‘Your face,’ Ivan said, gesturing with one hand at Reggie’s cheek where his mom had hit him, taking a large bite of the sandwich with the other.
Reggie touched his face absently.
‘My mom hit me,’ he said.
‘Why’d she do that?’ Ivan asked.
‘I called her a bitch,’ he said.
‘You sure have a way with people,’ Ivan said, finishing the sandwich and washing it down with the glass of lemonade. ‘Hit twice by two people in one day. Do you see the common denominator?’
‘What do you mean?’ Reggie asked.
‘You know why you were hit, don’t you?’ Ivan said, brushing crumbs from his hands and off his lap.
‘Because I called one guy dickless and called my mom a bitch,’ he said.
‘It’s more than that,’ Ivan said.
‘How so?’ Reggie asked.
‘You let people hit you,’ Ivan said. ‘You let them get away with it.’
‘The kid from school was bigger than me,’ he said.
‘So?’ the killer said.
‘My mom’s an adult,’ he said.
‘And?’ the killer said.
Reggie said nothing. He wanted to argue, wanted to defend himself, but didn’t know how. Also, some part of him thought maybe he deserved it – the hard shove to the ground, the stinging slaps. Why and what for, he couldn’t say.
‘The common denominator is you,’ the killer said. ‘People know you’re weak, so they know they can hit you if they want, and you won’t fight back. You have to change the common denominator, and the equation changes.’
Reggie didn’t reply, but he considered what the man said.
‘Tell me about the man who killed your dad,’ the killer said.
At first he didn’t want to. Caught off guard, Reggie struggled to find the words. The words to refuse this man before him, but more than that, to refuse the memory. He thought again of the rear-view mirror casting back his father’s gravesite, and the shame that simple reflection had stirred in him.
Reggie’s thoughts and feelings whirled, collided, then solidified into something clearer. He focused and it came to him, and surprising himself, he told the killer in his tree house about another killer, the one who’d taken his dad from him with a single bullet.
***
‘Where’d it happen?’ the killer asked.
‘In a parking lot,’ Reggie said.
‘What was his name?’ Ivan asked. ‘The man who killed your father.’
‘I never asked,’ he said. ‘I never found out.’
‘Why’d he do it?’
‘Because he was a drug addict,’ Reggie said. ‘And my dad tried to help him.’
‘Explain,’ Ivan said.
‘He was a parishioner at my dad’s church. My dad caught him stealing from the tithing box one day,’ he said. ‘Dad asked him why he was doing it. The man broke down and cried and told my dad. He said he needed the money for a fix. He couldn’t take it not having a fix. It made his body burn. It made him see crazy things. Only the drugs made it go away.’
‘What did your dad do?’ the killer asked.
‘Dad talked to him, and listened,’ Reggie said. Suddenly he had to do something with his hands. He rubbed them on his jeans; plucked at his shoelaces; scratched his arms. He needed to move and he stood, took a couple steps, settled down again and brought his legs up to his chest as he’d done before. For a strange and uncomfortable moment, Reggie wondered if this was how the drug addict had felt that day. ‘He told the man about programmes that helped people like him. He told him the church sponsored these programmes and could get him in at discounted rates or even free.’
‘Did he go?’ Ivan asked.
Reggie stared at the man across from him. Lowered his gaze to the large bandage about his middle, and the great red stain there. Again, he thought it looked like an eye, even through the bandage. A third eye looking at him, seeing him. Seeing through him.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘He went.’
‘But it didn’t work, did it?’ the killer asked.
Reggie superimposed himself on that large red eye. Looked with it back in time to the past year. He saw the parking lot clearly. His dad lying there in a pool of blood.
‘For a time it did,’ Reggie said. ‘The guy went to a rehab centre for two weeks. My dad went to see him every day. Came back and told me and Mom how the guy was doing over dinner.
