by Jonas Saul
“Whoever paid to have Darwin taken care of grabbed Darwin from Bob and made his death appear to be Darwin’s handiwork.”
“What about the gas station?” Carson asked. “We have him on security cameras stealing food and a truck.”
“I would be hungry too if my potential kidnapper entered my home and sat down to eat the french toast that my wife had just prepared for me. They’re scared. They were hungry. They stole the truck to get away fast. Look where they checked in—a couple of miles away and then ditched the truck. They aren’t on the run. I’m sure Darwin wants to find out who is behind all this as much as you do.”
“Correction,” Carson said, raising his hand. “I just want Darwin. He’ll be able to answer all my questions.”
“Make that call. Find somebody to check Lee Michaels’ body for signs of a struggle. If he was the only one beating people and Darwin’s hands are clean, then he’s the one who beat his fellow agents.”
Carson grunted and started dialing. It took him ten minutes to get through to the medical examiner.
“Working late?” Carson asked.
“Yeah. Too many dead people. Do something about that, will you, Carson?”
“I’m trying, I’m trying. Listen, I need you to do me a favor.”
“What is it?”
“Pull the bodies of John Simmons, Don Ouellette and David Baron. I need you to look at something for me.”
“Their autopsies haven’t been completed yet.”
“I just need you to confirm something for me.”
“Give me a minute.”
Carson held the phone away from his ear. “He’s going in now.”
Greg nodded and looked back at his hands.
“Okay,” the medical examiner said. “I’m here. I’ve got all three rolled out of their holes. What do you want me to look at?”
“Their hands. Tell me if you see any sign of a struggle. Is there any skin under their nails? Did they put up a fight?”
“Give me a sec.”
Carson waited patiently, hoping Greg’s theory didn’t pan out. The last thing Carson wanted was to believe that two agents were rogue.
“There’s nothing on John Simmons’ hands. Moving to Don Ouellette’s.”
Carson could hear the slab being rolled back into place. He waited.
“Nothing at all on Don’s hands but a little dirt. Normal though.”
“Okay, last one,” Carson said. “David Baron.”
Carson looked at Greg who sat staring at him from across the table.
“Nothing on the first two men,” he said.
Greg nodded. “It’ll be this guy. My guess is Nick was alone in the kitchen and killed here. Lee went out alone to take care of David and left Nick to guard the Kostas. If there’s anything to find, it’ll be on the agent who didn’t have Nick holding a weapon on him.”
“Carson?” the medical examiner asked.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Strange. There’s no blood or skin under his nails.”
I knew it.
“But there’s a few flecks of plastic. Like you find on those fake leather jackets. And two of his nails have recently been broken. By recently, I mean within twelve hours of time of death. Without a full autopsy report, I can’t confirm anything. But it does look like he struggled with someone before he died.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll swing by in a couple of days to see what you find in the autopsy.”
Carson hung up and turned to Greg. “He found flecks of plastic under David’s fingernails and evidence of a struggle based on the condition of the fingers.”
“What was Lee wearing when he was found?”
“An imitation leather jacket. We’d have to confirm the state of the jacket.”
Greg sat back in his chair.
“Doesn’t prove anything,” Carson said.
“No, but it offers doubt, the kind that’s beyond reasonable.”
Chapter 11
The jolt woke him. Something banged around him. He heard it again and felt the pain. It rushed him like a strong wind.
He moaned and rolled to his side. His movement was restricted. He opened his eyes and saw nothing.
Am I blind? No, that’s not possible. I can’t be blind. I have a fear of the dark. I could never live like that.
He touched what stopped him from rolling over. A wall, only inches from his face, but he couldn’t see it.
Frantically, he roamed his hands along the wall and felt where it started and stopped. The sides were small, the top and bottom wider.
A coffin.
The pine boxes Gambino had his men prepare for the Hernandez family.
He moaned and tried to calm his breathing.
If I’m in a pine box, that means they’re going to bury me in that cemetery across the street. Unless I’m already buried. How am I still alive after getting shot?
He touched his forehead. There was a large bump between his eyes, just above where the top of his nose met his eyebrows. He felt a slight pain in his chest where the other bullet hit.
Rubber bullets.
He’d recently seen them used on protestors at the occupied cities around the globe. But why use rubber bullets? Why not just kill him outright?
So I could be buried alive and die six feet under the ground.
He realized that shooting him would’ve been too easy.
“Help,” he shouted. With his fists, he banged both sides of the makeshift coffin and shouted again. “Someone! Help!”
