The Red Mohawk Read online

  No chance of any survivors there. Even the radio died a sudden death. He ceased fire and turned his attentions on the third car. It was still upright but the hood had been crushed. It was half its normal length, courtesy of it bashing into the trunk of the front car. Inside it two cops were slumped forwards in the front seats, both their faces were bloodied. Neither of them was conscious but the Red Mohawk took no chances. He aimed the Uzi at the pair of them and opened fire again. The two cops bodies juddered erratically as if they were body-popping. The fuckers were dead now. For sure.

  With the Uzi raging hot in his hand the Mohawk eased off the trigger and ceased firing. He looked around and listened intently to the highway. Someone was still alive. Somewhere. Some fucker was moving.

  He noticed that on the far side of the final squad car the back door was open. He strode around the car, Uzi raised, looking for any sign of a survivor. It didn’t take long to spot one.

  Crawling on his hands and knees into the desert wasteland at the side of the highway, leaving a trail of blood behind him was an overweight balding man with a serious case of builders crack. His baggy blue jeans were hanging around below his buttocks, dragging his underpants down too. His white sweatshirt was covered in dirt and traces of blood. He had obviously been seriously injured in the pile up and was in no fit state to walk or run from the scene. He looked back and saw the sight of the masked killer behind him, Uzi in hand, primed and ready. The man whimpered but said nothing. He continued his fruitless attempt to crawl into the desert, hoping maybe he would be spared.

  He didn’t stop crawling until the dark cold shadow of the Red Mohawk loomed over him, shielding him from the afternoon sun.

  The man rolled over onto his back. He was a pathetic, disgusting mess. A feeble excuse for a human being. His life, not worth a jot, no doubt wasted on booze, junk food and bad television. He raised a hand to shield himself from a glint of sunlight reflecting in his eyes from over the shoulder of the Mohawk.

  ‘Please,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m not a cop.’

  The Red Mohawk raised his Uzi and pointed it at the man’s head, then asked, ‘So what are you?’

  ‘I’m not a cop,’ the man repeated. ‘I’m just a guy. I was in for a ride along. I’m just a local nobody.’

  ‘A local?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Wrong answer.’

  The Red Mohawk had heard all he needed to hear. He opened fire on the guy’s face. Bullets punctured holes through his skull. His blood and brains sprayed out all over the road.

  Eighteen

  Baby could feel someone’s hand stroking some strands of her hair across her forehead. Her hair felt damp and clammy, her brow sticky with sweat. She opened her eyes. She was lying on her back on a sofa looking up at the faces of two men. Their features were blurred. She blinked a few times and tried to rub her eyes. That was when she remembered the gunshot wound in her arm. She winced as a stinging sensation raced through her.

  ‘It’s okay Baby, you’re safe now,’ said one of the men.

  She used her left hand to rub her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her vision cleared and she noticed that her bloodied hand had been washed clean. She focussed on one of the men. It was Litgo, the odd fellow in the Superman costume who had let her into his home.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’ she asked.

  ‘About half an hour,’ Litgo replied.

  She couldn’t really see the other man so she twisted her head around to get a better look at him. He had shaggy brown hair that hung in front of his eyes because he was leaning over her. She soon recognised him. It was Benny Stansfield, a senior cop who paid regular visits to The Beaver Palace. He smiled at her.

  ‘You’re gonna be fine Baby,’ Benny said. His voice was calm and reassuring, a character trait she associated with him from their previous meetings.

  ‘I think I’ve been shot,’ she said.

  ‘Yes you have. But there’s no need to panic. You got quite lucky because the bullet only really grazed your arm. It passed right through so you’ve got no shrapnel or debris in there that could cause an infection.’

  ‘Wow, lucky me,’ said Baby with a hint of sarcasm. She’d taken offence to the suggestion that she’d been lucky.

