Soultaker

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Raymond Slater did the only thing he could think of after stuffing Cindy’s mangled body in the trunk of his Lexus.

He went home.

The journey back through the familiar streets was hellish. He kept to a few careful miles over the posted speed limit the whole way, but he spent every moment convinced some bored Rockville cop would pull him over to fill his ticket quota. One big problem was the shattered passenger-side window. There was a spray of glittering safety glass on the leather seat and floorboard. Some of it was tinged crimson with Cindy’s blood. A fragile wedge of glass remained at the bottom of the window frame. Raymond had been sure some busybody cop would see that as a red flag and use it as an excuse to stick his nose in his business. So he stopped at a little strip mall for a quick clean-up job. He knocked the remaining glass out of the frame. Then he used a rolled-up newspaper to sweep the safety glass to the floor and under the seat. The biggest bloodstain was on the floorboard. He unfolded the newspaper and placed it over the stain. He surveyed his work and judged it passable. Not perfect by any means, but good enough not to arouse any immediate suspicion.

So he got back in the car and resumed the journey home. The next half mile passed without incident and he began to relax. In another few minutes he would be home and safe. He would be able to decompress and take some time to consider his next move.

Then he heard it.

A noise in the trunk.

He might have missed it had the radio been on, it was so soft. But he’d turned off the radio after leaving the alley, finding the sound of music grating under these circumstances. When he heard the noise, he wished he’d left the radio on. His ears perked up and he listened intently while his heart raced. A few moments of silence allowed him the brief illusion that he’d been hearing things.

Then he heard it again.

And there could be no mistake.

The bitch is alive!

The whimper coming from the trunk was low and weak, but it was clearly the sound of a person in unbearable agony. Raymond gripped the steering wheel tighter and let out a whimper of his own.

“Fuck me running.”

Then there was the sound of something shifting in the trunk, followed by a louder whimper.

“Jesus Christ!” Raymond punched the steering wheel. “Die already!”

Raymond replayed the words in his head. He had never felt lower in his life. He felt like a monster. A badly injured young girl was trapped in the trunk of his car. It wasn’t her fault she’d fallen under the spell of Lamia. She was just a child. This was the truth. And yet it didn’t matter. He couldn’t change what had happened. He couldn’t take her to a hospital. So he was left with a grim reality-if she didn’t die on her own soon, he would have to speed the inevitable along.

By the time he arrived at last at his large estate in the wealthiest part of town, he was a trembling, mewling wreck. He pulled up to one of the garage doors, fumbled with the automatic opener clipped to the visor above him for a moment, then watched through a veil of tears as the maroon door rolled up on its tracks. He pulled the Lexus into the open space, fumbled with the opener again, and rested his forehead against the steering wheel for several minutes in the gloom of the garage. His sobs only masked the intermittent cries still emanating from the trunk.

His hands at last came away from the steering wheel. He curled them into fists, dug the nails deep into his flesh, instinctively knowing he needed the pain to cut through the whirlwind of emotions engulfing him. He desperately needed something real and immediate to center him. He bore down harder. His hands shook. Then he let out a big breath and opened them, saw blood leaking out of the deep grooves. And there was pain, yes, enough to make him grit his teeth, but he felt focused again. In this case, instinct had served him well. Maybe that was the key. He shouldn’t overthink any of this. It would be hard. He was an educator. Thinking things out and reaching logical conclusions was the backbone of his life. He nonetheless knew he would have to reach beyond that now. Silence that coldly analytical side of himself and trust his gut.

He sat back in the seat and thought of nothing for a time. Blanked his mind as thoroughly as possible given the circumstances. He saw a workbench with tools on it through the windshield. To the left a door led to a small anteroom. His eyes saw these things but his mind was elsewhere. Simply gone for a time. His eyes glazed and his breathing evened out. His heart was no longer racing. He remained in the trancelike state for more than ten minutes. Then something-maybe his newfound friend Instinct-told him it was time to wake up and start dealing with the mess.

He almost smiled. A small twinge of that aching desperation returned.

Such a fine euphemism. So delicate. So thoroughly removed from the truth of the situation.

The “mess” moaned again.

Raymond popped open the trunk and got out of the car. There was no conscious decision involved with this. Instinct was guiding him. Instinct would enable him to do what needed doing without having to think about it. And that was good. Better than good. It was like a gift from the gods. Because what needed doing was so overwhelmingly awful. It was vile and despicable, an act normally committed only by the most depraved. What could be worse than the cold-blooded murder of a helpless human being?

