by Laird Barron
Hunched over, the bag containing her jacket clutched in her arms, Maureen scuttled across the parking lot, out of view of the cameras. She left her car where it was and walked four blocks south, to a cinderblock garage on a lot between a pair of two-family homes. A key on her keychain opened and allowed her to raise the door. Inside was a dirty white Ford Escort registered to Christie Sayers, which was also the name on the rental agreement for the garage. The keys to the car were in the glove compartment. Maureen started the Escort, backed it onto the street, and closed and locked the garage behind her.
She headed to a storage facility at the edge of the shopping plazas on the northeastern side of the city. A key duct-taped to the bottom of the driver’s seat unlocked a storage locker the dimensions of a large walk-in closet. From plastic tubs stacked against the rear wall, she removed two sets of clothes, jeans, loose knit shirts, socks, and underwear. After changing into one outfit, she packed the other in a black duffel bag lying on top of a green suitcase. To it, she added the toiletries she’d picked up at Wal-Mart. The clothes she had been wearing, she pushed into a garbage bag she tied with a plastic tag and placed on top of the plastic tubs. From the footwear arranged to the right of the tubs, she selected a pair of Doc Martens, which she tugged on and laced up, and a pair of sneakers, which she added to the duffel bag. The locker didn’t contain much in the way of men’s wear, only a few pairs of sweatpants and t-shirts hanging from a short clothes rack. She selected pants and a shirt approximately Frank’s size and folded and placed them in the bag. She returned the baseball cap to her head.
Last came the filing cabinet on the left, which she unlocked with a key concealed under a piece of duct-tape beneath the plastic tubs. From the top drawer, she removed a flat metal box, which she set on a folding card table in the center of the locker. From the bottom drawer, she lifted a bundle wrapped in plastic and tape. The metal box contained five thousand dollars in five stacks of rubber-banded hundred dollar bills, and, more importantly, a blue Argentine passport, driver’s license, and a debit card for the Citi Belgrano in Buenos Aires. All were in the name of Mariana Highsmith. There was also a clasp knife, and a pair of books that had come from the Avila bookstore in Buenos Aires: a guidebook to the American northeast and a book of conversational English. She slid the Irene Paretsky debit and Visa cards from her wallet, dropped them in the box, and replaced them with Mariana Highsmith’s license and bank card. She zipped the passport into a pocket on one side of the duffel bag, along with the money. The books went in with the clothes. Using the clasp knife, she cut the tape and plastic from the bundle.
Inside were a pair of .38 revolvers, a crumpled box of bullets, a pair of short plastic tubes, a plastic sandwich bag filled with cotton, another plastic sandwich bag filled with metal washers, and a roll of black duct tape. Careful inspection of the guns would have revealed their serial numbers filed down to the metal. Maureen loaded the cylinders, set the revolvers aside, and turned her attention to the tubes, cotton, and washers, from which she spent the next half hour fashioning two makeshift silencers she attached to the pistols using the tape. The silencers secure, she carried the guns and the tape out to the Escort, whose trunk she popped. Half a dozen empty plastic shopping bags littered the floor. She selected a bag for each pistol and wrapped the weapon in it. With the tape, she affixed one gun to the front right wheel well, the other to the rear left wheel well. Leaving the trunk open, she returned inside, where she zipped the duffel bag and exited the locker, whose door she lowered and locked. She deposited the bag in the trunk, then drove across town to the parking lot of the Holiday Inn near the Thruway exit.
She steered to the back of the building, easing the car into a space next to a beige minivan with Virginia plates. She shut off the engine, reclined her seat, lowered the baseball cap’s bill over her eyes. Her nerves crackled with anger and anxiety; it was all she could do not to start the car and speed for the Thruway. Breakwater was a good three hours south, though, and that without the disruption of the storm battering it. There was no sense in compounding the fatigue of a long drive with the exhaustion of a sleepless night. Plus, she preferred to arrive in the town during the daylight. She could at least rest. Somewhat to her surprise, she dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep from which she was awakened by the minivan’s family climbing into it for an early start. A stop at the Quick Check up the street allowed her to use the toilet, splash water on her face, and purchase a large coffee, sausage-egg-and-cheese sandwich, and a bag of trail mix. She paid cash, as she did for the tolls for the Thruway and, later, the Jersey Turnpike.