  ‘Benny smiled. ‘Take it easy there, tiger,’ he said. ‘You’ve had quite a morning. But I promise you, you’re safe now. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  She looked back over at Litgo. His smile was still very unsettling due to his lack of front teeth. For the first time she noticed something else about him that she’d somehow missed before. He had a pair of fake breasts underneath his Superman outfit. Well, she assumed they were fake. Either that or he was in the middle of a sex change operation. She remembered him referring to himself as Supergirl earlier. It made sense now. He was wearing a Supergirl outfit, not a Superman one. That’s why he had the red shorts instead of the tight red underpants over his blue tights. What a weirdo.

  Benny was much more approachable. She remembered having sex with him at The Beaver Palace once a few months earlier. He had been quite pleasant and a considerate client.

  ‘Did you catch the guy in the mask?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ve got a bunch of guys on the tail of that lunatic right now,’ said Benny with a warm smile. ‘He won’t get far. His five minutes of fun terrorising this town are about to come to an end.’

  ‘Good.’ Baby rolled her legs off the sofa and sat upright. ‘I felt like he was after me. He stared right at me in the diner just before he started killing people.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Benny. ‘Because I was wondering if maybe you knew him? He killed your friend Arnold, and from what I’ve been told, Arnold was his first victim. Have you any idea why that was? Did you or Arnold do anything to rile him up?’

  ‘No. He just walked up to Arnold with a meat cleaver and attacked him.’

  ‘So was he already in the diner when you arrived?’

  ‘Yes. He was sitting near the jukebox. Like I said, he stared right at me. I turned away and that’s when he put the mask on and came towards us.’

  ‘You saw him without the mask on?’

  Baby nodded. ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Can you give me a description of what he looked like?’

  ‘He was just a normal looking guy with dark hair and a creepy stare.’

  ‘That’s good, Baby. We’ll get you to look at some mugshots down at the station later and see if you can identify him, if you feel up to it that is?’

  ‘I do feel a bit better,’ said Baby. ‘But my arm feels really heavy and numb.’

  ‘See,’ said Litgo grinning. ‘That sugary tea I gave you has worked a treat. And I bandaged up your arm nice and tight to stop the bleeding.’

  Baby looked at her arm. Her right sleeve had been ripped off just below the shoulder. But sure enough the wound was wrapped tightly in white bandage, although a trickle of blood had seeped through it. She remembered thinking that Litgo was a touch creepy when she first met him, particularly when, just before she had passed out, he had called her by her name.

  ‘How did you know my name?’ she asked him again.

  Litgo glanced at Benny before answering. ‘I got a call from the folks who work at the diner. They said you were heading my way.’

  ‘Oh. How did they know my name?’

  Benny reached out and grabbed her by the hand. ‘Someone there recognised you,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky so many people in town care about you. You’re a popular young lady. Now come on, see if you can get up. Then we can get you out of here.’

  Baby stood up slowly. Her legs and in particular her knees felt stiff from all the running she’d done earlier. She wasn’t used to that kind of exercise. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m taking you back to The Beaver Palace,’ said Benny.

  ‘Shouldn’t we go to the police station first? Or hospital?’

  ‘Sure. We can go anywhere you want. Come on, my car is just outside.
But we need to hurry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I said so.’

  Nineteen

  Milena Fonseca and Dr Carter had been watching the news on a small portable television on the wall of the asylum’s staff room ever since Jack Munson had dashed off in the direction of B Movie Hell. The latest news flash was even more alarming than the last. Things in B Movie Hell seemed to be getting worse by the minute. More cops were dead, killed in a high-speed pursuit of The Red Mohawk. And another civilian, some poor sucker on a ride-along with the cops, had been murdered too for good measure. Three police cars were wrecked too. But the manner of the latest slaughter was deeply concerning.

  ‘Where the hell did he get a gun?’ Fonseca asked aloud, hoping for an answer from herself more than she was expecting one from Dr Carter. ‘From what they’re saying here it sounds like he had a machine gun. Where would he get automatic weapons around here?’

