone forever. It sounded perfect. Almost romantic, but Dale wasn’t sure he could really leave her. It was too much to think about now.

The sun was high in the sky before the black detective finally appeared. It was nearly noon. He had been sitting in front of the police station for over six hours. He was hungry and dehydrated. His mouth felt like he had been drinking dust. He licked his chapped lips and squinted through eyes blurred from lack of sleep. The detective was wearing a pair of tan high-waisted pants and a white blouse with billowing sleeves buttoned all the way to the top. She was wearing a pair of black pumps. She looked like she should have been carrying a riding crop. It was definitely her. Dale started his engine.

The detective pulled out of the parking lot in a sleek black BMW sports car with large chrome rims on the tires. If he hadn’t known that she was a cop he would have thought she was a drug dealer or a stripper. She had obviously picked up her taste in cars from the suspects she dealt with.

Dale followed her to the 215 freeway staying two or three car lengths behind as they traveled south toward Henderson. The BMW exited at Green Valley Parkway, then continued south past the Green Valley Ranch Casino and The District retail shops and restaurants. Dale studied the happy couples, the families, the groups of teenage friends, all enjoying themselves shopping, talking, laughing, and embracing. It was a life that Dale could scarcely imagine. He had never had a best friend let alone a group of friends to hang out with. He had never been part of a couple. His family had never gone out for a fun afternoon of dining and shopping. His mother and father had been too busy chasing the next high to take him on any fun family outings.

The BMW turned into a small gated community on Horizon Ridge. Dale waited until she’d turned the corner before stepping on the accelerator and racing to catch the gate before it closed. He just barely made it through the gate and caught a glimpse of the BMW as it turned the next corner. Dale piloted the Sonata through the maze of cul-de-sacs one block behind the detective’s BMW. Dale spotted the BMW pulling into a garage and he stopped his car at the end of the block. He hopped out of the car and jogged down the street toward the detective’s house. The garage door began to close and Dale broke into a full sprint. He slipped under the door just before it closed. The detective wasn’t in the garage. The fire door slammed shut and Dale jumped, startled. She had gone into the house. Dale crept slowly toward the fire door. His hand trembled as he reached for the handle and his heart pounded like a taiko drum. He could not be sure that she had not seen him slipping under the garage door. The detective could have been crouched on the other side, aiming her weapon, prepared to shoot him the minute he opened the door.

Dale placed his ear against the door. He could hear water running in the kitchen and the detective hum-ming and singing some gospel song. Dale inched open the door. The detective had her back to him. She was washing dishes and singing. It was not the gospel tune Dale had thought it was. You didn’t shake your ass like that to gospel.

The door was open a quarter of the way. Dale knew he couldn’t open it much wider without the tightly wound springs in the bomber hinges squealing. He stood in the doorway, a few short feet from the detective, breathing hard. He had the old hippie cop’s .40-caliber Glock in his hand. He could have just shot her in the back. He pulled the hammer down on the pistol and the detective whirled around, reaching for the pistol on her belt.

“Don’t do it, Detective. I will kill you.”

The detective had her gun out of the holster. All she had to do was raise it six inches and it would have been pointing directly at Dale’s chest. He knew she was probably a better shot than he was. Dale had never even fired a gun before but he already had his gun aimed at her stomach, and with her so close, he could hardly miss. All he had to do was pull the trigger. He could tell by the look in her eyes, the doubt, the fear, that she knew he had her. Dale wished that he was a sharpshooter like the cowboys on TV and could have shot her in the arm or something just to get her to drop the gun.

He saw the look in her eyes change from fear to anger.

“Aw, shit!” He knew she was about to shoot him. He knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt. This was why he preferred to ambush his victims rather than confront them face-to-face. You could never guess how someone would react to being attacked. Some became terrified, passive, and compliant. Others, like this detective, fought.

The detective raised the gun. Dale closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The bullet went low, hitting the detective in the belly instead of the chest. The detective paused for a second, wincing and grimacing and belching up blood. Dale waited for her to fall or scream or run. He was still pointing the gun at her. The black woman’s eyes widened in shock, then hardened.

“Oh fuck.”

