The Well Heeled Rapist begins with the excessively brutal rape of a graduate student-barmaid by a member of one of Pittsburgh’s wealthiest families.  Similar incidents involving this rapist have occurred before, and always before the family’s law firm has been able to extricate the wealthy rapist by paying money to the victim. 

This victim won’t be bought off, however, and the rapist gets impatient.  He hires a pair of would-be assassins to kill the victim.  The victim, however, learns that she is in danger, and moves in with a roommate who has a very large dog.

The assassins discover where she is and move in for the kill.  They don’t know about the dog.

From The Well-heeled rapist

Akitas are the Japanese national dog.  They have locking jaws and they don’t bark.  Originally, Akitas were bred for hunting bears. In fact they look a little like bears themselves, and they have a thick layer of muscle around their necks, almost like a girdle, which accounts for their ability to shake to death any prey that is smaller  than they are. Their lineage includes the Tosa, a Japanese fighting dog, and the Malamute, a powerful sled pulling dog.  Akitas combine the qualities of these two dogs in that they are powerful and they are fighters.  Because Akitas are hunters, they don’t bark; they stalk.  They lay in wait.

Most Akitas are eighty-five to a hundred pounds.  Nettie’s dog Nikki was a lean hundred twenty pounds.  She had a double curl tail that lay on her back like a plume, and her markings were tan and white except that her face was black.  She was a stunner and she liked meeting new friends.  People always fussed over her and sometimes she even got a dog biscuit.  Nikki had accommodated easily to Mary Ann’s presence in the apartment to the point that Mary Ann was like a second mom.  The two got along beautifully.   

The morning after the assassins, Vinnie and Jaedeen, discovered where Mary Ann was staying.  They watched from a van parked across the street as Nettie left the building.  Mary Ann promised that she would not go out and said she understood the risk.  She did not bother to set the security bolt inside, however, for no one knew where she was.  There was no need to become paranoid, she thought.  She had called off her house cleaning job for the week, so if the killers waited for her there, they would be frustrated.

But the killers were waiting outside, and when the building seemed to have emptied out, they got out of their van and went inside.  Dressed as workmen, they carried tool bags and located the door to the unit where they believed Mary Ann was staying.   Jaedeen watched while Vinnie started picking the lock. 

Nikki was asleep in the bedroom, legs straight out, facing the door, ears relaxed.  Mary Ann was in the shower.  But although Nikki was asleep, at the first metallic ticking of the pick, her ears went straight up and her head rose from the floor, her eyes intent on the front door.  As the ticking noise continued, Nikki got up and silently went to the door.  Then she moved to the side of the door where she would be hidden when it opened.  She stared fixedly at the lock and assumed a stiff legged stance.  Finally, the bolt snicked open and then the door knob turned.  Slowly at first, the door opened a slight distance, then further, then all the way open. 

A large man with a sweatshirt hood pulled over his head stepped in.  He had a pistol with a silencer in his right hand.  The man sidestepped through the doorway, his right side forward, and as his body cleared the open door, he held the door knob with his left hand as his companion stepped in front of him into the apartment.   The first man then closed the door quietly. 

Just as the door closed, the second man glanced to his right, behind the man with the pistol, and he saw Nikki.  His mouth opened but no sound came out.  His eyes bulged in his head and his body was frozen in place, unable to move.  Nikki glared at him.  Her lips were pulled back off her teeth and they quivered slightly with a quiet growl.  The first man glanced at his comrade and sensed that something was wrong.  He started to turn, to look behind him, but Nikki was already in the air.

Nikki struck the man’s body with her front paws and sunk her teeth into his shoulder at the same time.  Her growl now was deep and gutteral.  The force of her lunge knocked the man to his knees and her bite broke the large shoulder bone, sending the man into instant writhing pain and the pistol clattering across the floor.  Her growling got even fiercer as she clamped down even harder on the shoulder, her huge canine teeth sinking down to the bone, and she began shaking her powerful head, fracturing the bones beyond repair.   The man yelled to his companion, “Get him off of me.  Get him off of me.  Jesus Christ, he’s gonna kill me.  My arm, my arm.  For Christ’s sake Jaedeen, help.  Get him off.”