‘“He’s really going to make it,” Dad said. “He’s going to turn his life around,” Dad told us. “That’s great,” Mom said. “That’s good,” I said.’
Reggie rubbed his eyes but found no tears. He felt inside like he should be crying, but he wasn’t. There was a numbness and a dull sorrow, yet his eyes remained dry. He wondered if it’d be like that until he died, and somehow that was sad too.
‘My dad was so happy when he was helping people,’ Reggie said. ‘And it made me and Mom happy to see him that way. He liked giving people hope. He’d take calls from the congregation at any hour.
‘He woke in the middle of the night once to talk to a man whose mom had died from cancer. Another time, he drove twenty miles across town at 2 a.m. to console a couple whose son had died in Iraq. He even helped bury a little girl’s dog that’d been hit by a car.’
‘And helping this particular man got your father killed,’ the killer said.
Reggie nodded.
‘How’d it happen?’ Ivan asked.
‘My dad got a call from the security company that had set up the church’s alarm system,’ Reggie said. ‘It was late when they called and told him one of the window sensors had been triggered. I heard his half of the conversation from my room, where I lay in bed watching TV. He drove off to check it out.
‘Mom asked him not to. She told him to call the police. He said it was probably just an animal or kids throwing rocks. And he left us.’
Something started to come through the numbness inside him, and Reggie pushed it down again. The pain was old and tiresome and he was tired of hurting.
‘He was gone for hours for what should have been a twenty-minute drive there and back,’ Reggie said. ‘Mom finally had enough, grabbed her keys, and dragged me along. I’d never seen her drive so fast, and yet the drive there seemed so long.
‘I remember how dark it was on the highway,’ Reggie said. ‘It was like we were driving through a long tunnel. And those little homemade crosses on the side of the road where people mark accidents that have happened? They were so bright in the dark. Like signposts.’
He looked at the man across from him.
‘And then we were there.’
Like his mom earlier on the way back from the movie and cemetery, Reggie felt a wetness at his eye and swiped it quickly away.
‘We saw him in the parking lot, lying on the ground. The tithing box was broken in pieces around him. The money was scattered all over the place. A couple dollar bills blew around like trash.’
Reggie smiled at the killer across from him.
‘The police counted it later and told us,’ he said. ‘There was sixteen dollars and seventy-two cents on the pavement. After all that trouble, he killed my dad and left the money.’
Whether he’d expected sympathy, some simple display of concern, from the man or not, Reggie wasn’t sure. In the two days he’d known Ivan, he’d seen little to suggest the killer knew such simple things as human emotions. But what he definitely didn’t expect was what the big man said next.
‘Some things live. Some things die. Remember that, Reggie. There’s no sense to it, and you waste your time trying to find any.’
At first, a hint of anger rose up in him. Reggie thought of seeing his dad dead there in the parking lot, and the killer’s casual dismissal pissed him off. He clenched his fists, on the verge of saying something, like he’d said to the older kid at the drugstore. But as quickly as it had come, the rage slipped away.
Instead, Reggie found himself repeating those words in his head, the ki
ller’s voice echoing in his mind. Some things live. Some things die.
Reggie found his gaze drifting again to the shoulder holster and the pistol slid snugly into it. Ivan watched him, saw the direction of Reggie’s glance. Quickly, Reggie looked away.
With nothing left to say, they sat in silence.
CHAPTER FOUR
1.
That afternoon the killer let him hold the pistol.
He wanted to walk around a bit, which Reggie didn’t think was a good idea. But Ivan insisted and they went down the ladder; Reggie first, the killer slowly following. He said he needed to know if he could move if he had to. Reggie knew that meant escape if he had to, but he kept that to himself.
The killer limped along, occasionally stopping to lean against a tree, holding his abdomen, catching his breath, but otherwise making steady progress. They had walked for about twenty minutes when Ivan told Reggie to stop.
