Fatal Encounters
Irv Pliskin
R Rated
Chapter 7
Carl was not amused with Clarissa’s cavorting in the shower. He told her he would be right there to be with her, but he had to check the hot water supply first. That sounded feasible.
“Do that, luv.” she called from the pelting stream of water. “This is fine, it it such a great shower. I never have been in one like this before. It is wonderful. It would be terrible to have it turn cold. You know, luv, someone brilliant must have designed it. Imagine, you walk into it, and around a curve so there are no doors or shower curtain. It is just a wonderful feeling of freedom.”
“Just a sec,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
He walked into the storage room, and slid open a hidden wall panel. Behind it there was a sturdy wall safe. He spun the dial, and the safe opened.
The safe was nearly empty, just a few medicinal bottles which were filled with a clear unidentified liquid. There were also a dozen or so syringes. Carl picked up one, took the orange covering off the needle, and very, very carefully inserted the needle into the rubber protective top of one of the vials. The stuff, which he had ordered from a scientist in Kirachi, was extremely dangerous. Even a drop or two on the skin could be absorbed and cause considerable difficulties, even death, within minutes.
The normal, effective dose of the clear liquid was 50CC’s. Carl put l00 CC’s into the vial, put the orange cover back on the needle very carefully and then walked into his bedroom. He slipped the protected syringe and needle under the pillow on his bed.Then he went to the shower, where Clarissa was splashing and humming in sheer delight.
As soon as Carl walked into the shower, she took the soap and a loopha and began to scrub him vigerously. She scrubbed his back first, and with a rare capriciousness reached down and said, “How about that darling?” she asked. “Do you like that?”
He groaned. “I was sure you would. More later, okay?” When she soaped his privates, he pushed her hands away.
“Let’s wait he said. After we shower, we’ll go to the bed and we can do whatever you want there...you won't even have to dry off. I have plenty of clean linen.”
She smiled, and kissed him, rubbing herself against him, and despite himself he felt a response. She felt it, too, and said, “You sure you want to wait, luvy? We could do it here and there, if you like.”
“No,” he said. “Let’s wait.” He splashed her with water from the shower.
Afer a few minutes he turned off the water, picked her up and carried her to the king-sized bed. He put her down gently and got on the bed beside her.
"Let's do each other together.”
“Wonderful" she said. "I love it, really love it.”
He lay down on his back, she straddled him and began to adminster to him. He put his left hand between her legs and began to massage her. With the other hand, he reached under the pillow and pulled out the prepared needle. He put the orange protective cover in his mouth and pulled he needle out.
“Clarissa,” he said. “Clarissa.”
“What?” she asked , stopping what she was doing to answer him. He made sure her head was removed from him, and he quickly jabbed her in the behind wiith the needle. Otherwise there was the danger that she could have bitten him severely. She could even have bitten it off.
She cried out, and started to remonstrae, but the dose was massive, enough to put down a horse in seconds and she jerked, twitched and fell across him. He had a violent, uncontrollable orgasm.
“You dumb bitch. you stupid bitch. You wet my bed, you got what you deserved. You should learn control, You stupid, ugly ox.”
Clarissa never heard a word.
When his exhileration waned, he got a large plastic sheet from the store room, put it on the bed and rolled her on to it. When she was in position, and still warm, he spread her lifeless legs and mounted her, frothing and yelling as he released again and again, Surfeited, he dropped onto the immovable, now cooling body and pummeled it, sobbing vigorously.
He went to the guest room to sleep away the afternoon. Usually he eliminated them at night, since they usually spent several days with him in the Cabin. But Clarissa had pissed him off with her attentions, so he hadn’t waited for the dark. He would now have to keep her until late at night to avoid detection.
At Midnight, he tied a rope around her waist and wrapped her in the plastic sheet, and put her in the trunk of the rented Lincoln. He couldn’t find an Anchor: he had bought a supply of them at various boat stores so he would be prepared, and he had run out. He decided to weigh her down with a cinder block. That should do it, he figured. And if not, screw it.
