MalContents

by Wilbanks, David T. ; Norris, Gregory L. ; Thomas, Ryan C. ; Chandler, Randy

  Yeah, right, like if I really had killed the cop I could waltz into the police station, say sorry, and they’d hand me flowers. They’d shoot me on the spot. Part of me wanted to tell him where I was, but the other half knew this maniac would follow any police cars out to my current location. For now, I felt pretty good about losing this psycho. It wasn’t like he was afraid of the cops, that much was evident.

  But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like too much stress to have both some whacked-out murderer and the police after me. Better to have the law on my side, I figured. After all, this was the twenty first century, there had to be ways to prove I didn’t kill that cop. Right? “I’m at the Fishhook Inn. I want protection but you need to make sure you’re not followed. I don’t want to go back to the station. If he got one of your guys he could get more.”

  “I’ll call the staties to come get you and your family. You can stay with them until I get up there. We can hold you overnight there if we have to. Don’t fucking leave where you are now, you hear me? You should have come to us instead of running. You’ve fucked things up pretty good here.”

  If he was looking for an apology, he could look elsewhere. “My family comes first, Detective. I wasn’t about to stick around while some cop-killer runs around my property trying to shoot me. Especially with my daughter’s school and my wife’s work just a short drive away. Sorry, I don’t feel bad about my decision.”

  “Just stay put. Someone will be there in a few.” He hung up.

  Back in the room, Mandy was surfing the web. “I got on. Wanna know what their password was? It was ‘Password.’ How stupid is that?”

  “You can get in trouble for doing that,” I said.

  Angie was looking out the window, one hand on her hip, the other opening the drapes. She let them fall back in place and turned to me. “I heard you on the phone with the police. What’d they say? And what’s this Mandy says about someone on our roof?”

  “Nothing. Mandy was eavesdropping and she heard wrong. The police are going to come here. My guess is they’ll pick us up and take us to the station for a bit, then put a guard outside the room . . . if they let us go.”

  “So we drove out here for nothing! Jesus, Pete, why the hell are you dragging us all over the place.”

  “Not back home, the State Patrol station, wherever that is.”

  “I’ll look it up,” Mandy said, clicking away on her keyboard. The way she was hunched over on the bed I could see a strap of her underwear peeking out of her jeans. “Pull your pants up,” I said. Suddenly I was getting real pissed at her. It was bad enough the jocks at school would be thinking ill thoughts about her, but God knew what this stalking nutcase would do to her if he caught up with us. Guys see girls dressed like Mandy was, they get ideas pretty quickly. She huffed and yanked them up over her belly button, adopted an old woman’s voice and said, “Are you satisfied, young man? Maybe later you can help me across the street. These weary bones ache so much.”

  “Enough with the sass already,” Angie said. She came and sat down next to me on the bed. Whispering into my ear, she asked me, “How bad is this guy? Was he on our roof or not?”

  Putting my hand in front of my mouth, I whispered, “It wasn’t him. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, what does he want?” Angie whispered back. “Money? How much do we have? What’s in the account?”

  “It isn’t about money. Said something about me making a bad choice before, and how he’s gonna make me pay. That’s all I know. Cops don’t know who he is. Shit, I don’t even know if the cops believe me at this point. The video didn’t show much. I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought I was making stuff up.”

  “And you’re sure he wasn’t a client?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I can hear you, you know,” Mandy said, still typing.

  I ignored her and kept my voice low anyway. “The guy wears a big cowboy hat. Sticks out like a sore thumb. I’d remember him.”

  “So what, we need to move now or something.”

  “Cool, are we, like, on the run?” Mandy asked. “Does that mean I can be homeschooled?” She didn’t sound as frightened anymore. Probably felt better knowing the cops were on their way.

  “Absolutely,” I told her. “Your first class is on how to dress like a lady.”

  “Heard that one already,” she replied. “You need new material.”

  Then I looked at my wife. Should I tell her about the timetable involved in this crazy mess? That we had till midnight or the guy said he was going to find us and kill us? Of course not. She was too much on edge as it was.

  Pushing myself off the bed, I went to the window and looked out. A minute passed in silence, then another. No state patrol cars arrived. It was starting to feel weird, yet familiar. The waiting game. Just like in the shop earlier in the morning, with the gun to my head. Tick. Nothing. Tick. A snippet of thought, a vision of my stalker walking through the parking lot. My mind playing tricks. Tick. Nothing. No cops. No killer. Tick. I’m going bonkers.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  “Where the fuck are the cops?”

  “Probably stuck on the highway dealing with this shit,” Mandy suggested, turning her computer screen toward me.

  “What did I say about the swearing,” Angie said.

  Mandy pointed at me. “Well he said ‘fuck.’”

  I put my hands up. “Okay, everybody stop swearing.” Then to Mandy: “What are you talking about?”

  She had found a real time traffic map on a local newspaper’s web-site. The exits at the north and south of Birchville had big red dots on them. “What’s that?”

  “Well, down here, a bread delivery truck is on fire, stopping traffic. And up here, a salt truck overturned. Stopping traffic.”

  Across the room, Angie shot me a look that dared me to suggest it was anything other than our friendly neighborhood killer. But the notion this guy could cause such a mess and seal off the ramps to town was preposterous. It had to be some weird coincidence. “Not even,” I said, answering her silent decree. “Someone crashed, someone else was rubber necking and crashed as well. The roads are icy. You see it all the time.”

  “I’ve never seen it,” Angie replied. “Not the exact two ramps to town.”

