Midnight Rambler_ A Novel Of Suspense Part 39

"I was here here, in my trailer," Bash said.

"So what's your point?" Cheever asked.

"I never laid a finger on any of them, or did anything horrible to them, or made them suffer or cry," Bash said. "I just watched."

"Is that your thing?" Cheever asked.

"Yeah," Bash said. "I like to watch. My heart don't work so good anymore, so I never went down on them like Coffen and Jonny and Skell did. I didn't hurt them, either. I just stayed in my trailer and watched."

His words sounded like a confession. Only something was missing. Guilt. His eyes were empty and soulless, and I wondered what event in his life had caused him to partic.i.p.ate in the deaths of so many innocent young woman and not regret it.

"Did you watch them die?" I asked.

Bash stared down at his scuffed shoes.

"Most of them," he said quietly.

"Not all?"

"I missed a couple," he admitted.

"What happened?"

"Skell killed them when I was on the air doing my show."

"Which ones did you miss?" Cheever asked.

"I don't know," Bash said.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Cheever said.

"I never knew the girls' names," he said.

Cheever threw a right hand into Bash's face. The DJ let out a m.u.f.fled yell and tumbled backwards into the trailer. Cheever looked around to make sure no one was watching, then followed him inside.

I glanced down at Buster, who was glued to my leg. My dog wanted no part of this. I made him go inside anyway.

The interior of Bash's trailer was like a cave. The walls and ceiling were painted black, the curtains tightly drawn. Natural light was not welcome here. An oversized leather chair with a TV remote on its cushion sat in the room's center. On the floor in front of the chair was a plastic bowl half filled with b.u.t.tered popcorn.

Bash's throne.

Across from the chair, a wide-screen plasma TV was mounted on the wall. I stared at the TV, slack-jawed. On its screen, a bikini-clad Melinda Peters hung by her wrists inside someone's closet, her manicured toes sc.r.a.ping the floor. A cell phone lay by her feet, and I thought back to last night's call.

Bash staggered around the trailer, clutching his face. Cheever grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him into the leather chair.

"Please don't hit me again," the DJ begged.

"You gonna behave?" Cheever asked.

"I didn't do anything."

"Answer me, a.s.shole."

"Yeah, I'll behave."

Cheever pointed at the screen. "Is that live?"

"Yeah, it's live."

"They're playing voyeur cam with her, aren't they?"

Bash hid the smirk forming on his face. "Something like that."

"When are your buddies going to kill her?"

"Tonight, after Skell gets back to Fort Lauderdale. He wants to see it."

"Were they going to broadcast it to him?"

"No. He was going to Jonny's place to watch."

I could not take my eyes off Melinda. The voyeur cam turned, and the Cuban who had shot out my windshield on 595 appeared on the big screen. It was Jonny Perez, wearing a bright red bandanna around his head and clutching a can of beer. He smiled and waved at the camera while doing a crazy little dance.

"Why is he dancing?" I asked.

"He's playing 'Midnight Rambler,'" Bash said. "It's what we play when the girls are being tortured."

"We?" I asked.

Bash nodded. Sensing that I wanted a more complete answer, he used the remote to start a CD player sitting on the floor beneath the TV. Out of its speakers came the opening harmonica riff from the live version of "Midnight Rambler." The music was like a demonic chuckle.

I took a deep breath. If I saw any more, I was going to explode.

"Where's your address book?"

"In my bedroom. I'll get it for you."

He started to get out of his chair, and Cheever shoved him back down.

"I told you not to move," Cheever said.

"I was just going to get the address book for him," Bash said.

"Don't you want Jack to go in there?"

Bash shook his head. "No."

"Why not?" Cheever asked.

"He won't like it," Bash said.

Bash's bedroom was in the rear of the trailer and reeked of cigarettes and a decayed conscience. There were no real furnishings, just a water bed and an upturned orange crate that served as a night table.

