Twisted

by Steve Cavanagh

  He felt nothing for Maria at that moment. Dead. Cocooned in plastic. He believed that everything in life happened for a reason. Even murder. Right then, Daryl had twenty million reasons to kill Maria.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Big Bill Buchanan took the last bite from a pastrami sandwich and washed it down with a cold can of soda. He belched, once, returned the can to his cup holder and looked out at the sea. So far, his dieting wasn’t going as his wife had planned. In the six weeks since he’d had the stent inserted in his artery, he’d lost over fifteen pounds. There was no denying that he felt better for it. No longer out of breath on the stairs, and with the benefit of the newly opened artery and the medication, he was almost a new man. He’d gone back to work last week, and must have put three or four pounds back on. As a US postal worker, he had a lot of time on his hands, unsupervised. The walking was good for him, and he no longer took the van up the steep hills on Corbyn Street. At lunch he ate the salad his wife had prepared for him freshly each morning, and drank the bottled water. Every other day he topped off the salad with a sandwich from Pete’s Deli, a Coke and a bag of chips. Justifying the pleasure came easy – he felt the hill walks and increased activity balanced out the calories. At least Bill allowed himself to believe that fantasy.

  Sitting in the parked mail van, in the old entrance to what once had been the Pearson farm, he balled up the wrapping paper for the sandwich and stuffed it into the door well. He would dump it later. Almost ten-thirty now. He’d been on the job since five a.m. One final stop. He started up the engine and drove the few hundred yards to the Cooper house. He stopped, got out and opened up the rear of the mail truck. A small stack of envelopes lingered in the bottom of a mail sack. He retrieved them, whistled his way to the mailbox and stopped.

  The mailbox wasn’t there.

  Well, it was, but someone had knocked it over.

  Maybe some drunk driver misjudged his speed and the slight bend in the road. Big Bill picked up the mailbox, checked it was empty, then made his way toward the house. He’d made his last delivery to the house on Friday morning, and the mailbox had been fine then. Maybe they didn’t know it had been hit. He also wanted to make sure the three or four letters in his hand got safely to their intended recipients.

  The tune on Big Bill’s lips died when he reached the front door. It lay open just a crack, and there was a strange stain on it. Only Mrs. Cooper’s car sat in the driveway. Mr. Cooper wasn’t home a lot but Big Bill liked to take a moment and admire that sleek Italian sports car whenever he got the chance. Mr. Cooper must have been someplace else.

  He hit the doorbell, waited. Nothing. He knocked the door with his knuckles. Again, louder this time. That’s when he realized the stain on the door looked like blood.

  ‘Mrs. Cooper?’ he called.

  ‘Mrs. Cooper, it’s Bill Buchanan – your mailman. Is everything alright?’

  The silence ate into his flesh.

  Tentatively, Bill touched the door and gently pushed it open. He called out again, asking if she was alright, was there an emergency?

  A dread took him when he crossed the threshold. He shouldn’t be here. Had no business being here. He could get fired. But what if there had been an accident?

  The little hallway led to the living room. Bill placed the mail on the table in the hall, then poked his head around the corner. No one in the living room.

  ‘Mrs. Cooper!’ he yelled. This time there was panic in his voice. Bill had already sweated through his shirt, and now he removed his ball cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve. He was out of breath, and he put out a hand onto the wall, used it as a base to poke his head into the living room. No one in there. And nothing looked disturbed.

  He called out again, then thought maybe he was being foolish. He should just leave. Bill had all but made up his mind when he happened to glance downwards. More stains. On the floor. Fine red droplets on the white rug.

  If anything, it made Bill more confident in his decision to investigate – that it was okay he’d come into the house. He called out again, with urgency, and was now moving through the living room toward the kitchen. These old houses had once populated the shoreline and Bill knew they were all the same. There were two doors leading to the kitchen. One from the living room and one from the hallway. Bill followed the blood pattern on the floor of the living room to the kitchen. The door lay closed.

