The Feeder (10 page)

What mattered was my sister’s murderer was dead and could never harm another.

I stepped back and took in what I had done. Killing Vinnie had been a lot easier than I’d expected. I had no doubts about my ability to kill another human being after Louie. It was just that I’d expected Diamond Vinnie to be a much tougher adversary. The mighty Feeder had fallen with barely a fight. The LAPD’s training must not be too shit-hot if it was this easy to take out one of their finest.

Something didn’t quite sit right, and I hadn’t yet put my finger on it. It puzzled me – a man capable of the type of explosive fury that had killed Camille hadn’t displayed a shred of that rage when I was threatening and humiliating him. Vinnie’s lack of fight had been disappointing, to say the least. He had died as pathetically as he had lived.

I looked back at the fat, balding little bastard I’d just killed. He wasn’t in very good shape for a cop either.

Wait.

I replayed the day of Camille’s murder in my mind. The angry man who had stormed out of the Dufferin. The shadowy figure in the alley the night before.

The
tall
angry man.

The
tall
shadowy figure.

The plump, doughy man who lay gutted in the bathroom wasn’t tall. He hadn’t even been angry. Just frightened – and desperate to convince me he hadn’t killed Camille.

I searched his room for signs of him being a police officer. I found no badge, uniform or even a gun. The room looked like a typical scumbag drug addict’s room: drug paraphernalia on the dresser, empty beer cans and liquor bottles, shabby clothing strewn on the floor and a few jerk-off magazines scattered around.

Where was the knife he had used to slice up Camille and the victim at the White Surf? Where were the keys to the BMW he had been driving? This was not the room of someone who owned a BMW. I’d be surprised if he owned a car at all. I found his wallet in the pocket of a leather jacket slung across the chair. I looked at the identification and confirmed that this man’s name was Vincent Dimone. No mistaken identity.

A further search of the room turned up nothing else of value except for a drawer filled with drugs. There was heroin, measured into tiny plastic bags like the one I’d found in Camille’s room at the White Surf along with a bag of what looked like crack rocks and several prescription bottles with different people’s names on them – containing various barbiturates and some stuff I didn’t recognize. A dark brown bottle rolled into view. The label had a picture of a dog and a cat on it. On closer inspection I identified the contents as animal tranquilizer: Ketamine, A.K.A. ‘Special K’, on the street. I took everything except the crack, stuffing it all into a plastic bag I found on the floor.

* * *

Back at the motel, I considered what I had done. I had killed ‘Diamond’ Vinnie Dimone. His identification had confirmed it. All indications were, Vinnie was not the tall man I had seen in the alley the night I was shooting the marbles. He was definitely not the angry, non-balding man I’d seen storming out of the Dufferin hotel and speeding away in a BMW bound for Malibu.

Vinnie was not a cop, and he was not Camille’s killer. If not Vinnie, then who had killed Camille?

I didn’t feel any remorse for killing an innocent man because Vinnie was far from innocent. He was a filthy drug dealer who may have been supplying her with some of the drugs that would eventually have ended her life.

~ Chapter 13 ~

Hollywood’s Bad Boy

So far I had killed two scumbags, but my sister’s killer was still walking around alive somewhere. With the first two I’d had names to go on but now I was truly grasping at straws. I’d been sure Diamond Vinnie was the cop who abducted her from the White Surf but after meeting and killing the asshole it was pretty clear he had never spent a day in the police academy.

I sat in bed back at my motel, reading Camille’s journal again. There had to be a clue somewhere in those pages. She had written about all of the others; she must have said something I had missed. Something that would lead me to the cop. My eyes welled up once again as I re-read the passages about her being duped into prostitution under the premise that what she was doing would lead to a movie career. She had fucked creepy old men and b-list celebs and never saw a dime of the money.

I remembered the posh penthouse where, as far as I knew, Louie still lay dead in a pool of his own blood (and probably other bodily fluids). How many women had fucked men for money to pay for the lifestyle he had been leading? It was mind-boggling.

