Good Lord, Deliver Us (33 page)

Z was beginning to get the picture. The
wacko had been killing the vagrants that Mrs. Smith brought home to
tend her garden. To get rid of the bodies, he'd found a way to take
them across the open, soccer area and down into the basement of the
ghost house on the other side.

All making
another
kind of
sense.

It was this grizzly image
of "body trundling" that had switched on the
second
light. The old lady who still
lived in the house next door to the ghost house? She'd said she'd
not only seen lights -- no doubt the light the madman needed to
plant his victims -- but also had heard noises. Like the sound of a
small truck. Except that, looking out her front windows at the
bombed-out street, she'd never been able to see a
vehicle.

It was remembrance of her observations about
engine sounds that had Z snapping the last piece of the serial
killer puzzle into place, the puzzle piece of the garden tractor in
the Smith garage -- the tractor with a carryall for an
attachment.

At that moment, Z would have bet his life
there'd be traces of blood on the tractor's "trailer" -- A and B
and AB and O -- that would type out to match the blood of the
corpses buried in the ghost house basement!

* * * * *

The Smith house was dark and quiet.

It was in the depths of another night, the
outside air thick and moist and cool. At least, it seemed that way
to Z whose face was pale and dry and hot.

It had taken a lot out of him just to get
into the Cavalier and drive the fifteen minutes to Liberty, the
walk around the side of the house to the garden-edged backyard
exhausting him, Z still stymied in the laundry room like a rundown
robot.

His breathing slowing, the pulse of pain in
his chest subsiding, Z eased open the door between the laundry room
and the kitchen to stick his penlight inside. Flashing it on, he
used the thin beam to carve up the kitchen, his first find, that
the knife the madman had dropped ... was gone.

Damn! He'd forgotten about
Ruble's fingerprints on the knife. ... Not that it mattered when
you had a steel plate for identification. Z had also forgotten to
put on his gloves -- another thing that made no difference. Z had
been invited; his fingerprints
should
be in the house.

No doubt about it. In the twenty-four-hour
period between last night and tonight, someone had been back to the
Smith house, probably Mrs. Smith herself, women having a genetic
need to tidy up.

Alert to any sound, any motion in the house,
Z slipped into the kitchen, satchel in hand. In his detective case
the usual, including cloth he could fashion into a gag. What he
hoped, was to find the Smith woman asleep in her bed at one end of
the hall, the boy, Sammy, snoozing away in his half-sized bed at
the hall's other end.

First, Z planned on zapping the woman --
lightly -- then tying and gagging her so she couldn't wake the boy.
After she came around, he was going to reason with her by
explaining in ways she couldn't help but understand how unhappy Z
was with her plot to eliminate her husband, to say nothing of her
plan to murder Z! After that -- leaving her tied loosely enough to
eventually wiggle free -- Z would pick up the boy and take him
home. Z could imagine the tearful reunion of father and son before
they set out to make a new life for themselves. (It was at times
like these that being a detective brought him the greatest joy. In
addition, Z's Mother would have been proud of him for taking
advantage of this chance to do good for someone else.)

As for Addison wanting Z to locate Ruble, as
long as the madman didn't get in the way, Z didn't care. Z had not
been hired to find Ruble. Crazies were police business.

Switching off the light, standing in the
total dark of the house, cautiously, Z sniffed the air. Failed to
pick up either the odor of burned flesh or of the medication
someone might apply to a burn. Good. Z had enough of being jumped
by maniacs!

Z tested the air again, delicately; thought
he caught the lingering odor of Mrs. Smith's perfume.

Guided by the knowledge of how the house was
set up, reaching out to touch a counter, a wall, the doorframe, Z
slipped through the blacked-out kitchen and into the crossing
hall.

Feeling his way by trailing his fingers
along the wall, he glided past the bathroom.

Sap out of his "night fighter" jacket and
bunched with his penlight in his "case hand" -- the light still
switched off -- Z was about to feel for the doorknob on the woman's
bedroom when he stopped to test the air again.