  He touched the handle, then gripped it and turned it. Opened the door an inch and caught a strange smell and an even stranger sight. The walls, the kitchen floor, or what he could see of it, were covered in dull gray plastic sheets. The smell hit him. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Droplets of sweat ran off his nose, falling on his boots. He wanted to shout out again but he didn’t have the breath. Nothing he could do but open the damn door.

  He pushed it, hard.

  And fell to his knees.

  A large ball of plastic sheeting on the floor. Blood pooling around it.

  The roll of plastic had been ripped open. The glass doors beyond which led to the porch were covered in bloody handprints.

  One of those doors lay open.

  Pain shot through his left arm, as if he’d been struck with a bat. He looked around, but there was no one there. The pain traveled up his arm, into his chest and his jaw. His hands patted his pockets and he found his cell phone. Dialled 911.

  He told the operator the address and said there was blood all over the kitchen, someone had been attacked. Big Bill listened to the dispatcher confirm she was sending police and paramedics. He lowered the phone from his face, took a hit from his inhaler and told the dispatcher to hurry, he needed an ambulance right away. He was having a heart attack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sheriff Dole got out of his police cruiser and ran around it. He got into the passenger seat, closed the door and put on his seat belt. Deputy Bloch shuffled over from the passenger seat. She lifted her right leg over the center console, got into position in the driver’s seat and put on her belt. She hit the siren, and the lights, and the gas. Dole picked up the radio, confirmed they were handling and tried to get more information from Sue.

  In many ways, Dole was a fine law enforcement officer. Chief among his virtues lay the knowledge of his own limitations. Dole was never going to chase down a purse-snatcher on foot, he could hit a barn door with shotgun but not much else, and he was the worst high-speed driver in the history of the county.

  Bloch was a different story. She ran ten miles every morning. He saw her sometimes, on the beach, pounding through the sand. She could also shoot and drive. Probably all at the same time, thought Dole.

  Sue didn’t have any more information from the caller. It was a tough situation and she was doing her best to keep them calm.

  The tires screeched out of Port Lonely and onto the coast road. Dole glanced across and saw the speedometer pass one hundred. He took hold of the handle above the door and thought about what he would do when they arrived at the scene.

  Paramedics had to come from county. No matter how long it took Dole and Bloch to arrive, the medics wouldn’t get there for at least another ten minutes. In the trunk Sheriff Dole knew he had a medical kit and a defibrillator. Those he knew how to use.

  Hitting the brakes, Bloch told him to hold on. No need. Dole felt the seat belt crushing his chest and then, when Bloch took her foot off the brakes, she took a sharp left, down the little road that led to the parking lot. Dole’s body was thrown right, and his shoulder cracked against the door.

  As he straightened up, Dole pulled on the handle, stopping himself being thrown into the driver’s seat.

  More accelerator. A thump as the car broke through the narrow wire fence blocking traffic from the beach.

  Instantly, Bloch lost control and the car began to skid on the sand. At this point, Dole knew he would’ve ended up driving head first into the dunes or sliding into the sea. Bloch did neither. She dropped down a gear, using the torque to find grip.
After some snaking and wrestling of the steering wheel, which threw Dole around, the car straightened up and Bloch pointed at the windshield.

  ‘There they are, up ahead,’ she said.

  Squinting through the windshield, Dole could only see a collection of black dots in the sand in the far distance. It seemed like Bloch had better eyesight too. It didn’t take long for the dots to become larger, so they looked like a rock formation. The closer they got, the more details came into view for Dole.

  The car pulled up, thirty feet from the figures up ahead. Bloch killed the siren, but left the lights flashing. When Dole got out he could finally see the scene clearly.

  A man with a cell phone to his ear jogged toward them. Beyond him, someone was lying on their back on the beach. A blonde-haired girl leaned over the body in the sand.

