Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) (30 page)
Read Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) Online
Authors: Joseph Badal
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue, #Espionage
When Vitas found the Pineview Lodge in the late afternoon, he knew it was just what he’d been looking for. On a side road, a half-mile away from Route 1, it was a collection of run-down log cabins tucked among the trees.
“I vant quietest cabin you have,” Vitas told the bespectacled clerk. “I do not want telephone calls. I vant quiet.”
“Ain’t no phones in our cabins, and you’re the only customer I got, mister,” the clerk said in a slow, bored drawl, scratching his three-day beard with a dirty finger. “Take your pick.”
Vitas selected the cabin farthest from the road. He paid cash in advance for two nights, and then drove to the back of the property. As he parked in front of the eight-step staircase leading up to the cabin, a sudden banging came from the trunk of the rented Buick.
He ignored the noise, took his luggage from the car’s rear seat, and climbed the cabin’s porch steps. Before entering, however, he turned to survey the grounds. Good! Trees screened the other cabins from view. There was no one in sight. In the distance he saw the craggy tops of mountains. He unlocked the door and dumped his bags on the floor. Then he returned to the car, popped the trunk, put one arm under her legs, the other under her back, and lugged Miriana’s bound and thrashing body into the cabin.
Vitas saw the girl’s tears and the fear showing in her eyes. Wonderful, he thought, the destruction process begins
.
He smiled down at her in his arms and licked his lips. He could smell the onslaught of fear and panic in the girl. He’d sensed it many times before with other victims. His spine tingled with pleasure. This little one is going to be the best, he thought once again. Those perfect features. How much fun it will be to smash that nose, to blacken those eyes, to bust those teeth! He couldn’t wait to watch her react to the fear and pain that would assault her brain and charge through her nervous system. Her whimpering only increased the thrill.
Vitas laughed, dropping her onto the thin, green spread covering the bed’s sagging mattress. He ripped the spread off the bed, pulling it from underneath her as though she weighed nothing. Then he quickly untied the cloth strips from around her arms and legs and bound her with them, spread-eagled, to the bedposts.
He noticed her eyes followed his every movement, as though she was his audience, and he was an actor. He walked to the side of the bed and bent over, exaggeratedly sniffing the side of her neck. The combination of perfume, shampoo, sweat, and fear – a powerful, erotic potion – made Vitas’ skin tingle. “Aah,” he moaned. He licked the side of her face and felt her shiver.
Seventeen-year-old Danny Farrell, hiding in an out-of-control growth of scrub oak, tried to make sense of what he’d just seen. This was different from anything he’d ever seen since he began hanging around the cabins. He willed his brain to solve the puzzle. He’d watched the car drive up to the cabin, and seen the man get out and carry the girl inside. Why does he have her in the trunk? he wondered. It was all very confusing. He just couldn’t figure it out. He removed his baseball cap and scratched his unruly blond hair.
What that man doin’ wit dat girl? She was kickin’ and got somethin’ wrapped ‘round her mouth – her arms and legs, too. Somethin’ not right goin’ on over dere.
Intrigued, he thought again about how the big man took the girl up the stairs into the cabin. His instincts told him the man was bad. He didn’t know why he knew that.
Using the trees and brush for cover, Danny crept closer to the cabin. He was going to get a look inside – just like he always did. He could slip inside and watch the people when they were sleeping. They never even knew he was there.
Danny snuck around the back and hid in the trees. He settled his back against the trunk of a giant oak and closed his eyes. They’d be asleep real soon. Just like all the people who stayed in the cabins. Then he’d play a trick on them. He started giggling and covered his mouth with both hands.
“Listen to me,” Vitas said in Serbo-Croatian. “I can make what is left of your life a misery. Cooperate, and I will go easy on you. Understand?” The lie was just part of the process. Of breaking the victim down to a babbling, incoherent sexual tool.
Miriana nodded.
“I am going to take off your gag. If you scream, I will knock your teeth out and put the gag back in your mouth. You can choke on your own blood.”
Miriana nodded again.
The man jerked the gag roughly from her mouth.
“Wa . . . water,” she stammered.
Vitas went to the bathroom and returned with a plastic cup of water. He lowered the cup to her mouth and let a few drops dribble between her lips.
“What . . . what do you want . . . with me? What have I done?” Her voice quavered.
“Ah, my little bird. You have been a very bad girl. Perhaps you will understand your predicament a little better if I tell you I had a very informative conversation with a friend of yours in Serbia. I found her very cooperative – and tasty.” He kissed his fingertips as though praising a fine meal.
“Wh . . . what friend?”
“Olga Madanovic, my dear. You must remember Olga. She told me everything. She just babbled and babbled.”
Miriana shuddered. She looked back at the man, the pistol in his shoulder holster gleaming ominously, his face a nightmarish vision. Then she quickly jerked her gaze away from the man’s piercing, one-eyed stare, letting her eyes fall on a corner of the room.
The man showed his gold-toothed, yellow-stained smile. “Olga told me everything. Initially, she tried not to. But I have great powers of persuasion. Such a beautiful woman. And what a body. She had this golden-blond hair on her arms and on her pussy. But she looked quite hideous by the time I finished with her.”
