The Resurrectionist

Sarah again if he went to prison.

Crossing Lossee Street was nerve-racking both because of the number of police cars that traveled this stretch of road, breaking the very speeding laws they were sworn to protect, and because of the traffic and the lack of a stoplight. Crossing the four lanes of traffic became a game of high-speed chicken. Dale got lucky and drove across all four lanes without stopping, narrowly missing a battered old truck full of construction workers.

Dale pulled up outside of the North Las Vegas police headquarters on Washburn, parked across the street from the police parking lot, and waited. He watched as police officers, a couple of ATF agents, and even one car that he could have sworn was marked FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION came and went. After an hour neither the black woman nor the old detective with the ponytail had appeared. Dale was growing impatient. The thought of walking into the station and asking for them crossed his mind several times and he might have been desperate enough to try if he had remembered either of their names. He sat there for a moment trying to recall the name the black woman had given him when she’d come to his house to arrest him. He could even picture the business card she’d left him sitting on the top of his desktop computer. He just could not make out the name.

Another hour went by. Dale watched policemen dragging in spitting, cursing, fighting, drunken prisoners. He watched them leave in their civilian clothes and head home to their wives, girlfriends, or a bar stool and a bottle. Dale was getting anxious. Patience had never been one of his virtues and this waiting was testing every ounce of will he possessed. He wished that he had a gun. He wanted to grab any cop at random and force them to tell him where Sarah was. The only thing holding him back was not knowing whether just any cop would know where they were or would even be able to locate them. He’d watched Law & Order enough to know that when the police took someone into protective custody, they kept the location of the witness secret from all but a very limited few.

A black Crown Victoria pulled into the parking lot and as soon as it passed Dale’s car he spotted the ponytailed silhouette. It was the old cop, the one whose throat he had cut in Sarah’s living room. Dale tried to restrain himself from running across the street and tackling him in the parking lot. He watched the old cop walk into the station and Dale sat back and waited a bit longer. The man would be coming out again soon and Dale would have to be ready when he did.

Dale hadn’t really thought of a plan. He didn’t know how he planned on kidnapping the cop or getting the Lincolns’ whereabouts out of him. He didn’t have a gun and he didn’t know if he could get close enough to use the knife. The old detective would shoot him on sight. He still had the hammer but that again meant getting close. Even if he did manage to ambush him again he would still have to drag him off the street and into his car without being seen or stopped. Dale hoped that he could simply follow him right to where Sarah was staying without having to confront the old detective at all. That would have been far easier. Dale was still sitting there trying to figure out how he would get close enough to make the detective tell him where Sarah was when the detective walked out of the station and climbed into an old gray F-150.

The truck left the police station and Dale followed in his Hyundai, wishing that he’d had the foresight to tint the windows or at least wear some sort of disguise. His mind was not working right. He still could not figure out how he was going to get what he wanted from the old detective. He looked at the savage-looking diver’s blade sitting on the seat beside him, rusting with dried blood, the hammer on the floor with bits of skull and brain matter matted onto it. He followed two car lengths behind the old Ford, even though the detective seemed completely oblivious to everyone around him.

The old detective pulled into the parking lot of a bar and grill, hopped out of the truck, slamming the door behind him, and strode toward the bar, eyes fixed like lasers, like a man on a mission. Dale followed. The old hippie cop was either going to pull his old lady out of the bar by her hair or he was a drunk about to go on a serious binge. Dale sincerely hoped it was the latter. It would make his job so much easier if the old detective was barely conscious when he left the bar. The only drawback was that it meant another long wait. Dale turned the radio to an oldies station and laughed when they began playing a tune by the Spice Girls. Who would have ever thought that they would be considered oldies? Dale wondered. Two songs later Milli Vanilli came on the radio, blaming it on the rain. Dale wanted to take the knife and pierce his own eardrums with it. Dale had never been into goth music but when Depeche Mode came on and declared that they gave in to sin because they had to make this life livable, he couldn’t help but sing along. He knew exactly how they felt. Dale’s eyes closed and he sat back and listened to the music. Before the end of the song he was dreaming again.

