Leather Maiden (10 page)

“I just got instructions,” he said. “They want ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand dollars. That's it?”

“Yep. That's it. And believe me, that's enough.”

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight. Look, I'm standing in my office. I'd rather talk later, face-to-face. My last class is at three today. Can I come by your place?”

“You've never been here.”

“But I know where it is.”

“Okay,” I said. “Bring the note.”

17

Jimmy and I sat in my little living room and sipped on crummy instant coffee and didn't quite look at one another. He was ashamed and I was ashamed for him.

I was looking at the blackmail note. It was lying on the glass coffee table and I was bent over it, reading what I had already read many times since he brought it over, perhaps expecting to find some code there, and then crack it, but I didn't have any success.

Like the previous note, it had been written with a black marker. But this time the letters were smaller. It read:

TONIGHT. MIDNIGHT. SIEGEL HOUSE. COME IN THE BACK WAY. BRING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS OR WE MAIL COPIES OF THE DVD TO EVERYONE. COME ALONE. DON'T FUCK WITH US. WE MEAN BUSINESS.

Jimmy sniffed at the air. “What is that smell?”

“Dead rat,” I said.

“That must be me,” Jimmy said, “because I'm starting to feel like that's what I am. A dead rat.”

“Perhaps,” I said, tapping the note. “But now we know we're dealing with more than one.”

“That's what we usually means,” Jimmy said. “I'm going to tell you something, bro. I haven't got ten thousand. I mean, it's in the bank, but I can't get it. It's under both our names, me and Trixie. I could go up there and pull it out, but Trixie would know pretty damn soon. She does, I might as well have just let them show the video. Hell, hire out a movie theater and serve popcorn, then lay my balls on a chopping block and give Trixie an axe and draw a line on my nuts with a marker.”

“Something about this whole thing doesn't add up.”

“What do you mean?” Jimmy asked. “It adds up to about ten thousand dollars. That's what it adds up to. And they are trying to show they know the connection by having me meet them where Caroline disappeared. Oh, it adds up all right.”

“Whoever took Caroline probably murdered her,” I said. “That adds up. But why now? This DVD is months old. Why has it taken so long for them to want money?”

“Everyone wants money. Now or later.”

“Thing is, though, they've gotten away with the crime and no one has a lead, so why surface now? What's the gain?”

“Again, the money. You said it yourself. It's perfect. They got away with the crime, and now I look good for it, and on top of that, they can pick up some cash. Sounds reasonable to me.”

“But still, why wait so long?”

“Could have been in prison for some other crime. Or the loony house. Who knows? Thing is, they got the DVD somehow, and they want the money.”

“So there's no money?”

Jimmy shook his head. “I thought about selling some things. I've got stuff I could get rid of. Motorcycles, a couple of old cars, things like that. But I couldn't manage to sell it before midnight.”

“That would probably just be the beginning anyway. It's never enough money, and you can't be certain you'll get all the copies of the DVD back.”

“Yep,” Jimmy said. “That's what I been thinking.”

“The police are starting to sound like the better deal, Jimmy. It would be rough for you, but it would be the right thing to do.”

“These blackmailing assholes. They shouldn't be able to do that, kill people. And they shouldn't be able to ruin my life, even if I did make a mistake. They ought to be stopped. And there's a way.”

I looked at him. There was a sudden gnawing in my stomach that wasn't hunger. “What way is that?”

“You know.”

“No. I don't know. You got something, let's hear it.”

“If something happened to them—”

“Wait a minute, brother mine. That don't work for me. No, sir. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”

“You've killed before.”

“In the service of our country. And by accident when I was trying to serve our country.”

“Accident?”

“I'd rather not go into it. Let me just say you get a little trigger-happy. Something moves when you're expecting something to move, or even when you aren't, you tend to shoot before asking questions. Good guy, bad guy. The results are still the same. Someone gets handed their ass.”

“I hear you, Cason. I'm not saying this lightly. I actually gave it some thought.”

“Sounds like it.”

“The law, they catch a killer, what are they gonna do?”

“Try them.”

“That's right. And if they find them guilty, what they're gonna do is put a needle up their arm, after costing the taxpayers a lot of money to house and feed and clothe them until they do.”

“You're worried about the legal system wasting money, suddenly? Some guy on death row is taking food out of your mouth?”

“I'm just saying. That's the way it would work. Hell, they might even get off. Get some slick lawyer and they might not get put to death. Might even pull an O.J., get turned loose, or just end up in prison.”

