Eleven Hours

by Paullina Simons

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed. “And this isn’t God’s way of saying ‘Screw you’ to me? If this isn’t, Lyle, I don’t know what is,” she added. “My point is, bad things do happen. They happen to everyone—”

  “Except you—”

  “Now, even to me,” Didi retorted. “This awful thing had happened to you, but instead of healing and coping and going on, you decided to turn on me. And what if you kill me, Lyle? And then my husband goes nuts and kills someone else? Some poor innocent fool who never knew what was coming to him? And what if the wife or husband of Rich’s victim kills someone else? Think about it—it all started with you, Lyle. All with you.”

  “Not with me,” Lyle said. “With God.”

  “No, Lyle, with you. God was testing your faith, or looking the other way. But you actively sought me out to hurt me.”

  “He had sought out my wife and son—”

  “Oh, my God. No. Your wife got sick, and your son was too small to save. Think of how many small babies God saves—”

  “Think of how many He doesn’t. Mine He didn’t.”

  Didi stood up in her agitation and said, “First you say you don’t believe in Him, then you say He wasn’t looking your way, then you say He actually tried to hurt you. Well, which is it, Lyle? It can’t be all three, you know.”

  Lyle said, “Sit down, Didi. I don’t like you to get so excited near me. You might hit me again.”

  Sitting back down, Didi continued, “That was my point, that was my whole point about the woman and the onion. With one good deed, she could have saved so many people. But you with one bad deed can harm just as many. You’ve already got the blood of two people on your hands, Lyle. One of them a police officer, probably with a wife and a couple of kids. That’s what you did to his life and to her life, and to the life of his kids. You single-handedly ruined all of them forever. That’s your legacy—”

  “Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” And he jumped up, ran up to her, and smashed the Colt hard into her face. Didi’s nose felt as if she had run full force into a concrete block. “Shut up,” he said, much quieter, “or I swear I will kill you now.”

  She choked on her blood, which flowed freely into her mouth from her nose, and started to cough, but she felt nothing, except another baby pain that wouldn’t stop for a broken nose, for a gashed head, for lacerated fingers, for a murdered cop. For nothing.

  When the contraction was over, she wiped her nose with the top of her hand, hiding the broken bottle underneath. She tried to hold the nose between her fingers to stop the bleeding, but it hurt too much. So she bent forward and let the blood drip on the ground. At that moment Didi knew her dying wasn’t going to stop her baby from forcing his way into the world.

  “What do you want with me, Lyle?” Didi whispered, spitting blood out as she spoke. “What do you want with me?”

  10:05 P.M.

  Rich was in a frenzy. “I can’t believe we’re just sitting here, sitting here doing nothing. What if the Blecks are away on vacation? How long are we going to sit here before we realize we’re too late, or they’re not coming, or they don’t have any answers? How long?”

  “We are the ones just sitting, Rich,” Scott said. “The rest of my men are all over this town. They’re not sitting, and they will find him. Maybe Lyle and Didi are eating dinner somewhere, maybe they went to the movies. The cops are looking everywhere.” Scott’s face was drawn, but Rich observed fierce resolve. “We’ll find him, Rich,” Scott said. “And we’ll find her.”

  “Don’t you feel helpless sitting here waiting for something?” Rich said in a broken voice. “I thought she needed me to take out the garbage and to help with the kids and to get the jars off the high shelf and to speed her up a little when she crossed the street, but I see that she needs me to save her life, and I can’t do it.”

  “I know, Rich.” Scott said. “Today I hate my job.”

  “Today I hate my life,” said Rich.

  “Why don’t you call home? Talk to your kids. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Rich looked at his watch. “You’re kidding me, right? The kids are in bed, and my mother is sitting at the kitchen table chain-smoking and picking up the phone every few seconds to see if it’s still working. What am I going to tell my mother?”

  “She must be worried sick. Just call her.”

  As Rich shook his head, Scott’s cell phone trilled. Scott flipped it open and listened intently.

  “Rich,” he said, “they found the car! The Eden deputies found it.”

  “Oh my God,” said Rich, feeling ready to collapse. “Is she there, is Didi there?”

