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  The Impaler

  ( Sam Markham - 2 )

  Gregory Funaro

  A Killer Without A Conscience

  The crimes are barbaric. The victims are found in desolate rural areas, naked and impaled on long wooden stakes. There are no clues. No DNA evidence. Just a message, etched over and over again on one broken body: I have returned. Without Control FBI Agent Sam Markham's last investigation ended with a serial killer's death and Sam's promotion. But back then, Sam had luck on his side. This time, the murderer's methods are evolving too fast, his bloodlust growing too swiftly. This time, no one is safe.

  Without Limits

  With each mutilated body, new depths to The Impaler's brutality are revealed. And as the clues finally slip into place, Sam will discover how easy it is to cross the line from hunter--to hunted. . .

  Praise for Gregory Funaro and The Sculptor

  A stone cold thrill ride! Unique and unexpected twists make this one a keeper! --Lisa Jackson

  Funaro provides clever plotting and plenty of suspense. --John Lutz

  Fast-paced, exciting. . .Funaro delivers gasp-out-loud terror and relentless suspense. A genuine page-turner! --Kevin O'Brien

  INSIDE A KILLER’S LAIR

  Markham felt a cool breeze rush past, and after a moment heard a clanging sound coming from another part of the cellar. He cracked open his eyes and quickly scanned his body. He was tied up, but not down to anything; he could roll over onto his back if he wished. Yes, he had to be in the Impaler’s cellar—the cement walls, the trickling sound of the blood and water running down the floor drain.

  Footsteps approaching again and Markham shut his eyes—another cool breeze and the sense of movement behind him. His mind spun furiously; he was starting to panic, felt as if any second he would open his eyes and try to bolt—when all of a sudden he felt the Impaler’s arms slipping underneath his torso.

  Markham’s muscles tensed. He thought surely the Im-paler had to have felt them tense, too—but a moment later he was being lifted off the workbench.

  I’m to be next, he thought. Whatever the Impaler did to the others before he skewered them he intends to do to me …

  Books by Gregory Funaro

  THE SCULPTOR

  THE IMPALER

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  THE

  IMPALER

  GREGORY

  FUNARO

  Copyright © 2011 Gregory Funaro

  All rights reserved.

  For John Scognamiglio and Michael Combs

  O mighty lord! O exalted god of battle!

  Thou art brilliant in the bright heavens!

  Let me proclaim thy greatness!

  Let me bow in humility before thee!

  —Ancient Babylonian prayer

  Prologue

  Criminal defense attorney Randall Donovan had really stepped in it this time—was in the shit way over his head and sinking fast. The man in the ski mask would not answer, would not even listen to him.

  “I’m begging you!” Donovan screamed. “This hasn’t gone so far that there’s no turning back. I don’t know who you are—who your people are—but your beef isn’t with me. I swear, whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it!”

  Nothing. Only the flashing strobe light above his head; only the deafening pump of eighties music and occasionally what sounded like power tools coming from the next room. He recognized the tune from way-back-when in law school—Depeche Mode or New Order or some other shit band like that—but he couldn’t remember the name of the song or the band that sang the cover; didn’t even know there was a cover until he met the man in the ski mask. For the man in the ski mask had been cranking the two versions back to back for days, and now Randall Donovan knew all the lyrics by heart.

  “How could you think I ’d let you get away?

  When I came out of the darkness and told you who you are.”

  He was in the man’s cellar, naked and strapped to a chair. Of that much he was sure. The room was cold, the chair soft and cushiony like a dentist’s chair. Indeed, when he first woke up, Donovan thought for a moment that he was at the dentist’s—his senses dull, his vision cloudy as the steady pulse of the strobe light brought him slowly back to consciousness. Then the smell hit him. Two smells, really. A bitter, chemically smell—close, in his nostrils—and another underneath it: something foul, like rotting garbage.

  But now, days later, even though Randall Donovan’s senses were sharp, he could smell nothing but the vague odor of his own feces. His arms and legs were tied down, and there was a strap across his waist. And then there was the pain, the dull, heavy pain in the back of his head that throbbed like the drumbeat surrounding him. Despite the chilly temperature he was sweating badly, and the lines of strange symbols that the man had drawn all over his body were now all runny and drippy-looking.

  “I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heard me speak.

  Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  “I understand,” Donovan called out. “I get it. You think I’ve wronged you in some way. But I swear to you, on my kids, I don’t know what I did. Let’s talk this out! I’ll give you whatever you want!”

  “There were many who came before me, but now I’ve come at last,

  From the past into the future, I’m standing at your door.”

  Donovan let out a cry of frustration and struggled against the straps. He could move only his head, but the sharp pain at the base of his skull made him stop immediately. He didn’t remember the man in the ski mask hitting him at home in his driveway. Never even saw him coming. But when he awoke to the music and the strobe light some time later, the man in the ski mask gave him two Tylenols and a glass of water. They did nothing.

