Deathgrip Page 29

“Early next week, I guess.” Donny drew a shaky breath, lots of apprehension. “But we’ve got to make sure his loyalty is with us first. We’ve got to be certain. This is a lot touchier than having him work the crowds, you know.”

  Gabe nodded, wanting to scream, Then spend some time with him, you idiot! Holding it in with admirable restraint, focusing instead on the rattle of Donny’s glass, the clink of ice cubes; such persistence in trying to drain an empty vessel.

  “You’ve made me thirsty.” Gabe rose from his chair. “Can I get you a refill?”

  Donny smiled, flattered, and pressed the squat glass into Gabe’s outstretched hand. “Thank you. Ginger ale.”

  “Coming right up.” Gabe left for the kitchen, and behind him, the TV volume boosted back to where it had been. Donny and his remote control. Every bit as wondrous as his onstage miracles.

  Gabe set the glass on the counter, brought one down from the cabinet for himself. Appearance’s sake only. He fed a few ice cubes into each, splashed in ginger ale from the bottle.

  He then pulled the tiny envelope from his shirt pocket and shook its contents into one palm. Five translucent green capsules, each about the size of a chili bean and containing 500 milligrams of the sleeping aid chloral hydrate. Standard hypnotic adult dosage was one or two capsules taken thirty minutes before bedtime. Donny was six-foot-one, and since it would not do to have him rousing prematurely tonight, five caps didn’t seem to be pushing it to a dangerous extreme.

  They had come by way of Irv Preston. A phoned complaint about insomnia, and his pharmacy of choice promptly had them ready. Irv was good about that. He would have prescribed morphine for Elvis.

  The last item from the envelope was a new X-acto blade, sheathed in plastic. One by one, he lanced a quick slit into each capsule, squeezed the liquid into Donny’s drink, dropped the flattened caps into the garbage disposal to dissolve. He swirled the drink to mix.

  Gabe served it with a smile, the obedient valet. Donny emptied it cooperatively while the two of them watched the movie in silence, and his head gradually began to dip toward his chest. Two valiant efforts to shake it off, one muttered complaint about being sleepy, and that was that. By the time Moses brought the stone tablets down from the mountain and discovered the Israelites indulging in hedonism, Donny had gone down for the count. Breathing slow, deep, steady as clockwork.

  Gabe took their empty glasses to the kitchen, thoroughly rinsed Donny’s with hot water, then slipped them both into the dishwasher. You could never take too many precautions. Back in the TV room, he gazed sorrowfully at Donny’s unconscious form. Pity. Donny had never missed the end of this movie. Gabe snatched up the remote controls, sent Moses and company to video heaven.

  He jogged up to the third floor, two and three steps at a time, and satisfied himself that nurse Sally Pruett wouldn’t be coming down for coffee or anything else in the next few minutes. Then back to Donny, latching on, arms around chest as he lugged him through the hallways and the kitchen. The man was boneless, as maneuverable as a hundred-and-eighty-pound scarecrow. Heels digging small tracks in the carpet nap, head wobbling about his shoulders. Onward, juggling him through the inner and outer doors, and finally outside. Across the porch and to Donny’s personal golf cart. Gabe propped him up on the passenger side, slumped as if weary from a long day of honest labor. Dream on.

  Gabe puttered back to the compound, the only movement under the watchful indifference of stars and moon and sky. He kept one hand on Donny’s shoulder, couldn’t have him tumbling out like a common drunk. He steered off the main sidewalk onto a branch leading to the office and studio building. Friday night, no one would be working this late, no foreseen interruptions. As far as discretion was concerned, the unbreached privacy of Donny’s house couldn’t be beaten, but the presence of a nurse ruined all that. And suggesting Sally Pruett take off the last two hours of her shift would arouse too much suspicion, too much a break in routine.

  Gabe wheeled around to the north entrance, the back of the building, unseen from the rest of the compound. He stopped the cart half-inside the overhanging alcove and heaved Donny’s dead weight across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Up to the second floor and into Donny’s private office, dumping him into an undignified heap atop the leather sofa. He drew the drapes before switching on the light. Ceiling-recessed fluorescents, glowing warmly within this home of multimillion-dollar decisions, schemes and ideas masquerading as cathode ray salvation. It was rich in earthtones, from the rust carpet to the walnut shelves and paneling, an antique globe perched atop a floor stand. The room was undeniably Donny Dawson.

