Demon Key Read online

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  He put down the printout and cleared his throat. “Yeah. Just about everything.”

  She exhaled relief. “You referring to the tropical storm?”

  “And this damn missin’ person’s case. I can’t help thinkin’ that when this storm passes, we’ll have another one or two people missin’.”

  “Funny how all the people snatched have been local.”

  “Yeah. I’m laughin’ my ass off.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she snapped.

  “I know. I’m tired and pissed-off at the moment, and that’s a mighty unfriendly combination. Sorry for the wisecrack.”

  “No sweat. I’m a bit bushed myself.”

  “Any leads from your DC boys?”

  Teddi plunked down in the worn leather chair beside his desk. “Zip. Nadda. Zero. SSDD.”

  He frowned and scratched the side of his head.

  “Same shit, different day, Dex.”

  “Oh yeah. Right. Told you I was wiped out.”

  She tapped her short, neatly trimmed fingernails on his oak desk. “I keep thinking we’ve missed something, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what that might be.”

  “So you think it might help if we review the facts again for the umpteenth time?” Dex offered.

  She chuckled. “Pretty desperate, huh?”

  He enjoyed her company – except for her occasional newly-divorced, I-don’t-trust-men attitude. It was obvious that she was still bitter, and her emotional wounds were slow to heal.

  It was past six in the evening, and they were the only ones left in the police station. The silence was occasionally disrupted by blustery storm gusts rattling the shutters and by tree branches tickling the office windows. Even though he was a calloused old lawman, those sounds gave him the creeps. Something surreal had invaded Gator Creek and kept his nerves on edge.

  Dex leaned forward and planted his elbows on the desk. “Desperate ain’t the word for it, Teddi. I’m contemplatin’ knockin’ my noggin against the wall.”

  “Glad I could save your wall from a beating, Dex.” Teddi opened the accordion folder on her lap and shuffled through the thick sheaf of papers. “So many reports and no damn substance. Nothing we can use.”

  “That’s the government for you,” he muttered. “Paper peddlers.”

  She scowled. “Hey, I’m just doing my job.”

  “And look where it’s gotten us so far.”

  She leaned back and managed an exhausted grin. “You’ve got me there.”

  “Four abductions in three weeks,” Dex stated, his sour stomach splashing more acid into his esophagus. He burped. “Sorry.”

  “Bad stomach?”

  “Bad month.”

  “Yeah. Join the crowd. My divorce was final a month ago.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “At the end?”

  “Hell, ever!”

  “No. Well, kinda. Before he morphed into an impossible asshole.”

  “Got that off your chest now?”

  She glowered at him. “Yes,” she replied stiffly.

  “Good. Can we forget that pain-in-your-ass for a few minutes and concentrate on the business at hand?”

  “That was blunt.” Her voice was ice.

  “Got to be. We’ve got our backs up against the wall here, Teddi. Those women might still be alive, and time is a tickin’. I’d prefer to find them alive.”

  She mellowed some. “So let’s have another go at it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I guess you think I’m being foolish.”

  “You mean totin’ all your personal baggage with you on this investigation?”

  “Well, yes. I guess that’s what I mean.”

  “Then I sure as hell think you’re foolish.”

  “Thanks for your brutal honesty.” She sighed. “Let’s get on with this.”

  Dex leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the edge of his cluttered desk. “All right now, let’s reassess our current position. We’ve got no friggin’ clues. No motives. No kidnappin’ ransom demands. No crime precedent in this peaceful neck of the woods. Did I miss anything?”

  “Yeah. The victims are all overweight women. Other than that, they have nothing in common. Different demographics all together. Social. Economic. You name it.”

  “And they were snatched in small shopping strips at night. Unlighted and no surveillance cameras. Our perp is shy, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Teddi smiled in spite of her sour mood. “A great psych profile.”

  His brows arched. “You mean psycho profile, don’t you?”

  She leaned forward. “Like me?”

  They laughed with no attempt at holding back. It momentarily allayed their tension. Stress. Frustration. Bitterness.

