The Tangerine Killer (14 page)

I awoke amazingly free from pain, until I moved and my body exploded. I staggered into the bathroom to take the shower I had been denied the night before and as the warm water ran over my body it washed away not only the ash and soot but some of the pain as well. Spectacular bruises were forming all over my body in swirling patterns of purple and green. It was going to be one hell of a day.

By the time Olin surfaced in the kitchen I had already made coffee and was stuffing bread into his oversized toaster. I also popped half a painkiller. Just enough to dull the pain without sending me loopy. The toast popped out and landed on my plate.

“Want some?” I asked.

He rubbed his eyes sleepily and nodded.

“You’re not really a morning person are you?”

“No.” He grumpily attempted to straighten his hair.

We ate in silence. He flipped lazily through the newspaper. I eyed his sad looking houseplants and wondered when they’d last been watered. Olin wasn’t really the plant type. I guessed they were the last remnants of life with his ex. I wondered why she hadn’t taken them with her. I couldn’t stop thinking about what she was like. Pretty? Smart? Sassy? If she’d snagged Olin then she had to be a least some if not all of those things.

“Are you going to take me back to my hotel so I can get some clean clothes?” I asked.

“Yeah, just let me get dressed.”

“All right,” I paused then added. “I’ll water your plants while I’m waiting.”

“Don’t bother,” he said.

He threw his dirty dishes in the sink. While he was in the shower, I watered them anyway. Maybe the good plant karma would protect my orchids back home who were probably shriveling up by now. I should have asked the neighbor to water them for me, only I didn’t like people snooping around my house while I wasn’t there.

Olin’s house was closer to my hotel than I thought. We were back there in less than ten minutes. He didn’t seem too keen on returning to such an exposed place after everything we’d been through. I didn’t care if the Tangerine killer was lurking in the bushes or hiding under my bed, the smell of my charred clothes was turning my stomach.

“I’ll see you in a minute,” I said.

“Hold on,” he grabbed my arm as I went to get out of the truck. “You think I’m letting you out of my sight?”

“I’m fine,” I flashed my gun at him. “See?”

“That won’t help you if there is another explosion.”

Begrudgingly I admitted defeat. Together we carefully opened the door to my orange room and stepped back to wait for an explosion. Nothing happened. I hadn’t expected anything to but after yesterday Olin was stuck in some kind of hyper vigilant mode. Deep down I knew he was right to be on guard. In fact I was surprised he didn’t have the bomb squad there waiting for us.

“I won’t be long.”

“I’ll wait right here,” Olin sat on the edge of the bed.

“You’d better. This door doesn’t have a lock.”

I took another shower since I still smelt of smoke having put my soiled clothes on over Olin’s boxers. Plus the warm water really helped ease the pain. I wondered if Olin was tempted to peek through the crack in the door. I pictured him sitting out there on the bed, trying desperately to restrain himself.

That couldn’t have been further from the truth. When I reluctantly left the steaming bathroom I found a pale faced Olin standing there holding a brown envelope. It was dripping blood onto my orange carpet.

“The desk clerk said someone left this for you.”

“What? Who?”

“He doesn’t know but I’m going to take him down to the station to get a composite sketch done. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out the killer dropped it off himself.”

“You really think he’s that stupid?”

“He’s cocky. Who knows, maybe he’ll make a mistake.”

“Is it another finger?”

“Probably but I’m not taking any chances. This is going to the lab in its entirety. If there is any shred of evidence on this thing that we can use to find the son of a bitch, I want it.”

“Jill’s tough, she can survive losing a couple of fingers,” I said.

“But what’s going to happen when he runs out of fingers?”

“She’s got toes.”

“Very funny.”

“Well what am I supposed to do? Collapse and cry for poor old Jill? Act all hysterical? That’s not going to catch him is it? This is my way of dealing so deal with it.”

Olin scowled but seemed to accept my logic. He took the bleeding envelope out to his truck to put it in an evidence bag and I applied a bit of lip gloss and mascara in the mirror while I waited.