Nobody could tie him to her, he was certain.
At two in the morning, along a secluded portion of the Delaware river where the water was dark and deep, he slipped the weighted body--without the plastic protective sheet--into the river. He watched her sink, turned, got into the car and without a backward look, drove away.
When the call came, Hallen had been sitting at his desk for at least two hours. He was sipping cold coffee, and wishing he still smoked. He could use the relief a guy got from lighting a butt...the slight diversion from what he was doing would be damn welcome.
What he was doing was really rough routine, but necessary. He was reviewing Eliana’s diary word for word. He was comparing the xerox of the hand written diary with the typed version. He was looking for nuances, things the typist may have missed, that might tell him something about her, her life and the man she called Carl.
The phone roused him from his concentration. It was the break he needed.
“Hallen,” he said. “How may I help you?”
“Good Morning, Jerry, it’s Ricio Garcia. How are you?”
“Fine, Captain. How are you?
“Listen, Jerry, I think we have something up here that may interest you. We got a floater this morning. Some hikers found a naked woman up here in the river. She hasn’t been in long, I don’t think. Not much damage, as a matter of fact. There’s a clothes line rope tied around her waist. Looks like she was weighted down and the knot came loose. I’m calling you on the off chance it is related to the cases you’re working on. Same sort of MO, a body of a young woman in the water.”
“Sounds interesting captain. Where are you? Is she still at the scene or have you taken her to the morgue?”
“Nothing of value at the scene Jerry. We have it roped off, of course. She’s up here at the morgue.”
“Okay,” Hallen looked at his watch. “I’ll be up there by noon, will that be okay with you?”
“Sure, maybe we can have some lunch afterwards.”
“That would be great, Captain. Thanks, see you soon.”
Hallen stood looking down at the blonde corpse on the table in the morgue. They had fished her out of the Delaware, a few hours before the captain had called him.
“This poor woman hasn’t been in the water very long,” the lab tech said, “we should be able to get a lot of information from her body,”
“Do you think this is related to your case, Jerry?” Captain Garcia asked “Is this related to the earlier bodies we pulled out of the river?”
“I don’t know,” Hallen said, “but if it is, it might provide a lot of help in catching the son of a bitch. I can tell you this, the woman is British, and she has been dead no more than five days.”
“How do you know that Detective?” Frank Collings, the lab tech, a sincere looking man, with rimless glasses asked. There was a note of incredulity in his voice. Was this cop looking at crystal balls, or some such silly shit?
“This lady was sitting in the seat in front of mine when I came back from London five days ago. The longest she could have been in the river is five days. And that means she would have had to be killed within hours of having landed in Philly. She was pretty well up river, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, We have no idea where she went in, but it might have been as far up as the Delaware Water Gap,” Garcia said.
“Well,” added Hallen, “if she had been dumped up there, and it had to be up there somewhere, because you found her where?”
“In an eddy up above Marshalls,” Collings said.
“Well, it would have taken them at least two, three hours to drive up there from Philadelphia. Right?”
“Them?” Collings asked.
“She was with a man, an American.” Hallen said.
“So, if they drove up there without stopping it would have been at least two, three hours, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” the captain said.
“Well, then, that would have been early afternoon Thursday. Today is Wednesday, so she can’t be dead more than five days. And that would be pretty tight, time wise.”
“Are you sure that’s the same woman?” Garcia asked.
“Yes, Captain, I’m positive,” Hallen said.
Hallen thought about the poor lifeless girl on the autopsy table. Although he wouldn’t have wanted his daughter to behave as she did on the airplane, she had been vigorous, alive and really quite excited about her trip. She was pretty good looking, too.
‘What a shame,’ he thought ‘what a terrible thing to do to someone.’ He remembered that the man had called her ‘Clarissa, Darling’.