The echo of his words was dulled by the thickness of the earth.
Am I already underground?
He grabbed the top of the box and searched for holes. In the middle of the lid, above his stomach, he felt a small slit where the wood had warped. His little finger slid through the opening. If he was in a building or outside, somewhere with even a small amount of light, he would see it through the hole.
Shit. I’m already in the ground.
Darwin screamed. His bladder released and warm urine filled his shorts. He broke out in a sweat, and pounded his fists against the top of the coffin. Within a minute he was worn out and fatigued.
“Oh, Rosina … my love. I’m so sorry … I failed you,” he mumbled through breaths.
I can’t believe after all I’ve been through that I’m going to die in a pine box, buried alive by Fuccini’s enemy.
“What are they doing to you, Rosina?”
He thought about oxygen. A quick calculation figured the area of the box to be small. Enough oxygen for a couple of hours.
I’ll starve for air before I’ll starve for lack of food.
He kicked his foot against the back of the box. Dirt dribbled down along his ankle.
Darwin cried.
His hand came up to wipe away the sweat from his face and the collected tears.
“Why?” he asked out loud. “Oh, God, please help me here. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
Something came to him from his Sunday school days when he was a kid.
God helps those that help themselves.
He felt in his pockets. He had no wallet, no keys, no flashlight and no cell phone. Even if he had a lighter or a match, he wouldn’t want to use it due to the oxygen it would consume.
The darkness felt heavy, like it crept closer, tightening its grip on his breathing tubes.
“Get control of yourself, Darwin. Think, dammit, think. The dark can’t hurt you anymore.”
He laid his hands down beside him and focused on his breathing.
Slow the breathing. Take it easy. Rosina needs me. I can do this.
“But how?”
Darwin breathed slower and tried not to think about the darkness. He was not doing a good job of it.
I have to put my rage to work.
The dirt above the coffin would have recently been replaced. Since he was still alive, and he figured the coffin would only have enough air for a couple of hours, then he had been buried recently.
Maybe that
was what woke me.
A backhoe could’ve dropped the dirt onto the top of the coffin in a clump. The rest of it could’ve been shoveled on by the machine.
So I’ve got a good hour of thinking to work this out.
He knew the general depth was six feet deep. He figured the Gambino men to be lazy and cut corners, so he may not be as deep, but worst case, it would be six feet.
That meant, since he was five foot, eleven inches tall, he could reach above the grass if he could get into a standing position and raise his hands above his head.
But how do I stand with all this dirt above me?
Displacement.
Eureka!
Science class in grade nine talked about displacement. He had to displace as much dirt as he could.
Just like they did when building that tunnel in The Great Escape.
He figured he had just over six feet in length and two feet in height inside the pine box. If every inch inside the box took the dirt above it, he could have a chance of standing and then digging himself out of the ground.
It could work. But how do I breathe when my head is above the box and in the dirt?
Then a beer commercial from many years ago came to him.
I. Am. Canadian.
Just like a hockey fight, he would raise his extra large T-shirt over his head where he would tie the sleeves together as tight as he could to form a seal.
He kicked the top again. More dirt cascaded down.
I can either stay here and die, or I can try to make this work and unbury myself. Option one is I die. Option two is I die trying. The benefit of option two is, if it works, I can kill the motherfucker who put me here.
He kicked again, harder this time.
He realized that the weight of all the earth above him could be huge. If he broke a large piece of wood off, in seconds he could be smothered and not able to move. He had to work slow and displace bits of dirt at a time, but yet work fast enough to get it done before the oxygen ran out.
He grabbed the warped piece of wood by his stomach and applied pressure.
Then he waited and listened. He heard nothing above him. The only thing he could hear in the absolute darkness was the beating of his heart.
His fear crept up again. The fear of being locked in a dark room when he was a child. His stepmother came in and poked him with the tips of steak knives and large syringes. For a moment his vision filled with the image of the pitchfork. He saw lights where there were none. He heard a voice.
“Rosina?”
The voice of his stepmother intruded. She told him how horrible he’d been and that dinner wasn’t a place for jokey jokes. Now that his father had gone to work, it was her job to teach him what was right and what was wrong.
He felt the sharp edge of a blade and screamed. The darkness called his name.
Daaarrrwiiinnn …
He wondered if he was losing his mind. Could someone be so consumed by fear that he dies by the flooding of insanity? Or would being in a coffin, buried alive, rid him of his fear of the dark?
He shuffled left and right and felt dirt under him.