Perfume. Stronger here. And ... something
else ....... A smell he associated with grocery stores. ..........
With ... meat counters .......

Blood!

His hands beginning to shake, Z set down the
case. Transferring the penlight and sap to his right hand, he
twisted the doorknob with his left. Pushed the door open
gently.

Releasing the knob to cover the dark head of
the light with his free hand, Z flicked the switch, the light
glowing red through his tightly closed fingers. Gradually relaxing
his fingers, Z allowed a faint shadow of light to escape into the
room, saw ... a shape on the bed, a woman's shape.

Letting a little more light shine through, Z
recognized the shape as Mrs. Smith, lying at an unnatural
angle.

By this time fully alert to what he was
condemned to see, Z uncovered the light to shine it on the woman's
statuesque body.

Clothed.

Sprawled to one side, the too-white skin of
her blond head turned his way.

Throat slashed.

Blood gushed out on the upper bed where
she'd fallen.

A lot of blood.

Jugular cut, a third of her blood leaked
from the wound: a quart and a half at least -- so much blood some
had dripped into a thickening puddle on the floor.

Idly -- Z's mind shying away from the
reality of what his eyes were seeing -- he speculated that a
gunshot wound bled so little because the swelling of abused tissue
quickly closed a bullet hole: the violated body's sad attempt to
keep the victim's life from leaking out. A gash, however, bled a
person out.

Picking up the case, pocketing his sap,
stepping into the room, Z quickly turned the light away -- but much
too late -- his mind's eye condemned to witness, for all time, the
wide, red grin of the woman's neck.

Z played the light around the rest of the
room, finding suitcases on the floor beside the bed. Three of them
-- from the way they were standing side by side, already
packed.

Shuffling forward, careful not to step in
the congealed blood pool, three, quick taps of his foot told him he
was right. All three suitcases were ... heavy.

Stepping around the bed, Z looked in the
closet to see fewer clothes than he had the last time -- saw spaces
in what was left of the line of shoes on the floor.

Desperately needing to be alone, Z snapped
off the light as a way of switching on the dark.

So what had happened here?

From what Z already knew,
the woman, giving her cousin the sanctuary of her home, had sicked
Ruble on Z and then on her husband, tasks the madman had done his
crazy best to accomplish, but failed to do. (Speaking of failure,
though the nutcase
had
to have been burned by the blast Z rigged, Z hadn't
done
him
major
damage, either -- the woman on the bed the irrefutable
proof.)

Meanwhile on that murderous night --
figuring both Z and her husband were dead -- the woman had returned
to her house to clear out, except that something had gone wrong
with her plans, that "something" as clear as sunlight shining on a
chrome-dome forehead. It didn't take a detective to figure out that
the lunatic -- wounded by the explosion, enraged -- had returned to
do in Mrs. Smith before she could get away. (However hurt Ruble
might have been, he still had the strength to slaughter women.)

Z's Mother, quoting the Bible, would have
explained the woman's murder by reciting: "Live by the sword, die
by the sword." Or, thinking of Ruble, she'd have said: "Play with
fire and you're bound to get burned."

Thinking about his Mother was another way
for Z to contain the horror on the bed.

Z stepped back to the bedroom door,
hesitated.

He needed to take another look, just to make
sure he had it right.

Turning back to the room, swinging up the
light ... he saw something he hadn't seen the first time -- a gleam
of metal on the bed beside the hideously grinning corpse.

A step closer told him
what it was, a gun, small-caliber, nickel-plated. Had to be the
madman's gun, the same gun the sicko had used to shoot the
vagrants, the gun Z had
expected
Ted to find in Mr. Smith's apartment along with
the body of the loony.

Yet, here it was.

Of course! Ruble had brought it here.

Trading hands, swapping the penlight for the
increasingly heavy satchel, Z drove himself a step closer to the
bed. Leaning over, he picked up the gun by hooking a finger through
its trigger guard and smelled the barrel. His verdict? Fired
recently, Z dropping the gun where he'd found it.