  That had been days ago now. How many days? He could not be sure. The man had given him Gatorade and some oatmeal to eat. He’d also adjusted the chair a few times so the cushion dropped out from underneath the lawyer’s buttocks. “Move your bowels,” was all he said, and placed a bucket underneath. Donovan tried pleading with him each time, but the man ignored him. And so Donovan moved his bowels. He’d also pissed himself many times, but the man in the ski mask didn’t seem too concerned about that.

  “I thought I heard you calling. You thought you heard me speak.

  Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  The spoken part was next—“Your body is the doorway,” the lead singer said—and then came the brief drum break. An opening, Donovan had learned.

  “Please listen to me!” he shouted.

  But then the chorus kicked in and Donovan was silent.

  “How could you think I ’d let you get away?

  Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  He had long ago given up calling for help; he knew that his only chance was to reason with the man in the ski mask. But how? Who was this guy? He couldn’t be one of Galotti’s boys. No, he’d gotten that greaseball guinea a sweet deal; got him back in the Witness Protection Program despite the stupid fuck’s narcotics rap. And he certainly couldn’t be a friend of the Colombian. Yeah, the Colombian’s buddies hacked up their enemies with machetes and fed them their own testicles. But the eighties music? The hieroglyphics all over his body? It didn’t add up. No, even though he hadn’t gotten the Colombian off, he’d prevented his family from being deported—and the motherfucker loved him for it!

  “Look for my light in the nighttime; I’ll look for your dark in the day.

  Let me stand inside your doorway and tell you who you are.”

  Donovan heard the sound of hammering coming from the next room, and all at once he felt the panic beginning to overwhelm him again—felt his chest tighten and his breathin
g quicken.

  “You thought you heard me calling. You thought you heard me speak.

  But tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  The spoken part was coming up again—“Your body is the doorway”—and Donovan was about to call out, when a voice in his head said, It’s pointless. Just count the papers and time your breathing to the counts.

  Yes, that had helped calm him before. How many times before? He wasn’t sure.

  “One … two … three …” he began, inhaling slowly between each number as the chorus asked over and over: “How could you think? How could you think?”

  The walls were completely covered with newspaper and magazine clippings of various shapes and sizes—some with headlines and grainy photographs; others just shadowy scraps of paper. There were also some large numbers tacked to the wall directly ahead of him—9:3 on one side of the door, 3:1 on the other. Donovan could see the numbers clearly. They had been all but burned onto his retinas. But during his days in the chair, he’d also discovered that he could read some of the articles if he focused long enough and blinked in time with the strobe—stuff about the war in Iraq; an archaeological find outside Baghdad; something about astrology and meteor showers. Sometimes the clippings rustled in the breeze from the open door—from the darkened hallway where yellow light often flashed—and Donovan sensed movement.

  “How could you think? How could you think?

  Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away …”

  The chorus began to fade, the hammering stopped, and the songs transitioned again for what had to be the millionth fucking time!—the distorted synthesizer, the popitty-pop-pop of the electric drums threatening once more to drive him insane. Donovan lifted his head, wincing from the pain, and for a split second thought he saw light, a passing shadow outside the doorway.

  “I know you’re there!” he shouted. The song’s intro was the quietest part; the best time, he’d learned, to call for the man in the ski mask. “Think about my kids, goddammit! They’re eight and six. Zach and Amber are their names. The best kids in the world. Zach plays baseball and Amber takes dancing lessons. We got her a tutu last Christmas. Jesus Christ, don’t do this to them!”

  Like the Depeche Mode or New Order or whatever-the-fuck song it was, Randall Donovan had played this tune many times, but he hadn’t seen the man in the ski mask since about twenty versions of the song ago.

  “Will you know him when he comes for you?” the man in the ski mask had asked.

  “I already told you, yes,” Donovan whined. “You want me to say it, okay, yes, I understand my mission. The equation, the nine and the three as written in the stars—I get it! How many more fucking times can I say it, you son of a bitch?”

  The man in the ski mask simply left him after that. Yes, that last time had to have been almost two hours ago now. And Donovan was running out of ideas. Sure, he’d already tried the tough-guy routine; tried the taunting and the name-calling and even thought for a moment about doing it all again. But then the hard-driving guitar of the cover version kicked in and he was silent—his throat dry, his voice hoarse, almost gone.

  He closed his eyes and gave in to the music; had learned that it was better just to take it, to just let it pass through him rather than to try to block it out. He had slept little during his days in the chair, but he had slept. He would try again—would close his eyes and just focus on his breaths. And he was doing quite well—had succeeded in steadying his breathing by about the halfway point in the song—when suddenly the dentist’s chair tipped backwards.

  Donovan let out a cry of surprise and opened his eyes, but the flash of the strobe blinded him momentarily.

  Then he felt the seat cushion drop—felt it peel away from his sticky buttocks.

  Donovan fought the pain at the base of his skull and raised his head just in time to catch the man in the ski mask tightening the straps around his legs, which were now raised and spread apart at right angles from his torso—just like his wife’s had been when she gave birth to Zach and Amber!

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Donovan shrieked.

