The Truth Itself

by James Rayburn

  After an eternity his struggles stopped and he lay still.

  Gasping and sweating Nadja and Janey stood up from Lucien, their hair and clothes awry, Janey’s cheeks a violent crimson.

  Nadja whipped the bag from his head. “Oh god,” she said.

  “He’s not? Fuck. Is he?” Janey said.

  Nadja put her fingers to his neck. Nothing.

  “There’s no pulse,” she said, panicking.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit.” Janey said. “We kept the bag on too long.”

  “Pump his chest,” Nadja said. Janey just stared at her. “Pump his fucking chest!”

  The tiny woman fell to her knees and started compressing Lucien’s chest with her gloved hands.

  Nadja kneeled beside him and opened his mouth, saying, “Don’t you fucking die on me, you miserable little shit. Not yet.”

  And she dipped down and for the first time in all the years she'd known him she put her mouth to his and breathed into him, feeling his lungs expand. She carried on until she was exhausted, Janey, tirelessly, machinelike, pumping away.

  And then Nadja felt something, a twitch, a flicker, and she put her fingers to the carotid and a faint pulse throbbed against her fingertips.

  She sat back, sweating and panting, and when Janey removed her hands they watched his narrow chest rise and fall.

  Nadja stood and said, “Okay, now let’s kill the little ogre for real.”

  EIGHTY

  Kate stared up at the endless sweep of stars and felt a sudden loss of equilibrium. Closing her eyes, she slowed her breath and heard the clatter of the tuk-tuk and smelled the warm, dry dust that it threw up as it neared them.

  The little green taxi rattled up the road from the third resort, its brakes squeaking when it halted beside where she and Hook stood near the dirt bike in the cover of a stand of trees.

  After restraining Kate from storming the bungalows, Hook had called his friend Ton who’d appeared ten minutes later, ready to earn a thousand baht for going to the desks of the resorts and speaking to the Thai clerks, pretending that he was looking for a farang who had booked his taxi.

  Kate had acknowledged the value of the plan, but—despite all her years of training—had found it almost impossible to wait for the man to do his rounds to the bungalows.

  Ton leaned out the window. “Khun Harry,” he said and beckoned Hook closer.

  Kate, standing at Hook’s shoulder, expected Ton to report what he had from the first two resorts: that nobody fitting the descriptions of Morse and Suzie had been seen.

  But this time there was more urgency in the man’s voice. “I think the people there them are lying,” the taxi driver said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Why?” Hook said.

  “Them tell me resort closed for renovation. But I see light in one bungalow.”

  Hook got the driver to explain where the occupied hut was situated. When the man had done this, Harry thanked him, handed over the money and the taxi bumped away into the night, a fall of dust obscuring its red taillights.

  “Let’s go,” Hook said.

  Kate shook her head. “No, you wait here.” She handed him the snubnose. “You back me up.”

  “With this peashooter?”

  “Let me do this, Harry, please,” Kate said and without waiting for a reply she cut into the jungle, using the moon to navigate by.

  She stepped over fallen branches and spikes of bamboo, crossed a stream that stank of human shit and found herself at the perimeter of the resort, looking at ten wooden bungalows built around an empty swimming pool. The front desk, in a thatched open-sided structure, was far to her left, and she could hear tinny laughter from a Thai television game show and the low chatter of the night staff.

  She caught a gleam of light from the bungalow farthest from her, built almost in the jungle.

  Kate moved through the undergrowth until she stood behind the bungalow, which rested on low concrete legs. The small bathroom window, set high in the wooden wall, glowed with the light of a green incandescent bulb. She broke from the cover of the foliage, crossed to the window and saw that it was free of glass, merely a rectangle cut into the wood, covered with filthy mesh, dead moths and bugs trapped in the net like specimens.

  She heard only the nocturnal insects, the distant drone of a motorcycle and the muted gabble of the TV show the desk staff were watching.

