Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

“Hey, Reggie, it’s me. I’m getting you out. Don’t jump when I open the door, okay?”

Inside the shed, Reggie must have recognized my scent because he began to whine eagerly and scratch at the door. My fingertips touched the latch and I jumped to push the wooden bar up from its crude resting place. It went up and then flopped back down. I grunted and jumped at it again, this time sending it farther up before it slid back into its slot. I heaved myself upward and knocked the bar to the very top, where it hung poised at the very edge. Good. It hadn’t settled back. Another good jump and I could knock it the rest of the way out.

I stretched my arm up and gathered myself to jump. A large hand suddenly closed on mine, and an arm hard as steel wrapped around my ribs and jerked me backward. A man’s triumphant laugh drowned out the sound of my own terror.

Denton Ferrelli said, “Hello, dog-sitter. We’ve been waiting for you.”

The truth hit me all in one gulp. I had been tricked. Denton had known all along that I was following him. The talk about killing Reggie had been a ruse to get me to follow him to this remote place. Nobody would know to look for me here, and nobody would hear me scream. They would kill me here and dump my body in the woods and nobody would ever find it. Animals would eat my flesh and scatter my bones while search parties combed Siesta Key.

I wasn’t so different from Gabe after all. Like Gabe, I had thought I was being smart and brave when I was really just being stupid and arrogant.

Denton Ferrelli swung me around while I kicked and flailed and screamed, all my noise and struggle as useless as the squeaks and air-peddling of a mouse about to be dropped in a snake’s mouth. My gun was in my shorts pocket, but the armlock Denton had on me made it impossible to reach. While I hung from his forearm, he carried me toward Leo and Gabe, who stood at the bottom of the porch steps. Leo’s malicious grin gave his sharp-boned face the look of a demented skeleton. A demented skeleton with a piece of tape stretched over the ridge of its nose.

Gabe was stern and self-righteous as a televangelist. He had put on a straw cowboy hat with the sides curled up like a rodeo rider, and he held a twenty-caliber dart gun pointed down at his side. The hilt of another gun stuck out from a thick leather holster draped around his hips, and a square metal container that I assumed held loaded darts was stuck in his waistband. I felt a little spurt of appreciation for his professionalism. He had backup ready, the same as a law-enforcement officer would.

Behind us, Reggie was scratching and jumping at the shed’s door.

I said, “Just so you know, my Bronco has a tracking device on it. If I’m not home soon, people will come looking for me.”

Denton laughed again. “You’re such a transparent liar. You’re a cute little dog-sitter too. Too bad you couldn’t mind your own fucking business.”

Panting and twisting, I said, “You’re cute too, Denton. I love the little ironic twists you give to murder. The kitten with broken legs for Conrad was a real stroke of genius.”

He chuckled, and his voice went high as if he were speaking lines on a stage. “Hey, Conrad, come see what I’ve found. It’s beautiful, man, some kind of rare bird I never saw before. Come look, it’s back here in the woods.”

In his normal voice, he said, “Stupid freak believed every word. Thought I wanted to share the joy I felt with my little brother. Gabe was in the trees waiting. He shot him while he leaned over looking at the damned cat.”

Gabe said, “Are you gonna keep holding her?”

Denton’s grip loosened a bit, and his voice came out sharp. “Don’t be a fool! Of course I’m not.”

“Then let her go so I can hit her running.”

My mind was whirling. Denton didn’t want to hold me while Gabe shot me with that dart gun because the dart might accidentally go into him instead of me. When he let me go, there would be a split second while he jumped out of the way. In that moment, I might be able to scoop my gun out of my pocket and shoot Gabe before he shot me. But I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn’t face that instant yet.

“Having your mother’s horse stomp her to death was clever too. Was your mother the first one, or were you already killing people before her?”

His arm tightened, squeezing my ribs so hard I could barely breathe. “Them and their goddamn animals. Always love for some four-legged beast. Not for me. Never any love for old Denton, not after sweet animal-sucking Conrad was born. Conrad’s little narrow head didn’t tear her up coming out. He didn’t have an ugly purple bruise on his face that never went away. Oh, he was easy to love. They should be grateful to me, I got them all together with their fucking animals. And now the dog-sitter will be joining them.”

A final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The reason Denton hated me was because I worked with animals. A mother who trained horses so well they thought with one mind had probably spent more time with them than she did with her little boy. Especially her first little boy, when the act with the horses was new and she was working hard to perfect it. Because I worked with animals, Denton had moved me to the place in his mind where a twisted coil of hatred toward his mother lay.

“What about your father? And Stevie? Why kill them?”

He made a bitter sound that was half laugh. “Conrad was the only one who mattered to him. Conrad and his stupid sissy clothes and his freak circus friends, his freak man-wife. All of them were freaks, and they didn’t care how they humiliated me. Never gave it one thought. I made millions with nothing but my brains, all Conrad ever did was give away the money somebody else made. Well, now they can all get together and dress up in their stupid clown outfits, forever and ever, amen.”

Self-pity from anybody is annoying. From a murderer, it’s downright disgusting.

Gabe must have thought so too, because he yelled, “Let her go, damn it!”

Denton’s arm muscles tensed in preparation for flinging them wide, and I braced myself to land on my feet.

28

Iwas almost surprised that fear didn’t buckle my knees when Denton took his arm away and let my feet touch the ground. He crossed the distance between me and the other men and stood beside Leo Brossi.

Little cold fingers climbed my spine, vertebra by vertebra. It was almost a sick joke: woman convinces cops to use her as a lure to catch a killer, woman goes off on her own with dead phone, woman gets killed after all.

He said, “Okay, Gabe, do it.”

Leo said, “Not so fast. I’m fucking that bitch first, and then I have some other things planned for her.”

Gabe frowned at him. “You didn’t say anything about that.”

Leo said, “What the hell’s the matter with you, boy? You probably fuck rattlesnakes. Denton, take the bitch in the house. I’m not doing her in the yard.”

Denton said, “Leo, don’t complicate things.”

“Look, the bitch hit me. She broke my nose. I’ve got a fuck coming, and I’m taking it.”

Gabe said, “Rape ain’t right. I don’t care how much of a cunt she is.”

It almost sounded as if Gabe might have a thread of decency somewhere in his beetle brain. I suddenly remembered the stuffed toy he’d brought the baby. The memory of it was a little ray of light. Denton Ferrelli had a sick twisted mind, and Leo Brossi was a career criminal, but Gabe was just a dumb kid living with snakes and alligators and thinking that killing things made him a man.

I said, “Leo will rape your baby girl if he gets a chance, Gabe.”

Leo said, “Goddamn it, Denton, get the woman in the house!”

Like a bull pricked by picadors, Gabe glowered at me and then at Leo. “Not in my house.”