His face suddenly took on a faraway look, as though he recalled past events. Then he shouted, “Look at me when I talk to you!”
Miriana’s body spasmed at the man’s bullhorn of a voice. She moved her eyes to his face and saw his smile.
“I remember Olga’s terror when she told me about your involvement in the kidnapping. She tried for so long to protect you. She didn’t want to give me your name. But, you see, my dear, she had no choice. Olga was a very strong woman. Much stronger, I suspect, than you are. But, in the end, I destroyed her will. Then I destroyed her body.”
Miriana shivered, noticing the glint of joy that seemed to be in the man’s one good eye, in his smile. There appeared to be consummate pleasure showing on his face, in the way his eyebrows arched, and in the way his breathing had become faster. The plastic glass in his grip suddenly shattered. The noise sounded like a firecracker in the confined cabin space.
Vitas watched the girl’s face and knew immediately her emotions were at the breaking point – especially when he calmly picked plastic shards from his bleeding palm and fingers. He saw the circle of wetness spread over her underpants and onto the bed sheet between her legs. The acrid odor of urine overwhelmed the musty cabin smell.
Vitas shivered. It took Herculean effort not to rip off his own clothes and jump on her. The smell of her fear was such a turn-on. The addition of the urine odor to Miriana’s other scents only excited him further. He stuffed the sock back in her mouth. “I will be back in just a moment, and then we can get started.”
Vitas checked the strips of cloth securing her to the wooden bedposts, then marched out of the cabin and drove eight miles to a pizza joint. He couldn’t get his mind off the Gypsy girl during the drive. It had been tough to leave her lying there on the bed – so vulnerable, so available. But he knew the time would increase her fear. So much the better.
Danny Farrell heard heavy footfalls on the cabin’s front steps and sneaked out from the stand of trees to the corner of the cabin. He peeked around at the front and saw the big man drive away. When he couldn’t hear the car anymore, he returned to the back of the cabin and carefully removed two of the boards covering the crawlspace underneath the cabin floor. He scooted across the earth until he came under the trapdoor and reached up to remove the bolt holding the trapdoor shut. But a movement to his left caught his eye and he froze. It was a raccoon. Danny chittered at the animal, trying to reassure it. It moved back into deeper shadow.
Crouched under the floor, Danny reached up and released the bolt. Pineview Lodge was a bootlegger’s place back during something called
Probishun –
at least that’s what his daddy had called it. And Daddy told him how the trapdoors were bolted from the outside now to keep motel guests from opening them and falling through. Danny thought that was funny. People falling through the trapdoors.
Danny liked sneaking into the cabins when they were empty, and he liked sneaking into them when they weren’t empty, too. He’d watch the people while they slept. And he almost always took something – a watch, a ring, a piece of clothing. Then he’d listen to the people yell at each other, “What’d you do with my watch? Where’s my jacket?” Then he’d put the stuff back. That really confused them.
Danny quietly lowered the trapdoor and silently pulled himself into the cabin.
Miriana opened her eyes and saw a young man wearing a light blue work shirt, jeans, and a red baseball cap standing in the middle of the room. He peered down at her, tilting his head one way, then the other, as though he was trying to understand what he saw. He stared at her near-nakedness, seemingly more confused and intrigued than interested in a lascivious way.
He walked around the bed, inspecting the way her arms and legs were tied to the bedposts. He even pulled on the knots. He had the silky, immature growth of hair of a teenager on his cheeks and over his upper lip. His honey-blond hair stuck out of the cap on his forehead and hung several inches down his neck. The way he looked around the room, the expression on his face reminded her of a little boy. The only thing about him that contradicted the impression she’d formed was how he moved – like a stalking animal. Powerful, but light on his feet. Soundless.
Danny focused on Miriana’s eyes – that pleading look – just like Mama’s when Daddy got liquored up and beat on her. Danny went down on his knees next to the bed. He tugged again at the knot that tied her right hand to the bedpost.
“Wh . . . why you be tied up like that?” he asked.
Miriana groaned.
Danny reached for the gag, but then jerked his hand back. “Mama says I should mind ma own bizness,” he said. “Don’t be stickin’ my nose where it don’t belong.”
But he couldn’t help himself. Slowly, he moved his hand toward Miriana’s face and touched her cheek. How soft her skin felt! Her eyes bored into him, pleading.
“You know you pissed yourself,” he said, as matter-of-factly as though he was commenting on the weather.
Danny stood and padded over to the two suitcases lying open in a corner. One of them had girl’s things in it. He lifted a blue-and-gold silk scarf to his face. He’d never smelled anything so good. It made him feel lightheaded. He went back to the bed, bent over, and smelled the girl’s hair and face. The same wonderful smell.
A car came crunching up the crushed-shell driveway to the cabin. The engine stopped. A door slammed. Danny jerked erect and, in three strides, rushed to the opening in the floor, dropped through it, and closed and locked the trapdoor behind him.
Miriana wanted to scream. You can’t leave me here. Please! Then she felt a twinge of hope. Someone else knew she was in this cabin. Please tell the police I am here,
she prayed
.
Please tell someone.