Broken (15 page)

Chapter 23

Three days
later Dan and I were standing on the Ocean Beach pier. We’d walked out to the
little café at the far end and bought lobster tacos and sodas. My treat. I
could afford it now. Alan Davies had been true to his word. I wasn’t going to
need to worry about money for a long time.

It was a
windy day, partly cloudy and about seventy degrees. In other words, it was just
like every other day in San Diego. I’d always loved the city, but damned if I
wouldn’t have liked a little variety in the weather now and then.

I’d only
had one drink this morning and found it was enough to keep me from shaking, at
least so far. I didn’t feel like I was about to vomit at any moment, either. It
was a different kind of feeling. Good, yes. But different. I’d even showered,
put on clean clothes, and brushed out my hair.

A chunk
of meat fell out of Dan’s taco and landed on the wooden planks below. “God
damn
it,” he said.

“I hate
it when that happens.”

Dan eyed
the fallen lobster meat for just a moment too long and I knew what he was
thinking. “Really?” I asked.

“Nah,”
he said. “Probably get hepatitis.”

“You’d
be lucky if that was all you got.”

“Yeah.”
He bit into what was left of his taco and chewed it thoughtfully.

“Your
plan failed,” I said.

“What?”

“You
thought working a case was going to save me,” I said. “I’m not saved. So
there.”

“I don’t
know,” he shrugged.

“What, I
am
saved? I had vodka for breakfast.”

“You
look better,” Dan said.

“Really?”

“Don’t
get me wrong, you still look pretty sick. But you looked half-dead when you
walked into my office the other morning. I figure we bought you a little time.
I may not have to speak at your funeral until
next
month, which is an
improvement.”

“You’re
hilarious.”

“I
wasn’t kidding.”

I
flipped him off and he nearly smiled. Nearly.

“I heard
from Alan Davies,” I said.

“I
figured you would have. How’s the girl?”

“She’s
barely spoken, apparently.”

“I
imagine she’s going to need a lot of therapy.”

“Her
father is the Mafia and her mother was murdered in front of her. I would think
therapy will be a recurring theme in her life.”

“Yeah.
What about Emerson?”

“He’s in
the wind. If he’s smart he’s in a hole halfway around the world right now.
Davies is never going to stop looking for him.”

“Well,
fuck him anyway,” Dan said. I looked at him in surprise and he shrugged. “If
anyone asks, I said Chandler Emerson should be brought to justice, of course.”

“Of
course.”

“And
what about you?” he asked.

I
watched a group of pelicans feeding in the gentle waves next to the pier. “I
honestly don’t know.”

He
nodded. “If you wanted to come back…”

“No.”

“Think
about it a little before you say that.”

“I don’t
have to think about it,” I said. “You were right to fire me. I was mad at you about
it, but you were right. I was in no shape to be a cop after I got out of the
hospital.”

“That
was a long time ago.”

“Not
long enough,” I said. “I’m still…” I thought about what Molly had said to me
before. “I’m broken.”

“You’re
not broken.”

“My
thinking is broken, then,” I said. “When they were trying to put my brain back
together, some things wound up in the wrong place.”

“Okay.”

“I’m
fucking
nuts
, honestly.”

“I
wouldn’t go that far.”

“I
would. And then there’s…” I stopped. He waited for me to say it. “I’m an
alcoholic.”

He
didn’t say anything. He wasn’t the type to say “I told you so.”

“It was
getting to be a problem before the Laughing Man,” I admitted. “But it didn’t
get out of control until I went after him and…damn it, Dan, he was always a
step ahead of me. Taunting me. He was beating me and that was how I coped with
it.”

“And
now?”

“I don’t
know. I may get another therapist.”

“Sarah
tells me you were going to go to an A.A. meeting.”

“I did.”

“How did
that go?”

“What’s
said there stays there,” I told him sagely. He didn’t need to know what I’d
really gone there for.

“Are you
going to go back?”

I
intended to say something sarcastic, but what came out of my mouth was, “I’ll
think about it.” I blinked in surprise. Where had
that
come from?

“Okay,”
he said. He looked as surprised as I felt.

