Thomas Prescott Superpack (26 page)

Chapter 58

At first I thought a great white had attacked me. It took me a moment to register the bites were at the hands of a jagged rock shore. I smashed against the rocks three times before I was able to grip a stationary rock and heave myself from the surf. I tried not to think about Caleb, but I subconsciously clicked the death toll from seven to eight.

The faceplate on the Tag Heuer was shattered, but it appeared to be functioning. It showed 9:52 P.M. I’d been in the water for exactly fifteen minutes. Funny, I’d done the same thing one year ago, almost to the minute. Of course, after my swim last year, I’d taken a four-hundred and eighty-three hour nap. Tonight would not be the case. I was probably borderline hypothermic and my moving was the only thing that would save my life, not to mention, Alex, Caitlin, and Lacy’s.

I took a step up the black rock, my right leg snagged, and I heard a definitive metallic clank. The shotgun. The fishing line had somehow held throughout the ordeal.

Was I smart shit, or what?

I pulled on the fishing line and the shotgun emerged from behind a large rock. I had two shots at glory. I would have to be perfect.

The island was less than a mile at its widest and its longest. According to Frank, there was an unmanned lighthouse and abandoned living quarters on the northeastern tip.

I quickly shed all my clothes, keeping only my boxer briefs and shoes. My extremities were starting to get feeling back and the pins and needles had started. If it hadn’t been pitch black, I might not have noticed the faintest change in blackness at the far right edge of the island. I held the shotgun to my chest like I was a minuteman in the Revolution and did the steeplechase until I was a hundred or so yards from a dilapidated lighthouse. The lighthouse was simply a concrete column sitting on a large concrete foundation. Picture an old man with glasses taking the last shit of his life, that’s what the lighthouse looked like.

There was a small cottage, which I deduced was the lighthouse quarters, less than thirty feet from the lighthouse. It was safe to assume no one had slept a night in the windswept structure in more than twenty years. This was not a homey bungalow; this was a could-fall-over-in-a-heap-of-dust-at-any-second carriage house.

There were two small windows on the western edge, of which a slight glow emancipated into the darkness. I didn’t want to risk being overheard and found my way back to the water’s edge. It took me a little over a minute to navigate the short distance to the base of the lighthouse. The lighthouse door was breathing in the wind and I slipped in the narrow, musty staircase between exhales. A flaxen glow from the light above seeped through the many cracks in the cylindrical concrete stairwell.

I twisted up the stairs and sidestepped into the small chamber. A large form blocked the light against a far wall, and I could tell by the shadow it cast it was a body. As I neared, I noticed the dark chocolate hair carried auburn highlights under the red glow.

I ambled toward Alex. Her naked body began squirming, the metallic cuffs around her wrists slinking through the glistening steel railing. With the duct tape over her eyes, she reasonably mistook my footsteps for Tristen Grayer’s. I gingerly pulled the tape from her eyes and covered her mouth. Her scream heated my palm, and I whispered in her trembling ear, “It’s me, everything will be okay.”

It would take ten minutes for her eyes to adjust but she relaxed at the sound of my voice. She whimpered, “Get me out of here.”

I couldn’t waste a bullet on the handcuffs. I had no choice but to leave Alex’s side and come back for her later. My gut, right down near my gallbladder, told me that she wasn’t in danger. At least not the immediate peril that faced Caitlin and Lacy.

I checked my watch, 10:01 P.M. I had nine minutes.

I kissed Alex on the lips softly and promised her I’d be back for her. I could hear her faint whimpering as I quickly descended the lighthouse steps and slipped past the inhaling door.

Chapter 59

I sprinted the thirty feet to the back corner of the guest quarters in a low crouch. I pressed up against the soft wood, a billowing paint chip brushing against my cheek. The red paint was weather beaten, the flailing chips trying feverishly to catch a nor’easter and drown their sorrows in the Atlantic.

There was light rustling behind me and I whipped around. Nothing. It was the lighthouse door changing rhythm in the wind. I took five or six deep breaths, then edged around to the west wall, my back continuously in contact with the tender siding.

