Crispy Critters (A Crime Thriller) Read online

  :

  Red had pulled Leo's backpack out of the wagon, which she had on the ground and was rifling through in the harsh illumination from the station wagon's headlights. She pulled out a bundle of rope and a plastic baggie full of pills.

  "Ah. Here we go. Now we're ready to party." She threw the rope near the pile of garbage bags and opened the baggie. She walked up to Cleary, who was seated against the side of the car, Davy standing next to him - his gun aimed at Cleary's face.

  "Your turn, Mr. Firefighter. How many do ya' think?” She held out her pudgy hand and showed him the blue pills. They looked huge to Cleary. Had Leo bought some kind of super-roofies?

  Cleary didn't answer. There was no right number. Once he swallowed any amount of those pills, he was for all intents and purposes dead. With both him and Leo paralyzed, they didn't really have a hope. So what was the point of co-operating?

  "Do I have to force them down your gullet like a sick puppy?"

  "Just shoot me, already,” said Cleary. “I'm not taking those pills."

  "But I have a funny feeling you will. Davy, give me that gun. Now go and kick the living shit out his sleepy friend over there."

  Cleary hung his head. Leo was probably dead anyway. Would it be better to go by concussion or burnt alive? He knew the answer, but he couldn’t stand to watch his friend being beaten. He would gladly trade his life for Leo’s, but he didn’t think that was in the cards. Now was the time to make one last-ditch effort to save themselves before it was too late.

  Cleary watched Davy shuffle over to Leo, who was lying stretched out, his arms by his side. Red turned at that minute, anxious to witness the first kick, licking her lips. Cleary leapt up at the woman, actually surprised at the speed he was capable of in the heavy suit, and knocked the gun out of her hand. She screamed, but before he could reach the Colt, lying at the base of a cholla cactus, she toppled down on top of him, all three hundred plus pounds, and started beating his head with her meaty fists.

  By this time, Davy had run up and snatched up the revolver. Red gave Cleary one final angry slap across the head, then struggled up from the ground, her sweaty arms coated in sand. She smiled down at Cleary, her cheeks as red as apples.

  "We're going to have fun with you, boy. I guarantee it." She now had the shotgun in her arms again. She grabbed the baggie of roofies on the ground and bent down, her knee on Cleary's chest. "Eat these!"

  Cleary shook his head. Red raised the shotgun and brought it down hard on Cleary's nose. He groaned and reached up to feel his face, forgetting he still had on his firefighter’s gloves. Red then pried his mouth open with the barrel of the shotgun and dropped two blue pills into the back of his throat.

  "Swallow or I'll mash your nose into a pulp." She took both of her puffy hands and held them over his mouth and nose. Cleary was wriggling, but he couldn't take his eyes off the barrel of the revolver Davy had pressed into this forehead. Unable to breathe through his nose, Cleary finally succumbed and swallowed the dry little pills, which felt bitter at the back of his throat. Maybe the last thing he would ever taste, he thought.

  Red got up and dusted off her dress, which was billowing in the breeze. Cleary laid back, trying to quell his panic, almost wishing this was all over. Then he heard the first whoosh of ignition as Davy lit the pile of garbage bags, flames already several feet high and lighting up the area. Red moved over and grabbed Leo's feet, turned his body easily and threw his legs onto the fire.

  "Feel that, Mr. Firefighter? Feel the heat? Was that how those guys you burnt felt?"

  Both Red and Davy had turned, their eyes on the flames like children watching their first fireworks display. Cleary rolled over. He knew he didn't have much time. He thought "What the fuck!" What have I got to lose?"

  Cleary pushed himself up on his fat rubber mitts; his fire suit feeling like it weighed a hundred pounds. He struggled up on one knee. Red was still entranced by the big yellow flames licking up at the night sky. She had sidled up next to little Davy, so close that Cleary wouldn't have been surprised if he saw them take each other’s hands.

  He stepped up behind Red and raised his arms. She never saw his long shadow - so mesmerized was she by the flames and the frozen look of fear on Leo's face.