The killer walked over to a fallen tree and set their empty water bottles on it. Making his way back to Reggie, he sat on a stump and pulled out his gun. He checked the safety and held it out to Reggie.
The gun was heavy and solid and cool.
‘Feel the weight of it,’ the killer said. ‘Become familiar with its contours, how your fingers feel around it.’
Reggie did so, feeling the heft of the thing. It was heavier than he would have thought. It felt large in his small hands.
‘Always keep it pointed away from you,’ the killer said. ‘Never point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot.’
Reggie lifted the gun and aimed at the bottles on the fallen tree several yards away. Ivan rose and stood behind him.
‘Keep your right arm locked,’ he said. ‘Now bend your left at the elbow a bit. Keep your legs apart and the left one forward.’
Reggie did as he was told, and looked down the sight at the bottles. Ivan reached over him and towards the safety. Reggie looked up at him.
‘Won’t someone hear?’ he asked.
Ivan smiled and reached in his jacket. From a pocket he pulled out a black metal tube and reached again over Reggie. Screwing the silencer on, he then flicked off the safety.
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Give it a try.’
Reggie sighted down the pistol at one of the bottles. His finger curled around the trigger, but he didn’t pull it. He thought of his dad in the church parking lot and the blood on the asphalt.
‘Pull, don’t squeeze,’ said the killer.
Then he was thinking about the older boy at the drugstore. And his mom slapping him at the cemetery.
He pulled the trigger smoothly and deliberately.
There was a low whoosh and dirt kicked up about a foot in front of the tree. The recoil shook in his arms and made his muscles twitch.
‘Again,’ said the killer, soft but firm, and Reggie pulled the trigger again.
A silver-dollar sized crater appeared in the bark just below the bottle on the left. The thunk of the bullet sounded like something heavy dropped on carpeted floor. The bottle did a little wiggle and twirl like a tired dancer, but came to rest still upright.
‘Again,’ the killer said, and Reggie pulled the trigger.
The low whoosh again and the bottle disappeared, pulled out of sight like something yanked out of reality. It was there, and then it was gone.
‘Good,’ said the killer. ‘Now the other one.’
He adjusted his stance and aimed. Pulled the trigger and the other bottle likewise was yanked away.
‘Very good,’ said the killer. ‘You’re a natural.’
Ivan reached out and over him to take the gun. For a moment both their hands were over the weapon, and Reggie didn’t want to let go. When he did and it was out of his hands, Ivan considered him with a curious look.
It felt good holding the gun, and when it was in his hands he wasn’t afraid of being hit by anyone.
‘Let’s head back,’ Ivan said, holding his side and starting to walk, each step placed gingerly and with care. He holstered the gun and Reggie watched it until it was out of sight beneath the flap of the jacket hem.
He could still feel it in his hands, like a phantom sensation.
Like it belonged there.
***
‘Was there ever someone you wished you hadn’t killed?’ Reggie asked when they were back in the tree house.
The walk and climb back up had exhausted Ivan, and the man settled back down in his spot near the far window with a groan. Outside, a summer wind stirred the branches and made the structure moan likewise, as if returning Ivan’s grunt like a separated beast calling for its pack. The swinging branches brought the sun in fits and starts of bright light, casting alternating bars of sunlight and shadow across the floor and the walls of the tree house. This pattern fell over Ivan, making the man seem caged, behind bars.
He thought of what the deputy had told his mom earlier.
Yesterday morning a man escaped from a police escort taking him to the county jail in Tucson.
‘No,’ said the killer, the answer snapping Reggie back to the moment. ‘There were two people I wish I hadn’t killed.’
‘Who were they?’ Reggie asked.
‘Just a woman and her son,’ the killer said. ‘No one special.’
‘Is it the woman you raped and killed yesterday?’ Reggie asked.
Ivan looked at him sternly.
‘What are you talking about?’ he said.