We
turned to the water and watched the waves roll in for a while. “It’s going to
be nice today,” he said.

“It’s
nice here every day.”

“You
know what I mean.”

“Yeah,”
I said. “I do.”

Chapter 24

I’d walked
out to the pier to meet Dan, and refused his offer to drive me home. It was
nice out, and I found I wanted the fresh air. I’d spent so much time in my
house in the past few years I’d forgotten how good an ocean breeze could feel.

Back
home I decided that I’d earned a nap. But on the way to my bedroom I made a
detour into the kitchen and took a fresh bottle of vodka down from the cabinet
above the sink. I cracked it open and poured an inch of it into a clean glass.
Then I put the bottle down, picked up the glass, and just looked at it.

By any
logic in the world I shouldn’t drink it. But this wasn’t about logic. It was
about a need that would have been impossible to explain to anyone who hadn’t
experienced it. And I wasn’t sure I really understood it, myself. Was it so I’d
stop feeling things for a while? Was it a security blanket? Was it just part of
who I was?

I
sniffed the liquid in the glass as if that was going to answer the question for
me. The thought of actually drinking it depressed me. It was like wearing
clothes you found in the dumpster because you couldn’t afford anything else. It
was walking in the ditch because the paved road was, for some unexplainable
reason, too frightening.

Fuck
it.  I took a sip and swallowed.

Instantly
I felt both revolted and panicky. Why had I done that? But the question was
made moot a moment later as my body rebelled against the liquor and I vomited
it up into the sink. Bits of lobster taco and vodka splashed against the basin.
I had to hold onto the counter to keep upright until the retching was over, and
then long enough to catch my breath again.

Drinking
was definitely out today. I poured the rest of my glass into the sink. My body
just couldn’t handle it. Maybe I’d feel differently after I’d slept a little.

I picked
up the bottle of vodka, looked at it for a moment, then upended it over the
sink and watched as the liquid ran down the drain. I was never going to drink
this shit. Maybe I’d quit drinking. And maybe I’d just switch to good Scotch,
but my cheap vodka days were definitely over.

I went
into the cabinet and found another bottle, which I emptied the same as I had
the first. Then I looked through the rest of the cabinets and cleaned every
bottle containing alcohol out of them. I even found an unopened bottle of
Schnapps and regarded it with surprise. When had I bought
this
shit? I
hated Schnapps. It went down the drain with everything else.

All of the
empties wound up filling two Hefty bags. I bundled them up, tied the tops, and
then started toward the front door. I’d put them in the dumpster outside so I
wouldn’t have to put up with the lingering smell of cheap booze, and then I was
going to clean the hell out of this place. Not just picking up garbage this
time, but a real cleaning, with Lysol and bleach and whatever else I had under
the sink. My house hadn’t had a proper cleaning in years. Did my vacuum even
work anymore? I had no idea when I’d turned it on last. I might have to go buy
a new one. Maybe I’d even call a carpet cleaning company in. The place sure as
hell needed it.

I was
rounding the corner into the living room with the garbage sacks in my hands
when I saw Chandler Emerson coming toward me, eyes filled with rage. I dropped
the bags but didn’t have the time to react as he pressed a stun gun to my chest
and hit the trigger. A blast of pain exploded throughout my body and I fell to
the floor, twitching uncontrollably. My nervous system was shot. I couldn’t
move.

Emerson
stood over me, breathing hard. I didn’t know how long the effects of a stun gun
would last. Ten minutes? Fifteen? In any case, I was going to be incapacitated
for at least a few minutes. If he didn’t blast me again, that was.

The
lawyer put the stun gun in his pocket and took hold of my wrists. He began
dragging me along the floor. I couldn’t make my head turn to see where we were
going, but it seemed like we were heading for the kitchen.

He
grunted and moaned as he dragged me. The man obviously wasn’t in great shape,
but unfortunately I didn’t weigh very much. If only my addiction had been to
chocolate cake, this whole thing might be going in a very different direction.