Collecting himself at last, Z retreated to
the hall where he put down the case and slumped against a wall. To
catch his breath. To think.

Snapping off the light, Z shut his eyes to
get a better mental image of the situation ... in his mind's eye,
"saw" Mrs. Smith cruising the area of the underpass, stopping to
hire day labor. Driving men to her house. Paying them -- maybe only
feeding them -- to work in the garden.

Ruble, lurking about for weeks, had been
killing these workers, mutilating them, burying them. ... With the
Smith woman's knowledge?

Z started over in an attempt to streamline
his understanding of the killings.

Ruble was insane.

Mrs. Smith was afflicted with hate and
fear.

Hate for her husband.

Fear that Z (knowing of her hate) would turn
her in for planning her husband's death.

To that point, everything
seemed clear. It was
how
the actions of Ruble and of Mrs. Smith
intertwined that was the problem. ............

No matter. ......... At least for now.

Suddenly, Z realized he'd done only half his
job that night.

Besides "reasoning" with Mrs. Smith -- no
longer necessary -- the other thing he had to do was spirit off the
boy.

At the thought of the maniac knifing Mrs.
Smith, Z began to shake. If Ruble had killed the lady, had he
.........?

In the sable darkness of the narrow hall,
Z's heart raced! Breathing hard, he felt the increasingly familiar
pain start in his chest, the deeper the breath, the sharper the
pain.

No matter. All that was important was
finding the boy.

Detaching himself from the hall wall,
leaving the useless valise where it was for the time being, light
on, Z moved again, the small circle of light wavering before him, Z
making for the hall's end where he opened the boy's bedroom
door.

Stepped inside to flash the light .....

Found himself backing out before he quite
digested what he'd seen.

Was turning.

Was struggling to get down the hall to the
bathroom!

In time to vomit in the stool. And throw up
again. And again, dry retching until he hardly had the strength to
flush; to lean against the wash stand; to twist on the tap; to cuff
cold water on his face and neck; to rinse his mouth.

His heaving stomach settling slowly, Z
gradually gained control of himself. Shaky control, but
control.

Propping his penlight on the sink, Z ran a
half-bowl of water. Finding a towel, soaked it in the lavatory and
wiped off his mouth. Located some toothpaste, swallowed some to
quiet vomit burn.

There'd been little blood this time, because
the victim ... was a child. Because the boy had been shot instead
of knifed, a small hole in the child's temple.

Z needed to think. Needed to be rational as
a way of clinging to mind and body.

What had the crazy done? Slashed the woman
to death, then shot the boy, after that returning to place the gun
beside the dead mother?

As much as a more detailed examination of
the bodies might help clarify what had happened, Z couldn't go back
to the bedrooms; could barely muster the strength of will to pick
up the light and zombie his way from the bathroom, through the
passageway and into the barren living room, somehow taking comfort
in the front room's onyx-black sterility

Switching off, Z wondered what he should do,
specifically, about the boy's father, the father who so obviously
had his life mortgaged to the boy's.

Though Z's agreement to
work for the Smith woman was canceled for all time, Z was now
working for the
husband
! If Z only hadn't said he'd work for Smith, Z could walk
away. Just ... walk away.

But he couldn't do that. Because of the
Zapolska code, saying that, once Z took on a client, he did his
best.

No matter what.

It was just that, in this
circumstance, Z didn't know what
was
best for his client.

Standing there in the dark, Z finally had an
idea, but .......

Allowing himself another minute to stop
shaking, Z knew what he had to do.

All that remained was to figure out the
proper sequence.

First, Z had to pack a bag with the boy's
clothing.

After that, carry the boy,
the bloody bedclothes, and the boy's suitcase out behind the house,
to the center of the open space. Find a low spot, probably in one
of the ripped-open basements -- a place where bulldozers wouldn't
be digging dirt
out
, but pushing more dirt
in
to level the soccer fields. Get the shovel from
the ghost house basement .....