The Red Mohawk Read online

  ‘Thanks Luce.’

  ‘Gotta go. My switchboard is lighting up.’

  The line went dead. Candy replaced the receiver on the wall and turned around just in time to see Reg walk back into the kitchen holding his rifle. Smoke was drifting gently out of the barrel.

  ‘Any luck?’ she asked him.

  Reg shook his head.

  ‘Did you miss him completely?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Red Mohawk.’

  ‘Oh him. No, he was half a mile down the road by the time I got out there. I did manage to hit the girl though. Got her in the arm I think. It knocked her down but she got back up and carried on running. After that she was too far away for me to get a clean shot.’

  Candy reeled back in shock. ‘You shot the girl?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Did you see the birthmark on her face?’

  ‘No. What birthmark?’

  ‘Never mind. Just hand me the phone. I gotta make a call.’

  Fourteen

  ‘Okay, so religion ain’t exactly my thing,’ Munson admitted. ‘Tell me, what the fuck is the slaughter of the innocents?’

  Fonseca could have revelled in knowing something that Munson didn’t, but she was gracious enough not to, even after he had inflicted all his tedious film knowledge on her. Besides, gloating about something she had learned about in Sunday School when she was about eight years old wasn’t her style. She showed him the page from the bible that had the underlined passage on it.

  ‘You’ve heard of King Herod, right?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of him, but that’s about as far as my knowledge of him goes.’

  ‘Well he was this King a few thousand years ago,’ Fonseca said, as if she were explaining the story to a child. ‘And when he was told that the son of God had just been born he sent out soldiers to murder all the boys under the age of two years old?’

  ‘Where the hell was this?’ Munson asked.

  ‘Bethlehem. Or Jerusalem. I can’t remember exactly. It’s not that important.’

  ‘It’s not?’

  Fonseca pulled a phone out from inside her slim black jacket. She used it to take a quick photo of the underlined passage in the bible, and then turned back to Munson. ‘To cut a long story short, King Herod was told that a boy had been born in Bethlehem.’

  ‘Or Jerusalem.’

  ‘Do you want to hear this story or not?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Herod was warned that this boy was to become the King of the Jews and would eventually overthrow him. So he sent his men into Bethlehem and ordered them to slaughter all of the boys under the age of two years old.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘All of it. It makes no sense. What kind of idiot would order the slaughter of a load of innocent kids?’

  ‘A King, a president, a prime minister….’

  ‘Do you ever get tired of being smug?’ Munson interrupted.

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Never. So what does it mean? Are you saying Joey Conrad is intending on killing a bunch of innocent kids?’

  ‘Well at this point we don’t even know for sure that it was him who underlined it.’

  ‘True,’ Munson agreed. ‘But let’s assume it was him, just for convenience sake. After all, we’ve not got a lot else to go on here. What would possibly make him want to kill young boys?’

  Fonseca shut the book and placed it back in the top drawer of the bedside table. She closed the drawer. ‘I think that’s a question for his psychiatrist when she gets here,’ she said. ‘Joey Conrad might not be intending to kill young boys. So far he’s only slaughtered an innocent police officer.’

  ‘So far,’ said Munson thinking hard. ‘But this King Herod fella, you say he was only trying to kill the baby Jesus, right?’

  ‘So the bible says.’

  ‘And why did he want to kill Jesus again? I’m struggling with that part. What possible harm could a baby do to a King?’

  ‘Well nothing,’ said Fonseca. ‘As a baby, Jesus obviously couldn’t hurt Herod, or defend himself. But Herod feared he would be a threat when he was a grown man. Far easier to kill him as a baby.’

  Munson sniggered.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Fonseca asked.

  ‘It’s just that it sounds like a rip off of the Terminator if you ask….’

  The words had barely fallen out of his mouth before he realised what he had said. Fonseca realised it too.

  ‘What were those films again?’ she asked.

  ‘Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Terminator.’

  Munson walked back to the DVD’s he had been flicking through earlier. Without even picking one up he suddenly spun back around and faced Fonseca, his eyes showing signs of life. Something was going through that hung-over brain of his and it was working fast.

  ‘What is it?’ Fonseca asked.

  ‘He killed that cop last night with a meat cleaver, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The killer’s weapon of choice was a meat cleaver.’

  ‘Really, because even though I’ve never seen it I would have thought his weapon of choice was a chainsaw.’

  ‘Sure, to the uninitiated. But anyone who’s seen the film a few times would know that he uses a meat cleaver more often than not, because he’s chopping up his victims like meat because he’s a cannibal.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘I was just thinking that maybe he’s re-enacting parts of these films. He’s wearing a mask, that’s an obvious one. He’s used a meat cleaver, which is slightly less obvious.’

  ‘Maybe more of a tribute,’ Fonseca suggested.

  ‘They all wore masks, technically anyway,’ Munson pondered aloud. ‘I mean the Halloween killer and the Texas Chainsaw guy, they definitely wore masks. And the Terminator was a cyborg with a human face.’

  ‘So the mask is a tribute, and the meat cleaver is a tribute? What are you getting at? I don’t see how this is gonna help us catch him?’

