Passing the aisle with the rubbers again, he saw the older kid and the kid looked up again as Reggie passed by. Reggie saw the torn box in the other kid’s hands, saw him moving as if to shove something in his pocket, before he stopped and looked up at Reggie.
‘What’s your problem?’ the bigger kid said. ‘Mind your own fuckin’ business …’
His words trailed off as Reggie moved past him and back towards the front of the store. He found the ten items or less express lane and put the packages on the counter. The clerk, maybe the same one who’d greeted him when he came in, said hi and smiled and Reggie said hi and smiled back.
He felt more than heard someone step into line behind him.
Reggie didn’t want to but looked.
It was the bigger kid who’d been stealing rubbers.
The bigger kid smiled at Reggie, and Reggie turned away, pulled out some money from his pocket, paid for the medicine. He thanked the clerk and headed out of the store and to his bike.
Bending, turning the dials on the lock to unchain his bike, he heard footfalls coming up behind him. Heard them stop very close. He could also hear the breathing of the kid behind him, like the puffs of breath from a prank caller.
‘Ain’t you the kid that cried last year?’ said the older boy.
Reggie ignored him and finished putting in the combination of his lock.
‘Hey,’ said the condom bandit. ‘I’m talking to you.’
Looping the chain out from around the spokes of the tyre, refastening it around the seat bar, Reggie rose and lifted a leg to swing over onto the bike. Caught off balance, the otherwise light shove of the older boy’s palms against his back sent Reggie toppling over.
His temple struck the wall the bike rack was bolted into.
Tangled with his legs, the bike clattered along with him and the pedals and spokes scraped him good along the calves and thighs. Pushing away from the bike, disengaging himself, he stood on shaky legs and touched his head where he’d hit it. His fingers came away without blood, but his temple throbbed smartly.
‘What the hell’s your problem?’ he said to the bigger kid, wishing he sounded braver and less pitiful.
‘I said ain’t you the kid that cried last year?’ the older boy said. He had a lazy smile on his face like this was nothing more than another day.
Reggie knew what he was talking about but didn’t say anything.
The older boy seemed vaguely familiar, like maybe he’d seen him around school. But being a couple years older, a senior most likely, Reggie probably hadn’t seen him much and couldn’t put a name to the face.
‘I don’t want no trouble,’ Reggie said. ‘I gotta go.’
He pulled his bike up and looked around the parking lot. There were people walking to cars and walking from cars, but none of them were terribly close by.
‘Yeah,’ the older kid said, ‘you’re him all right.’
He chuffed a wicked little sound that was something between a laugh and hocking a winner of a snot bomb.
‘You were walking to the office and crying,’ said the bigger kid. ‘Crying like a little faggot.’
Drugstore bag of medicine in one hand, gripping the handlebars, Reggie tried to steer away. The older kid stepped in front of him, placed a hand on the handlebar, a foot on the front tyre.
‘Did you poop your diapers that day?’ said the older kid. ‘Or did your boyfriend dump you?’
Reggie wanted to leave. His heart was thudding, pounding against his chest like a beast shackled. His vision blurred and reddened. He wanted to leave but the bigger kid was in front of him.
For some reason he thought of the man in the tree house. He thought of the crumpled bullet dug out of him. He thought of the shiny black gun.
Something in Reggie loosened. The pounding stopped. The blurry and red vision cleared. His formerly white-knuckle grip on the handlebars relaxed. He looked up at the older kid, looked him square in the eyes.
‘My dad died,’ he said.
The other kid blinked. His mouth worked like he wanted to say something, but didn’t know quite what.
‘So why don’t you go back to stealing your rubbers,’ Reggie said. ‘And while you’re at it, find someone with a dick who could actually use them.’
And just like that the older boy’s flustered moment was gone.
His fist found Reggie’s eye and down he went again, bike on top, hard sidewalk beneath. The older kid leaned over him and grabbed a fistful of Reggie’s shirt.
