Graverobbers Wanted: No Experience Necessary

Chapter 17

HE'D TAKEN a regular plastic shaver and broken the top to get at the blade, which he held pinched between his thumb and index finger.

"Stay away!" he said.

I rushed him, and he flung the razor at me. It bounced harmlessly off my chest as I grabbed him and easily pinned his arms behind his back. Mrs. Tandy screamed.

"Be quiet!" I shouted at her. "Don't make a sound! Now listen to me, I need your full cooperation, both of you! I'm only here to ask questions, nothing else! I just need you to—"

Mrs. Tandy vanished from sight, and I heard her footsteps running down the hall, probably toward the nearest phone. I shoved Mr. Tandy out of the way. His leg struck the bathtub and he fell to the floor. The razor was still on the floor, within his reach, so I gave it a good kick then followed his wife to stop her before she called the police.

I hurried down the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen, where Mrs. Tandy stood next to a phone mounted on the wall. She held the handset in one hand and was punching buttons with the other.

I grabbed the phone from her and gave the cord a good yank, popping it out of the jack. "Do you want your husband to die?" I demanded. "Do you?"

She shook her head, tears spilling down her face. "No!"

"Then sit down and stay calm! If you don't do as I say you might as well slice his wrists yourself!"

I couldn't believe I'd said something like that, but this was no time for compassion. I sprinted back into the bathroom, ready for the sight of Mr. Tandy lying on the tile in a pool of blood, his wrists slashed wide open.

But he hadn't gone for the razor. He was sitting against the bathtub, his eyes vacant. "Why can't you leave me alone?" he asked.

"I'm sorry if I'm inconveniencing you," I said. "I know what a pain it is when somebody shows up uninvited and exposes you for the twisted deviant that you are."

"You just don't understand."

"No, I don't, and thank God for that. But here's your chance to redeem yourself. I need names. Besides Michael Ashcraft, who is involved in making the tapes?"

Mr. Tandy shrugged.

"Look, man, if you don't want your face plastered all over the front page of tomorrow's newspaper, you'll answer my questions. Now who's involved?"

"It was his wife," Mr. Tandy said."And some other guy."

"What other guy?"

"He never told me his name."

"What did he look like?"

"Sort of creepy.Old guy.Big white beard."

Great.The Apparition.No help at all.

"Who else?"

"Nobody else."

"You're lying. There's somebody else working for Ghoulish Delights that you haven't told me about."

Mr. Tandy's voice abruptly switched from a pained whisper to a shout. "What do you think, they took me around and introduced me toeveryone?I don't know who you're talking about! All I did was order the tape. That's all."

"Where'd they get the girl?"

He lowered his voice again. "I don't know! All they said was that they take people who won't be missed. Maybe she was homeless. I didn't ask. Why are you asking me all this stuff instead of bugging Michael Ashcraft? He's the one you should be talking to! I didn't do anything!"

I noticed Mrs. Tandy standing in the hallway, staring at us as her hands shook. I shut the bathroom door in her face.

"I don't care what you did or didn't do," I told Mr. Tandy. "You're the one I'm talking to."

"But Idon'tknow anything!"

"How did you find out about Ghoulish Delights?"

"The Internet.A chat room."

"Must've been some chat," I said with a dry chuckle.

"Hey, you don't know anything about me! You have no right to stand here acting all haughty and arrogant!"

"I'm going to make two points. One, `haughty' and `arrogant' mean the same thing. Two, because of you an innocent woman was tortured to death. I don't need to know anything about you to figure out that there's something seriously wrong with you."

Mr. Tandy buried his face in his hands and began sobbing. His shoulders shook, his head bobbed, and after a couple of minutes of trying to calm him down I had to accept that I wasn't going to get anything out of him.

I opened the bathroom door. Mrs. Tandy stood there, her face pale and tight. "Please, tell me what's going on."

I ignored her and walked toward the front door. I knew the secret behind Ghoulish Delights now, but I couldn't see how this was supposed to help me find the hidden clues in the video.

As I stepped outside, I saw an envelope taped to the passenger door of my car. Forget searching for leads and interviewing suspects...I needed to just stay in my damn car all day!

I hurried over to the car, glanced around to catch a glimpse of the delivery person I knew would be nowhere in sight, then ripped open the envelope. It felt like it contained several pieces of paper. I have to admit, I was feeling pretty darn uncomfortable hanging around here, and I really didn't know what Mr. Tandy might be capable of, so I got in my car and sped off.

I drove out of the neighborhood and pulled into the parking lot of a small library, then carefully opened the envelope and removed its contents.

Five pieces of notebook paper.

One Trojan-brand condom.Ribbed.

I didn't even want to know what the condom was for yet, so I looked over the first piece of paper. In crayon, in a child's scrawl, was the following letter:

"DearGramma , I miss you.Arizona is fun. Momsed that I could have all the soda I want during the trip. I love you.XOXOXO. Love, Amy."

The next letter was similar:

"DearGramma , I miss you. Its hothear but I stilllik it. We will be back soon. I love you.XOXOXO. Love, Amy."

There were three more letters, all toGramma from Amy, allto basically the same effect.

Five letters and a condom.And somehow this was supposed to tie in with the tape.

I held open the envelope and looked inside to make sure I hadn't missed anything. And I had. A message written on the inside of the envelope read: "One after the creation of the other."

Huh?

I tore open the foil wrapper to make sure there was nothing else of importance hidden inside the condom. As I removed the condom and examined it, a woman walking past the car with an armload of books noticed me and picked up her pace. Looked like a normal condom. The kind I no longer had to wear ever since the birth of Kyle, when Helen decided that our child quota had been met and it was time for me to get a...but that's bringing up a horrible memory I don't want to discuss.

I unrolled the condom completely just in case the killer had written some sort of message on it, but no, it still looked like your standard-issue prophylactic. Wow, these things were huge when you unrolled them all the way.

Satisfied that this condom was in fact a regular condom, I rolled it back up as well as I could and stuffed it back into the wrapper. I returned all of the parts of the clue to the envelope, and began to drive home.

One after the creation of the other.

Wasn't the whole purpose of a condomtoprevent creation? So "creation" had to refer to the letters.

A condom after the creation of the letters.

WasArizona the important part? Or maybe it was the misspelled words, such as "sed" and "lik."

One after the creation of the other.

I was completely baffled.

Then my heart rate doubled as I saw the red and blue lights flashing in my rear-view mirror.