One name leapt at me from the page: Dirk Davis. I reached for the tabloids I had found in Camille’s bag. One of them featured an article comparing Davis to Charlie Sheen. As I read it, I shook my head at the idiotic shit they had written. At one point in the comparison between the two so-called ‘Hollywood Bad Boys’, it was determined Dirk Davis beat Sheen hands down when it came to being a troublemaker. It said,
Tiger blood? That’s nothing! Dirk has werewolf blood!

The article mentioned the sexual assault charges, which he had beaten but didn’t reveal any of the sordid details of the alleged attacks. According to Camille’s journal, Dirk had done horrific things to women unfortunate enough to find themselves alone in his company. One of those women had been Cammie herself. After re-reading my sister’s account of Dirk’s attack on her, I knew who my next victim would be.

Dirk may not have killed her but Cammie had a score to settle with him.

Getting close to a superstar of Dirk’s caliber might be tricky but I had a few advantages, one of them being Camille’s journal. Another was the fact that I had her face. Cammie’s journal painted a clear picture of where Dirk could be found on any given Saturday night. He liked nightclubs and was a VIP regular in several of the strip bars down on Sunset.

Camille also had a phone number with his name beside it. I decided to try it first. I was winging it, but I’d been winging it ever since my plane had touched down at LAX a little more than a week ago. I honestly didn’t expect Dirk to answer the phone. I didn’t know what I was expecting, to tell the truth, but he picked up on the first ring.

“Dirk.”

“Hi baby,” I whispered.

“Well hello to you too, sweetness. And who’m I talkin’ to?” His Southern drawl sounded as sexy over the phone as it did on screen.

“It’s me. Aurora.”

“Sorry babe, drawin’ a blank. You hot?”

“Ooh yeah, I’m fucking hot. And blonde. You might not remember but you gave me the best assfucking of my life.”

There was a pause.

“Ya gotta narrow it down a little more than that. I’m a busy man.”

“Oh, you’ll remember when you see me. And honey, you DO want to see me, I guarantee it. I have a present for you.”

“Oh?”

“I have a friend who’s dying to meet you. She’s real freaky and says she will do things even you couldn’t imagine. I made her a bet that she couldn’t out-kink you. I told her you were the kinkiest dude I’d ever met and she didn’t believe me.”

“Ain’t nobody freakier than me. You know that if you’ve met me. If I’ve done you and you’re a-comin’ back for more, then you’re a bit of a freak yourself.”

“You have no idea,” I said with absolute honesty.

“Why don’t you bring your friend and meet me tonight? I’m in the mood for a little dirty.”

“Where you going to be?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

It was too easy! I couldn’t believe my good luck. I gave him the room number of the hotel I had booked myself into that morning using Camille’s fake identification. I had planned to spend a couple of nights in the neighborhood where Dirk was known to hang out and then go hunting; one nightclub after another if necessary. As it turned out, hunting would not be necessary. The prey was walking right into my trap, even though I hadn’t intentionally laid a trap.

I had a couple of hours to prepare for his arrival, so I dashed out to pick up a few supplies.

* * *

Dirk arrived on time, eyeing me up with a lewd grin as he sauntered into the room.

“I remember you now. Back for another ride, eh?”

I nodded as I pushed him toward the bed.

Dirk smirked.

“Baby likes to play a little rough?” he taunted.

“Sure. Why not?” I purred.

I continued to back him toward the bed, letting him reach around behind me and run his hand over my ass, but stopped him before he managed to touch the front of my crotch.

“Where’s your friend? In the shitter?”

“No. But she’ll be there pretty soon.” I slid his shirt up to his neck, exposing his smooth, well-toned chest and abdomen. It was almost a shame to mar such a perfect surface. Almost.

I leaned forward and ran my tongue up his breastbone and across his pectorals, teasing first one nipple, then the other. His hands groped their way toward my chest, seized my bustier inches from where I had tucked the Beretta out of sight, and attempted to yank my top down.

It’s go time. Now or never.

I pulled his shirt up over his face, forcing him to raise his arms. Blinded with his arms over his head, he was easy to throw off balance. I shoved him hard, toppling him backward onto the bed. Before he could recover I pounced on him, driving my knee into his balls and clicking the handcuffs onto one of his wrists.