Which brought her to here, now, to the parking lot of the Porcelain Pig Family Restaurant (closed), across Ocean View from the motel where she and Frank had enjoyed their last happy time together. Rain sizzled against the Escort’s windows, thundered on its roof. Wind gusted to a shriek, rocking the car. Between the rain and the distance, she couldn’t tell if anyone in Room 211 had registered her arrival. Best to assume they had. She was guessing Louise Westerford had a minimum of three, as many as five, men with her. One to either side of the door, positioned to grab her as she entered the room. The others stationed nearby should it prove necessary to assist those two. Possibly a man hiding in the bathroom in case the situation seriously deteriorated. She pictured the room, the king-sized bed facing the room door, the bathroom down a short hall beyond it. Assuming he was still bound to the chair, Frank would be on the left.
She took a deep breath, released it slowly. With the Irene Paretsky identity, whose connection to her could be traced easily, she had set in motion one narrative, in which, frightened by Louise Westerford’s threats, she had adopted another persona and fled the country. Assuming whatever hacker Louise was employing had discovered the alias and was tracking her through its purchases, the ruse should distract the older woman, cause her to divert resources in the direction of Montreal to deal with this fresh wrinkle. Because there was no doubt Louise intended the same or worse vengeance on her. Looking ahead, the same obvious link between Maureen and Irene would throw the police off her trail, at least temporarily.
She drew in another breath, let it out slowly. The Christie Sayers identity would be considerably more difficult to connect to her, and the time it would take the cops to do so, and then to search the video archives of the Thruway cameras for the Escort, and then to do the same for the Turnpike’s video records, would extend her lead.
She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. In this day and age, you could hardly say something was untraceable, but the Mariana Highsmith identity was as close to it as a considerable sum of money could buy. If the police succeeded in doing so, it would be long after she had flown to Buenos Aires, emptied her account at the Citi Belgrano, and left in a rental car for the border with Uruguay. The only thing for which she had not planned was having someone else with her, especially a companion as grievously hurt as Frank. It was a complication, but not an insurmountable one. If she could get Frank to Newark, there was a small apartment on the western edge of the city rented to Ruth Abbot, where they could hole up for a few days while she sought medical care for him, and prepared for his departure from the country.
She took a deep breath, let it drain from her slowly. Thus far, Maureen had done her best to put the photo of his naked, wounded body from her thoughts. Now she allowed herself to remember it, to see the damage days of beatings had done to him. She pictured the wreck of his face. No doubt he had suffered internal damage, broken ribs, a bruised liver or kidney, a possible retinal detachment or blowout fracture. Cold, murderous rage rose in her. When she was ready to kill Louise Westerford, she zipped her raincoat and stepped out into the storm.
Rain lashed her. To her relief, the revolvers were where she had fastened them, which had been the idea, but as she crouched beside each wheel well, a surge of panic made her certain that pistol was gone, jostled loose by the combination of distance and weather. She stripped the guns of their covering, wadded the tape and bag into a ball, and tucked the b
all into her raincoat’s front pocket. Holding a revolver in either hand, she crossed the street. Water streamed from the baseball cap. Wind pushed her like an enormous animal, a dog or horse shoving her this way and that. Roaring filled the air overhead. She kept the pistols close to her legs, silencers pointing down.
On the other side of the street, she descended the short ramp to the motel’s submerged parking lot. The water was cold, most of the way up her shins. She splashed across the pavement to a passage between the main office and the motel proper. A set of stairs climbed to the second floor. Her boots squelched as she ascended them. At the top of the stairs, she turned right, following the walkway that wrapped around the front of the building. Despite the rain pouring from the front of the cap, she could see the door to Room 211 open ahead. Louise’s men weren’t leaving anything to chance. They would be fast; she would have to be faster. Her sole advantage lay in the possibility Louise did not want her dead right away. She was at the doorway. She turned and entered it.