‘You watch your fucking mouth, dip shit,’ he said and shook him, making Reggie’s head bounce against the concrete under him.
‘Hey! What’re you kids doing there?’
The older kid looked up, let go of Reggie, turned and ran.
Reggie, slowly standing, touching his throbbing eye gingerly, saw the store clerk who’d greeted him jogging his way. He got back on his bike, turned it, and started pedalling. Across the parking lot, onto the street, the long way home before him.
3.
He handed Ivan the medicine and a bottle of water. The man didn’t look good. He was still pale and clammy, but he was conscious and alert, which Reggie took to be a good sign despite the pasty flesh of the man’s face, and the shakes that occasionally passed over him.
The man downed a couple of the Amoxicillin tablets Reggie had found in his mom’s medicine cabinet, coughed and spit up some of the water, wiped his mouth, and looked at Reggie. He pointed at Reggie, touched his own temple and eye in indication of Reggie’s.
‘What happened?’ he asked, reaching for the antiseptic cream and Ibuprofen Reggie had purchased at the drugstore.
‘Some asshole from school,’ Reggie said.
‘Why’d he do it?’ the man asked.
‘I told him he had no dick.’
Ivan smiled, and this made Reggie smile. Though a smile on Ivan’s face didn’t look so much like a smile, as it did a crocodile or shark showing its teeth.
‘That’s likely to piss someone off,’ the big man said. ‘Why’d you say it?’
‘He made fun of me crying once in school,’ he said.
‘Why were you crying?’ Ivan asked.
‘My dad died,’ Reggie said.
Ivan looked at him a long moment before he said anything. Reggie wasn’t sure he liked those blue eyes staring at him so. They weren’t like eyes at all, just as his smile wasn’t exactly a smile. His eyes were like gems, bright but lifeless.
‘Tell me about it,’ the killer said, and to his surprise, Reggie did.
***
‘My father died doing that job it was he liked doing so much,’ Reggie said.
‘The one that took him awhile to find?’ the killer asked.
‘Yeah,’ Reggie answered.
‘And what was it?’ Ivan asked, trembling briefly with a pained breath. ‘What was it that made him happy?’
‘He was a minister,’ Reggie said, watching the man’s face closely for some slight indication of how this made him feel. What killers thought of ministers was something that suddenly piqued his interest.
The killer said nothing; gave only a small nod.
Reggie continued.
‘Dad used to say that he was confused much of his life,’ Reggie said. ‘That he never knew quite where his life was going. As a kid in school he got Cs and Bs, completely average, never excelled at anything. He didn’t play any sports. Didn’t do any after-school stuff either.’
Ivan nodded.
‘I’ve been there before,’ he said. ‘Confused.’
‘He said his parents were worried,’ Reggie said, ‘but didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like their son was misbehaving or falling in with the wrong crowd or anything like that. So they couldn’t yell at him or punish him or nothing.’
‘So they left him be?’ the killer asked.
‘Yeah,’ Reggie continued. ‘He got through high school, did some college, but eventually dropped out. He went from job to job, worked at just about everything a man could
work at. Construction, retail, clerical; he even went back home at one point and did nothing but volunteering, living off Grandma and Grandpa again, saying there wasn’t any point in making money.’
‘But none of it made him happy?’ Ivan asked.
‘No,’ Reggie said, shaking his head.
‘And how’d he come about finding God?’ the killer asked.
Reggie searched the man’s tone for any sense of mocking or contempt, but found none. The gut shot man seemed genuinely interested, but Reggie kept watching, intent, wary of the man and interested also.
‘Dad used to tell me Grandma and Grandpa were what he called social Christians,’ Reggie said. ‘They went to church because that was what people were supposed to do. But they never really talked about church stuff, never went to any functions. There was a Bible around the house that found itself moving from table to table, shelf to shelf, but no one ever read it.’
The killer was like a child at a campfire ghost story, rapt and attentive.