  Dr Carter didn’t answer the question. ‘You’re not drinking your coffee,’ she said, nodding at the rapidly cooling red mug of filth on the table in front of Fonseca.

  ‘It’s a tad strong for my liking,’ Fonseca replied. ‘Can you think of anywhere around here where he could get a gun? I mean he only escaped yesterday, right? And already he’s got a mask, a meat cleaver and a very powerful firearm. Yet no one seems to be reporting them as stolen. He steals a car and its reported in minutes because he murders the car salesman. But the gun, the clothes, the mask and the meat cleaver, nothing. Not a peep. Where did he get them?’

  ‘Have your read his file?’ Dr Carter asked.

  ‘Every word of it.’

  ‘Well then you shouldn’t be too surprised by how resourceful he is. When they brought him here it was clear he was very well trained in all aspects of military stuff. He’s highly intelligent, resourceful and motivated, he just doesn’t have a grasp on reality. The file explains most of it in my opinion.’

  ‘It doesn’t explain how he got a machine gun.’

  Dr Carter shrugged. ‘Maybe he found it at the car lot when he stole the car?’

  ‘That’s unlikely, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. What I do know is that your agency trained him up to be a combination of James Bond, Jason Bourne, Rambo, Freddy Krueger and God knows who else. He’s a man for any given situation. He was supposed to be the ultimate soldier. A man who could do kung fu, work undercover, infiltrate enemy fortresses, fly fighter planes, disguise himself as anything from a bartender to a female wrestler. And I should think they taught him how to acquire weapons at short notice. Your people trained him, so don’t be sitting there asking me how he managed to get his hands on all this stuff. You should know better than I do.’

  Fonseca leant back and raised her hands defensively. ‘Woah, steady on. This nonsense happened before my time.’

  ‘Of course. But you should still know more about it than me.’

  ‘You’d think so, but someone seems to have covered a lot of it up. You know much more about Joey Conrad than I do.’

  ‘So it would seem, Agent Fonseca. But I really can’t tell you how he acquires weapons or how he does kung fu. What I can tell you about is his mental state and his erratic behaviour.’

  ‘Kung fu,’ said Fonseca, glancing back up at the news on the portable television. ‘Does that mean you’ve seen him do kung fu in here?’

  ‘No. But I’m sure he could.’

  ‘Has he ever been violent in here?’

  ‘Just once.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A few weeks ago he beat up another patient.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Neither of them were willing to talk about it.’

  ‘Any idea what triggered the fight?’

  ‘No. I didn’t even give it much thought at the time. But now that Conrad has escaped I think I can guess what it might have been about.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘The guy he beat up is called Dominic Touretto. A couple of months ago Touretto escaped from here. He was on the run for about a week before we got him back. He was picked up by the cops in B Movie Hell. Anyway, I guess it’s possible Conrad wanted to know how Touretto escaped so he could do the same thing. Maybe he was trying to beat the information out of him.’

  ‘And how did Touretto escape?’

  ‘We can’t work it out. We think he just climbed over the wall, but we’re not sure. No one escaped from this place for years. Now we have two escaped patients in two months. Not very good is it?’

  Fonseca finally felt like she was getting somewhere. ‘Why didn’t I know about this before?’ she asked.

  ‘Why would you know?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Fonseca reached into her pocket and pulled her cell phone out. She flicked through a few menus, accessing the confidential files she had on all of the inmates at Grimwald’s. ‘There’s nothing about this in Touretto’s file,’ she said, eyeing Dr Carter suspiciously.

  ‘About his escape?’

  ‘No. About his altercation with Joey Conrad.’

  Dr Carter looked offended. ‘Well it wasn’t a fight worth putting on record. It was the kind of incident that is best sorted out with a handshake. We can’t make official documents of every fight that goes on in this place. We’d never get anything done.’

  Fonseca looked around at the state of the staff room and figured that they didn’t get much done anyway. ‘So you think Conrad wanted to know how Touretto escaped, in order to plan his own escape?’