She started moving forward again, aiming her nine-millimeter at Dale and pulling the trigger. Bullets struck the fire door, the doorjamb, and whizzed past Dale into the garage. One dug a searing furrow along the side of Dale’s head, barely missing his left eyeball. She was aiming at his head. Dale dove behind the kitchen island and returned fire. He struck her in the chest, the thigh, her right arm. She continued moving forward. The large woman dove on top of Dale and began punching and clawing at his face. He felt her hands clamp down on his throat and squeeze his windpipe shut. He was already breathing heavily from the adrenaline racing through his veins after being shot at. With the large black woman’s hands clamped down on his esophagus he could not get any air into his lungs. He still had the gun in his hand and he aimed it at the detective’s chest and pulled the trigger until the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Blood sprayed Dale’s face and arms as each bullet bore a new hole in the detective’s torso. Finally, she rolled off him and collapsed onto the kitchen floor, bleeding out on the ceramic tiles, dead.

Dale coughed and wheezed, then took several deep breaths trying to slow his breathing. His lungs burned with each breath. His heart hammered in his chest. Dale’s arms and legs trembled uncontrollably. He tried to stand but the trembling in his legs almost dropped him back to the floor. He held on to the kitchen island and waited for the trembling to stop. Dale looked down at the dead detective.

Jesus, that was one tough bitch, Dale thought. Even with almost an entire clip in her chest and stomach she had nearly killed him. Dale grabbed her by her legs and dragged her toward the fire door. He spotted her car keys on the kitchen island and grabbed them. He dragged the detective out into the garage, opened the rear door of her BMW, and pulled her up onto the backseat. Dale shut the rear door, slid into the driver’s seat and shoved the detective’s key into the ignition. There was a garage-door opener attached to the visor and Dale pressed the remote. The garage door rattled and squealed in its tracks as it rose. Dale started the engine and put the BMW in reverse. He pulled out of the garage and drove off down the street. Several of the neighbors had come out of their houses. An elderly couple carrying a dachshund and wearing what looked like matching pajamas and slippers tried to wave him down as he sped off down the street. He was less than two blocks away when two police cars raced by him heading back toward the detective’s house with their sirens and lights blaring. If he had been even two minutes slower, they would have caught him.

Three more police cars raced by as Dale exited through the gate and turned back onto Horizon Ridge. Soon he was back on the freeway, headed home, the dead detective bouncing around on the backseat. Blood rolled out from beneath the driver’s seat and pooled under Dale’s feet, sloshing onto his shoes. Dale took the 215 and headed toward North Las Vegas. Back to the abandoned house where he’d left the old detective with the ponytail.

The road began to blur as the pain in Dale’s skull roared like a forest fire. Blood dripped into his eye and Dale wiped it away quickly, squinting to try to bring the road back into focus. Another white-hot flare of agony tore through Dale’s skull and he struggled to keep the BMW from swerving into the opposite lane. Another drop of blood dribbled down Dale’s forehead into his left eye. He wiped the blood away with his wrist and then reached up to touch his forehead. The entire left side of his head was wet with matted blood and there was a neat round hole in his skull just above his temple. The detective hadn’t missed after all. Dale felt around and found the exit wound, a jagged hole in the back of his skull on the right side of his head. The bullet had gone straight through his skull and come back out on the other side. He should have been dead. Dale smiled and rolled his eyes skyward.

“Thank you, God,” he whispered.

Dale looked over his shoulder at the body rolling around the backseat. That black bitch had almost killed him. He had gotten lucky. Not lucky—blessed. God had been on his side. He was on a mission of love, and love was the most powerful force in the universe. He would bring the black detective back and then he would make her talk and then he and Sarah Lincoln would be reunited. He didn’t care if it took all night. This time he would be patient. He wouldn’t rush it. He would start with her fingers and keep cutting until she told him everything he wanted to know. She was tough, but everyone had their limits and he was determined.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Sarah watched a couple fighting in the courtyard only a few feet from her door. The woman had an infant in her arms and was feeding him a bottle even as she continued to berate the man Sarah assumed was the baby’s father. The man was clearly intoxicated and was swaying and staggering as the woman poked a finger at his face and yelled in a shrill voice that felt like it was peeling the skin off the inside of Sarah’s ears. The woman had apparently found another woman’s phone number on her husband’s cell phone and then he had come home several hours late from work reeking of perfume and alcohol. The woman was so angry she was practically screaming. Her voice rose to such a high pitch that Sarah could not understand a single word and doubted that the woman’s husband could either.

The man smiled drunkenly and closed his eyes as if reliving some pleasant memory, clearly not listening to whatever the woman was trying to communicate to him. That further aggravated the woman, who slapped him hard across the mouth with the baby’s bottle, splitting his lip and dropping him down onto the seat of his pants. That woke him up. He staggered to his feet and began shouting back at her. That was apparently what the woman had wanted. She continued to yell at her husband, pointing the bottle she had just slapped him with as she berated him about all his failures as a man, only now she was smiling.

