Ink for the Beloved

by R C Barnes

  Right there in all their painted glory were the images I had been seeking. The pictures I needed to piece it all together. A chubby cow was jumping over the moon with a cat fiddling beneath. There were the constellations and their astrological pairings with Cancer, the crab sitting proudly amongst the stars. There was the wolf on a distant hill howling to the crescent moon. I could now see they were drawn to resemble rune symbols. High at the top, not far from Cancer was a little rocket ship, and I knew it had the number eleven on its side for the Apollo moon program. And there was the child’s hand with the beaded butterfly bracelet drawing attention to the winking moon with a little mouse sitting on top. How could I forget about the mouse?! All the images and stories pointed to the moon. The moon was the answer. It had been right there before me.

  If I had only looked within.

  Suddenly, I sensed movement behind me. Something was moving fast. Before I could turn, I was hit in the back of the head. My knees crumbled, and everything went black as my body smacked onto the pavement.

  ***

  A hard jolt brought me back to consciousness. My head collided with something metal, and I tried to get my arm in a position to buffer the bouncing movement. I was in a car. Or rather the trunk of a car. I could feel the scratchy cheap layer of fabric used to line a trunk’s interior. It was dark and cramped, but if I kept my body curled in a fetal position, I could manage the situation. Slowly my eyesight adjusted… BANG. It felt like the car had gone over a speed bump. They were everywhere in the Bay Area. I cursed out loud. My impulse was to scream at the driver and pound on the top of the trunk. But then I realized I probably didn’t want them to know I was awake.

  I suspected Todd was driving, but I didn’t know for sure. This wasn’t my mother’s car, but he had probably gotten rid of her Volvo a long time ago. The vehicle was reported stolen, so it wouldn’t have been smart to keep it around.

  I wondered how long I had been out cold and how long I had been in the trunk of the car. A solid form in my back pocket told me I still had my cell phone. I reached around and pulled the phone out. Luther was the number I dialed. He answered immediately.

  “Girl, where the hell are you?!” His voice was charged and emotional.

  “Luther, I’m in trouble,” I responded.

  “Where are you?!” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  He began to protest, but I cut him off with “I’m in the trunk of a car.”

  “WHAT?! What happened? Where are you?”

  “The car is moving, so I don’t know. First, is Echo with you?”

  “Yes,” Luther responded. “Ollie just brought her over. He told me about this Maxine business.”

  “Good because I don’t think the house is safe. Or the studio…”

  “Bess, Bess…,” Luther stopped me. “I’m having Ollie call the police. You keep talking to me. How did you end up in a car trunk? Do you remember that? You rushed out of my place thirty minutes ago.”

  Good. That meant a lot of time had not gone by. It took me maybe twenty minutes to get to Cosmic Hearts from Luther’s apartment

  “I was in front of the tattoo studio, and someone hit me from behind.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “I didn’t see them, but my guess is Todd.” I could hear Luther relay the information to Ollie and then Ollie speaking to the police. When Todd’s name came up, Ollie questioned it, claiming Todd was dead. Luther responded I was guessing, and I could hear Ollie tell the police in the background. The car slowed and took a hard right. My body slid with the trajectory motion, and I was crunched into the side of the trunk. Ouch.

  “Bess, keep talking to me,” Luther said. “How long has the car been driving?”

  “I don’t know because I was out for a while. But if you say I’ve been gone for half an hour, then ten minutes. Maybe ten minutes.” Luther barked the information to Ollie, who then repeated it to the police.

  “Luther, the car is stopping,” I cried. The panic I heard in my voice scared me even more.

  “Bess, listen to me,” Luther said. He spoke precisely and urgently. “Hang up with me right now and dial 911. Do you hear me? Dial 911, hit mute, and then hide the phone in the back of the trunk. Leave it there. We’ll find you.”

  “Luther…,” I sobbed. I had barely enough time to do Luther’s instructions before the driver of the car came around to the back and opened the trunk.

  There was a squealing sound as the trunk opened, like an animal screeching in defiance. Even though it was dark outside, a swatch of light fell across my face, and I had to hold up my hand as I squinted at the glare. The shadow of Todd’s familiar form blocked the light, which I realized was a streetlamp. It had been cold in the trunk, and my body was shivering. The shivering could also have been adrenaline and panic.

