Demented, page 1
DEMENTED
By B. W. Battin
A Gordian Knot Thriller
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright © 2015 B. W. Battin
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Meet the Author
B. W. Battin grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After serving four years in the U.S. Coast Guard, he graduated from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He became a reporter at KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, then moved on to TV stations in Shreveport, Louisiana; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Duluth, Minnesota, where he wrote his first published novel, Angel of the Night. After it was published, he became a full-time writer. One of his novels, Smithereens, was made into a TV movie for NBC. His novels and short stories have been translated into various languages, and he has ghost-written novels for other authors. He lives in Belen, New Mexico, with his wife Sandy, whom he describes as the love of his life. They met in Albuquerque while they were both in the news business.
Book List
Thrillers
Angel of the Night
Catch Me If You Can
Demented
Fair Game
Programmed for Terror
Serial Blood
Smithereens
Tender Prey
The Attraction
The Boogeyman
The Creep
Horror
Into the Pit
It’s Loose
Mary, Mary
Night Sounds
Satan’s Servant
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To Clarence and Lucille Sherman, Two of the Nicest People in Minnesota
DEMENTED
PROLOGUE
“I hear you’re looking for that cocksucker Gilbert Martinez,” the male voice on the phone had said. He had given an address in East Harlem. Then he’d hung up. That’s why Detectives Kate Hastings and Tom Napier were northbound on the FDR Drive.
Tom was driving. Glancing at Kate, he said, “Just like the old days. We’re looking for a guy whose name I can pronounce who killed a guy whose name I can pronounce.”
“What’s the matter?” Kate asked. “Can’t you say Niem Van Vu or Huyen Troung or Tsang Tran?”
“First time I ever heard Vietnamese spoken with a Texas accent.”
They were part of a special juvenile gang detail, and they were running into more and more Asian youths. Not all of the Oriental immigrants fit the stereotype of the ambitious, motivated people who studied, worked hard, became successes in their adopted land. Some formed gangs, robbed, and extorted money from the ones who did fit the stereotype.
The kid they were seeking was one of the lieutenants of a large gang that operated in the Puerto Rican neighborhood known as El Barrio. He was wanted for killing a kid named Lopez. It was a dispute over turf, who controlled which streets in an area that was claimed by two gangs.
“I don’t have a Texas accent,” Kate said. “Not after living ten years in New York.”
“Maybe not to the casual observer,” Tom replied. “But to a native New Yorker you sound suspiciously like hog jowls and turnip greens.”
“Hog jowls and turnip greens? Are you sure you’re not confusing Texas with Harlem?”
“That’s not what you eat in Texas?”
“Tom, I think you need to travel more, broaden your experience a little. There’s all kinds of things out there beyond the Hudson River.”
“You mean it’s not all a barren wasteland?”
Growing up on a farm in West Texas, she had thought it was a barren wasteland, which was why she had come to New York. But then, she wasn’t going to tell Tom that.
Tom Napier had been her partner for two years now. Tall and broad-shouldered with thick dark hair and a boyish face, he was a hunk. He was also a married hunk who didn’t fool around. Not that Kate would have allowed herself to become romantically involved with him. You and your partner were too dependent on each other for that. Romance was an unnecessary complication. It could cloud your judgment, take the edge off your instincts.
Looking across the East River at Queens, Kate wondered how Tom had beaten the odds and remained happily married so long. Being a cop put you in the high-risk category when it came to divorce—not to mention alcoholism, suicide, burnout, and all the other names that were given to what happened when you couldn’t cope anymore.
Kate had never been married. She’d come close a time or two, but something had always gone wrong.
Two days ago, she had broken up with a man named Donald. Or more precisely, he had broken up with her, abruptly ending their year-long relationship. They’d been lovers, both physically and emotionally. Although a date had never been set, they’d been drifting inexorably toward marriage. Or so Kate had thought.
And then, the day before yesterday, just like in some damn soap opera, Donald had informed her that he’d found someone else, someone who worked for the same company. They were both accountants. Maybe they’d sit around in the evenings and recite the multiplication tables, Kate thought bitterly.
But she shouldn’t be bitter. Relationships ended. It happened. She was a cop; she was supposed to be tough. But she hadn’t felt very tough. She’d felt unloved, unwanted, rejected. A little bit of it was fear, she supposed. Fear that at thirty-two she had delayed marriage so long that it would soon be beyond reach. Fear that all she would ever have was her job and the lonely apartment that offered only a TV set for companionship.
