Lizzy Gardner #2_Dead Weight (23 page)

“Goody two-shoes?”

“I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Lizzy wanted to release some nervous laughter, but now wasn’t the time. She was relieved that it was over. She even had a strange feeling of euphoria at having accomplished what she set out to do.

“The neighbor woman was sweet,” Lizzy said. “She was just worried about Vivian. She thought I was Vivian’s mom and so I went along with it.”

Hayley didn’t respond.

“You’re right,” Lizzy said. “I asked you to help me with something illegal and immoral and then I didn’t follow orders. I could have gotten us both in a lot of trouble. I’m sorry. I truly am.”

There was a police car in the far right lane. Lizzy saw Hayley hold her breath while the patrol car passed them by.

“I’m the one who should be apologizing,” Hayley said after the police car made a right and disappeared. “I went to see my mom last week.”

That explained Hayley’s recent change of mood. “How was she?”

Hayley didn’t answer right away and Lizzy didn’t rush her.

“She was the same,” Hayley inally said, her voice strained. “Exactly the same. She’s living in filth and she doesn’t want to change.”

Lizzy sat quietly.

Hayley exhaled, keeping her eyes on the road in front of her. “I offered to take mom to Narcotics Anonymous. I told her I would pick her up and attend the meetings with her, but she said she couldn’t do it. She said she was weak and that I was the strong one.”

“Stronger than most,” Lizzy agreed.

“I’m not as strong as I pretend to be,” Hayley said. “I lie awake at night fantasizing about revenge against every perverted monster out there. I’m all screwed up inside, Lizzy. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but it’s not good. My thoughts are dark and sometimes I feel like I’m being strangled from the inside out. I don’t think I can overcome the darkness like you did.”

“Hayley, you have only just begun to dig yourself out of the nightmare you’ve had to live. You have to ight it. It’s way too early to think about giving in.”

After a moment Lizzy added, “I still have nightmares. Spiderman is dead and yet he’s not. He’s inside my head, but I’ll never stop trying to get him out of there. More than anything I want peace. I want you to have peace, too. And people like Ruth Fullerton. We all have our demons. Sometimes I think it’s not a matter of getting rid of our demons as much as it is learning to live with them.”

***

Jessica looked at the clock. She had been driving for four hours and twenty-ive minutes without a pit stop. More than anything, Jessica had to pee. For the past thirty minutes, she’d been wriggling in her seat. There was nothing she could do about it. There was no way she was going to lose Ellen. If that happened, her entire day would be one big waste of time.

Just as Jessica contemplated peeing in her pants, the left blinker on Ellen’s car lit up.

Thank God.

A few miles back they had exited onto CA 58 East. It was dark now that they were no longer on a main road. It was impossible for Jessica to see the road signs.

Ellen was driving faster. She probably had to use the restroom too.

Jessica tried to memorize lefts and rights, but quickly gave that up, iguring she’d just have to write down the nearest address once they came to a stop.

About eight miles up the road, Ellen made a right onto a long dirt road. The sign was big enough that Jessica could make out the words: Livingston Farms. Jessica did not follow Ellen down the road. Instead, she drove straight ahead, made an illegal U-turn and came back to the road. She turned off her lights and slowly made her way over the dirt road that appeared to be one long driveway.

Ellen’s car was long gone and that caused Jessica to panic. She sped up to about twenty mph until she saw a small farmhouse up ahead on the right. The road was narrow, but she pulled her car as far over to one side as she could before she shut off the engine. She crept quietly out of her car and hurried toward the nearest tree. Under any other circumstance, she never would have even considered leaving the car.

But desperate times called for desperate measures.

The hoot of an owl sounded in the distance. Jessica took her time relieving herself. She felt like a new woman as she zipped her jeans and walked back to her car.

As soon as she climbed in behind the wheel something sharp stabbed into the back of her head. “Get out of the car nice and slowly.

Any fast moves and I’ll blow your head off.”

Chapter 30

Doctor, Doctor

“Could you leave the mirror alone and loosen the cuffs a little, sweetheart?”