“What you're worried about is Trixie and everyone else knowing you were riding Caroline like a bicycle, so don't come off all pious.”

“I admit it. But it wouldn't be any loss if these killers bit the big one.”

I looked at him. He looked earnest and eager.

“I asked you the other day if you had anything to do with Caroline missing, and I didn't like asking it, but it was just a technical question. I was sure I knew the answer, and the answer was no. That was what you said.”

“And it's true.”

“But now you're talking about killing the blackmailers easy as if you were talking about making an omelet.”

“It's not the same kind of thing, and you know it.”

“Close enough for government work,” I said. “And I've done government work. Here are some problems. That's vigilantism. It's against the law. We get caught, we go to jail. Maybe we get the needle. Maybe we don't have the smart lawyer who can get us off. And here's another thing. You've never killed anyone.”

“I've killed deer. I've killed moose, and even a bear. I go hunting all the time, all over the country. Mounted them myself. Their heads are on my wall at the house.”

“They weren't human. And they couldn't fight back. At least you didn't give them a chance to fight back. Hunting doesn't impress me. Maybe you ought to give the little forest animals a rest. A killer, he, she, it, them, they may fight back in a way you don't expect. And I have killed humans. It isn't the pleasant and wonderful thing you think it is. Even if you think the ones you killed deserve it. It comes back on you. Blowback. I think about the people I killed every day. And that was for my country. That's what I was paid to do. That's what I was asked to do. And worse yet, I was good at it.”

“Isn't this for a purpose? Doing these jerks?”

“To not embarrass you? To make sure you keep your marriage and your job? Stay respectable? Hard for me to get worked up enough to think killing for that is a good idea. The answer is no.”

“I was just thinking out loud.”

“Too loud.”

“I was thinking about Mom and Dad finding out.”

“That's something all right, but it was mostly yourself you were thinking about.”

He looked angry, but it didn't hold. After a few moments, he said: “What do we do then?”

“In all that junk you got you could sell, do the motorcycles work?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you prefer to shoot animals with guns, but do you have anything that takes pictures of them at night?”

“What?”

“Something that can take a night picture, a good picture without light?”

Jimmy shook his head. “No. But I got a friend, a fellow at work, and he believes in Bigfoot.”

“Bigfoot?”

“Yeah. You know.”

“Yeah, I know. What's that got to do with anything?”

“He has night cameras. He's always trying to get a snap of Bigfoot taking a dump in the woods, or some such thing. He sets the cameras in places where he thinks it comes. He ends up with pictures of deer and mice and raccoons, but he's sure Bigfoot is out there, even if he hasn't shown up yet.”

“Can you borrow a camera?”

“I think so. And he's got some recording equipment too. Stuff you can put in one spot and hear what's going on some distance away, get it recorded. He's got everything. But I'll have to make up a story for him.”

“Well, make up one. Even if you have to tell him you're hunting Bigfoot.”

“I say that, he'll want to go.”

“Here. Here's the story. Tell him you think your neighbor's dog is digging under your fence, digging in your flower beds.”

“We don't have flower beds.”

“He knows that, make it something else. Tell him the dog is shitting in your yard. But tell him you want to set the camera up to prove to your next-door neighbor that it's his dog, not an armadillo, as he says.”

“I got you.”

“So you get the camera, and we set it up tonight, and then we get pictures of them. We have photos of them, and they know we can connect them back to the blackmail scheme and the murder, they may be hesitant. We reverse it on them.”

“Yeah, man. That's a good idea.”

“We'd need the equipment soon, as in quick soon. And the motorcycles, gassed up and ready to go. Time-wise we'd have to be way ahead of the blackmailers.”

“How would we know if we're ahead of them? They could be there right now, waiting until midnight.”

“If they are, they're likely to be seen. They probably wouldn't want to take that chance. They'll wait at least until it's dark.”

“What about us? Now we'll be more likely to be seen.”

“That's a chance we'll have to take.”

         

Jimmy had to tell some lies to Trixie to do what we wanted to do, but I figured the lies he told her now were no worse than the lies he told her before. The lie was we were going camping. A brother gig. Hanging. Chatting about old times. It was the middle of the week, but Jimmy arranged for the next day off, gave his class a free day. And me, I could go in late.

Jimmy borrowed the night camera, got a few other things we needed from his friend. While he did that I figured on a plan I thought might work, but I can't say as I felt real confident. It wasn't that good a plan, but it was some kind of plan, and that mattered.

Whatever might come, we were as ready as we were ever going to be.

