Frostitute: A Twisted Tale of Extreme Horror Read online

  DiTirro handed over the burger, fries, and Coke ("full fat, none of that diet shit," just as she had demanded) and the two cops went back to their seats in the front of the car. "Got you a Whopper," the big man said, handing over a paper-wrapped package and a medium-sized carton of fries.

  "Thanks," Jim said. His growling stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten anything all morning. He unwrapped the burger slowly, taking care not to spill any of its contents on his shirt. In the rearview mirror, he could see that Natasha had already demolished two thirds of hers.

  I guess she really hasn't eaten in days...

  When he caught sight of the ruined state of her teeth, Jim thought, With rotten dentistry like that, she's either a meth head or British...and she sure as shit doesn't sound British.

  "Okay, Natasha." DiTirro popped three French fries into his mouth. "Let's go back to what we were talking about before your empty belly interrupted us. You said there were at least two guys that killed Detective Forsberg last night, but you don't know exactly how many because you were hiding in his attic. Is that right?"

  She nodded, downcast eyes still focused on the remnants of the burger.

  "Well look, if we're going to keep you out of jail, we need to go right back to the beginning. What happened between you and the pastor at The Lucky Star."

  That got a response: A pre-programmed one, which was pretty much what both detectives had expected. "I wasn't at no Lucky Star motel."

  "Who said it was a motel?" Jim shot back.

  "Everybody knows The Lucky Star. It's a motel where the working girls go."

  "Yes," Jim agreed, taking a cautious bite out of the Whopper. Damn, but it was good. He could practically taste the cholesterol. "Working girls like you."

  "I ain't no hooker," Natasha said half-heartedly.

  "Then Chastity's your sorority name?" DiTirro chuckled. That earned him a glare.

  "Look," Jim slipped effortlessly back into good cop mode again, "We ain't Vice, and we're not about to bust you for trying to make a living, even if it is on your back."

  "Not just my back," Natasha boasted, her mouth jumping in before her brain had time to engage. "I'm pretty damn good on my hands and knees too."

  DiTirro came close to choking on the mouthful of meat...which he figured was something that Chastity had learned to avoid doing by now.

  "Oh, damn." She finally realized what she had just said.

  "It's fine. Really," Jim assured her. "We're trying to catch a killer here, honey. You have to make a living. We get that. We totally do. We're not going to give you a hard time for that."

  "You all are telling the truth?" she asked cautiously.

  "Cross my heart," Jim said solemnly.

  "And hope to die," DiTirro finished.

  "Yeah, right..."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "That pastor. The one from down in Colorado Springs. He's one bad man." Natasha shook her head, no doubt remembering some of the indignities he had heaped on her.

  "Why do you say that?" DiTirro prompted, glancing down to make sure that his digital voice recorder was surreptitiously recording every word she said.

  "He had a reputation. The other girls, they talked about it. Talked about the bad things he did. Nasty things. Wasn't a one of 'em ever went back to him twice."

  "And this was your first time?"

  "Yes sir, it sure was. And the last, let me tell you." A shiver ran through Natasha's skeletal frame.

  "Well, obviously, what with him being dead and all." Jim rolled his eyes.

  "I mean apart from that!" Natasha snapped angrily. "He was one sick son of a bitch. He hurt some of the girls, at least one of 'em really bad. Put her in the hospital."

  "So why'd you go with him to The Lucky Star in the first place?" Jim countered in his most reasonable tone of voice. "You knew his rep. You knew he got off on inflicting pain on the girls he picked up. So why go with him."

  "I needed the money. I needed..."

  "A hit," DiTirro finished for her.

  Natasha's silence was all the answer he needed. After a moment she went on: "Anyhow, I was stupid. Yeah, I let him pick me up. The hundred he gave me up front helped with that. He rented a room at the motel...8, I think it was." Jim nodded. He'd read Forsberg's preliminary report and the attached notes. It had indeed been Room 8. "Said he wanted me for an hour. Promised to pay me another hundred when we was done."

