Twisted Hunger (5 page)

As he padded to the bathroom, he saw the cause of the nightmare—yesterday’s newspaper. Because it was his habit to read it through every day before leaving for school, he had seen the short article on page four.

The owner of a high fashion men’s clothing store in Beverly Hills, California, was the victim of a gruesome murder last Friday night. The suggestion was made by the leader of a gay rights group that the murder was related to the recent increase in violence against homosexuals.

But if that was the motivation, why would the murderer have taken the man’s eyes?

All day yesterday, while trying to explain Chaucer to undergraduate students who’d rather be sleeping, Luke kept repeating the suggestion from the news article in his head, determined to accept it as a reasonable explanation.

The recurrence of the nightmare proved he had not succeeded. Instead, he awoke completely convinced that this murder was connected to the others.

Twenty-one years ago this month, because he couldn’t admit to what he was doing in East Los Angeles at that time, he had not gone to the cops about what he had seen.

He had told Terrell and Pablo, however. And when Pablo got pulled in for questioning about the liquor store break-in and shooting, he thought he could save himself by pretending that
he
was the one who had witnessed the murder in the alley twenty blocks away. He had taken Luke’s story and exaggerated it a bit too much. The police hadn’t accepted any of it.

Two days later, Pablo was found dead from a drug overdose. Since Luke had never known Pablo to do anything stronger than smoke a little weed, he and Terrell believed it was something much more sinister. They figured the psycho hooker had a friend on the inside who told her about Pablo’s story, and she murdered him, thinking he could identify her. Under the circumstances, Luke and Terrell decided to keep their opinions to themselves.

From the newspaper account of that murder, Luke had learned that there had been a similar murder-mutilation a few weeks before in Oakland. When another body was found in the same condition in San Diego the next month, one reporter dubbed the killer “The Eye Doctor”.

Each victim had been drugged, his throat slashed from one jugular vein to the other and both eyeballs removed.

There were no more such killings in California, at least as far as Luke ever heard. And yet, for the rest of his high school years, he had not been able to shake the fear that the killer whore was hiding around every corner, poising her knife to strike the moment he appeared. After the bungled robbery he had cleaned up his rebel act, even to the point of receiving scholarship offers from several highly respected colleges.

He chose the University of North Carolina, not for its academic reputation but because it was the school farthest from where his nightmares originated. By the time he earned his PhD, he liked the area enough to accept a position as Associate Professor to teach English literature at the Charlotte campus.

He gradually overcame his fear and believed he had permanently blocked out the horrifying experience. Then suddenly, seven years ago, two more mutilation killings in Atlanta topped the television news for several days, and Luke’s night terrors began anew.

He still had all the newspaper articles in an envelope on the top shelf of his closet. Hundreds of times he had tried to throw them away, but he never succeeded. The articles had become a symbol of the one challenge he had run from—his personal Moby Dick.

For a long time he had stuck to the straight and narrow, right through choosing a career. In his mind, teaching fell into the no-risk category and gave him the opportunity to feel as though he were doing something to pay back society for the misdeeds of his early teen years. The pay wasn’t the greatest, but there was always the benefit of extended vacation times.

And those were the times when he made up for the fact that he was usually bored out of his mind with taking the safe road. During those breaks, he worked extremely hard to burn off his need to live on the wild side. He tried mountain climbing, skydiving, parasailing, even bungee-jumping. If it was legal, had an element of danger and risked no one’s life but his own, he was game for it. Afterward, he was usually ready to go back to being Mr. Madigan, a feet-on-the-ground, head-in-the-books English teacher.

He had made reservations to go white-water rafting down the Colorado River this summer, but now he doubted that even that crazy ride would erase the memory of the whore’s face or block out the sound of the voice in his head that kept calling him a coward.

Luke splashed cold water on his face in an attempt to wash away leftover images from the nightmare. The dark blue eyes that stared back at him from the bathroom mirror were still glazed with a combination of sleepiness and fear. Worse than that, they were framed by a face that was maturing at a much faster rate than he was ready for.

Dammit, he was only thirty-six. What were all those little lines doing around his eyes? And when had his thick head of light brown hair gotten so much darker? At least if it had stayed light, the gray hair that had suddenly sprouted by his temple wouldn’t be so noticeable.

He turned away from the stranger in the mirror and stepped into the shower. The hot water washed away the sleepiness and awakened the analytical part of his brain.

It seemed illogical that the same woman was still around, still performing an occasional mutilation after twenty-one years, and yet he couldn’t dismiss it as a coincidence either.

The main reason he had gotten control of his nightmares again after the Atlanta murders was that he had logically deduced that they could not have been connected to those in California fourteen years before. The other reason was because it was reported that the FBI had taken over the cases and, when no further information was released, he was able to convince himself that they had the situation under control. After reading the article in yesterday’s paper, he didn’t think he could fool himself into believing that again.

It was well past time for him to find a way to put an end to his nightmares once and for all. It was time to stop being a coward and do what he should have done twenty-one years ago.

After he got out of the shower, he looked up Terrell’s home phone number in Glendale, California. When he got the answering machine, he left a message then called his friend’s office.

A female voice answered. “Homicide.”

“Detective Harris, please.”

“He’s on another line. Can someone else help you?”

“No, it’s personal. Do me a favor and put a note under his nose that says, Hornets sting Lakers’ balls.”

The woman chuckled then put him on hold.

Terrell had never admitted that he’d gone into law enforcement because of a misspent youth or to try to do something about Pablo’s murder, but that was what Luke believed. Either way, Terrell hadn’t taken the coward’s way out, as he had. Terrell faced real danger every day of his career and always kept an eye open to any clue that might have a connection to what Luke had seen so long ago.

