Francis Bryce knew he looked, in the vernacular, frosty. The hair, the shades, the clothes. He’d even worn the trench because he thought it added a little cachet.
Maybe the shoes had rubbed blisters on his heels, his toes, but that was the price he had to pay to blend in with the masses.
And he’d treated them, applied NuSkin.
He’d planned tonight so well, every step. He’d done his research, his due diligence, calculated the timing.
When he thought of the humiliation and ridicule he’d suffered here as a child, it seemed all the more vital he experience his triumph as a man in this place.
He had Seal-It for his hands. He’d taken a couple of his father’s condoms. It wouldn’t do to leave any of his DNA in or on the lucky slut he chose tonight.
As an added precaution he’d walked a full ten blocks from home before hailing a cab. He’d had the cab take him as far as SoHo before getting out, walking again, then hailing another to take him into Brooklyn.
Another walk, a third cab to Coney Island.
Not that the police had the slimmest clue, but 28.35 grams of prevention equaled 0.4536 liters of cure.
He’d do the same on his return. No public transportation, with their intrusive cameras.
Even with walking and switching cabs, he arrived at the amusement park before dark.
Understanding the value of blending in, he bought a Coney Island dog, a fizzy. Disgusting, of course, though he had to admit the first bite was delicious. Still, by the time he’d walked, wandered, and finished the dog, he felt vaguely nauseated.
His mother had bought him a dog on that long-ago visit. And blue cotton candy.
Sit on that bench, Francis. Sit right there like a good boy and eat your candy. Mommy just needs to talk to this man for a minute. Then we’ll ride all the rides!
Her dealer, he thought, though he hadn’t known that at the time. He’d sat, obedient, and fascinated by the texture of the blue fluff on the paper cone.
He found that taste so sweet, sting-his-teeth sweet, but ate it anyway.
Then she’d been so bright and happy. High as Ben Franklin’s kite. He’d ridden kiddie rides. Some she could ride with him, and did with her hair blowing while she went Wooo!
Then the bumpy cars, the revolving carousel, the spinning teacups, the swaying mini-Ferris wheel, the rocking rocket ships had combined to purge his stomach.
Other kids had giggled or made noises of disgust. And his mother had laughed and laughed.
Oh, Francis, isn’t that just like you! Puking up a fun afternoon.
He’d never gone on an amusement ride again.
Until.
Now dusk settled at last, and those of his age group began filtering in. For the most part, his on-site research proved, afternoons were for kids with their nannies or grannies or a parent or two. Families—a lot of tourists there who took selfies in front of the classic Wonder Wheel.
In daylight hours, he’d often observe old people—especially men—sitting on benches, looking out over the beach. Probably dreaming of the life they could have had if they’d had brains or luck or a whore wife who didn’t bitch and complain constantly.
They were at the end of the road anyway, so too late for them.
He was at the beginning of his road. In one year, one month, one week and three days, he’d turn eighteen. University waited, and he already had his pick there.
He’d wait until he was into his sophomore year before arranging a tragic accident for his father. Then all the money would be his, the house would be his. He’d sell the boat due to his mal de mer along with the house in the Hamptons, as he had no interest there.
He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He could buy as many whores as he wanted.
And make them do whatever he wanted.
He really wanted to experience—using the inaccurate vernacular—a blow job.
But tonight, he’d experience intercourse. He’d earned it. He deserved it.
Tonight, he’d finally know what it was like to have female breasts in his hands, to slide his tongue inside a girl’s mouth, to shove his erection inside her.
To penetrate her, dominate her. To hurt her with his body while hers gave his pleasure.
As thinking of it gave him that erection, he was grateful for the trench.
The lights gleamed and flashed now and brought that—for him—false sense of excitement and a kind of tawdry glamour.
Screams streamed down from the Cyclone as its cars and passengers dived down a run, looped around a loop.
Insanity, as far as he was concerned.
Air guns popped as idiots fired at various animals or cartoon villains, all to win some cheap prize. The Wonder Wheel circled. More screams from the G-Force with its passengers strapped to a spinning wheel that twisted, inverted.
It made him feel queasy just to look at it.
He considered several possibilities. Long-legged girls in their tiny shorts and skimpy tops, so obviously asking for what he was so anxious to give them.
But most traveled in packs, and many had boys with them. Tall jocks with empty brains, slouching hoodlums with smirking mouths.
He had several options for cutting one from the herd, but preferred finding a satisfactory selection who walked alone. He kept his eye on the restrooms, though for some reason females often traveled in packs even there.
