“Shut up!” he snapped. “I’m almost there.”
She’d told Mason that Andy Smith had some crystal meth in his house. She wasn’t positive, but she’d been so angry when Andy turned her away empty-handed that she’d complained about him to Mason the next day—and that was when they’d hatched this plan. She couldn’t recant, but she wouldn’t need to. She and Mason would take other things if they didn’t find the drugs they wanted. Once they sold that stuff, they could buy their own meth. As far as she was concerned, Andy deserved what they were doing to him.
“Here we go.” Mason put his shoulder to the door as he turned the handle.
They both rushed inside. He went straight for Andy’s big-screen TV, since that was the most obvious item of value, while she hurried down the hall to the bedroom and dug through the dresser drawers and an open suitcase she found on one side of the bed.
She could hear Mason coming toward her even before he appeared in the doorway. “Anything?”
“No. Nothing.”
He propped his meaty fists on his hips. He had dark hair, almost black eyes and a pockmarked face. Bambi thought he tried to compensate for that in the weight room. She suspected he also took steroids, because he was almost too muscle-bound. “Where could he keep his shit? Did you check that suitcase?”
“Of course.”
“Looks like he’s going somewhere,” he mused.
“Good riddance. That’s all I can say.”
“He’d take his dope.”
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing in there. What he gave me when I was here before he got out of his top drawer, but I’ve already looked there, too.”
“Damn it.” Mason went into the kitchen, where, from the sound of it, he was slamming cupboards and emptying out drawers, and she moved on to Andy’s bathroom.
There was nothing particularly interesting in the medicine cabinet—just a box of rubbers, nail clippers, Q-tips and antiseptic. Under the sink he had the usual—plus a box of hair bleach, which was odd given that Andy had dark hair.
“Damn it! I’m not finding anything!” Mason yelled out to her.
“You got his TV. That’s something!” she called back.
“I’m taking his laptop, too.”
“Where’d you find that?”
“Right here on the kitchen table.”
She didn’t care what he took. She grabbed the shampoo out of the shower and squeezed it all over Andy’s bed, carpet and the clothes she’d dumped out of his drawers. “Take that, you pompous asshole.”
Mason stood in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
She tossed the bottle on the bed. “Having a little fun.”
“Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing else worth staying for.”
She handed him a watch and a ring she’d taken from the counter in the bathroom. “There’s this.”
“I don’t want this shit. It’s too easy to identify.” He gave it back, so she kept it herself. She wouldn’t pawn it. The cops would be able to trace it that way. She’d give it to her younger brother.
“Come on,” Mason said, an impatient edge to his tone.
As she followed him to the living room, she noticed a door that hadn’t been opened. “Where does this go?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t even see it until now.”
She turned the knob only to find it locked. “This could be where he keeps his meth.”
“In a linen closet?”
“Why not? Besides, maybe it’s not a closet. Can you open it?”
Mason peered out the front windows.
“Anyone coming?”
“No.”
“So? Should we see what’s in here or not?”
“We’ve come this far.…” He pulled the tools he’d used to pick the lock on the back door from his coat pocket.
Bambi could feel her heartbeat vibrating through her whole body. She wanted to flee before they could get caught, but she was intrigued by what might be behind this door. “I don’t think it’s a closet. I think it’s a basement or something.”
“Probably. But why the lock?”
“Maybe he cooks his own meth.”
It took Mason only a few moments to get the door open. His hands weren’t shaking quite as badly as when they’d been standing outside in the cold and could easily have been spotted by a neighbor.
“You’re amazing!” she exclaimed. “And I was right. This is a basement.”
She hurried down. Mason turned on the light before she could descend into utter darkness and quickly followed.
Instead of the damp, musty odor one might expect, she smelled fresh-cut wood. Someone had been building down here. She could see only a cement floor until she went low enough, but then a room came into view. That wasn’t so unusual for a basement, she supposed, but everything else she saw certainly was.
She came to an abrupt stop. “Holy shit! What is this?”
Mason was a step behind her. Because he was taller, it took longer for him to be able to see the room, but he ducked down when she spoke—and froze, too. “It looks like a fucking torture chamber!”
“It is a torture chamber. What else could it be?” Bambi gazed in shock at the whips on the wall, the chains coming out of the floor, the bondage bed, the many different kinds of restraints—and the knives. There were all kinds of implements designed to inflict pain and suffering. “I knew he was into S and M, but this is way over-the-top.”
“He didn’t bring you down here, did he?”
“Of course not. I would’ve known about it then, wouldn’t I? What’s this?” She picked up a metal hook-like object dangling from a chain.
“It’s a pussy hook,” he said. “A friend of mine showed me one once.” He started to retrace his steps. “I’m getting out before he comes back and locks us in.”
“Wait! What’s this?”
As she crossed over to what she’d found, he turned. “What’s what?”
“It’s a shrine or something.”
Although he hesitated, he eventually approached the far corner area where she was standing and gaping at the pictures and newspaper articles affixed to the wall.
“There have to be fifty photographs here,” he said, marveling at the display.
Some candles and flowers, even jewelry, were stacked on a small stand beneath the photos, but it was the photos that drew Bambi’s attention. “They’re all of the same woman.”
Mason smoothed out a newspaper article that still had the headline attached. “Evelyn Talbot.”
“Dr. Evelyn Talbot,” she corrected, reading from a different newspaper clipping. “She’s the psychiatrist who started the prison where Andy works.”
“Hanover House. In Hilltop.”
“Yeah, the one with all the psychopaths and serial killers.”
“That gives me chills.” He took her arm, but she pulled away so she could smooth out the other clippings that were beginning to curl at the edges. Someone—presumably Andy—had circled certain phrases. “Renowned psychiatrist,” “determined to unlock the secrets of the psychopathic mind,” “these men feel no conscience, no need to restrain their baser desires.” He’d also scribbled out one particular name wherever it appeared—Sergeant Benjamin Murphy.
Some articles hadn’t come from a regular newspaper. They’d been taken from the Internet. A lot of the pictures had, too. There was even a Wikipedia entry giving information on Evelyn Talbot, where she was born, what she’d experienced and the path of her career. “Why would Andy have collected all of these?” she asked. “And why would he care enough to display them—as if … as if she’s all he can think about?”
“You said he works at the prison, so he knows her,” Mason responded. “He’s obviously obsessed with her.”
“Look. Here’s a clipping about Kat’s body being found.”
Mason hadn’t worked with Kat. He didn’t know her like Bambi did, but he knew of her, since the police had questioned all the bartenders, too. “Why would he keep that?”
“Maybe he’s the one who killed her—”
“That’s it.” He started to drag her away. “We’re out of here.”
“Oh my God! Did I sleep with a murderer? Kat’s murderer?” she cried, sickened by the thought that the hands that had touched her had also taken a life.
“I don’t care.”