Sarah watched a little longer, then turned back to her empty room. Detective Torres had come to the room a couple hours ago to drive Josh to work. Sarah had been trying to amuse herself and keep her mind off her situation ever since. She had tried to work on her dissertation but still could not get into it, so she had given up on it after writing, and then deleting, two pages of research notes. Then she had gone to the window to spy on the neighbors. She watched a short Latino woman with gorgeous legs and a pair of breasts every bit as full and perky as her own lead a middleaged man in a crinkled suit into her room. The man in the suit was nervously looking around to make sure no one was watching him as he crossed the courtyard with the woman. Sarah was pretty sure that the Latino woman was a prostitute working out of her motel room. She watched kids playing soccer and Frisbee in the courtyard and mothers carrying armloads of laundry and groceries. Then the couple had started fighting and the entire courtyard had stopped to watch.

Sarah was scared. This was about the worst time she could have ever imagined for her to be alone in a strange motel room. Sarah picked up her cell phone and dialed eleven for Detective Lassiter. The phone rang five times before the voice mail answered.

“Hello, you have reached Detective Trina Lassiter with the North Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. I am unavailable right now. Please leave your name, number, and a brief message and I will return your call.”

Sarah hung up the phone and hit redial. Again the phone rang five times.

“Hello, you have reached Detective Trina Lassiter with the North Las Vegas…”

Sarah hung up the phone and tossed it onto the bed. She looked at her running shoes and sighed. It had been days since she had gotten in a good run. She still did not really feel like running but sitting around the motel room was driving her crazy. Sarah grabbed her Asics running shoes and sat down on the edge of the bed. She considered calling Josh to tell him that she would be out jogging in case he called and could not get a hold of her, but she knew that his cell phone would probably be in his locker at work and by the time he got the message she would already be done with her run. She decided to try Detective Lassiter one more time. She picked up the phone and hit the speed dial. Once again she got the voice mail greeting. This time she left a message.

“Hello Trina, this is Sarah Lincoln. I just wanted you to know that I was going out for a jog. I didn’t want you to panic if you called or came by and I wasn’t here. I’ll be back in an hour. It’s almost six o’clock now. I’ll call you back when I get in.”

She called Detective Malcovich next. He didn’t answer either. Sarah guessed that they might have both been in the same meeting somewhere or working on a case or in court or whatever else cops did when they weren’t protecting her from supernatural sex murderers. She left a message for him as well.

“Hello, Harry. It’s Sarah Lincoln. I just wanted you to know that I was going out for a jog in case you dropped by to check on me. I’ll be back by seven. It’s six o’clock now.”

Sarah hung up, picked up her keys, and walked out the door. She had forgotten to pack her water bottles. Luckily, she had remembered her Garmin. She turned it on, then waited for it to locate a satellite. She quickly keyed in a six-mile course and began jogging up Tropicana, away from the strip. She passed the Adult Superstore and tried not to think about how long it had been since she’d had sex with her husband, let alone did anything freaky with him. She didn’t know if she could ever walk into a store like that again without thinking about what that pervert had done to her. She jogged up toward the Orleans Hotel and almost got hit by a car trying to cross Arville Street. There was another sex-toy and apparel shop on the next block. Sarah had never realized before how many of these shops there were in Vegas. She guessed that it was like smoking. You never realized how many smokers there were in the city until you quit and were constantly being accosted by their smoke. That’s how she felt now, accosted by all the commercialized fetishistic sex.

She barely looked at the new strip club that had just opened up across the street from the Orleans as she picked up her pace, enjoying the feel of the wind on her face even if the air was warm and congested with car exhaust fumes. It was better than being cooped up in a motel room worried about being raped and murdered. The Garmin beeped, telling her to pick up her speed, and Sarah lengthened her stride.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Detective Lassiter was a ruin. Dale had skinned the fingers on her right hand one by one, cutting around the base of each digit with a scalpel and then jerking the skin off with a pair of Robogrip pliers like he were removing a condom. She still had not told him where Sarah was. So Dale had gotten more creative. He boiled a pot of water and stuck her other hand in it until it began to blister. Then he took the scalpel and the pliers and de-gloved her entire hand. He wished that he could have removed the gag from her mouth so he could have listened to her screams. They must have been exquisite, he thought.

The detective was strapped to the chair with silver duct tape. Her arms, legs, and head were completely immobilized. She had been almost mummified in tape. He had ripped open her shirt and torn off her bra. Then he had begun cutting on her breasts. He tried to imagine that she were Sarah but her breasts were bigger and flabbier than Sarah’s. They looked more like his mother’s, only in a different, darker color. Dale remembered what his father had done to his mother’s breasts on the night he died.