  Cleary fell on them then, taking both in his arms, diving into the fire like a bizarre kind of circus performer. Red let out a yelp, but Davy went silently into the flames, trying to turn to protect his face. Cleary felt Red collapse beneath him face-first into the gasoline-charged pyre and he pulled Davy in tight with his right arm, so he couldn’t roll away.

  The first thing that struck Cleary wasn't the heat or the rising gases in his nose, but Red's wild hair, igniting like a Roman Candle. She had obviously put on hair spray before leaving the house - an excellent accelerant. This completely distracted Red, who began clawing at her head instead of kicking herself free.

  Cleary looked over and saw Davy's eyes, which were glowing red against the black sky. Then his head went right into the flames, between two garbage bags that were bursting into new life as their contents spilled out and joined the growing fire.

  Red was trying to roll now, but Cleary could tell she was disoriented and probably couldn’t see, her eyelids likely gone, and her pupils popping like fresh grapes on a barbecue.

  Cleary kept his head down behind the bulky body of the woman, the rest of his torso and arms protected by the fire gear. He could feel the heat and some of the fire-resistant rubber was starting to separate and bubble, but for another minute or two, he would be protected from the worst of the flames.

  Davy was the first to stop moving. Swallowing and breathing the hot gases rising off the flames would instantly seer and destroy lung tissue, so he essentially was no longer able to process the oxygen that his brain needed to survive.

  Red had not yet surrendered, but she was close to death. Her skin on her sides and arms was charred and blistered in areas; the blackened surface and underlying fat split open like the casing on a burnt sausage. The only things still moving were her legs.

  Cleary pushed away from the fire, to test her condition, and she barely moved. He lifted himself off of the woman, who was now mostly naked except for her hiking boots, and grabbed Leo's arm and pulled him from the fire.

  :

  Bathgate had called in their location and reported David Torrance and the unknown woman as missing. She didn't know what else to do.

  Then their radio crackled to life. Dispatch had received a call. Someone was reporting a fire in the desert, up in the canyon next to Highway #10, which was pretty suspicious at two in the morning on a weeknight. Bathgate got directions. On the way up the highway west of Palm Springs, Scott had his eyes on the hills to the north. He couldn't see anything yet.

  "Think this is just a coincidence?" asked Scott.

  "I think they just moved the party," said Bathgate. Following the directions, she turned off the highway and headed north up a road that was barely a one-lane path through the scrub and cacti. They were climbing now, into the foothills of the ridge, into Pinkham Canyon. Then the road ended and Scott could see a dull glow off to the east - a fire just about ready to die out.

  They turned into the desert and drove toward the glow, dodging cacti as they went, just as the wind started to pick-up. Eventually, Bathgate slowed and squinted into the night.

  The fire was completely gone now, not even embers remaining. A fire without wood, she thought, staring into the raw night beyond their headlights. How strange!

  Lying on the ground up ahead was a shape that at first defied recognition. Bathgate was reminded of a sea creature - a small beached whale or a baby hippo, the moonlight reflecting off the rounded flesh. When they stopped, Scott stepped out of the car first, his gun out of his holster, shielding his eyes from the dust whipping around him.

  "It's a woman," he yelled, standing close to the body. "Maybe Torrance's girlfriend. She’s the right size. But she's naked. And burnt bad."

  Bathgate got out of t
he sedan, her stomach roiling. The bizarre scene in front of her had made the small hairs on her arms stand at attention.

  "And I’m guessing that's Torrance. Dead too. They're lying side by side, like they were laid out on purpose.”

  "What do you think?" asked Scott.

  "I don’t know what to think. It looks like a ritualized killing. But it still involves fire."

  "Seems like a lot of trouble to go to. Why wouldn’t Cleary just stick with the original plan and leave them in the house?"

  The storm was getting worse. Bathgate looked over at what was left of tire tracks in the desert floor. Within minutes, they would be gone. And they didn't look like truck tracks either, which raised another question.

