One Kick: A Novel

by Chelsea Cain

He took a pair of latex gloves out of the bag and put them on, stretching them and snapping them into place like a surgeon.

  “He could have taken both of us,” he said. “But he cut my throat and left me for dead.”

  The room was cold, but the AC didn’t switch off. Kick’s arms were covered in goose bumps, but she didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe.

  “I don’t know why he took my brother and not me,” Bishop said. He extracted a straight razor from the bag and set it on the plastic sheeting.

  Klugman looked terrified, his eyes pleading at Kick. She didn’t offer anything in response; she kept her face expressionless.

  “Do you think that makes me lucky?” Bishop asked. He took Klugman by the chin again, forcing Klugman to look at him. Tears streamed down Klugman’s face. “Yeah,” Bishop said slowly. “I go back and forth on that one too.” He dropped his hand and sat back on his heels. “It made me angry for a long time,” he said. “I’ll admit, it led to some unhealthy life choices.” His hand moved back to the bag, and Kick saw Klugman start to blubber before she even saw the orange Black & Decker drill. “But then I had the opportunity to spend time with that man again. And I—” Bishop glanced at Kick and then leaned in close to Klugman. “Let’s just say that I was able to work through some of my anger,” he said.

  Klugman squirmed and wrenched his wrists against the cuffs.

  “And you know,” Bishop said, sitting back with a wistful smile, “ever since, I’ve felt a lot better.”

  Klugman was shaking now. “You’re crazy,” he rasped.

  Bishop picked up the straight razor. He did look crazy. “But I’m fun.”

  The moment Bishop started to move that razor toward him, Klugman went to pieces. “He left the cash at a bus stop,” Klugman stammered, sniveling. “And I left him the boy.”

  “What do you mean you left him the boy?” Bishop asked.

  “I told him his mother wanted him back,” Klugman said, cringing against the side of the bed. “I told him to wait right there on the bench for her.”

  The image of James sitting on that bench, buoyant with anticipation, made Kick’s throat burn. “You son of a bitch,” she said.

  “That’s all I know,” Klugman whimpered.

  “I need you to go back to your room, Kick,” Bishop said.

  The razor was still in his hand.

  Kick hesitated. She studied Bishop for some clue, some indication of what she was supposed to do. But he gave her nothing. She took a deep breath. “I want to watch,” she said.

  Bishop looked at her, but his face was a mask. “This isn’t pretend,” he said carefully. “I’m going to start hurting him. So if you’re uncomfortable with that, you should go now.”

  Klugman was crying, shoulders heaving, sputtering blood. If he was holding back anything, they would know. If they were going to sell it, Kick knew she had to play along. “I’m not uncomfortable with that,” she said.

  Bishop moved so quickly, Kick wasn’t sure what happened next. He had Klugman’s head to the ground, on the plastic, and then Kick saw the razor in the air, and Klugman howled. Bishop cupped his hand over Klugman’s mouth until the howls turned to quiet weeping.

  Then he let him go and sat back on his heels, slightly out of breath, a fine spray of blood on his bare chest.

  Vomit burned in Kick’s throat. Klugman was in a fetal position, blood where his ear used to be.

  “Holy fuck,” she said through her hands.

  Bishop dropped a small piece of flesh on the plastic sheeting. “I told you it wasn’t pretend,” he said as he wiped the blood off the blade onto the thigh of Klugman’s white pants.

  An overwhelming smell of urine filled the room.

  Kick suppressed a gag.

  “I know his online handle,” Klugman croaked through his sobs.

  “I’m listening,” Bishop said.

  “It’s Iron Jacket,” Klugman said. “I don’t know anything else, I swear.”

  Bishop exhaled. “Okay,” he said. He closed the straight razor and dropped it back in the duffel bag. “That name mean anything to you?” he asked.

  The first infomercial had ended, and now dozens of people were doing Zumba on the TV screen while an instructor shouted encouragement over Latin dance music.

  “The name, Kick, does it mean anything?” Bishop said.