I came to the first of two windows and peeked inside. My eyes had adjusted, my pupils surely the size of a buffalo nickel, and I could make out the shadow of an old toilet and a small sink, chipped, drooping, and breathing asthmatically through rusted pipes. There were two doors. One appeared to open to a small closet, the other serving to separate the small outhouse from the main quarters. From this door, I caught the residue of flickering flames cascading through a hole where a doorknob once rested.

The window was once a four-pane and only the wooden cross and one pane remained. I reached my arm through the frame and pushed hard on the glass with my open palm. The glass bent slightly and popped from beneath the wood’s edge.

I pulled the piece of glass out and silently laid it on the rocky earth. Now for the window’s skeleton. The horizontal piece was only connected peripherally through its vertical better half and slipped off without much fray. The vertical piece ran up into the frame of the window and would be more of a hassle. If I had an hour to kill and my Boy Scout survival knife, I may have been able to remove the twenty-four inch casing without a peep. Unfortunately, I would have to peep. The key would be to peep at the right moment.

It would have been easier to push than to pull, but if I pushed, I risked dropping the casing inside. I dug my right knee into the softness of the beaten timber and grasped the casing with both hands. The door of the lighthouse was banking viciously in the foreground and I started moving my body slowly with the rhythm.
Whip, whip, clack.
Forward, forward, back.
Whip, whip, clack
. Forward, forward, back.
Whip, whip, cla—

I pulled with all the strength I could muster and I thought I felt the entire structure move, when
snap.

Even with my front row seat I was unable to hear the wood splinter beneath the door’s cry. I leaned the shotgun against the outer wall where I could reach it from inside, pulled my shoes off, and bellied up to the window. My plan was to go in hands first, then use my leverage to crawl down the inner wall with my feet. I checked my watch. Seven minutes.

I had the strange feeling Tristen was on the other side of the door doing precisely the same thing.

I wiggled my torso through the window and leaned forward until my hands pet the dusty floor. Pushing hard backward against the inner wall I used my feet to climb down. Then as soon as I’d begun, I was lying on the mold riddled floor staring under the tiny crack separating the rooms.

I cocked my head. In the silence I thought I could hear Alex’s hushed whimper resonating from the lighthouse chamber. Then I heard a fingernail bend, a knuckle crack, the door scratch its head, carbon dioxide levels rise. Then blackness.

Chapter 60

I blinked my eyes and stood up gingerly. Standing made me nauseous and I threw up, which is when I noticed my hands were handcuffed behind a steel pipe running from the ground to the ceiling, one of the guest quarter’s hurricane poles.

A voice ingrained in my nightmares resounded from behind me, “Relax, I hit you with the handle. You’ll live. For another few minutes at least.”

I took a step around the pole and saw leaning against a four-foot ax, his hell orange eyes shimmering in the candlelight, Tristen Grayer. To the right of me standing naked, duct tape over her eyes and mouth, attached to a second pole, was Caitlin. She mumbled something, and thrashed about, before succumbing to her tangible restraints.

I canvassed the room for any sign of Lacy. Tristen took heed of this and said, “Looking for your whore sister?”

I didn’t answer and Tristen took a couple paces towards me. He said apathetically, “She’s dead. You would have been proud though, Thomas. She took a blind dive into the Atlantic about five miles out. But I have you in her stead. I wanted to keep you around for next year, but it appears I’ll have to find a new victim after all.”

All the will I had left to live seemed to drain from my body. My brain and heart ceased activity, as if they’d both sent conscripts to the other about surrendering. I wanted one answer before I died and asked, “Tell me about Conner.”

Tristen smiled. “Oh, Conner. Shame about him wasn’t it. And him saving my life and all.”

“He what?”

“Last year when the two of us, you and I, plummeted over the cliff. Conner was the one who dragged me from the surf. I told him about this island and he took me here. He kept me much like you are now. He would come by a couple times a week to give me food and water, eventually we got to talking, and I even started considering him a friend.”

I mentally gagged at the idea of Tristen and Conner as friends. Tristen did a circle around Caitlin and I noticed his laggard left leg drag on the earthy floor. He continued, “Then one day about a month ago, Conner tells me he has this idea, a game. He wants me to help him get his revenge against you, Thomas Prescott, for reaping his benefits. Can you believe my luck? He said he didn’t have it in him to rape and kill, and that I would be his tool.”

