The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (14 page)

“You should have kept to yourself, stayed in your place. Too bad, buddy.”

The voice was nothing close to familiar, and as he scrambled to make sense of things, his brain lost the battle and the lights for him, went out.

“Welcome to the party, Sunshine.”

Travis tried his best to make his vision clear as he opened his eyes, but the pain in the rest of his body protested the action. He wanted to drift back into the bliss of unconsciousness, though a nagging tug at the back of his brain condemned him for the desire. He tried to take a proper breath to clear his head, found that he couldn’t and then he tried to move his arms and discovered that they were equally disabled.

“Oh, you can try to get free if you want to, but I’ll have you know no one has ever let themselves out of those nifty zip cuffs.”

Travis felt his face scrunch with the confusion, but the fog was stubborn and wouldn’t clear. Just what the hell was going on? A smell hit his nose and the implications stirred a fight or flight response in his entire body. The odor of gasoline was prevalent.

“Abby,” Travis began and found that the effort cost him and he began coughing.

Something was wrong with his chest, the pain he felt when he tried to inhale a second time told him that one of his ribs was probably broken. The boots that the man was sporting as he walked around were the likely culprits.

“Don’t bother with that, buddy. She’s on a vacation. Gave me one hell of a fight, I’ll give her that.”

The voice hovering around him was definitely annoying and too confidently snide for his liking. Travis forced his eyes open and saw that he was at
his kitchen table, the lights were on and there was a man roaming around his home carrying a small gas tank with him. When he faced him, the man’s gnarled appearance was almost comical. It was too perfect that he was going to die by the hands of a man with a tree stump for a mug.

Since he didn’t have anything better to do, Travis decided that talking might be productive. He asked, “Who hired you?”

The man stopped what he was doing, put the gas tank down on the floor and cocked his head sideways. “Most people start begging me about now to spare their lives and all of that nonsense. You, my friend, are ahead of the game. Accepted your fate already, that’s good.” The man grinned. “You have your girlfriend’s father to thank for this. You pissed off the wrong man.”

“I knew that much. Did you kill the others too?” Travis would have scoffed, but he figured the action would cost him a few clear-headed seconds.

The man laughed. “That old lady and the redneck? Wasn’t difficult. A little cocktail and some patience and they gave out like old tires.” The man picked up the gas tank. “Trick is to keep your distance and let your work do itself.” He lifted the tank. “See this? By the time the fire guys get here to put you and your girl out, I’ll be gone and no one will ever know I was here.” He frowned. “Too bad about the girl. She wasn’t supposed to be here, but since she’s seen me, she’s gotta be taken care of. Can’t have loose ends.”

Travis turned his head to his left and found Abby next to him, bound to a chair, her head lolling to the side with her back to him. For one fierce second, he thought that she might be dead, though as soon as he saw her chest rise he felt his heart beating again. Even if this man didn’t have the intention of burning them alive, he had put his hands to Abby, and for that there wasn’t a force in nature that was going to keep him from trying to take that man out of existence. If there was a way to get his hands free, he’d be able to get to his feet, but even as he yanked and twisted his hands, he couldn’t feel any give in the plastic that bound him.

“How about doing this like a man instead of a coward? Why don’t you do this the right way, huh?”

The man put the gas tank down again and approached Travis. He slapped him hard, brutalizing his face and then lifted his chin. “You think our rematch would go in your favor, cowboy? Please. My employer wants you to suffer, and suffer you shall. I don’t have the luxury of kicking your ass twice. How you die doesn’t matter to me.”

He dropped Travis’ chin and Travis had to bite his bottom lip to keep from spitting his two coins at the man. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to yell insults at a person who held the whole deck, not just the proper cards.

As soon as the man was a good distance away from him, Travis began his questioning again, “Why were you hired to kill
Maudette Lawson and Roger Daniels?”

“Why does the sun rise? I do what I’m told to do, what I’m paid to do. You go to work, get the job done and go home. So do I.”

Travis frowned. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. At this pace, he was going to see flames before a bright idea struck him. He asked, “Who are you? I think I should know the name of the person who’s going to set me on fire. It’s only polite.”

The man wagged his finger at him. “Uh uh, buddy. I make a good living because I keep that little bit of information to myself. What if you live, eh? You won’t be as pretty, but you’ll remember every syllable of this conversation after you look at your gruesome mug in a hospital mirror. I’m not stupid.” The man chucked some gasoline over the curtains in his living room, scoffed and added, “If you need something, you can call me Gun.”

Travis thought Gun’s made up name was probably in an effort to make up for having some sissy girl name like Heather. He opened his mouth to remark on the thought when he felt fingers tugging at the binds holding his hands behind the chair. Abby was awake.

********

Abby had been so blissfully asleep when she’d heard the struggle going on with Travis and the man with the leather coat. Leather coat guy had Travis on the floor, kicking him, and before she could scream and make herself a target, her brain had told her to remain still and quiet and not draw the man’s attention to her even as she saw Travis go still. At first, she thought that she was going to get away, that the man would
go away and leave her alone since it was possible that he hadn’t even seen her. Not even a minute passed before she discovered that she wasn’t going to be that lucky.

She was pulled by her hair from the bed and dragged to her feet. She was greeted with a smile as her hair was released and a fist was drawn back and let loose to collide with her face. Darkness swallowed her and the next she knew she was listening to Travis play the most ridiculous game of twenty questions. Why anyone would want to chat up the man that was intent on burning you to death was beyond her; the fact of the matter was all that Travis could think of doing made her wonder just how hard the man calling himself Gun had hit him in the head.