  Kick took a shaky breath and lowered her hands from her mouth. “No,” she said.

  Bishop peeled off a bloody latex glove. “Why don’t you go to your room and get dressed,” he said to her. He gazed around the room. “It will take me a few minutes to pack and clean up.”

  Kick nodded and got up and walked wordlessly to the door. The plastic orange juice jug was still on the carpet.

  “Iron Jacket tried to buy you,” Klugman called after her. “He offered Mel ten grand, but Mel said he wouldn’t part with you for less than fifteen.”

  “That’s a lie,” Kick said. She faced forward, not looking back. “Mel was nothing like you.”

  36

  KICK HAD PACKED HER plastic Target bag and was perched on her psychedelic tropical-print bedspread, waiting, when Bishop knocked. She opened the door to her room and found him fully dressed, the suitcase in one hand, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He was in a jaunty mood.

  “You ready?” he asked. “We’re all checked out.” He offered her a stale-looking pastry on a small, limp paper plate. “Danish,” he said. “From the lobby.”

  Kick looked down at the Danish. Then up at Bishop. “Did you kill him?” she asked.

  She could see her reflection in Bishop’s sunglasses, but she couldn’t see his eyes. He leaned forward, his expression unchanged. “No,” he said quietly. “I called the police. They’ll be by to pick him up by checkout. I left the TV on so he can learn to Zumba. Can we go now?” He adjusted the shoulder strap of the duffel bag. “Or am I going after Iron Jacket by myself?”

  Kick picked up her purse and the Target bag and followed him out the door with the Danish. The sky was bright peach and the motel had started to come alive. A couple of kids played in the pool while their dad drank coffee and looked at his phone on a deck chair. A housekeeper in a pink dress pushed a cart full of folded white towels along the veranda. Kick glanced across the courtyard at Bishop’s room, where a Do Not Disturb sign hung on the doorknob. Her hair was wet and fell in heavy curtains on either side of her face. It smelled like hotel shampoo, a scent she recognized but couldn’t place. They were crossing the concrete deck near the pool’s edge when Kick stopped. She studied the pool around her feet.

  “Bishop,” she called hoarsely.

  He turned and sighed and walked back to her with his bags.

  “This is the spot,” she whispered. She had punched him hard. He had bled. She’d seen him bleed. Kick’s voice caught in her throat. “The blood’s gone.”

  “I cleaned it up,” Bishop said.

  Kick glanced around the courtyard. The pool vac, the skimmer, all of it was gone.

  Now she felt bad for taking a shower when he’d been so hard at work. “I have incredibly long hair,” she tried to explain. It took a lot of upkeep. People didn’t understand.

  “I didn’t notice that,” Bishop said, starting to walk again.

  Kick could see the roof of the Impala over the concrete-block wall that separated the courtyard from the parking lot.

  “We have to talk,” Kick said.

  Bishop stopped. “Can we do it in the car?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “No.”

  Bishop exhaled. “Okay.” He dropped his bags and walked back to her. He scratched the back of his neck. “Which talk do we need to have?” He raised his eyebrows. “The sex talk?”

  “Oh,” Kick said, alarmed. “No. I’m fine about the sex.”

  Bishop visibly relaxed. “That’s a relief,” he s
aid. “Okay, what, then?”

  “You cut off his ear,” Kick hissed. She sucked in a breath and put her hand over her mouth. She looked around. The kids were splashing and squealing. The father was half asleep.

  “Part of his ear,” Bishop corrected her, lowering his voice. “He’ll be fine. If he has anything to worry about, it’s his nose”—he pushed his sunglasses up—“which I had nothing to do with.”

  Kick hesitated. “So that was all an act?” she asked. “You weren’t really going to torture him?”

  “Of course not,” Bishop said.

  Kick laughed with relief. Bishop had been trying to scare Klugman. And it had worked, and now they had a lead. They were that much closer to the man who had hurt Monster and James. This was all very, very excellent. She tore off a piece of Danish and ate it, and her eyes fell back on the door to Bishop’s room.