Shit.

He was thinking again and that would only get him in trouble. It would slow him down, and the sooner this terrible thing was done, the better. So much was at stake. Cindy was just one girl. The fates of hundreds more young people hung in the balance.

The first thing to do was shed some light on the situation. It was full daylight outside, but the garage-door windows were small and dusty. He didn’t want to see Cindy’s twisted and broken limbs again, but there was nothing for it. He would need to see clearly to get this done fast and with some degree of mercy. So he found the light switch and flipped it. The overhead fluorescent lights flickered and came on, bathing the interior of the garage in a harsh glare. Patricia’s sleek black Jaguar gleamed in the space next to his Lexus. Patricia, whose body was moldering in the hole Penelope had forced him to dig out back during the night. He felt another sharp pang of loss, but pushed the emotion away, into a remote corner of his psyche. One day he might let it out again. And on that day he would allow himself to experience the full spectrum of pain, regret, and loss.

If, of course, he lived long enough.

He moved to the rear of the Lexus and lifted open the trunk lid.

Cindy’s face was pressed against the trunk floor. She flinched at the sudden light and lifted her head to look at him. Her face was red and shiny with sweat. Her legs looked as if they had been worked over by a couple of especially sadistic mafia enforcers. No, that was a movie thing. Mere fancy. Allowing instinct to guide him was all well and good, but he would not turn away from truth. Her legs were broken bones sheathed in trembling flesh. And this had happened because he’d been careless with the window. Because he’d driven her at high speed straight into a fucking telephone pole.

She lifted a shaking hand toward him. Her class ring glittered as the light struck it.

“Please…” she said. “Please…help me…it…hurts…”

Raymond sighed.

I can do this.

Cindy moaned some more and sobbed softly.

Raymond again gave himself a mental prod. This needed doing. And now, not later. In theory, it could be done easily enough. He could find something from the workbench to finish her off. It was filled with a number of things that could accomplish the grim task efficiently enough. But he didn’t move. He stood there and stared at the girl. Memories from the last few years taunted him. Cindy had been a star at Rockville, existing at a rarefied level of popularity known only to a tiny elite. Girls like her didn’t come along every year. Maybe once or twice a decade a student with that special combination of beauty, brains, and personality graced the halls of Rockville High. She’d really been something special. What he had to do was a crime in more ways than one.

She was looking at him again. For the first time, he saw more than pain in her eyes. They were clear and focused. She was analyzing him. Looking for an angle. “You can’t kill me.”

Raymond blinked. “I…”

She shifted again and a fresh jolt of agony made her cry out. Then her eyes were on him again, hard and unflinching. “She’ll know. She’s inside me, and she’ll fucking know. And she’ll come get you. Make you fucking pay.”

Raymond swallowed hard and stared at her. The fierce conviction evident in her eyes made him waver for a moment. Maybe Cindy was right. Maybe Lamia would come for him if he killed the broken golden girl. But instinct told him otherwise. Lamia wouldn’t have put her on his tail in the first place if she was really all knowing and all seeing. A theory had been formulating quietly in his subconsciousness and now it surged to the surface.

Lamia was powerful. Extremely. Of that he had no doubt at all. She was something very old. Something not human. A force of nature beyond the ability of men to comprehend. But she was not the goddess she claimed to be. She was instead a magnificent manipulator. She displayed her admittedly impressive abilities only when it suited her. When it benefited her. She terrorized people into following her, bullied them into believing she controlled everyone and everything. Well, maybe she could control one person at a time. Maybe two or three. Four or five. Maybe more. But nothing close to everyone in town. Yet he understood why her followers believed she could. Until today he had believed it, too.

Cindy squinted at him. “Whatever you’re thinking is wrong.”

Raymond wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m sorry, Cindy, but I don’t think so.”

Cindy sneered. “You’re dead. Fucking dead. You’ll see. Lamia will fix me and I’ll dance on your fucking grave.”

Raymond opened his mouth to respond, but the words never made it out.

The door to the anteroom flew open and banged against the wall. Raymond’s eyes went wide as Penelope strutted down the stairs and into the garage. She wore a tight, see-through white blouse and a beige miniskirt that revealed almost everything. It was not normal workday attire, but as Penelope had informed him before leaving for work this morning all the normal rules had been suspended. She could do whatever she wanted and no one would lift a finger to stop her. She was drunk on what she saw as her elevated new station in life. Lamia had fooled her as effectively as she’d fooled anyone.

