Rescuing Christmas (6 page)

Jamie only stuck his tongue out at him as he moved inside the small house. He stopped and looked around until his eyes fell on the new bodyguard sitting on the sofa watching TV. The man jumped to his feet when they walked inside. Other than the TV on the wall and the sofa pushed back against the opposite wall, the only other things in the living room were boxes. He could see the tiny kitchen and noticed fast food bags all over the counter. He shook his head and said, “Chris love, this will not do.”

Chris smacked him on the back of the head and pulled him against his body and kissed him. When he finally let him go he said, “Stay safe and do exactly what they tell you to do. Do you understand me?”

Jamie laughed and said, “Yes, but don’t even try to be this bossy in bed because I will knock your sorry ass out.” With a smile on his face, Chris squeezed his ass and swatted it.

“Just stay safe Jamie.” Chris stepped back and said, “Keep him safe boys.”

The bodyguard merely nodded his head and Gerry said, “Nothing is going to happen to him here with us around.”

Chris walked out the door and shut it behind him. Jamie opened the door, stuck his head out and said, “You stay safe too jackass. Make sure you come home to me.”

Chris smiled over his shoulder and said, “I will bring myself back to you every day, no matter where you are.” He climbed into his Jeep and drove off.

Jamie closed the door and said, “Okay, let’s get some food and start talking.”

The bodyguard pulled out his phone and dialed someone. Minutes later his phone rang again and he answered it. He turned around and said, “Officer Sanchez said she can bring pizza or burgers, which do you guys want?”

Both Jamie and Gerry said, “Burgers,” at the same time. They gave him instructions on food then sat down waiting for the food to arrive.

Gerry turned to Jamie and said, “Okay, explain.”

So Jamie got comfortable and started talking.

REVELATIONS

Chris walked into the interrogation room and looked across at Tyson Haskell where he sat handcuffed to the table, a paramedic checking a bullet wound in his shoulder. Until Chris was a hundred percent sure of the safety of Jamie, this man was not leaving his station house. Marge Turner was still out there somewhere which meant that Jamie and his mother were still not safe. Chris was weary and had barely had any sleep over the last couple of weeks. Christmas was drawing closer and he had plans, but they could not be fulfilled until Marge was dead or behind bars.

“Tyson, I am Sheriff Anderson. I hear you already gave a full confession to my Deputies, but what I want to know is why you have been doing all of this. All of the men you have attacked and marked over the years. You do know this is your third and final felony strike right? This is it for you, you are never leaving prison again. And I will do everything in my power to make sure your mother never gets out of prison either; that is if we catch her alive.” Tyson tried to lunge when Chris said that but the paramedic bashed him on his wounded shoulder causing him to bellow in pain.

Chris resumed speaking, “Now. I want to know where your mother is and I want to know why you have been doing all of this.”

Tyson stared at Chris with murder in his eyes before he finally said, “I want to talk to my sister.”

Chris grinned despite himself and opened the folder he was carrying in his hands. He pulled a picture out and placed it face up in front of Tyson and said, “She tried to shoot her way out; it didn’t end so well for her. Just like it almost didn’t work out for you either. The same thing may also happen to your mother, unless you are willing to cooperate with us.”

Tyson stared down at the picture as a tear slowly made its way down his cheek and splashed across the picture of his sister’s dead body in the morgue. Tyson looked up and said, “I know I am sick. My mom told me when I was a kid that liking men made me diseased. She told me there was a way to cure it. I had to force myself on rich gay men and hurt them, mark them, then she would step in later and gain their confidences and then she would drain their money because they didn’t deserve it like we did.”

Chris was disgusted, but not shocked. People like Tyson usually had someone at their center controlling their lives and a lot of times they ended up monstrous. “What about your sister?” asked Chris. “She isn’t gay, so why did your mother involve her? Or was is just some form of control she desired?”

Tyson shook his head and said, “My sister is a sociopath. She lures men in who are struggling with their sexual identity and then convinces them they are straight. When they are nice and supple after a few months, she would bring them to me and I would prove to them how wrong it is to be gay. I would drug them, rape them and then I would mark them. At first I would do it with markers, but after I learned how to tattoo in prison I did it more permanently. But it never worked for me because I fell in love there in the end. We have been on this last scheme longer than my mother wanted to be because I love Jamie and I did everything I could to slow her plans down.”

Chris shook his head and said, “What can you tell me about where she might be and how we can bring her in safely?”

Tyson said, “The only way you will bring her in safely is if you manage to sneak up on her and get her. Other than that, she will go out using suicide by cop and she will likely do it while laughing maniacally the entire time. She won’t make things easy. My father was an Army Ranger and taught her a lot of stuff. You better be on you’re A-Game otherwise, you’re all screwed.

“I have something I need to show you. But you will need the medic here to help me show you,” said Tyson.

Chris nodded and motioned at the two-way mirror and moments later two State Police officers walked into the room. They flanked Tyson and he stood with their help.

“I need to remove my clothes. Just trust me,” said Tyson.

Everyone looked at one another before Chris looked at the mirror and cocked his head to the side, raising his eyebrows in questioning.

Thirty seconds later Darren the District Attorney walked into the room and said, “I will allow this as long as we are recording it.”

Chris turned to the officers and they slipped on latex gloves and together they worked with the medic to start removing Tyson’s clothes gently to avoid causing further injury to his shoulder. As the clothes were removed, there were gasps around the room. Tyson was covered from the tops of his chest to the bottoms of his feet in scars. At first Chris thought they were just self-mutilation scars but as he got a closer look, he realized they were names cut into his flesh and in many places he would never be able to reach. And right over the center of his chest was a small space with the name Jamie McCormick tattooed there, just waiting to be cut into.

