Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) (22 page)

The man awoke in an instant and spun over. His movement ripped the needle from Bob’s hand, and it disappeared into the bed sheets. The man sat up and kicked himself back across the bed. Bob ducked to the floor. The man’s frantic movements woke his wife.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Spider again?” she asked, still half asleep and unaware of what had taken place.

“What the… There’s a… Sam, call…” The man fell back to the bed, unconscious before he could warn his wife.

“It was just a dream. Go back to sleep.” The woman pushed the man back toward his side of the bed.

Bob reached into his pocket and pulled out the other pre-filled syringe.

The woman lay on her stomach. Her right leg and half of her buttocks stuck out from the sheets of the bed. It might as well have had a bull’s-eye on it. He jammed the needle into the side of her buttocks and thumbed the plunger down. She swatted at it in her sleep and made contact with Bob’s hand holding the needle. She flipped over and pulled the covers to her chin. Bob didn’t try to hide.

“Oh my god! Marty!” she screamed.

Bob lunged at her. He grabbed her in a bear hug and whispered in her ear. “It’s time for us to have some fun, Samantha.”

They were the last words she heard before going limp in his arms. He dropped her to the floor and went in search of the children. When he finished, he went back to the master bedroom and dragged Samantha down the stairs and out to the garage. Bob took the keys to one of the cars from the key hook on the wall. He popped the trunk to a newer black Lexus. He dumped Samantha inside and closed it.

The man was next. Bob dragged him down the stairs and out to the garage. On the workbench, he found a spool of wire and used it to hog-tie the man. He dumped him in the trunk of the other car and slammed the lid.

He backed the Lexus containing Samantha out of the garage and parked his taxi inside. His cargo from the taxi was transferred over to the Lexus. He hit the button on the visor to close the garage door and left.

He needed to find a cheap motel with ground-level entry—a place where he could get her indoors and perform a procedure without a bunch of people nosing around—something seedy and out of town. He knew just the place. It was a half hour away.

Bob made a right off of Highway 41 into the trashy little motel in Gibsonton. Most of the town was populated by carnival folk, drug addicts, cheap hookers, and drunks. The neighborhood didn’t look any better during the daylight. The sign in front of the Weary Traveler Motel would have said Vacancy if all the letters were lit. It was a run-down single-story building shaped like a U. Bob’s options were seven dollars an hour or thirty-two for the whole night. He dug through his wallet. He had only twenty bucks. The wallet he’d taken from the cop was empty aside from a couple credit cards, which were sure to be canceled or tracked by then. He thumbed back through his wallet and pulled out a new Visa. He peeled off the activation sticker. The name on it was Dan Ellison. He gave the hollow-eyed front-desk woman the card. She didn’t ask for ID. She handed him a couple metal keys—they had plastic tags with room numbers on them. He moved the car to room 118. Darkness lay over the motel’s parking lot. The only light came from a halogen motion light mounted to the outside of the office. When it clicked off, he popped the trunk of the Lexus and pulled Samantha into the room.

My alarm woke me just after six in the morning. After a quick shower, I went through the usual routine of getting dressed and throwing on my shoulder holster. I walked out to the kitchen to deal with Butch. I opened the cupboard and grabbed his food. As soon as it hit his dish, he came running from the living room. I started some coffee and went to the fridge to get the creamer. An empty one-foot-by-one-foot square—where the dry erase board had been—stared me in the face. I tried to put the thought of Bob Cross standing in my kitchen out of my head.

I sat down at the breakfast bar to drink my coffee and watch the morning news. Every local news outlet was airing coverage of the case. They had footage of his ex-wife’s house. Bob Cross played on every channel. Every photo had the name Psycho Surgeon below it. They were doing their best to make him famous. He wouldn’t be able to hide for long with the kind of exposure he was getting.

I took a sip from my coffee and set it on the counter. I grabbed the report from the break-in and looked it over. The rustling of the paper must have sounded like food to Butch. He jumped up on the breakfast bar and sent my coffee splashing toward me in a brown tidal wave. I did my best to dodge the flying liquid but still caught a good portion of the liquid with my suit jacket and pants. I let out a deep breath. That was probably an accident, but it also might have been payback for locking him in the bathroom.

