A Perfect Canvas
Page 29
Chapter 29
Eddie watched Nicholas turn back to face the wheel. The Honda shot forward as Nicholas stomped on the gas pedal like he was trying to kill a mouse.
“So I’m a snake, huh?” he said. “I like that. Serpents are the middlemen between mankind and the spirit world. That’s high praise.”
Eddie shook his head. The man was way unbalanced.
They stopped at a stop sign. A single lance of electricity fissured the night sky. Thankfully, they continued south, moving away from the thunderstorm, which looked to be heading north. An occasional gust of wind pushed at the car, causing it to rock from side to side.
“Are you circumcised, Eddie?”
“What?”
“Has the foreskin of your penis been removed?”
Eddie shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “That’s none of your damn business.”
They neared the taillights of a cattle trailer being pulled by a slow moving farm truck. Nicholas let up on the accelerator. The smell of manure streaked through the car like the tail of a sulfur comet.
“Come on now. We’re both grown men. We’ve shared the same woman, swapped germs so to speak. Surely you can tell me if you’re circumcised or not.”
The thought of swapping germs with Nicholas nearly made Eddie puke.
“Most men born in America are circumcised,” Nicholas said. “But there’s no real meaning behind the act. Circumcision is meant to be a rite of passage. In some cultures a boy goes through various stages of circumcision on his way to manhood. You’ve probably never heard of meatotomy. It’s a form of penile modification in which the underside of the head of the penis is split. Then there’s a subincision where the split is continued all the way to the base.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Rites of passage. Rituals performed on the penis. The clamp and cut procedure is the most common method currently used to perform a meatotomy or a subincision. First, you restrict the blood flow with a simple rope tie-off. Then the tissue to be cut is clamped using hemostats. They’re sort of like needle-nosed pliers that ratchet closed. One side is inserted into the urethra. Then you ratchet them tight until the tissue is fully compressed. Within about fifteen minutes the tissue will become paper-thin and translucent. It’s just a matter of cutting to the desired length after that.”
Eddie cringed. “That’s disgusting.”
“Some people use surgical scissors, but I prefer a scalpel.” Nicholas leaned forward in his seat, tried to peek around the truck and trailer. “You know this car is a real piece of shit. The clutch is slipping, it pulls to the left, and the brakes are spongy.”
Who cares. How did he draw the chatty nutball in the serial killer lottery? Weren’t maniacal killers supposed to be the quiet type? Couldn’t the man just shut up and drive?
A rear tire of the trailer ahead swerved off the payment, probably pushed by the wind, and rumbled across the bare earth along the edge of the road, kicking up chunks of dirt that smacked the fender and hood of the car.
Nicholas accelerated and passed the truck and trailer at over eighty miles an hour.
Eddie tightened his grip on the shotgun. The moisture in his hands brought out the sickeningly sweet smell of the gun oil he’d rubbed the weapon down with the last time he’d stored it.
“Everything’s going to be just fine,” Nicholas said. “Isn’t it? Soon Paige will be saved. Then it’s on to the whole world.”
Eddie’s mind swelled with questions. Nicholas could be taking him down a road that led to his death, to Paige’s body, to a place worse than hell. There was a good possibility he was walking straight into another trap. But what else could he do? He could think of nothing. He only prayed Paige was still alive, that this madman wanted to take him to her while she was still alive.
“Have some confidence,” Nicholas said. “You’re going to save Paige, be the big hero. Right? The real question is why do you want to save her? Why are you risking your life for a woman who betrayed you, who doesn’t love you anymore?”
“She still loves me.”
“Then why’d she sign a lease on a new apartment?”
The man was messing with his mind. But didn’t it make sense? She would set herself up with a new place to live if she was leaving him, and if he were to believe Tabitha she might have been planning it for a while. Eddie tried to shrug it off.
“So what if she has?” he said, just wanting to shut Nicholas up. “Just because she signed some stupid lease doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me.”
“Then why has she been having an affair?”
With this choice of topic Eddie couldn’t help but wonder if Nicholas wanted his brains surgically removed from his head via shotgun. Nicholas’s lack of concern worried him.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Quit avoiding the question. Why did she leave you? Why did she start banging me?”
“Because of your lies.” Eddie tasted the venom in his own words, hoped to poison Nicholas’s smugness. “People like you smell a little blood in the water, and you take advantage of the situation. That’s why.”
But a tremor of uncertainty quivered in his gut. He could have done more for her, more for them.
They continued driving south. Nicholas kept them on back roads where there was little traffic. Eddie checked his cell phone again, but the error message was still there.
Nicholas smiled. “All I did was offer her what she wanted. That’s it. She did the rest. If she really loved you, do you think that it would matter what I said to her? Face it, I offered her another option, and she jumped at it.”