  Bishop started for the car.

  The back of Kick’s neck itched.

  “Of course not, it wasn’t an act?” she asked, running to catch up with him. “Or of course not, you weren’t really going to torture him?”

  37

  KICK STARED STRAIGHT AHEAD out the windshield and tried not to think about the fact that she was speeding through the desert in a dirty Impala with a trunkful of torture implements and a man who packed plastic sheeting and duct tape in his carry-on.

  Bishop was eating sunflower seeds he’d bought at a gas station a few miles back. Adam Rice’s face had been on a Missing Child poster on the gas station’s front door; Kick spotted it when she went in to ask for the bathroom key. But if Bishop had noticed it, he didn’t say anything. Every so often he spit five or six sunflower seed shells into a Styrofoam to-go coffee cup. The sound rattled Kick’s nerves.

  “Does the name help?” she asked.

  Bishop had been texting or on the phone since they’d left the motel. He glanced over at her. “Iron Jacket,” he said. “Catchy, right?” The road in front of them was reflected in his aviator sunglasses, empty desert on both sides.

  “That’s a no, isn’t it?”

  “It gets us closer.”

  Kick rested her head against the seat back. The Impala’s windshield was spattered with dead bugs. They passed a billboard for some tribal casino.

  “There’s a lot of data to sift through,” Bishop said. “The big users are actively monitored. He’s not one of them, at least not with that handle. It may take a little time.” He dribbled some more sunflower seed shells into the coffee cup.

  Kick fiddled with her seat belt. Then adjusted the sun visor. Then readjusted the sun visor.

  She dialed up James’s digital medical chart. His blood pressure was down and they’d started him on broad-spectrum antibiotics.

  Kick let her eyes drift out the side window. In front of them, the foothills were shades of violet. Except for the occasional billboards, the landscape, as far as Kick could see, was barren. The window was hot from the sun.

  Another billboard for the same casino appeared on the horizon. An Indian chief in full headdress was extending a peace pipe in apparent celebration of the fact that Dionne Warwick would be appearing. But the illustrator had given the chief a pipe tomahawk. It could be used as a pipe or as a hatchet in close combat. One end was the pipe of peace, the other was the ax of war.

  “Can I see the photo?” she asked Bishop.

  He dipped into his pocket and handed her the photo of James as a kid with Klugman. Kick held it delicately in her palm. The corners of the photo were soft, and it was warm from Bishop’s body heat. It smelled like mildew.

  “Mel said that Iron Jacket posted pictures,” Kick said. “And Klugman said he communicated with him online. If Iron Jacket is a pedophile and he’s on the Internet, then he’s on the porn sites. You have to upload new images before they give you access. So he’s communicating with people. There’s an online trail.”

  “If he’s trading images, he’s careful,” Bishop said. “He probably uses peer-to-peer file sharing.”

  “Someone knows who he is,” Kick said. “It’s a community. And he’s putting the community in danger. He makes them look bad.”

  “He makes pedophiles look bad?”

  “He’s a sadist,” Kick said. “A killer. Yeah, I’d say he makes pedophiles look bad. But they’re all too afraid to report him because if they know him, he knows them.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “Put me in a chat room,” Kick said. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. “I grew up with these people. I know how to talk to them. Someone knows who this guy is. We’ll do a video. So they can see me. We can upload it to a few of the popular sites. I’m a legend, Bishop. Someone will want to impress me.”

  Bishop’s attention wavered between Kick and the highway. He didn’t exactly leap at the idea.

  “You took me to see Mel,” Kick pressed.

  “Yeah,” Bishop said. “One dying pedophile strapped to a bed. And for the record,” he added, “I was against that. You’re talking about going in front of a million pedophiles, many of whom have probably jacked off to your image.”

  “I know,” Kick said. She fiddled with the wire ring. She had done all kinds of things that scared her. She had jumped out of an airplane with a parachute on her back; she had testified in court; she had gone off with Bishop despite the fact that she knew she couldn’t trust him. She could do this one thing, for James.