What happened next occurred with almost startling clarity. Maureen raised the gun in each hand to either side of her and squeezed the trigger. The pistols made a spitting sound, jerked slightly in her grip. The men flanking the doorway collapsed, one with a red hole in his throat, the other with a red hole in his cheek. Maureen swung the gun in front of her, to where Frank slumped forward in his chair, a man in a black turtleneck and jeans to his left, Louise—also in turtleneck and jeans—to his right, a bloody carving knife in her hand. Maureen shot the man in the chest and Louise in the chest. The man crumpled to the carpet. Louise stepped away from Frank. Maureen shot her again, also in the chest. Louise dropped the knife and sat. Pistols held out before her, Maureen advanced past Frank to the bathroom, through whose open door she saw a man in a black turtleneck and jeans rising from his seat on the edge of the bathtub, a .45 in his left hand. She shot him in the chest, the silencer on the right pistol puffing apart, sending washers pinging off the tiled floor and walls. The man tried to retreat, backed against the edge of the tub, fell into it, and did not rise. Guns leading the way, Maureen exited the bathroom.
She approached Frank, whose torso was covered in a sheet of blood from, she saw, the ear to ear cut Louise had made to his throat. Covering the room with the .38 in her right hand, she brought her left behind her and slid that pistol inside the waist of her jeans. With her free hand, she felt Frank’s bloody neck for a pulse. There was none.
Maureen moved her hand to Frank’s shoulder and lowered her head. The acrid smell of gunpowder mixed with the metallic odor of blood. Riding the adrenaline coursing her veins, grief rushed over her. Blood dripped and pattered from the chair to the carpet. Rain blew in the open door. A part of her mind was telling her she had to go, she’d been too late for Frank but at least she had ensured she wouldn’t have to watch for Louise in her rearview mirror. Likely, after she murdered Maureen, Louise had planned on the storm destroying the motel, if not carrying the bodies of her husband and his mistress out to sea, then confusing the means of their deaths for anyone who cared to investigate. The same plan could work for Maureen, provided she wasn’t here when the waves and wind brought the building down. She lifted her hand from Frank’s shoulder to touch his hair.
And started back as his head jerked up. A horrible bubbling wheeze filled the air, the sound of someone attempting to breathe through a throat that had been slashed. Maureen dropped her gun, dug in the front pocket of her jeans for her clasp knife. Frank rocked weakly from side to side, struggling against his bloody bindings. She opened the knife, grabbed the topmost loop of rope, and sawed at it. The wheezing continued. She cut the next loop down, the two below that, and the remainder of the rope slackened, slithering to the carpet. Before Maureen could catch him, Frank pitched forward. She shoved the chair out of the way and knelt beside him, casting the knife aside so she could grab his shoulders and turn him over.
The wound to his neck gaped. (Was this why she couldn’t find a pulse there?) His eyes bulged, his lips trembling with words he could not voice. “Shh,” Maureen said. “It’s all right.” Which it most decidedly was not. Given the opening in his throat and the volume of blood he had lost, she could not understand how Frank could possibly be alive, nor could she imagine the story she was going to tell at whatever hospital she sped him to. As for how this was going to complicate her already complicated escape plans…
She heard movement behind her. In an instant, she had the .38 out from the waistband of her jeans and turned with it pointing at Louise Westerford, who was using the bed to pull herself to standing. Maureen considered shooting her again, hesitated. The front of Louise’s black turtleneck was sodden with blood. When the older woman pressed her hand to it, her fingers and palm came away crimson. She stared at Maureen with her large blue eyes and said, with some measure of astonishment, “That hurt.”
“It’s called being shot,” Maureen said, and squeezed the trigger. Having outlived its brief lifespan, the silencer did not muffle the BANG. Louise’s head snapped back as a hole opened in the center of her forehead. There was surprisingly little blood. She closed her eyes, but remained standing. A moment passed, and then she said, “You are making it difficult for me not to kill you.” She opened her eyes, and they were white, smooth marble orbs.