  A booming explosion outside Dex’s office rocked the station and knocked the police chief backwards in his chair. The lights blinked and snapped to black. Teddi drew her gun and straddled the doorway, alert to possible terrorists. In the darkness, she listened hard, but only detected ghostly wind howls and creaking tree limbs.

  Suddenly, the station’s front door flew open and crashed against the wall. A skulking shadow slid inside.

  Chapter 4

  Elaine strained to turn her gaze from the gruesome patch of skin, but her neck remained inert from Big Man’s dart drug – Big Man – that’s what she called him now.

  She watched in terror as he snapped the top two corners of her flesh between a pair of powerful alligator clips attached to a long rope pulley. The rope disappeared outside into the raging storm through a small square cut in a wall. Large enough for her flesh to clear. God, the lunatic was going to hang out her own bloody skin like ordinary laundry!

  He tugged at the pulley rope until her flesh vanished outdoors. The wind ravaged it, but the clips held it fast.

  He returned to Elaine, grabbed a long razor from his worktable, and slowly shaved her head. She saw some of the rain-soaked locks drop to the floor. She cringed in her mental room like a scolded child. An abused child. A terrified child!

  When he finished shaving, he spread his hand over her face, obliterating her view. She didn’t know whether to cheer or be even more afraid. What was he doing to the top of her head? Her visual perspective changed. More to the side. He had turned her head, but why?

  Her heart thumped hard and fast. Close to rupturing. Normally, just the stress of walking to her mailbox at the street curb made her ticker drum a fierce tango beat. But this was way worse. So, why didn’t she have a heart attack now and spare herself the ignominy and horror of this repulsive experience? Her cardiologist warned her repeatedly that she was a ripe candidate for a heart attack, but now that she remained alive after enduring this shocking trauma, the doctor was obviously full of . . .

  Big Man removed his massive hand from her face. Elaine’s eyes followed him back to the workbench where he exchanged the razor for a wide paintbrush. Must have been a four incher. She’d used one like it to paint the outside of her trailer last fall. What a bitch of a job that had been. Jeez, Elaine, now your mind’s wandering!

  He returned, and the paintbrush disappeared from her view above her head. Her shaved head. Now what? She shuddered to think. To imagine.

  God, she was really losing it. Falling apart. Her thoughts came in vulgar language, like her asshole stepfather had freely used around her since kindergarten when he’d invaded her family. She had always despised his potty mouth, but now she was mind-speaking the same way. She hated herself for thinking it. She hated her stepfather. She hated Big Man. She hated the television and movie potty-mouths. There were potty-mouthed assholes everywhere! And right now she hated the whole damn world for it!

  The paintbrush came back into view, and the bristles dripped blood. Her blood! She vomited in her mind room. Imaginary vomit. What had he done to her head to make it bleed like butchered cattle at the stockyards?

  Her dazed eyes followed each brush
stroke. When the bristles were stroked dry, he returned the brush to the top of her head. It came back into sight dripping her blood. Her head had been transformed into a paint bucket! She mind-vomited again.

  Although she didn’t have a good angle to see exactly what he was painting, it appeared as if she was Big Man’s canvas. Varnishing her body with her own blood! What kind of nutcase was he, anyway? She prayed hard for that heart attack her quack doctor had promised.

  Big Man saved her face for last. The piece de resistance. He roughly dabbed the bristles so close to her eyes that she feared he would poke them out, but they somehow survived. Finally, he tossed the paintbrush onto his worktable and walked beyond her range of vision.

  The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell . . .

  Jesus, she was singing that childhood song again. Her escape song each time her stepfather hit her mother or tore off her clothes. Rape and child molestation had been family rituals after his arrival. The sicko bastard! So she had stashed reality behind the impenetrable fortress of that little ditty where Floyd-the-Sicko couldn’t reach her.

  And now it was happening to her again. Another sicko invading her life. But, she figured this whacko would certainly be her last one if she wasn’t rescued soon.