Chris hissed as he jerked upright and said, “Are these all victims of yours?”

Tyson turned dead eyes on Chris and said, “No. They were all at one point tattoos as my mother would tattoo a new name on my flesh, which she started doing when I was eleven years old. When the man was dead or had been sufficiently broken down and ruined, she would then cut the tattoo into my flesh using a scalpel. She did it daily for weeks in order to make sure it stuck as a nasty scar. Yes, I have been helping her all this time, but I never had a choice, just my sister had a choice and she lived for this stuff.”

Tyson sat back down in his chair and put his head on the table. After a moment his shoulders and head started shaking as if he were sobbing but then he stopped.

They all waited for him to lift his head off the table but then the medic noticed he wasn’t breathing and pulled him up off the table and everyone gasped as they saw foam dribbling from his mouth. He had bitten down on a cyanide capsule lodged most likely in a fake tooth.

Chris cursed and stepped out of the room with Darren.

Darren said, “He gave us nothing to work with. We have no way of finding his mother still and she is gunning for Jamie hard.”

“I know this Darren, trust me I know.” Chris sighed and rubbed his weary eyes. He tilted his head back and thought for a moment then his head snapped up. “I never hired a new bodyguard for Jamie and neither did any member of the State Police. There was one there when we got to my house and dropped him and Officer Gerry off.”

Chris ran for the door as Darren alerted the station. Within moments every officer was headed straight for Chris’s house.

Chris roared into his driveway and saw the house on fire, smoke billowing everywhere. Firemen were racing up to the house at the same time and began putting out the flames. It wasn’t until that moment that Chris realized several State Police Officers were trying to hold him back from running inside.

Chris heard a groan off to the side and turned his head. Tied up and gagged under a bush off to the side of the house, was Gerry. Chris and several other officers ran over to help him. Chris held his head and put his hand over a profusely bleeding gash on the back of his head where he had been struck by something heavy.

As soon as they removed the gag, Gerry started apologizing but Chris was having none of it.

“Just tell me what you know,” said Chris.

“I don’t know shit,” said Gerry. “Jamie and I were sitting on the couch eating burgers and Jamie snapped his head up suddenly staring behind me in fear and the next thing I know you are all out here pulling me out of the bushes and the house is on fire.”

RESCUE

Jamie opened his eyes and closed them again immediately as a spasm of pain washed through his head. Giving it a minute he decided to attempt to open his eyes again, but slowly this time. As he opened them he took a look at his surroundings and realized he was in the basement of his bar. Marge was standing against the far wall of the basement staring at him as she virtually inhaled two cigarettes at once, one in her right hand and another dangling from her lips, a half empty bottle of tequila in her left hand.

Then Jamie realized she wasn’t staring at him, but had zoned out. He tried to close his eyes again to avoid detection just in case she focused back in on reality but his body betrayed him causing him to cough. He saw Marge drop the bottle and spit the cigarette in her lips onto the ground before crushing it underfoot as she walked toward him, lifting the other cigarette up to her mouth and taking a drag.

As she stood over him staring down at him she sneered. Jamie couldn’t even be bothered to actually fear her. Something about her was just so sad and lost.

Marge spit down on him, but most of it landed on his shoulder and she said, “My daughter is dead because she tried to kill your mother. My daughter deserved to live, your mother does not. I will kill her very slowly after I am done with you. My son is in police custody and has likely died as I taught him to, so this makes it just me in the world, which is good. I will have your fortunes to myself now and won’t have to share.”

She moved away and Jamie lashed out with his bound legs and caught her feet in his and as she became entangled in them she flew forward and smashed her head into the floor, rupturing it like an egg, blood and brain matter spraying across the floor. Unfortunately, her cigarette flew from her outstretched hand and landed in the spreading pool of tequila and after a second it ignited and slowly spread toward the boxes laid out against the side of the stairs leading down into the basement.

Jamie tried to move but found he couldn’t stand up and started to panic when he realized he was actually tied tightly, not just wrists bound together, but he was tied to a pipe against the far wall.

Once the fire met the boxes they started slowly going up in flames. Not long after that the stairway caught fire as well and spread the flames around the walls heading slowly toward him on one side and the furnace on the other side.

***

“Mom, I need you to think and think really hard. Where would Jamie keep anything important that would lead a psycho to the information she needs to steal all of his money and all of yours?” Chris was desperate and time was probably running out for his Jamie and all he could think of was getting him home safe and sound and showing him just how much he really loved him.

Mrs. McCormick said, “His bar. He keeps everything there in the safe but no one knows where the safe is, not even Marge or myself. Only Jamie knows where it is.”

Chris was on the move even as he was hanging up the phone, spinning the wheel in his hands, turning back to head downtown where the bar was located. The other officers all spun around as well as they struggled to race after him. As soon as he turned on the street where the bar was, Chris saw flames and smoke curling up from a street vent next to the bar. He called the fire department and slammed on his breaks, spinning out as he used the back of his Jeep to ram through the front doors.

Out and running with dozens of State Police on his heels, they ran around looking for signs of a fire, then realized there was none. It was then he smelled smoke. After following his nose he discovered a small door at the back of a maintenance closet. He kicked it in and smoke billowed out, covering him forcing him to cough. He grabbed a bandana out of his back pocket and tied it around his face and stormed down the stairs. The fire had not yet spread very far, but it would be enough to kill anyone trapped down there if they didn’t get it put out soon. One of the officers behind him came hurtling past him wielding a fire extinguisher in an attempt to put out the flames.