He cut a line from one shoulder to the other, then down her sides and across her belly in a perfect square. He peeled up the edges of the square with the scalpel and began slowly flaying the skin from her torso. He lifted a flap of skin at her shoulder and grabbed it with the pliers, stripping her skin from the muscle and fat like the peel of an orange. He didn’t care if she talked or not. He was having fun now.

Over the course of an hour Dale had excoriated all the skin from Detective Lassiter’s chest. Her mammary glands were a bloody mass of fatty tissue, lobules, and connective tissue. Dale removed the tape from around her mouth and head. Mucus, saliva, and tears drooled down her face onto her exposed muscles and sinews. Her breath stuttered out in jerks and starts, spraying saliva and blood. She was shivering from shock and the loss of blood. She would be dead soon. But not before she told him where Sarah was. He didn’t care if he had to bring her back and torture her all over again.

Dale grabbed Detective Lassiter by the chin and lifted her head until her eyes met his. Her pupils had narrowed to pin dots.

“Tell me where she is.” He ran the scalpel up the detective’s inner thigh all the way to her vulva. “Or I start cutting down there.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The sky was beginning to darken as Sarah passed Jones Street. Storm clouds rolled in from the south, blanketing the sky. Sarah considered turning back but she felt good. Her lungs felt strong, like she could run forever, and the chances of an actual rainstorm were slim. It only rained two or three weeks out of the year and this was not the season. She decided to keep running.

Tropicana was a long, slow, steady incline, not a steep hill but a gradual ascent that filled your quadriceps with lactic acid and kept the burn going through the entire run. Sarah ignored the persistent burn in her thighs and ran another long block to Rainbow Boulevard. She slowed down for just a moment and checked the clouds above. The sky was completely gray now but still not a drop of rain had fallen. The Garmin began to beep again, urging her on. Sarah took one more glance at the skies, then charged forward. It had been a week since her last run and she had missed it more than she knew. She continued running up Tropicana Avenue another mile. She could see Buffalo ahead, less than a block away.

A black BMW pulled up beside her. Sarah spotted it out of the corner of her eye but ignored it. The Garmin was beeping again, telling her to speed up. She broke into a full sprint for the last block. She knew that she would still have to turn around and run the four miles back to the motel once she reached Buffalo but right now she didn’t care. Pushing herself to her limit felt good.

Sarah reached Decatur Boulevard with her lungs feeling like they were about to burst. She checked her time on her Garmin. It was a personal record. Four miles in thirty-one minutes. She leaned up against the street sign to catch her breath and celebrate her victory. She was just about to begin that long jog back down Tropicana when that same black BMW she had spotted out of the corner of her eye stopped at the corner. An alarm went off in her head too late to escape as the car door opened and Dale stepped out of the BMW aiming a pistol at Sarah’s head.

“Get in the car.”

Sarah looked down Tropicana Boulevard and considered running. The street was packed with traffic. She could take a chance and hope that Dale wouldn’t shoot her in front of so many witnesses. Then she remembered that he was already wanted by the police. There was no longer any need for him to be discreet. If she ran maybe a police car would happen by before he could catch her again. Maybe someone would stop their car and help her. Dale was already coming around the car toward her. It was too late now. He had the gun pointed at her face now.

“If you run I will shoot you dead. Now get in the car.”

He opened the car door and grabbed Sarah by the arm, dragging her inside. Sarah began to scream and punch at Dale. There was blood leaking from Dale’s head and Sarah tried to aim a punch at the wound. Someone shouted something at Dale from a passing car and Sarah hoped that they would call the police, that someone would save her before he got her alone. Sarah felt Dale crack her over the head with the pistol and her legs wobbled. She was thrown into the car and the door was slammed shut behind her. Dale ran around the car and Sarah tried to reach up and lock the door before he could open it. Dale ripped open the door and pushed her back into her seat. He shoved the pistol into her ribs and pulled the BMW back out into traffic.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know. Shut up. Don’t talk.”

There was a desperation to Dale’s movement that Sarah hadn’t noticed before. This was not the careful, meticulous killer who had bathed her and her husband after murdering them both, washed her sheets, and scrubbed the walls and floor. The impulsive madman who had just snatched her off a busy street in the middle of rush hour was an entirely different breed of killer. Something had changed him.

“You could have gotten away. The police let you go. They didn’t have anything on you. Why did you come back?”

“I said shut the fuck up!” Dale slapped her and Sarah’s head spun.

Sarah knew that she was going to be raped and tortured no matter what she did. There was nothing he could threaten her with. No matter what she did the pain would be the same.