  An icy chill hit his body, his muscles flash-frozen in terror. The man in the ski mask had stopped, stood gazing down at Donovan from between his legs. He now wore gloves and a sleeveless white robe cinched at the waist with a thick leather belt. Around his massive biceps were matching leather armbands, and the robe was open in a V that partially exposed his tattooed chest. Donovan couldn’t make out the tattoo, and was about to try reasoning with him again, when something else caught his eye.

  The man’s white robe was spattered with blood.

  Jesus Christ! Donovan thought. Whatever he’s about to do he’s done before!

  The man in the ski mask disappeared through the darkened doorway.

  “Please don’t do this!” Donovan called after him—cry-ing, his mind racing. “Please, God, seriously, I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ll give you all my account numbers right now. My Bank of America PIN is the birthdays of my kids: five-two-three, six-two-eight. Zach is May twenty-third and Amber is June twenty-eighth. It’s the same for my credit cards, my ING account, Franklin Templeton and Vanguard and my—they’re all on the uptick! And we have a house out near Asheville, too. Zach and Amber, they—oh my God, my—listen! Can you hear me? You’ve got some big money coming if you play this right. I swear I’ll help you link all the accounts. Tell me how you want to do it. Blindfold me and take me to the bank. No! Just get me out of here and we can get on the computer and I’ll dump everything off to you! Set up an offshore account in a phony name. I know how to do all that. I’m not fucking with you. I mean it. I won’t even look at your—”

  FACE!

  In the pulse of the strobe the man returned—this time, without his ski mask.

  Donovan gasped in horror.

  The man’s face!—no, not a face, but a terrifying, gaping mouth with fangs as long as fingers. And his eyes—floating fierce with yellow fire as they flashed down at him like lasers between his legs. Donovan’s mind began to crack, began to scream that this couldn’t be happening.

  “But I didn’t do anything!” he cried, the tears beginning to flow.

  Then he saw the long wooden stake in the man’s right hand.

  Donovan shrieked—struggled against his bonds and tried to move his hips—but the man only leveled the stake and ran him through.

  The pain was excruciating, incomprehensible in its brutality, but Donovan was silent, his breath ripped from his lungs as the stake tore him apart inside.

  “Tell me how could you think I ’d let you get away?”

  Mercifully, in the flash-flash-flash of the strobe, Randall Donovan went insane—watched his own death through the eyes of a madman before the stake finally burst from his neck and drained his life onto the floor.

  PART I

  ENTERING

  Chapter 1

  As always, Michelle sits gazing up at him from the bed—her eyes, the crystal of her wineglass sparkling in the candlelight.

  “To us,” she toasts. “You, me, and baby make three.”

  Strawberry Quik, he thinks. She always drinks strawberry Quik.

  “What’s a good name for a strawberry?” she asks.

  “I won’t let it happen,” he replies. “Not this time.”

  But the voice comes anyway—out of sight, from behind. Just like it always does.

  “How ’bout Elmer?” cackles the man in the closet. “Elmer Stokes is a good name for a strawberry.”

  He tries to turn around, tries to cock his hands back à la Spiderman and shoot the webs from his wrists like he did the last time, but his muscles are slow and rubbery today, and the hulking, square-headed figure of Elmer Stokes glides right past him.

  Pop-pop goes the gun—a silly pop that reminds him of bubble wrap—and then the blood begins to pour from his wife’s head.

  Elmer Stokes laughs and disappears into the kitchen.

  “You got anything to
eat, Agent Dipshit?” he calls out of sight. “I got the munchies from smoking your wife!”

  But he does not follow—knows from experience that it is better to stay with Michelle, to spend what little time he has left with her. He rushes to her side, takes her in his arms, and tries to plug up the bullet holes with the bouquet of pink tulips that had only moments ago been her glass of strawberry Quik.

  It’s cold, he thinks. Her blood is always so cold.

  “Cold like a shower to wake you up,” his wife spits through bloody lips.

  And with a start Sam Markham opened his eyes—his lungs clawing at the darkness as the wave of despair washed over him. He swallowed hard, gritted his teeth, and pushed the pressure in his sinuses down to his stomach. And after a moment he felt his breathing level off, felt his heart rate slow and his face relax.

  He rolled over and stared at the big orange numbers beside his bed—5:11 … 5:12 … 5:13—and when his mind had settled, he reached for the nightstand and checked the date on his BlackBerry.

  Wednesday, April 5th, he said to himself. Almost two weeks since the last one.

  He closed his eyes and made a mental note of it.

  Later, just after dawn, he sat at the kitchen table watching the ducks dawdle around the pond. He crunched his Wheaties methodically, in time with the waddle of a fat one that was poking around in the reeds. He had many years ago given up analyzing the dream itself; stopped trying to understand exactly why sometimes he saved Michelle and sometimes he didn’t.

  True, for a long time he hadn’t dreamed of her at all. Started up again only after that nonsense in Tampa. No need to ask why. No need to worry. No, just as he had learned to do in another lifetime, if he absolutely had to dream of his dead wife, he preferred instead to control and catalog his feelings afterwards. Like a scientist.