William Brown - The Undertaker

From the rear, Doug's house looked much like his neighbors, except none of his lights were on. He had a stout brick garage with an overhead door, and a tall board fence that spanned the gap to the garage next door. The fence had a thick wooden gate. Along the fence ran a line of dented metal garbage cans, but there was nothing that offered a hand or even a toehold to scale the fence. Even if you did manage to climb it, Doug had added a looping double spool of razor wire along the top.

Sandy stood in the alley and looked up at the tall barrier. “Jeez, and I thought you were paranoid,” she said glumly.

“Good fences make good neighbors.“

“Who said that? Carl Sandburg or O. J. Simpson?” she asked, pushing on the fence and the gate, sizing them up. “Your surfer boy built himself a good one.” She stepped over to one of the garbage cans. Rummaging inside, she pulled out several sections of newspaper. “I think it's time the “Fuckin’ Wallendas” made an encore,” she said.

“You can't get over that thing,” I tried to tell her.

“We lived in a second floor apartment and my old man never let us out on school nights. I learned the fine art of escape and evasion from my older sister Louise. Piece of cake, Talbott, let's go.”

She draped her camera and the big shoulder bag around my neck and pushed me back against the wooden fence with my hands knit together. As light as she was, I barely felt her weight as she stepped from my hands to my shoulder and draped the newspaper across the razor wire. “Good thing I changed into the shorts,” she said as she looked down at me. “I wouldn't want some pervert looking up my skirt.” She dropped back down, “Okay, one, two…” She rocked backward, and “three!” I tossed her upward and she soared effortlessly over the razor wire, clearing it by at least a foot. She dropped out of sight on the other side, but I heard no screams or snapping of bones, only a soft “Thump.”

Moments later, the bolt on the gate rattled and she pulled it open, dusting off her hands with a flourish as she welcomed me inside the dark rear yard. “Warning: performed by professional acrobat. Do not try this at home,” she said with a big grin on her face.

“Show off,” I mumbled.

“Show off? I remind you that you would be standing out in the alley picking your nose right now if you hadn't brought me along.”

“You're lucky you didn't break your butt!” I whispered.

“And you'll be lucky if you don't get another bruise later.”

“Hush.” I put my finger to her lips and we stood listening, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. She started kissing my finger, running her tongue up it, and putting it in her mouth until I pulled it away and glared at her. “Will you stop that!” I whispered.

“You didn't complain when we were on the train. Then again… maybe that wasn't your finger, was it?” she whispered with a gleam in her eye.

Doug's back yard was as dark as a cave and the damp air slowly came alive with the sounds and smells of a warm summer night. Rich and earthy, still wet after the rain, I smelled roses, lily of the valley, and honeysuckle. I heard mosquitoes buzzing and the flapping wings of a large moth. Too much. Too little. And very quiet. Slowly, the outline of the yard emerged from the shadows, blacks on darker blacks and grays on darker grays.

The garage took up almost half the area between the fences, but there was a tool shed off to the right and a cracked, uneven sidewalk leading to the back door of the house. I took Sandy's hand and we walked slowly to the wooden rear stairs. They creaked as we stepped lightly up the half-dozen risers to the covered back porch. There was a window on each side of the rear door. I tried to look into the dark rooms, but I couldn't see a thing. I opened the screen door and squinted through the small glass panes in the kitchen door. That was just as fruitless, so I turned my attention to the locks. One was set in the doorknob and he had two dead bolts in the door. No hope there. I looked closely at the door and window frames. There were no electric contacts or wires from a burglar alarm system, but I knew he had one. I pulled out my handkerchief, placed it against one of the small panes of glass in the door, and smacked it with my elbow. In the still, damp air of the back yard, it sounded like a car crash, but it probably wasn't loud enough for anyone to hear next door or out in the street. Not in these old buildings. The front and rear walls could stop a cannon ball. I slipped my hand through the broken window frame, intending to open the door as Sandy reached out and turned the doorknob. To my surprise, the door swung open. The damned thing hadn't even been locked.

“Men!” she whispered in my ear. “You always gotta break something, don't you?”

“Slow down!” I whispered, trying to hold her back, but she ignored me as usual and stepped through the open doorway into the kitchen. The best I could do was grab her by the seat of her shorts and stop her from going any father.

“Have we been formally introduced?” she asked as I let go of her rear end. “Yeah, come to think of it, I guess we have, haven't we.”

The room was very dark. There was barely enough dim light coming through the draped rear windows to tell me we were in the kitchen, but not much more. Her hand ran along the wall, searching for a light switch, but I seized her wrist. “No, wait,” I said as I heard the panicked skittering of sharp nails on the tile kitchen floor. Three terrified balls of fur dashed past us and tore out the back door, screaming like banshees.

“What the hell was that?” Sandy asked.

“Doug's cats, I hope.” Without seeing them, I knew one was a big, black Persian, fat as a turkey, and the other two were Burmese, one white and one gray.

“Something sure spooked them.”

She was right about that, and there was a damp, foul smell in the place. I wasn't sure what it was and I wasn't sure I wanted to know, either. We stood there in silence, listening to our own hearts pound, but nothing else came out of the dark at us. The townhouse was as silent as a tomb. Still, something had terrified the cats.

“Stay there,” I told her as I inched forward, reaching out, navigating through the dark room with my fingertips. Fortunately, these old houses were not large. I bumped into the kitchen table and then my hand found the counter top and the stove on the far side. To my right, the darker, rectangular shape of a doorway emerged from the gloom. I figured it led to the front rooms. I took two steps toward the door when my foot bumped into something large and soft lying in the middle of the floor. I lost my balance and fell forward on my hands and knees.

“Are you all right?” Sandy quickly asked.

“Yeah. Have you got a match?”

She rummaged around inside her big shoulder bag. “Here. You want them?”

“No. I don't want to move. Light one, but cup your hand around it.”

She struck the match across the emery paper once, twice, then a third time before it lit, but by then I had already guessed what was lying next to me.

“Oh my God!” she said as she dropped the match on the tile floor. Its dim yellow glow quickly went out, but not soon enough. In that split second I saw a dead, battered, and half-naked body lying on its back, tied to a kitchen chair. The face was bloody and swollen beyond recognition, its eyes staring up at the ceiling, but I knew it was Doug.

Sandy had seen it too. She quickly turned away and I heard the sound of gagging and coughing as she threw up in the corner.

There was nothing to say. I took the matches from her hand and lit another, forcing myself to take a closer look as a towering rage grew inside me. They had used coat hangers to tie his legs and arms to the chair and the wires had cut deep into his skin as he struggled. There was a kitchen towel jammed in his mouth and enough bruises and burn marks to show that Doug had died slow and hard. Worse still, there was a second body in the room, sprawled on the floor near the sink. It was a woman. She was naked and as badly beaten as Doug was. Her face was turned away from me, but I knew it was Sharon. It took a real sadist to beat and torture two people like that and a real twisted mind to order it. Not that Tinkerton would have come here and gotten his own fingers bloody. He preferred rubber gloves, a clean, white surgical gown, and classical music when he worked, so the kitchen of an old brownstone would be far too crude for his tastes. That was the moment I knew I could never rest until I killed the man, with my bare hands if I had to.