“Fuck you.”
“If you want to trade you have to trade fair. Is that it, Billy Boy?”
“Okay. That’s it. I was going to find you and then cut your fucking ugly head off just like I did your cousin. And then I’d have a pair of the god ugliest bookends on earth.”
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Winters said. “Except, I’m not keeping my end of the bargain. You see, I just keep taking from you. Taking and taking without giving anything back. I took your mommy and, for the most part, your daddy from you. I took your childhood, your career, and even your sanity. And I took that pretty bitch redhead you dream about. Oh yeah, earlier tonight, I took your dago cop partner.”
Winters nodded slowly, his face expressionless, his skin a grim, icy white. “That’s right,” he explained, “I got him tonight. I snuck up behind him. I think he smelled me at the last second but before he could completely turn around I had an ice pick in his kidney. And then we had some fun. A couple of hours of hard rock and roll.
“So come on,” Winters asked, “what’s left for me to take?”
“You sick piece of shit.”
“That’s not it,” Winters said, shaking his head with exaggerated pity. “That doesn’t even make sense. Why would I want to take a sick piece of shit away from you? Come on, think harder. It’s really pretty easy. Even for such a bright boy.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to guess what I can still take away from you. I’ll give you a hint. It’s an old joke. Take my blank, please.”
Shannon didn’t say anything. Winters was only a few feet from him, his body bobbing up and down as if it were floating on the ocean. He wondered if he could end it right there, if killing Winters’s dream self would kill off his physical self. He wanted to try it more than he ever wanted to try anything. Winters seemed to sense what Shannon was thinking. He started to chortle, his slit mouth twisting into a smirk.
“You don’t want to try that, now,” Winters admonished softly, his singsong voice rising and falling with the bobbing of his body. “If you did, I’d have to break your fingers some more and you’d wake up screaming like a baby. Like last time.
“Anyway,” Winters added, “being such a bright bulb, you’ve probably guessed what’s left for me to take. If you woke up now you won’t be able to stop me. I’d just have to go ahead and take it. Tonight. Besides, if you could kill people off in their dream states, don’t you think I’d be doing it?”
Shannon took a step back. “Okay,” he said, “what do you want from me?”
“In a minute. Just so we’re clear, I’m talking about your wife. You know, take my wife, please. I’m with her right now. She’s all dressed up like a Christmas turkey. And I’ve got the carving knife.”
“Why do you think I care? She left me.”
“You care, Billy Boy. You don’t want her to end up like all the others, do you?”
Shannon found himself involuntarily shaking his head. “For the last time, what do you want?”
“The same as you. I want the two of us to get together tonight. Have a little dance. Make a little romance.”
Shannon agreed and Winters gave him the address where he had Susan.
“I’ll be watching you,” Winters warned. “Just like I can meet you in your dreams, I can watch you while you’re awake. If you speak to anyone, call anyone, I’ll know about it. And I’ll do things to her that I’ve only dreamed about. Imagine that, things that someone like me has only dreamed about. Then I’ll disappear. So don’t be stupid.”
Winters body floated off, floated until it became a small, white point. Floated off until there was nothing.
Turbulence jerked Shannon awake in his seat. For a brief heartbeat he could still smell the odor, for a bit longer he could taste it in his throat. He found himself gagging from it. The woman sitting next to him was eyeing him somewhat suspiciously.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Shannon nodded and, when he could, he muttered something about having a bad dream. He found a pen and wrote down the address Winters had given him. He couldn’t afford to forget it. Then he fell back into his seat, feeling his heart skipping on him, racing away like a rabbit’s.
He knew Winters was with Susie. There was no doubt in his mind about it. The sonofabitch psycho had told him the truth. And he knew Susie would be kept alive until he got there. About watching him, Shannon knew that was true, also. As impossible as it sounded, he knew it was true. But if Winters were watching him, he wouldn’t be able to do things to Susie, he’d have to be concentrating his energies on Shannon. Unless he took occasional breaks, thinking that watching Shannon ninety percent of the time would be enough. Even still, Susie would be kept alive.
As much as he tried telling himself otherwise, he knew Winters had also told him the truth about DiGrazia. It fit together. Joe would’ve gone to pick up Susie after the case broke against Winters. Somehow Winters followed him and got to him-probably as he was opening the door to wherever he had Susan hidden. Or maybe the psycho found Susie first and waited for Joe. Anyway, Shannon knew it was true and knew Winters would’ve taken his time killing his partner. And he knew Winters would’ve forced Susie to watch.
A numbing calm took over. It was almost peaceful. Something like death. The plane wouldn’t be landing for a couple of hours, but that was okay. Susie would be kept alive. There was nothing to do but wait. Wait and let himself slip into the blissful numbness. And he welcomed it.
Charlie Winters’s eyes opened slowly and, as they did, they focused on Susan Shannon. She was lying spread-eagle on the kitchen table, each of her limbs tied by wire to each of the four table legs. If she struggled the wire would slice her skin. Her own eyes were large and shining brightly with terror. A dish rag had been stuffed in her mouth. All her clothing had been removed.
Seeing her terror excited him. He closed his eyes momentarily and breathed deeply. He could just about smell her terror. A barely palpable pungent smell. Sweeter, though, than the heavy, rotting, death odor that he carried.
He stood up and leaned over her so that his face was inches from hers. Even though she was gagged he could hear the sudden intake of her breath. Pure unadulterated fear exploded in her eyes and it sent a dizzying rush of exhilaration through him that nearly floored him. He had to back up a few steps. He ran his tongue slowly over his lips and swallowed.
“Did I frighten you?” he asked in his soft, singsong voice.
She made a muffled noise that sounded something like “please.”
Charlie Winters could barely contain himself. He picked up the carving knife that he had left lying against her neck and ran the blade over the length of her body, pushing the skin down but not cutting it. He did a complete trace of her body, ending back at her throat.
“You don’t want any sudden movements,” he whispered into her ear, his breath stale and harsh, “because those wires I’ve tied around your wrists and ankles will cut straight to the bone. Probably even clean through it. Understand, sweetmeat?”
She nodded her head, tears leaking from her eyes.
Winters took hold of the index finger on her right hand and slid the knife under it. The drive to cut it off was pounding in his head. For a long moment he stared, transfixed on her finger. Then he let it go and took a step away. If he started now he wouldn’t be able to stop and that wouldn’t be any good. He needed her alive for when Shannon showed up.
Those were the plans he had improvised. They weren’t his original plans, but his original plans had gotten shot to hell because he had let Eddie Podansky live.
Podansky. He had gotten careless with him. He should’ve found his family and taken care of them and then taken care of Podansky. But he had let things slide and the Brookline cop was alive to make the connection between him and Elaine Horwitz. After all, Podansky had stopped him only a few blocks from Horwitz’s office, and the cop was suspicious as hell to begin with. And it wasn’t a difficult leap from Charlie to his cousin Herbert and then to the recent killings.