The address book lay on the crate. I found Jonny Perez under the J's. He lived in West Sunrise, which was as close as you could get to the Everglades without falling in.

As I slipped the address book into my pocket I realized I wasn't alone. The bedroom's ceiling was papered with photographs of naked women. It looked like pervert heaven, only with a twisted difference. The photographs were not torn from an X-rated magazine or copied off a p.o.r.nographic website. They were real. They were the victims.

I choked up. The poses were s.e.xual, the women smiling through clenched teeth. All eight were there. I silently recited their names as I pulled them down.

The last photograph was of Lola, a pretty Jamaican prost.i.tute whose story I'd never known. I'd talked her into making her johns wear rubbers and getting doctor's checkups, and she'd lasted twelve years without getting sick. As strange as it sounded, I took a lot of pride in that.

I let Lola's photograph float to the bed. It flipped over as it landed, revealing writing on the back.

#7.

I checked the backs of the other photographs. They were also numbered. I realized this was how Bash and the rest of the gang saw their victims, as nameless objects. In their eyes, they were not worthy of proper names or ident.i.ties, just numbers.

I gathered up the photographs. They were evidence, but a part of me didn't want anyone to see them. The victims had suffered enough, and having these images pa.s.sed around a police station or at a trial seemed one more senseless indignity. As I weighed what to do with them, a man's screams shattered my thoughts.

I ran into the next room, and found Cheever punching Bash. Cheever outweighed me by forty pounds, and it took all of my strength to pull him off the struggling DJ.

"What are you trying to do?" I asked.

"Kill the son of a b.i.t.c.h," Cheever said.

"Why? What did he do?"

"Look at the G.o.dd.a.m.n TV."

I looked across the room at the giant screen. Jonny Perez and a second Hispanic were dancing naked around Melinda while using pieces of paper to cut her arms and legs. Each time she screamed, they cut her again. They seemed to be feasting on her fear.

"I caught Bash laughing under his breath, getting his rocks off," Cheever said.

"I need to talk to him, Claude."

"Wasn't the address book in the bedroom?"

"I've got the address book," I said. "I need to ask him something."

Cheever walked across the trailer to where my dog was sitting in the corner. He crossed his arms and stared murderously at Bash.

"Go ahead," he said.

I knelt down beside Bash's oversized chair. The DJ was red in the face and was having a hard time breathing. I grasped his arm and pinched it.

"You said something on your show that I want explained," I said. "You said Melinda had more dirt on me. What was she going to say?"

Bash started to reply, then thought better of it. I answered my own question.

"Was she going to say I was the Midnight Rambler?"

The DJ shut his eyes.

"Yes," he whispered.

"That's why you've been attacking me on the radio, isn't it?"

The DJ nodded.

"Was that Skell's idea?"

"Yes. Skell thought it would take the heat off him."

Since Carmella Lopez's body had been discovered in her sister's backyard I'd been painted to look like the kind of monster that I'd spent my life chasing. Now I knew why.

"He's all yours," I told Cheever.

Bash opened his eyes and looked pleadingly at me. "What about our deal? You guys said you'd help me if I cooperated."

"Fat chance," Cheever told him.

"But you guys said-"

"The only deal you're getting is a one-way ticket to Starke," Cheever said. "Either you'll get the needle shoved in your arm, or someone will shove a broomstick up your a.s.s. Those are your options."

"But we had a deal. deal.

" "We lied, b.u.t.tercup."

Bash's eyes floated to the giant screen. Jonny Perez had ripped away Melinda's bikini top and was cutting perfect circles around her perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Bash tore his eyes away long enough to look at me.

"No deal?" he asked.

"No deal," I said.

Bash started to protest, then went rigid in his chair. He slapped his hand over his heart like a dramatic actor in a play. I knew what was happening, and pulled him out of his chair and laid him on the floor. Then I began to pound his chest. But it was too late. He had already stopped breathing.