  ‘Where’s the paramedic?’ cried the man with the cell phone.

  Bloch was already halfway to the man. Dole went straight to the trunk, threw it open and brought the medical kit and the defibrillator with him. With so much to carry, Dole only jogged to the nearby figure. Bloch was there already, talking calmly with the blonde-haired jogger beside the body.

  ‘She just came running toward us. She was screaming. There was so much blood …’ said the blonde-haired jogger.

  Dole’s legs locked, and he slid to a halt on the fine sand as soon as he saw who was lying there.

  One side of Maria Cooper’s face was black with blood and dirt. It had caked over one eye, closing it. Her mouth was open, and she was screaming. The right eye was wide and panicking – searching around, fearfully, for the source of some new, unseen attack. She squirmed in the sand, her cries now a raw guttural roar.

  Dole called Bloch to him. He opened the medical kit, handed Bloch some gauze and told her to keep light pressure on the gash on the side of Maria’s head. While she did so, Dole took Maria’s hand. She was bone white. She’d lost a lot of blood.

  Gently, but quickly, he wrapped the gauze to the side of her head with a bandage while she dug her nails into the sand, and bucked and squirmed and screamed.

  All the while, Dole whispered to her softly, telling her she was going to be alright. Soon as the gauze was in place, he set about checking her vitals.

  She was breathing, she was in shock, and Dole couldn’t find a pulse. Either it was so erratic he couldn’t detect it, or it was her jerking, writhing movements making it impossible to find.

  ‘Maria, what happened?’ he said.

  She ignored him. He placed his hands on either side of her face, trying to focus her attention, to calm her and get some sense of what had happened. The pupil of her right eye had all but disappeared into the iris. It was a tiny black dot and it didn’t move as he brought his face closer to her. Dole pinched her left eyelid, prised it open through the cake of blood. His hands instantly fell away.

  Oh Jesus.

  The pupil of Maria’s right eye had flooded the iris. It looked as big as an eight ball. Dole was no medic, but he knew what that meant. Maria had suffered some kind of brain damage.

  ‘Maria, it’s Sheriff Dole. What happened?’ he said to her, now more urgent than ever. The sound of sirens in the distance. The paramedics would be here any minute.

  ‘Maria!’ he shouted.

  She stopped moving, looked at him and spoke. Her voice box was shot to shit with all the screaming, there was blood in her mouth and in her throat, but through all of that Dole heard those two words from her, clear as day. And those words sent an icy needle through his entire body as sure as a shot of liquid nitrogen.

  ‘Who’s Maria?’ she said.

  When the paramedics arrived, they took over after Dole had given them her vitals. Maria was in shock, she’d just become tachycardic and they strapped her to a stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance with great speed.

  Dole heard the radio crackle with more from Sue.

  Big Bill Buchanan was delivering mail up at the Cooper’s house. He’d found a bloody crime scene and called it in.

  By the time the paramedics arrived at the house, Bill was dead on the floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Paul felt the sun on his face. A warmth that spread over his cheeks, and down through his body. The sun was strong. He could see the blazing sphere even with his eyes closed. It burned a circle of light through his eyelids, dim and muted, but there all the same.

  After the sun came sensation. He couldn’t feel his tongue. Stuck to the roof of his mouth, dry and alien. He swallowed, almost gagged and somehow a sliver of saliva brought it back to life. His arms were heavy, and he found he couldn’t lift them. He turned his head and felt like he was spinning. Dizziness made way for nausea, but his stomach was groaning and empty. Nothing to be sick with.

  Slowly, memories returned. The room. The fisherman. The boat.

  His eyes opened, and he quickly shut them again when the light from the bare ceiling bulb sent a sharp stab of pain into his head. The light went off. He heard movement and opened his eyes again. It seemed to take a long time to adjust to the darkness, and bright spots flickered in the corners of his vision. A rotten smell came next. Sweat and sick. He realized he was catching the scent from his own body.