The words came easier than Reggie would have thought, talking to a stranger about his dad. Almost as if they had always been there, waiting to be said.
‘Until one day Dad did,’ Reggie said. ‘He read it cover to cover on his time off from jobs or volunteering. Then when he was done, he read it again. The third time through he started taking notes, cross-referencing things he read.’
Ivan was nodding again.
‘I’ve known people like that before,’ the killer said. ‘Get caught up in religion. Only to give it up again.’
Reggie nodded.
‘That’s what Dad said too,’ he said. ‘He’d talked to co-workers, heard people at church or in public praising God for everything from cancer remission to baseball games. And that’s why he never really took it seriously as a kid.’
The killer nodded his agreement.
‘Then he read the book for himself,’ Reggie said. ‘And things changed. He said much of the scripture made no sense at first. But some of it did. And as he kept reading and rereading, more of it did.’
Reggie paused, looking at the killer. The expression on the man’s wan face seemed pensive, attentive, and Reggie waited for the big man to ask a question or say something. When he didn’t, Reggie continued.
‘Eventually, Dad said, it got to where the more he learned, the more it seemed there was to learn. Frustrated but committed, he figured he’d try to strip it down to the basics. He figured the most important stuff had to be what the faith was named after. So he started to focus on the Gospels, the things Jesus said.’
‘I’ve listened to that sort before,’ the killer said, almost speaking over Reggie. ‘Jesus this and Jesus that. How we’re all sinners and it’s the grace of God that saves us. How there’s an end to things coming and a new thing starting.’
‘What do you think of it?’ Reggie asked, cautiously, hearing a note of annoyance in the big man’s voice.
‘I told you before,’ the killer said, and Reggie remembered. ‘I’ve had people pray to God before I killed them, and a few pray for me. Ain’t nothing changed the outcome of what happened. Just me and my gun and the silence after.’
Reggie propped his chin in his hands, thinking about this. He was thinking of his dad and there was some of the old hurt. He was thinking of things his dad used to say, and weighing them without really doing so. Just kind of letting the memories float about smoke-like.
‘Let me guess,’ the killer said, breaking the brief silence. ‘Your dad studied, prayed, and eventually started his own ministry?’
‘Yeah,’ Reggie said.
‘How’d he die?’ Ivan asked, startling Reggie with the sudden change in the conversation. Though this was where it had been heading the whole time, Reggie realized, and he’d just been taking a detour. Sightseeing before he got to the destination.
Taking a breath, Reggie told him.
‘One of his parishioners shot him,’ he said, meeting the man’s eyes.
The killer’s response came quickly but calmly, not missing a beat. Almost as if he’d had such a response planned for a long time.
‘I guess that just about says all that needs to be said about God,’ the killer said.
‘I guess it does,’ Reggie said, then fell quiet.
He stared at the walls of the tree house and the whirly patterns in the wood. He stared at the floor too. The killer said nothing as well. They stayed that way for awhile, high up in the little house, silent with their thoughts in a place all their own.
CHAPTER THREE
1.
The sheriff’s department came around about an hour later. The white and green Ford could be seen over and through the trees from their perch in the tree house, crawling up the road at a leisurely pace.
Reggie moved for the ladder and Ivan grabbed him by the arm.
‘Remember our arrangement,’ he said, not a question but a statement.
Reggie nodded.
‘In my line of work,’ he said, ‘there’s consequences for breaking your word.’
Reggie didn’t remember actually giving his word about anything, but nodded again anyway. Then he was moving down the ladder and emerging from the woods and jogging back to the house across the dry field of the front yard. A slight summer breeze stirred things and made a whisper in the air over the expanse. He walked in the back door just as his mom was leaving the kitchen to check on the sound of the car pulling up out front.
He watched from the hall as she opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch to greet the man walking up. The cadence of heavy boots pounding up the steps to meet her sounded like heartbeats.