  ‘Well the Terminator and the Halloween killer were both hunting for a young woman. The Halloween guy, Michael Myers, turned up in a town called Haddonfield. He was looking for his long lost sister or something. But the Terminator showed up in Los Angeles I think, and he was trying to kill a woman before she gave birth to the saviour of mankind.’

  Munson looked like he’d talked himself into a corner and had no idea where his theory was taking him.

  ‘You’re clutching at straws,’ said Fonseca.

  They were interrupted by a woman’s voice. ‘Actually he might be on to something there.’

  Fonseca spun round to see who had spoken. Standing behind her at the entrance to the cell was a lady in her mid thirties. She was wearing a long white coat over a blue tunic. Her long brown hair was scraped back into a ponytail. Her face was pale and narrow, highlighted only by her bright red lipstick. She smiled at them.

  ‘Hi, I’m Dr Carter,’ she said. ‘We need to talk. There are a few things about Joey Conrad that you should know about.’

  Fifteen

  Baby raced out into the parking lot. She had no idea what the best direction was to run. She contemplated her earlier plan of hiding in the back of the pickup truck. That was now far too risky and just plain stupid. Her number one priority was to get as far away from the diner as possible. Running along the highway was one option, but if the masked killer had a car it wasn’t necessarily the smartest thing to do. She chose instead to run across the road to the open field on the other side.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sprinted anywhere. But as she rushed across the road she was galloping for all she was worth. Unfortunately she didn’t have much in the way of grace as a runner. Her arms and legs flailed around wildly, hindering her progress and tiring her out. In the diner’s parking lot all of the other vehicles were pulling away and speeding off down the
highway, with the exception of the yellow car with the red stripe and the red pickup truck. The pickup truck may have belonged to Skidmark or Termite. As for the yellow and red stock car, well that was almost certainly the car of the killer.

  The field stretched on for as far as she could see. Its tall grass swayed gently in the wind, oblivious to the urgency of everyone and everything around it. As Baby charged through it she could feel it brushing harshly against her ankles. It was almost knee high and made running that little bit more strenuous. Its length also hid just how uneven the ground underfoot was. With every stride she took she felt her feet landing awkwardly, twisting one way or the other. An ankle sprain or a fall was highly likely, but it was a risk she had to take.

  She was barely thirty metres into the field when she heard the first gunshot. It rang out loud from a fair distance behind her. She didn’t dare look back but she hoped that someone had shot the masked madman.

  A gust of wind blew hard in her face as she was attempting to take a deep breath. Oddly the wind seemed to knock the air out of her lungs rather than fill them. She was already slowing down, losing energy and momentum with every stride. She only covered another twenty metres before the second gunshot rang out. It was followed by the sound of a police siren. There seemed to be all kinds of chaos going on behind her, but she had the horrible sensation that if she turned around to take a look she would see the skull-faced psychopath chasing after her. If he was anything like the masked killer in most horror movies he’d be walking really slowly but still catching up with her. She promised herself that if she tripped over she’d do the sensible thing and get straight back up, unlike most of the characters in Slasher movies, who inexplicably start crawling along the ground instead of getting back up and running.

  As her breathing became heavier and her legs weaker she feared she wouldn’t be able to carry on for much longer. But she was determined to keep going for as long as her stamina would allow.

  SNAP!

  She didn’t know exactly what the sound was but she suddenly felt like someone had hit her across the arm with a hot metal poker. Whatever it was it spun her around. She stumbled and lost her footing completely, turning over on her ankle.

  For a short but sickening few seconds all she saw was an endless repetition of

  Grass,

  Blue sky,

  Grass,

  Blue sky,

  Grass.

  THUD

  Grass.

  She landed face first in the stuff. Fortunately the grass was high enough to hide her from the road. For a few seconds she lay still, stunned by the fall and unsure what caused it. She rolled onto her side, most of her body staying concealed beneath the long grass. Her heart was pounding, and she was still breathing heavily. And she was dizzy from all the flashes of blue sky and grass.

  But most of all her arm hurt. Just above the elbow. It felt like a wild animal had taken a bite out of it and now a parasite was sucking away at the blood. She rolled onto her back and stared up into the clear blue sky. The sun was shining brightly. But now her hearing wasn’t working quite as well as before. She could still catch the sound of the police siren and maybe even the echo of the gunfire and the wail of screeching tyres. But everything had become blurred and the noises were melding together. But then right out of the blue a man’s voice spoke clearly and confidently to her.

  ‘Get up! Run!’ he said. She recognised the voice. In her mind’s eye she saw the face of the man who had spoken. He looked serious. He was serious. ‘Do as you’re told,’ he said.

  She took a few deep breaths and pressed down on the ground with her good arm to steady herself as she climbed back to her feet. She was all alone in the middle of the field. There was no man in sight. A second bout of major dizziness came over her as she stood up. Her head felt like it was covered in candyfloss, sticky and cloudy. She grabbed at her injured arm in the hopes of brushing away whatever it was that seemed to be causing the pain. The palm of her hand touched on something wet but warm on her sleeve. She looked at her palm and saw that it was covered in blood. Her blood. A stream of it was oozing out of a gash in her right arm, just above the elbow. It looked like someone had ripped the sleeve on her sweatshirt open with a rusty knife.