Hayley ignored Dr. Daniel Williams, a physician who specialized in spinal injury medicine and rehabilitation. He was considered to be one of the best spinal doctors in the area, but like many men, doctors, lawyers, and politicians included, he had a weakness for illegal sex.

The reason Hayley had selected Dr. Williams as her victim, over dozens of other doctors who enjoyed the age-old practice of buying sex, was his attitude.

After cuf ing Williams’ hands to the swirly scrollwork of the cast-iron bed, she moved on to tying thick leather straps around his ankles.

Like Peter, Randy, and Brian, she’d been watching Dr. Daniel Williams for a few months now. She knew he brought the girls he picked up to this particular dump of a hotel. She’d visited the hotel more than once and she already knew that the cast-iron framed beds would be perfect for tying and cuffing.

While tightening the leather straps around his ankles, Hayley caught her re lection in the mirrored wall to her right. Seeing herself in a full length mirror threw her off track. The black push-up bra beneath a see-through blouse together with the sequin mini-skirt was enough to catch a lot of unwanted attention, but the skirt and bra wasn’t what Hayley was focused on. It was the short spiky blonde wig, blue eye shadow, and funky four-inch wedges that made it impossible to look away. She could hardly believe the person looking back at her was actually her. She might have laughed, maybe even cried, if she thought she could get away with it.

But the man on tonight’s menu wasn’t drunk or drugged. She had to be careful. Unlike the others, this man did not know her, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup if things went awry. And laughing or crying would only serve to give her away.

She had too much work to do to let a little lapse in judgment mess up her plans. She turned back to Williams and pulled on the strap around his ankle.

“Ouch. Damn it, sweetheart, you’re going to hurt me if you’re not careful there.”

She brushed a finger over the bottom of his foot.

He tried to pull away, but couldn’t, which meant she’d done her job.

He was secure.

“Stop that. And stop chewing that nasty gum.”

She snapped, crackled, and popped just to piss him off.

“No, really,” he said. “I’m serious.”

She blew a bubble. A big one.
POP
.

“I’m done. That’s it. Undo these cuffs and take off those straps. I’m not going to pay you either.”

That look—she knew that look. It was the same smug look Brian used to give her every time he came into her room.

“Oh, come on,” she said in a breathy voice. “Don’t be such a baby. I thought you enjoyed a little S&M every once in a while.”

“Not S&M, honey; B&D is more my style.”

Hands on hips, she took a step back and looked at him long and hard. “Is that right? I didn’t know there was a difference.” The guy looked like Brad from the original
Rocky Horror Picture Show
. He even wore the same geeky glasses.

“My preferences fall toward bondage and discipline,” he explained, “not sadism and masochism.”

“Whatever.”

He lifted a brow. “If you’re a professional, shouldn’t you know the difference?”

She grabbed the strap around his other ankle and yanked hard.

“You’re probably right,” she told him.

“Do you have a name?”

She chewed her gum, blew a giant bubble and then watched it slowly deflate.

The expression on his face turned from anger to worry. “Who are you?”

She walked across the room, picked up her backpack from the loor and then came back to him and set her backpack on the edge of the bed. Reaching inside, she pulled out a roll of duct tape.

“I want to know what’s going on,” he said as he watched her rip off a piece of tape. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Using her free hand, she grabbed his neatly folded shirt from the chair nearby and used it to wipe his mouth before placing the duct tape over his smoothly shaven jaw. He was mumbling now, his eyes growing wider by the second.

She reached inside her backpack again and pulled out a black permanent marker and a soldering iron which she plugged into the wall socket.

He didn’t seem to like her soldering equipment at all. Oh well, he had serial killer Samuel Jones to thank for that idea.

His mumbling grew louder, but she wasn’t worried. They got all kinds in this hotel; hearing moaning and groaning and other strange noises through the walls was nothing new.

She glanced at the good doctor’s face.

Yeah, he was definitely seeing red now.

“Maybe,” she told him, “this will teach you to stop thinking with your dick instead of your brain.” She tapped her knuckles on his forehead.

“Do you have a brain in there?”