  The lights flickered overhead, and she held her breath. Her imaginary breath. God, not darkness! She was deathly afraid of the dark. She hated night. Footsteps. Invisible footsteps approaching her bed. The invisible hands. The whisky breath. Her thighs being roughly split apart, and an invisible hard-on penetrating her. Pumping her. Pounding her. Spitting on her. Yep. Floyd-the-Sicko at work. That monster encouraged her to eat. And eat. Get fat. Grow big titties. For the invisible hands.

  But the lights sputtered back to life, casting away her invisible horrors.

  Big Man swept her off the table and dropped her unceremoniously into a wheelbarrow. At least it looked like one during her brief plunge. Two stained wooden handles. He gripped both and clenched an electric lantern handle between his teeth. It illuminated his eyes. Cruel, foreboding eyes.

  He butted the doors open with the front edge of the wheelbarrow and shoved it and her into the furious wind and rain. Pines whipped wildly on each side, as she and her captor proceeded deeper into the tropical storm. The rain sheered her vision as before, and the trees became shadowy waving madmen. Then the madmen vanished from sight. Nothing to see but angry rain drops. And to top it off, the damn matchsticks held.

  After what seemed like a excruciatingly long journey – again, she had no sense of time – they paused in front of an oddly shaped shadow. She heard a nearby door creak open beyond her head – the bald paint can. Then he wheeled her inside the hulking shadow where the rain mercifully ceased pelting her eyes.

  The light was dim, and he cast long shadows as he worked at something in the distance. Suddenly, she found herself sitting, and he fastened several straps around her. Clanks of metal echoed in the dry space as he slipped her lower body into a harness. He struggled and grunted with that part, and Elaine was glad. She hoped he got a hernia.

  When Big Man finished, there was another metallic creak. No, it was more of a grating groan. He leaned over her and did something to her right arm. An injection? She couldn’t see or feel it. Just a blurry flash of a syringe. God! What more tortuous drugs could he inject her with to intensify her terror? She would know soon enough.

  Suddenly, he lowered her into a tight black hole that scraped her sides! Her vision gradually returned until she could see its rough, stony sides clearly. Her downward trek was punctuated with nauseous jerks. The harness appeared to be attached to a pulley rig like the one Big Man had used to thrust her flesh into the storm.

  Elaine was now reduced to a quivering ball in the corner of her mind room. Darkness deepened all around her. Darkness! She screamed. Imaginary screams.

  One of the matchsticks broke and her left eyelid blinked. Up and down. Up and down. She closed it against the deepening blackness, but her right eye was forced to observe the descending horror. Was she to be buried alive?

  More imaginary screams.

  She smelled the dankness. Felt the coolness prickle the hair on her arms. It took a moment for the significance to sink in, but when it finally did, she wanted to yell for joy. Her senses were back in working order!

  Elaine willed her limbs to thrash in the constricting harness, or whatever it was, but her muscles were still drug-frozen. It was no use. Escape appeared impossible.

  Still, she kept falling in slow motion. Deeper and deeper into – what? A malodor assailed her nostrils and nearly gagged her. The blackness stank like piss, shit, and death all rolled into one horrible stench. Oh God, what was down there?

  Her heart struck her ribs like a caged gorilla – another returned sensation, but not a welcome one. It only served to amplify her panic. To incite her imagination to envision more hellacious horrors.

  And still she dropped. Big Man’s electric lantern was now a memory. So was his dreadful shape. What the hell was he up to?

  Elaine was startled when her body finally reached solid ground. Because of her fear, she overlooked the fact that she would eventually hit bottom. More metal clanging echoed down from above – maybe she was at the bottom of a well – and then suddenly, the harness released her. She fell over like a roly-poly doll on her side.

  Ouch!

  Pain! Excruciating pain! Must be the side where Big Man cut away her skin. She heard more metallic clanging, and soon Big Man appeared, climbing down an old aluminum ladder with his lantern clenched between his teeth. He grabbed her feet and flipped her onto her back, and this time she felt it. Her senses were acute now, but her muscle response remained nil.

  Big Man dragged her along a tunnel, and the top of her head and that one side both ached like a sons-of-a-bitches. She tried to scream, but all that emerged from her straining throat was a hoarse croak.

