Darkness on the Edge of Town (37 page)

He had Lundy cuffed and on his stomach, one knee pressed into his back. Thinking about how much he’d like to pound his head into the pavement, crack it like an egg.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“I don’t know—“

“Don’t fuck with me.  Where is she?” Pressing his knee harder.

“She’s in there.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t my fault.  I tried to save her but he got her anyway, I tried, I tried…”  Blubbering.  New blue Keds skating in the dirt.

Buddy fighting panic now—who got her?  “Is she hurt?”

“I don’t know—I don’t think so. She looked okay when he took her in there.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two, three hours ago?  I can’t remember—it could be longer than that.”

“Who is
he
?”

“Dark Moondancer.”

He shook Lundy until he rattled.  “Are you playing games with me?  Because if you are—“

“No no no!  Dark Moondancer. That’s his
name
.  It’s the truth, I swear to God, it’s his nick.  He took her away from me, all I ever wanted was for her and me to—”

“Shut up!”  He heard the savagery in his own voice. 
Out of control
. Gritted his teeth, tamped down his revulsion. His voice quiet. “If you don’t shut the fuck up about that I’ll kill you.” He took a deep breath.  “Tell me about Dark Moondancer.”

“I don’t know him, really, except from the Internet.  He…he and I have had transactions over the years.  He knew I was in town and he wanted to…to meet Summer.”

Buddy gave him a hard slap to the head.  “Go on.”

“He’s evil.  He likes torture.  That’s why I refused to let him meet Summer. I wanted to protect her.”

“What are you saying? He’s torturing my daughter in there?”

Lundy gasped.  “Your daughter?”

“Answer the question.”

“Oh, God. Ohmygod, I’m dead. Oh God, please don’t hurt me!”

His voice hopeless.

Buddy felt something crack in his heart.

Laura stared, taking in everything at once but unable to completely assimilate it.  Breaking it down object by object, things she could name.  A gas can on the floor.  A trouble light.  Extension cords.  A video camera.  A work table. Tools arrayed neatly on the table’s pristine surface—pliers, a vise, an electric drill, a staple gun.  The tool cabinet was like the one her father owned; candy-apple red.  The kind you got at Sears.

Shackles bolted to the walls.  Meat hooks dangling from the ceiling.  A machine that looked custom-made, padded, something you’d see in a gym, but with shackles, chains, and pulleys at each end. A modern-day rack? Photos tacked to the wall, 8 X 10s of the hell he had commited on young women and girls—she counted three different women, photographed from all angles. Tied up, eyes bulging with fear. Before and After shots.

Digital photos of Jessica Parris after death. 

A place for Let’s Go People! to unwind.

Laura took it in, trying to stay clinical.  She almost lost it as she stared at the mattress on the floor, though, soaked through with old bloodstains. So many reds, browns and blacks they formed a hard, shiny slick.

Mickey prodded her deeper into the room.

“You two girls know each other?” asked Galaz.

When Laura finally looked at Summer, she felt both relief and revulsion.

The girl was bolted to one wall, huddled down as far as she could get but her arms were held high above her head.  Wearing a little girl’s dress.

Unhurt, physically. But how did you face something like this without losing a grip on your soul?

Twelve years old

She looked at Galaz, the supercilious smile on his face.  Seeing living, breathing women as something to torture for his pleasure, because he was so empty he couldn’t get a high any other way. 

If there’s a way for me to kill you, she thought, I will.

Buddy secured Lundy to the tree with the cuffs after tearing strips of the man’s shirt for a gag.  Arms behind him, cuffs looped around a sturdy bough. Lundy on his knees. 

That would hurt before too long.  His back would be in agony.  Good.

Buddy started for the back of the warehouse. 

The cars were there, Laura Cardinal’s and Galaz’s.  He made a circuit of the building, which was uniformly dark except for the one area near the corner, where a dim light leaked out through the holes in the painted- over windows.

That’s where they were.

Buddy leaned his back against the brick, which still retained heat from the day.  He needed to call it in. The cell phone would have to do.  But before that, he took the knife he always carried and stabbed the tires on the two vehicles. 