  What was left of the fire, blackened pieces of paper and cardboard, were also being swept away. All they really had were two bodies, one with the clothing burnt off and her hair gone, the other with a face so badly charred they would probably have to use dental records to make an official ID

  Bathgate turned to her partner, "Call it in. I'm going to catch some sleep in the car. Wake me when you see the ambulance. There’s nothing I can do until they get here."

  :

  At seven AM the next morning, a dark-blue Crown Vic rolled up in front of Cleary's little two-story. The ex- firefighter's truck was parked on the street, the hood still up, and one tire flat.

  Bathgate knocked on the front door, and Cleary answered, still in his pajamas, two bandages across his nose. He led her in. This time she did take the coffee offered.

  "Truck still acting up?” said Bathgate.

  "Yeah, I think it's ready for the scrap heap. Kind of like me," laughed Cleary. “Where’s your partner?” he asked.

  “He’s in court,” she said.“What happened to your nose?”

  "I was jacking up the back of the truck to change the tire. The jack slipped, the lever kicked back, and I almost broke my nose. Hurt like hell."

  "So you don't know anything about the death of David Torrance last night?"

  They were back in the small kitchen, a very sad looking deck of worn cards sitting in the center of the table. "This another one of those perverts you're trying to protect?" asked Cleary. Bathgate lost her relaxed demeanor momentarily. "A killer is a killer, Cleary. Whoever's doing this is no hero."

  "I don't get it,” said the retired firefighter. “We keep meeting, but you never arrest me. Am I a suspect or do you just like the conversation?"

  Bathgate tapped her fingers on the tabletop for a few seconds. Cleary noticed she had chewed one nail down to the nub. A worrier, he guessed, wondering what worried her the most. "The storm last night destroyed all the evidence. But you know that. You're a lucky bastard," said Bathgate.

  "I don't feel that lucky," said Cleary. Bathgate stared at him, looking like she wanted to say something more.

  “I’m a data geek,” she said, as if that would mean something to him. He lifted his eyebrows. “The arsons I have been working on were never classified as homicides.”

  “I thought as much,” said Cleary.

  “I saw a correlation between a number of house fires and their occupants. All registered pedophiles. There wasn’t even a murder file created, probably would never be.”

  Cleary got up and poured more coffee for himself. He couldn’t help but look at the second drawer on the right. Leo’s Colt 45 was lying in there, loaded. He had made a point of picking that up before he left the scene. Bathgate seemed like a nice woman, so he wasn’t thinking about hurting her. Just him, if necessary. He wasn’t going to prison at age 72. No way.

  "But then your luck ran out, Cleary," she said. They locked eyes for a minute, neither saying anything. "Now I have two mysterious deaths in the desert and a commander who wants answers. And the media won’t stop calling.”

  Cleary was sitting now, but he still had his eyes on the drawer with the gun. He was wondering how long it would take for a body full of wear and tear, like his, to get to the counter and get the safety off.

  “But you have no evidence,” he said, casually, wondering where the calmness in his voice came from.

  Bathgate pulled a plastic baggy out of her jacket pocket and slid it across the table to Cleary. "I guess you forgot this behind when you high-tailed it out of the desert last night." Cleary looked at the pills in the dirty plastic container blankly. "Probably when you saw our headlights coming."

  Cleary noted that the evidence wasn’t re-bagged. That meant her fingerprints were on it, along with Leo’s. He didn’t understand. Did she want him to pick it up? Was this a trick?

  “I don’t know what this is,” he said.

  Bathgate gave him one of those withering cop looks that said “Why are you fucking with me?”

  “The woman who died in the desert? Her name was Charity Floyd. She was worse than Torrance. Sexual assault. Attempted murder. Fraud. A list of priors longer than a Stephen King novel. A very nasty character. I know, I arrested her once.”

  “So?”

  “So, I think it’s a good time for you to retire from the revenge business. Cause if you keep it up, I will catch you. Prison is a lousy way to spend your retirement years."