But then maybe she was better off this way. Tish, her twin sister, had stayed in Texas, married a man who turned mean, beat her up so badly that she had to be hospitalized. Finally he did the only kind thing he’d ever done for Tish. He ran off and left her.
“You figure it was someone from the other gang tipped us where to find Martinez?” Tom asked.
Kate considered that. “Seems to me they usually settle their own grievances,” she said. “The only thing they hate worse than a rival gang is cops.”
“Somebody out there doesn’t like Martinez.”
Kate said, “Somebody from the neighborhood maybe. Some shop owner who got tired of being ripped off. Or some kid who got beaten up by the gang.”
“Most of these people trust cops just slightly more than the kids in the gangs do.”
“Could be a phony,” Kate suggested. “You know, have a little fun making the cops run around in circles.”
“You mean you didn’t come in today just hoping for a fun trip to East Harlem, a chance to see the sights?”
“To tell you the truth, Tom, I was hoping to get on the Gray Line tour of the Lower East Side. You know, the one where they point out the homes of all the famous muggers.”
Tom laughed. “This job’s making you too damn cynical, you know that?”
They fell silent, and Kate found herself recalling what had happened two days ago. Donald had sat beside her on the couch in her apartment, looking uncomfortable.
“I don’t exactly know how to say this,” he said. Uncertain what was going on, Kate said, “There’s nothing you can’t tell me; you know that.”
He squirmed a moment, then said, “I’m breaking off our relationship.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck.
“I’ve … well, I’ve found somebody else.”
“I see,” she finally managed to say.
And then the whole story poured out. How he’d been seeing both her and the other woman. How he’d loved them both. How he’d finally decided that the other woman was better suited to be his lifelong partner, making it sound as if he’d worked it out mathematically or something like that.
Kate saw an image of Donald the accountant, pages of figures in front of him, assigning two points to her hair, three to her breasts, God knew how many for her performance in bed. She wondered how badly the other woman had beaten her. By two points? A hundred?
Who needs a guy like that? she wondered. But then it wasn’t losing Donald that hurt. It was being rejected. It was all the self-doubt.
The se things were still on her mind as Tom pulled to a stop in front of a four-story brick tenement. A brown-skinned boy of about five with black curly hair watched them as they got out of the car, staring at them with large dark eyes that were more like an old man’s eyes than a child’s, eyes that had already seen too much of what life had to offer. Fuck the world someone had written on the building’s wall in yellow spray paint.
As the detectives entered the building, Kate smelled onions and garlic, the scent seeming permanent somehow, as if it had seeped deeply into the walls and floors and ceilings. And below that odor was another, less clearly defined one: the smell of derelicts who had vomited and urinated and maybe even died in the vestibule, the aroma of an old building going to ruin. It was, Kate supposed, the stench of human misery.
They headed up the stairs. Gilbert Martinez was supposed to be hiding out in 2-D. The cracked, yellowing walls were covered with graffiti, much of it in Spanish, los banditos was written in bright red felt-tip marker at the first landing. The Banditos were a street gang.
They knocked on the door of 2-D. Kate had unzipped her purse. Her fingers rested lightly on the butt of her service revolver. There was only silence from within the apartment. Tom knocked again, louder.
“Quien es?” a boy’s voice said through the door.
“I’m from the welfare office,” Kate said.
“What-choo want?”
“I gotta make sure the landlord’s doing his job, fixing the stuff that needs fixing, getting rid of the cockroaches.”
“I don’t want no trouble. It’s okay in here.”
“You gotta open up. It’s the law.”
For a few moments there was only silence on the other side of the door, and then it swung open, revealing a skinny boy of about ten or eleven. Dressed in a dirty T-shirt and torn jeans, he eyed them fearfully. His straight black hair was thick and shiny. Kate and Tom displayed their badges.
“You said you were from the welfare.”
“We look out for everybody’s welfare,” Tom said. “We’re looking for Gilbert Martinez.”
The boy shook his head.
“You know him?” Kate asked. Again the boy shook his head.
“Whose apartment is this?” she asked. “Who lives here?”
“Me and my mother.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rudy Ramirez.”
“How do we know Gilbert’s not inside hiding?” Tom asked. The boy just stared at him, a strange mixture of emotions playing in his eyes. Kate saw fear and something else, something she was unable to identify.
“Let us take a look around,” Kate said. “If Gilbert’s not here, there’s no problem. We’ll go away and leave you alone.” The boy stepped aside, and the detectives cautiously moved into the apartment. If Martinez was here, he could be armed, and the seventeen-year-old had already demonstrated his willingness to kill. To Kate, who didn’t smoke, the place smelled of cigarettes. The living-room furniture consisted of a couch, a chair, a portable TV, and a coffee table with two glass ashtrays, both full of cigarette butts. The furniture was old, Salvation Army quality. Blankets and a pillow were piled on one end of the couch, indicating that it doubled as a bed.