Emerson
lugged me slowly through the kitchen and into the dining room. My body was
still twitching when he laid me out next to the dining room table, but I was
able to make my hand flex. Emerson saw it. “No, you don’t!” he said. He took
the stun gun out of his pocket and blasted me in the chest again, setting off a
new round of pain and twitching. Then, with a kind of maniacal glee in his
eyes, he pressed the stun gun against my cheek and pressed the trigger a third
time. I was already in so much pain I nearly didn’t feel the new shock, but I
decided if I lived through this I was going to beat the hell out of him before
I called the police.

Emerson
put the stun gun down on the dining room table and then bent over to grab me
under my arms. He grunted loudly as he hoisted me up into a chair and propped
me up so I couldn’t slide off of it. Then he turned and left the room. I
couldn’t turn my head quickly enough to follow him, but I heard him go into the
living room and then my front door opened. A moment passed in silence and I
tried to get my body to do something,
anything
, but it refused to
cooperate. I knew Emerson was coming back, and I probably wasn’t going to like
what he’d be bringing with him.

The
front door opened and closed again. Emerson reappeared in the dining room with
a red toolbox that still had the price tag attached. He’d probably bought it
this morning. That was unexpected. I’d figured he was out getting tools to cut
me up with, not actual tools. Maybe he was going to do a little carpentry and
just didn’t want me getting in the way. Or maybe I didn’t want to know what was
in the toolbox.

Emerson
opened the toolbox and removed a roll of duct tape. He peeled the end of the tape
away from the roll and then began circling me, wrapping the tape in tight
circles around my arms as he secured me to the chair. I was in no danger of
falling off of it now. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to move anytime soon.

In the
end he used far more tape than he needed to, probably thinking using too much
was better than too little. He had that much right, at least. After using
nearly the entire roll, he took a box cutter out of the toolbox and cut the
remainder away. He patted the tape down, making sure it was secure against my
body. Then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. “How do you like that, you
fucking bitch?” he asked.

I tried
to tell him to go fuck himself, but my lips were numb and I sounded like
someone mumbling in their sleep. He got enough of it to understand what I’d
said, though, and punched me in the face hard enough to make my teeth rattle.
My vision filled with stars.

I had
little chance of being rescued, I realized. Dan had no reason to come and check
on me, and it wasn’t like I had any friends who might stop by to say hello.
Emerson could kill me here and it could be days before anyone knew I was even
missing. Days, or weeks, maybe.

Emerson
looked at the box cutter in his hand, frowned at it, then went into his toolbox
again and came out with a miniature blowtorch, the kind home cooks wanting to
try something fancy used to sear a crust on a crème
brûlée
.
He clicked the trigger and a blue flame about an inch long appeared at the
nozzle. He held the trigger down for a moment so I could get a good look at it,
then shut the flame off.

“I’ll
wait until the shock wears off,” he said, nodding at me. “You really should
feel this after what you’ve done to me.”

I
concentrated on making my mouth work. “Fuck you,” I said. There. That had actually
sounded pretty good.

“Goddamn
whore,” Emerson said. “You ruined my life. I was almost done with him. I was so
close. You should have just crawled back into the gutter you came out of and
died.”

I flexed
my hands. My twitching had stopped and I could feel my nervous system slowly switching
itself back on, like someone checking the lights in a building after a
blackout. In another minute I’d be back at a hundred percent. Not that it would
matter much. I wasn’t going anywhere as long as I was taped to this chair.

“What do
you think is going to happen here?” I asked, forcing my words to come out
slowly and clearly. “You’re wasting time. You should be running.”

“Where
am I going to go?” Emerson asked, his voice plaintive. “My assets are frozen.
The roads and airports are being watched. If the police don’t find me, Alan
will. He’ll skin me alive for what I’ve done.”

Good
,
I wanted to say, but maybe I could still talk my way out of this. “So you just
came over here to get revenge on me? Think about this. What’s your next move?”

He
shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care anymore.”

I
thought it over, trying to look more incapacitated than I actually was to buy some
extra time. “Go to Mexico.”

“What?”

“Mexico.
It’s easy. Get on the trolley and take it to San Ysidro. Get off at the last
stop and it’s a five-minute walk to the border.”