  The sight of the blood panicked her. How had it happened? She took a quick look back at the diner. There was no sign of the Red Mohawk but that didn’t mean he wasn’t around somewhere, maybe hiding in the long grass.

  The diner seemed a long way off in the distance now. The yellow car with the red stripe was gone. In its place standing and staring at her was an old guy in a white undershirt with a sweaty bald head. It was hard to focus on him, but Baby thought she recognised him as a customer from The Beaver Palace. He was brandishing a long rifle and it looked like he was reloading it. She touched the blood on her arm again. Had this man fired his rifle at her?

  Fuck it. He must have done.

  She heard a man’s voice again. ‘Run Baby run.’

  That was good advice. She turned her back on the old guy with the rifle. Summoning every last ounce of strength she had she carried on running as far into the fields as she could.

  She heard no more gunfire. In fact she heard nothing over the sound of her own breathing which had become increasingly loud. Eventually when she could run no more she stopped to catch her breath. The highway and the diner had become a small blot on the horizon behind her. No one seemed to be pursuing her any more. Even so, she had to keep on moving because her arm was pumping out blood, not profusely, but enough for her to feel the constant throb of it. She pressed her sleeve hard against it in the hope of slowing down the bleeding. The sleeve already had a dark patch of blood licked into it and it was spreading.

  The further she walked the weaker her legs became. Her knees began to ache and her feet felt heavy. Just when it felt like she could go no further she spotted a small cottage up ahead on the horizon. Mustering up all the energy she had left she carried on towards it, her walk becoming more of a stagger with every step she took.

  By the time she reached the cottage the feeling of dizziness had turned to nausea. She tried to take deep breaths and blinked desperately in order to stop herself from passing out. If she could just get to the cottage and sit down for a few minutes she was sure she would be fine. A drink of water wouldn’t go amiss either.

  The cottage was old and run down. The walls were made of rickety white panelled wood and it had a thatched roof that had seen better days. Around its perimeter was a shaky wooden white picket fence. Halfway along the fence was an open gate. She staggered over to it and rested her left hand on one of the wooden panels, inadvertently smearing some blood onto the fence. She didn’t dare to use her other hand because her arm was too weak from the bullet wound.

  There were several small square windows along the side of the cottage, some with net curtains behind them that she couldn’t see through. At the far end there was a narrow red door. The paintwork on the door was chipped in several places, showing signs of age.

  She staggered up to the door. Before she could knock on it, it opened inwards. A man’s face peered around the door’s edge. He was in his early forties. His face was complicated. None of his features were quite where they ought to be. He had big cheeks and thick sideburns. His hair was scruffy and covered his ears. And he looked at her through a pair of narrow green eyes, doused with suspicion.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, his mouth moving out of synch with his words.

  Baby struggled to get an answer out, barely managing to make herself heard as she said, ‘I think I’ve been shot.’

  The man looked at her arm. She held up her bloodied left hand.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘You need medical attention.’

  He opened his door wide and stepped out. Baby blinked a few times to be sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. The man was wearing a blue outfit and a red cape. He was dressed as Superman, although thankfully he was wearing red shorts instead of speedos. He was only
slightly taller than Baby, standing at little over five and a half feet. He hurried behind her, slipped an arm around her back and grabbed her gently by the wrist.

  ‘Here, you look unsteady on your feet,’ he said.

  ‘I feel like I’m going to faint.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Supergirl’s got you now. Let’s get you inside.’

  ‘Don’t you mean Superman?’

  He didn’t answer. Not that it mattered too much. Baby felt relieved just to have found someone so welcoming and compassionate. He had taken great care not to squeeze her injured arm too tightly, and for that she was grateful. He led her through the open doorway. ‘I’ll put some tea on for you,’ he said. ‘Then let’s get this injury tended to.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Baby. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  She stepped into a kitchen with a dusty red tiled floor that was cold underfoot. There was a large wooden table in the centre of the room with nothing on it but a brown teapot on a large wicker coaster. There were two large wooden chairs, one on either side of the table.

  ‘Sit yourself down,’ the man said. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. A cup of sugary tea will sort you out.’

  ‘I don’t take sugar.’

  ‘Maybe not sweetheart, but you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ll have to make an exception this one time. The sugar will do you good. It’ll keep you awake and restore some red blood cells.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  He helped her over to the nearest chair, pulled it out with his free hand and saw to it that she collapsed down onto it and not the floor. She was relieved to finally be sitting down. Being in the care of someone who seemed to know what he was doing calmed her down a little. She managed to get her breath back and her head began to clear. Much of the anxiety she had felt when she first saw the blood on her arm was subsiding.

  ‘You can call me Litgo,’ she heard the man say. ‘I’m not really Supergirl.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Behind her she heard him close the front door. Then she heard him slide a deadbolt across, securing it shut. She looked over her shoulder and saw him slipping a thick rusty metal key into the lock. He twisted it and another bolt clicked into place. He tucked the key back in a pocket on his red shorts and turned around to face her.