Serial Uncut - J. A. Konrath [65]
“You see him?” Harry asked. I heard him in my earpiece, but I also heard him in the alley, somewhere ahead.
“Not yet.”
“Maybe he’s screaming because he can’t stand the smell.”
I didn’t think that was the case. I’d heard my share of screams on the Job. Screams of joy. Screams of sorrow. Screams of pain.
This was a scream of terror.
A clanging sound, only a few yards away from me. A Dumpster. I held my breath, heard whimpering coming from inside.
“He’s in a Dumptser,” I told Harry.
“Probably sitting in a big pile of rats.”
I approached quickly. It was dark, but I could see the Dumpster lid was open.
“This is the police!” I shouted, hoping my voice didn’t quaver. “Raise your hands up where I can see them!”
Bald Guy complied. But there was something wrong. Rather than two hands, I counted three.
I moved closer, and realized the third hand wasn’t his. It belonged to a woman.
And it wasn’t attached to the rest of her.
I felt someone touch my shoulder and jumped back. It was Harry.
“Looks like he got you a birthday present, Jackie. Quite a handy guy.”
My stomach seized up, then I bent over and vomited, soaking my broken shoes and getting it caught in the fake curls hanging in front of my face. When I heaved for the final time, the transmitter popped free of my bustier and plonked into the puddle of puke.
“Happy twenty-ninth,” Harry said.
The following is an excerpt of Killers by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn.
Donaldson
“…multiple fractures of the clavicle, humerus, radius and ulna, a dislocated shoulder, a dislocated elbow, multiple contusions and lacerations, including skin abrasions covering about thirty percent of his body. A concussion. Plus the son of a bitch lost six teeth and an ear.”
The man speaking had a high-pitched voice, with a slight southern lilt.
“How’d it happen?” This voice was Latino, probably Mexican.
“Chained to the back of his own car, which went down the side of a goddamn mountain.”
“Poor guy.”
“Don’t waste any tears on this one. See the deputy outside? Soon as this bastard wakes up, he’s getting arrested. This dude is a serial killer. Name is Gregory Donaldson. Likes to cut up hitchhikers. Did all kinds of crazy, sick shit to them. Hear tell, he murdered more than fifty people.”
Low whistle from the Mexican. “Goddamn. Looks like he got what was coming to him.”
“You said it, brother. There’s a special room in hell for people like this.”
Donaldson peeked his eyes open. The men in his hospital room wore scrubs, the kind with novelty print patterns that were supposed to cheer up patients. One of them was chubby, early thirties, in need of a shave. The other was short, Hispanic, and even from ten feet away Donaldson could smell his armpit stains.
Donaldson figured they were orderlies. Beyond them, through the doorway, he saw the sheriff’s deputy the white guy had mentioned, a portly man in a khaki uniform. He sat in a wooden chair reading a magazine called Handgun Enthusiast. The gun on his belt had a snap over the holster.
Donaldson had been awake for a few hours, faking unconsciousness to avoid being asked questions, biding his time until he figured out a plan.
As situations went, this one was dire. Even in the grip of the morphine haze courtesy of his IV, Donaldson hurt. He hurt bad. His left arm felt like it had been yanked out, chewed up, and sewn back on upside-down. The neck brace was cruel stainless steel, screwed onto his scalp and shoulders, making it impossible to turn his head.
Donaldson peered down at the substantial girth of his body. A thin blanket covered his protruding gut. His arm was a mess, swollen to twice its normal size, purple and scabby with surgical pins and clamps holding his shattered bones in place. The pins poked through the flesh in half a dozen places.
He touched the side of his head, felt a bandage on his cheek and another that went up over his ear. Correction—one that went up over where his