His mother was standing above him. He could see the claw hammer pull back, raised high above her head. There was blood on the hammer. It was saturated in it. And there were bits of brain, his brain. The ham-mer began to fall again. Everything went black. Dale woke up.

There were tears on his face, and his clothes were drenched in sweat. Run DMC was playing on the car radio and the old detective was leaving the bar. Dale drove the Sonata over to the detective’s truck. His hand gripped the hammer as he inched closer. He was perspiring again, hoping the detective wouldn’t turn around and see him behind the wheel and start shooting. He pulled up beside the detective’s truck, watching as the old cop staggered as if sleepwalking to his car. Dale slipped out of his SUV with the hammer in his hand. The old cop had his back turned, fumbling with his keys, trying to find the key to the truck. Dale hit him once with the hammer at the base of the skull and the detective folded and went down.

The detective lay on the gravel-top parking lot, snoring loudly as if he had just fallen peacefully asleep. Dale dragged him into the SUV, fished in the detective’s pockets for handcuffs, and locked his wrists together behind his back; then he took the detective’s gun out of the shoulder holster and placed it under the driver’s seat along with the hammer and the knife. He reached across the detective and strapped his seat belt across his chest.

Dale put the car in drive and headed back to the abandoned house. He pulled the pistol from beneath the seat and sat it on his lap as he passed Lossee Road, heading back up Washburn Street. Dale checked the rearview mirrors repeatedly. If a police officer tried to pull him over he would have gunned him down without hesitation. He was so close now. Soon he would be back in the cold, dead arms of the woman he loved.

The detective woke up as Dale pulled into the driveway. Dale pointed the gun in his face and put a finger to his lips.

“Shhhhh. You stay nice and quiet or this gun is going to start making a lot of noise. Now, we’re going to get out of the car. I mean, you’re going to get out first. No. I’m going to get out first. Then I’ll come around and get you out. If you yell or scream I’m going to shoot you in the face and leave you bleeding on the sidewalk. Then I’m going to go after that black detective with the big tits and the big ass. Do you understand?”

The old detective looked at Dale without speaking, his bloodshot eyes out of focus and uncomprehending.

“Where is Sarah? You can tell me now and avoid a lot of pain. I know all about pain. I’ve killed more people than anyone you’ve ever met. No serial killer in history has murdered more often than I have. I just bring them back to life. No harm. No foul. But before I bring them back, I make them scream, just like I’m going to make you scream. I’m going to skin you alive, Detective. I’m going to tear you apart piece by piece. But if you just tell me where Sarah is I’ll kill you quickly and then I’ll bring you back and you won’t remember a thing. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

“Fuck off, you little twerp.”

The detective spit in Dale’s face and Dale lashed out and smashed him across the face with the butt of the pistol. This time, the detective took it well. He spit blood onto the windshield and then turned and smiled at Dale with his teeth stained red with blood.

“I was in Vietnam in the seventies and Grenada in the eighties. I have killed a lot of people too and I’ve seen even more death. You, my friend, are a lightweight, a pussy. And you can kiss my ass.”

Dale hopped out of the car and ran over to open the passenger-side door. The detective fell out of the car and Dale caught him. Just as the detective fell into his arms, Dale felt searing pain in his neck and shoulder. Dale tried his best not to scream.

“Stop. Stop. Stop it! Fuck. Stop it!”

The cop was biting him, trying to tear out his jugular with his teeth. Dale cocked the pistol and placed it under the detective’s chin.

“I will kill you. And this time I won’t bring you back. Now, let go.”

The detective released his hold on Dale’s throat. His bite had broken the skin and blood dripped down Dale’s chest and shoulder. Dale wiped the blood from his neck. He was okay. The old detective hadn’t gnawed through any major arteries.