Twist (33 page)

D
red Gant peered out between the vertical wooden slats of the storage compartment’s door. The flashlight beams didn’t concern him right now. They were too wan and distant for their light to make its way through the mist and reveal his position.

One of the light beams seemed to be moving slowly and directly toward where he crouched. It wasn’t very bright, and it played about inaccurately.

But sooner or later it always returned to its course, toward where Dred hid in darkness with his heart pounding out the rhythm of his fear.

This was beginning to
feel
very wrong.

He’d experienced this uneasy feeling before, and it had been right. In that instance he’d been beaten half to death by a truck driver outside of Slidell, Louisiana.

The killer squinted. He could see a form now behind the approaching flashlight beam.

 

 

Pearl held her Glock handgun pressed flat against her thigh in one hand. In the other hand, extended out about waist high, was her flashlight. She kept her eyes focused straight ahead. She could barely make out the row of crude wooden storage cubicles. The ninth from the left looked like the others, dark areas above stark vertical slats, with occasional diagonal boards to provide rigidity. She swallowed her terror, made one foot follow the other, and kept walking in the same direction, toward the suspected storage bin, feeling and hearing the gritty concrete floor beneath her leather soles.

Pearl was getting close now. The mist became electric. And there was junk all over the floor. Not large junk, but small cuts of wood, metal pieces, glass shards. The detritus of years.

She continued her slow walk toward what might be her death. She knew Quinn was behind her, and drew comfort from that. The Tactical Unit was supposed to be back there in the dark, sharpshooters who could hit a gnat’s eye, looking after her, ready to squeeze the trigger to save her life.

She thought that should give her more comfort than she felt.

A small hard object, maybe a screw or a nail lying on its side, jabbed into the thin sole of her right shoe.

Moving through darkness, except when lightning flashed, was grating on her nerves. She could still back out of this, switch off her flashlight and make her way through the dark to the warehouse door. She could leave Carlie Clark and her dilemma to be solved by someone else. There were ways. Ways to do most anything.

She stubbed her toe on something, lowered the flashlight beam a few feet, and saw that she’d kicked what looked like a car’s old shock absorber.

Her toe still throbbed. She raised the flashlight high, higher, so its beam was aimed at more of a downward angle, spread wider to illuminate the stained and littered concrete floor ahead of her.

 

 

The hell with this
, Quinn thought.

Immediately after a lightning strike illuminated the warehouse, and darkness closed back in, he moved away from Springer, off to the side in the shadows, nearer to Pearl.

He heard Springer’s harsh whisper. Couldn’t make out what he’d said. Didn’t try.

 

 

In the storage locker, his heart hammering, the killer watched the female form approaching through the mist. He forgot everything else and pressed his forehead hard against the wooden door so he could see between the slats. He was a nine-year-old boy in a Missouri outhouse. He could hear the buzz of insects in the night, smell the human excrement, see between the slats....

The woman continued to advance on him in silhouette, yet with ominous substance. Her long raincoat draped her form gracefully. The wind and rain had spiked up her hair. In her hand she held a lamp raised high.

The wretched refuse
. . .

His heartbeat was deafening. His rushing blood roared.

I must be hallucinating! But she’s so
real
!

The woman continued her relentless approach. There was no doubt now where she was going.

The killer threw the slat door open and broke from the storage shed. He was screaming, shrieking. The echoing din was startling.

Five feet away from him, still and silent in the darkness, Quinn aimed his police special revolver and squeezed off three rapid rounds. In the flashes of gunfire he could see Pearl’s startled pale face.

He could also see Gant, still alive, raising his gun to shoot and kill Pearl.

Quinn had to save Pearl—
now!

All in a few long seconds
: Quinn was in the suspended time of action and danger. He saw Pearl raise her Glock to fire back at Gant.
She must think he’s the one who got off the earlier shots.
Quinn fired again at Gant. Pearl was blasting away with the Glock. Gunfire erupted and echoed like grounded thunder.

Gant stood suspended in a brief but violent dance, as if worked like a puppet by the impact of bullets. Bursts of light flashed from gun barrels. There was a terrible beauty to it, almost like a fireworks display.

 

 

Dred Gant saw Lady Liberty, her torch held high, lift her free arm. In her free hand was a gun.

Its muzzle flash was the last thing he saw.

The Lady Liberty Killer died instantly. He’d been shot twice in the head, once in the throat, and once, with a nine-millimeter Glock, in the heart.

The Tactical Unit had been ordered to aim above waist level. Not a bullet had come within two feet of Carlie Clark, where she was safely bound and low on the concrete floor.

Pearl and a female Tac Unit sniper removed the scarf and tape from Carlie’s eyes and mouth, then freed her of her bonds. EMS paramedics covered her with a blanket and wheeled her on a gurney to an ambulance that would take her to a hospital for examination.

Quinn held Pearl tight to him. She was unharmed but trembling violently. She found one of his hands with her own and squeezed.

Gradually, the trembling subsided.

He reluctantly turned her over to one of the paramedics, who assured Quinn she was physically all right but in shock. At the urging of Quinn and the paramedic, Pearl climbed into the back of the ambulance where she might help tend to Carlie. That seemed to comfort both women. It sure as hell comforted Quinn.

When the ambulance had departed, he walked back into the warehouse.

 

 

The killer’s body lay untended in a pool of blood, pointedly ignored. Quinn saw that Gant had been armed with a revolver. It lay about ten feet from his right hand, but a blood pattern on the floor indicated that it had been kicked there by one of the cops before the killer’s death had been established beyond doubt.

Leaving the body where it was, for the police photographer, wasn’t taking any kind of risk. In addition to the shots to his throat and heart, Dred Gant had a bullet hole in his forehead, and another round had penetrated his right eye. One of the hollow point bullets had taken off most of the back of his head. Brain matter was visible on the floor.

As he was leaving, as a matter of formality, Quinn knelt to make certain the Lady Liberty Killer was dead.

T
he storm that had so violently ended the heat wave and drought in New York moved on, but another followed. It formed over the western plains, caused major damage in Kansas, then rampaged north by northeast, spawning tornados as it went.

In Bland County, Missouri, its winds banged and splintered the shutters of an old house at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by a grassless, pitted yard. The wind found its way through the front door, slamming it open and shut, as if an unwanted guest couldn’t make up his mind. It gathered beneath the eaves and lifted the roof. Dropped it back down. Lifted it again. Shingles fluttered and flew like startled blackbirds into the storm. The back wall swayed and, with a slight break in the wind, fell inward. The rest of the house, without the support of roof or back wall, simply collapsed in on itself.

The storm sorted through the wreckage, hurling it this way and that, as if in a mad selective process.

And then moved on.

Don’t miss John Lutz’s next exciting thriller featuring
Frank Quinn

Coming from Pinnacle in 2014!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A multiple Edgar and Shamus Award winner—including the Shamus Lifetime Achievement Award—John Lutz is the author of over 30 novels. His novel
SWF Seeks Same
was made into the hit movie
Single White Female
(1992), starring Bridget Fonda, and later remade as
The Roommate
(2011), starring Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester, and
The Ex
was a critically acclaimed HBO feature. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and Sarasota, Florida. In describing his serial-killer thrillers, John Lutz says: “I’m trying to provide readers with the kind of roller-coaster ride that will scare them a lot but compel them to buy another ticket.”

 

His website is johnlutzonline.com.