“Why me? You could have any woman you wanted, a woman of your own who would love you. I’m married. Why do you want me?”

Dale turned quickly and Sarah braced for another blow but instead he gritted his teeth and answered her question. His face was twisted in anger and some deep emotional pain.

“Any woman? Is that what you think? I can have any woman? Women hate me. My own mother hated me. This is the only way I have ever gotten anyone to pay attention to me. That’s why God gave me this power, so I wouldn’t be alone, so I could make whores like you love me without violating his law. Thou shalt not kill. I can bring them back.”

Dale smiled smugly, proudly.

“But the Bible also says, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’ I’m married. I have a husband. You’re sinning right now, Dale. You’ve been sinning all along. You have to let me go and turn yourself in. You need help.” Sarah was trying her best to control her panic. Tears were streaming from her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter. God will forgive me. He knows what I feel.”

“What do you feel, Dale?”

Dale’s face twitched. He licked his lips and stared straight ahead through the windshield, avoiding Sarah’s inquisitive eyes.

“Do you love me, Dale? Do you think you actually love me? This isn’t love. You don’t hurt the people you love. This is sick. This is twisted and evil.”

“You have to be quiet now.”

“I want to know, Dale. I want you to tell me what you think you feel for me.”

“I loved my mother. She was the first person I ever brought back to life. My dad murdered her right in front of me. But I brought her back. She hated me ever since. She hated what I could do. She kept trying to kill herself and I kept bringing her back. Then she tried to kill me, beat me to death with a hammer. I mean, she tried to. She tried again on the day she died. She poured gasoline all over herself and burned herself up. She tried to take me with her. She poured gasoline outside my bedroom door while I was sleeping and set it and herself on fire.” He turned to look at Sarah again; his face was a riot of twitches and tics as he struggled to suppress his pain. “That’s it. No more talking now. I’ll shoot you if I have to. I can always bring you back. But no more talking.”

This time Sarah listened. She recognized the neighborhood as they pulled up to the gate. She even knew the code on the keypad. One, two, four, three. He was taking her home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“How do you see this ending, Dale? You see us being together forever or are you just going to fuck me one last time and run?”

Sarah was trying to get under his skin. She wanted to ruin whatever sick fantasy was driving him. Take away any satisfaction she could from what he was about to do to her. He seemed to be coming unhinged. Nothing about what he was doing made any sense. He had taken her back to her own house to do what? Rape her? And then what?

“Shut the fuck up and get out of the car.”

“You haven’t thought about it, have you? You’re just making this all up as you go, aren’t you? What are you going to do? The cops will be looking for me. They’ll put you in prison. Then you’ll be the one getting raped every night. You’ll be the one waking up screaming.”

“Get the fuck in the house!”

He grabbed her by the hair and shoved the barrel of the Glock against her temple. Sarah walked with him to her front door, knowing that she was in for unfathomable pain once that door shut behind her. She considered trying to fight him, forcing Dale to kill her now before he could hurt her, but that would only stall the pain. He would just drag her back into the house, revive her, and torture and rape her anyway. She stepped through the door into her home, hoping that someone would find her before Dale could hurt her.

Dale took her up to her own bedroom and pushed her down on the bed. The mattress seethed beneath her, crawling with thousands of maggots and flies. The entire room smelled like death and madness.

“You’ve never had a real woman, have you, Dale?”

Dale clamped his hands over his ears and winced. Blood trickled down his face from the wound in his head, which had started to bleed again. He wiped it away quickly. He squinted and swayed a little. For a moment, Sarah thought he was about to faint or perhaps even die on the spot. She rose from the bed.

“What the fuck are you doing? Get back on the bed!”

He pointed the gun at her and for a moment Sarah thought he was going to pull the trigger. Then he winced and grabbed his head with his left hand, still pointing the gun at her with the right. Blood was seeping from the wound and trickling down his forehead steadily now. He blinked repeatedly, trying to keep the blood out of his eye.

“I’m getting ready for you, Dale. You can’t fuck me if I’m fully dressed. Isn’t this what you wanted? You don’t have to rape me. I’ll let you have whatever you want. Maybe I’ll even rape you.”

She reached out for his belt buckle and he pulled away from her. She guessed he probably couldn’t get it up with a woman he hadn’t tortured and abused. That was part of his ritual, his fantasy. A willing victim ruined the fantasy for him.

“Come on, don’t you want to cum on my tits? Isn’t that what you told the detectives you wanted to do to me? Here I am, Dale. Let’s fuck!”

She reached out for him again and he pulled away again.

“Stop that! Not like that. Get back on the bed.”