  “Good, you’re awake,” he observed. “I won’t have to carry you. Makes it a lot easier for me.” He looked down at me, and a smile crept across his face. His missing teeth made him look even more like a reptile. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he said, and he pulled out what appeared to be a scarf from his jacket pocket.

  For a brief second, I thought he was going to wrap it around my throat. However, his aim was higher, and the scarf was forced into my mouth. He wrapped it around my head twice before securing it tightly behind my neck. The scarf bit into the sides of my mouth. My jaws were forced open in a painful way, and I had to fight to keep from gagging.

  “Come here,” he snapped and hoisted me out of the trunk. He had a firm grip on my arms and lifted me effortlessly as if I were one of Echo’s fairy dolls. A brief image of my sister flashed in my mind. I hoped she wasn’t worried about me and that Ollie and Luther were shielding her from what was going on. The phone was tucked into the floorboards of the trunk. They would find me.

  Todd had stopped the car in an industrial area of the city. I guessed we were in Oakland. I couldn’t smell the ocean, but then again, my nostrils were covered by the woolen scarf covering the lower portion of my face. Todd kicked open the door to what appeared to be a condemned warehouse. Windows were boarded on the outside, and junk was piled up and overflowing on the sidewalk area. He pulled me through the threshold.

  The area was dank and deserted. There were signs homeless people had taken up residence at different periods. Bedrolls and blankets were shoved in corners, and empty cans of food were tossed around the ground. I wanted to say something smart like “Hey, is this where you’ve been staying? Looks like an upgrade.” But I was gagged, so the thought went unvoiced. I guess that was the point of the scarf.

  Todd was showing no mercy as he pulled me along over the floorboards. The wooden floorboards were loose and lay across the concrete floor. Todd kept a firm grip, holding me tight against his body as he dragged me along. I couldn’t use my arms to balance, so I continually tripped over the junk cluttering the floor. One block of wood caused me to stumble, and I fell over. Todd released me as I fell, and I came down hard on my knees. I was thankful I was wearing jeans.

  Todd cursed and pulled me up by my elbows. He shook me hard as if it was my fault I couldn’t walk straight. I tried to call him a dumbass - but then again, I was gagged.

  I know I should have been fearful. I know I should have been scared, but now, I was just angry. Angry and annoyed. Angry that this guy had done so much damage to my family and annoyed at his level of incompetence. What was the purpose of taking me? Even if he could beat me up and have me reveal the location of the drugs, which I knew must be in the safe deposit box at the bank. He couldn’t get to them. Could he? I didn’t know the rules of having access to a safety deposit box, but I assumed the bank had to have you listed as authorized, and you had to have the key. The police were still waiting to have a judge allow them access. The court’s view was it was just drugs, they weren’t going anywhere.

  Could my mother have added Todd to the list of authorized people? No, impossible. But then…

  Who was on the
list? Me? Maybe. Unless you had to be over eighteen than I wouldn’t be. And my mother would have drawn up this legal stuff back when Cosmic Hearts was being launched. I wouldn’t be listed then as I was a toddler. My deceased grandparents, maybe. That was possible. And Dusty. Dusty would have access. Dusty was how Todd was going to get into the safety box. I loved Dusty immensely, but she would roll over the minute Todd threatened to do anything.

  My feet hit more debris and glancing down, it looked like crumpled up bags and cartons from fast-food restaurants. We moved through three rooms, and then Todd pulled me up a flight of metal stairs. We climbed about two levels, but it was difficult for me to gauge. We reached a floor with wide-open spaces. The walls were covered with graffiti, and there were large holes in the plaster. I saw plastic sheeting everywhere. I began to panic. Was this the place where the police found Rodriguez’s body? And Todd lost his teeth?

  “Where’s your phone?” he demanded. He growled when he realized I couldn’t answer him. (Hey, dumbass!) His hands moved around my jeans, padding me down. He looked at me, satisfied that the object was not on my person. I was so glad Luther had told me to leave it in the car.

