The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard (книги без регистрации .txt) 📗

“What about this Delaney, the source of the information on Wenske’s investigation? Why wasn’t he killed?”

My phone went shaky in my hand. “Good question, Lieutenant.” I wondered if by now he had been.

After a moment, Davis said, “I think I should put you in touch with some reliable law enforcement out there, Strachey. I’ll get a name, and let me get back to you.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Give me an hour or two.”

“There’s one other thing I should tell you. I’m all but certain Eddie Wenske is alive.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“With luck, I’ll know soon.”

“If these bad actors killed Kim and Miller and maybe Delaney to keep Wenske from exposing all this criminal behavior, why wouldn’t Wenske have been their first and foremost victim?”

“I think they had planned on making him just that,” I said. “But then they had what they thought was a better idea.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I guessed the knock at my door just after eight was going to be Ort or, even better, Paul Delaney. But instead it was three Hispanic men instructing me to step through the back doorway of their black van. One of the three men had a Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic drawn, another waved what looked like a jagged-edged hunting knife at my jugular, and the third man gestured impatiently for me to get in. I said I’d like to bring my phone, which was next to my bed, but the meanest-looking of the three, the one with the knife, snapped, “Fuck that. Get your ass in the vehicle now.”

My impulse was to run, but I thought I knew enough about these three—were they the Hispanics with a van who probably killed Bryan Kim and Boo Miller?—that the chances were good that the one with the Glock would shoot me down in the motel parking lot and then the one with the dagger would plunge it into my heart. So I climbed into the van.

I was shoved onto the floor while the others sat on the metal benches that ran along either side of the van’s interior. The back door was slammed shut and we quickly took off, the van driven by a fourth man I didn’t get a look at.

There was some dirty carpeting under me, and I wondered if its putrid stench was from Boo Miller’s blood.

“Where are we headed?” I said.

“Shut your mouth.”

The Glock was still aimed at my midsection, and I said, “Is the safety on on that thing? Glocks are known for discharging in a light breeze.”

He just grunted, holding no interest in anything I had to say on gun safety.

None of these three was Pablo or Blanco, so were we headed for the Skutnik lodge or elsewhere? And when we arrived, wherever it was, would I find Paul Delaney? If I did find him and he was alive, that offered hope for me. If I found him and he was not alive, that was bad all the way around.

I assumed the van I was in was the one I had seen earlier in the day as Ort and I were driving away from the Skutnik lodge, but I wasn’t sure.

I hadn’t had any dinner, so the queasiness I felt had to have been from the stinking carpet and from fear.

“Mind if I sit up on the bench?” I said. “You can still blow my guts out if you think you need to.”

“Stay down! Stay down!”

I imagined the Glock going off and the bullet passing through my viscera and on down through the floor to the van’s gas tank where it would set off an explosion that would blow us all to bits. That would represent a crude form of justice, but I wouldn’t get a lot of satisfaction from it. Nor would it punish or restrain whoever was behind all this bloody mayhem.

We sped along a straight smooth highway—Interstate 5?—and then veered onto a road with twists and turns and a lower speed limit. Highway 89, I was thinking.

The three men had not bound me—not necessary with their arsenal aimed at me—and they had not blind-folded me either. I wished they had. That would have been an indication that I would be unable to tell the authorities where I had been held captive after I had gotten out of this alive.

After ten minutes or so—I was able to glance at my watch from time to time—the van turned left onto a secondary road, and I thought: This is it. I’m getting my wish. I’m going to see Mason Hively’s dungeon.

We made another turn onto a bumpier road—the Skutnik driveway—and soon the van slowed and came to a halt.

We all stayed put until the driver came around and opened the back door. I looked out and was interested to see that it was Rover Fye. The other three exited the van first. Then I climbed out.

I said, “Am I in a Hey Look TV reality show? You’re Hal Skutnik’s boyfriend, I think I recall. Am I on gay TV?”

“Yeah, you’re in a reality show, you stupid asswipe. You and your friend Delaney. But the reviews aren’t going to be all that good.”

“Par for the course at Hey Look TV,” I said.

Fye didn’t fly into a rage. He said coolly, “You’re going to get a dose of reality you won’t soon forget, Strachey. And the reviews are going to be great. Because I’m the reviewer, and I know you’re going to receive raves.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“Don’t bother.”

Fye directed the three goons to take me into what he called the studio.

I said, “I’m not ready for my close-up.”

“Yeah, you think you aren’t.”

It was after nine at night and Pablo and Blanco were still lounging on their bench, floodlit now, outside the big metal building. They exhaled cigarette smoke and nodded as we approached, and Fye manipulated a big sliding bolt and then opened a walk-through door next to the high garage doors, which remained shut.

I followed Fye, the muzzle of the Glock close to my back and the hunting knife raised and glistening off to my side.

The building was in fact a film studio, with cameras and dollies and lighting overhead and on racks and poles. Taking up half the space in the back part of the structure was a film set, the much-talked about dungeon built for the unproduced The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo. There were torture devices—a medieval-style rack, some kind of hang-from-the-rafters mechanism, and a large leather-covered platform with whips and paddles next to it. And chained by the feet to a supporting I-beam were two men.

One of them was Paul Delaney, who nodded a kind of resigned greeting as I approached him. I think he mouthed the words, “Sorry, sorry.”

I also recognized the other man who was chained to a pole. I walked up to him and said, “Dr. Wenske, I presume.”

He laughed lightly and said, “You’re Don Strachey, I take it.”

“I sure am.”

“You didn’t happen to bring along a cake with a file in it, did you?”

“I meant to, but nope.”

Fye said, “I’m going to go up to the lodge and relax. I’ll see you all in the morning. Mason might drop by later to say nighty-night to y’all and get spanked. But I want to leave you alone so that Edward will explain what your role is going to be in HLM’s next production. I want you to understand how important that role is. I think it’ll be perfectly clear and you’ll know just what to do. And so will Mr. Wenske. Right, Eddie?”

Wenske looked pale and exhausted but otherwise unhurt. He was a slightly worn version of his Weed Wars jacket photo, with the hazel eyes, the shock of hair and the bent grin that was part of his natural physiognomy. He wore old jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, and he was borderline aromatic.

Wenske said, “Rover, you are nuts. I told you. This is not going to work.”

“Oh, sure it is,” Fye said, and directed his three goons to chain me up too.

Which they did. They attached a manacle to my ankle and locked it with a key one of the Mexicans kept on a ring on his belt. Welded to the manacle was a chain that was wrapped around the same upright I-beam that kept Wenske and Delaney from moving more than about twelve or fourteen feet in any direction. Off to the side about ten feet away was a porta-potty that I didn’t like the looks of.