Sarah heard a tire screech outside. She glanced out the window and saw Detective Torres pull into the driveway of Dale’s house, throw open his car door, and charge up the walkway to Dale’s front door, his gun pulled. He kicked down the front door and went inside.

Fucking idiot, Sarah thought. Didn’t he notice the car in her driveway?

Moments later the street filled with black-and-white patrol vehicles and one Saturn hybrid SUV. Josh! If anyone had the sense to check their house it would be he. The cavalry had arrived.

“They’re coming for you, Dale. You don’t have much time. You’d better get it up if you want to get in one last fuck before they send your crazy ass to the gas chamber.”

She reached out for him again. This time he had both hands on his bleeding head, eyes closed, grimacing in pain. She grabbed his cock, testicles and all, and twisted as hard as she could. When Dale cried out, she balled up a fist and punched him in the mouth as hard as she could. The gun flew and Dale dropped to his knees. Sarah never let go of his testicles. She was trying to tear them clean off his body. She punched him again, aiming for his bleeding head, and then again in the face. Then she grabbed his testicles with both hands and twisted his cock in one direction and his balls in another. Dale screamed like a woman.

The bedroom door flew open and Josh burst inside. He took one look at Dale lying on the floor with Sarah tugging at his crotch and an expression of white-hot rage twisted his features. He grabbed Dale by the throat and lifted him from the floor as effortlessly as a mother would have lifted a newborn. He began strangling Dale. Sarah did not object. She did not implore him to stop as she would have thought she might have. She remained on the floor, watching her big, strong husband, the love of her life, strangle her tormentor to death, waiting for Dale to die. She wished she had a cigarette. Revenge was even better than sex. Then Detective Torres walked in and ruined everything.

“Put him down, Josh. Let him go.”

The detective was pointing a gun at her husband.

“He tried to kill me! He kidnapped me and was going to rape me!”

“I know, Sarah. But I can’t let him do this. This ain’t the way. You said it yourself, you don’t want Josh going to jail for you and that’s what will happen if he kills him.”

Torres was right. She didn’t want to lose Josh. She needed him.

“Then you kill him. Just shoot him. You kill him!”

“I can’t do that, Sarah. I’m a cop.”

“Where’s Harry?”

“I don’t know. I can’t get a hold of him or Trina. I thought they were at the motel. That’s why I went there looking for them. That’s Trina’s car out front. I need to find out what this piece of shit did to her and I can’t do that if he’s dead. Let him go, Josh! Now!”

Dale was turning blue and had passed out. He would be dead soon. A bunch of uniformed cops spilled into the room. Two of them tackled Josh. He tossed them aside like they were rag dolls and went after Dale again. Three more cops jumped on top of him but Josh continued to fight, almost managing to break free again.

“Don’t hurt him. He’s the victim here. Just get him under control. Calm down, Josh. It’s over. You and your wife are safe.”

Josh stopped struggling but the police officers continued to hold him. One of them had his cuffs out and was reaching down to slap them onto Josh’s wrists. Sarah scrambled over to her husband and pushed the offi cer away.

“Cuff him, not him!”

The officer looked over at Detective Torres, who raised an eyebrow and gestured toward Dale, who was lying unconscious on the floor by the window. His head wound was bleeding profusely now and only then did Sarah realize that it was a bullet wound.

They rolled Dale onto his stomach and handcuffed him. Then they began to search him, finding the diver’s knife, a cell phone, and the keys to the BMW.

“Wake him up! Throw some water on him or something. Bring him here!”

The officers dragged Dale’s limp, unconscious body over to Detective Torres, who led them into the master bathroom. Torres pulled Dale into the tub, then stepped out and turned on the shower. Dale woke up immediately, swallowed a mouthful of water, and began to cough. Torres shut off the water.

“Where the fuck is Detective Lassiter? What did you do to her?”

Dale smiled.

“They’re dead, both of them. They were trying to keep me from Sarah.”

Sarah’s heart sank. Harry and Trina had died because of her.

Detective Torres fell back against the bathroom cabinet, eyes wide, stunned.

“I should have let him kill you, you sick bastard. Where are they? Show me.”

Dale pointed toward the back of the house.

“The house next door.”

Torres nodded to the other officers.

“Go check the house. I’ve got him. All of you, go!”

The officers filed out, leaving Sarah, Josh, and Torres alone with Dale. Detective Torres withdrew his pistol from his holster again. It was a Glock .40 just like the one Harry carried. Just like the one Dale had been carrying. He pointed the weapon at Dale’s head.

“Don’t. He can bring them back.”

