Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) (36 page)

“But I’m just now gettin’ started. Be patient. We’ll get to you in good time.”

But he did stop his torture for a little while, and appeared to be standing there and thinking about what she’d said. Claire held her breath and hoped to hell that she had gotten through to him. If he would take her out, untie her hands, she could fight him, but she had to get out of the cage first. Then he called out, “I didn’t used to hurt people this bad, you know, tie ’em up and beat on ’em, didn’t even like it, but ever since I got out of that nuthouse and found my own true love had gone and got married to my own brother, that’s all I ever wanna do. Just bust up folks, and I mean, bust ’em up good, too. Know what, I’m just like Bones now. He taught me how to hunt down Fitches just like he does. You know, it just makes me feel good to do it. So just sit back and relax. Your time’s a comin’ up soon enough. Bones’ll wanna do you first, though. Or maybe he’ll just keep you for a while and have some fun with you.”

And then he went back to work, methodically inflicting damage on his barely conscious captive’s body. Claire fought desperately to get out of the cage, kicking at the bars, but she couldn’t break through. Finally, she just gave up and shut her eyes and tried to block out the moaning and groaning and cries of pain. She had seen plenty of awful things in her law enforcement career, but she had never witnessed anything like what Punk was doing to his helpless victim. The abuse went on awhile, with various bats and tire irons and hammers, in sort of a horrendously organized way, as if there was a method to his madness. Finally, Punk or Bones or whatever devil he was, stopped his gruesome work, now panting with exertion but smiling, always smiling. Then to her utter horror, he started licking the man’s broken-up body, especially at the places where splintered bones had pierced the skin. Oh, God, oh, God. He was a sadist. A walking, talking abomination. He was worse than Thomas Landers had ever been. He took more pleasure in inflicting pain than killing his victim.

Punk continued undressing and licking the poor man for a long time. Claire spent that time frantically jerking and kicking as hard as she could on the bars. Nothing worked, the cage was way too strong. She stopped and tensed up to the consistency of set concrete as Punk approached her again.

“You enjoy that, Claire Morgan? Did you hear my pretty music?”

At that point, Claire didn’t know what to do. Play along with him? Or just keep her mouth shut and hope he didn’t get a hankering to play one of his creepy symphonies on her? She decided to play along.

“I heard a bone break when you hit him.” She almost had to choke those words out, and then she hesitated, watching his expressions for guidance. This guy was a criminally insane psychopathic serial killer, and she was the only one around on whom he could take out his mountains of crazy. Across the room, she could hear a low moaning. His other victim had to be dying, had to be. No human being could endure such a beating and ever function normally again. He couldn’t last much longer. She took a deep breath. In, deeply, hold. Out, deeply, hold. Okay, play along. She had to. What else could she do? Decision made, her voice still had a slight tremor when she spoke. “I liked it, I guess. It’s different. I never heard any music quite like that before.”

“You want to hear some more?”

Oh, God. Her bones were certainly next on his bone-breaking to-do list.

“Do you?”

Now his demented grin became dreamy, happy, appeared almost orgasmic. “Each bone makes its own sweet sound, kinda like different notes, and you can put ’em together once you figure it out. Bones told me that. He’s better at it than me. He got lots of practice while I was locked up, but I’m getting better.”

Claire breathed in deeply again, desperately trying to calm raw, ragged nerves, trying her best not to give in to pure mindless panic. She did not want the Bones personality to emerge, not here, not now. Dr. LeCorps made it clear to her that Bones was the brute of the family. But how could he do any worse than the terrible injuries she’d just witnessed Punk inflicting? She had to get him to let her out of the cage. That was her only chance. “Why don’t you let me out of here, Punk? Let me watch you work, up close, where I can hear the music better.”

Punk’s eyes went extremely narrow, latched on her face, watchful, examining her in minute detail, no doubt thinking things over in his damaged, defective, demented brain, maybe even chatting about it inside his head with Brother Bones. Then he seemed to wake up from a short doze and laughed and shook his head. Claire’s heartbeat wavered, not sure yet. “Don’t think I oughta do that. Thomas Landers told me how tricky you are. He said you were always tryin’ to escape when he had you tied up, and that you’d turn on him in nothin’ flat. So I won’t be taking no chances with you, no ma’am. But you can watch me all you want. I’m gonna go now and try to find me another Fitch to play you some tunes on. I try to catch us two instruments every night, you know, one for me to play with and one for Bones. That’s how we gonna get rid of all of ’em. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta dump that guy over there. We got us a good place to put the bodies ’til spring. Nobody’s gonna find ’em, not even Bud and those other cops. You wait right here, you hear?”

