The Killing Kind

I parked the car and took the bag of groceries from the front seat. I was still rearranging my thoughts, shifting possibilities, as I reached the kitchen door. I pushed it open and something white lifted from the floor and tumbled in the air, carried upward by the draft.

It was a sugar wrapper.

Rachel was standing at the entrance to the hallway, Pudd at her shoulder pushing her into the kitchen. She was gagged with a scarf, and her arms were secured at her back.

Behind her, Pudd froze.

I dropped the bag and reached for my gun. Simultaneously, Rachel twisted in Pudd's grip and slammed her head back into his face, co

I came to in slow, arduous steps, as if I were struggling through deep red water. I was vaguely conscious of Rachel sitting on a kitchen chair by the table, still wearing her white cotton robe. Her teeth were visible where the scarf had been pulled tightly into her open mouth, and her hands were tied behind her back. There was bruising to her cheek and left eye, and blood on her forehead. Some of it had run down to stain the gag. She looked at me wide-eyed and her eyes flicked frantically to my right, but when I tried to move my head I was struck again and everything went black.

I drifted in and out like that for a while. My arms had been tied separately, each wrist bound to one of the struts of the chair by what felt like cable ties. They bit into my skin when I tried to move. My head ached badly, and there was blood in my eyes. Through the mists I heard a voice say:

“So this is the man.”

It was an old man's voice, faded and scratched like a recording heard through an old radio. I tried to lift my head and saw something move in the shadows in the hallway of the house: a slightly hunched figure, wrapped in black. Another, taller shape moved beside it, and I thought that it might be a woman.

“I think that perhaps you should leave now,” said a male voice. I recognized the careful, composed rhythms of Mr. Pudd's speech.

“I would prefer to stay,” came the reply as the voice drew closer to me. “You know how I like to watch you work.”

I felt fingers on my chin as the old man spoke, and smelled salt water and leather. The stench of internal decay was on his breath. I made an effort to open my eyes fully but the room was spi

“No,” said Pudd. “It was unwise of you to come at all, on this of all days. You must leave.”

I heard a weary exhalation of air. “He sees them, you know,” said the old voice. “I can feel it from him. He is an unusual man, a tormented man.”

“I will put him out of his misery.”

“And ours,” said the voice. “He has strong bones. Don't damage-his fingers or his arms. I want them.”

“And the woman?”

“Do what you have to do, but a promise to spare her might encourage her lover to be more cooperative.”

“But if she dies…?”

“She has beautiful skin. I can use it.”

“How much of it?” asked Pudd.

There was a pause.

“All of it,” said the old man.

I heard footsteps on the kitchen floor beside me. The red film over my eyes was fading now as I blinked away the blood. I saw the strange, nameless woman with the scarred neck staring down at me with narrow, hateful eyes. She touched my cheek with her fingers, and I shuddered.

“Leave now,” said Pudd. She stayed beside me for another moment or two, then moved away almost regretfully. I saw her blend into the shadows, and then two figures moved through the half-open front door and into the yard. I tried to keep them in sight until a slap to my cheek brought me back and someone else moved into my line of vision, a woman dressed in a blue sweater and pants, her hair loose on her shoulders.

“Ms. Torrance,” I said, my mouth dry. “I hope you got a reference from Paragon before he died.”

She hit me on the back of my head. It wasn't a hard slap. It didn't have to be. She caught me right on the spot where the earlier blows had landed. The pain was almost visible to me, like lightning flashes in the night sky, and I grew nauseous with pain. I let my head hang down, my chin on my chest, and tried to keep myself from retching. From the front of the house came the sound of a car pulling away, and then there was movement ahead of me and a pair of brown shoes appeared at the kitchen door. I followed the shoes up to the cuffs of the brown pants, then the slightly stretched waistband, the brown check jacket, and finally, the dark, hooded eyes of Mr. Pudd.

He looked considerably worse than when we had last met. The remains of his right ear were covered in gauze, and his nose had swollen where Rachel's head had impacted upon it. There were still traces of blood around his nostrils.

“Welcome back, sir,” he said, smiling. “Welcome indeed.”

He gestured to Rachel with one gloved hand. “We had to make our own entertainment while you were gone, but I don't believe there was much that your whore could tell us. On the other hand, Mr. Parker, I believe you may know considerably more.”

He stepped forward so that he stood over Rachel. With one movement, he tore the sleeve of her robe, exposing the whiteness of her arm, speckled here and there with small brown freckles. Ms. Torrance, I noticed, now stood in front of me and slightly to my right, her own Beretta leveled on me while my Smith amp; Wesson lay in its holster on the table. The remains of my cell phone were scattered across the floor and I saw that the wire to the telephone in the kitchen had been pulled out.

“As you know, Mr. Parker, we are looking for something,” began Pudd, “something that was taken from us by Ms. Peltier. That item is still missing. So too, we now believe, is a passenger who may have been in the car with the late Ms. Peltier shortly before she died. We think that individual may have the item we are looking for. I would like you to confirm who that person is so that we can retrieve it. I would also like you to tell us all that passed between you and the late Mr. Al Z, everything of which you and Mr. Mercier spoke two nights ago, and all that you know of the man who killed Mr. Paragon.”

I didn't reply. Pudd remained silent for about thirty seconds, then sighed. “I know that you are a very stubborn man. I think you might even be willing to die rather than give me what I want. It's very laudable, I admit, to give up one's life to save another. It is, in a sense, what brings us to this point. After all, we are all the fruit of one man's sacrifice, are we not? And you will die, Mr. Parker, regardless of what you tell me. Your life is about to end.”

He leaned over Rachel's shoulder and grasped her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at me. “But are you willing to sacrifice the life of another to protect Grace Peltier's friend, or to fuel your strange crusade? That is the real test: how many lives is this person worth? Have you even met the individual in question? Can someone whom you do not know be worth more to you than the life of this woman? Do you have the right to give up Ms. Wolfe here to safeguard your own principles?”