The Dime

by Kathleen Kent

  He’s a sexual predator who relentlessly hits on anything female and who never forgets, or forgives, a rejection. Especially if that turndown happens to come from an overly confident redheaded cadet.

  He tells us that the day’s class will be on controlling and subduing an unruly subject. “Many times in your career,” he tells us, “you’re going to come across some hardheaded hooligan who…will…not…comply.”

  He motions to one of the cadets, Ed Regan, a guy who flunked out of Marine boot camp within the first few days, to step onto the mat and stand facing him. He’s a nice kid but has stomp on me written all over him.

  Costello says, “In this scenario, the subject is facing you, but he won’t let you take his arm or wrist to cuff him. He’s not overly belligerent, but he’s not eager or willing either.” He tells Regan to hold his hands up in a defensive posture.

  Costello takes a few steps toward Regan and says to the watching group, “As soon as you’re within range, you need to attack the stronger arm first, which is usually the right arm. You step to the subject’s right side, taking hold of the arm and pulling downward with your left hand to move him off balance. And watch…”

  With a series of smooth, spiral motions Costello secures Regan with a combination monkey grip ending in an effective front wristlock. The motions were practiced, effortless, a thing of beauty to watch. He holds Regan in the wristlock while he tells us, “Now you can cuff the subject or lead him around like a little schoolgirl.”

  Regan is grimacing with pain, and it’s obvious that Costello has been slowly increasing the torque on the cadet’s wrist. He then parades Regan around the perimeter of the mat, making sure that everyone can see that he has total control of his subject. There is derisive laughter from the other cadets, but I don’t think it’s funny, having seen the flash of embarrassment on Regan’s face when Costello called him a little schoolgirl.

  Costello has noticed my look of disapproval and he releases Regan and points him back off the mat. Regan melds into the group, trying not to shake out his stinging wrist.

  “We’ll break into pairs and practice this technique, but first,” he says, “we’ll address a subject who’s more combative.”

  Costello points to me. “Rhyzyk, you’re up.”

  He motions me onto the mat and tells me to turn and face the rear wall, my hands in the Weaver position, knees slightly bent, as though I’m getting ready to fire a gun.

  “You will also,” he continues, “one day walk in on a subject who is armed and fully prepared to use his weapon. Let’s just hope it’s not when you’re coming out of the john, still pulling up your trousers.”

  There is more laughter. My back is turned to the group, but I laugh along with them.

  “We come upon our subject in the midst of robbing a convenience store or mugging some poor bastard. Our subject in this case is Cadet Rhyzyk.” He kicks hard at my right instep, startling me. “Spread your legs wider,” he orders.

  He’s close to my left shoulder and he whispers loudly into my ear, “Only to keep your stance more stable.”

  He turns and winks to the group and there are a few uncomfortable snickers.

  “Cadet Rhyzyk, as we all know, had the best overall PAT scores of any female we’ve ever had entering this academy. Outstanding aerobic and anaerobic capacity, she ran the mile and a half in less than nine minutes, did fifty sit-ups in sixty seconds, the three-hundred-meter dash in forty-eight seconds. No discernible difference right versus left during the handgun-simulation test. She left a lot of the men in the dust. It was as though she’d been training her whole life for that one day just to teach every last one of us cock-jocks a lesson. Right, Rhyzyk?”

  I hadn’t joined the academy to make new friends, and I knew full well that being a woman, and a lesbian, would not endear me to my fellow, mostly male cadets. But being a cop was what I wanted, had always wanted, and Costello was damn right about my being prepared. Every workout session, every encounter on a sports field prior to joining the academy was tackled as a way to ensure success through the training period.

  “Yes, sir,” I say loudly. I’m grinning tightly, saying to myself, Yeah, that’s right, you puffed-up, testosterone-driven meat wagon.

  “The only problem is,” he continues, “blazing your way through a physical ability test is not going to do you any good when you’re dealing with some guy who’s bugged on PCP and who outweighs you by a hundred pounds.”

