The Feeder (13 page)

I listened. It was quiet on the other side of the door. Was he waiting for me or had he decided to stop pursuing me and have another drink like I’d suggested?

He is a cop
, I reminded myself.
Expect the unexpected.

Cops had guns.

Shotguns
. A shotgun blast can eradicate a person through a door, which is why cops and criminals alike both use them. Nothing will make a cop dive for cover faster than the
chik-chik
sound of a pump shotgun on the other side of a door he’s preparing to kick in.

I stepped into the shower and flattened against the back wall, suddenly regretting my decision to let him out of my sight. I no longer felt safe behind the bathroom door. For all I knew, he had gone to get some firepower to blow me away.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I heard the clink of ice cubes in a glass and the clunk of a bottle being set back down on the bar.

I heard him mutter, “Fuck it. Whatever.” Or something to that effect. His footsteps shuffled unevenly across the room, then I heard a thump and a muted curse as he bumped into something.

Then silence.

Well, you can’t stand in a shower all night. It’s time to end this one way or another. At the end of this night, someone’s gonna die.

I tentatively opened the door, holding my knife behind my back in case he was waiting for me on the other side.

He wasn’t.

I peeked around the corner into the living room and saw that he had returned to his place on the sofa, a fresh drink in front of him. He was fumbling with a cigarette package, trying to remove a smoke but couldn’t seem to get one.

I sheathed my knife.

“You ready for me now?”

His head bobbed. “Jusht get over here and suck me. No games.”

“Understood. It won’t happen again, I promise,” I cooed, strolling toward the bar. “I’m dying for a drink. Do you mind?” I grabbed the bottle of Scotch he’d left on the bar – Johnnie Walker Blue – and took a swig to get the taste of his cock out of my mouth.

Having given up on the cigarette, he reached for his own glass of Scotch and missed, then managed to pick it up, spilling half of it on himself as he took a drink. He slammed the tumbler back on the table so hard I was surprised that neither the glass nor the table broke.

“Whaja gimme?” he slurred. His speech had noticeably thickened.

“Just a little something to relax you, dear.” I said, hanging back near the bar, a safe distance away from him.

“Shtupid whore.”

It had been twenty minutes since I’d injected him. Maybe thirty. I’d lost count. I watched him with fascination. He was getting wasted off his ass right before my eyes. His movements became increasingly uncoordinated and his head weaved like one of those silly bobble-head characters.

I finally stepped into the light where he could get a good look at me without my wig.

His face registered first confusion, then fear when he saw Camille standing before him. He shook his head, as if trying to chase away a hallucination.

“It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me,” I agreed.

“But I killed you,” he protested, sounding almost childlike.

“Yes, you did. Yet here I am.”

“Aurora,” he said stupidly.

“Yes, Aurora. Also known as Camille.
MY
sister. And you killed her.”

“Gonna kill you too,” he muttered.

“Yes, I’m sure you are.” I resisted the urge to drive the heel of my shoe into his nuts. He was a cocky prick, right to the end and I hated him more than I had ever hated anything in my entire life. “That’s what you do, right? You kill innocent women – because you’re the big badass murderer – The Feeder. A real tough guy, cutting the tits off pretty women. And then hiding behind your fucking badge!” My voice had increased in volume and pitch and I struggled to keep my anger under control. “Did you think you were going to get away with it?” I shouted in his face.

“Yeah. I will.”

No, you won’t.

I wanted to open his belly and watch his intestines slither to the floor. I wanted to slice his cock off and force-feed it to him. I could feel my hunting knife, snug in its sheath against the small of my back. It would be so easy… so satisfying.

No.

It has to end. Here. With him.

I couldn’t expose him as The Feeder if he appeared to be a victim of the same killer. As unsatisfying as it was, this was the best way to end it – all of it.

I fingered the second pair of syringes I had sewn into the ruffles of my other sleeve.

When another ten minutes passed and he still didn’t make any move to attack me, I approached the sofa where he sat, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed.

I walked around behind him. His head lolled back on the cushion as he tried to keep his eyes on me. His exposed jugular pulsated, inviting me to pierce it.

