Archer Mayor - Scent of Evil

The first possibility of escape occurred to me then, justifying in my own mind my docility so far. If I were to merely step off the platform, I could crash through the skylight to the floor below it and maybe get away. From this elevation, it was probably twelve feet to the glass, which in turn was some ten feet above the floor. A long way to go, but survivable, which was more than I thought my chances were with Buddy. Besides, I continued thinking hopefully, even if I broke both legs, I might still be able to crawl to a fire alarm and summon help. I took a small step toward the edge to get into position.

“Cute,” was all I heard from behind me before the back of my head exploded into a painful flash of light and I felt my entire body go weak. My hand flew to the point of impact and was grabbed by Buddy, who pulled me backward off balance into the chair. I landed heavily, my head still swimming, and was only half aware of him quickly handcuffing my wrists behind my back, to the outside rails of the chair back. He ran off two long strips of duct tape and fastened my legs to the front legs of the chair.

If there was one image that had dogged me throughout this case, and had served as a continual reminder that the man we were after was both determined and crazed, it was the picture of Charlie Jardine, bound and helpless, having to watch his own death like a spectator. Superimposing that image on my own situation, I suddenly came face to face with the true meaning of the word “horror.”

I worked my mouth several times, trying to get the words to come out, fighting the fearful nausea and the pain from the back of my head. “Buddy, for Christ’s sake. Why do this?”

He laughed, putting the finishing touches on his handiwork. “This has been my home away from home. No one knows where we are. I’m going to end this the way it began and then I’m history.”

He pulled a small bottle and a packaged syringe from his pants pocket and began preparing an injection.

“Buddy, we went through your house; we found the silencer and the curare. We know you killed Jardine. Killing me isn’t going to help you.”

He was meticulously measuring how much curare to pull into the syringe barrel, holding it against the skylight’s dim glow. He sounded almost bored. “It doesn’t matter. If I am caught, I’ll be able to get off on an insanity plea, especially after killing you.”

He tapped the syringe with his fingernail and shot a little of the fluid out the end of the needle, to eliminate any air bubbles.

I made a single, convulsive leap against my bonds, hoping for a flaw in the duct tape or a weakness in the chair. I barely moved, though the pain and nausea from my head wound doubled in intensity.

Buddy looked at me and shook his head. “That reminds me: I better tape you down a little better before I stick this in. Wouldn’t want you bouncing around, messing my aim up.”

His words had the proper undermining effect. Had I waited until he was just poised with his needle, I might have been able to knock it out of his hand with my shoulder.

I closed my eyes as he set about taping my elbows painfully together, pinning my upper arm against the back of the chair so tightly I could barely move.

“There we go,” he said happily. “Trussed up like a hog.”

He picked up the syringe from the floor and held it ready. “Any last words? Words become a little difficult after this stuff goes in; that’s what Charlie found anyway.”

“Yeah, Buddy, I’d like to know why? Jardine didn’t steal Rose from you, and losing a scholarship couldn’t have been the end of the world.”

He paused for a long time, giving me a faint touch of hope. “Let’s say I thought it was poetic justice, and leave it at that.”

He did it then with astounding quickness. One moment he was smirking down at me, the syringe held delicately in his hand, and the next it was over, the needle had been withdrawn, and he was carefully putting the small plastic sleeve back over it before slipping the whole thing into his pocket. “Gotcha,” was all he said.

I felt for a moment that my heart had stopped. I turned my head away from him and looked down at the shape of the small, dead sparrow, all my focus turned inward. After a half minute I realized I needed to start breathing, and I took some of the hot, stale air into my lungs, no longer resentful of its poor quality.

“I envy you a bit, you know. I’m curious about how it feels. With Charlie, it was almost like he was going into a trance, until I grabbed his attention, that is. Did you guys figure out exactly how I did it?”

I was beginning to feel very odd. I tried to answer, mostly to see if I could do it, but the effort seemed too much. I wasn’t numb, which was how I’d imagined Charlie had felt. Instead, it was just the opposite. I could sense everything that was going on inside me: the air moving in and out, the blood rushing through the vessels in my neck, the regular thumping of my heart, the sweat pouring down my face. But I could not will myself to do anything, wiggle a toe, or move my tongue, or even swallow. It was as if all the body’s automatic systems had taken over, and all the voluntary ones short-circuited.

Buddy was still chatting, fooling with something beyond my scope of vision, but I no longer listened. All I had left was my ability to concentrate, and to spend what time I had left paying attention to Buddy seemed a waste. At first, though, I didn’t actually know what to think about. The case came to mind, the irony of it ending this way, questions about how they would deal with my death. I wondered if Ron would be made lieutenant, and if Willy Kunkle would bother trying to get back on the force without me goading him.

Gail eventually pushed all that aside, as she often did in real life. I found myself regretting how little time I’d given her this past week, and how I’d allowed the tensions of the investigation to come between us, if only temporarily. I remembered holding her close just recently, having patched up those differences, and the warmth of her voice on the phone a mere twenty minutes ago.

Buddy thrust his face before my own, cutting off my view of the skylight. “Hi, Joe. You haven’t been paying attention. I invented a new toy, something to help me in my work.” He dangled a thin nylon strap in front of me, on which two empty wooden sewing spools had been taped, about an inch and a half apart.

“See, when I killed Charlie, it was hard work; it took a long time and ended up being painful-for me, that is. My thumbs hurt for a couple of days. So this is my new experiment.” He disappeared and I could hear him moving behind me. The strap, held horizontally, reappeared before my eyes, the spools side by side, in the middle.

“It goes around the neck, each spool over an artery, so that when I pull it tight, you can still breathe, but the blood gets shut off. It’s no wear and tear on me, ’cause I just work a tourniquet stick from the back. Whatcha think? Neat, huh?”

I felt his hands around my neck, adjusting the strap, fitting each spool into the depression on either side of my trachea.

“Of course, if it doesn’t work, I’ll just go back to using my thumbs, but let’s give it-”

Silence fell like a cleaver. The strap went slack. I couldn’t move my head, but I shifted my eyes from the skylight and scanned what little I could see of the darkness beyond. Behind me, I could hear Buddy quietly pulling the hammer back on his gun. Whatever had caught his attention was quiet now.

He moved as gently as a cat, sliding into my field of vision from the right, his gun in his hand, gliding down the two steps from the platform to the one catwalk I could see in my frozen state, the same one we’d traveled from the air shaft.