  ‘Hello?’ he said.

  A lamp clicked on in the corner of the room. The shade veiled the harshness of the light, and he found he could look around the room without that searing pain in his head.

  A dark basement. He tried to curl his arms beneath him to sit up, but found he could not. Someone was holding him down. He glanced left, then right. Swore.

  Both wrists were tied to the bed with rope. He pulled his arms toward him, testing the rope, feeling its bite. After a few moments he stopped, exhausted. The fear took him then. It had been a long time since he’d allowed it to overwhelm him, but there was no choice here. His body shivered, and the tears, filled with salt, burned his eyes as they erupted and fell upon his cheeks.

  He lifted his head as much as he could and saw a man sitting in front of the bed. He couldn’t make out his features. It was the two items on the small lamp table that sent Paul off the cliff edge of fear and into primal, instinctual …

  Panic.

  His legs hammered the mattress, he screamed and swore and tugged at his bonds until his wrists bled and foam sat thick on his lips.

  On the table he saw a laptop and a gun.

  A hand reached into the light and tapped the keyboard. The laptop came to life. The glare from the screen proved painful at first, but Paul welcomed it now. Pain was good. Pain meant he was still alive.

  The screen shifted and changed and Paul found he was watching the live feed from a news channel.

  ‘Remember me? I’m the guy who pulled you out of the water. You’re in my house. Been here a couple of days,’ said the man.

  The man leaned forward, and in the glare from the laptop screen, Paul could just make out the man’s face. Dark stubble, tousled hair. A strong jaw and clear, bright eyes. Hard to guess at the man’s age in this light, maybe mid-thirties or early forties. Last time Paul saw this guy he was in bright yellow waterproofs, his hands on Paul’s chest pumping water out of his lungs.

  The fisherman.

  ‘I would tell you to calm down, but I don’t much care for you at the moment. They’re saying a lot of stuff about you on the news, fellah. I want you to watch. Then I want to hear your side of things. If I don’t like what I hear then either I’ll turn you over to the cops or I’ll shoot you myself. If I save a man’s life, I figure I have a right to know what kind of man I saved.’

  The panic subsided enough for Paul to know he was in a lot of trouble, and he had to pay attention if he wanted to see his way through this. He switched his focus to the screen.

  The news anchor talked about the President’s foreign trip, the storms hitting New Orleans and then, finally, local news. Police still appealing for any witnesses who saw Paul Cooper two nights ago. His picture appeared on screen. A photograph of Paul on his boat, taken by Maria the firs
t month they’d moved out here. The anchor continued the report as Paul’s picture filled the screen, he said that Paul Cooper’s boat had sunk in the bay and he hasn’t been seen since. Coast Guard have called off their search. Then he saw Sheriff Dole being interviewed, asking for witnesses who can account for Maria Cooper’s movements on the same night …

  Paul held his breath.

  She was stable in the Bay City Hospital, having suffered life-threatening brain damage from a vicious attack in her own home. The sheriff of Port Lonely does not believe this was a house invasion and is urging residents of Port Lonely to remain calm. Sheriff Dole believes the victim was attacked by her husband, the missing Paul Cooper.

  Paul didn’t believe it was possible to feel any worse – but he found himself tumbling into a dark hole. Maria was hurt. Badly hurt. His mind spun away in a thousand directions, each driven with fear and anger and no clarity of thought. If the sheriff believed he had been the attacker then Maria was obviously in such a state that she couldn’t tell them what really happened, or maybe she thought it was Paul, or maybe she was in a coma?

  Fresh tears came now. Paul’s body relaxed and he gave himself over to the pain. He’d caused this. Maria could have been killed because of him.

  Because of J. T. LeBeau.

  A hand closed the lid of the laptop as the anchor moved on to other news. The same hand then came to rest on the butt of a .45 pistol sitting on the table.

  ‘Talk to me, goddamn it. I’m gonna count from five,’ said the man.