  As he’s talking, I can feel him moving up behind me, and automatically, I tense, readying my muscles for contact.

  “Now,” he tells the cadets, “you don’t want the subject to know that you’re approaching him. So you walk directly up behind him, making sure that he can’t see you. Then you step deep under his hips and at the same time drive your right hand under his armpit, achieving a half nelson.”

  His tree trunk of an arm pins me in the wrestling hold, but his fingers are digging into my neck hard enough to cramp the muscles. My hair is wound into a tight bun, but the short hairs are being ripped out by their follicles.

  “At the same time, you want your left hand over the subject’s left arm, sliding through at a forty-five-degree angle, achieving a bar arm. Then,” he says, forcefully arching my back and spinning me around to face the class, “tightly wedge his back. As fast as possible, bring his left arm behind him. Bend the wrist, turning it into a rear wristlock.”

  The twist on my hand is excruciating. I can feel the tendons in the wrist straining, the tiny bones threatening to fracture.

  “Now’s when you cuff your subject,” Costello finishes. “That hurt much, Rhyzyk?” he asks, smiling to the group, increasing the pressure to where I think the bones in my wrist will just shatter, erupting through the skin like popcorn.

  My eyes are streaming, and the blood has drained to my lower extremities, but I manage to keep my face deadpan.

  “No,” I say.

  “And sometimes,” he mutters, swiftly bringing his right arm over my head to the front of my neck and squeezing, “you get that asshole who will just…not…comply.”

  The murmuring, ambient noise of the gym begins to build, from a gentle shoreline rush to a roaring wave, and the swirl of fireflies in front of my eyes spark and then fade to a wash of dark, and I hear Benny’s voice inside the roar saying, If you go down, you’ll never want to get back up again.

  My feet begin a desperate jig and then the fluid in my legs catches fire, but I let my knees buckle. Somewhere in my barely conscious brain I register that Costello’s grip has relaxed, his head following through with my sagging body. Reversing the momentum, I throw back my head and shoulders and push off the floor hard, catching him off guard, propelling him toward the rear wall. His feet have to shuffle back as well or I will topple him over onto his ass. The quads that I have worked on so torturously at the gym, doing squats by the hundreds, drive us, and he smashes into the wall with such force, the urinal in the bathroom on the other side is knocked down and he fractures his skull.

  When I come to, Regan is pulling me up off of an unconscious Costello, and somebody is calling the paramedics.

  I feel a tight clamping sensation around my wrists and imagine that it’s Regan, still pulling at me to get me off the floor and away from Costello, who is lying motionless beneath me. But then I hear the unmistakable metallic snicking sounds of handcuffs being fastened, and I open my eyes, my lids fluttering against the light.

  My boots seem to have become glued to each other, because I can’t move my legs apart to stand, and I realize that my ankles have been bound together.

  A ripping noise, and something sticky is being pressed with no small amount of pressure over my mouth. I waken fully, panicked and thrashing, as I’m lifted roughly off the ground by two pairs of hands, at my feet and shoulders. My wrists are cuffed in front, and I reach over my head, trying to grab something, a shirt, a handful of hair from my attacker. But before I can connect with anything, I’m thrown roughly into a hard, contained space
, the trunk of a car.

  I catch a flash of the vehicle—it’s the white Jefferson patrol car that must have been driven across the field in pursuit of us—and two male, sweat-stained faces standing over me, the tall cop and the shorter one, still in their patrol uniforms. The trunk door is slammed shut. The darkness is complete, but I can hear the muffled sounds of the two of them talking together.

  I begin at once to work at snapping the chain between the cuffs. Depending on the make, restraints can be broken either at the links or at the weld point on the cuffs with enough twisting action, time, and torque applied to them. There is the clacking noise of the moving chain, but I’m hoping the insulation in the trunk will dampen the sound.

  A door in the car is opened briefly and shut again. And then the trunk is raised, flooding the space with blinding light. The taller cop is holding a wand with two extended wires at its far end. He jabs me on the thigh, and the volts through my body are like a snake of rotating teeth, liquefying my organs. He jabs me again, and I scream involuntarily through gritted teeth, my feet kicking out at the frame in spasmodic thrusts.