Kate could see the kitchen through an open doorway. To its left was a tiny hall leading to the bathroom. To its right was a closed door that presumably led to a bedroom. Tom nodded to her, then moved toward the kitchen while Kate headed for the bedroom. Stepping through the doorway, she found an unmade bed and more shabby furniture. She checked under the bed, discovered no one hiding there. Nor was anyone in the small, musty-smelling closet, although she did find men’s as well as women’s clothing. The boy had lied about living with just his mother.
Kate considered that, deciding that the boy either didn’t want to admit his mother was living with a man or he didn’t want the welfare people to find out. Sometimes women would claim the husband was gone when he really wasn’t, to keep the welfare checks coming.
Kate returned to the living room as Tom emerged from the kitchen. He gave a quick shake of his head, and so did she; neither of them had found anything significant. The boy was sitting on the couch now, beside the pillow and blankets.
“You were right,” Kate said, looking at the boy. “Martinez isn’t here.”
“Like I tole you,” he said.
“Why do you think someone would tell us he’s here?”
The kid shrugged.
“He a friend of yours?”
“I don’t know him.”
“Who else lives here besides you and your mother?”
The kid mumbled something.
“What?”
“Nobody. Just us.”
“Then how come there’s men’s clothes in the closet?”
“And a guy’s razor and stuff like that in the bathroom,” Tom said.
“Carlos,” the boy said almost inaudibly.
“Who’s Carlos?” Kate asked.
“He stays here sometimes.”
“What’s his last name?”
“Trujillo.”
“You sure it’s not Martinez?”
“Trujillo,” the boy said again. “You come back later, you can meet him.”
Kate sighed. She was just about convinced that the tip on Martinez had been a phony. The clothes in the closet had been the sort of things a man in his thirties or forties might wear, not a seventeen-year-old. She took one last shot at it. “We could tell the welfare about Trujillo, you know.” The boy stared glumly at his shoes, said nothing.
“But we wouldn’t do that,” Tom said, “not as long as you were straight with us.”
“I tole you the truth,” the boy said. “I don’ know the guy you’re looking for.”
Kate’s eyes met Tom’s, the two detectives silently communicating that they were both ready to go. As they moved toward the door, Kate turned, intending to tell the boy something, and in the next instant she forgot what she was going to say, because the kid’s hand was emerging from under the blankets, raising an automatic.
“Look out!” she cried, trying to push Tom out of the kid’s line of fire. The gun went off.
Kate heard Tom gasp as he spun around, dropping, and she knew he’d been hit. A part of her wanted to go immediately to her fallen partner, see how he was, but she had to ignore that part of herself, for the kid—the crazy, goddamned kid—was swinging his gun toward her. Instinctively Kate had reached into her purse. Now, as she threw herself to the floor, her hand found the butt of her service revolver. She flung the purse off the gun as the boy fired again, the bullet missing. The boy was standing now, holding the automatic with both hands, the way you were taught at the police academy, and before he could shoot again Kate fired her own weapon. The boy flew backward, as if he’d been hit by a truck.
For several seconds, Kate lay on the floor, trembling, her brain unable to cope with what had just happened. Finally the realization settled over her that she was a police officer, that she still had responsibilities, that both her partner and the boy needed medical help. Getting slowly to her feet, she moved to the fallen boy, kicked the automatic out of his reach. He lay on his back, arms and legs spread, as if he were about to make an angel in the snow. Blood ran from the hole in his neck. Suddenly Kate was confused again, uncertain what to do. A voice somewhere inside her head said, You can’t put a tourniquet on a neck wound; you’ll strangle the person you’re trying to help.
Suddenly Kate turned away from the boy, hurried over to where Tom was lying. He was on his side, his back against the door. Blood had seeped through the front of his shirt. And then Kate noticed his eyes, the way they stared at the ceiling, dully, lifelessly.
Kate could feel a strange lethargy settling over her, as if sitting down and closing her eyes would make everything all right, as if it were just a bad dream, a weird horror concocted by her subconscious. She shook her head. She had to take action. She had to get help.
Her eyes darted around the room, but she saw no telephone. Dashing into the kitchen, she saw two wires hanging out of a hole in the wall, where a phone had been. Was there no phone in the bedroom. As she passed the boy, she noticed that the blood had stopped pouring from the hole in his neck. He’ll be all right, she thought. The blood’s stopped.