I felt bad for Jill but I had to admit I felt worse for myself. I was very attached to all of my fingers and most of my toes, except for the one I’d broken as a kid that now looked kind of crooked. I couldn’t imagine someone hacking them off. But what really scared me was what was going to happen after that.

He can hardly contain his fury. Sam has nearly been killed in the explosion and that wasn’t the plan at all. The slick dick was the one who was supposed to end up in hospital or better yet the morgue, not his most precious asset. What if her skin had been burned? Everything would have been ruined. From what he can see she was battered and shaken but refused to go to the hospital. Then she had just disappeared.

He should have been there from the start, been better prepared to make sure she was nowhere near the blast. He doesn’t know how it can all have gone so horribly wrong. Now he doesn’t know where she is and he’s furious. He always knows where all his subjects are at every moment of every day. He feels powerless and out of control. At least he still has the slut in the basement, but she’s only just hanging on.

It’s quiet down there in the dark. He sits in the corner and observes her like a lion watching its prey. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought she was sleeping but he realizes he took too much too quickly. The slut has been unconscious for much longer than he expected. He knows taking the second finger was just greedy and the extra loss of blood has caused her skin to take on a sallow complexion. He thinks she may even be in a coma but there is no way to tell. Of course if she never wakes then he will be sure. He never really intended to kill her but if she was lost during the process then that would have been okay. Now he can’t decide what to do with her.

His technique is perfect. He’s ready for the main event. He needs to clear the room, sterilize the equipment, prepare. If only he could decide what to do with the body. He almost wishes she would wake up so he could ask her where she wants to go. He wonders if perhaps he will dump her outside a hospital but no. His new found compassion is pathetic. Weak. Not who he is at all. He reaches for the knife that lies on the floor beside him and rises. He takes one last look at the peaceful, sleeping beauty then swiftly runs the blade across her neck. The blood gushes from her jugular in a pumping motion, she makes a gurgling noise and her eyes flutter open for an instant. He smiles as the blood pools down around his feet and she reaches out feebly with a two fingered hand. Then she is gone.

I managed to convince Olin that between the two of us, we could cover more ground separately than together. Plus he was aggravating the hell out of me. He thought I should lie down and rest. Please. What did I look like, an old lady? Sure I was beat to hell but that hadn’t stopped me in the past and it certainly wasn’t about to stop me now. Besides, I knew if I went with him he would make me sit in the car the whole time. It was all right for him, it wasn’t his fingers on the line. He couldn’t protect me forever. As an added bonus, if he wasn’t around then I wouldn’t have to put on a fake smile and pretend I felt fine when I really felt like shit. At least doing something would keep my mind off the pain.

I had to track down the truth about the baby who mysteriously disappeared. I still hadn’t mentioned it to Olin and the longer I kept it from him, the worse I felt about it. I had to figure out where the child fit into the picture, if it fitted in at all. Then I’d tell him.

So after much pushing and prodding with promises that I would call him at the first hint of trouble, Olin went off to try and track down the elusive Harvey. As if I hadn’t already been punished enough, I went to suffer the wrath of the one person I wanted to meet about as much as the Tangerine killer. My mother.

She still lived in the house I grew up in with Derek, my stepfather. He bought the pretty little home in the historic district that she always wanted. It had white painted shutters and a small picket fence. Picture perfect. No wonder she thought Derek had been our savior. The pretty baubles he bought meant she turned a blind eye to everything that went on. I’d have rather lived in a cardboard box on the street than in a house with that man.

Their car was parked in the driveway. It had a custom baby blue paint job that just seemed creepy and wrong, rather like Derek himself. I sat in my Jeep smoking cigarettes from the stack of packs I had stopped and bought on my way there. I didn’t buy an entire box, after all I wasn‘t actually a smoker. Buying just as many individual packs at twice the price didn’t seem as bad. But I didn’t know why I was bothering to lie to myself.