I interrupted him, “Then why did you kill him?”

He acted like I’d asked why lions and tigers don’t mate. “When I’d served my purpose he was going to lock me up again, or kill me. I got to him before he got to me, simple as that.”

It was closing in on that fateful minute and I went into stall mode, “How’d you know about this place?”

He did a tight spin on the toe of his right foot, then said, “This is where I brought Geoffrey.”

I nodded like this was common knowledge. He laughed to himself and continued, “I couldn’t believe it. I go back three years later just to see what the dump looks like and I walk in
on the two of them fucking like dogs.”

I shook my head in disgust. “Were you mad or jealous?”

He seemed to ponder the question and walked behind me. “A little of both I guess. I didn’t like the fact my family had been screwing for the last hundred years, but I would have liked to think Ingrid would have picked me over him. But when I found out Ingrid was pregnant with Geoffrey’s child, I lost it.”

“I’m sorry, but
lost it
is not the correct term for chopping your sister and the child she was carrying into fifty pieces. It’s called going psycho.” I laughed, which in hindsight I would have tried harder to hold back. The ax struck me in my right midsection and the sound of cracking ribs filled the room.

I fell to my knees and Tristen continued as if nothing had happened, “I made love to Ingrid before releasing her to the beyond. It was an ecstasy I’d never felt before. Geoffrey was a different story, he would need to suffer, to know he’d caused Ingrid’s demise. I left him slightly alive. That night we stole a boat and drifted for a day before coming to shore here on this very island.”

He wiggled the ax at me, “I kept Geoffrey much like you are now.”

He snickered to himself, and said, “Do you know what I did? After each murder I would bring the girl’s eyes back here and nail them to the wall.”

I was having trouble breathing, but was able to lift my head a couple inches. A deluge of black masses protruded from the walls. A shiver ran up my spine as I conjured up the image of Geoffrey handcuffed to this pole, ten beady eyes penetrating his soul. Tristen was in front of me again, and said, “Do you know why I killed those three girls on the same day last year? This exact date one year ago to be precise.”

He didn’t wait for my answer, “Geoffrey said he was sorry. He said he was sorry for screwing Ingrid when he knew I loved her, and begged me to kill him. He was my brother, so I finished it that night. I called Conner Dodds and told him where to find the bodies.”

I helped him along, “Then you dumped Geoffrey’s body off the bluffs to make it look like a suicide, then hacked the girls into chicken feed.” They’d found the women’s bodies almost pureed together.

He lifted my chin with the blunt side of the ax, “I knew it would be the last of my killings for a stint and couldn’t stop. But then you came along and ruined everything. That however will be rectified here in a matter of minutes.”

I felt the floorboard directly beneath me tense. I stood up holding my ribs and said, “You know the guy you stuffed in my locker?”

His smile faded as mine began to form. I enlightened him, “That wasn’t Conner.”

Tristen didn’t have time to answer before his head exploded.

Chapter 61

I turned in time to see the mouth of a pistol snake from within the vacant doorknob aperture. The door swept inward and a familiar voice rang out, “How did you know?”

A mild scream erupted from behind me, and I wasn’t sure if Caitlin was frightened or elated to hear her brother’s voice. I answered his question, “The first thing I noticed was the size of his dick,
then I started to see the other inconsistencies.”

He laughed, “I shouldn’t have used an agent. Everyone knows you have to have a five-inch dick to get into the Bureau.”

Had Conner not been minutes from killing me, I would have laughed. I said, “So how did you get Tristen to believe the agent was you?”

Conner snapped on a pair of thin surgical gloves. “I knew he would strike at night with a quick blow to the head, rendering the face unrecognizable, so I kept the guy drugged face down in my bed at all hours of the day. I picked out the guy who closest resembled me. I knew the guy had to be close, but not perfect. I needed to fool Tristen, but at the same time, I needed you to figure it out. I needed you to come here to be killed.”

Touché.

He continued, “Anyway, I had the agent follow me to my apartment, told him I had an extra pair of night goggles he could try out, and juiced him with a mild sedative. Then I met Tristen and handed over the car.”

“When did you get the tattoo?”