  Cleary thought about his postage-stamp yard and the patches of weeds. He wasn’t sure if he could take her advice, but he could offer her some hope. "I was thinking of taking up gardening."

  “Good idea,” she said.

  Cleary was still trying to find something in her eyes that would give him a clue as to why she had given him the only evidence she had. He couldn’t find anything. Cops were good at that. But he knew something she didn’t. His fingerprints weren’t on the bag.

  Bathgate stood up then and thanked him for the coffee. At the front door, she stopped and turned to him. "Did someone in your family have a run-in with one of these pedophiles?” she asked.

  Cleary colored slightly, his voice rough. “A grandson.”

  Bathgate nodded, the briefest expression of pain flashing across her face. Then she opened the door.

  “A month ago, a stranger tried to get my daughter into his van,” she said. “Luckily, she put up a fight and ran away.”

  Cleary swallowed, thinking how close we come every day to disaster.

  “By the way, the small blue pills in the baggie are roofies, but you probably know that,” Bathgate said. "And just so you know, possession is illegal if you don’t have a prescription. The bigger blue pills are more interesting - I have no idea why they are mixed in with the others. They’re generic Viagra."

  Cleary couldn’t help but show surprise, but before he could open his mouth, Bathgate walked down the path, climbed into her car and drove away.

  Cleary went back to the kitchen and stared at the baggy, then shook his head in amazement. Leo was upstairs in the second bedroom recovering from the second-degree burns to his ankles and calves and sleeping off the roofies. Somehow he had mixed up the roofies with his own pills.

  Last night, Cleary had hauled Leo into the station wagon and driven away from the two bodies in a hurry, wondering when he would start to lose control of his body and possibly go flying off into a ravine or ditch somewhere, likely killing them both. Or be eaten alive by coyotes while he watched helplessly, unable to move a muscle. But nothing had happened.

  Well, he didn’t mean that exactly. Something had happened. Something he hadn’t felt for a very long time - and was still feeling - the results of a double dose of Viagra that had been force-fed to him the night before.

  Cleary took the bag of pills and fed it into the garburator. “I guess there’s hope for me yet,” Cleary said, to no one in particular, and then went upstairs to check on his friend.

  THE END

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  AN EXCERPT FROM THE #1 AMAZON NOVEL BUZZWORM BY THEO CAGE

  Police officers call Washington DC
‘the District’. But we still say it like we’re spitting out a mouthful of beer that’s gone punky. It’s not a feel-good word for politicians. Or for homicide detectives, of which I am the latter.

  Washington used to be the murder capital of the free world. Over four hundred homicides a year. We’ve gotten better, but only marginally. I think we are now number three or four. Some consolation.

  Angela, my ex, left me in 2001, the worst year for the city. And mine too. I can’t blame her though. Bullets were as common as houseflies and generous overtime easily paid the alimony payments. I think I ate dinner with her that last year maybe a dozen times. Even that may be an exaggeration. You’d have to ask my daughter Kyla. She was the only one counting.

  Something happens to cops when they can no longer cope with the workload. The pressure of facing a fresh new homicide case every single day starts to eat into you, to hollow you out. You feel like a spent shell.

  The only reason I drag myself to the job everyday is the hope that a case, any case, not even necessarily my case, will be solved. I’m not talking justice here. Just a solved friggin’ case. Because once you feel overwhelmed, it’s not simply a matter of changing careers.

  The victims live in your head forever. So you take the files home with you on weekends, to bed with you at night, into your nightmares. They don’t disappear if you decide to take that cushy job as Security Director for Rothmans over the line in Reston, Virginia. Too much time on your hands just makes the hollowness ring in your ears - like a stomach-churning background noise that never seems to go away.

  The caseload is better now though. But a lot of good detectives ended up leaving for low-stress jobs in the burbs. But I can’t go there. Angela lives out in Arlington with her new husband and I don’t know what I would do if I bumped into him at the Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

  Something I’d probably regret, but nothing new there.