  ‘Like I said, I didn’t at the time. But it makes perfect sense now.’

  ‘Yes it does. Can you take me to see Touretto please?’

  ‘I can, but be on your guard, he’s very unpredictable.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In every way.’

  Twenty

  Munson was eager to get into B Movie Hell as soon as he could. It hadn’t taken him too long to shake off Milena Fonseca. Whatever it was that Devon Pincent wanted him to do in B Movie Hell, he was pretty sure it would need to be done without Fonseca seeing it and reporting back to headquarters. He’d grown tired of playing dumb and making daft wisecracks to give Fonseca the impression he wasn’t a competent agent. And he’d made a big deal about Joey Conrad’s potential links to movies in the hope she would hang around at the asylum for a while trying to follow up on the theory. He’d bought himself some time. He hoped it would be enough.

  The highway was deserted, so Munson took the opportunity to call Pincent on his cell phone. After an irritating wait to be put through by the switchboard operator at headquarters he heard Pincent’s voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘Devon Pincent. How can I help you?’

  ‘Devon, it’s Jack. I’m heading into B Movie Hell and I’m on my own. What’s going on?’

  For a few seconds Pincent didn’t respond. When he did, he lowered his voice, practically to a mumble. ‘Sorry Jack but if this is a personal call, you’ll have to contact me at home. In fact I’m heading home now. Why don’t you call me there in about an hour?’

  ‘At home?’

  ‘Yeah. You’ve got my number, right?’

  ‘Umm, yeah.’

  ‘Okay. Bye.’

  Pincent hung up.

  Charming.

  Munson tossed his cell phone onto the passenger seat. What the fuck was going on? Whatever it was, it was serious enough and “off the record” enough that Pincent couldn’t talk about it on the company phones.

  Up ahead he saw the bridge that led to B Movie Hell. It was a beast of a bridge for such a hick town. A good fifty feet below it was a very wide lake. A police car was parked across the entrance to the bridge, preventing him from driving onto it. One police officer was sitting in the driver seat of the car. Another officer was outside adjusting the population figure at the bottom of a road sign that read –

  WELCOME TO B MOVIE HELL

  POPULATION 366_

  Munson pulled up short of the bridge. The officer who was adjustin
g the population sign stopped what he was doing. He walked over to the front of Munson’s car, holding a hand up to warn him not to move.

  Munson wound down his window and held out his FBI badge. ‘Hi, I’m Jack Munson FBI, you should be expecting me.’

  The officer came around to the window and took a look at the FBI badge. ‘Okay, wait here a second,’ he said.

  He walked back to the police car that was obstructing the road and spoke with the officer sitting at the wheel. A brief conversation ended with both officers eyeing Munson suspiciously before the driver reversed a few metres, leaving the way clear for Munson to proceed onto the bridge. They waved him through. Munson didn’t hang around. He gave them a grateful wave back and cruised onto the bridge.

  Once he was over the bridge he drove for another five miles down the highway until he saw The Alaska Roadside Diner. There were two police squad cars parked outside it. He steered his Mercedes off the road and parked up next to one of them, facing the large window at the front of the diner. He had a perfect view of all that was going on inside. Three cops were standing by the diner’s counter. They were in deep discussion with a buxom blonde in a pink waitress outfit. Munson killed the engine and reached into his jacket pocket. His fingers settled on his concealed bottle of rum. He pulled it out and took a swig from it. It tasted good. He savoured the taste for a few moments before slipping the bottle back into his jacket. He sighed heavily and climbed out of the car. In the distance he heard the sound of police sirens blaring. Joey Conrad was still wreaking havoc somewhere.

  He walked past the front window and up to the diner’s entrance, feeling invigorated by the taste of the rum. The three cops and the waitress spotted him. They stopped talking and turned to look at him. They had been so engrossed in whatever they were discussing that they hadn’t even noticed him pull up outside.