He only needed one, but he had standards. She must be pleasing to his eye, in face and figure. She must not be taller than he was.
But he grew impatient, and jittery with it, nearly settled for one who carried more weight in her hips than he liked, another whose mouth looked pinched and ears too big.
He found it frustrating that the ones who pleased his eye, met his standards so rarely walked alone. For this most important project, he couldn’t approach one who had companions.
Then he saw her, and could barely believe his luck. That is, if he believed in luck at all.
He knew her!
Delaney—she went by Del—Brooke. She attended his school, actually had a reasonably intelligent brain. Black hair that fell in waves, golden brown eyes, perfect features. Long legs, but she met his height requirement, as he had at least an inch on her.
She wore blue shorts to show off those legs, legs with excellent muscle tone, as she captained the school’s swim team. A tiny white top with skinny straps to show off those swimmer’s shoulders.
He’d been her lab partner once, and they’d worked well enough together. But when he’d suggested they meet for coffee, she’d looked at him with pity that barely disguised derision, and told him she was seeing someone.
Lies, just another lie. And he knew she’d tittered about it with her friends after.
Here, an opportunity to have all he wanted presented itself.
And though she talked on her ’link, for the moment, she walked alone.
He slid a hand into the right pocket of his trench. The first syringe, the one filled with his own formula, one he’d termed Compliance.
He imagined trademarking it one day.
It would make her, obviously, compliant, open to suggestion, malleable, a bit sleepy.
This time, he’d coated the needle with a numbing agent. She’d feel a prick, of course, but little more than that.
Then his formula would do the rest.
He nudged off the safety on the needle, and approached her.
Eve spent the flight working on the logistics of the operation.
“You’ve got copies of his face and the sketch where he’s wearing the wig. He’ll be wearing it. Black baggies, black Kick Its, probably a black tee. The trench, as we didn’t find it at the residence.
“Ditch the ties. Not you, Jenkinson. Yours makes you look right at home at a carnival. Peabody, lose the jacket. Your shirt’s long enough to cover your sidearm. You’re with McNab. He always looks at home at a carnival.”
Though she didn’t like knowing she stood over sky, she stood, pointed to the screen and its image of the park.
“Santiago, Carmichael, take the north side. Jenkinson, Reineke, take the east, and try to look less like cops. Peabody, McNab, the south. Feeney, do the crisscross, and Roarke and I will go straight down the middle heading west. Skip the kiddie area. He isn’t interested in that.”
“Two minutes,” Roarke called out.
“You’ve got earbuds, use them. Keep in contact. The locals should be in place, along the beachfront, entrances, exits. Remember, he’s armed. The syringe is lethal.”
She sat, strapped in. “McNab, any more on the journal?”
“There’s a hell of a lot of crazy and ugly, LT, and whoever prosecutes this is going to do cartwheels, but he doesn’t say where, the exact location in the park. Just how he’s going to start off his senior year with—he writes—metaphorically, a bang. And how he’ll enjoy the screams as he ejaculates into a female. He actually writes like that. It’s whack.”
She felt the copter’s descent in her gut.
“Pattern here is to write the details afterward, like a report. I’m back to last March when he goes off bragging about successfully creating a formula. He calls it Compliance. Here’s a quote.
“‘The popular term is date-rape drug, but rape is a lie perpetuated by women in their endless quest to emasculate men, to deny us our rights.’ It’s how he thinks,” McNab concluded.
“He can spend the rest of his life thinking like that, in a cage where his ‘rights’ will be severely limited.”
She glanced toward the front and saw the lights, the iconic wheel turning, flashing, with the buildings spearing up ahead, the sand and water spreading behind.
Then the water came very, very close, so she turned her head and just let herself breathe through the beach landing.
Glad that part was over, she unstrapped, stood.
“We’re go. Let’s find the fucker, save the girl.”
While they worked their way to the entrance with its big, grinning-face logo, she coordinated with the local cops. For now, she wanted them as backup only. She already had ten cops and a consultant going in.
Enough, she thought, to cover the park, and maybe not get made as cops too quickly. The locals covered the beach areas, the ins and outs.
“Have to cover the beaches, the city areas in case he plans to lure her out. But he’s inside.”
The two cops on the entrance nodded her in.
“He wouldn’t do this on one of the exterior rides.” Roarke took her hand as he spoke, then just smiled as she started to tug it free. “Try to look less like a cop,” he reminded her.
“Right.”
“But we have dark rides as well.”
That reminded her he had a financial interest in the park. In both parks.
“Dark rides?”