For the long minutes that Travis was occupying Gun with small talk, Abby had pretended to be unconscious, all the while wiggling her fingers and trying to get at least one of them free. It was just her luck that her wrists were small, that Mr. Big Shot hadn’t taken into account that a woman’s hands were smaller and that her binds probably should have been tighter. She managed to free a few fingers from whatever it was her hands were tied with, but it wasn’t enough to win her any awards. Gun had had the foresight to not only tie her hands together, but have them bound behind her with the back of the chair between them. It felt hopeless.

Abby knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to free herself without being able to see what she was doing, and she realized that she’d gotten lucky with hers when after a few minutes she hadn’t even gotten even a single strand of Travis’ binds undone. It didn’t feel like there were any knots to untie.

“He’s in the back bedroom, look at me.”

Abby let her eyes take a break from their acting career, and she relaxed her tired fingers as she strained to look at Travis. She saw his face twist as he got a good look at the purpling her flesh had done since Gun’s fist had connected with her face. Abby wished silently that she wouldn’t ever have to see the pained expression in Travis’ eyes or the lines of white hot anger that sharpened his features like a whetstone.

She whispered, “I’m okay, I promise.” She twitched her head to the side and said, “I can’t get your knots undone; I don‘t know what he‘s tied us with.”

Travis seemed to struggle underneath his binds for a few seconds before he gave up again. He whispered, “Is your arm free?” As the question left his lips his head snapped to the right and Abby knew that she needed to play dead once again. Gun was coming back into the room.

Abby desperately pleaded with her brain cells to come up with a solution to the situation they were in. She had a sinking feeling that they were going to die in horrible screaming agony and no one they loved were going to be any wiser until someone strolled down the sidewalk outside and smelled smoke from the human barbeque she was fixing to attend.

Abby wiggled her free fingers, wishing that hand wasn’t still bound, that she could get her entire arm miraculously free, but even as she inconspicuously tried to wrench her bones beyond their physical limits, she knew it was hopeless. She was going to die tied to a kitchen chair next to the man she loved more than she thought possible and the last thing she would ever hear would be his screams of torment. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. She was supposed to tell Travis that he was going to be a father, and then they were going to get married and have a happy life together. It was supposed to be happily ever after.

“All right, kiddies, time to get this party really started!”

The sound of the world ending wasn’t what she thought it would be either.

********

Travis stared at Gun, who lifted the gas tank up above his waist as he came close to both him and Abby. It wouldn’t be enough, Travis realized, for Gun to just cover the house in gasoline; he would have to douse them as well. He heard Abby cry out as Gun covered her in the rank fluid. Apparently, she wasn’t able to keep still and quiet as cold fuel was poured over her head.

“Look at that, you’ve joined us after all. I thought you’d be out cold until I lit the fire at least.”

Travis did not enjoy the amusement this Gun guy seemed to be getting out of the situation he’d placed them in. It was clear that this man had done something similar to this before, that even if he’d begged for Abby’s life that there would be nothing he could say that would be able to reach him. The man didn’t have a soul at his disposal.

He could feel his binds with his fingers and again, he tried to wiggle hands free. There didn’t seem to be a hope of getting himself out of this mess, and yet he knew that he didn’t have it in him to give up. It was then that he remembered that Gun had said something about using zip cuffs and had added a little quip about no one being able to get out of them. Either this man didn’t know that he was a police officer, or he was so confident in his victim binding ability that it didn’t matter to him. However, and this caused him to smile, it should have mattered. Travis realized he knew how to free himself, that in the station, they often used zip cuffs instead of the metal handcuff because they were easier on flesh and struggling subjects had less of a chance to bruise themselves.

The trick was in creating enough leverage between your hands and using the force in separating them to make the catch in the cuff side so that the loop in the cuff could create enough give to let a hand loose. At least, it was the theory. With his hands behind his back and the imminent understanding that he was about to experience literal Hell, he wasn’t certain if he was going to get free in time to do anything more spectacular than scream.

The sudden splash of cold gasoline over his head felt like being born. Travis had to gasp, and as he did, some of the fuel went into his mouth and burned down his throat. The fit of coughing that ensued after it made the injury to his side and chest reassert itself. If there was one thing he could wish for, it would be to have his last act be to kick Gun in the balls.

“You know, you two have been great and all, but I’ve been here long enough.”

Travis watched unable to do anything as Gun touched Abby’s face gently and then leaned in close to kiss her. She fought him, but wasn’t successful in getting away from Stumpy’s misshapen mouth.

“It’s a shame I gotta do this to you, but there is such a thing as being in the wrong place my dear. You ought to have gone home and then all of this would have been something you read about in the newspaper.”

Travis could see now, as Gun lifted away from Abby, that he’d stuck one of his dishtowels in an empty beer bottle and had lit it. The situation then became real for him, and he realized that he was minutes from death, that Abby was going to die. He snapped, knowing that the lack of his ability to free himself must have been from the fact that he hadn’t let the reality sink in. It had been surreal to think that he’d gone to bed and woken up in a life or death situation. Hell, he’d just confessed to loving someone for the first tim
e
there ought to have been a rule that allowed him a bit of a grace period against shit hitting the fan.