“Detective Caleb Barton, I find you guilty and sentence you to death by lethal injection.” I jabbed him in the throat with the third syringe and injected another dose of Everclear directly into his bloodstream.

“Have a drink on me,” I told him. His blood-alcohol content would begin to soar to a dangerous level soon, if my calculations were correct.

I had four syringes in all. The fourth one was loaded with plain old heroin; some of Vinnie’s dope along with the rest of Camille’s stash, loaded into the empty syringe I’d found in her bag. I didn’t know much about dosages, but I was pretty sure the shot held a lot more junk than the average addict banged all at once. When combined with the rest of the drugs I’d given him and heavy doses of alcohol in his bloodstream, he’d have to be inhuman to survive it.

I pulled on a pair of surgical gloves before administering the final injection into his forearm. The last shot was more for show than effect. I wanted to account for the presence of the drug in his system and hopefully make it appear as though he were voluntarily using it. I placed the empty syringe on the coffee table next to the ashtray.

I noticed a wallet on the table. Out of curiosity I opened it and looked at his driver’s license. Caleb Leonard Barton.
CLB
. He was an organ donor. Too bad his organs would be ruined by the stuff I had pumped into him. There was another card tucked in behind his license. I slid it out. Another California driver’s license with Caleb’s picture on it but the name was different.
Vincent James Dimone
, it said.

Well, hello again, Diamond Vinnie!

Caleb was Diamond Vinnie after all, using the identity of some poor dirtbag drug dealer to conceal the fact that he was a respected member of the LAPD. After appearing on TV during press conferences, he had to have known it wouldn’t work for long – or was he really that delusional?

Maybe that was the reason he had killed Camille. I had called him threatening to expose a secret and given her room number. He must have thought the caller was going to blow the whistle on his secret life of pimping and prostitutes. Cammie had been trying to get away from him so it made sense that she would try to expose him in order to escape.

On the other hand, Camille’s life would have been in danger even without my interference, given that she was dating a serial killer. It was just a matter of time before she became his victim. If I hadn’t come to L.A. my sister would probably still have ended up dead, along with a lot of others. I may never have known what had become of her; I might have carried on for years missing Camille, waiting for her to call and wondering why she didn’t. Caleb would have continued to kill. Vinnie would have continued to feed people’s addictions and Dirk Davis would still be brutalizing women.

I guess everything really does happen for a reason.

Caleb slumped on the sofa, unconscious. I sat on a bar stool and sipped Johnnie Walker from the bottle, experiencing peace of mind for the first time since Camille’s birthday phone call so many eons ago. I felt… serene. I didn’t know how else to describe it. How was I supposed to feel, watching my sister’s killer die so peacefully? It didn’t seem right. He, of all people, should have been made to suffer.

I had envisioned a violent, bloody showdown – one that would surpass all of my previous murders. Caleb was supposed to be the main event.
He
was the white rhino of the safari and his death should have been the climax of the hunt. Instead, he had the luxury of being put down almost humanely, like a beloved family pet. It wasn’t fair but it
was
necessary.

I slipped out of the apartment to retrieve the items I had stashed inside the stairwell. I had everything I needed to convince the world that the dying man on the sofa was solely responsible for the murders we had both committed.

On the table I placed assorted items I had collected during my time in Los Angeles: Camille’s used syringe and spoon from her room at the White Surf and two hotel room keys; one from the White Surf and one from the Dufferin. After replacing the Vinnie driver’s license, I added Camille’s Marissa Gonzalez one to his wallet and left it on the table where I’d found it.

I filled a glass with Everclear, refilled both syringes and injected more alcohol into his neck.

In the bathroom I placed several personal items from Camille’s purse; her toothbrush, hairbrush and a tube of her lipstick I hadn’t used. In the medicine cabinet I placed the prescription bottles I had taken from Vinnie’s room. In the master bedroom I left Camille’s suitcase, containing all of her clothing that I hadn’t worn.

I returned every few minutes to check on him and inject him with more alcohol. Five ounces was the fatal amount when consuming pure grain alcohol orally, but injected directly into the bloodstream I theorized that it would take less to reach a lethal blood alcohol level. Even so, administering it 5cc at a time would probably require several injections.