“Interior thrill rides. Murderer’s Row, the Tunnel of Terror, Well of Woe, and Final Battle. All age twelve and up without an adult.”
“A lot of screaming in those?”
“That’s what they’re designed for, after all.”
“We’ll start there.”
“Let’s see then. I believe it’s this way to Murderer’s Row.”
She scanned crowds as they went, focusing on the younger set. Plenty of screams out here, too, she thought, and wondered why in the name of humanity people paid to scream.
No cams on the entrance of the ride where one-seater cars trundled into the mouth of a structure made to resemble a prison. Over the mouth, a man wearing the old-timey black-and-white-striped con suit bared his teeth in a maniacal grin and swung an axe.
“It’s a prison break, you see,” Roarke told her. “Escaped prisoners looking for blood and/or hostages.”
“Single-rider cars. Not this. He needs to be with her, right with her. Not this one.”
But she checked with the attendant anyway.
She tapped her earbud when Carmichael spoke. “Attendant at the Shoot ’Em Up Arcade thinks he saw him. Teenage attendant, says he noticed because of the trench, and it’s too hot for one. Plus, he walked by a few times, alone, so the kid thought he was probably a pickpocket and kept an eye out.”
“When did he spot him last?”
“He’s not sure, but less than a half hour.”
“Keep looking. That’s good, it’s good,” she said to Roarke. “He’s here, and less than thirty ago, he was alone. What’s next?”
This time Roarke had a park map on his ’link. “Well of Woe.”
The Well looked like a big, walled hole in the ground, and cars—room for three—descended at, to her eye, an insanely steep angle.
“What’s the deal?”
“A bit like a series of escape rooms with various obstacles, dangers including giant insects, a fire-breathing dragon, booby traps, evil sorcerer. And not this,” he realized. “If you get through one room successfully, you go into the next. If whoever’s in there hasn’t gotten through, you’d team up.”
“Not this,” she agreed, but checked before she stepped back from the echoes of screams and wild laughter.
“All right then, we’re on to the Tunnel of Terror.”
“Which is?” she asked as he led the way.
“Haunted, overrun with vampires, zombies, name your monster. If I remember right, and it’s been some time, the tracks circle and snake, climb up, then drop down abruptly into the dark. Various horror vid sound effects, perhaps the brush of skeletal fingers over your face, the red-eyes of a giant spider hurtling toward you in a sudden flash of light.”
“Who thinks of stuff like that?”
“Well now, I had a bit to do with the design here, so I remember some of it. If you’re paying for terror, the tunnel ought to provide it. Just over there.”
Shortly after the Shoot ’Em Up attendant spotted Francis, Francis spotted the girl.
He had a plan.
Put away the ’link, bitch. Put it away.
She stopped a moment, a hand on one hip, and laughed. Then as he wished, she slid the ’link into her tiny purse.
When she started to walk again, he came up beside her, slid the needle in—delicately this time. Then swatted the air.
“Sorry! You had a bee land on you.”
“I think it stung me. Shit!” Frowning, she rubbed at her arm.
“Are you allergic?” he asked, all concern, then looked at her face. “Oh, hey! Hi. It’s Francis, from school?”
“Oh yeah, hi.” Still frowning, she gave her arm another rub.
“Are you here by yourself?”
“No. I’m meeting some friends. They’re getting on line at the Cyclone, so—”
“I was heading for that myself. It’s such an iconic ride, isn’t it? Have you had a good summer so far?”
“Uh, yeah. Actually pretty mag.” She’d quickened her pace, obviously hoping to shake him off. Now, as the drug began its work, she slowed. “Um, you?”
“Absolutely! I’ve had a simply glorious summer, and it’s only going to get better. Let’s go this way.”
“What?”
“This way.”
She shrank back at first when he put his arm around her, then turned as he did.
“We’re going to take a ride. You like rides, don’t you, Delaney?”
“I like rides. I’m going to ride with my friends.”
“I’m your friend now.”
“I feel funny.”
He slid his hand up from her waist, toward her breast. “You feel marvelous. You’re excited to be with me.”
At the tunnel, he got on line with her. Only about a dozen ahead of them, and that was fine. It gave him more time to prep her.
“We’re going to get on this ride. It’s what you want.” He slid his hand over the curve of her ass. His heart pounded; his mouth went dry. “Like you want me to touch you. Say it, Delaney. Say, ‘Francis, touch me.’”
“Francis, touch me.”