“I have to get out. I can’t stay here. I will go insane before I run out of air. I have to get out. Now. It’s time. I have to leave this place. I have to get out.”
He grabbed the warped edge of wood and pulled.
A piece broke off and dirt poured in. He touched the hole and figured it to be the size of a baseball.
He used his right knee to plug the hole and lifted his shirt up. Once he got the bottom up to his neck, he heaved it over his head and pulled his arms out. Next, he reached above his head and brought the ends of the sleeves together, tying them in the tightest knot he could. Then he secured the bottom of the T-shirt to seal it over his head.
The fabric laid across his face, causing an even more claustrophobic feeling.
Man, am I happy I’m not claustrophobic. That would suck right now.
He pulled the shirt away from his nose and breathed in. Air traveled through the fabric with ease. He grabbed a hand full of dirt and dropped it onto the shirt in front of his mouth, testing its integrity. Not a single drop came through.
Perfect.
He released his knee from the plugged hole. As dirt dropped into the pine box, he used his hands to shovel it to the back and used his feet to push it into the far corners. He did this for what felt like an exhausting thirty minutes until he plugged the hole with his knee again to catch his breath.
When he’d researched phobias to get answers on why he couldn’t look at a knife like everyone else and why he needed to drive with the interior light on at night, he remembered seeing there was a phobia for being buried alive called, taphophobia.
“Fuck, am I glad I don’t have that one either.”
He collected his breath, counted to three and began displacing dirt again, thinking of the day he married Rosina in Rome. She was so beautiful. The church had been magnificent, and the people who witnessed the wedding were awesome. Everyone involved made them feel welcomed and cherished. He remembered thinking how happy he’d been to elope—to take Rosina to Rome and marry the woman of his dreams.
He dug upwards and moved the dirt as far from himself as possible. Soon the bottom of the coffin was getting so full that his legs were becoming stiff from the exertion and the inability to move freely.
It was almost time to attempt to stand. He began the arduous task of bringing the dirt up to and above his head. The work grew harder as his arms stiffened. He wondered how much dirt he’d moved. Would it be enough? Was the earth loose enough to push through and try to stand?
He would have to work fast when he broke the piece of wood in the lid out of the way. Dirt would fill the coffin fast. He would need to be ready and stand with determination, using his hands to pull dirt down below himself, constantly making a path for the top. Air would be an issue, but if he stayed where he was, air would be an issue soon enough.
Dirt now filled the box almost up to his waist. It sat packed to his triceps and up around his T-shirt-covered face to the top of the coffin above his head, leaving him enough room for his face to remain exposed to the little air left.
Now or never.
He grabbed the board where the hole was and pulled downward.
Nothing happened.
He pulled again, harder, but it didn’t budge.
“What the fuck?”
With both hands, he yanked on the wood, but nothing moved or broke off.
Oh man, I’m done. I’m fucking done.
In the dark, he felt his air waning. He gasped and tried to breathe in deeper. Small amounts of dirt trickled around his right knee. He rested his weary hands at his sides and waited for the nausea to go away. Throwing up in his T-shirt-covered face would be the end.
A wave of anger rolled over him. How could people like Gambino exist? What he did to the Hernandez family was unspeakable.
Making me die a slow death because I love my wife and want to protect her makes no sense. You’re a warped human being, Frankie Gambino.
He felt his anger, allowed it freedom and drew power from it. The darkness closed in again.
He raised his right knee as fast as he could and slammed it into the opening it had plugged only moments before.
Wood cracked and split.
Hope filled his sluggish brain. He did it again and again, feeling the dirt coming in around his leg.
He grabbed the broken wood and pulled a piece toward him. With the aid of the weight of the earth, the wood gave and broke in.
At the last second, Darwin breathed in a deep breath and struggled up, digging with his hands at a mad rate. He pushed with his feet and scrambled like a mole, making a path where one hadn’t been moments before.
In seconds, he was up on his knees and sitting outside the pine box, which came up to his waist. Dirt rested on his shoulders like the weight Atlas once carried.
He pulled his shirt away from his mouth and nose as far as it would go and bre
athed out. He breathed in again and coughed. Minute amounts of dust filled the small space. He knew the air inside his shirt limited him to mere minutes at best.
The small twigs or rocks scattered throughout the dirt, scratched him all over. He reached above his head and dug deep, pulling the dirt down and around him to fill the now half-empty coffin. He pushed hard with his legs and forced his body to stand. Using his thighs harder than they’d ever worked, Darwin pushed up and dug, breathing as little as he could.