‘Good morning ma’am,’ the man said. Through the mesh of the screen door he was a vague form with a wide-brimmed hat and a gun belt. ‘I’m Deputy Collins,’ said the man and they shook hands.
The voice was familiar and Reggie wanted to reach out and pull his mom back inside and lock the door behind her.
‘Good morning, officer,’ his mom replied. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘We’re driving around notifying nearby residents about a situation,’ the deputy said. How the same voice that had tauntingly asked You know what rape is, kid? could now disguise itself with civility, was beyond Reggie.
Such a trick seemed dangerous to him. Something a predator did to lull its prey into a false sense of security. Just before it flashed its claws and dragged the hunted into a dark den.
‘What situation would that be?’ his mom asked. Interest rather than concern tinged his mom’s voice. Serene calm or outbursts of emotion when he was late home for something or wasn’t where he was supposed to be were her only two moods since his dad had died. One or the other. Nothing in between.
That was almost as troubling to Reggie as the deputy’s dual personalities.
‘Not to cause any alarm, ma’am,’ the deputy began, ‘but it seems there’s a dangerous man on the loose.’
‘You don’t say?’ said his mom.
‘Unfortunately so,’ said the deputy. ‘Yesterday morning a man escaped from a police escort taking him to the county jail in Tucson.’
‘What’d he do?’ she asked. She leaned nonchalantly against the door, her back pushing against the mesh and bending it inward.
‘He’s a killer,’ said Deputy Collins, friendly neighbourhood peace officer and tormentor of bike riding boys.
‘Who’d he kill?’ his mom asked, her tone still mildly interested, like someone spying a squashed bug on the sidewalk momentarily before passing.
‘Many people,’ the deputy replied. ‘He’s a contract killer.’
‘My word,’ his mom said.
‘Yes, I know,’ said the officer. ‘Who’d think such a man loose in our town?’
They each shook their head at the wonder of it all.
‘If you see this man,’ the officer said and held up a photo Reggie couldn’t see through the screen door, ‘stay away from him and get to a phone. Give us a call and we’ll be there lickety-split.’
They shook hands again, and the deputy walked away, climbing in his car and driving off. Plumes of dirt billowed into the air and then settled like battlefield detritus. His mom stood on the porch for a time, looking at the photo without really looking at it, and then came back inside.
Reggie left silently by the back door.
2.
‘Tell me about the first person you killed,’ Reggie said after climbing back up the ladder and settling down again across from the killer. Together they’d watched the patrol car weaving away in the distance, until, crawling first up and then down a hill, it blinked away in the white horizon.
Despite the deputy’s unsettling offer to let him see crime scene photographs, Reggie thought about what the officer had said to him by the side of the highway: He raped and killed a woman and killed her kid. And about how Ivan himself had admitted to killing women and children only a short time ago.
Reggie idly wondered if he could get to the ladder before the killer drew his gun. If, peddling fast, he could catch up to the patrol car on his bike before it reached the highway. But these were just fleeting thoughts without substance, like the remnants of vague dreams upon awakening, drifting away.
The two of them had an arrangement, a deal. And in Ivan’s line of work, a man’s word was everything. Ivan had rightly judged Reggie when he’d asked what if he called the police and the killer had said he knew Reggie wouldn’t. Reggie was likewise sure the man would keep to the terms of the deal. He was safe as long as he didn’t betray the killer’s trust.
At least, he was pretty sure.
‘My first hit?’ Ivan asked. ‘Or the first person I killed?’
‘There’s a difference?’ Reggie asked.
‘There is,’ the killer said. ‘A hit is never personal, just business. Killing someone because you want to is an entirely other thing.’
‘The first person you killed then,’ Reggie said, nodding with the decision. ‘The very first.’
Reggie thought it might take him a moment or two to call forth the memories. So many killed over so many years, he figured the killer might have to close his eyes against the tide. Take himself back and carefully reel in the memory out from the rest. But Ivan answered immediately.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 3