“I drove down to Vermont and paid a guy a hefty sum to do it while the guy was passed out. I told him it was a fraternity prank, but I don’t think he gave half a shit.”

I’d pieced most of this together already. I straightened up, light-headed from the pain and the anguish. “How long have you been planning this little endeavor?”

He looked at Caitlin who was shaking her head and whimpering, then settled his eyes back on me. “Truthfully, when I pulled Tristen from the water I thought it was you. When I saw that it was him, a light went off. Not everything all at once, but enough where I knew I wanted to keep him around.”

“So after you talked to him last year, you sent us on a wild goose chase, then drove to the true site of the murders?”

He laughed, “Only you fucked everything up. You sealed your own fate, a year ago.”

“I should have known when I followed you that night. Were you meeting Tristen there or were you just supposed to pick up his groceries for him?”

“I figured that when Tristen called, he’d already committed the act, I had no idea he would be there that night. When I got to the bluffs, I had second thoughts about sending you and the rest of the task force on a red herring. That reminds me, I never asked you, why did you decide to follow me in the first place?”

“Dumb luck. I was supposed to ride with your sister to the site, but I was real gassy and decided to drive myself. I floored it out of the lot and saw you headed in the opposite direction and decided to ride your coattails. I remember thinking it odd at the time that you would send us to a destination and not accompany us.”

He furrowed his brow, “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone this?”

“I figured you wanted the limelight of finding the bodies. Big whoop. Like you said, you didn’t think Tristen would be there, you just thought you were taking out someone else’s dirty laundry.”

He nodded then said, “I was so nervous when I reached the bluffs. Hell, I’d never seen one dead body, lest three. I was getting my nerve up when I saw you in my rearview mirror with a flashlight straddling over the guardrail. The light started bounding toward the bluff’s edge and I figure you saw something.”

I nodded. I’d seen Tristen’s ax glimmer in the moonlight as he raised it for a severing blow. Conner continued, “I jumped out of the car and followed in the direction you’d gone. I saw a figure holding an ax and fired twice. Then another figure appeared and both went careening off the bluff.”

Un—
fucking—believable. Conner had been the one who’d shot me. I’d shot Tristen in the knee, then picked up his ax to finish him off. I’d taken a step forward when I took a bullet in the left shoulder and right thigh. I’d always figured Tristen had a gun on him and had shot me from where he lay on the ground. After I’d been shot, I’d staggered backward, and Tristen had picked himself off the rocks and jetted forward. I remember clawing at his face, then weightlessness, then icy Atlantic.

Conner continued, “You have to believe me, Thomas, I thought it was Tristen who I’d shot. When I saw the two of you go over, I ran to the edge, and jumped myself. You have to believe me, when I pulled Tristen from the water, I thought it was you.”

I found it ironic Conner was so adamant of my believing his innocence, just seconds before he took my life. “So what did you do after you pulled out Tristen?”

“There was a boat anchored there. I pulled Tristen out and just started sailing out to sea.”

“Why didn’t you just take him in? You still would’ve been the hero.”

“I thought about that, but I felt there was a good chance Tristen would tell the cops what he’d told me, and everyone would see what I’d done, see how selfish I’d been. Actually, after about an hour, Tristen started talking. He told me everything. Ingrid. Geoffrey. Matinicus. That’s when it clicked. I figured I could make up some crap about Tristen getting me on his boat. Taking me to the island, where I would escape, killing Tristen, and come out the hero. I mean shit, I would’ve been on fucking Regis. But early the next morning I was listening to the radio to see if anything had been reported. Apparently, someone heard the gunshots and called it in. You were reported as alive, but in critical condition. Then the guy says how they found Tristen Grayer’s remains splattered on the rock bed. That’s when I knew I was screwed. If you just would have died, I could have done anything. But I wasn’t sure what you knew. So I just kept him at the island.”

“So that’s why your name never showed up in the book. You didn’t want it to.”

He nodded. “I get a call from Alex Tooms three days later wanting to interview me. I gave all credit to you, told her if my name so much as showed up in the book, I’d sue her ass.”

I helped him out, “So now, what’s your plan, you’re going to kill the two of us, make it look like Tristen did it, then rescue Alex and no one will know the wiser. Have her write a sequel to
Eight in October
, where you, Conner Ellis Dodds, are the hero.”