  How perfectly appropriate that tonight’s assignation take place here. This was better than the house after all.

  Gabe locked him inside, left him slumbering alone for the next thirty minutes while he carted over to retrieve his trunk from cold storage in the cafeteria kitchens. As expected, no one had touched it, they wouldn’t dare. Dead weight again, this time literally, and this was hot, sweaty work, scuffing the cumbersome thing along floors and sidewalks. He drove it back to the offices, dragged it up the stairs to the second floor, then paused at the top, panting for breath.

  He leaned for minutes atop this makeshift mausoleum, and Edie inside, cold and silent. Were her stilled bones locked into place, and did her eyes yet watch from some distant realm? Did they comprehend the totality of darkness?

  A part of him wanted to learn right now, first hand. What really does wait for us? I want to know. But. Duty first.

  Gabe wiped sweat from his forehead and dragged the trunk the rest of the way into Donny’s office. Ducked out and down the hall to his own office — considerably smaller, always an irritation — then brought back the camera he’d left waiting. Back in Donny’s office, he locked the door, you could never be too careful. Three’s company, four’s a crowd.

  Gabe squatted beside the trunk, rested his head against it, I have to go through with this, it’s what’s needed, then he opened the padlock and unpacked the girl within. He stripped her out of her clothes and tossed them aside. Edie Carson had most assuredly seen better days, but she was still photogenic, in a morbid way. Her face sunken and slack, her skin a fascinating blue-gray, particularly her nipples. In her lower regions the flesh was mottled a deeper hue where the blood had pooled and settled. Swollen feet, almost black. She wore the bruise of her broken neck like a scarf around her throat. The smell was not as bad as he’d anticipated.

  But the sight alone, oh, the sight, too many memories. The years compressing within seconds, taking him back too far. Half a life ago, nearly, but still not distant enough for him, and Gabe fell beside her, tenderly holding one chilly hand, I’m so sorry for what I took from you, and wasn’t it just the same as before, always too late with an apology.

  Remembering: Seventeen years old, summertime in Michigan, and it didn’t matter if you’d spent the last thirteen as a ward of the state, when summer came you still felt alive and vital and immortal. Adolescent Gabe, hungry for experience, thirsty for sensation, in a borrowed car with three bottles of wine and a ripe new wrinkle named Kate. Kate Quinn, fellow child with Michigan for parents, sixteen years old and built like twenty, and while girls frequently steer clear of Gabe, Kate tells him he has animal magnetism. He’s hard as a rock. Born to be wild, these two, if only for one perfect night, and the ambrosial wine pours sweet and easy, and they drive to some nearby lake in this land of plenty.

  Falling and stumbling and laughing, he’s never felt this good in his entire life, wet sloppy kisses beneath a summer moon, and the entanglement of sweaty limbs, no Eden could have been any more perfect than this. Let’s swim, she says, I want to swim! and he can only laugh with incredulous delight as she peels away her clothes, there, his first live sight of the nude female form, and she cavorts like some drunken moon goddess, perfect in its glow. He would kill for her, die for her. Let’s swim, that entreaty again, and he tells her he has a head-start, but she doesn’t get it, the joke doesn’t translate.


  Gabe watches her splash in while he tries to finish undressing, his head swimming, the entire world swimming, Kate must surely be a more experienced drinker than he. And he falls, laughing at himself while she calls from the water, arms aloft and waving, Come on, come on! and even at this distance she is still perfection beneath a summer moon. His spirit willing, the flesh weak, the flesh incompetent, the flesh getting sick. He vomits explosively, the reek of cheap wine and a groaning in his ears he recognizes as his own, I’m blowing it, I’m ruining everything. He tries to answer, Be there in a minute, in a minute, in … a … minute, and consciousness is the next casualty while somewhere, far away, he hears the flailing of limbs, the splashing of water, the cry of panic and pain. Crazy Kate, what’s she up to now?