  "What happened when you got inside?" Jim prompted.

  "He locked the door and turned on the TV. Turned it up real loud." Her eyes glazed over, staring off into the past, recalling the events of that night. "Then he took out some handcuffs. Told me that was what he was into. I said I didn't know, but he, he had 'em on my wrists and had my wrists cuffed behind my back before I knew what hit me.

  "Next thing I knew, he done kicked me in the back of the knees. I went down hard on my face, smacked it good and proper on that nasty-ass carpet." She grimaced, lost in the memory. "Then I felt something cold and hard in the small of my back. Fact, it all started to get cold back there. Son of a bitch was cuttin' my clothes away."

  "And you couldn't fight back. He had a knife," DiTirro said, matter of factly.

  "Hey, I tried. I hollered. But he'd thought of that. That's why he turned the TV up so loud, see? Besides, that's when he stuck his boot in the back of my neck, crushed me right into the god-damned floor. Choked me up so damn bad I thought I was gonna puke. Everything went red in front of my eyes and I started to see them dancing stars, just like they do in the cartoons.

  "He kept his foot on my neck while he cut off the rest of my clothes. Right down to the bra, panties, then he cut them off too. Cocksucker. Stripped me nekkid and told me if I didn't do what he said, he'd cut my titties off."

  "Did you believe him?" Jim asked, genuinely curious.

  Natasha nodded vigorously. "Oh, hell yes. I looked into that man's eyes, mister police man. Mister dee-tective. He was crazy, that motherfucker. One hundred and fifty percent cray-cray."

  "So what happened next?"

  "What happened next was, the son of a bitch made me crawl into the bathroom...

  Captain Zach Wentzl was not, at present, a happy man. His trim, 5'9" 170-pound frame was lean and compact, with barely an ounce of fat to be seen, thanks to his obsession with Crossfit. As soon as he heard that Daniels and DiTirro were back in the building, and with a suspect no less, Wentzl had immediately gone downstairs to the interview room, where he hung out behind the one-way mirror and listened to the woman talk.

  In less than five minutes, he had figured out that she was stark raving mad.

  The interview went on for half an hour. Apart from the two Homicide detectives, a public defender — a very junior public defender — had sat in, listening and shaking her head incredulously as the suspect's story unfolded.

  When they broke for coffee thirty minutes later, Wentzl caught Daniels by the arm as he headed for the restroom.

  "Just what the fuck was that supposed to be?" the Captain scowled, "What's she high on?"

  Jim couldn't help but notice that the longer this case went on, the more his boss swore. Then again, after the shit Natasha had just told them on the drive here (and then repeated again just now in the interview room) it was hard to blame the man.

  "I know, Cap. I know, okay?" Jim spread his hands placatingly. "I know how crazy it sounds..."

  "Crazy? Crazy is god-damned right, Jimmy." The Captain waved his coffee cup in the direction of the hooker, who was trying to peer intently through the one-way mirror glass without much luck. "Dead women walking? That's what I'm supposed to believe...that a dead woman rose up from the grave, walked into The Lucky Star motel, tore the pastor inside out, and then bit his God-damned dick off!?!? Ripped his guts out?!?"

  Jim exchanged a helpless look with DiTirro, one that seemed to say, hey, how about a little help here? DiTirro shrugged back, code for what the fuck do you want me to say? Wentzl was right on this
one. It did sound absolutely nuts. Both detectives knew it.

  "She was high on something," Wentzl went on, planting both fists on his hips. "No jury is going to buy what she's shoveling. Walking corpses, for God's sake..."

  "Look, Cap, we know how this sounds," DiTirro said, echoing his partner's words, "but we don't have any other leads right now. No other witnesses. As whacked out as this all sounds, we’ve got nothing else. Not a single fucking thing…other than the name of her pimp..”

  Wentzl's stony glare would have made a lesser man's sack shrivel up into his body. “Her pimp,” he echoed flatly.

  “Russian, name of Piotr. Piotr Blinov.”

  “And you think that this Blinov character might have killed the priest?”