  The deeper they trekked into the tunnel, the fouler the stench became. A stockyard and septic tank all rolled into one. Elaine regretted the return of her sense of smell.

  The confining tunnel abruptly ballooned into an enormous room. A grotto perhaps. Elaine looked above and couldn’t see the ceiling. Suddenly, they stopped moving. Big Man reached behind him and pulled out the rain-cleansed slice of her flesh from a backpack – she’d never even seen him retrieve the horrible item! With a groan, he heaved it somewhere in front of them. She heard a soft plunk.

  Was there a lake out there?

  Big Man spun and glowered at her. The lantern momentarily bathed her in its yellow glare, and then without a word, he stepped over her hapless body and backtracked into the tunnel. The light vanished with him.

  Her trepidation returned, and she languished in a numb stupor. In the pitch-blackness. She was a goner. Left to starve to death without dignity. Without hope.

  Suddenly, waves lapped her toes and ankles. Then, larger swells gurgled and hissed and rolled over her. She sputtered and coughed the cool water from her throat and mouth.

  Oh God! What was in the lake that could cause waves that size? She squeezed her eyes shut. Something big, that’s what!

  The waves came in a regular series. She shut her mouth and eyes each time one washed over her. Her hands wiped away the residual water.

  Her eyes popped open and she studied her hands. They worked again! She wiggled her toes and bent her legs. All worked perfectly. Halleluiah!

  As the next wave approached, she rolled and rose to her knees. The water slammed into her, knocking her onto her back again. She scrambled to her feet, and her knees wobbled like jelly. There was no time to lose. The next wave was coming, and it would surely topple her again.

  Elaine retreated from the lake like a lame beggar. Her steps were small and unsteady, but she moved far enough away where the gurgling wash was too shallow to shove her down. Smiling, she turned toward the lake. Whatever had been in there couldn’t hurt her now. She was saved!

  She stuck out her tongue at the unseen lake. “Take th
at, asshole! Better luck next time.” Her quivering voice echoed in the vast black expanse.

  Suddenly a violent water eruption petrified her!

  An unseen monster snatched her from the rocky shore in its tremendous jaws and crushed her before she could react. Her masticated form tumbled down its huge gullet.

  Elaine Brewster’s pathetic life was over.

  Chapter 5

  “Freeze!” Teddi shouted into the gloom, her gun pointed at the invading silhouette. “FBI!”

  “Don’t shoot! It’s me. Officer Fuentes!”

  A flashlight beam stabbed the darkness in his direction. Dex stood behind her and pinpointed his deputy. “Dammit, what the hell happened outside?” he demanded gruffly.

  “Transformer blew just as I was getting out of the squad car,” Carlos Fuentes responded irritably. “It’s miserable out there. There ain’t much difference between a category one hurricane and a top-end tropical storm, I can tell you that.”

  Dex turned the beam toward his office doorway. “For godsake, get rid of that poncho and high-tail it in here.”

  Teddi holstered her gun. “Another thing, Dex.”

  He paused, uncertain of what she was referring to. “Yeah?”

  “All the Gator Creek abducted women were Caucasian.”

  He laughed loudly. “You never quit, do you?”

  Late the next day, the tropical storm moved out of Broward County to Fort Meyers. The skies were now clear and cloudless, but the winds still gusted fiercely. Teddi rode with Dex to a small Gator Creek restaurant named Cohen’s Deli, the site of the latest reported female disappearance. Dex parked his midnight blue Impala with a cherry on top in the washed-out alley behind the deli and greeted an excited Mr. Cohen.

  The restaurant owner explained how he’d left Elaine Brewster in charge of closing and cashing out while he went home to his family. He berated himself for leaving her alone on such a stormy night, especially in light of the recent abductions.

  When Mr. Cohen finished relating his story, Dex pointed at the dented red Neon across the alley that was now a gully wash after the heavy rains. White sand was piled up on the other side like a riverbank, and several broken tree limbs lay scattered helter-skelter across the parking lot. Mr. Cohen, a forty-something with wavy black hair, a full beard, a high voice, and a nervous demeanor, pointed at the car with a trembling hand.