John Lutz: Pulse

“The M.E. or the killer?”

“Killer. I already know the M.E. is a prick. You going in now to look over the apartment?” The question sounded almost like a warning about what was waiting inside.

“I was about to,” Quinn said.

Bronsky took a drag on his cigarette that meant nothing. “Two bedrooms with two twin beds in each. I heard somebody say the victim shared the place with three other students. The roommates all went home for the summer. What if they’d been here, though? All four girls?”

“Richard Speck,” Quinn said.

“That’s what I was thinking. Would this creep have killed all of them?”

“Why not?” Quinn said.

“Those other girls should know that,” Bronsky said. “Realize how lucky they are to be young and still alive. They might be more careful the rest of their lives. More appreciative.”

“It’ll give them something to talk about,” Quinn said. “Then in a few days or a few weeks they’ll go back to being themselves.”

Bronsky made his Edward G. Robinson face again. “Why do you figure that is?”

“We’re all who we are,” Quinn said.

“Yeah, I guess we have to live with that.”

“And die with it,” Quinn said.

He left Bronsky, who continued puffing on his faux cigarette, blowing faux smoke. Six feet away from the dead woman who was real.

Central Florida, 2002

It was barely audible but growing louder. Something was striking metal, over and over. It was like a steel drumbeat, and he walked to it.

Daniel Danielle kept his head down and his eyes squinted almost closed as he trudged west. The wind blasting from behind him was fierce, and the heavy rain obscured his vision.

The joy of escape filled his mind. He would make it all the way, he knew. Fate was on his side. Destiny belonged to him.

The ground couldn’t absorb the rainfall, and half the time he was splashing through pooled water. A few times the howling wind knocked him off his feet, but he always struggled to a hunched standing position and continued his trek west, away from the wrecked prison van and the dead guards. He was armed now, with the small-caliber gun that had been taped to the ankle of the one who’d pretended to be a fellow con, and with a nine-millimeter Glock handgun from the holster of one of the dead guards. He’d managed to find the right key on the cluster of keys dangling from a dead guard’s belt, and he was no longer handcuffed. He was still wearing the prison’s orange jumpsuit, and that could be a problem.

The metallic banging sound was ahead of him now. Much closer. Curious, he altered course slightly and moved toward it.

An angular dark shape loomed ahead in the driving rain. As he drew near, he saw that it was what was left of a house. Most of the roof had come down, and part of what remained was flapping violently in the wind against what looked like a section of steel ductwork. The mad drumbeat got louder as Daniel approached.

The central part of the house hadn’t collapsed. A man appeared from the wreckage, bent forward against the wind, and motioned with his arm for Daniel to come to him. He was a tall, rangy guy with a hawk nose and gray hair. His shirt was torn half off him and flapping like a flag.

As Daniel got closer, he saw the man’s gaze fix on the orange jumpsuit.

“You here to rescue us?” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth so Daniel could hear. Daniel could see the dread knowledge and doubt in the man’s eyes. Rescue workers didn’t wear that kind of uniform.

“Sure am,” Daniel said. “From everything.”

He used the Glock to shoot the man in the chest. He went down hard on his back. A blast of wind rolled him to rest against part of the wrecked roof that was jammed up against the base of the house.

In the wind, the bark of the Glock had been barely audible.

Daniel smiled… Rescue us? Dumb cracker!

He picked his way through the wreckage to the central core of the house, what used to be the bathroom.

His luck held. A woman was there, huddled tightly beneath a white porcelain washbasin. It was somewhat quieter in the enclosure, and the wind was partially blocked.

The woman was in her fifties, overweight, and frightened as hell. Through a curtain of rain-plastered hair, she studied Daniel with wide blue eyes. Had those eyes seen what happened outside in the wreckage?

Daniel smiled. “I killed your husband.”

The woman said nothing. Didn’t even change expression. In shock, Daniel decided. His fault? Or the hurricane’s?

He left her and made his way to what used to be the kitchen, rooted through the wreckage until he located the right cabinet and found the drawer where the knives were kept. He chose the largest one, testing the blade’s edge with his finger to make sure it was sharp.

He returned to the makeshift shelter and found that the woman hadn’t moved. He squatted down next to her and began to cut away her clothes with the knife. She put up no resistance. The maelstrom of storm and events had stolen any sense of reality. She was having a bad dream that would eventually end. This man was here to save her; he was a doctor, cutting away her clothes so he could treat her injuries. There was no other explanation. None that she wanted to explore, anyway.

She couldn’t hear him over the wind, but could see that he was laughing. He twisted her around so she was on her stomach and skillfully sliced the tendons behind her knees. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Then he began having fun.

An hour later, the wind had died down. At least it was no longer yowling. It was still coming out of the east, and was hard enough to drive curtains of rain when it gusted.

Daniel left the woman and found in the house’s wreckage what used to be a bedroom. It was easy to locate some of the husband’s clothes.

He stood naked in the searing rain for a while and let it wash most of the woman’s blood from him. Then he put on the farmer’s clothes. The guy had been well over six feet, so Daniel had to roll up the pants cuffs. The short-sleeved shirts were a little baggy but fit okay. The orange jumpsuit he wadded and shoved into what was left of a dresser drawer.

These people couldn’t have lived in this isolated ranch house or farmhouse or whatever it was without some kind of transportation. He walked the perimeter of the house and saw what might have once been a garage. There was a vehicle near it, lying on its side.

Daniel walked over and saw that the wind-tossed vehicle was an old Dodge pickup truck. He considered trying to shove it upright, but he found that he couldn’t budge it.

That was when he noticed chrome grillwork peeking out from under the wreckage of the garage. He walked over and saw that it was the front end of a late-model Ford SUV. Suffused with a new strength, he began throwing wreckage this way and that, digging the vehicle out.

When he was finished, and the SUV had a path out to where the gravel driveway was clear, he went to the dead man and found keys in his pocket. One of them was a car key. Good. That meant there’d be no need to hot-wire the ignition.

He then pulled a wallet from the corpse’s pants pocket. Eighty-seven dollars.

Daniel smiled. He rummaged through the wallet for more, but there was none. He did discover that he’d killed Flora and Nathan Amberson. Nice to have met you folks.

He returned to the SUV, climbed in, and inserted the key in the ignition switch.

The vehicle started on the first try. Daniel studied the dashboard. Half a tank of gas. Good enough.

He returned to the woman and dragged her out so she lay on a flattened and shattered window. Then he set to work beating her body with a length of two-by-four from the house’s studwork. When he was finished, he threw some of the house’s wreckage over her.