  “It’s a lot easier to swallow than zombie hookers, Cap,” Jim pointed out. Based on Wentzl’s expression, he could tell that he’d scored with that one. The Captain was calming down a little, now that there was a living, breathing, flesh and blood pimp who might also turn out to be the perpetrator on the radar.

  “Find him and pick him up,” Wentzl said at last. He pointed a finger at the pair of detectives, waving it back and forth. “If he killed the priest, then we’ve gotten a maniac off the streets. That’s all well and good. But if he’s responsible for Forsberg, I want him nailed to the fucking wall. Understood?”

  “We hear you, Cap.” Both men nodded solemnly. “Loud and clear.”

  “Good. Then go get him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ever since she had gotten her revenge on the perverted pastor, Anya had adopted the mentality of a hunter: She knew Piotr’s home turf like the back of her hand, had walked those streets for night after night, through the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter. Every back alley and run-down, abandoned derelict building, every vacant lot and stretch of barren wasteground, she could picture with total clarity in her mind’s eye.

  Thanks to so many Russian winters, the cold had never bothered her even when she was still breathing. Now she paid it even less attention. Her reserves of patience seemed to be almost limitless. Anya knew with absolute certainty that if she simply hung around for long enough, moving silently through the winter darkness like a shark gliding through murky waters, then sooner or later Piotr would turn up.

  And on the third night, he finally did. With Marko in tow, the pimp slouched his way out of the night. With cigarette in hand, Piotr stopped to shoot the shit with two of his girls who were shivering at an intersection. The girls — she recognized them as Joelle and Shania — were trying gamely to appear alluring and sexy, but even from across the street she could see their teeth chattering. Piotr apparently didn’t approve, or took offense at something that Shania said, because after shaking a fist at her, the pimp delivered a stinging slap across her face.

  Which was when the unmarked cop car pulled up to the kerbside next to the four. Two men got out. They were wearing suits instead of uniforms. Instantly, the two Russian men’s posture changed. Marko squared off against the police officers, while Piotr took a step back and reached into his jacket pocket. That was when one of the cops drew down on them both, stepping backward himself to give the handgun adequate clearance room. Sensing the impending danger, the two hookers disappeared into the night. Anya couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but angry words were being exchanged on both sides.

  The harsh words escalated to yelling. The cop, still the only one of the four who had been quick enough to get his gun clear of its holster, finally got Marko to see sense. Angrily, the big man turned his back and allowed the second cop to cuff him. A red mist began to descend over Anya. With a sudden flash of insight, she realized that this could be her one and only chance to have her revenge. If she allowed them to take him into police custody, he might never see the light of day again.

  If I’m going to do it, then it has to be NOW.

  Without conscious thought, she was moving, driving herself on across the slushy street. The outside world shrank down to nothing more than Marko and Piotr, who was reluctantly standing by to allow the second cop to cuff him next. They were close now, so close. Almost close enough to touch. Ten feet. Five. Marko was nearest. He looked up, surprise written all over his face, as the woman he had helped bury not so long ago appeared out of the wintry night with murder in her heart.

  Marko was helpless, his hands cuffed uselessly behind his back. Any sense of fair play that Anya might once have possessed had died along with her in the motel room that night. The NFL’s highest-rated quarterback couldn’t have hit him as hard as Anya did. They came together with a crunch of breaking bone, Anya’s forehead driving itself into Marko’s nose and mouth. Blood gushed from his nostrils, pouring down into Anya’s hair. Grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket, she kept their momentum going and launched them both bodily into the air.

  Entwined like lovers locked in an embrace, the two flew ten feet before landing in the middle of a side street with a sickening thud that accompanied four of Marko’s ribs breaking. Anya leapt to her feet with a grace and fluidity that she had never possessed in life. Marko rose more slowly, staggering almost drunkenly toward the far side of the street, stunned and holding a hand up to his face in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of blood from his broken nose. Having both hands cuffed behind his back wasn’t helping his balance any…which, along with the pain from Anya’s surprise attack, probably contributed to his not seeing the truck in time.