“That’s right.” He put his mouth to her ear, and the scent of her nearly turned his knees to liquid. “When we get inside, in the dark, I’ll touch you. You’ll come with me, into the dark, and let me touch you wherever I want. We’ll have intercourse. You want that. You want to have sex with me. Whisper that, in my ear.”
She put her mouth to his ear. Compliant. “I want to have sex with you.”
Then she looked around, her eyes glazed, confused. “I—I’m meeting my friends.”
“No. I’m what you want, bitch, and don’t forget it.”
He kept her tight against him, and his head down as they held out their wrists for the scanner.
He nudged her into the car first, then sat close.
He’d chosen this ride for several reasons. The dark, the screams, the length—eight full minutes—and the small platform behind a wall of fake bones and severed heads.
In exactly two minutes after the ride began, he needed to get her out, behind the wall, on the platform, with its emergency exit just waiting for his escape when he’d finished with her.
The ride began with a shuddering descent. And the dark.
“Put your hand on my penis. Rub it. Rub it, whore.”
He shoved up her top, yanked at her bra so he could, at last, at last, feel the female breast.
“You like that, don’t you?”
“It hurts. You’re hurting me.”
“That’s what you want. Say it. Say, ‘Hurt me, Francis.’”
He didn’t see the tears leaking out of her eyes. “Hurt me, Francis.”
The screams began, and the crazed laughter, the groans and howls and moans.
Eve took one look at the Tunnel of Terror, and thought: Yes.
The dark, the size of the cars, the screams that echoed up.
She pushed her way to the attendant.
“This boy. Has he gotten on, with a girl?”
“Lady, I’m doing a job here.”
She shoved her badge in his face. “So am I. Look at him. Have you seen him, with a girl?”
“The doof in the trench with the iced little chick? All over her.” He shook his head. “Can’t see why she’s with a doof. They’re on now.”
“How long ago?”
“I dunno. Few minutes. A couple.”
“Hit the lights. Stop the ride.” While the attendant gaped, she tapped her earbud. “Tunnel of Terror. He’s on it. He’s got the girl. Move! I said hit the damn lights, now.”
“But—”
Before Roarke could speak, she grabbed the attendant by the shirt. “Lights, now, or I charge you with accessory to rape and attempted murder.”
“Holy shit, I’m just doing a job.”
He hit the lights and the brakes for the ride. Shouts of protest rose up.
Eve saw the steep, narrow platform beside the tracks, and started down.
“Cover the exits to this ride. Emergency exits. Call for MTs. He gave her something to get her on. Francis Bryce,” she shouted, and swatted at whatever dangled from the ceiling. “This is the police. You’re surrounded. Move away from the girl.”
If they were too late to stop the rape, please God, let her be alive.
“There’s a platform coming up on the left,” Roarke told her. “Behind the wall of doom. First emergency exit.”
He’d had to practically lift her out of the car, but excitement gave him strength. She didn’t struggle, but went limp. And there were tears in her voice.
“It’s dark. I can’t see.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He took the penlight out of his pocket. It wouldn’t do to step wrong.
“Move your whore ass!”
Filled with power, he shoved her onto the platform. Pulsing with power, he fell on her, then tore at her top.
“I want you to put my penis in your mouth, but we only have six minutes, so we’ll just have intercourse.”
He pushed her down. “No, that’s not what they say, the ones you lie down for. We’re going to fuck. I’m going to fuck you. Say it. Say: ‘Fuck me, Francis. Fuck me hard.’”
“I—I don’t want to.”
He slapped her, first with the palm of his hand, then with the back. And that felt marvelous.
“But you will. Scream. I want you to scream while I take what you wouldn’t give me. You won’t fight me, you can’t, but you can scream.”
When she did, he went so hard he wondered he didn’t implode.
Pushing up, he started unbuttoning the baggies. “Now say what I told you.”
She choked out a sob.
And lights filled the tunnel.
Stunned, he dropped to his knees, slapped a hand over her mouth. “Shut up. Don’t make a sound. If you do, I’ll kill you.”
Her eyes, so big and tawny, stared at him. His penis was so hard it hurt.
Just a glitch, he thought. A stupid glitch. It would go dark any second, and then.
“Francis Bryce, this is the police!”
Disbelief flooded him. His ears rang, and his breath began to hitch.
He fumbled in the trench for the second syringe, but he could hear them coming, closer. Closer.
As he had at the theater, he panicked. Throwing his body at the emergency exit, he ran.
Eve heard the weeping, soft and desolate under the shouted objections and catcalls of riders. And the shrill of the alarm on the emergency door.
She stepped over, skirted the wall.