I walked to my bedroom to change. When I pulled open the closet door to grab a new suit, something in my safe caught my eye. My safe door stood open, and I stared inside. The other officers and I had gone through my safe to make sure all of my firearms were accounted for. They were, but I hadn’t noticed that the manila envelope containing my divorce papers looked as though it had been gone through. I pulled it from the shelf in my safe and opened it.

I had looked over the documents a thousand times. Our divorce hadn’t been quite as clean as I would’ve liked, and my father had always stressed that I should never sign anything I didn’t understand. I went over the entire bundle of documents so many times that I had memorized them. Samantha wasn’t going to get anything more than she deserved, especially after cheating on me. I couldn’t imagine why the detectives would have gone through it. I dug through the sheets of paper. Everything was there.

A thought of what Cross had meant by his note on the fridge bubbled up in my head.
“My next will be the best yet. At least for you.”

The “at least for you” part bothered me. He might have had Samantha’s name and address. As much as I hated it, I needed to call and check on her. I found the last number I had for her and dialed. It went to voicemail. I needed to find a phone number for Samantha’s house. If I could get her on the phone, it would at least put my mind at ease. I didn’t have a phone book, and didn’t feel like turning on my computer and running a search. The quickest way to get her number was to call my sister. She picked up right away.

“Hey, Carl. We’re just getting up. What’s going on?”

“Hey, I need a number for Samantha. It’s work related.”

“Work related, huh? Don’t give me that. What do you want to talk to her for? You remember that she’s remarried, right?”

“I don’t have time for this. Just give me her damn number.”

“Geez. Whatever. Bite my head off.”

“Mel, what’s her number?”

“Hold on.”

She got it and rattled it off in a snotty tone. It was the same number I already had.

“What’s the phone number for her house?”

“You can’t call their house. What are you, crazy?”

I’d had enough arguing with my sister. If I told her the real reason why I wanted to get a hold of Samantha, she would freak out.

“Forget it. I’m sure he’s in the phone book. Don’t worry about it.”

I hung up.

Whether Sam was in any kind of danger or not, I didn’t know. However, if I told my sister my reason for wanting to contact her, she would be planning a funeral within a day. I fired up my computer and searched for their house phone number. Martin Bridgeman’s home phone number came up right away. I tried the number twice but got no answer.

I looked at my watch. I had enough time to get out to their house and be back to the station before my shift started. Though I’d remembered the general area of Samantha’s new house, I wrote the address down in my notepad to be sure. I finished getting dressed, grabbed my keys, and headed downstairs.

Around seven thirty, I pulled into their neighborhood, a twenty-year-old subdivision filled with upper-class homes. At the top of the market, the homes in the neighborhood were worth a million dollars each.

I squinted at the numbers on the mailboxes and houses. I caught a house number over a garage and continued up the street. I stuffed my notepad back into my pocket. “Four more.”

I’d been to Doctor Bridgeman’s house once in the past. Samantha insisted we go and eat dinner with the dentist and his wife. Little did I—or his wife—realize they were already sleeping together. Another half a block up, I found the address. I slowed as I passed, hunching down to get a better view of the house through the passenger side window. The driveway was empty. Everything looked normal.

The home was smaller than I remembered. It was a tan two story with a terracotta tile roof and expansive landscaping. A pair of king palms took center stage along the sidewalk leading up to the front door. A two-car garage stood to the right, as well as another for one car—three cars total.

I pulled to the curb and walked up to the house. I stopped outside their front door. A carved wooden sign sat in the landscaping to the side. It read, “The Bridgemans”.

I shook my head in disgust and knocked on the front door. I prepared myself for the most awkward greeting imaginable. No one came. I tried the doorbell. No response. I continued waiting for another minute or two and checked my watch—just after seven thirty. They could still be sleeping.