  Keeping close to the wood, holding the sawed-off, Kate moved to the side of the bungalow. It was windowless, an air conditioner mounted to the wall, the fan spinning within its housing, the motor giving off a low whine.

  The bungalow was occupied and Kate knew now that her child was inside.

  She could sense her pull, drawing her like the moon draws the ocean, and just as irresistibly. Kate had to fight the urge to rush the door. She had to forget she was a mother, had to find the zone where time slowed, where she entered the flow state and her concentration narrowed and all doubt left her and she did what she did without thought or emotion.

  She could not.

  Her heart hammered at her chest. Her throat was tight. Sweat dripped from her hair, and the bandage on her left hand itched. She was terrified.

  Kate fought her body for control and lost. Cursing herself silently she sucked air so thick she could taste it and then she walked slowly toward the front porch, conscious of the sound of her shoes on the grass and the gravel, an undammed surge of adrenalin giving her the shakes. She had to clench her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.

  Useless fucking bitch.

  Reaching the front of the bungalow she pressed herself to the wood, holding the Remington against her chest, and inched herself forward until she stood outside one of the pair of windows that flanked the door, pinkish light coming from behind the closed curtains.

  She listened again.

  No sound.

  She put her face close to the glass and peered in through a chink where the curtain didn’t quite meet the window frame.

  Morse, dressed only in a pair of boxers, sat on the bed, smoking.

  There was no sign of Suzie.

  Kate inched her way up the two steps onto the balcony. The wood creaked. She stopped, sweat pooling under her arms and breaking in trickles from her hairline. She wiped her face with the back of her arm and moved forward, reaching the door.

  She waited. Listening.

  After drying sweat off her left hand on her shirt, conscious of the bandage and the lost finger, she took hold of the door handle and turned it slowly.

  Locked.

  She stepped back and raised her right foot, sending all her weight into her leg, her shoe striking the timber beside the lock, the plywood splintering and the door swinging inward.

  Kate ran into the room, leveling the Remington at Morse who was still seated on the bed, staring at her impassively, smoke curling from his lips as he exhaled.

  She scanned the hut. A cane chair. A bar fridge. A wooden closet standing near the bathroom door.

  “Where is she?” Kate said in a voice she barely recognized. “Where’s Suzie?”

  The pale man said nothing and, keeping the sawed-off pointed at him, she moved toward the closet. Eyes still on Morse she reached out a hand and opened the door, hearing the hinges creak and then hearing something else.

  She took her eyes away from the tall man, but kept the weapon extended, and looked down and saw Suzie lying on the floor of the closet, trussed, gagged, her eyes wide with terror.

  Kate’s training was washed away by a flood of relief.

  Her child was alive.

  Too late she heard a sound behind her and she spun as a figure in a gaping nightgown flew at her from the bathroom, a figure with a man’s bony chest and a woman’s painted face, long black hair streaming.

  Kate saw the gleam of a short blade and she fired and saw blood bloom on the almost female face and then she felt a sharp pain as the knife took her in the chest and she knew it was bad when all strength left her and the Remington slipped f
rom her grasp and she folded in on herself, the room tilting wildly, and she was lying on the wooden floor, looking at up Suzie who screamed soundlessly into her gag.

  Kate had to fight to keep her eyes open, to stop invisible hands from dragging her down into the gathering darkness and when she tried to speak to her child, to tell her that everything would be alright, no words came, only a flow of thick, hot blood.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  Nadja kneeled behind the giant Mercedes-Benz, feeding a length of garden hose into its tailpipe. When the hose was shoved in as deep as it would go, she lifted a cloth from the cement floor of the garage and stuffed it into the gap between the hose and the pipe, so no carbon monoxide would escape.

  Nadja gave the hose a last tug to see that it was securely wedged in the tailpipe and then she squatted for a moment with her back against the huge chrome bumper, watching Janey Burke use old issues of The Washington Post to close the crack between the bottom of the roller door and the concrete slab. When she was done with that, the diminutive redhead sealed the one small window with duct tape.