She grabbed the permanent marker, climbed onto the bed and straddled him while she wrote two words in big bold letters, centered and in all caps, above his navel: SICK FUCK. She ignored the panicked mumbles beneath the duct tape as he bucked and twisted.

She climbed down and then ripped the duct tape from his mouth.

“What do you want from me?” he begged.

She tucked her pen inside her backpack and pulled out a letter addressed to his wife and the CEO of the hospital where he worked.

She held the letter in front of his face so he could read what it said.

“What would you do if your wife knew everything about you?”

Hayley asked him when he finished reading the letter.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I am glad you asked,” Hayley answered. “There is something I need you to get for me.”

“What is it? Money? How much do you need?”

She pressed a inger into the middle of his chest and said, “Listen carefully. I need a syringe illed with an immobilizing drug and, of course, a hypodermic needle. Etorphine hydrochloride, haloperidol, immobilon, take your pick. The man I plan to inject is approximately ive foot ten, 160 pounds. I need to put him out in under a minute. .two at the most.”

“Tranquilizing agents don’t affect everyone the same,” he said, his voice strained. “There’s no way to detect whether or not you’ll have the exact dose needed. It will take time to enter the bloodstream.”

“Then make the dose high enough to do the job in under a minute.”

“It could trigger respiratory problems. He could die.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. Can you get me what I need, or not?”

She waved the letter in front of his face. “It’s your call. You do realize that the CEO of your hospital despises creeps like you. Did you know the CEO’s daughter was raped by their neighbor, a man he trusted?”

“I’ll do it, but it’s not going to be easy.”

“I never expected it to be easy. Two days from now, not three days and not four,” she warned. “In two days, when you take your brown bag lunch to Marshall Park on 27th Street, I want you to make a small detour from your regularly scheduled park bench to the bench closest to the horseshoe pit. It’s impossible to miss and nobody ever plays horseshoes on weekdays. Even if they do, they won’t pay any attention to a doctor eating his lunch. Tape the bag you’re going to leave for me to the bottom of the bench. If the syringe isn’t there, I will be mailing the letters. And don’t even think about trying to intercept the letters. I have your in-laws’ address in Florida and the home address of every colleague you’ve ever worked with.” She continued to look into his eyes, unblinking. “You don’t want to piss me off any more than you already have.”

Hayley stepped away from the bed. “I wrote everything down so you wouldn’t forget.” She held up a piece of paper and then folded it and tucked it in the pocket of his suit jacket that was hanging over the chair.

She continued to talk to him as she began to gather her things. “If you hadn’t spent most of your life fucking young girls who had no interest in being fucked by you, girls who asked you to stop, underage girls who you drugged, then you wouldn’t be here right now. You deserve to die. You really do.”

“I have a family.”

“Yeah, I know. Two girls and a boy. I also know that you’ve paid your own daughters a few too many visits in the middle of the night.”

“I would never do such a thing.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “You’re a liar.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I wish that were true,” she said as she moved back to his side. “I saw you outside the Road Town Bar two weeks ago. You picked up two underage girls. I happened to run into those girls later and they told me all about the sick things you do.”

“They were whores. Why do you think they’re on the streets?”

“You think it’s because they want to sleep with ugly assholes like you?”

“Yes.”

Her mouth tightened and her vision blurred as she ripped off a new piece of duct tape and slapped it over his mouth.

Anger rolled its devilish ingers around her heart, strangling whatever sense of normalcy she had left inside. Nothing had been the same since she’d visited her mom. Mom loved drugs more than she loved her own daughter. Life wasn’t fair, she knew that, but she also knew that until she took care of the men who had ruined her mom’s life, and her life, she wouldn’t ever be able to move on.

“Every single one of those girls on the street,” she ground out, “needs money to survive. There are a few girls out there who’d rather dole out blow jobs than work nine to ive behind a desk, but many of those girls have been traf icked. If they don’t bring their pimps back something in the form of greenbacks, they get beaten to a pulp. Those pimps make sure the girls are addicted to drugs so that they will never leave. So that they’ll believe they have no choice but to sleep with sick fucks like you.”