  Time stands still, and he sleeps, and it’s not peaceful, fevered Dionysian dreams gone the way of sour wine, and when he awakens it is light. Shivering in the dawn, alone, soaked with dew and swollen-headed, his hangover as virulent as a plague, and then he sees her. Kate, cold and pale and adrift, wrapped in the fishing line stretched between two floating milk jugs, and all those hooks she must have fought against, and the most grotesque of all, the one hooked fish pinned against her shoulder while it struggles feebly with fins and tail and gasping mouth, and all he can do is wail aloud to a vanished moon and hurl empty bottles at a hungry lake. Neither offering acceptable.

  Edie. The more things change, the more they stay the same. He wanted to weep in her arms, but tears were a puny apology. Anybody could cry.

  “I owe you more than that,” and he drew a breath of resolve and opened his shirt to expose the pastiche of scar tissue. Beneath the lights, before the sleeping Donny Dawson, Gabe maneuvered his chest to her mouth. Pried it open and fed his nipple between the cold lips, then slammed her jaws together. The click of teeth, the warmth of blood, and in this way he fed her. If not the pound of flesh that was her due, it was at least a start.

  And he could focus again, the clarity almost shocking.

  He plucked a tissue from Donny’s desk, wiped Edie’s chin free of his blood, then dabbed his own not-inconsiderable wound. He drew several more tissues and rummaged in the desk until he found a tape dispenser, then fashioned a crude bandage and left his shirt hanging open.

  Donny’s turn now, and Gabe helped him out of his clothes as well. The man’s sleeping penis was limp and flaccid, too bad, Gabe had been hoping for a dream-induced erection. No such luck.

  He dragged Edie to the sofa and positioned her head in Donny’s lap, setting his arms and hands so that they looked as if he were holding her head in place. A good one, for starters.

  Gabe fetched his camera, attached the flash on top, tested it once, and all was well, batteries charged. Off with the lens cap and he focused in, snapped two angles of this first compromising position, and oh, the degeneracy of it all.

  To the camera lens, Donny’s eyes appeared closed in bliss.

  What next, what next — well, turnabout was fair play. Gabe switched their positions, and this time Donny was doing the oral honors, head wedged into the chilly juncture between Edie’s thighs, enough of his face visible for error-free identification.

  Next he stretched Donny out atop the sofa, then draped Edie over him like an obedient love doll. Donny’s hands appeared to be gripping the livid roll of her bottom. What a cooperative pair these two made. Game for anything, no request too kinky.

  His gorge rose only once, memories near and distant, the snap of a neck and the sound of water in a choking throat, and he battled them down. Focus on the task at hand, control, and he put Donny and Edie through position after position. Giant toys, that was how he had to regard them, rag dolls of flesh and bone and blood. He could play with them every night of the week and not grow bored.

  A one-night stand, however. Later tonight, Edie would have to be buried, deep in the woods bordering Donny’s property. He’d already purchased the shovel, and the lime to speed along decomposition. He would offer prayers for her soul.

  Focus: Even through the viewfinder, it was obvious that Donny’s partner was no hot-blooded tigress, that she was … well, dead. Which was the least of all worries. An advantage, in fact.

  After all, in the wake of indiscretions by Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, mere adultery was passé. But necrophilia, now there was a new moral low, and like it or not, Gabe found his imagination to be boundless.

  Position and click, position and click…

  Every last negative on the two thirty-six shot rolls he’d brought for the occasion.

  Chapter 26

  Collegiate parallels — Paul remembered those first few miserable days, a lowly freshman homesick at a university seven hours from his front door. Fantasy sequences in which runaway trucks end the newfound desolation of displacement by smearing him across two blocks of pavement. Had he learned nothing in the decade since? He’d forgotten that eventually a day would come when he would awaken to find things acceptable, maybe even palatable. Familiarity breeds comfort. With some help from a restored sense of purpose, a reason for awakening at all.

  The day after Paul’s unexpectedly pleasant stroll with Gabe Matthews, Donny took out a good chunk of Saturday to show him around the compound in greater detail. More time-consuming than it might ordinarily have been, for Donny was more than lethargic … the man was physically wiped out. Said he was feeling a bit out of sorts, and if Paul didn’t know better, he might have guessed Donny had dropped a couple of ‘ludes.