  Nadja walked the hose toward the rear door of the car and dangled it through the open side window. She slid in beside Lucien who sat slumped on the leather seat, breathing shallowly, and closed the door. Holding the hose with one hand, she activated the electric window with the other, and the glass rose, lifting the green and black hose with it, trapping the rubber against the doorframe. Closing the window all the way would put a crimp the hose, so she stuffed a towel into the gap between the glass and the metal.

  She slid from the car, closed the rear door, and got in behind the wheel, leaving the driver’s door agape. Starting the Mercedes-Benz, she listened to the beat of the obsessively maintained engine, feeling the steady rhythm coming up through the floorboards and the constant and reassuring vibration of the steering wheel beneath her gloved fingertips.

  As Nadja quit the car she caught a whiff of the warm gas wafting through the mouth of the pipe that dangled just by her husband’s left cheek, pure, unfiltered, carbon monoxide filling his lungs.

  She took a last look at Lucien slumped in the rear of his silly old car, then she beckoned Janey and the two women left the garage and entered the kitchen, shutting the door after them.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  When Hook heard the gunshot, a loud smack that had the screaming birds boiling from the trees, he jumped aboard the Yamaha, kicked-started it—the noise be damned—and took off at such speed that the rear wheel slid on the loose gravel and he almost lost control, but he fought the bike and tamed it and hurtled down the bumpy track toward the bungalows.

  Hook swung off the pathway toward the empty pool, skirted it, the tires nibbling at the cracked coping, ramped a hump in the grass and landed heavily, cursing, bringing the bike to a sliding halt, chewing dust.

  He heard a flat slap and something buzzed past his ear and shattered the window of the hut behind him and Dudley Morse burst from a bungalow, caught long enough in the rectangle of pinkish light that fell through the open doorway for Hook to see that the tall man had Suzie, bound and gagged, slung over his shoulder.

  Morse fired again, missed and then he ran for a path that led into the trees that separated the bungalows from a small beach.

  Hook spun the accelerator of the Yamaha and surged after Morse, trees and bushes flying at him in the yellow eye of the bike.

  He cleared the trees and spotted Morse sprinting for the beach, a muddy little cove that attracted few tourists, unlike its more glamorous sibling on the far side of the cliff.

  Too late Hook saw a shelf of rock in his path and he hauled up the handle bars of the bike like a steeplechase jockey at a jump and for a moment he thought he was going to make it, but the rear tire clipped the boulders and he was unseated from the Yamaha, airborne, in freefall for a split second before he hit the rocks, his wind smashed from him.

  Hook fought for breath and hauled himself to his knees in time to see Morse dragging a kayak from the sand to the water. The tall man threw the child across the tapering hull, pushed the craft out and jumped aboard, his long arms windmilling the double-bladed paddle.

  Hook gained his feet and, clutching his ribs, staggered onto the beach, the gibbous moon casting a broken reflection in the black, rippling ocean.

  When Morse hit the low breakers the kayak started to yaw and Suzie slid from the prow into the water. Morse circled back but the child was gone, and he corrected his course and made for the cliff and the next beach.

  Hook, oblivious to the pain in his ribcage, ran from the sand into the ocean, splashing, gasping, floundering. When the water was deep enough he threw himself into a clumsy crawl, each stroke a spear to his side, and when he reached the spot where the girl went down he dived.

  He saw nothing.

  Came up for air.

  Dived again, his hands churning empty water.

  His lungs bursting he shot to the surface, sobbing for breath, and then he went under again, forcing himself deeper, and in the moonlight that pierced the clear water he spotted a dark shape and as he plunged toward it he saw that it was Suzie, her bound feet scraping the silty seabed, her one arm free, hand pointing upward, her hair washing away from her head like kelp.

  Hook grabbed her and churned to the surface, sucking air, treading water, shouting her name, the child limp in his arms.