“Please untie my hands. It hurts me to lay on them like this. Please, I can’t get out. Please take off the cuffs.”

Punk thought about it, and then he walked around to the back of her cage, reached in and released her. “Now don’t make me sorry I did this.”

“No, I won’t. Thank you.”

Then he grinned at her, the whole time he was donning his winter parka and snow boots and gloves and ski mask and leather fur-lined cap. He headed outside without another word to her, his victim’s broken body hanging limply over his shoulder, but she could see that the man was dead. God, now she’d seen with her own two eyes what Blythe and Paulie had suffered at his hands before he killed them. And how many others had died so cruelly in all the many years that Bones Fitch had been running loose and preying on innocent victims?

Claire renewed her efforts to get out, trying to pull loose the steel bars, using every ounce of her strength to dislodge them. They would not budge. She got her feet up against the door again and started kicking out with both feet, again and again, determined to get out before Punk returned. She did not want to be around when Bones emerged and took over. He would not mess around. He would not show mercy. He would not stand outside her cage and chat her up. This time Black was not going to come and rescue her, did not even know that she was in trouble. This time she was alone in the hidden lair of a psychopath with no way out. But she was gonna survive, damn it. She was not going to die in this awful hole. She was gonna get away. Somehow. Some way. She was not going down easy, no way, she was going to fight for her life. She was not going to let him kill her.

By the time her captor stomped back into the cave, his coat covered with a crust of snow and ice, Claire was exhausted from kicking and jerking on the bars. Then the scariest madman she had ever run across walked right back up to her cage, smile still on his face. Not a good sign. Rigid with fear and tension, she waited for him to speak, terrified he had become Bones Fitch now, come back to take care of her once and for all.

“Couldn’t find nobody else to play. Sorry ’bout that, ma’am. Guess you’re gonna have to do. But just think how good you can hear the music, if it’s your own bones I’m a snappin’ and a poppin’. That’s good, right? Maybe I’ll go easy on you. Your bones are probably real slender and fragile and stuff, like Blythe’s were. You know, easy to crack. But those kind sound good, too, once we got ’em all dried out and hanging up like wind chimes. But it’s gonna hurt you, till you pass out all the way. Sorry, I hate to hurt you so much, you bein’ Bud’s friend, and all, but that’s just the way it’s gotta be. But then, after that, you won’t feel a thing until you’re dead and frozen up in the ice out there in the river.” He gestured with his hand toward the shaft where he’d earlier disappeared with the body.

Long, rippling, and, yes, unspeakably horrendous shivers started shuddering their way down Claire’s spine, like an endless undulating field of wheat blowing in the wind. The very calm and matter-of-fact way he had just described her demise was completely chilling, all right. And okay, now it was pretty damn clear that he planned to beat her within an inch of her life, strike that, beat her to death, and sooner rather than later. Okay. Okay. Now she was in
big
trouble. On the other hand, that meant he’d have to get her out of her cage in order to hoist her up into his favorite pummeling position. At least, that would give her a fighting chance to get away. She could probably take this guy down. In a fair fight. Black had taught her a few new boxing moves to go with her kickboxing prowess. Problem was, she didn’t think serial killers were into fair and gentlemanly rules of engagement. Not from what she’d seen and heard thus far. But he wasn’t all that big or strong, and he sure wasn’t that bright except in planning heinous criminal deeds and escaping from the guys in white coats who were probably still chasing him.

Maybe she could trick him. Wrestle his weapon away somehow. Kill the damn bastard in the most horrible way possible. That one sounded the best to her. Okay, that was her plan, as weak and unlikely and impossible as it was. Now all she had to do was wait for him to decide to release her from the cage and beat her to a pulp, and not panic in the interim or in the aftermath. Stay calm and carry on, as the British used to say during the war. Yeah, right. At the moment, she heartily wished she
was
in England or at least had a grenade to toss at the freak grinning through the bars at her.

“Where’s Bones, anyway?” she asked him. Maybe distraction would work. Chat, chat, and more chat. “I’d sure like to meet him before, you, well, you know.”

“Play bone music on you?”

Claire frowned. Maybe distraction didn’t work with the criminally insane. He seemed to have a one-track mind with Claire being his next musical ditty. “Yeah. Guess that’s gonna happen, regardless of what I do or say, right?”

“Hey, it’s gonna be so pretty. Really melodious, I promise. It’ll make it worth dyin’ for. You’ll be smilin’ the whole time, promise. Everybody that we’ve played tells me that they like it.”

