the end of the tape. I broke a fingernail trying to scratch through it.
“Fuck!”
The hell with Bennett, I thought. He would be of no use getting away, because he would think only of himself and end up getting us both killed in the process.
I started trying to feel around the trunk for anything that I might be able to use as a weapon. There was nothing.
The car made a sharp left, then a sharp right, then sat for a moment as something rattled and screeched outside.
A gate.
The car moved forward. The gate screeched and rattled shut.
When the trunk opened, the first thing I saw was the barrel of Kulak’s gun. I held my breath and waited for Kulak to pull the trigger.
“Get out,” he said. “Get out!”
I got out, a little dizzy, legs wobbly.
Hands bound behind his back, Bennett struggled out and stood doubled over for a moment.
“Stand up!” Kulak ordered.
Bennett rocked once on the balls of his feet, then bolted forward, hitting Kulak like a battering ram. He knocked the Russian sideways and kept running for the gate.
Alexi Kulak very calmly got his balance back, aimed, and fired.
I watched, horrified, as Bennett’s right leg buckled beneath him, and he went down, crying out.
In the distance I could hear police sirens, but I knew with a terrible sinking feeling in my gut they wouldn’t be coming here. We were locked inside the gates of Alexi Kulak’s auto salvage yard, and we were at the mercy of a madman.
Chapter 60
“So who is this guy?” Landry asked, shining his maglite into the trunk of the car.
“Jeffrey C. Cherry,” the deputy said, reading from the victim’s driver’s license. “West Palm Beach; 06-20-88. He’s got an employee parking sticker from Players.”
“Jeez,” Weiss said, poking at the trash around the body. “If he didn’t have that crowbar in his head, I’d say he died from eating his shit.”
“There’s a couple of dime bags of coke,” the deputy said. Could have been a drug deal gone bad.“
Landry looked over at Bennett Walker’s Porsche. “Could have been. But what was Bennett Walker doing here, and where is he?”
“And what drug dealer wouldn’t steal that car?” Weiss asked, the keys are in it.“
Landry took a pen out of his pocket and pushed open the small duffel bag that sat on the victim’s chest. A couple stacks of 1’s-singles topped with a twenty-and what looked like some drug residue.
“This sucks,” he said. “This is some kind of setup. This kid works at Players-”
“Valet,” Weiss said, peering in the open driver’s door. “He’s got a name tag in here.”
Landry walked away from the car and called Elena. Straight to voice mail. He didn’t like that. She would have been waiting to hear news on what the search warrant had gained them.
She had told him to talk to the valets. He guessed this was the kid who had split before he’d gotten there. Elena had known him, then. And Walker had been here.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said.
Weiss flashed his light at the crowbar planted in Jeffrey C. Cherry’s skull. “Imagine how he feels.”
Chapter 61
Kulak left Bennett lying on the ground, bleeding, and dragged me inside the building by my injured arm, digging his thumb into the wound every time I slowed down.
He took me into a large, open garage space with hydraulic lifts and drains in the concrete floor. Lights hung from a ceiling of open steel trusses. On one side of the space was a row of old beat-up red metal lockers with iron-mesh fronts. He dragged me to them, pulled one open, shoved me inside with my back to the wall, shut the door, and locked it.
I was in a cage. Literally a captive audience for whatever horror Kulak might want to play out in front of me.
The cage was not much taller than I was and not much wider or deeper. I could get my hands in front of me, but I couldn’t get any leverage or power to try to push against the door.
It seemed a very long time before Kulak returned. I began to think perhaps he had taken Bennett elsewhere to torture and kill him and that I would be left standing in that cage for hours and hours, wondering what would happen to me when he finally came back. Then I heard them-Kulak shouting at Bennett to move, a scuffle of footsteps, someone falling, Kulak shouting.
Bennett came sprawling through the doorway, landing on the floor near one of the drains. Kulak walked over, gun in hand. He seemed very calm, relaxed even, as if he had flipped the switch on his emotions.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
Bennett looked up at him. “What?”
“Take off your clothes, Mr. Walker.”
“Why?”
Kulak gave him a savage kick in the ribs, an action weirdly at odds with his demeanor.
“Take off your clothes, Mr. Walker. You are going to know how it feels to be vulnerable.”
When Bennett still didn’t move, Kulak kicked him twice more, once in the back, once in his injured leg. Bennett struggled then to sit up, grimacing. His face glowed with sweat as he stripped off his T-shirt and jeans. He had trouble moving the injured leg, trouble bending that knee.
It seemed to take forever for him to complete his task. All the while Alexi Kulak just stood there, waiting, gun in hand. He smoked a cigarette, watching dispassionately as his victim struggled.
When he was naked, Bennett curled on his side on the concrete, and just lay there, breathing hard. His back was to me, and I could see the entrance wound in the back of his thigh-a small innocuous-looking hole that belied the damage the bullet had most surely done inside the leg.
Kulak dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and put it out with the toe of his wingtip shoe. He produced a pair of handcuffs, closed one around Bennett’s left wrist and the other around one of the iron bars of the drain.
He walked over to a workbench, set his gun aside, and chose a tool from a rack hanging on the wall. He chose it carefully, like a musician choosing an instrument or a sculptor choosing a chisel.
It was a bolt cutter.
Bennett watched him. I could see the abject terror in his face. Like an animal trying to flee a predator, he threw himself as far away from Kulak as he could-a pathetically short distance-before the cuffs rattled and he strained against the unyielding iron bar of the drain.
“Why did you kill my Irina?” Kulak asked him with eerie calm.
“I didn’t,” Bennett said. “I didn’t kill her.”
Kulak took a step closer and stomped on Bennett’s wrist, making him cry out.
“Why did you kill my Irina?” he asked again.
“I-I didn’t,” Bennett said. “I barely knew her.”
Just like he was snipping a weed from his lawn, Kulak leaned over with the long-handled bolt cutter and cut Bennett Walker’s left index finger off at the knuckle.
A wet hot sweat washed over me from head to toe. The screams were horrible. I closed my eyes for a moment but opened them again to abate the dizziness.
