“So you remember him?” I ask through gritted teeth. “His name is Floyd.”
“I do remember him,” she agrees with a nod. “He-he was the one who pulled out a chunk of my hair and then put it in his pocket.”
“Your hair? He kept it?”
“Yes. It hurt. He was weird – even the others thought so.”
“I noticed,” I mutter.
“They all told him it wasn’t smart to keep my hair because of DNA and all, but he said he didn’t care, that it was worth the risk.”
“Wow. I can’t fucking wait to kill this sick son of a bitch,” I grumble. “He said he leaves at nine, so that should give us plenty of time to check out his house and then hunker down inside around eight thirty.”
“Okay,” she agrees. Nine o’clock can’t come quick enough.
Tessa
* * *
Floyd’s house is dirty, just like what I remember about him. As soon as Verek mentioned his hairstyle, I immediately remembered it and the face of the man who went with it.
While I told him about the creep pulling out my hair and keeping it, I didn’t tell him that Floyd was the one who took a certain, very painful virginity of mine. It felt like he was ripping me open. They all wanted to hurt me, but that was probably the most agonizing. I couldn’t even scream with the tape over my mouth as the other three men watched. I heard someone mention that Floyd had a deal with them where he always got to have a go there first with their victims. He certainly wasn’t the last either…
“You okay?” Verek asks as I stand paralyzed in the middle of his trashed living room where the carpet is so dirty it looks light brown, but I think it was once cream-colored. And unfortunately, there’s no garage, so we’ll have to make it look like he hung himself. That’s not an image I’m looking forward to seeing.
“Uh-huh, yeah,” I answer.
“This one tougher on you than the others?” he asks, and I’m not sure if he means the memories or the way we’re going to kill him.
“Yes,” I reply which is the answer to both questions.
“I know it’s gross, but if he saved your hair somewhere, we need to find it before the police do.”
“Right,” I agree, since we’re going to set this up as a suicide because he can’t handle the guilt of what he did to women.
“If you would rather look for a laptop or tablet you can,” Verek offers.
“Thanks. I’ll do that,” I agree as I start lifting dirty towels and clothes from the pile on the sofa, trying to only touch corners with my gloved hands while holding a small flashlight in the other.
Half an hour later, and right around nine when he should be closing up the pawn shop, I have an older, slow-as-snails laptop plugged in and booting up, and Verek has a cigar box full of hair.
“Well, at least they’re labeled by date,” he says with a cringe as he stares down at them.
“You should probably pull out all the ones from around this past April for Cari, Robin, and Sandy’s sake.”
“Good thinking,” Verek says as he places the box on the kitchen counter and uses his index finger to sort through the pile. One by one he pulls the hair out and places them on a paper towel. “Got theirs and yours,” he tells me before folding up the towel and pushing it deep into his pocket. “We’ll throw these out or burn them later. The rest of the box we can put next to the laptop to make it easier for the police to track down victims.”
“What if a family member or friend finds him first and covers it up?” I ask in concern.
“Then he’s still dead, and they’ll have to live with the shit he did.”
“Right, yeah. It would hurt us with explaining the other two’s disappearance, but either way, they’ll all be dead.”
“Exactly,” Verek says.
“The laptop is finally on the home screen, no password.”
“I’ll type up the message,” he says when he comes over. As his fingers move over the keys, he reads the words aloud. “I’ve done so many horrible things that I can’t live with myself anymore. I’ve raped women, lots of them, ruining their lives and my own. I, along with Joey Simpson, Donald Franklin, and Leroy Clemons would kidnap women together and hold them against their will. I warned them I was going to confess, and they all decided to run to try and avoid getting caught. I’m sorry, even though words could never make up for what I did. The next best thing is to end my life.” Verek finishes typing and turns the screen to me. “How does that all sound?”
“Good, that’s good. I think you covered everything.”
“All right then,” he says as he straightens. “You want to wait in the bathroom?”
“No,” I say with conviction. “It’s more disgusting than anything else in this place.”
“How about the hallway, then?”
“Okay.”
Pulling out a gun from the back of his jeans, he offers it to me. “If anything goes wrong, if he were to get away from me, kill him, then run. I’ll handle the rest.”
“I understand,” I say. “Please don’t let him get away.”
“I won’t, unless he has a weapon that I can’t get away from him. He works at a pawn shop, so it’s not a stretch to think he would carry a handgun.”
“Be careful,” I beg him.
“I will,” he assures me just as the lights of a car flicker through the dark house. “Showtime,” he says quietly. “I’ll wait for him behind the front door.”
“Okay,” I say. Before I move into my position out of sight in the hallway, I lunge forward and place a kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Verek replies, looking a little stunned.
Shit! Maybe I should’ve waited to do that until after we were done here, not right before Floyd walks in.
Either way, it’s too late now. I shove Verek toward the door with my free hand to get him moving before I hurry down the hallway, just around the corner so that I can hear everything, the gun clutched in my hands at the ready. I even rest my finger over the trigger so that all it will take is a second to fire it if Floyd gets away from Verek. Not that I think he will.
I don’t hear the key in the lock, just the door opening and shutting, and then there’s a loud whomp. That’s when I sneak a peek into the living room. Verek is towering behind Floyd, slamming the front of his pudgy body into the wall, hopefully not hard enough to leave any bruises as he tries to restrain him, his forearm over his throat. Verek’s biceps bulge with effort, and I know that I shouldn’t find him sexy like this, when he’s in the middle of putting a man to sleep – permanently – but I do. He’s just so tough and masculine, impossible to resist at any day or time.
The man thrashes hard, attempting to get away, until they’re both on the ground. But finally, thankfully, he goes still underneath Verek. He keeps his hold on him down there for several more minutes to make sure he’s really out before he climbs off him.
“Whew!” Verek says as he gets to his feet, swiping his face on the sleeve of his shirt to remove the sweat before he turns to face me, as if he knew I had been watching even when I was supposed to be hiding. “Dirty son of a bitch was feistier than I expected.”