Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

And yet, as she lay on her back in the darkness, vaguely aware that she was drowning in her own blood, a stray thought did manage to insinuate itself into Dorie’s consciousness, complete, discrete, in a disembodied voice that was somehow familiar, though not her own: There are worse things in life than bleeding to death.

Yeah, or drowning, she answered quickly, before the tide could pull her under again.

Thank heaven for pure dumb luck, thought Simon, ruefully rubbing his brow, just below the hairline to the left of the widow’s peak. He knew it was only an accident of timing that he’d ducked his head to go titty-diving just as Dorie had brought her head up to butt him, so that instead of catching him in the nose with her forehead, she’d caught him in the forehead with her nose. Broke it again, too, judging by the amount of blood.

He crawled toward the sound of her moaning-an eerie, bubbling sound. The closer he got, the more blood there was-his palms were sticky from crawling through it, the knees of his trousers were damp by the time he reached her, and when he rolled her onto her side to prevent her from drowning, her bare skin was wet and slick with warm blood.

Not as unpleasant a sensation as he might have thought. In fact, it reminded him a little of bathing Missy-the feel of soft, cushiony flesh beneath slippery-smooth wet skin-only without the attendant taboos, of course. Unlike Missy’s, Dorie’s body was Simon’s to do as he pleased with, for as long as he could keep her alive-and contingent, as always, upon the amount of fear they could generate together.

Because without the fear, dead or alive, it was just another naked body, and naked bodies, per se, had never held all that much fascination for Simon. Which brought him back to the question of the moment: what to do about this one. Stop the bleeding, of course. Clean her up a little. Hog-tie her, hands to ankles, keep her out of mischief. And no gag: the poor thing’d be breathing through her mouth for days, if she lasted that long. Maybe throw a spare mattress up against the side door leading to the garage: that was the weak spot for the soundproofing.

But after that, there would be no sense in hanging around. Something that Simon had learned over the years, something most people would never know, was that while anticipation of physical suffering produced fear, the actual pain was itself anodyne. For several more hours, while her agony was in full bloom, Dorie would be incapable of experiencing any viable fear.

Inconvenient, sure, but Simon was only mildly disappointed. Because the ejaculatio praecox that had plagued him since early adolescence rendered penile insertion problematical and extended intercourse all but impossible, he was incapable of enjoying prolonged sexual gratification, but when it came to the fear game, Simon Childs was an all-night, do-right, sixty-minute man. The longer he could make a game last, the better he felt about himself.

And since Dorie’s broken nose was going to force him to delay his gratification for another twelve to twenty-four hours, Simon realized as he crawled off into the darkness to find his goggles, by this time tomorrow, barring complications, he could expect to be feeling very, very good about himself.

“I said, put your hands up!”

Pender hit the kill switch on his flip phone, then turned slowly. The young Carmel cop was in a textbook two-handed firing crouch, his feet spread shoulder-width apart, his knees slightly bent.

“And I said FBI,” replied Pender in his best command tone. “Which letter didn’t you understand?”

But the kid was starting to tremble from the strain of the position, so Pender adjusted his approach from authoritarian to folksy.

“Listen, son, we both know you’re not gonna shoot me,” he said in the possum-eatin’ drawl he’d learned in Arkansas as a rookie agent working out of the Little Rock field office. “The paperwork alone’d take you a month to complete, not to mention the hearings. Then, assumin’ you get to keep your job, the counselin’ starts; you’re gonna be tellin’ some shrink all about how you shot that friendly ol’ FBI man because Daddy didn’t give you that red wagon for Christmas when you were five. So why don’t you just back them sights offa my chest, I’ll show you my tin, we’ll whistle in the fire, piss on the dogs, and get back to shootin’ the bad guys ’stead a each other.”

A bit much? Maybe, but it worked-to a degree. “Okay, nice and slow,” said the cop. “Open your coat, let’s see your badge.” He still had his sights centered in on Pender’s chest-the kill grid, on the firing range-but they both knew it was more to save face than because he seriously believed Pender was a threat.

Pender played out the scene for all he was worth anyway, slowly opening his plaid jacket, lifting his wallet out of his inside pocket gingerly, with two fingers, and letting it fall open to reveal the old DOJ shield that only two days ago, he’d have bet he’d never be using again. “Okay?”

“Yeah, sorry.” The kid flipped the safety back on and slid the Glock into its holster. “You know how it is.”

“Sure I do,” said Pender soothingly. “What’s your name, son?”

“Mackey. Wynn Mackey.” Clean-cut, soft-spoken, nicely trimmed ’stash, well-tailored uni-just shaking hands with him made Pender feel old and tired.

“Ed Pender. Pleased to meet you.”

“Pender! Sure, sure-you were down here in July, that serial killer who broke out of County. I thought I recognized you from someplace-I just figured it was a wanted poster or a BOLO.”

“Yeah, I guess I have that kind of face.” Pender nodded toward Mackey’s holster. “Now, don’t forget you have a round chambered there.” Then something occurred to him. “Hey, what happened to Sid?”

“Who’s Sid?”

“The old guy, sitting in the car?”

“There wasn’t any old guy in the-”

He stopped-they’d both heard the studio door slam. A moment later, Sid appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Where the hell were you?” snapped Pender.

“I had to take a leak.”

“I nearly got my ass blown off.”

“It’d take at least a shotgun to cover that spread,” said Dolitz, glancing pointedly from the holstered gun to Pender’s rear.

Mackey checked out the new arrival from the ground up: white bucks, beige slacks, white Ralph Lauren Polo with the collar turned up in back, jaunty toupee. “Don’t tell me you’re FBI, too.”

“Retired. Very retired. What’s going on?”

“I was just about to ask Agent Pender here the same question.”

“Ms. Bell contacted us a few weeks ago,” said Pender, then paused. The idea was to get as much information as possible, while releasing as little as possible. But Mackey waited him out. He was young and he was local, but apparently he wasn’t stupid, so rather than waste any more time, Pender gave him the rundown-everything up to, but not including, the fact that he, too, was retired, at least technically. It would only have muddied the water, Pender told himself, especially since he’d already tinned Mackey.

And to Pender’s surprise, before he’d even finished explaining the significance of the vomit stain on the parquet floor, how extremely unlikely it was that Dorie would have simply left it there and gone off for the day, Mackey was talking into the two-way radio clipped to the front of his uniform, near his left collarbone.

“This is Mackey. Patch me over to Smitty…. Al, it’s Wynn. You know that Buick wagon you tagged down on Ocean…? Yeah, well, don’t tow it. Don’t even touch it; it might be a crime scene…. No, I’m not shitting you.…Look, just tape it off, I’ll get right back to you.”