The final touch was in the kitchen, where I placed Dirk Davis’s missing ears in the freezer, wrapped neatly in cellophane.

Two more injections. Then two more.

I placed the Beretta, which I’d used to plug Vinnie and Dirk full of lead, back where I’d found it, on the counter behind the bar.

Last, I withdrew my trusty friend from the sheath behind my back. I caressed the steel with my latex-covered finger in fond reminiscence of the good times we’d shared together.

I didn’t need the knife anymore. It belonged to The Feeder, who sat motionless on the sofa, his complexion porcelain-white and his breathing so shallow it was almost undetectable. Suddenly he convulsed several times and retched. His bladder let go and he vomited a little down his front but he didn’t regain consciousness. It wouldn’t be long now. I placed the knife beside him on the cushion and wrapped his already cooling fingers around it.

I topped his Scotch glass with Everclear, wiped the bottle clean and left it on the table beside his glass.

I sat on the barstool, sipped more Johnnie Walker and waited until it was over.

~ Chapter 17 ~

Homeward

Going home without Camille didn’t feel right. I had failed. I’d gone to rescue her and instead had caused her death. Slaughtering those scumbags had given me some satisfaction, knowing they could never hurt anyone again but it was a piss-poor substitute for having my Cammie sitting beside me on the plane.

Back at home, the house felt emptier than before. Even though Cammie hadn’t been back there in more than two years, the knowledge that she was out there somewhere had always been a comfort to me. Her impromptu phone calls and surprise drop-ins could happen at any moment. Expecting the unexpected had made my life worth living.

Now, I had to accept that there would be no more phone calls. Camille would never come home again. Why the fuck was I even bothering to stick around? I had killed four men in cold blood and it had accomplished nothing.

I tried to busy myself with menial tasks to keep myself from thinking too much. I spent hour after hour in front of my father’s workbench, reloading hundreds of rounds of ammunition for guns I had no intention of firing anytime in the near future.

I gazed at the uniform rows of rifles in my father’s gun safes and the neat stack of individual locked cases, each containing a different handgun. It would be so easy to end it. Just click, bang… problem solved.

I knew in my heart that Camille wouldn’t have wanted to see me end myself in such a cowardly fashion. She had tried to protect me right to the end, even though I wasn’t the one who had been in need of protection. She wanted me to survive, regardless of what happened to her.

I would carry on. I owed her that much.

I was accustomed to being alone; I had spent most of my life that way and quite enjoyed my own company. I wasn’t one of those needy people who always had to have companionship to feel whole. I had never known loneliness… until now. Having Camille gone had left a fifty-caliber sized hole in my chest.

I’d read her journal from cover to cover several times, before burning it. The only personal item of hers I kept was her silver Gemini pendant, which depicted a pair of twins. I had an identical one. We weren’t Geminis – we were Virgos, having been born in September, but we had a tendency to collect twin-related items. The pendants had been a nineteenth birthday present; the last birthday gift our mother had given us before her death from cancer ten months later. I found Camille’s tucked away inside her wallet with a broken chain.

I missed Camille fiercely; the old Camille from my childhood. In burning her journal back in L.A. I had burned a piece of her, one of the last things she had created before she died, but I was able to let that Camille go. That Camille was a diseased, disturbed former shell of the beautiful sister I remembered. I still had pieces of the old Camille by which I could remember her.

In the basement of our family home, I knelt before an old cedar trunk. It was Camille’s ‘hope chest’, passed down to her from our mother, who got it from her mother. I caressed the smooth surface of the lid before opening it. The trunk was remarkably well preserved, sanded to a satin finish and well-oiled to enhance the natural red and gold tones of the wood. In the old days, my mother had told us, everyone she knew had a cedar chest to keep bed linens and other fabrics safe from moths, mice and other pests. I knew that the chest contained a few of our old baby clothes as well as my mother’s wedding dress, given to Camille before Mom’s death in hopes that she would one day wear it. The chest was still beautiful after all these years. It had been moved downstairs with the rest of the belongings Camille had left behind when she moved. I opened the lid, knowing what I would find inside.