  The eighteen-wheeler’s airhorn tipped Anya off. Looking to her left, she saw two giant white lights, lighting up the snow in front of the huge supermarket truck. Its driver slammed on the brakes, but the wheels locked and the juggernaut began to slide. The back end jack-knifed, swinging out behind the truck and causing it to fishtail. Anya danced sideways, hurling herself out of the road; she landed in a crouch on the sidewalk, just feet away from the kerb, and threw herself into a spinning roll that helped bleed off some of her kinetic energy.

  Unfortunately for him, Marko didn’t have supernatural powers to help him get out of this one. Like a deer caught in the headlights, the big lunk turned towards…well, the headlights. His mouth, still weeping blood from multiple shredded tooth sockets, formed a perfect ‘O’ of astonishment the instant his brain finally caught up with what his eyes were telling it.

  Then he took 18,000 lbs of frantically-braking truck right in the face.

  Marko’s body ruptured like an over-pressurized sack of blood. His internal organs exploded across the truck’s hood and windshield, scaring the shit out of the wide-eyed driver, who had a white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel and kept pumping at the brakes, as if that would make any difference at all. What at first glance he took to be a long string of link sausages splattered liquid brown shit across the glass, dumping out the contents of Marko’s bowels. The Russian enforcer’s limbs splayed out and jerked, like a starfish that had just gotten shocked with hundreds of thousands of volts.

  Undeterred, the rapidly-slowing truck mounted the kerb and thrust its still-screaming red hood ornament through the plate glass window of a charity thrift store. The glass shattered, a thousands jagged shards of various sizes slicing into the flesh and soft tissue of Marko’s back. His agonized shriek was cut off suddenly when he was sandwiched hard between the truck’s engine block and the back wall of the store, crushing his spine and mercifully ejecting the life from his battered body. The brick wall bulged outwards but held fast against the runaway rig, which now idled in between scattered racks of clothing and second-hand books.

  Fortunately, the driver — a middle-aged man from Idaho called Norm — was absolutely fine, another walking, talking advertisement for the benefits of seat belts.

  Anya kept rolling, then sprang to her feet before the three incredulous survivors. Time seemed to be moving in slow motion.The armed cop was swinging his gun around toward her, while his partner was reaching inside his jacket, presumably to draw his own weapon. She didn’t give a shit about either of them, though; Piot
r was all that she cared about. She unloaded a punch on him, catching him on the right side of his chest. At least one of the bones broke with a satisfying crack, and the startled pimp flew ten feet backward through the air, landing hard on the frozen sidewalk and skidding backwards through the snow.

  “Bitch!” Piotr hissed, and suddenly he was the one reaching inside his coat. Anya was closing fast, striding confidently towards him. Her fists bunched tightly at her sides, itching to bury themselves inside his body. The red mist was descending over her again, blotting out everything except the need for revenge. Anya was going to break every bone in his body, one by one, before he died.

  The gun was clearing Piotr’s coat already, its muzzle swinging up toward her.

  “Drop it!” The cry came from behind her, loud and clear on the cold night air. She knew without turning round that the cops had both drawn down on her. In front of her, Piotr’s finger was tightening on the trigger of his own weapon. Anya was so blinded by rage, she simply didn’t give a damn.

  The pimp’s pistol barked, four times in rapid succession. The first shot went wide, punching out the windshield of a parked car. The second grazed her hip and kept going. The third and fourth punched into her chest on the left side. Soft tissue blasted out of her breast and sternum, courtesy of two dime-sized bullet holes. The shock broke her concentration, causing her illusion of normalcy to drop. Piotr saw her as she truly was, a walking corpse with a ruin where her face had once been. Terrified to the very limits of sanity, he did the only thing his reflexes would allow: Jerked the trigger as hard and as fast as he possibly could.

  Anya dived blindly to her left, hitting the hood of a parked car with a thud. She kept rolling, dropping down into the snow on the opposite side.