Yes, and she probably would, too, after he broke both her legs with a Louisville Slugger and urged her to utter flowery compliments about his musicality.

“So, come on now, Claire Morgan. Let’s just get you out and movin’ over there and set you up and get all ready for when Bones comes back.” He was leaning down close to the bars now and inserting the key hanging on the chain around his neck into the padlock. “Would you rather that I tie your arms up to that hook Bones put in the ceiling or strap you down on the worktable? You can choose. I don’t mind. Whichever floats your boat.”

“Whatever makes the music sound better, I guess.”

Punk nodded agreement and pulled the lock apart, and then opened the door, still smiling and happy and nuttier than Mr. Peanut. She crawled out on her hands and knees, her legs cramping from being bent inside the small space so long. “I don’t think I can walk yet. Give me a minute to stretch my legs, okay?”

“Sorry about that. I do want you to be comfortable. I promise. That was Bones’s idea, you know, to put our musical instruments inside those old metal punishing cages so people couldn’t really kick their way out. He’s real smart.”

Instruments, again
. “Oh, I know he is. But so are you, Punk. But you don’t know how much that I really like you. I knew it the first time I saw you out there with your brothers.”

“You do?”

“Oh, yeah. Look, I’ll show you.”

Punk looked down at the doubled fist she held up, and then she smashed it into his genitals as hard as she could and then even harder into his nose when he bent over in agony. She heard the melodious crunch of his nose when it broke and welcomed the sound. Warm blood spurted out and hit her in the face and chest, and he staggered backwards, grabbing himself. But then he grabbed her parka with one hand as he fell, pulling her down with him. Claire really started punching him in the face then, aiming for his injured nose and front teeth, hitting him with both fists, but she couldn’t break his grip on her coat. He hit her in the face, a brutal direct hit on her left eye. Stunned, she dropped back, unable to function for a few seconds. Quickly twisting around, he jumped on top of her and straddled her waist, the blood gushing from his nose and down over her face and hair.

“You bitch!” he screamed into her face. But then he calmed down pretty fast. “You hurt me bad, and Bones is not gonna like it. He’s been taking real good care of me since I got back. But hey, did you hear that music when you broke my nose? Huh? Pretty, right?”

Claire was seeing double now, two of him, two of everything, very dazed and not quite thinking clearly. But Punk wasted no time. He jumped off her and dragged her over to the rope that had suspended the other man. He quickly wrapped it around her wrists, knotted it tightly, and then he wrenched her up with one hard jerk that nearly took her arms out of the sockets, and she was hanging in the air, her feet suspended about a foot off the floor. He stood in front of her, wiping blood off his face with a dirty white towel and then holding it against his wounded nose, but he was staring up into her face.

Still woozy, Claire started trying to loosen the ropes binding her wrists together, but he had the knots tied so tightly that it was already cutting off her circulation. He picked up an aluminum baseball bat from the table and held it up where she could see it. She swung her foot out at him, and managed to get him a good kick in the face again. He staggered back a few steps. If he liked broken bones so much, maybe she’d play a catchy tune or two on him before he finished her off.

Standing out of her reach, he wiped off more blood, soaking the towel. His voice was muffled. “You’re pretty damn tough, know that? But you sure shouldn’t’ve done that. Now you’re makin’ me mad.”

“Untie me, and we’ll see who’s tough. C’mon, let’s have a little cage fight, right here, right now. What’d you say? See who’s really the toughest. You or me. Or are you too chicken to fight a woman? Do you have to tie me up to beat me?”

He laughed a little bit but he sounded uncertain. “You couldn’t beat me at nothin’. You’re just some skinny girl, and you don’t have no badge and gun no more.”

“I can fight, all right. Too bad you’re too yellow to face me, fair and square.”

At that, Punk frowned some more and thought some deep thoughts for a second, or two. “I’m not gonna fall for that shit. But know what? I’m a gonna leave you for Bones to play. Because, even though you really got me good, probably broke my nose, and all that, you do got some guts to you. Most of our instruments don’t fight back, once we get ’em down here in those cages. They just hang there and take it and beg and cry. You’re pretty damn different, but kinda stupid, too, ’cause you’re just gonna make both of us real mad.” Now he looked puzzled about it all. Glancing back toward the entrance to the shaft, he said, “Can’t figure what’s keepin’ Bones. He shoulda been back by now.”

“Maybe you oughta go out there and find him. Maybe he got lost in the storm. Maybe a Fitch shot him down and he’s hurt and needs your help.”

“Bones don’t get lost nowhere. He don’t get shot. He don’t get hurt. He don’t never need any help.”