  “Move over here,” he demanded. “There’s a chair.” Todd placed a hand on my shoulder and pushed me down. I felt the edge of the chair as my body fell, and I managed to adjust myself quickly, so my butt hit the seat, and I didn’t plummet to the floor.

  “There you go,” he said. His voice sounded disappointed that I hadn’t hit the floor. I took a deep breath and instantly regretted it as I received a healthy snort of Todd funk. The scarf must have been one Todd owned for years and never washed. It’s difficult to gag when you are already gagged.

  With me in the chair and silenced, Todd then picked up strands of rope lying nearby. He tied my hands and tied each ankle to the front of the chair. He then stood back to admire his work.

  In my mind, I was shooting electric laser bolts at him, but I stayed calm as if I had already sucked down three packets of hot sauce. I let my fury simmer.

  “Alright, then. I’m going to make this simple,” Todd said. “I am going to remove the scarf so you can tell me where the key is to the safe deposit box. I know you know. I’ve been watching you. You might think your little tricks with the bicycle would throw me off your track, but I didn’t need to follow you, my dear. I just needed to wait until you came back to the tattoo studio. And eventually, you did.”

  I prayed my eyes didn’t betray my thoughts. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I walked. No, I ran right into the trap.

  “Your movements all over the city were amusing. I lost you for a few days. And during that time, I lost two fingers.” He held up his right hand and waved it like he was saying hello. That’s when I noticed the hand was wrapped in bandages. He smiled, but it was more like a painful wince. He wasn’t displaying his crocodile grin.

  “I’ve been patient because I knew you would show up, and I knew you would have the answer I need. I had to convince others of this. It was hard because they don’t know you the way I do. Alright, I’m going to remove the scarf. If you scream, I hit you. If you don’t give me the answer I need, I hit you. I may have lost some digits, but they didn’t take the fingers from my strong hand.”

  Todd stepped behind me and loosened the knots on the scarf. It slipped enough to allow me to breathe properly, and I spat out the scratchy material from my mouth.

  “Where’s the key?” Todd asked.

  “What are you going to do with me?” was my reply.

  “No, no, no,” he said, stepping in front of me and wagging a finger. “Tell me where the key is, or I hit you.”

  I really didn’t want to get hit. Images of my mother in the hospital bed was all I needed to spit out what he wanted to hear. “It’s in the moon,” I replied. I then closed my eyes and lowered my head as if he had defeated me. But I was really hoping he would take my answer and not ask anymore. If I looked at him, he might grasp that my response was not entirely forthcoming.

  Todd repositioned the scarf over my mouth and tightened the knots, so it was a gag once more. He came back around and smirked as he spoke. “Now, that wasn’t hard. And as a reward, I’m going to share what’s going to happen next. I leave you here while I head back to the studio and retrieve the key. Once I have it, I’ll be at the bank first thing in the morning with your mom’s pal, Dusty. After we’re done, I’ll tell Dusty where you can be found.”

  His eyes took me in for a beat longer. I couldn’t imagine what he thought as I sat there tied to a chair with his nasty scarf around my mouth. However, many thoughts fluttered through my head. One of them being he would be back because he couldn’t possibly locate the key by merely looking in the moon. The tattoo studio was called Cosmic Hearts. There were constellation lights all over the place. He would rip them down and look inside the ones shaped like a crescent moon and come up empty. He would be back, and he would be angry.

  But I was gagged so I couldn’t say anything.

  “Goodbye, Bess. I hope I never see you again, you little bitch.”

  THIRTEEN THOUGHTS

  Contrary to popular belief, being tied up and gagged is not kinky, and it’s not fun. Of course, I was not benefiting from lying on a comfy bed with my head propped up with feather pillows. A lavender-scented blindfold was not wrapped around my head, and silk scarves were not attached to my wrist and ankles while a partner lightly touched my thigh with a feather.

  Instead, I was strapped to a metal chair in the middle of a room filled with swaths of plastic sheeting and piles of junkie debris. My mouth gagged from the smell of human funk coming from the scarf, and my wrists were scratched raw by the tough fibered rope used to tie them together. I was alone unless you counted the rats. I guessed the scratching sounds I was hearing were vermin moving in and out of the walls. I could hear the roar of traffic, but it sounded distant like white noise. And I really had to pee.