“You keep telling yourself that. The fact is we were happy together until you came along. Things might not have been perfect, but they never are. She means nothing to you.”
“We’re not together for the sex, if that’s what you mean,” Nicholas said. “She wants to be a part of something special.”
“Special? Until you, she was a part of something special. You chained her to a tree. You hurt her. Now she’s all alone, bleeding, maybe dying. And you call that special?” The cork of anger worked its way back out of the bottle, and he hammered it back in as best he could. “You need to seek professional help, buddy. And I don’t believe you. Paige hasn’t cheated on me. She’s never cheated on me. Would never cheat on me.”
Tabitha was wrong, and Nicholas was lying. He had to be.
“I can see why you might think that, Eddie. But as usual, you have it all wrong. You really don’t know anything about her, do you? She deserves better than you. I know it. She knows it. You know it.”
“Like I said, you don’t know anything about us.”
They passed a huddle of sand trucks on the side of the dark rural road drenched in the light of a street lamp. The place wasn’t familiar. Nicholas had gotten him talking, and now Eddie wasn’t sure exactly where he was. He would have to watch for the next street sign.
“I know a lot more than you think. I know why she left you. I know what she’s looking for. I know what she needs. I even know about her scars.”
Eddie blinked, stunned by this piece of information. If Nicholas knew about the scars then maybe there had been some real intimacy between them. Paige rarely talked about her scars, even with him. Most of what he’d learned he’d had to piece together over the years because she was so sensitive about it.
He spotted a green street sign and realized they were on the southern side of the city, not very far from a police station. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He was making a mistake, trying to do it all on his own. He needed help. He should have made Nicholas drive him to the closest police station when they’d left the house. Now he’d fix that mistake.
“Make a right at the next intersection,” he told Nicholas.
“Now why would I want to do that? There’s plenty of gas in the tank. Whatcha’ thinkin’?”
“Nope.”
Nicholas made a left at the next street, taking them east. He started humming what sounded like “Superstitious” by Stevie Wonder, drumming his thick fingers on the steering wheel to the tune.
Eddie shouldered the shotgun again. “Turn around.”
“Paige is this direction,” Nicholas said pointing out in front of the car. “If I turn around that’ll just take us into town. And what’s there? Nothing we’re interested in. Maybe you’re thinking of stopping? To chat with some college girls, offer to buy them a drink? Or maybe you’re looking to get some help?”
He paused, raised an eyebrow inviting a response. Eddie didn’t bite.
“Well, I’m not sure that's a good idea,” Nicholas continued. “Think about it. We stop. People see you holding a shotgun. The cops come. Now how’s that going to look? What do you suppose the cops will do when they see you holding that gun on me? You think they’re going to listen to what you have to say? Or do you think it more likely they’ll shoot you first and figure out what’s going on afterwards? I think it’s best, for Paige’s sake, not to chance it. Don’t you?”
Eddie shoved the barrel of the shotgun forward meaning to pop Nicholas’s in the chin with it, but Nicholas ducked out of the way, reached up with his shifting hand, and slapped the end of the barrel away from his head.
“I’m trying to drive here,” he said. “And you smacking me with that isn’t helpful.”
Eddie sucked in a breath. Lucky son of a bitch. His finger hadn’t been on the trigger. “Keep your finger off the trigger till you're ready to fire," his dad had drilled into him as kid. And thank God for that. Otherwise Nicholas’s brains would be all over the windshield, and Paige would be left out there, somewhere, never to be found.
“You’re really not thinking things through, Eddie.” Nicholas tapped the side of his head with his finger. “That’s disappointing. If you shoot me what’s going to happen? You think I’m going to take you to Paige if I’ve been shot? You think I’m going to tell you where she is while I sit here bleeding?” A snort of derision shot from his nose. “Not a chance. She can rot on that tree.” He looked at Eddie in the rearview mirror. “But I’ll tell you what will happen if you hit me with that shotgun again. I’ll grant your last wish. I’ll stop this car and we’ll just sit. We’ll call the cops if you like. Wait for them to come. They’ll never find her, she’ll die, and you’ll get shot.”
They passed an old farmhouse with a wood shingled roof and a half dozen junk cars lined up in the front yard like waiting coffins. A light was on in an upstairs window, and it made Eddie think of those motel commercials. The ones that go, “We’ll leave the light on for ya.” But nobody was out there leaving a light on for Paige and him. They were on their own.
To the north, white and blue bolts of lightning battled in cosmic swordplay. Paige was in the worst trouble of her life, and so was he. He’d thought he was in control of the situation, but he wasn’t. He never had been.