After that, Claire just hung there, hoping to hell Bones never came out to meet her. She sure didn’t want to trigger that. She stared at him, still trying to work the knots free with her fingertips. They gave some but not enough.

Punk leaned against his worktable and stared up at her awhile, and then he said, “Know what?”

He waited as if she was supposed to take some kind of wild guess. She debated the wisdom of just waiting until somebody came and rescued her.
Who
, she didn’t know,
when
she didn’t know, but there were people out looking for her by now and had been for some time, she did know that much. She still had a chance. So she said nothing, and let him contemplate the meaning of life or whatever loony tunes he was playing inside his evil mind.

“Aren’t you even gonna guess?”

“Not much point in it.”

“Okay, then, I’ll just show you what I done.” He started unbuttoning his shirt, and Claire watched warily, hoping that didn’t mean what she was afraid it meant. She had expected assault and pain and broken bones and lots of other horrible stuff, but not sexual assault, not rape. But, and lucky for her, Punk stopped when he got to his insulated underwear and just pulled the top all the way up to his chin. Claire stared at the scars on his chest, just above his nipples. ANNIE. It said Annie, all right, her birth name, the name Thomas Landers called her. Scratched out in some bizarre kind of homemade tattoo.

“Thomas did it, too, carved your name in his chest just for you, cut it with a needle. Then your boyfriend done gone and shot him dead. I’m gonna get him, too, when he comes out here lookin’ for you.”

“Well, good luck with that. He’ll kill you with his bare hands if you don’t let me go.”

Punk frowned. “Better not say nothin’ like that to Bones when he gets here. He’s real sensitive to that kinda thing. And he protects me from people like you.”

So Claire just hung there, limp and completely unable to free herself. For the first time in her life, she realized that she was probably going to die. Right here, right now. Death was finally going to catch up with her in this awful place with this awful man. Her luck had run out. She was never going to get out of this alive. Never in a million years. She was never going to see Black again. Never see Bud or Harve or anybody else, not ever again. The revelation stunned her. She had always known she might get killed in the line of duty, that it was possible, but she had never allowed herself to accept it. Until now. Now she was accepting it. She was going to die the most cruel death imaginable, here alone with a madman. She was going to be beaten to death, just like the caged man and Blythe and Paulie and God only knew how many others.

Trying to swallow down the rising horror and accept her fate with some kind of courage, she began to hope that Punk or Bones, or whichever one of them killed her, would play his bone music staccato style and get it over with. But he had taken plenty of time with the other man, time she had witnessed and now would experience herself. But no, no way would she let that happen. She’d goad him into finishing her off quickly, if she had to. She sure didn’t want to be awake and aware when the obscene body licking started. She resigned herself, tried to prepare for the first brutal swing of that bat, tried to control the paralyzing fear that was gripping her. She did not want to die, not here, not like this.

Then suddenly, in the utter stillness, in the endless waiting for the violence to commence, a voice rang out in the distance, echoing down the mine shaft, a woman’s voice, like an angel calling down from heaven.

“Claire! Are you in here?”

“He’s got a gun. . . .” Claire screamed to Laurie Dale, but that was all the warning that Claire could get out before he busted her mouth and nose with a quick jab of his fist. She felt an explosion of pain, went limp on the ropes, head lolling forward, only half conscious, but she heard him running. Heard multiple shots fired, heard somebody fall and crash into something. Then somebody was jerking her head up by the hair, and it was Laurie Dale’s beautiful green eyes that Claire saw, worried and frantic and focused on Claire’s face.

“Claire, Claire, can you hear me?”

Claire managed to nod, but then the ropes were being cut and she collapsed down into the FBI agent’s arms. “I got him, Claire. He’s dead. He’s not going to hurt you anymore. Oh, God, look at your face. What did he do to you?”

“How did you . . . ?” Claire kept trying to talk, but her injured mouth wouldn’t quite move the way she wanted it to. She could taste her own blood, warm and metallic and sickening.

Laurie was on her knees on the floor beside her now. “I came out to check on you when you didn’t come back, saw the tracks in the snow leading down onto the Fitch property to some shack and then more footprints led me out here. C’mon, we gotta get you outta here and call this in.”

Laurie dragged Claire up onto her feet, and Claire found she could walk and her dizziness began to clear a bit. Punk/Bones was laying on his back on the ground several yards away, the back of his head completely gone. Laurie was a good shot with that .357, all right, and thank God that she was.

“Think you can walk? I got the snowmobile right outside. All you have to do is get to it,” Laurie said anxiously, still supporting Claire with one arm around her waist.