I walked to the edge of the house and turned at the garage. Two first floor windows sat on the side. The location of the one closest to me told me it belonged to the garage, and the other sat toward the back of the house. I walked to the first window and tried to peek inside. The thick blinds did a great job of preventing me from making anything out in the garage. I tried the next window at the back. Again, blinds blocked my view inside.

I walked back to my car to head out. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. They weren’t home, were asleep, or had seen me and didn’t want to answer. I decided to keep trying to call her throughout the day—maybe even to call Marty’s dental office to see if it was open later. That was all I could do.

I pulled up to the station a few minutes after eight o’clock. Just as the day before, the media had taken up permanent residence in front of the building. As I pulled around the station, I spotted the television crews recording from the sidewalk. I pulled in and parked. As I walked toward the door of the station, Officer Johnson greeted me.

“Morning, Lieutenant.” He opened the door to let me in.

“Johnson.” I nodded. “You take a job as the doorman here?”

He smiled. “Looks like it. We had reporters sneaking into the employee parking and trying to get interviews. Sergeant Timmons put me out here to shoo them off.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged. “Whole shift, I guess. Until I’m told otherwise.”

“Well, have fun.”

“Tons.”

I walked inside and made my way to my office. I could see the captain and Major Danes talking in the captain’s office next door. The captain saw me walking past and waved me in.

“Major. Cap.”

“Morning, Lieutenant. I hear you had a break-in. Cross?” Major Danes asked.

“Appears so.”

“You didn’t find anything missing, though?”

“No, nothing missing, but…”

“But?” Bostok asked.

“I didn’t notice it until this morning. My divorce documents had been gone through.”

“Do you think it was Cross?” the major asked.

I shrugged. “I guess there’s no way of actually knowing if it was Cross or not. It could have been one of the detectives.”

The captain appeared to be kicking something around in his head. “Call your ex-wife,” he said.

“Tried. No answer. I even tried stopping there, but they could’ve been asleep or out of town for all I know. I haven’t talked to my ex-wife in almost a year.”

“Did anything look off when you went to the house?” the captain asked.

“Not that I saw.”

“How hard did you look?” Major Danes asked.

“Not that hard, I guess. I rang the doorbell, knocked, and took a quick look into a couple windows. I left within a few minutes.”

“Any signs of a forced entry?”

“If there had been on the front door, I think I would have noticed it. I never went around back.”

The major set his jaw. “Go back over there and have a better look around. Take an extra officer from patrol with you.”

His words came across more like an order than a suggestion. I nodded.

“Okay. Kane, before you head out,” the captain cleared his throat, “I called and enlisted the help of the Bureau this morning. They are going to send us over two agents later this afternoon. In the meantime, they have put alerts out on Bob Cross’s credit cards and bank account. If he accesses either, we’ll have his location. I want you to have a meeting with the agents when they arrive.”

“That’s fine. Anything else?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

“Any word on how Donner is doing?” I asked.

“They kept him overnight and sent him home this morning. He’s fine.”

“Good.”

Roaches scattered across the worn carpet when he flipped on the lamp. A coughing attack had woken him from his sleep. His hand was covered in blood from his lungs. He wiped it on the edge of the chair he sat on. Samantha lay bound to the bed. She wore the familiar green lingerie. Bob looked back at the digital clock that sat on the nightstand—8:16 a.m. He’d woken up a few times in the last hour from Samantha making noise. She was coming around. He needed to give her another dose of the tranquilizer. In the middle of the night, a couple in a drugged stupor had rented the next room. He didn’t want Samantha coming to enough to realize the situation she was in and scream. He went to her side.

Her eyes rolled around in her head before coming straight and focusing. She fumbled her words. “Where am I?”

“You’re in a motel room.”

“Why?”

“Because this is where we’ll have to work.”

“Wha… Who are you?”

“I’m Bob Cross. The press has been calling me the Psycho Surgeon, though.”

She squinted and shook her head. “What?”

“Psycho Surgeon.”

“Where am I?”

“I just told you. You’re in a motel room.”