Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
“You’re hurting me, Leon,” Charley snapped and jerked her arm. “Let go!”
He held on tight. It had never occurred to Charley to take her gun with her to pick up Owen or to meet with Margo at her office.
But oh, how she wished she had that weapon now.
Not that she could actually shoot someone, but she was certain she could have used it as a means to threaten and escape Leon Lerfeld.
“Keep moving!” Leon sneered, shining a flashlight in her face.
The tunnel was cold, damp, and grim. Pitch black, except in whatever direction Leon shined a small flashlight, Charley mostly just felt the rats at her feet.
She’d cringed as she had stepped on at least two.
After Leon had grabbed her in front of her shop, he’d been the one to brandish a weapon.
He’d forced her into the old car with a knife, driven her to a dilapidated house, and dragged her inside.
“Whose house was that back there?” Charley asked, stumbling along behind him.
“My uncle’s. He was hateful and violent, instead of appreciative.
I had to siphon off his social security checks because I deserved to be paid for my care.
” Over his shoulder, Leon bared his teeth and gritted out, “When I bought my scooter with his money, he had a moment of lucidity and threatened to tell them where I was. I silenced him.” Snickering to himself, he said, “Did the same to his crazy wife and that stupid dog.”
“Tell who?” Charley asked as calmly as possible. “Who’s looking for you, Leon?”
“Stop calling me Leon! That old geezer in the house was Leon Lerfeld. My name is Dorian Fester! Those jerks at the psych facility, where I was held against my will for twelve long years, are probably looking for me. I had to pretend I was catatonic when I first got there.” Halting suddenly, he turned to her, rolled his eyes up in his head, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue as if he were in a stupor before saying, “I deserved to be released. I shouldn’t have had to escape.
” Then, with the familiar deadness returning to his face and dulling his eyes, he said in a chilling monotone, “I was released. I am no longer a threat to myself or society.”
Charley winced in pain as he suddenly yanked her forward again. “Why were you there?”
“Evaluation for competency to stand trial.”
“For what crime?”
“Murder,” he snickered.
“Who did you murder, Le—Dorian?”
“I was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the state of Colorado’s criminal court.”
“Who did you murder?” Charley repeated.
“My streetwalking whore of a mother. She was always telling me to leave, but I had nowhere to go,” he said as though Charley would understand.
In the next breath, he spat, “She was as useless as all the females who have rejected me. You’re just like the others, you know that, Charley?
” He turned to glare at her. “I gave you a chance, but you rejected me too. Over and over and over and—”
“Let me go!” Charley’s brain had been whispering that Leon, or Dorian Fester, was the Cave Killer. Now, she was convinced he had brutally murdered six women. When he didn’t comply with releasing her, she was forced to follow along behind him. “Where are we going?”
“Shut up. I need to think.”
Although there were no holes in the floors leading to tunnels beneath the property which she’d just sold, Charley and Sully, along with a lot of people, had since learned of the numerous hidden passageways crisscrossing under Old Colorado City.
If the pioneers could escape danger using the tunnels, why couldn’t she?
Charley formed a plan as she was dragged behind Dorian Fester a few more yards.
The dim view illuminated by his flashlight soon indicated a wider, open section in the cave with tunnels branching off in three different directions.
When rats hissed again, Charley purposely pretended to trip over them.
“Oww!” she cried. Falling to the ground broke Fester’s hold on her. Pulling her left foot close to her chest, Charley wrapped her left hand around her uninjured ankle and rubbed it.
“Get up!” Fester ordered.
“No! Let me go!”
The second Fester reached down to grab her again, Charley used her right hand to yank the flashlight from him. With all her strength, she slammed him in the head with the flashlight. Then, instantly shining the harsh glare in his eyes, she scrambled to her feet in relative obscurity.
“You bitch! After I strangle you, I’m gonna cut you into tiny pieces and let the rats feast on your dead body.”
Staring at him in horror, Charley watched Fester swipe at the blood running into his left eye.
She backed away, hoping, praying she was retreating in the direction from which they’d come.