“You fu-” he sputtered, struggling to free his face from the shirt.

When he finally worked his head free, he found himself staring into the barrel of my gun.

“Say hello to my little friend,” I snarled.

I would have burst out laughing at the cheesy line if I hadn’t been preoccupied with forcing Dirk Dickhead onto his front and locking his hands together behind his back.

Dirk bucked and thrashed, trying to throw me off. I jammed the gun into the back of his neck.

“Stay still or you’re Christopher fucking Reeve. You’ll be rolling down the red carpet in diapers.”

That subdued him somewhat but he continued to sputter profanity into the bedspread. I brought the butt of the gun down on the side of his face, opening a gash across his handsome cheek with a satisfying crunch. Blood gushed from his mouth and he spat out a broken tooth.

I’d anticipated this one would be a fighter, and was ready with some men’s ties I’d picked up on my last-minute shopping trip. One of them I had already tied in a noose, which I used to tether his head to the frame at the side of the bed. I pulled his pants down and used his belt to bind his knees together. The second tie I used to lash his belt to the bed frame on the other side of the bed. A strip of duct tape over his mouth and he was ready.

Dirk was bound crosswise to the bed, tethered at the neck and knees like an animal ready for slaughter. With his hands cuffed behind his back, he was putty in my hands. All I had to do was lift his arms each time he resisted and the pain in his shoulders forced him back into submission.

I paused for a moment to catch my breath. Hollywood’s biggest asshole now lay face down across the bed, bare-assed and helpless, about to become an even bigger asshole. I wished I could take a picture of him and sell it to the tabloids for a million bucks.

I laughed. “Well, douchebag, what should we do first? My friend mentioned how much she wanted to fuck you up the ass. Maybe we should start there.”

He renewed his struggles but only succeeded in sliding his hips further off the edge and tightening the noose around his neck.

“You like the autoerotic asphyxia thing? Keep struggling and you’ll get it,” I told him. “It would make a great headline in the tabloids.”

I grabbed a pillow from the bed to muffle the shot, in case the noise from the television wasn’t quite enough. I had chosen a Western with plenty of blazing guns on the movie channel to help with the sound effects. I placed the barrel of the gun at the entrance to his ass.

“Looks like my friend is in the shitter now, dickhead. Time for you to get penetrated.”

I fired one shot, directly up his ass.

“This is for Camille and Lucille and all the other girls whose lives you ruined.”

Muffled by the duct tape, his screams sounded like, “Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!”

“I knew you’d like it,” I told him.

He thrashed and fought with renewed fury, nearly upsetting the bed in the process. The noose around his neck grew tighter the more he struggled. His eyes bulged and his face flushed about fifty shades of purple. I freed him from the bed so he wouldn’t choke to death and let him flail his way onto the floor.

Still bound at the hands and knees, he looked like he was doing the Worm. I broke out in giggles at the sight of him. It reminded me of a scene from Nathan Tackett’s
THE
, a satirical horror novel I’d read, in which a guy was nearly eaten alive by a demonic Snuggie.

I stood and watched him for a moment, analyzing the way it made me feel. I enjoyed seeing him suffer, after reading about the horrible things he had done to Camille and all those other women. I felt justified in administering his punishment. He deserved it. He was a brutal, sadistic person.

So what did that make me? Was I some kind of hero for doing what I’d just done? My actions were every bit as sadistic as his.

No.
I wasn’t. I was ruthless but not as sadistic as Dirk. There was a difference. He preyed on the vulnerable and tortured them for his own sick sexual gratification. I was simply evening the score for the ones who couldn’t.

For the ones who were no longer alive.

It would take a long time for him to die from a gunshot to the ass. It would be a slow and agonizing death, too. I wished I could leave him like that and let him suffer but it was too risky. There was a chance he would be found and get medical attention in time. If he survived he would be able to identify his assailant – me. I could not leave until Dirk was dead.

This one would make the front page of every newspaper and tabloid, considering his celebrity status. I would have to make it good.

I used my foot to flip him over onto his back.

This would be my masterpiece. With Dirk subdued and rapidly going into shock, he was a blank canvas and I was the artist.