  Shaking his head, Scott said, “No, just the car.”

  Rich leaned against the hood.

  “This is good news,” Scott said. “We’ve got the bastard’s car.” Into the phone, Scott said, “I want you to take the car away from there. Get a tow truck and tow it. Tow it here. I want to see it. Oh, and leave ten men to wait for him to come get his Honda.” He hung up and said to Rich, “Tony’s Body Shop, off Eighty-seven. They found it in the back, in mint condition near some wrecks. The vehicle ID number matches up. It’s the right car.”

  Rich couldn’t think anymore. “What does that mean, that we found the Honda?” His brain was candy. “What does it mean?”

  Scott gently shook Rich in a show of support. “It means,” he said, “that Lyle Luft is still in Eden. And if he’s still here, we’ll find him. We’ll get him when he comes to collect the car, or we’ll get him after we talk to the Blecks.”

  “The cemetery!” Rich exclaimed. “His wife—the cemetery!”

  “What? What?” said Scott. “I don’t follow.”

  Rubbing his face with hands sweaty from heat and tension, Rich said, “Does it make sense? His wife is probably buried in her home town. Eden must have a cemetery. I bet he went there.”

  Scott threw open the phone. In thirty seconds he dispatched three police cars to the Eden cemetery.

  “You’re smart, Rich,” Scott said.

  “No, I’m not,” Rich replied. “I love my wife.” He paused, struggling with his thoughts. “I know if my wife died, that’s where I’d go—her grave.”

  “Why?” said Scott, listening to Rich, unblinking. “Why would you go there in the dark?”

  Shrugging, Rich said, “Maybe when he went there it wasn’t dark yet. I don’t know. I’d go to visit. Or to say good-bye or to kill myself.” His insides hurt so much, he felt as if blood were draining away from his heart and into the street. He felt light-headed. Lyle Luft wouldn’t be killing himself until after he had killed Didi. Rich stood up, but his knees were weak.

  Scott must have seen Rich’s anxiety, because he said, looking up at him, “You can cross that out. Lyle is not killing himself.”

  “How do you know?” Rich said, unrelieved.

  “Because,” said Scott, “he wouldn’t be needing a second car, would he? He could kill himself at his wife’s grave, but after that, he wouldn’t be going anywhere in his Honda, would he?”

  Rich felt better.

  A few minutes later the tow truck drove up the street, pulling along a white Accord. After the car was lowered off the hoist, Scott and Rich glanced in. It was too dark on the street for detailed observation, but the car looked clean. It was also locked. Scott popped open the door with a thin metal band and smiled at Rich. “I’m also a pretty good pickpocket in a pinch. What? Do you think I’m in the wrong business?”

  “I’ll tell you after you get my wife back.”

  One of the other police officers had sprung open the trunk. “Scott? You’d better come over here and take a look at this.”

  Rich and Scott quickly walked around. They looked inside the trunk. Rich staggered back. “Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, God. Oh, Didi.”

  10:17 P.M.

  “What do I want with you, Didi?” Lyle said, keeping a polite distance away from her on the picnic bench. He was measurably calmer, and h
e smiled. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

  “I haven’t figured it out yet,” Didi said tiredly. The fight was oozing out of her. She swallowed blood. All propriety gone, she lifted her dress and held the hem to her nose. It was quickly saturated with blood. Didi thought that soon there would be no hiding her contractions even from him, dense as he was. The pain was now overwhelming. When it came, there was nothing to do but grit her teeth and try to get through it. How could she put herself in labor at his mercy? She didn’t by now expect him to run and get help.

  Didi wasn’t thinking much past getting away from Lyle. The fact that there was a baby on the way and she was in a place called Pfluger Park hadn’t fully registered. The coming of the baby hovered behind thirst and fear and Lyle. It hovered back in Dallas, in a hospital bed, with Rich next to her, saying, hush, baby, hush, wanna see what’s on TV?

  “Haven’t figured it out yet, huh?” Lyle said. “You can be a little slow. Is it the heat? Want to play our favorite game? Guess.”