  Bishop was looking at the road. Heat rippled the pavement ahead of them. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll set it up. I know some people in Portland who are good with computers.”

  “Good,” Kick said, a little surprised that Bishop hadn’t tried harder to talk her out of it.

  The landscape went by in shades of brown.

  They passed the exit for the casino, a tall, shimmering gold tower of glass attached to what looked like a mall. The parking lot was filled with cars. Where did all those people come from?

  “You’re not really married, right?” Kick asked.

  “Now you ask,” Bishop said with a smile.

  “Those sunflower seeds are disgusting,” Kick said.

  Bishop emptied some more into his mouth. “It was the healthiest thing they had,” he said.

  38

  BISHOP EMERGED FROM THE airplane bedroom looking relaxed and well rested. Kick, on the other hand, had dozed in her chair and had a pit in her stomach and a dull ache behind her eyes. Her hair still smelled like cheap motel shampoo. She smelled it on the airplane and could still smell it now in Bishop’s Panamera. By the time they parked in a no-parking zone in front of the Crowne Plaza office building on the corner of SW Bill Naito and Clay, she had braided her hair into a long, tight rope.

  “This is where the FBI offices are,” Kick said.

  “Yep,” Bishop said. He slapped a parking pass on the dash and got out of the car.

  Kick grabbed her purse and followed him. “These are the ‘people you know in Portland’?” she asked. “The FBI?”

  “I know them; they’re in Portland,” Bishop said.

  Kick sighed and gazed up at the Crowne Plaza office building. It took up the whole city block, eleven stories of 1970s dark glass and concrete. The FBI was on the fourth floor. She had visited many times in the months after her rescue, staring into the middle distance while men in pleated suit pants questioned her.

  She jogged up the wide front stairs after Bishop and followed him through the revolving door.

  The lobby of the Plaza was like any other office building lobby: there was a café and a building directory and a security desk and people in business attire drinking coffee and sitting on benches. Kick and Bishop walked across the lobby to a bank of elevators, stepped in one, and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The elevator started going up. It had brushed steel walls and tasteful lighting, but in the end they were still trapped in a metal bo
x.

  “Does Frank know about this?” Kick asked.

  “Sure,” Bishop said.

  Of course Frank knew. Kick didn’t know why, but the thought made her feel a little queasy.

  The elevator chimed and came to a stop at the fourth floor. When the doors opened, Frank was waiting for them. But instead of them getting out on the fourth floor, Frank stepped into the elevator with them.

  “Hey, Frank,” Bishop said. “We were just talking about you.” He pressed the button for the basement level and the elevator started to descend.

  Frank glowered at both of them. “I don’t like this,” he said.

  “Her idea,” Bishop said, jerking a thumb at Kick.

  “She’s a victim,” Frank hissed.

  Kick waited for one of them to acknowledge the fact that she was standing right there. Neither of them did.

  “You obviously have never been kicked in the nuts by her,” Bishop said. “Trust me, she can take care of herself.”

  Frank sighed, held his hand up, and dangled a visitor badge on a black lanyard in front of Kick.

  “And hello to you,” Kick said, putting the lanyard on.

  The three lapsed into silence.

  “You slept with him, didn’t you?” Frank said. He held up his hand to stop her before she could answer. “Wait. I don’t want to know.”

  The elevator doors opened.

  “You’re not my father, Frank,” Kick said, stepping into the basement.

  “If I were, I would kick his ass,” she heard Frank grumble under his breath.

  The two men exited the elevator and Kick followed their lead down a concrete corridor, past the building mail room toward a fire door.

  “You armed?” Frank asked Kick.

  Kick adjusted the strap of her purse. “Kind of,” she said.

  She saw Bishop smirk.

  Frank waved the ID badge clipped to his belt in front of a card reader mounted next to the fire door and the door opened. There was a desk on the other side, and a security guard, and an American flag, and a metal detector. The corridor continued beyond it.