by Tom Pitts
Another bright white flash of pain ignited as Bomber hit her again in the left temple. Her vision blurred and she squeezed her thighs as she tried to cling to consciousness.
When her eyes refocused, Jason was saying, “Don’t act like you don’t know who he is. We know you do. We seen him on the block and we seen him with your husband. Why you bringing him around?”
Linda started to shake her head. Bewildered, she scrambled to come up with something, even a lie. Something to make them stop hitting her.
Jason said, “Bomber?”
Linda cried out. “No, please. No more. I don’t know who he is. I only met him once. He contacted my husband after you showed up. He said he was a detective.”
“Bullshit,” Juliet said. “They know him. They both do.”
Without being asked, Bomber punched Linda in the stomach and she let loose a blast of stringy vomit that dripped down and mingled with the garbage on the floor of the car.
When she was done gagging, she sat back up and Jason said to her, “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. If you’re lying, we’re going to find out. And then we’ll kill you, and then we’ll kill your husband.”
Juliet, her voice croaking with the weight of the high, said, “And we’ll kill your little dog too.” She giggled after she said it, but no one else did.
Gary could tell the smoke was bothering Calper, so after few pulls, he flicked the rest of the butt onto the freeway. He tried to look across the city at the lights, but there were none. The walled-off freeway kept the city obscured from his line of sight. Cut off, the way he was from Linda. He knew she was out there, beyond the walls, somewhere. He thought about her, of all the fights they’d had and the meaningless anger that’d passed between them. And he was sorry. He thought of her as frail, small, and girlish—like a flower. Then he remembered: she was tough, resourceful, smart. He knew she wouldn’t give up, knew she’d find a way to fight back, to reach out to him. He tried to quell his terror by telling himself she was going to be okay. She was a survivor.
Calper spoke and Gary didn’t hear him the first time. Calper repeated himself, asking Gary to open the glove box. Gary did. Inside was a large two-way radio. He handed it to Calper who twisted one of the two knobs at the top. A small green light glowed. Calper held the radio between his thighs and turned the second knob with his thumb until it announced a loud static.
“What’s with that?” Gary asked.
“It’s a police scanner. They can come in pretty handy in situations like this. I already got lucky with it once.”
Gary looked back out the passenger window. The comment almost didn’t register.
“What do you mean?”
“That’s how I found you.” It was Calper now who looked out his side window.
“But you were looking for this DeWildt kid. How did you know that had anything to do with my address?”
Calper sucked in a long breath through his nose and expelled it audibly over his lips. “When I heard the call, it was in the right spot, on the right block. You didn’t think those scumbags just happened upon that house, did you?”
Chapter Thirteen
After the suicide attempt—that’s what he heard his father call it—there was a lot of activity. Gone were the quiet afternoons with Mommy on the sofa and Jason standing guard. After Mommy came home from the hospital, his father said she had to get help. He made the arrangements, like he always did.
Jason heard them fight about it, Mommy crying out that she didn’t want to go. But when the daytime came and his father had gone to work, she acted differently. She told him she was brave and he should be brave too. So they had to go. She dragged him along to slow and boring doctor’s appointments where he was left in a room with beige walls and big pictures of the outdoors; deer, ducks, and birds, always with a big sky crowded with robust clouds. He sat in the room, wondering where on earth the pictures were painted, where life could look so perfect and so wild. The magazines in those rooms were for adults, the only pictures were ads and the stories looked long and unreadable. In his pocket he’d stow away a small toy truck or some of his army men, but he never felt quite comfortable enough to allow himself to slip into his own world, the alien surroundings tethering him to the room. It was not his home, his safe place, it was Mommy’s doctor’s and he didn’t feel safe there.
She’d almost always come out in tears, stoic tears that’d she’d sniff back as she took his hand and tugged him toward the car. Once or twice, when they reached the car, she didn’t start the engine, instead she’d lay her head on the steering wheel and weep. He sat in the back seat, buckled and ready, and thought, she must be tired. This is happening because she doesn’t get her naps anymore.
“Now what do we do?” Bomber asked the question after the five of them sat in silence for a solid minute, the air in the car thick with bad breath, body odor, and the tang of Linda’s vomit rising from the floor.
Jason’s silence told them he didn’t know.
“Let’s fuck her up,” Bomber said. “I’ll fucking rape this bitch.”
The little one on Linda’s right shuddered.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Bomber?” Jason said. “She’s got blood and puke dripping from her mouth.”
“I don’t care. I’ll flip her over and fuck her in the ass. What do I care?”
Jason glared at Bomber. Maybe Bomber was just trying to scare her, maybe not, but the idea pissed Jason off. Bomber pissed him off.
Bomber shrugged, then said, “Why don’t you use that razor of yours?”
Jason said, “I got something better. Juliet, open the glove box and gimme that thing we got from Kent the cunt.”
Juliet opened the glove box and drew out the brand-new Sig Sauer .45 Jason had lifted off the injured lawyer. It’d never been fired and was fitted with a full magazine. The grip was wide and meshed with black rubber. She felt the weight of the weapon in her hand before handing it to Jason.