  Didi drew in her breath, her body throbbing, shifting down on the bench. She propped herself against the back of the picnic table and said, “I see you’re not done torturing me yet, Lyle. I thought after you killed two people and brought me here, we might be through playing. But I guess not. Okay, let’s see. You mean you didn’t just pluck me out of a crowd randomly like picking numbers in Lotto?”

  Lyle shook his head. “No.”

  She asked uncertainly, “Did you know me, Lyle? Did you know who I was?”

  He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I didn’t know you. I never laid eyes on you until this afternoon.”

  This afternoon? Surely not this afternoon. She had spent a lifetime with Lyle. Hers, the baby’s, the girls’, her husband’s lifetime.

  “Okay,” she whispered. How long were they going to sit here at a picnic table in the middle of a park at night and pretend they were lovers, pretend they were future husband and wife, falling in love in Pfluger Park under the stars?

  “Not much longer, Didi,” said Lyle, “Two more guesses.”

  “You took me because I looked like your wife and you wanted to relive her through me?”

  Again Lyle shook his head. “Melanie was small and blond. She was also careful with money. Nothing like you.”

  “I’m running out of ideas, Lyle,” said Didi.

  “One more, Desdemona. One more.”

  “Because I was shopping in NorthPark, you were under the mistaken impression I was rich and you wanted money from my family?”

  “Having spent all day with me, you gotta know that that can’t be it. So why even say it? When my wife died,” he said, “I received a small settlement from the hospital. Mel’s parents threatened to sue, and the hospital was only too happy to give us a little dough. I got some and they got some.”

  “So if you have money, why did you sell my ring?”

  “Just for the hell of it. Wanted some cash in hand.”

  Heavy-hearted, Didi thumbed the bottle neck, still between her fingers, and said, “I’m done, Lyle. I’m sapped dry. Not another idea in my head. I lose.”

  “You lose,” said Lyle. “Let me tell you what I want.”

  He stood up and came up to her. She struggled to her feet.

  And then Lyle whispered intensely, “I want your baby, Didi.”

  10:20 P.M.

  Rich and Scott stared mutely into the trunk of Lyle Luft’s Honda. The two cops shined big black flashlights inside. Rich saw a white plastic baby bath, and inside that a patterned infant car seat. He saw two paper shopping bags filled with baby clothes. He saw a large Winnie-the-Pooh, and a small Mickey Mouse. There were six cases of ready-made bottles of Enfamil and six cases of size 1 and 2 diapers, all neatly stacked.

  An unmarked car pulled up and two FBI men got out. Coming up behind Scott, one of the men said, “We’ve looked for them everywhere. They’re not here.”

  “Of course they are,” Scott barked. “Look at the trunk! You’ve got to find them, and fast. He’s hiding out. He’s here, in a private place. Maybe he’s got an apartment or a room somewhere. Don’t come back till you’ve found them.”

  The FBI man sighed and shrugged. “Will do my best, sir,” he said and got back inside his car.

  Rich stumbled away from the Honda. Scott followed him, H&K in hand. “Rich—”

  Whirling around, Rich exclaimed, “And I thought we were helpless before! All of you guys, all of you, can’t do anything. Not a single one of you. God!”

  Scott lowered his head, and the black bandanna slipped over his forehead. Rich saw it and was angered enough to pull his own bandanna off his head and fling it to the ground.

  Scott was silent a moment, and then pulled his bandanna off too.

  Rich grabbed Scott by the shoulders. “We have to find her,” he said intensely, shaking Scott and not letting go. “We have to find her right now.”

  As they were talking, a dark sedan pulled up. Two people got out and started walking toward the house.

  10:20 P.M.

  Didi didn’t wait for Lyle to continue. She pushed him as hard as she could, raised her hands high above her head, and, aiming for his eye, thrust the ragged edge of the bottle neck into his face. He dropped his gun and stumbled back, the glass stuck deep in the flesh of his cheek.

  Screaming, she ran around the picnic table. Lyle jumped up on the table, ran across it, jumped down, and lunged at her. She moved quickly away, and he fell on the ground. Raising her foot, Didi kicked him hard in the ribs. While he was down she kicked him again, aiming at his groin. She missed and connected with his thigh instead. In frenzied frustration, she wanted to scream, but all that came out was something throaty and unnatural, like the dying breaths of a half-eaten animal. He’s still here, and I am too, she thought. I am never going to get away from him.