  He towed her to the beach, dragged her from the ocean and lay her face down on the sand, pumping her back, saying her name over and over like some primitive incantation. Water jetted from her mouth and she spat and gasped and he hugged her to him and cradled her while she cried and spoke words he did not understand.

  Hook untied her and carried her back across the beach and over the rocks, past where his broken bike lay like a felled beast and along the path through the trees.

  He stopped a moment when he sighted the bungalows, expecting police, but the resort was eerily quiet, even the babbling TV stilled, and he suspected that the Thai staff, like the frightened birds, had fled into the night.

  Approaching the bungalow Morse had occupied, Hook set the girl down on the grass. She clutched at his sodden shirtfront with hands made vise-like by raw terror.

  “It’s okay,” he said, gently prying her fingers apart, “I’ll be right back.”

  Dripping, he walked toward the bungalow and climbed the steps and stood in the doorway.

  Kate lay on the floor between the bed and the open closet, a dark pool of blood fanning out from her body. He didn’t need to touch her to know she was dead but he entered the room, stepped over another body of indeterminate gender (he glimpsed a bloody, rouged face cratered with acne scars) and he kneeled beside Kate and touched her throat and looked into her dead eyes.

  Green eyes. Like his.

  All she got from me, he thought, her eyes. And a taste for deceit and subterfuge.

  Hook covered her with the sheet from the bed and left the bungalow and walked over to the child, who sat hugging her drenched knees.

  He crouched beside her and wrapped her in his arms, trying to still her shaking body.

  “Is Mommy dead?” Suzie said.

  “Yes,” he said, “she’s dead.”

  The girl buried her face in his chest and sobbed and he lifted her and carried her away.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Nadja was in her en-suite, running a bath, the mirror already steamed up. She stripped off her clothes and stood naked, the black ankle monitor an obscenity on her pale body.

  She found a pair of scissors in the cabinet behind the mirror and placed her right sole on the rim of the bathtub and was about to cut through the strap of the monitor when she stopped herself. What if it sent out some kind of a distress signal that brought thuggish surveillance personal to her doorstep?

  No, too risky. She could live one more night with the thing on her ankle.

  The bath was ready and she lowered herself into it, and, as she slowly washed her body with the buttermilk soap she favored, it was as if she were sloughi
ng off the decades she’d spent in Lucien Benway’s claustrophobic orbit.

  After she and Janey had left Lucien in the idling car and returned to the kitchen, the small woman had kneeled and retrieved from the tiles the plastic bag they’d used to smother him and shoved it into her pocket.

  She’d pointed at the broken glass and mess of alcohol on the floor. “Let me clean that up.”

  “No,” Nadja had said. “You go now.”

  They’d stood looking at each other, suddenly awkward, women who, had they met in other circumstances, would have raised one another hackles.

  “Thank you,” Janey had said.

  “No, thank you.”

  They’d laughed and embraced for an awkward moment and then Janey, limber as a gymnast, had left the way she had come, through the kitchen window, dropping into a walled alley hidden from the front of the house. She’d scaled the wall and melted into the night, invisible to the dregs of the press contingent.

  Nadja had found a dust pan and a brush and swept up the broken glass, depositing it into the trash. She’d mopped up the Scotch and rinsed the cloth at the sink. Peeling the orange gloves from her hands, she’d balled them and dropped them in the garbage can.

  Then she’d come upstairs and drawn her bath.

  The bath that was cooling now, as she lay submerged, feeling very sleepy.

  She rose from the bathtub, dried herself and dressed in a chaste pair of flannel pajamas.

  In her room Nadja slid beneath the freshly starched lavender-scented sheets of her bed and, as soon as her head touched her pillow, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  When Janey Burke finally arrived home (so buzzed by what she and Nadja Benway had done that she’d walked aimlessly around her Foggy Bottom neighborhood for she didn’t know how long) she was amazed—and more than a little appalled—when she realized that she was hungry.