‘When I rode into town for the medicine,’ Reggie said, ‘there were police all over the highway. One of them stopped me and told me about the woman and kid you killed when you escaped.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone yesterday,’ he said.
‘But the cop said …’ Reggie began.
‘I don’t care what the cop said,’ the killer interrupted him. ‘A state trooper recognized the car I was driving as reported stolen. Pulled me over. A second highway patrol vehicle happened to be passing and pulled in behind me. They cuffed me, searched the vehicle.’
‘What were you doing here in Payne, then?’ Reggie asked. ‘Were you sent to kill someone?’
‘Only if necessary,’ the killer said. ‘I was sent to find something. Not my usual business, but the money was good.’
‘How’d you get away?’ Reggie asked, interested in what the killer was supposed to find, but deciding to save that question for another time.
‘There are a few ways to work yourself out of handcuffs if you know what you’re doing,’ Ivan said. ‘I waited until the two police cars were separated in traffic before I made my move. The trooper was young, inexperienced, and panicked when he saw me free of the cuffs. He crashed into the concrete divider, the window shattered, and I crawled out.’
Reggie’s uncertainty must have shown on his face, because the killer elaborated a little more. That the man wanted Reggie to believe him seemed somehow important, and so he filed that away in his mind.
Always mind the details, he thought, and was slightly disturbed by the killer’s voice replaying in his head.
‘I escaped yesterday from the police, beat them up pretty bad, got my stuff back, but I didn’t kill anyone. And I don’t do rape.’
‘So the woman and kid you’re talking about …’
‘Happened a long time ago,’ said the killer.
‘The officer said he’d show me the pictures,’ Reggie said, thinking of the deputy standing in front of his bike, blocking him, and later on the porch with his mom. ‘You know … of the crime scene.’
‘He was fucking with you,’ Ivan said.
Reggie thought of the deputy, and the bigger kid knocking him off his bike. He thought of holding the cool, heavy gun and pulling the trigger. He thought of what Ivan had said to him earlier.
The common denominator.
People know you’re weak.
He hadn’t felt weak with the pistol in his hands.
‘What about this woman and her son?’ Reggie said, changing the subject back again. ‘The ones you killed a long time ago.’
After a brief pause the killer spoke, and Reggie listened.
***
‘There was a woman who left her husband because he hit her. And we’re not just talking about how some guys do when they’re drunk. He hit her a lot.
‘Like many women in the same situation, at first she tried to placate him. She thought it was her fault. Maybe she didn’t pay enough attention to him. Maybe she wasn’t pretty enough. Lots of maybes with no answers.
‘He never gave her answers. He just hit her. And she took it, because a wife was supposed to be obedient to her husband. That’s how she was raised, and so she just took it. Until he hit their son.
‘That’s when things changed. That’s when she couldn’t take it anymore.
‘So one day she left him. She packed a couple suitcases when he was at work, took their son, and left. Didn’t leave a note or anything.
‘There was only one problem,’ the killer said. ‘Her husband was someone important. Or, more accurately, his father was. Her husband was a coyote for human traffickers. His father was the man financing that operation, and many others.
‘Her husband’s family had their hands not only in human trafficking, but drugs, prostitution, weapons procurement, and pornography. This family was used to getting what they wanted, and once they had something it was theirs until they no longer wanted it. And her husband wanted her back, just not alive.
‘He didn’t even need all of her. Just the head would do, he said.
‘Furthermore, since his son was a quiet kid, a reader, and not at all likely suitable for the family business, he saw no reason to let the kid live either.
‘So the husband called me. He explained to me what he wanted, and offered me a lot of money. I accepted the job.
‘I found the woman less than a week later. She was working as a card dealer in some Indian casino. The kid was going to school nearby.
‘I waited for them at their home. The kid came first and I knocked him out and tied him to a chair. The woman called some time later and left a message on the machine. She told her son she was going to cover a shift for one of the other dealers and wouldn’t be home until the following morning. She told him not to wait up.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 5