He called 911, explained who he was, that he was a cop.  Gave the exact location.  The South Tucson police were on their way. He got through to DPS, to Jerry Grimes. 

He’d give them five minutes.

Laura was aware of Galaz standing near her. He was smug, pleased with himself. But there was something else.

Something going on with him.

Working out a problem.

“Why don’t you check her shackles?” Galaz said to Harmon.

“They’re fine.”

“Humor me, Mick.”

Ponderously, Harmon walked over to Summer and bent down to check.  He straightened, said, “I told you they were fi—“

The bullet took him in the chest, throwing him against the wall.

Galaz was holding Laura’s weapon, looking down at Harmon.

“Sorry, Mickey, there’s been a change of plans,” he said. 

Mickey started crawling along the floor.

Galaz crossed over to Mickey, his latex-gloved hand swooping in to take the gun from Harmon’s shoulder holster.  Harmon gasping, still crawling.

Galaz staring down at him.  “You look like a snail, Mickey.”

He followed as Mickey Harmon crawled, his fancy shoes inches from his face.  Laura saw the narrow planes of Galaz’s face—rapt attention.

She looked from him to the work table. Less than two feet away, but her muscles had gotten cold again from not moving, and when she tried to move in that direction her body resisted like wood.

Had to do it.

Couldn’t.

She looked at Summer. The look on her face.  Jesus.

Throat constricted, aching, clenching—she inched her way, one eye on Galaz, the pleasure he got from watching Mickey crawl.

“Almost to the door, Mickey,” Galaz said.  “If you make it before dying, I’ll let you go.”  Pocketing her gun.  Holding Mickey’s.

Laura was almost to the table.

Mickey, two feet from the doorway.

Galaz, in a world of his own.  The look on his face orgasmic. 

The knife was closest. She didn’t know if she could even wrap her crippled fingers around it. Even the idea was agony. 

She heard a train horn. 

Galaz still had his back to her, but he seemed to have lost interest in Mickey, who had fallen short of his mark and lay either dead or unconscious short of the doorway.  Galaz oddly still. Thinking?

Laura’s fingertips touched the knife.  She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, tried to grasp it.  How she’d be able to do anything when she couldn’t even wrap her fingers around the knife, she didn’t know.

Suddenly, Galaz turned.

Laura started and the knife scuttled out of her fingers.

Galaz looked from the knife to Laura. “Can’t do it, can you, Detective Cardinal?  It must be frustrating, not being about to tell your body what to do when you’ve done it all your life.”

Unconcerned, he crossed to the place Laura had been.  Like a choreographer, he eyed the distance between that spot and where Mickey Harmon was shot.  “This can work,” he said, and nodded. “You shoot at Mickey and Mickey shoots at you.  The problem is—maybe you can help me figure this out—what about all my hairs, fibers, fingerprints?  Semen?  What would you do?”

Laura needed to get the knife.  But she’d pushed it even farther away, and her hands were cramping up even worse.

Galaz spun around and scanned the room.  Frowning. “Have to burn the place down.  That’s the only solution, don’t you think?” Talking more quickly now.  “He shoots you but you shoot him, he’s wounded.  He’s got to cover this up though. So he pours the gas and lights a match and then tries to get out.  Does that sound plausible?”

Not expecting her to answer. 

“Or, he’s about to pour the gas and lights it just as you shoot him—I don’t think it really matters.  The important thing is the Point of Origin.  It’s got to be right…here.”

He strode over to where Mickey was when he was shot.  Only a couple of feet from Summer.  He had been checking her shackles just before Galaz shot him.

Outside in the night, she heard a train coming, horn blaring to warn people away from the tracks.  Laura looked at Summer.  Fear shiny in her eyes.  Watching Galaz, understanding what he was saying, that the Point of Origin would be at her feet. 

Galaz looked at Summer.

“Something I’ve always wanted to do—the Joan of Arc thing.  Too bad I won’t be here to see it all.”  He winked at Summer and walked to the gas can, hefted it up.  Held it near her, watching her face. Completely absorbed in her fear. 

He looked bemused.  Oblivious to Laura.

Laura said, “What about Musicman?”