Torres paused. Tears were streaming down his face. He no longer looked like the macho asshole Sarah had taken him for, the one he always pretended to be.

“Bullshit. I don’t believe all the magic bullshit.”

“He can. You saw it on the tape. He can do it and if there’s a chance you have to let him.”

The detective’s radio squawked and he removed it from his belt clip, still pointing his gun at Dale.

“Detective Torres? We found Lassiter and Malcovich. They’re dead. He killed them. He tore them apart. It’s awful.”

Torres looked at Sarah, then back at Dale.

“Can you really do it?”

“I have to. Murder is a sin.”

Torres called back over the radio.

“Get everybody out of there. I don’t want anyone touching anything. Wait for me outside.”

“Should we call CSU or the ME?”

The detective looked at Dale with obvious suspicion, then held the radio to his mouth again.

“No. Don’t do anything until I get over there. Just wait.”

He grabbed Dale by the shirt and dragged him out of the shower.

“Come on.”

Together they walked out of the bedroom, out the front door, and into the detective’s car. They drove around the corner in silence. Sarah didn’t want to see what Dale had done to the detectives but knew she had to. She had to see it, but more important, she had to see him bring them back.

They pulled into the driveway where a dozen cops stood in front of the house. The neighbors had come out of their houses to see what was going on and the police were already having a hard time trying to manage them.

“Get some yellow tape up and get all these people behind it. Where are they?”

“In the kitchen,” one of the officers, a short black cop shaped like a fireplug with arms almost the size of his clean-shaven head, replied. Torres nodded and began walking up to the front door, dragging Dale with him.

“You can’t take them in there. It’s horrible. You can’t let civilians see that.”

Torres whirled around, his face twisted into a scowl, tears in his eyes, obviously trying hard but having a difficult time suppressing his emotions.

“That’s my partner in there and a guy I’ve known since I’ve been on the force. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. Just shut the fuck up and keep these people away from the crime scene. I’ll handle the witnesses however the fuck I want to.”

He stormed up the walkway and into the house. Sarah and her husband followed.

The officer on the radio had not been exaggerating. Dale had torn the two detectives to pieces. He had cut Harry’s nose off his face, though Sarah could not see any other wounds or what had exactly killed him, but with Trina, he had taken out all of his fury.

Her torso had been flayed of all skin, as were both hands. Between her legs looked even worse. He had carved out her vagina like he were coring an apple. Sarah could not have imagined the pain she must have gone through.

Torres turned and punched Dale in the stomach, doubling him over.

“If you can bring them back, then you’d better do it right now, and you’d better hope you can do it because if you can’t I’m going to do to you everything you did to them.”

Dale dropped to his knees and vomited onto the floor. Torres kicked him in the ribs, knocking him into his own vomit.

“Get the fuck up and bring my friends back!” Torres pulled out his gun and pointed it at Dale’s head. “Do it now!”

Dale struggled to his feet. His eyes rolled up in his head and he looked again like he was going to lose consciousness but then he steadied himself. He walked over to Harry and placed his lips against the detective’s lips. He took one long breath and breathed into Harry’s mouth. Then he did it again, taking an even deeper breath this time and fully expanding the detective’s lungs. The third time he breathed in and Harry breathed out. The detective began breathing on his own in a fast, panting breath like he was hyperventilating. As Sarah watched his nose began to regenerate, like a film running in reverse. Detective Torres made the sign of the cross and continued to stare as Harry began to blink and open his eyes.

“Oh mi Dios! He did it. This little piece of shit can really do it!”

He removed the gag from the detective’s mouth and Harry bent over and threw up onto the floor.

“Cut him loose!” Detective Torres said, and Sarah began opening drawers, looking for something to cut the detective free with.

Torres grabbed Dale by the shirt and dragged him over to Detective Lassiter.

“Do her now. Bring her back.”

Dale put his lips to Trina’s lips and began breathing into her lungs. Her chest rose and fell with each exhalation. Sarah and Josh stopped what they were doing to watch. The detective’s skin began to reknit itself, growing back up over her chest. The skin on her hands began to grow back also, starting at the wrists and spreading back down over her fingers. Between her legs, the ragged hole Dale had carved in her sex began to sew itself shut and her vulva gradually reformed. When Dale removed his lips from the detective’s she was completely whole again though still unconscious. Dale dropped to his knees at her feet, kneeling in a small pool of congealed blood.

“I can’t fucking believe it. He did it,” Torres said in an awed whisper.

“Cut me the fuck loose.”