Of course, Terrell had repeatedly insisted the whore could have mistaken Pablo for Luke in the dark, but that wasn’t remotely possible with him, so he had nothing to fear from her. The genetic combination of his black father and Mexican mother had resulted in very dark skin, soft features and a broad-shouldered, six-foot three-inch frame.

“The Lakers could drown your lame-ass Hornets before they figured which end their stingers come out of. I can’t believe you’re still rooting for a team that left Charlotte years ago!”

“It’s the team, not the city.” Luke’s mood improved the instant he heard Terrell’s voice. “I thought you got off the night shift.”

“I did, but I’ve got a new case… Oh, that’s why you’re calling, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I was wondering if you thought it would do any good for me to come out there and see you for a while… if there’s anything I could do to help.”

Terrell was silent for a long time. “You’ve never wanted to talk about it before, even with me. What’s up?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like I have to do something now.”

“I’m not sure what you could do, but it would be great to see you. When does the school term end?”

“My classes are finishing up this week. I was thinking of flying out next Wednesday, after Memorial Day. Will Nita mind my camping out at your house for a week or so?”

Terrell laughed. “I doubt it… since she doesn’t live there anymore.”

Luke didn’t know whether to laugh or offer sympathy. “What happened?”

“I’m not really sure, but she had me served with divorce papers here at my desk a few weeks ago and was moved out by the time I got home.”

“Which probably wasn’t ‘til several days later if you were on a case. Jesus, Terrell. That makes three now, doesn’t it? When are you going to learn that you don’t have to marry the tree to enjoy the fruit?”

“What can I tell you, man? I’m an optimist when it comes to romance. I just haven’t found my soul mate yet.”

“And you probably won’t as long as a good murder case can make you forget about the rest of the world.”

“You sound like Nita… or was that Rosalie? Or Debra? Anyway, I’ve got another call. Let me know when you’re landing and I’ll pick you up.”

Luke snorted, knowing that Terrell would probably forget that promise as well if he got busy.

* * *

Terrell surprised him the next week by not only remembering but being on time. “I have the day off,” he explained. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t call me if something comes up. If we just weren’t so damned shorthanded all the time…”

As they headed for the baggage area, Luke asked, “Do you think you’d work this hard if you could nail Pablo’s killer?”

“Huh?” Terrell looked at him as if he’d lost one or two important marbles.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last two days. You know, why you and I do some of the things we do. If I had come forward back then, and if they had caught that crazy broad, would you have still become a cop and would I still be jumping out of airplanes and hanging off cliffs?”

Terrell smirked at him. “First you’re nagging at me like one of my wives and now you’re playing amateur shrink. Don’t go there, man. It’s a no-win situation to rethink what’s already past. Just make up your mind about what you want to do today then do it.”

“Okay. I want you to line up every hooker in L.A. and let me look each one in the eye until I find the one I saw that night.”

With a slow shake of his head, Terrell said, “It’s been a hell of a long time, man. Hookers don’t last that long to begin with, but even if she did and hadn’t aged a day, nobody remembers a face that well for twenty-one—”

“I do,” Luke said, harshly cutting him off. He softened his tone as he continued. “I see her in every alley, every dark room. I’ve seen her in my sleep so often I could tell you how many hairs are in her false eyelashes.”

“Okay, okay. I believe you. But let’s not get into it any further until we get back to my place. I have a file there for you to look at.”

The traffic was heavy all the way to Glendale, which gave the two old friends a chance to catch up on the details of their lives.

Their careers were moving along as expected. Terrell was preparing to take the examination for captain and, despite his complaints about cutbacks and administrative policies, still looked forward to working on every new case.

Luke’s attitude toward his career had likewise remained the same as it had always been—ambivalent. The fact was, nothing ever came along that he wanted to do more, although he always had a feeling that something else was waiting for him to catch up to it.

Both sets of parents were aging with varying degrees of grace, sisters and brothers were bearing the responsibility of having grandchildren, which left Terrell and Luke off the hook to a certain extent in that regard.

Terrell already had his eye on a new lady to share his limited free time with. This time, however, he was changing his pattern. This lady was a police sergeant with enough years under her gun belt to understand the demands of the job. This lady wasn’t the least bit in awe of his bravery or his size. Maria Fernandez just might be “the one”.

Luke hadn’t dated anyone on a steady basis for over two years. His opinion that playing the field was more fun than sitting in the dugout hadn’t changed with time. Of all the beautiful, intelligent or talented women he’d become acquainted with, none of them were able to sell him on a long-term commitment. He used Terrell’s track record as the perfect example to support his way of thinking.

Terrell’s two-bedroom townhouse was in a neat, middle-class neighborhood, but it was still a step down from the kind of house he’d grown up in. As the son of a professional football player, he could have done better financially if he’d followed his father’s footsteps, but he had chosen to funnel his ability to intimidate with his stature along a more useful path.

As Luke entered the front door, he stopped and looked around with some dismay. The last time he’d been here, the living room was decidedly masculine with dark wood and black leather. That same room now looked like a Caribbean hotel lobby, complete with white wicker furniture and miles of pastel, flowered fabric. “I, uh, see you’ve done some redecorating,” he said, stifling a laugh.

Terrell grunted. “Nita spent two months of my paychecks making this
her
home. Wait until you see my bedroom. Pink and lilac from wall to wall. Funny thing is, she didn’t even try to sue me for the house. I guess she thought it was more of a punishment if she made me live in it like this. The guest bedroom isn’t too bad though. By the time she got to that room, she had finished the decorating course she was taking and had moved on to a computer class. You know where it is. Take your bags upstairs and I’ll crack open a couple beers.”