He winked. “You have to admit, it’s a beautiful story. Tristen back from the dead, the eyes seeing the next murder site, and the romance, don’t get me started on the romance. Me and Lacy, you and Caitlin, you and Alex, and soon to be me and Alex. It’s a far cry from last year’s simplicity.”

Conner made his way to Tristen’s limp body, a pool of blood forming around his shaved head. He bent down, wrestled the ax from Tristen’s grip, and said, “And what an ending the book will have.”

He was right, it sounded like quite the tale. I helped him along, “Let me guess, Conner Dodds puts a bullet in Tristen Grayer’s skull seconds after he’s finished massacring his final victims.”

He grinned wickedly. I pointed out, “Two problems, Lacy died at sea. The blind girl is the pinnacle of the story, and second, I already spoke to Alex and told her everything.”

He scoffed, “Don’t think I’m not pissed about Lacy. I mean I go out of my way to nab her when I have the chance. You should have seen it. I stroll up on Gregory and Gleason, thinking you’ve spilled the beans about Tristen’s and my relationship, but it turns out they didn’t know squat. I hop in the backseat, plugged the two of them, and grabbed Lace. You should have seen the look on her face, total disbelief. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she knew it was me.

“I taped her up and hand delivered her to Tristen’s boat. He wouldn’t have had another chance to get her, I mean, you weren’t going to leave her side. Tristen must have thought I’d done this hours before he smashed my skull in with the ax.”

He pointed to an earpiece, “As for Alex, you’re a terrible bluffer, she doesn’t know shit.”

That explains why I thought I heard Alex whimpering, Conner had been behind the second door in the outhouse. Conner said, “I was thinking of raping Alex while she still thinks it’s Tristen, but it’s too risky, and look how she went after you once you were famous. She’ll be my willing slave after I save her life.”

He looked at his watch and said, “Sorry to have to say this, but I have a timetable to stick to.” Conner picked up the ax and walked over to Caitlin. He brushed her hair back and she squirmed. He said softly, “I’m so sorry Caitlin. I really am.”

I used every ounce of strength I had remaining to break free of my restraints, the sensation of warm blood oozing from my wrists possibly the last my brain would register.

Conner waited for my tantrum to subside then said, “I won’t torture you, Caitlin, not like what I’m going to do to Thomas. It’ll be one quick strike. You won’t feel a thing. I’ll perform the defacement and slaughter after you’re dead.”

How brotherly.

He said, “Lay down and this will soon be over.”

Caitlin was sobbing hysterically and her naked body involuntarily descended to the dusty floor. Conner pulled her legs out so she was flat on the ground, her hands above her head handcuffed around the pole. Her body was shaking violently and she may have been having an epileptic seizure from shock. Conner glanced at me as he pulled the ax skyward and said, “You don’t know how hard this is.”

He pulled the ax to its peak and smiled.

In hindsight, I found it fitting Conner’s eyes would be the last to adhere to these forsaken walls.

The blast came from the second window. The shotgun shell exited the barrel at a speed of 1500 feet per second, shattering the brittle quarter inch glass pane, cutting through sixteen feet of dusty coastal air, and nipping the first strands of close-cropped blond follicles a thousandth of a second later. The slowly expanding buckshot splintered Conner Ellis Dodd’s skull, ripped through his brain, and splattered the majority of his brain and eyes against the far wall.

As the ax thudded to the ground and Conner’s shell of a body fell to its knees then flopped forward in a heap, my first thought was that Caleb somehow survived the boat crash and washed up somewhere on the island.

I slowly turned my gaze from the pool of blood forming around what was left of Conner’s head to the shotgun’s fading echo. Framed within the shattered window, holding the smoking shotgun was not Caleb, but a trembling, wet, and stoic, Lacy.

I shook my head in complete awe. After a few seconds, I said, “I guess it’s safe to assume you can see again.”

Her heavy breathing slowly turned into a wry smile.

I returned the smile. “Mind if I ask when?”

She swallowed hard, then letting loose one of her infamous cackles, said, “During the baseball game. I yelled, ‘Oh my God. They came back.’ No one noticed.”