In Motion

18

We got there late afternoon and went into the woods above the house at the summit of the hill. The woods were thick, but there wasn't much of it. It was hot and we had to sit down to rest because the trees held the heat and it was hard to breathe. There were hordes of mosquitoes and flies.

We had come on a couple of Jimmy's motorcycles. We had our camping equipment and the surveillance equipment strapped over the backs of the bikes. We broke out the pup tent and set it up and pulled the mosquito net down and secured the bar at the bottom of the tent against the ground. The way we placed the tent, we had a view through the net and through a little clearing in the pines, a straight-shot look down the hill. It was close in the tent with the two of us, and the trees were tight around us, and that made it warmer, but it really wasn't too uncomfortable. We had a pair of binoculars, and from time to time Jimmy put them to his eyes and glanced down at the Siegel house.

“What are you, General Patton?” I said. “Give those things a rest.”

“I don't think they're there,” he said.

“You said that already. Maybe ten times.”

“Well, I just want to make sure.”

“You know what I think? I think these guys are amateurs, and I think they see a way to make some bucks, that's what I think. And I don't think they're going to show early. They figure they got you by the balls, and they do. So they're going to wait until time and then they'll show, and you will show, and I will have the camera, and I will get them on film.”

“By the way,” Jimmy said, “did I mention we too are amateurs?”

“No. You didn't. But you're right. Still, I think we have the edge. They did something to Caroline, got away with it, it was most likely an accident. Now they've gotten greedy, and that could be their downfall.”

“That's why you think they're amateurs?”

“That's why.”

Jimmy scratched his chin, gave me a hard look. “And what happens when I don't have the money?”

“That part is tricky,” I said.

“Since it will be my ass on the line, perhaps you could lay out the plan a little more clearly.”

“I told you already.”

“I got it down, but I don't like it. I keep hoping for more. Way it is now: They ask for the money. I say go fuck yourself, I haven't got any money. My brother is on the hill with a camera that has a telescopic lens and he's filming you. And if you don't believe us, we can swap a DVD with you tomorrow for the one you got. How am I doing?”

“Swell.”

“Now, here comes my question. Why would they care? They got the good DVD, and all we'll have is a film of me and them standing around down there by the Siegel house. For all anyone can tell, me and them are going to sit down and have a circle jerk, see who can shoot it the farthest.”

“That's why you will have the wire and I will have the recorder, and that's why you will say they do anything to you, it's on film and recorded, and I've got both.”

“What if they don't believe me?”

“Talk your talk, and then point up the hill. I'll flash my flashlight at them in confirmation. You just have to talk some good doo-doo, brother.”

“I still think we ought to do what needs to be done.”

“Don't go there again, Jimmy. I'm not up for it. Not even a little bit. I'm here to help you, I got to believe you're not going to give me grief. We don't try and do anything to hurt them.”

“What if they just decide to shoot me, then come up the hill after you?”

“I will run like the wind.”

“I will still be dead.”

“That is true, but I will tell heroic tales of your death for as long as I live.”

         

We lay there in the pup tent, passing the binoculars back and forth, watching the house and all around the hill, as if Jimmy's blackmailers might come crawling up through the vines. The sun moved overhead and fell westward. The mosquitoes buzzed against the net, and a blackfly about the size of a pterodactyl lit at the center of the net and lay there as if waiting for us to make a move.

I thumped the fly and it flew off. I showed him. He wasn't so scary.

The falling sun had begun to cause a big shadow to stand out to the side of the house and it made the vines there dark as a pit. The sun melted bright red on the west side of the woods, and some of the rays from it came through and lay over us and made everything appear as if we were seeing it all through a red cellophane lens.

Then the redness sank down and the dark rose up. I checked my glow-in-the-dark watch. It was eight p.m.

“Only four hours to go,” I said.

“Shit,” Jimmy said. “That's like an eternity.”

An hour or so later we had a false start when a car parked down at the bottom of the hill near a tall pine and a guy got out on the passenger side, stood in the darkness of the tree. From the way he stood, and from what little the moonlight showed us, we could tell it was just some guy stopping to pee. When he finished, he got back in the car, and his buddy at the wheel drove them away.

It was kind of like a signal. We got out of the tent and found a place for us to do the same. When we finished, we got back in the tent, behind the skeeter net, which was a good thing. The mosquitoes were really thick now and I had a dozen bites on me, all of them acquired during the time I was taking a leak. The crickets were very busy and there were so many of them, it sounded like someone sawing wood. Inside the tent, listening to them, protected from the mosquitoes, it was almost soothing.