She was there at the door before I even rang the bell. Gardening gloves in one hand, trowel in the other. All perfect blonde hair and flawless makeup. She hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“I wondered how long it would be before you showed up.”

The ice in her voice sent a chill down my spine.

“Nice to see you too Mother.”

There it was. The loving exchange of a mother and daughter reunited after years of pretending one another didn’t exist. She looked good, too good compared to the way I knew I looked and felt. Her piercing blue eyes bore right into me and I returned the stare with unwavering dedication. I had just survived an explosion. I could certainly survive my mother.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“No.”

“Just like that? No?”

“That’s right, no.”

“It’s nice to see the years haven’t mellowed you Mom.”

“What can I say? You know you’re not welcome here.”

I bit my tongue and refused to let her get the better of me. She wasn’t my mother, she hadn’t been for years. She was just someone I needed information from, someone I had to use to get what I needed. Just another pawn in the cat and mouse game we were all playing with the killer. A game that could end with my life. Not that she would care.

“I’m sorry about Lisa.”

Bull’s eye. I struck a nerve on the first blow. Her eyes welled up with tears. She blinked them back so quickly, I questioned whether I had even seen them in the first place. I’d never seen her shed a tear over me. I had to admit it stung a little.

“Such a tragedy but then that seems to have been the theme for her whole life,” I added.

Strike two.

“Why do you say that?” she sniffed.

“Well, you never really get over the loss of a child do you? Especially someone as fragile as Lisa. In fact I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did.”

“You have no idea what you are talking about,” she said.

“So help me set the record straight then.”

I saw the wheels turning in her head. The absolute refusal to do anything that might help me in any way and yet her desperate need to defend Lisa even in death. As a child I always felt she would have preferred Lisa as a daughter instead of me. Perfect Lisa with her good grades and sunny disposition. Now I was surer of it than ever. If anyone could have usurped Faye in the role of fake grief, it would have been my mother. It was a role she was born to play.

“You want me to help you?” she said.

“No Mother, I want you to help Lisa. Tell me about this.”

I pulled the photograph of Lisa, Frank and the baby out of my pocket and held it up, keeping it just out of reach in case she decided to try and grab it.

“Where did you get that?”

Her eyes were wide with surprise, magnified by the bejeweled glasses she put on to look at the photograph.

“It doesn’t matter. I just want you to tell me what happened to the baby and why no one seems to want to talk about it.”

“No.”

“No? God Mother don’t you understand? There are lives at stake here, people are getting hurt. Why are you being so stubborn?”

My voice was loud and angry. She was pushing all my buttons and I was losing control. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it together.

“Who is it darling?”

Derek. His voice echoed from deep in the bowels of the house and I took an involuntary step back from the open door. I should have known he would be there. The two of them were glued at the hip. Nausea washed over me in a giant wave.

“Nobody,” my mother called back.

“Nobody?” I couldn’t believe she had just lied for me.

“Look,” she stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her. “I told you never to come here. I warned you to stay away, for your own good. You understand? For your safety. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

She reached out to grab my arm but I pulled away. I didn’t know who the woman before me was but she wasn’t exactly the mother I remembered.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

“You shouldn’t have come back here. You should go home. Now. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Too late.”

I spun around to leave but my body protested in a painful spasm which took my breath away. I paused to catch my breath and she came up behind me. I felt her breath hot and sweet on the back of my neck. I wanted to run away as fast as I could but I was frozen in place. Torn between wanting to know what she had to say and afraid of what that might be.

“The baby wasn’t Frank’s,” she whispered.

“Then who’s was it?”

“If you’re going to stay, that‘s what you need to figure out.”

“Do you know?”

Her face told me she was hiding something. If she knew then she had to tell me. For a moment I thought she was going to speak but then she turned and went back inside, leaving me with cryptic clues and nothing else.

I wondered what would have happened if I let her reach out and touch me. I almost wished I had but the moment passed and I couldn’t get it back. Now I just wanted to throttle the information I needed out of her with my bare hands. And chase a lot of painkillers with a bottle of Jack.