  By Monday, Donny was back to his usual self, enthusiastic about their future association, and he charged Paul with a new mission, one that should dovetail nicely with his former training.

  “With all the emphasis on our television ministry,” Donny said, “we’ve gotten away from radio. Gabe and I have come to the conclusion that we can fill a lot of coverage gaps across the country by syndicating radio airtime. Mainly into places where it’s not feasible for us to buy into TV. Say, rural areas where they don’t have cable access or a satellite dish.” Then his salesman’s smile. “With your background in radio production, you’d be perfect to edit the tapes for us.”

  Finally, something to give a sense of accomplishment. Just waiting for show night to roll around once a week had left him feeling mercenary, a hired gun.

  Donny took him down into the studios and turned him loose in a sound booth, a regular toyland equipped with two reel-to-reel Teacs, a mixing board, speakers on either side of his skull, outboard effects gear, and much more. Including the most comfortable and noiseless chair from which he’d ever had the pleasure of reigning.

  His first order of business was to produce a sample program, show them what he was capable of. And see if their notions of the end product were compatible. Paul culled the audio track off one of the tapes from the final week of the crusade tour. The sermon alone was seventy-eight minutes, punctuated with interminable stretches of Donny-led chanting that may have breezed by had you been there to participate, but would drag on like a stuck loop if all you could do was listen. These were the first things he edited out. Next were the pregnant pauses following rhetorical questions, during which distant audience voices would invariably shout an amen or some other burst of agreement. He left a couple in for variety, but a few went a long way. Shooting for a one-hour total format, Paul ran and reran segments, timing various stretches, eventually whittling the sermon down to a lightning bolt. He worked up an intro that could be used each week, gospel music and a voiceover lead-in, and tucked that before the sermon. He left a bit of free time after the sermon on the assumption that Donny would like to tape a studio message with which to cap the broadcast. An appeal for contributions, please, keep us on the air.

  The time-honored cash grab, cornerstone of a free economy. And this time I’m a direct party to it, a stray thought once he’d wrapped the production work. He tried not to dwell on it. Just doing my job — the world’s most popular rationalization. Ten thousand death-camp guards couldn’t have been wrong, could they?

  The u
nveiling came at midday on Wednesday, when Donny came down from the offices upstairs into the studios. Paul cued up the reel-to-reel master of his sample as Donny parked himself in a corner chair. Without comment, they listened to passion and promises. Paul tuned in for any hint of production glitch, or an obvious edit that had escaped earlier scrutiny. While Donny had ears only for himself …

  And loved it. He was all smiles, all clasping hands that, strangely enough, felt clammy with sweat. Donny was full of enthusiastic praise, giving his mandate to do a radio version of each week’s show while Paul beamed with the satisfaction of a job well done, and then Donny’s sunshine face began to eclipse into crumbling concern.

  Because he had one more job for Paul this day, perhaps the most important so far…

  Dawson household, Paul’s first trip inside the hallowed walls, and he was duly impressed. Third floor, one of the house’s many bedrooms, bright with early October sunshine and decorated in a blatant contrast of styles. Nouveau-country chic meets chronic ward. Curtains wavered in a breeze that bore the subtle contentment of a virgin autumn, the smell of earth in transition. A world turning toward hibernation.

  While on the bed, there lay a woman who had beaten the world to it. She doesn’t look much like the woman in the pictures. Not anymore.

  Amanda Dawson, meet Paul Handler. Paul? Mandy. Pardon her if she doesn’t get up.

  “She was brought home a couple of nights ago, very late. Apparently—” Donny’s voice choked off, and he dabbed a finger at a bright drop in the corner of one eye. “Apparently she came down with some kind of fever three weeks ago. And she’s been like this ever since. They flew her back from El Salvador on Monday. In case … just in case…” Donny shook his head, turning away, and Paul decided, no, he did not want to stare at the tremors spasming across Donny’s back.

  Paul, silently damning himself for his smug pride in the studio an hour ago, oblivious to the man’s pain. And while he knew there had to be a good reason, he asked the obvious question anyway: “Why isn’t she in a hospital?”