  Didi tried to kick him in the head, but Lyle caught her foot, tripping her. She fell hard on her back.

  Wildly, she wriggled her foot free, leaving her sandal in his hands. She scrambled up, and he attempted to get up too, moaning. A quick thought ran through Didi’s head—Can’t believe the bastard is moaning—and just then she heard a pop, felt a pop, like a water-filled balloon at a town fair, POP and hot liquid gushed down between her legs, through her underwear, down her calves, onto her feet and to the ground.

  Ahh, Didi let out an anguished breath, ahh, to let go, to relieve her heartbreak.

  The water was here, the worst was here. Her baby was not waiting another hour to come into these woods and into Lyle’s bloodied hands. Her throat was mute and her eyes didn’t cry because her womb was crying hot water, crying right down her thighs.

  Ahh.

  She stepped away from Lyle and in a defenseless, useless gesture put her hands between her legs. The handcuffs pressed against her thighs. She immediately leaned down to Lyle and raised her arms to hit him.

  He was quicker. He grabbed her legs, yanking her toward him, and she fell. He turned her over and fell on top of her.

  “You bitch,” he whispered. “Look what you did, look what you did to my face.” Supporting himself on one hand, he grabbed the neck of the beer bottle and with a piercing yell yanked it out of his cheek. “You bitch,” he said. “You gonna die.” He flung the bottle away.

  “Get off me,” she hissed into his sweating, bleeding face. “Get off me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Lyle panted back. “Why are your legs wet? Have you wet yourself?”

  “Get off me!” Didi’s arms were pinned between her breasts and Lyle’s chest. Her cuffed hands were pinned between them. There was nowhere for her to go. She whispered, “You’re hurting the baby.”

  Lyle was not moving. “Scared, Didi?” he said into her face. “I haven’t gotten to kiss you properly—” And he roughly pressed his lips on hers.

  She spit into his mouth, and a clump shot out far into his throat; he choked. “Goddamn, what was that?” he yelled. Didi hoped it was her half-dried blood.

&
nbsp; She tried to move her face away from his. He pulled up, and she screamed. Lyle shoved the palm of his hand against her mouth and nose.

  Didi fainted, or she thought she fainted, because she didn’t hear Lyle for a while. She didn’t hear herself either, screaming or crying or whimpering. When she came to, he was still on top of her but had relaxed a bit, seeing the fight had left her. Though he was still on top of her, he didn’t feel as heavy. Then she felt him, oh, what is he doing, is he unzipping his jeans? Oh, no, and then the Belly made her forget even Lyle, forget everything.

  “Oh Christ,” she whimpered. The pain was intolerable. “Please, please help me, please help me, please, please…”

  On top of her Lyle laughed.

  Then the baby pain was over. Didi needed to move her hands above her head. They were stuck and digging into her abdomen. Getting them out of the cuffs looked impossible.

  “Desdemona,” Lyle said, fumbling with her dress, touching her thighs, “your legs are so wet.”

  “Let me touch them, Lyle, let me touch them,” she said.

  “I’m not letting you move, pretty fucking Didi. You can’t be trusted. It’s a good thing I have the cuffs on you.”

  “Let me bring my hands up above my head,” she whispered. “You’re hurting them like this, let me just move them—”

  He ground against her—against her thighs, against her stomach. His movement helped her to free her hands from his chest.

  The baby pain was slamming her belly again. She screamed, with her cuffed hands just above her head.

  All that time when she was holding the bottle neck she had been hoping for a miracle, but the miracle had turned out to be just a little black magic. He got close and she sliced him, she scarred him for life, sure, but that was it.

  She was moaning uncontrollably. The baby, the baby, you’re hurting Mommy, you’re hurting me, please, please help me … please …

  His hand cupped her mouth again. “Shut up!” he screamed at her. “Will you shut the fuck up?”

  Didi thrust her hands forward and hit him with the rim of the handcuffs. She thought she hit him on the top of his head as he nuzzled in her neck, but he was barely hurt.