It was Harry. He was fully conscious now and struggling to free himself from the tape still binding him to the chair. Josh finally found a butter knife and went to work trying to cut through the duct tape around Harry’s arms. Sarah used a key from her key chain to saw through the tape on Harry’s ankles. It took a while but they finally managed to cut Harry free.

“Where’s my fucking gun? I’m going to put a bullet in this freak’s brain.” Harry stepped forward and Detective Torres grabbed him by both arms to hold him back.

“Wait. Wait, Harry. Wait. Will you wait a second! We have a problem.”

“There’s no problem, Mike. Give me your gun and I’ll fix the problem right now!”

“You don’t understand, Harry. There are about a dozen officers outside who just saw you lying dead on the floor in here. What the hell am I supposed to tell them when you walk out of here looking as healthy as a horse?”

“Dead? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“This piece of shit murdered you and Trina. He tortured you to find out where we were keeping Mrs. Lincoln. I just made him bring you back. You should have seen it, Harry. I’ve never seen anything like it. You were dead as disco, bro, and he just breathed into you and you were alive again. You don’t remember it? Were you in heaven?”

“Heaven? Fuck no! I don’t remember shit except waking up tied to a chair and seeing you three all standing around looking at me. I went for a drink after work. I was walking to my car and then I woke up here. You’re saying I was dead?”

“You were in full rigor. He had cut your nose off and then I think you choked on your own vomit. He had a gag over your mouth and you must have thrown up.”

Sarah and Josh went to cut Detective Lassiter free. She was still unconscious, snoring soundly as if she were merely asleep and not reanimated. Josh took the butter knife to the tape around her arms and shoulders while Sarah squatted down in Lassiter’s blood to cut her ankles free. Harry and Torres were still debating whether to shoot Dale and how to explain to the cops outside why Harry and Trina were walking out instead of being carted out in body bags. Dale had lost consciousness and was lying on his side with his face in the detective’s blood. Sarah had the urge to take the butter knife from Josh and try to cut Dale’s throat with it but it was too dull. She considered stabbing him in the eye with it instead. She removed the last strip of tape from Trina’s ankles just as the woman woke.

Detective Lassiter looked around in a panic. She was breathing hard and struggling to free herself from the rest of the tape while trying to reorient herself. Before anyone could react, she leaped up from the chair and ran over to Detective Torres. She snatched the Glock out of his hand and pointed the gun down at Dale.

“Motherfucker!”

She pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, four times, until Torres finally wrenched it back out of her hands. All four shots had gone directly into Dale’s skull, scattering his brains across the floor.

The front door opened and police officers rushed into the room with guns drawn. Torres turned his back and held up his hands to tell the officers to hold their fire.

“Hold it. Hold it. I got this. It’s all under control. I got this.”

Sarah felt the pain even before her body began to fly apart. She looked over at Josh as his head began to bleed and his throat tore open in the same spot where Dale had cut him in the video they had taken on their spy camera. Harry collapsed first, convulsing on the floor and choking. His nose fell off, leaving a hollow crater in the center of his face like there had been before Dale had resurrected him.

Trina began losing chunks of flesh and skin. She stumbled around screaming as her skin sloughed off in sheets and her vagina fell apart.

Sarah looked down at her body as her chest tore open. One of her breasts fell off and the other lost a nipple and most of its skin. Her stomach ripped open and her intestines spilled out onto the floor; then she began to choke as her throat split wide and blood filled her throat and lungs. She collapsed between her dead husband and her murderer.

As she lost consciousness, she heard Dale beside her begin breathing rapidly. She turned her head and tried to focus her eyes as her vision began to darken. She could make out what was left of Dale’s skull as it began to knit itself back together.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Monica O’ Rourke and Kelli Dunlap for their much needed last minute assistance in proofreading this book; to Tod Clark, my dedicated reader, for his honest opinions; to Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Books for being the first to publish my first novel; to Brian Cartwright for the beautiful work on the limited edition; and Brian Keene, Maurice Broaddus, my wife Christie, and my son Sultan for their constant support and encouragement. Oh, and special thanks to Jack Staynes for his rabid enthusiasm. Here’s a little bit of siction for ya.

Praise for Wrath James White and Succulent Prey!

“This should definitely be on your reading list.”

—Shroud Magazine

“If you want to read something different from anything else you’ll read this year, this is the book to read.”

—Fear Zone

“Succulent Prey reads like a rollercoaster ride through Donner Pass sitting next to Jeffrey Dahmer with an engine fueled by Rob Zombie…Never boring, always exciting and bristling with violent pleasures, White’s sharp, cutting prose…pulls readers along until the bloody end.”

—Cemetery Dance

Other Leisure Books by Wrath James White:

SUCCULENT PREY