If so, maybe she could make it back to the shack ahead of him and escape up the ladder and through that hole in the closet.
Dear God, how had it come to this? Without another thought, she turned and ran as fast as she could.
The glow from the flashlight jumped here and there along the narrow tunnel walls.
Rats ahead of her scattered as the one behind her clutched the back of her coat. Hauled up short, Charley screamed.
“Stop!” Fester shrieked manically.
Grabbing her left arm, he gave her a hard half-turn and retrieved the flashlight.
Charley swiveled and with her bare right hand, raked her fingernails down his face.
She instantly recalled the raw scratches she’d seen on his face in the past and instinctively knew one of his victims had also clawed him.
He’d asked her to visit him when he supposedly had a virus.
Why? So he could strangle and stab her? Well, she would not become his next dead body.
Charley fought furiously, punching him repeatedly with both fists as he forced her back to the section of the cave open to the other tunnels.
There, Fester hit her hard across the side of her head.
The blow jolted her, and this time when she fell, it was for real.
“I thought you were my friend,” Charley spat as he loomed over her.
“I wanted to be more than your friend, but you rejected me.” He leaned down and jerked her to her feet.
Madness lit up his eyes. She’d seen this hint of his insanity the day he’d shouted at little Carly Cooper.
With Fester’s face close to hers, he sneered, “Your repeated rejections are the reason I had to kill those six women! Strangling them was the only way to achieve numbness from the pain you caused me.” Pulling a knife out of his jacket with his right hand, he dropped the flashlight and gripped her throat with his left hand.
“Their blood is on your hands, and now it’s your heart, instead of mine, that will bleed! ”
“Let her go,” ordered a calm voice.
Light shone at the mouth of the tunnel from which they’d emerged. Fester pressed the knife to Charley’s throat. Twisting around, he imprisoned her against his chest as a shield.
“Sully,” Charley breathed, feeling the sharp blade against her throat.
“I said let her go,” Sully growled, aiming his flashlight and a gun at Fester.
“She’s mine!” Fester shrilled. “You tried to steal her from me. Get out of here, Custis.”
“I’ll be glad to get out of here,” Sully said, walking a few steps closer. “But I’m not leaving without Charley.”
“Stop! Or I’ll slice her up.”
Sully stopped. “Throw the knife down. The cops are on their way, and you’ve got nowhere to run.”
“That’s what you think. I know these tunnels like the back of my hand,” Fester replied. “You throw your gun down or I swear I’ll cut her head off.”
“I’ll throw my gun down if you promise to let her go.”
Charley felt the knife move slightly away from her neck as Fester seemed to consider the offer. Sully waited.
“Okay,” Fester said. “I promise. Now throw your gun down.”
“Don’t do it, Sully,” Charley pleaded. She was stunned when Sully dropped his gun into the glow of the flashlight on the tunnel floor.
“Yes!” Fester, like the madman he was, whooped feverishly in her ear. He hollered, “You’re an idiot, Custis!”
Instantly taking the knife away from Charley’s neck, Fester shoved her aside with a victorious grunt. Swinging his arm up in the air, he lunged at Sully. The two gunshot blasts that followed were deafening. On wobbly legs, Charley watched Dorian Fester fall.
“Sully!” Charley cried and ran. Sully’s arms closed around her, holding her protectively against his rigid body. She clung to him and whispered, “Thank God. Thank you, Sully.”
Sully gently eased Charley out of his arms and shoved her SIG Sauer P365 9mm, which he’d shot Fester with, into the back of his jeans. Then he picked his .44 Magnum off the ground.
“I own a gun store,” Sully growled and kicked the knife out of Fester’s hand. “You were the idiot.”
“A dead one,” Detective Groves said as he emerged from a tunnel to the left of Sully. “I heard him scream his confession to murdering those six women.”
“So did I,” Sully said.
“Both our bullets were headshots,” Detective Groves noted as he joined them, aiming his flashlight on Fester. “Your bullet drilled the middle of his forehead. Looks like my shot entered his skull just above his right ear.”
“Yeah,” Sully said. “Charley, did he hurt you?”