He looked at her. “Clarissa, I hope I can I will get the bastard that did this to you. I tell you this, I am certainly going to try like hell.’
Hallen knew that with some luck they could fnd out a lot about this poor woman. They could certainly find out what it was that killed her. At least he hoped so. He suspected that she was dead before she was thrown in the water. But, she could have been drowned if she had been thrown in weighted and still alive. But that would take a sever blow or something else to make it possible. Although he hadn’t done a real examination, he saw no obvious contusions, no marks that would indicate strangulation or anything like that. Hallen guessed that she may have been drugged. He considered that quite likely since there were no obvious bullet holes or knife wound. Hopefully, Collings and the coroner would find out what had been used to kill her. It might be good to know.
Hallen was formulating an action plan. First he would visit the sketch artist and generate a picture of the woman’s traveling companion. Then he would have someone contact the airlines and see what he could develop. Then he would fax the picture of the man to Murchinson and have him canvas Eliana’s firm, and explore any other area he might think of. It was possible that while they were waiting for Eliana to fulfill her notice requirements, that she and Carl had met some of the staff at the Antiques store. It was worth checking out, he felt sure. If Mrs. Morgan had met the man, and could tie them together, that would really be an important development.
Hallen thought about the flight to the states. All that sexual activity. The girl was pretty brazen about it, too. Didn’t bother to cover it up much. I think she must have had him coming every hour on the hour. That, Hallen reflected, would be a bit much for even a younger man. It reminded him of the old joke: "What every man wishes for most is a nympho whose father owns a liquor store.”
If that gal wasn't a nympho, she was pretty close. Hallen looked up from the corpse.
“This woman is British. She sat in front of me on the flight from London last week. I think her name is Clarissa, at least when I saw her on the flight, that’s what the guy she was with called her. Listen, send her to pathology. Have them check her mouth, her vagina and her anus for semen. Might not be any, since she was in the water, but maybe we can get lucky, and find some trace. That would give us a DNA sample, and that might come in handy some time in the future. I’m going to the sketch artist and have him do a drawing of the man she was with. I’ve got a pretty good memory of what he looked like."
Once Carl realized his destiny - that his twisted psyche demanded the chase of women and their destruction after he had used them to his fill - he decided that that made him completely vulnerable to the actions of the police. He felt that he had to prepare himself for the contingency that at some point he would be found out ... and that he had to have a way to deal with it, to drop out of sight, out of the world, as it were.
He pondered about this, at great length, and then he heard of the Cu Chi tunnels the Vietcong had developed to use in the Vietnam War and the methods Hussein and other despots had developed to protect themselves, to hide themselves if necessary. They created what were called spider holes. Carl decided to do the same for himself while he could--as a precaution against capture. He also decided to do it all himself...no help, no body to know about it.
He got the plans, through a variety of sources, so they could not be traced back to him, in any way. Then he started to do his thing. He selected a spot, about 200 yards from his house, with a view of he house and the driveway. Slowly, he acquired the materials he would need to build himself a spider hole. He bought the materials from lumberyards and building supply dealers in several states. He had a heavy-duty van, doubly sprung to make it ride well with a heavy load, and drove all over a 300-mile area to get the things he might need. He even bought a backhoe, which he hid in one of the out buildings on his property. His acreage was so large he could work the hoe as he wished, and no one would hear him or see him. He taught himself to operate the machine, and then slowly began his excavation. It took him months, but slowly he built a place for himself underground...equipped with all the things he needed for several months of survival. He equipped it with battery driven radios and TV, a small soundless generator that needed little venting. He did everything he could to cover all contingencies.
The spider hole, once finished, was invisible from the ground. Even if you stood on the camouflaged plug that was the opening, you would not know it was there. It was as safe a hidey-hole as a desperate or determined man could create. It made Carl feel good. This was a way out, if the bastards started to close in.
Chapter 8 in March issue.