“What are you going to do?” the kid said.
“Whatever the fuck I like, Russell. Keep your mouth shut.”
It was the first time Jason had ever called him by his real name. Coming out of Jason’s mouth, it didn’t sound right, didn’t sound like his name, like he was talking to someone else.
Jason wagged the gun in front of Linda’s nose. “Now, you’re gonna tell us what’s up. Or I’m gonna stick this thing up your cunt and pull the trigger. You got that?”
Russell started to say something, but Jason fired his eyes at him and he sat back quiet. Linda didn’t say anything. She tried to nod her head but ended up only shaking.
Jason spoke slowly, his words drawn out and clipped. “What the fuck was Calper Dennings doing with your man?”
Linda broke down, tears streaming down her cheeks mixing with the blood. “I don’t know. He just showed up. I don’t know him. My husband doesn’t know him. He knocked on our door and told my husband he could help. That’s all, I swear to you.”
Jason poked her in the forehead with the barrel of the gun. But she had nothing more to say. She raised her hands to cover her eyes and Bomber said, “I told you to keep your fucking hands down.”
Juliet’s voice croaked to life. “Let’s call him. Or let’s call the old man.”
“I don’t have the number. It’s not in that phone.”
Juliet rolled back her glassy eyes. “It’s in the old one. Our phone. The one in the trunk.”
Jason twisted back around and gripped the steering wheel, .45 still in hand. He needed a moment to think. That phone had been tucked away for a reason. It was his phone. The last time the battery died, he buried it in the trunk. The account was dead, the bill long unpaid. He calculated the risk of turning it back on. The phone was paid for by his father, but he didn’t keep it up, he didn’t like the umbilical connection to the old man. It was state-of-the art. He really had no idea of what they could do. Technology ch
anged too fast for someone like him to keep up with. He didn’t understand the GPS or how to turn it off. He hated feeling that the world was smarter than him.
“And we need to get rid of this car too,” Juliet said, her voice careening into jags.
“Fuck.” Jason got out of the car and slammed the door. He walked to the rear of the Impala and keyed open the trunk. He dug deep. Even though he knew where he’d hid the cell, there were tattered belongings from all four of them to push through. When he’d found it, he slammed the trunk closed with as much force as he could muster and marched back to the driver’s seat. He tossed the old phone to Juliet saying, “Charge it up. Don’t turn it on. Let’s hit the road.”
From the back seat, Russell asked, “Where are we going?”
No one answered him.
Calper and Gary exited off the 80 at Madison and made their way toward Gary’s house on Coldwater Court. Calper knew he was going to have to tell Gary something, but he was stalling, deciding on what. As he turned onto the residential streets—dark, empty, and even quieter than when they left—he reached for the scanner and thumbed down the volume.
“I knew he was going to be there. Or at least, I had a pretty good idea. Jason has a connection to the house.” Calper flicked the turn signal and rounded a left. “Jason DeWildt is related to the Perkins. He spent a lot of time here as a boy. When I heard he was in Sacramento, I figured, odds were, he’d be showing up here.”
Calper reached Gary’s street and pulled onto it. As they neared the Carsons’ driveway, they both peered at the house across the street, contemplating it for a brief moment before continuing their conversation.
“Related? How?”
“He’s a nephew, on Abigail Perkins’ side. I work for her brother. Rather, I was hired by her brother to help find Jason. He’s been in a lot of trouble and managed to slip through their fingers a few times.”
Gary thought about this. He snapshotted through his memory and couldn’t remember seeing anyone visit his neighbors. There were cable guys, meter readers, and delivery men. No guests, no relatives that he could remember. Even on the holidays.
“Who’s her brother?”
Before Calper could answer, his cell went off in his pocket. It rang once more while he glanced at the ID, then he answered it.
“Hello. I’m here.”
“We got a hit on the cell.” It was Taber, his nasal whine coming through the speaker loud and clear.
“You’re kidding. After all this time?”
The voice on the other end didn’t answer him at first. There was a muffled voice in the background, then Taber said, “It just passed Davis. Looks like they’re flying down the 80 west. They’re in a place called Dixon now. We were smart to pay the bill and start up the account again.”
Always take a moment to pat yourself on the back, thought Calper. “I’m on my way. Keep an eye on that thing and let me know if they get off the freeway.” Calper ended the call and restarted the engine. “I gotta go. I think we got a lead. I’ll call you first chance I get.”
Gary didn’t move. Calper waited, but Gary wasn’t budging.
“Gary, please. Time is important here.”
“I’m coming with you. If they’ve got Linda, I want to be there. There’s nothing for me here.”
There was no time to argue, so Calper threw it into drive and pulled a U-turn to head back to the freeway. He got about twenty yards before Gary told him to hit the brakes.
“Change your mind?”
“No. I gotta feed the dog and let him out.”
“Look, Gary, why don’t you stay here. Take care of the pup and I’ll call you every hour on the hour.”
“No, I’m coming. I’ll just leave the screen door open for Barney.”
“Aren’t you afraid of somebody breaking in?”
Gary looked at Calper, confused. “Why? Linda’s gone. There’s nothing left to steal.”