  When I’ve stopped convulsing, he stands with his shoulders hunched over the trunk, bringing the wand within a few inches of my face. The hand holding it is tattooed with bright blue wings and a scarlet sword. My eyes have adjusted to the light and I look up into his face, memorizing the features, the fullness of the mouth, the set of the eyes, the height of the forehead, and the crew-cut hair, a sandy but unmistakable red. He smiles and jabs the electric cattle prod once more into my shoulder.

  Afterward, I sense the restraints being released and my arms pulled behind my back. I’m cuffed again, palms facing outward, the metal biting painfully into my wrists, and the trunk is once more slammed shut.

  I hear doors opening and closing, and then the patrol car is driven at high speed, bumping hard across the field, knocking my head and knees against metal. The car slows, then angles sharply up an incline—it has to be the ramp to the big truck—and the engine is cut. I can hear the echoing footsteps through the truck cargo area, and the loud banging of the outer truck doors being secured.

  There is the deep vibration of the truck’s gears being engaged and then forward, tilting movement onto the road.

  I’m lying on my left side, my shoulder cramping painfully beneath me, my legs drawn to my chest. I will myself to slow my breathing and start deep inhalations and exhalations through my nose, reassuring my oxygen-starved body that I can, within a few minutes, get enough air through my nostrils alone. I close my eyes, taking stock of what’s injured. My cheek where I was hit stings, but, hopefully, no bones are fractured. Neck, back, and thighs all feel strained, but there are no muscles seriously pulled. My biggest discomfort comes from the right deltoid where Hoskins’s head struck me after he was shot. Both my car and the patrol car must be in the cargo area of the truck, Hoskins still sitting in the passenger seat, the seat belt holding his stiffening body.

  The few moments before his death he was completely relaxed, joking about a possible hillbilly meth run, helpfully pulling out his badge for a fellow police officer. He didn’t even have time to register that he was about to be murdered by a man in uniform.

  My throat closes; my eyes are filling with tears, and, worse, my nose is filling with snot. Stop it, just fucking stop it, I rage to myself. You’ll smother yourself, you stupid bitch.

  I stay focused on how the truck is oriented, trying to gauge distance and turns, but it’s hopeless. I can’t do anything but keep an awareness of the passage of time, a game that I played with my brother when we were kids. At any point in the day, one of us would turn to the other and ask, “Time?” I was often uncannily correct, guessing the time close to the minute thanks to the internal timekeeper that my mother called the Eve Clock. All women had it, she said, because for most of their lives, females are entrusted with waiting expectantly for loved ones to be born or to die.

  But now, in the complete dark of the trunk, it’s an impossible task, the adrenaline seeming to squeeze minutes into seconds or string them into hours. The best I can do is stay alert and not lose my nerve wondering what’s going to happen when the truck gets to its destination.

  I think through my options for escape: I could slip the cuffs, kick out a rear taillight, push through the backseat. But my wrists are too tightly bound and the trunk space is too small to maneuver in. My best hope is to get to the cell phone in my left pocket. If it’s still there, and if it hasn’t been smashed by my falling on it.

  The tall cop with the tattoo and reddish hair must be the same deliveryman that Sergei witnessed as he left El Gitano’s head in a box at my door. He’s big, and very fast. His eyes, when he looked at me, cattle prod in hand, were calm, almost amused, and I think of Tony Ha saying that Lana’s killer was humming as he cut her ears off. That he was a man who enjoyed his work.

  The truck stops and starts frequently as it progresses through some nearby small town, perhaps Karnack. But soon, within fifteen minutes, we’re driving without perceptible changes in speed, and for quite a distance. Eventually, there are more stops and starts, and then a final stop. But the truck engine stays on for a good while.