  One thing movies never show you is, if a person has been tied up for a long time, how they handle this most basic function. I live in California, and I carry a reusable water bottle in my bag. I drink half my body weight in liquid ounces to stay hydrated. This means I must use the bathroom almost every two hours.

  My bladder was bursting.

  I thought back to the last time I had used the bathroom. It had been at Luther’s house before my ill-fated call to Emily’s mother. I had been drinking tea, but I hadn’t finished it, had I? But then I remembered it was my second cup. I tried to calculate how long ago that had been.

  I wondered if by keeping a low profile for the last week and hiding my activity from Todd, he believed I had located the key a long time ago. Perhaps he thought I was moving the drugs somewhere else. No, that didn’t make sense. He probably had someone watch the bank to make sure I didn’t go inside while he watched Cosmic Hearts. It wasn’t Duane, so maybe there was someone else sitting in a car with a viewpoint of the bank with tons of fast-food wrappers and styrofoam cups littered in the back seat. Maybe the gross guy at Tobacco Joe’s. No, No, No. My mind was going in too many directions.

  I took a deep breath, ignored my screaming bladder, and began to itemize what I knew and what Todd knew and to think out my situation. One, I knew where the key to the safety deposit box was. I had solved Maxine. Two, I had semi-lied when I told Todd it was in the moon. I knew Todd would think of the planetary lights draped around the shop. He would go to Cosmic Hearts, tear down the lights and break open the ones fashioned like a moon. Hell, he would break open all the lights. Todd would then realize I had lied to him and come back and torture me. However, this bought me time. Time to do what, I wasn’t sure.

  Three, I didn’t have my phone. Luther’s request that I call 911 and leave my phone in Todd’s car might work. They would track the vehicle. My hopes shot up with the thought. But then I realized if the police saw my location as Cosmic Hearts (which is where Todd was headed), they might think it’s not an emergency. No, they knew it was an emergency, Luther and Ollie had called them
.

  Four, my phone was with Todd, not me. If Todd were killed in a shootout, nobody would know where I was.

  Five, I have to pee.

  Six, I was counting on the fact the police allowed Echo to stay with Ollie and Luther, and they didn’t move her. If Echo remains with Luther, she’d be fine. However, if Officer Lopez (or anybody else) took my sister to the station and she saw the room for children-in-crisis, Echo would scream for me and create a scene. The children-in-crisis room was where we had been the horrible night when Terry went bonkers over Luther. If there was an emotional scene at the police station, a lot of stuff could go wrong, possibly alerting Todd to Echo’s whereabouts. I wanted Todd to be focused on me.

  Seven, I hoped having Ollie take Echo to Luther’s house was the right move. Todd knew about Luther, he knew where Luther worked, but he didn’t know where Luther lived. Luther’s home was the safest place for my sister. If anything happened to me, she would already be somewhere she would be protected. Restraining order or not, with everything going down, Luther would fight like a gladiator for Echo. He could have a shot at winning custody.

  Seven and a half, I really had to pee, and because my ankles were tied to the chair, I couldn’t cross my legs.

  Eight, I wish I had peed in the trunk of Todd’s car when I had the chance. That way, my DNA and smell would be all over the trunk, and he would be directly tied to my death. I hadn’t done it then because the thought of Todd seeing me with a wet crotch was too embarrassing. I don’t think I could have handled his nasty comments with no ability to lash back because of the gag. My anguish was mounting as I knew there was no way I could go another five minutes without soiling myself. If I ended up becoming a meal for the rats, they would reach my bladder and find it bone dry.

  Eight and a half, I wondered how long I could go before I died. (Once I had the thought, I realized Rueben would probably know the answer to that.)

  Nine, how long would I be tied up here? Nobody knew where I was outside of Todd. What if he was killed in a car accident as he headed back to Berkeley and the tattoo shop? What if he got in a shoot out with the cops? What if his boss, the drug kingpin, or whatever he was, finally got tired of Todd’s antics and got rid of him? What if the ghost of Wolfie rose up and tore out his throat? I smiled, thinking about the last image. It would be a fitting end for Todd.