Chapter Fourteen
The flat lights of Sacramento were receding in the rearview as Jason opened up the Impala on Interstate 80. The rush of night air in the car felt good, as though it could clear his knotted thoughts. The cell sat beside him on the front seat and he peeked at the charge indicator. It glowed green, as it should. The wind whistled in his ear and blew out any discussion or complaints bandied about in the car. He no longer heard the whimpering of the woman in back—the woman he increasingly doubted knew anything about Calper Dennings. Hard for him to accept, but it was looking like she wasn’t part of the grand scheme his family concocted to rope him in.
He’d done things like this before. Made mistakes. In fact, he’d done things like this his whole life—letting his instinct and his gut drive his actions, only to realize he should have slowed down and questioned them. When the darkness rose up inside him, all rational thought recoiled, morals were derailed. He knew it, he’d always known it. And yet, every time his feelings collided with his objectives, the memory of his mistakes hid themselves like frightened animals somewhere deep in the recesses of his brain.
Even now, part of him was second-guessing. He wasn’t sure why he’d come under his father’s crosshairs gain. Something had happened, something had shifted. Jason was now seen as an asset. Or a threat. He was sure his family—his father—had something very specific in mind for him. Otherwise, a man like his father wouldn’t put so much effort into finding him, reining him in, controlling him. He knew the way his father operated; he’d seen how it’d worked with his mother. He’d seen what it’d done to her. A direct manipulation. No allowance for subtleties. When his father wanted things to go a certain way, nothing could stop him from imposing his will on the universe. That’s why he’d fled. There was no avoiding a force of nature like Stephan DeWildt.
“Jason,” Juliet said. Her voice was sharp and nagging and cut into his consciousness as if she’d been saying his name over and over.
“What?”
“You gotta make that call.”
“I will, I will. I can’t very well make it while I’m driving. I need to think.”
“You want me to call ’em?”
He pinched his brow together and glared at her.
“Then pull off if you got to. We need to dump this fucking car too.”
Jason sighed. She was right. Only a matter of time before the car got them busted. He’d have to switch. That meant seizing an opportunity. Something he was good at.
“Next exit,” he said.
The familiar green freeway sign announced Meridian Road was next. He signaled and started to move over from the fast lane to the right. Whenever he returned to California, the freeway signs gave him comfort. They made him feel more at home than his family ever did.
They made the exit and decelerated into the flat darkness of the Vacaville-Dixon Greenbelt, a sprawl of orchards and farmland that broke open into the California Central Valley. A dark blue clung to the horizon giving them the only perspective of where they fit between the earth and sky. Jason glanced into the rearview and saw Bomber with his hand clutching the terrified woman’s breast, his nose plugged right behind her ear. The woman kept rigid, her eyes darting away from the point of violation. Tears continued to stream down her already slick cheeks.
Jason hit the brake and jolted everyone in the car forward.
Lost in his own thoughts, Russell flew forward like his bones were hollow. Bomber, too, slammed against the back of Jason’s seat. “What the fuck?”
“What’d I tell you, Bomber?”
“What?”
“Stop that shit. Just fucking stop it.”
“What shit?”
Jason yanked the wheel to the right and the hit the brake again. The car slid off the blacktop, crunching gravel under its wheels. Jason was panting, listening to his own uneven breath. He thought about his razor, he thought about the gun. Then he saw the cell phone on the seat beside him was winking at him—red.
; He grabbed the phone and thrust it under Juliet’s nose. “I thought I told you not to turn it on.”
“I didn’t turn it on. I plugged it in. That’s all.”
They were stopped. High yellow corn on one side, almond trees rowed like headstones on the other. Jason squeezed the phone in his hand.
“Make the call,” Juliet said.
Jason got out of the car and slammed the door. He shouted at the closed window, “Don’t nobody move.” He walked in front of the car and stood in the dust illuminated by the headlights and lifted the phone to his ear.
“We just got a call from him. Right now he’s at Meridian and Weber outside of Dixon. You know where that is?” Taber sounded excited, his voice pitched upward.
“No, but I got a GPS. What’d he say?”
“We’re looking at an internet map right now and it looks like nothing but a cornfield. There’s nothing around there, not even a farmhouse. He should be easy to spot.”
“What did Jason tell you? Did he say he has the woman?”
“He didn’t say anything about her. He was spouting his usual shit. Stop botherin’ him. Let him be. You know.”
“Did you ask? Did you say her name? Linda Carson.”
“Of course we asked. Her safety is of paramount importance to us, believe me. But he wasn’t rational, wasn’t making sense. Who knows what he’s planning.” Ashton lowered his voice a little, like he was letting Calper in on something he didn’t know. “The kid’s, you know, fucked up. What do want me to say?”
“C’mon. You got to give me more than that.”
“He sounded disorientated. He was breathing heavy, yelling. Christ, Calper, I’m just sharing what I heard.”
Calper cut the call short and dropped the phone between his legs. He asked Gary if he had map functions on his phone and told him the cross streets where they were heading. Then he kicked up the speedometer to a hundred.
Chapter Fifteen