  I lie on my side, sweating through my clothes, time stretched through the filter of the agonizing deadness in my left arm, straining to hear any approaching footsteps. And then there is the clanging of the cargo-bay doors opening. A heavy sliding noise as the ramp is lowered, and the patrol car engine comes to life. The patrol car is backed down the ramp, its tilt sliding me toward the rear bumper. Afterward, I hear the clatter of the ramp being raised again, and the truck, possibly still containing the car with Hoskins’s body inside, drives away.

  The patrol car is driven a short distance into a covered space, like a garage. I can hear the engine noises echoing off enclosed walls.

  The trunk will open soon.

  I can try to squeeze my body around, onto my back, and kick out as strongly as I can with my feet toward my kidnapper’s head, but then what? Better to feign unconsciousness while lying on my side, turned away from the opening, and wait for an opportunity to attack.

  The trunk opens and a hand presses hard against the side of my face, grinding my head into the frame, and a needle jabs into my right shoulder. A heavy body folds itself over mine, restraining me, smothering me, until I feel a building, undeniable warmth from my intestines to the base of my tongue, and then comes the inevitable toppling off the cliff to nothingness.

  29

  I’m aware that I’m aware, my alertness turned on like a bank of lights engaged all at once. I’m sitting upright in a hard chair, my head bowed forward, hair falling in a cascade over my eyes. There’s a moment of nausea, an unpleasant ringing in the ears, and then those symptoms are gone.

  I stare fixedly at my lap and realize that I can’t move my hands because I’m in a prisoner’s transport restraint, wrists cuffed in front and fastened to a belly strap with a length of chain running to ankle cuffs. I am no longer gagged, and my lips are raw from the tape having been pulled from my mouth.

  All of my clothes except for my sleeveless T-shirt and underwear have been removed, boots and socks included. Which means that while I was unconscious, I’d been unbound and stripped. The thin vinyl seat cushion sticks creepily beneath my bare legs, and the cool air causes the skin on the tops of my thighs and arms to gooseflesh.

  My neck is stiff and cramped, so I raise my head carefully and see, through squinting eyes, a room bright with diffuse, natural light and painted a soft cream color. It’s sparsely furnished: a small couch, a bookcase, one prominent window with sheer, gauzy curtains closed over it. There are no paintings, but there is one large, unadorned cross nailed to the wall with a plaque next to it, the kind of shellacked board that could have been made in a high-school shop class, with the words WELCOME HOME burned into the wood. Underneath the cross is an armchair in which a woman sits.

  The woman tilts her head and smiles at me.

  The dizzines
s returns for an instant, and the smile on the woman’s face falters. She looks concerned, ready to stand, but she sees my eyes focused on her intently, and instead, she smooths her skirt over her knees and crosses her hands in her lap. There is a patient, untroubled quality to the way she waits, her head now turned toward the light of the window. But I know she is listening, receptive to any move I might make.

  I rattle the chains ineffectually and look back up at the woman. She’s probably in her sixties, petite, clear-complected, without any distinguishing marks, her hair the color of a West Texas sunset.

  As I’m opening my mouth to ask her what the hell she wants with me, she says calmly, “Would you like some water?” She nods to a glass of water with a straw sitting on a small table next to the chair.

  Her voice is deeply Southern but soft and sunny, like the paint on the wall.

  I hesitate and she picks up the glass and takes a sip, showing me that the water has not been tampered with. I nod my head and she brings me the water. A thought moves sluggishly through my brain: I could stand abruptly, knocking her over. But I can’t lean forward. Something has been used to tie the belly strap to the chair. As though reading my intentions, the woman pauses, waiting for me to realize that I’m not going anywhere. She holds the glass close to my mouth as I sip awkwardly from the straw, almost finishing the water.

  She then takes a few steps back and continues to study me.

  “Where am I?” I ask. My throat is dry and constricted, my voice insubstantial. I sound weak and afraid. “And where the fuck are my clothes?”

  “Somewhere between Caddo Lake and Lake of the Pines,” she answers lightly, returning to her armchair, and I don’t know if she’s referring to where we are or the location of my clothes. She sits, patting down a few loose strands of hair with one hand. “Your things are being cleansed.”