She saw Raymond and scowled. “There you are! Where the fuck have you been, Raymond? Why didn’t you show up for work this morning? I told you-”

Then she was standing next to him and looking down at the trunk. “My God…” She looked at him. “What have you done?”

Raymond’s emotions were complex in that moment, a mixture of guilt, terror at being caught, and self-directed anger at allowing the situation to slip out of his control.

“Penelope…” The plaintive, strained tone returned to Cindy’s voice. “Please help me. He kidnapped me. I think he was going to rape me.”

Penelope chortled. “Oh, please. Raymond likes a bit of slap and tickle, but he doesn’t have the cojones for hard-core stuff.” She looked at Raymond again. “What really happened?”

Raymond felt deflated. He’d been caught. Found out. It was all over. There was even a kind of relief in knowing he wouldn’t have to make like some kind of tweed-wearing Rambo. “It was an accident. She came after me.”

“An accident, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Penelope smirked. “I can see that, I guess. And you brought her here, not knowing what else to do. Figured you’d finish her off in private and…then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course not.” She slapped him. “That’s for being such a fucking pussy. You expect me to believe you would’ve offed this chick while she was still awake and talking to you?”

Raymond was silent. He didn’t have an answer for that.

Cindy let out another little cry of pain. “Penelope…please…”

“Shut up.”

Penelope spun on her heel and stalked toward the workbench. There was a clank of metal as she sifted through the various implements there. When she returned, a long iron spike was gripped in her right fist. It was a rusty thing, something Raymond had found in the yard years ago after construction was finished on the house.

It had a very sharp tip.

Cindy saw it and whimpered.

Penelope sat on the lip of the trunk and leered at Raymond. “She’s no use to Lamia like this, so I’ll do what you weren’t man enough to do.” She reached inside the trunk and ripped the flimsy and shredded halter away from Cindy’s body, exposing the girl’s tanned torso. She directed another leer at Raymond. “Look at her. Still a hot young thing from the waist up, Raymond. Sure you don’t want to have a bit of fun with her before I do this?”

Raymond’s face twisted in disgust. He took an unconscious step away from her. “You sick bitch. You can’t be serious.”

Penelope’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “Oh, but I am. Think about it. You can’t tell me you never fantasized about getting nasty with Miss Hot Stuff here. This is your big chance, Raymond. You’ll never get another.”

Raymond had indeed fantasized about Cindy Wells. Her and many other young girls throughout his career at Rockville. The memory shamed him now. His voice was tight as he said, “No. And don’t ask me again, you psychotic bitch.”

Penelope’s leering smile faded. “Very well.” She looked at Cindy and a hint of mirth again twitched at the corners of her mouth. “Time to say good night.”

Cindy moaned. There was terror mingled with the agony in her cries now. “No…please…please…please…”

Penelope raised the spike over her head and slammed it down. Raymond saw the tip of the spike punch through Cindy’s quivering stomach and cringed at the sound of the girl’s scream. It was astonishingly loud in the closed garage, seeming to shred his ears. Nearly as awful was the sound of the spike thunking against the trunk floor after passing through the girl’s body. Penelope yanked the spike out and slammed it down again. Another puncture. Another fountain of blood. Raymond forced his eyes away from the girl’s ravaged body, but what he saw now was perhaps more disturbing. Penelope slammed the spike down over and over. A dozen times. More. At some point Cindy stopped screaming and Raymond knew she was finally dead. But Penelope just kept slamming the spike down. And she was laughing, her mouth open in a broad, almost manic grin. She glanced at Raymond once with delight radiant in her eyes. She bobbed her head, as if in time to a jaunty tune only she could hear. Her formerly white blouse was splattered with crimson.

And in the midst of Penelope’s murderous frenzy Raymond rediscovered his resolve.

Penelope was distracted. She was obscenely absorbed in the act of mutilation.

Raymond quietly opened the Lexus’s rear door. He removed the Glock from its box and loaded it the way the gun-shop clerk had showed him. He moved to the rear of the car again and aimed the gun at the back of Penelope’s head. She continued thrusting the bloody spike into the dead girl’s very still body.

He waited until she was done.

She dropped the spike in the trunk and looked at him. She didn’t flinch at the sight of the gun.

She smiled.

And licked flecks of blood from her lips.

She took a step toward him, swinging her luscious hips seductively. “A gun, Raymond? Really? Put that thing away before I-”

Raymond’s voice was cold as he said, “Not this time.”

Then he shot her in the face.