Startling him out of his reverie. “Musicman?”

The train was coming.

“Weren’t you going to bring him here?  To see Summer?”

“What?  No.” He shrugged.  “You can’t do everything.”

“But he defied you.”

Wheels ticking on the tracks, louder and louder.

“Can’t do everything,” Galaz repeated, uncertain.

The train upon them now, the rumbling shaking the room.  A sweeping wall of sound, so big that for a moment it obliterated all thought. They were in the maw of sound.

Concentrate!  She had to try one more time for the knife.  She straightened out her fingers as far as they could go and pressed down on the handle, edging it to her by pushing the handle down against the wood.

The thundering in her ears. Fear pushing its way up into her throat.  “Musicman  wins, then” she said.

“He won’t win.  He won’t get Summer now.” Galaz unscrewed the cap and sloshed some of the liquid on the floor. The smell hit Laura, the rank high smell of pure gasoline.

The thing she feared most was dying in a fire.

Summer, whimpering with fear.

Get your fingers around—

Galaz produced a silver lighter from his pocket.  Paused.  Laura could see he was still working it out in his mind, seeing the evidence the way the fire marshal would see it, the detectives, the ME. 

Get your fingers around the knife—

The sound of the train abating, now, the wheels the noisiest part.

Laura curled her fingers.  It hurt like hell, but fire would hurt worse. She closed her eyes and with an act of will, squeezed.  The knife was in her hand.  She’d have to rush him, but she could barely move. 

She’d just have to aim herself at him, keeping the point of the knife to the front.

Five feet away. 

She clenched her muscles even more, the pain excruciating.

Galaz’s back toward her.  Splashing more gasoline on the walls, the windows.

Harnessing her adrenaline.  Clamping down on muscles already stressed beyond the breaking point. Take a deep breath.

Now
.

When Buddy heard the shot, he reacted immediately. Drawing his weapon, he tried the metal door but it was locked.  He stared at the windows, looking for the weakest point.  The panes were fashioned of glass and wood, and in some places the wood strips were broken. 

There would be no element of surprise.  They’d see him coming.

Then he heard the train.  He realized the tracks went right behind the warehouse.  All he had to do was time it right.  He doubted anyone would hear the breaking glass.

He took off his shirt and wrapped it around his gun.  Picked the place where the wood had splintered, where there were stress fractures. 

Waited.

The train coming, coming, the rumbling getting louder and louder until it enveloped him in an ungodly roar—

Now.

Laura pushed off from her feet and launched herself toward Galaz,  flat end of the knife handle jammed into her side to keep it steady, using her body as a projectile. Trying not to think that it could poke her own guts out.

Landing far short, crashing on her hands, her knees, her chin, her hand cut, the knife skittering harmlessly across the concrete.

Galaz spinning around, his face a mask of surprise.

The stink of gasoline everywhere.

“You actually think—“

Shock in his eyes as a gunshot exploded through the small space, the momentum spinning him around and flipping him backwards into the wall.

Head cracking—an awful sound.  Holding his side, his mouth open and working.

In his hands, the lighter.

Manicured fingers flicking.

A rough male voice yelling, “Drop it!  Do it now!”

Laura recognizing the voice but not sure—

An incandescent moment when metal struck flint, ignition.  Spark—a runnel of flame swirling up Galaz’s arm to his waxy face and up the walls.

The delight on his face turning to terror.

A blur beside her: Buddy Holland going to his daughter.

Laura thinking: Shackles.

Buddy from cop to father, his face twisted in terror as he ran to his daughter, pulled at her shackles, saying, “Keys keys keys! 

Frank Entwistle, peering down at her.  “You okay?”

What do you think
?  But she didn’t say it.

“What about Mickey?” Entwistle asked.

“Mickey?” What about him?

Entwistle nodded toward the man lying in the doorway.  “He had the key to your handcuffs, didn’t he?”

Then she remembered: Mickey bending down to check Summer’s shackles.

Suddenly, a loud
whoosh
! Galaz lit up like a burning straw man, sheets of flame spreading to the roof, the whole place getting darker, almost black. Boiling black smoke on a river of flame—