He
scowled at me. “But the Border Patrol…”

“Have
you ever gone into Mexico from San Ysidro? There is no checkpoint to go
through. You walk through a turnstile and you’re in Tijuana. Nobody gives a
shit about you going over there. Coming back is what’s hard, and you’re never
coming back.”

Emerson
looked like he was actually considering it for a moment, but then he glared at
me. “You really think I’m going to go to Mexico and live with those…those
beaners
?”

“Well,
you probably shouldn’t say that to them,” I told him. “It’s really racist.”

Emerson
clicked the blowtorch on. “I think you’re ready,” he said. “What should we
start with?” He brought the blowtorch close to my head, near enough that I
could feel its heat. “Your ears? I think we should start with your ears.”

He
leaned in close. I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth. I didn’t want him
to hear me scream. I didn’t have any illusions that I wouldn’t, of course, but
I hoped I’d be able to hold out for a minute or two.

I felt
the other presence before I saw him. One moment I was waiting for Emerson to
burn me and then the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I knew
he
was here. God help me, I actually opened my mouth to warn Emerson, but it was
too late. I saw a shadow move behind the lawyer, then a gloved hand appeared
and clapped itself firmly against Emerson’s forehead. Another hand appeared,
this one holding a straight razor, and opened the lawyer’s throat wide in one
swift motion. Blood erupted from Emerson’s neck like a volcano, much of it
splattering onto my face and hair. The lawyer’s eyes bulged and he made one
quick, wet choking noise as he clutched at his throat, but it was over. The
hand on his forehead released him and he crumpled to the ground, dropping the
blowtorch as he fell. Without him to hold the trigger, the flame clicked off
harmlessly. I was left facing his killer, who held the bloody straight razor at
his side as he looked down at me.

The last
time I’d seen the Laughing Man he’d been dressed for battle, a mess of leather
and body armor that had made him look like a cyberpunk street hockey player.
Today he wore jeans and a grey hoodie. He wouldn’t have gotten a second look out
on the street except for the Greek theatre mask he wore. The mask was painted
in solid white, its mouth open in a wide laugh that was probably supposed to
look joyful. It looked demonic to me, maybe because I knew a monster was on its
other side. He’d worn the same mask three years ago, during our first
confrontation. The Laughing Man had cleaned it in the interim. The last time
I’d seen it the mask had been colored with my blood.

The mask
covered his entire face, except for his piercing blue eyes. I remembered the
eyes, too. I’d remember them until the day I died.

A small
slit had been cut in the mask’s mouth so he could speak. It had the added
effect of amplifying every breath he took. His breathing now was as calm as if
he’d been sleeping. I’d have been willing to bet that his pulse rate hadn’t
increased even a beat while he’d slaughtered Emerson. That had meant no more to
him than swatting an insect.

I
strained at the duct tape for one brief moment before giving up. It was
hopeless. I had no chance of escaping. At least not before he cut my throat,
too.

The
Laughing Man watched me for a moment, his head cocked just slightly. Then he
knelt down and turned Emerson’s face toward himself. He went to work with the
straight razor. I didn’t have to wonder what he was doing. The Laughing Man would
remove the lips, then cut away the skin covering Emerson’s teeth, going all the
way back to where his jaw hinged. When he was finished Emerson would be left
with the same grotesque grin the Laughing Man carved into each of his victims.
The last time I’d seen that mutilation it had been on the faces of the two
little girls I’d been so desperately trying to save three years ago. I had
already been teetering on the edge of madness back then, and that was all it
had taken to push me over.

It wasn’t
going to happen this time. I wouldn’t let it.

I turned
my face away as the Laughing Man cut on Emerson, the only sound in the room
that of flesh being sliced and tossed away. When it was done, the Laughing Man
took a moment to inspect his work. Satisfied, he heaved Emerson up into the
chair at the head of the dining room table. He pushed the chair in neatly and
moved Emerson’s body into a position that suggested he was alive and well. He
was making a still-life, I realized. Emerson would have looked like a man
sitting down to dinner, mouth open in laughter. The Laughing Man didn’t have
enough bodies to make a family, of course, except for me. He could make Emerson
a wife, if he wanted to. Was that his plan? Was this how I was going to die?