The man’s companion, Jaedeen, was still transfixed in abject terror.  He shuffled backwards as if retreating from a evil spirit that was bent on his destruction.  He couldn’t  speak or help his companion.  Mary Ann, having heard the shouting, banging and Nikki’s loud growls, came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and nearly bumped into the second man, who seemed to be backing into the bedroom. Mary Ann was stunned and screamed.  What were these men doing in here?

The man looked at Mary Ann and was confused.  What should he do?  Nikki didn’t give him an opportunity to decide.  She saw that Mary Ann was in danger, and left the first man as fast as she had attacked him.  She took a galloping lunge at the second man and hit him full in the chest.  He fell backwards into the bedroom and skidded across the entire length of the room on his back.  The dog was on his chest before he stopped sliding, and she lunged at his face.  The man managed to protect his throat, but Nikki clamped down on his face under his nose.  Her mouth covered his mouth and her teeth dug into his jaw.   Using her powerful neck muscles, she twisted and ripped.  His screams were piercing.  Nikki paid no attention.  The man’s legs and arms flailed.  He pounded on her body with his hands.  Once she had a good grip on his face, she began to shake his whole head like a rag doll.  The man could hear the bones in his jaw and cheek crunch and he felt the jaw break.   Blood spurted from his face onto the rug and all over Nikki’s muzzle.

Then came the shrill scream from the living room, “Nikki, Nikki.  Help.” 

Nikki loosened her grip on the bloody face and dashed headlong back into the living room.  Her muzzle soaked red and blood flying from her mouth, she was the hound from hell.  The face of the man she had just attacked was ripped and full of elongated holes.  The features of his lower face were missing, replaced with raw meat, blood and bone shards sticking out and teeth showing through flesh where his mouth had been.  He writhed in pain holding his face together with his hands once the dog was gone. 

The first man was on his feet again, but he was hunched and unsteady.  It was almost as if he was groggy.  His right arm hung limp by his side.  Breathing hard, he held the gun in his left hand.  As Nikki came through the door, he fired at her with the silenced pistol as fast as he could pull the trigger—pffft, pffft, pffft.pffft-- but the shots went high and wide.  Plaster flew, glass shattered, and holes appeared in the door.  He shot the gun dry and Nikki was on him, paws hitting him in the chest at a full run. 

The man fell backwards over top of a glass coffee table, and onto his back.  The table shattered and the man fell into the glass and splintered wood.  He wheezed, “ooooof” as the air was knocked out of his lungs.  Nikki spun to get at him, but the man rolled to his right side, presenting her only with his back.  She lunged and bit down on the man’s good shoulder.  He screamed in pain, shrugged the dog off, and got to his feet. 

No sooner had he got to his feet than she was on him again, and this time she clamped down on his thigh.  He bellowed in pain and pounded her head with his one good fist.  He was hitting her so hard that he felt the bones in his hand fracture, but she wasn’t fazed.  As the dog shook her powerful head, her teeth drove deeper into the leg.  He could feel the teeth against the bone.  

The man with the bloody face came into the room.  He held the pulp of his shattered face with his hands.  His arms and the front of his torso were bright red.  He was oblivious to his companion’s cries for help, and he ran out the door.  The first man continued bellowing and pounding with the flat of his hand, but Nikki held on, still shaking her powerful head. 

In absolute desperation, the man dove into a front summersault, hitting the floor with his left shoulder, tucked in, and actually pulling the big dog, still locked onto his leg, over top of him into the air as he rolled screaming and bellowing at the top of his lungs.  The pain was unbelievable.   Nikki’s back hit the floor when the man’s legs completed the somersault and she momentarily relaxed her grip, stunned.  She had taken the blow on her spine.  The man knew this was his only chance to escape and he skittered to the door, grabbing the handle and flinging it open and then half-crawling, half-scooting on his ass, out the door, slamming it behind him. 

Out in the hall lay the body of a seventeen year old paper boy.  He had been shot by a stray round that penetrated the door to Nettie’s apartment. Three holes were visible in the panel of the door.  The wounded intruder, crawling on all fours, bumped into the body, looked at it in confusion, got unsteadily to his feet, and limped away.  The blood trail was significant.

Steel City III will be published at a future time.