Alive. One injection mark, so she should stay that way.
“You’re okay. We’re the police. Roarke, take the girl.”
“He’s got that second syringe. You bloody well mind my cop.”
Then she was gone, out the door.
Roarke knelt down to the girl, who trembled and wept. “There now, darling, you’re safe.”
“Kill me if I make a sound,” she whispered.
“He won’t hurt you again. There’s a promise.”
Since he’d left his jacket behind and her shirt was in tatters, he took off his own. “Let’s put this on now, all right? What’s your name?”
“Del.”
“There you are, Del. Can you walk?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, never mind that,” he said, and lifted her into his arms.
As he carried her out, she pressed her face to his shoulder and wept.
Her team hadn’t converged on the exits before Eve shoved out.
But she saw Francis—the trench, the hair—heading toward the giant Ferris wheel in a limping run.
Hoping the girl had managed to kick him in the balls, she sprinted after.
“In pursuit. Suspect’s running northeast from the tunnel ride to the Ferris wheel. Never mind. I’ve got him.”
She supposed it rated as anti-climactic how easily she caught him after such a frustrating hunt. But she tackled him on the fairway, and actually heard him say, “Oof!” as he went down.
He kicked, humped his body, squirmed while people crowded around.
“Get back. Police. Move back!”
She started to reach for restraints, then pulled her stunner instead.
With one hand, she pressed it to the side of his neck. The other, she clamped on his wrist. He struggled to turn the syringe in his hand, the needle shining sharp in the festive lights.
“Drop it, you little bastard, or you’ll get a jolt you won’t forget.”
“I wasn’t finished!” But his fingers uncurled.
“Trust me, you’re done.”
“Sorry we weren’t closer, LT.”
She glanced up as she pulled Francis’s hands behind his back.
“Don’t touch that.” She nodded toward the syringe. “I need to check if he’s got a safety in his pocket somewhere.”
“We had a bet going,” Santiago told her. “If someone else spotted him, called for backup, who’d get there first.”
She just stared at them as she clipped on the restraints.
“Had to call it a tie.”
“Yeah.” Carmichael confirmed it. “It was … Well, oh, my, my.”
While Francis started to blubber, Eve looked back to where a bare-chested Roarke carried the girl wrapped in his shirt.
“Don’t piss me off, Detective.”
“Just admiring and envying your taste. Sir. Here come the medicals.”
“Good. And here’s the safety.” She handed it to Santiago. “Be careful. The needle’s probably coated, and you don’t want what it’s got. Francis Bryce, you’re under arrest for the murder of Jenna Harbough, a human being, for the murder of Arlie Dillon, a human being. For the attempted murder of Kiki Rosenburg.”
When she hauled him to his feet, he spat at her. “Bitch, you’re all bitches!”
“Wow.” She used the sleeve of her jacket to swipe the spittle from her cheek, and wasn’t the least sorry to see he’d bashed his nose on the fall. It dribbled blood.
And his wig sat crooked now.
“That’s called assaulting an officer, so we’ll add that in. Also the attempted rape, also the use of a date-rape drug, and a whole crapload of other charges we’ll make official when you’re booked.”
The eyes, she thought, even with tears streaming out of them, the eyes were wrong.
Yes, some were just born twisted.
“Meanwhile, you have the right to remain silent.”
“Fuck you, whore!”
“Keep it up.” She tapped her lapel. “Record’s on. You have the right to legal counsel,” she continued, unfazed, and read off the rest of the Revised Miranda.
“I need somebody to transport him to Central while we clean things up here.”
“We got him,” Jenkinson said.
Reineke nodded. “Be a pleasure. Come on, young sir. We’ll escort you to your first cage in what will be a long line of them.”
“I want to go home! You’d better get your hands off me! Do you know who my father is?”
Perp-walking him away, Jenkinson turned and grinned. “Who’s your daddy?”
She would have laughed, but she spotted Roarke walking toward her. He wore a black tee, which would’ve been fine. Except for the park logo of the silly face with its wide, toothy grin.
“Are you kidding me?”
“She didn’t want to let go of the shirt. McNab ran off and got it for me.”
“It would be McNab.”
“Peabody’s with the girl in the ambulance. Delaney Brooke. Del. Whatever he used on her is wearing off.”
“I need to talk to her.” She turned. “Let’s get that ride blocked off. We can use local sweepers to process, and…”
She trailed off at the look from Feeney. “Sorry, you know what to do. I’ll be with the girl.”
As she walked off, Feeney clapped his hands. “All right, boys and girls. Let’s get things done.”