“What the fuck?” Maureen said, and aimed the gun at her again.
“Don’t bother.” Louise waved her bloody hand, and the pistol was wrenched from Maureen’s grip and thrown across the room. “What the fuck?” Maureen said.
“Oh, you have much bigger concerns,” Louise said. “Why don’t you check your beloved’s heartbeat?”
Fearing him suddenly inert, Maureen glanced at Frank, who regarded the scene with the same wonder and horror as she. “He’s fine. Well, except for where you tried to cut his fucking throat.”
“I did not ‘try’ anything,” Louise said. “I sliced his major blood vessels and windpipe. Go on. Tell me what his heart rate is.”
Maureen touched Frank’s neck, but still couldn’t find anything. She caught his left arm, pressed her fingertips to his wrist. Nothing there, either, or from his other wrist. Finally, she leaned down and pressed her ear to his blood-soaked chest. It was silent. She lifted her head and looked at Frank, whose expression said that he, too, could not detect his heart’s beating. She looked at Louise. “What is this?”
“Revenge,” Louise said, “on my faithless husband and the woman with whom he betrayed me. Someone I hired,” she added, her tone thick with contempt.
Wind gusted into the room, bringing with it a spray of rain that swept around Louise and splashed against the ceiling. How had Maureen ever thought this woman frail, weak? The very air surrounding her was different, darker. Maureen remembered the room in which she had met Louise to review her findings concerning Frank, the big leather books with their Latin titles, the crystal ball on its metal stand ornamented with devils, and said, “You’re a witch?”
“Please,” Louise said. “What I am is someone who has spent a lifetime mastering knowledge that was old when the ice sheets weighted the land. I have given more of myself than you can conceive to learning secrets that would crisp your nerves, char the bones inside you.”
“Then why did you bother hiring me? Couldn’t you have kept an eye on Frank, yourself?”
“My energies were required elsewhere,” Louise said. “In general, I’ve found money as efficient a means of achieving my ends as the arts of the left hand. Your reputation was impeccable. I was concerned my rivals might attempt to strike at me through my husband. It seemed simpler to employ you to monitor him than to divert the strength necessary for me to do so, personally. Little did I know.” She barked a laugh.
“Okay,” Maureen said, “but once you did know, couldn’t you have let him go gently? Did you have to hurt him like this?”
“Yes I did. Within my community, I have a certain standing to maintain. This does not include my husband committing adultery with a hireling. Beyond that, I loved h
im.” Louise shook her gory head. “I loved him with everything I had. You cannot sully such a gift, you cannot spit on it and rag it through the mud and expect there to be no consequences.”
“How self-righteous.”
“I do not have to justify myself to you, of all people.” White fire danced over her blank eyes. “I am the one who was wronged.”
“So it’s one down, one to go, is that it?”
“It’s this entire miserable town to go.”
“You’re serious.”
“I will not be satisfied until this place has been swept from the face of the Earth.”
“The storm—”
“Yes.”
“Jesus,” Maureen said, not irreverently. “And Frank?”
“Will stay as he is. The waves will take him far from here, out to where the water is deep. There, he’ll float while the water softens his flesh and the creatures of the sea consume him, all the while conscious of his slow devouring.”
“I assume you’re planning a similar fate for me.”
“Oh yes,” Louise said. “Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“I wonder what you would do to spare your beloved further suffering?”
“What do you mean?”
Louise flicked her right hand, and the carving knife she had been holding when Maureen entered the room lifted off the carpet and wobbled through the air to hang in front of Maureen, serrated blade down. She tensed, ready for the weapon to point at her and attack. “Go on,” Louise said, “take it.”
Still suspicious, Maureen reached out and caught the carving knife’s pebbled hilt. When her fingers closed on it, whatever force had been suspending the blade released it. “All right,” she said, “what now?”
“Cut your throat.”
Maureen’s stomach dropped. “What?”
“Press the edge of the knife to the left side of your neck and draw it across to the right. I doubt you’ll be able to open the windpipe, but you should have no trouble with the major blood vessels.”