We talked for a while, and when that played out, we took turns nodding off. About ten-thirty we heard a noise behind us, and it occurred to me that our blackmailers would probably come up on the house the way we did, from the top of the hill, or to be more precise from the opposite side of the hill and through the woods. They weren't on motorcycles, though, and they weren't coming up the trail alongside the woods the way we had come. They were walking along a trail on the opposite side. We could hear them whispering, and we could hear limbs being pushed aside not too carefully, and then someone, a woman, cursed, and Jimmy and I looked at each other in the dark.

We pushed the mosquito net up and eased out of the pup tent. We sat in front of it and were quiet.

The two people were not quiet. They were louder, now, and we could see them as two human-shaped shadows walking between a crooked row of trees and scraggly brush. If they had looked to their left, and had they really been watching for us, they would have seen us.

They fought the limbs some more, and I realized then that they hadn't really scoped things out before coming out here. I was even more certain, now that I could see their shapes and hear their voices, that they were young. Not kids, but young.

Finishing off the trail, coming out of the woods, they started down the hill, two shapes with the moon fully outlining them and the house below, the vines looking like some kind of strange dark ocean, the waves frozen, the house being the biggest, darkest frozen wave of all.

They walked down to the gravel behind the house and stopped there for a moment. They were wearing light coats. It was way too hot for coats. The guy leaned over and kissed the girl on the cheek, then they slid in close and held each other for a while.

After a moment, they broke apart and went on down to the house. They worked at the vine-covered door for a long time, and then it came open and they slipped inside.

“I don't know,” Jimmy said. “I don't know what to do.”

“It isn't midnight yet. Just wait. Could just be a couple grabbing a quickie.”

         

We lay there in the tent behind the skeeter net until about eleven-thirty. No one else had shown.

“I can't believe it,” Jimmy said. “That has got to be them.”

I looked at my watch. “Still half an hour. Someone else could show. In the meantime, I think we ought to wire you up.”

We got out of the tent, and while we fought mosquitoes, we put the receiver on his belt and pulled his shirt down over it. The way it was set was like a baby monitor. Whatever Jimmy heard, I'd be able to hear up here with a little piece that went in my ear, like one of those walking phones. And I could record it.

When I had him fixed up, he turned on the receiver and said a few words, and I could hear them in my earpiece. I said, “It seems all right. I don't know how it'll work when you're down the hill apiece, but it ought to be fine.”

Jimmy went over to his motorcycle. There were saddlebags on it, like a horse. He reached in one of them and took out a pair of gloves and a little snubnosed revolver in a holster that was mostly just a strap with a little belt.

“I thought we went over the gun business,” I said.

He came over with another pair of gloves and tossed them at me. “We might end up leaving some print somewhere down there, and we don't want to do that.”

At the time, I thought Jimmy was being a little excessive, but later I was glad for the gloves. I pulled them on. When I was finished, I gave him a hard look.

“I still don't like the gun. You can keep ignoring me, but I'm going to keep saying it. The gun, it's not a good idea.”

“Don't panic. I'm going to strap it to my ankle. It might be them that loses their cool. They do, I'd like to have a fighting chance.”

“They're a couple of kids.”

“And maybe,” Jimmy said, “they're the couple of kids who killed Caroline, as well as the ones blackmailing me.”

“I don't like the gun business.”

“Don't worry. I'm not going in blazing. But I don't have any money either. They might take that personally.”

“Thing is, you got to get them to come outside,” I said. “I can hear you in the house, but I can't see you and I can't film. I need to get their faces on the film. Tell them you left the money outside, hid it up the hill. Anything to get them out of the house. What I'm saying as plain as I can say it is don't go in the house. Don't get out of my sight.”

“I'll do what I can.”

We climbed back in the tent and waited. Just after midnight, Jimmy and I got out of the tent and I got the camera and made sure my earpiece was in good, and we tested the equipment again. I adjusted the telescopic viewer on the camera and looked down the hill. The infrared view reminded me of the tools I had used in Iraq. Something about that made my skin crawl. I took a deep breath, looked at Jimmy.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“I think so. About that gun.”

“I'm cool,” Jimmy said. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a short cylindrical pipe, or at least it looked like a pipe. He flicked his wrist and a narrower, longer piece popped out. It was an asp, an expanding baton. “I also got this.”

“Why don't you pull a goddamn cannon down there with you,” I said.

“Believe me, I thought about it.”

Jimmy looked at the house below, took a deep breath, started walking.