  “Me either,” Mandy added.

  “Shit,” I said. It just came out. I didn’t care about not swearing anymore. Frustration was seeping from my pores. My eyes automatically landed on the duffle bag carrying my gun.

  An hour passed. The cops did not show up. I called Detective Larson again and he said between the cop-killing at my house, and the accidents on the highway, law enforcement was spread thin. He assured me someone was on their way to get us and we needed to stay put. To say he sounded stressed out would be like calling Ebola a casual annoyance.

  Outside, the sun was going down. The sky was a rainbow of orange, pink and purple bands.

  Mandy was streaming news coverage of the crashes from a local television website. Fire crews and police were all over the place. The highway was at a dead stop and drivers were being told to avoid it if they could.

  “I’m getting hungry,” Angie said, reading a People magazine she’d found in her gym bag. “Do they have a restaurant here?”

  “Not at the lodge, no. We passed a McDonald’s a few miles back.” The thought of leaving them alone in the room made me tense. What if the guy showed up when I was out? What if I came back and he was waiting for me, standing over my dead wife and daughter. “On second thought, I’ll call the front desk and see if they can order us a pizza.”

  When I picked up the phone the line was dead. Tapping the hook did nothing to make it work. I set it back in the carriage and saw Angie glaring at me again. “I’ll go down to the front desk. Probably ice on the wires or something.”

  “Dad, it’s never a bad wire,” Mandy said. “Maybe we should just drive to the police station?”

  “No. I don’t want to be out on the road. Someone could steer us
off into a ditch or something. I mean, you know, it’s icy is all. Look at all the accidents already.”

  “Pleasant,” Angie said, understanding the real meaning behind my statement. “Hurry back.”

  The worn, wooden stairs creaked as I took them down to the first floor and cut through the small den. With the sun down, the room dimly lit, and all the wooden architecture around me, I felt like I was in the belly of a pirate ship. Next to the sofa and recliner was an old hand-made shelf with board games—checkers, chess, Candyland, Connect Four, and a deck of cards. I made a mental note to take the cards and checkers up to the room to give us something to do.

  There wasn’t anybody at the front desk, but the door to the small employee back room was open so I dinged the bell on the counter and waited. After a minute, I was still alone, and decided to check out front in case the concierge doubled as a parking lot attendant or something. But aside from the encroaching night and dirty mounds of snow, there was no one in sight.

  Back inside, I risked a walk around the desk and into the back room. It was empty, which could be read a thousand different ways. Maybe the guy was taking a crap, maybe he slinked off out back to have a smoke. Who knows? There was, however, a phone book sitting on a small table near a phone, so I grabbed it and decided to explain later why I’d stolen it.

  Before heading back upstairs I grabbed the cards and checkers.

  I used my cell phone and ordered sandwiches from a deli a block away and then called Detective Larson again while my wife and daughter played Go Fish. Their conversation had drifted to what boys Mandy was seeing. Naturally, I eavesdropped as best I could, curious as to what cretins were putting their hands on my little girl. Far as I could tell she liked some guy named Jared. All I could think of was the guy from the Subway commercials, which was comforting, because he seems pretty harmless. Larson didn’t answer.

  Tick. Tock. More thoughts. The moon rose.

  The delivery boy called my cell and I went down to the lobby and paid him for our food. So where’s the bellhop, I thought. He’s still gone. Possible he’d come back and gone off again. At least that’s what I told myself.

  I went back up to the room, doled out the food.

  “I asked for avocado,” Mandy said, studying her sandwich.

  “I told them to add it,” I replied. “Just eat it.”

  Both Angie and Mandy peeled the meat and vegetables away from the bread and made little salads they ate with their hands. They usually did this at home as well, something about bread being high in carbs and making you fat. Women.

  I had ordered a small cheese pizza for myself and ate four of the six slices.

  When my stomach was full, I lay down on the bed and tried to wrack my brain about anything that might tell me who the man in the cowboy hat was. Could I have really forgotten about a client who dressed like that? Had I really done something to this guy to make him so nuts? No matter how hard I tried, I could not figure out who he was.

  Dear God, I was spent.

  Rolling over, I saw my dufflebag on the floor, and unzipped it to reveal the gun case. Knowing it was within an arms’ reach made me feel better. Slowly, my eyelids closed and sounds became muffled. Sleepiness is a common side effect of stress and I wished I’d remembered it then; I wouldn’t have even touched the bed. It’s a trigger that sets of narcoleptics, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost dozed off in the middle of being yelled at by Angie.

  Figured I’d close my eyes for just a second, think about what the cops and I were gonna have to do to catch this guy. But we know

  about seconds, don’t we?

  A dark nothingness overtook me.

  When I awoke, it was pitch black outside. Mandy and Angie were gone. The word CHOOSE was scrawled on the far wall in blood.

  As I stood up, I saw my cell phone on the nightstand. The battery had been removed from the back. Mandy’s laptop was overturned on the floor between the beds, the screen broken. Without thinking, I snatched the gun case from my bag, opened it and found the gun inside. With it tight in my hand, I flung open the door and ran out into the hall. My legs were still half asleep and gave out on me, pitching me into the banister near the stairs. “Help!” I cried. “Help me!” Behind me I heard a door open. A man in a bathrobe came out into the hall.

  “You all right?”

  “No. Someone kidnapped my family. Call the cops. Now!”

  He just stood there, dumbfounded, thinking I was nuttier than squirrel shit.

  “I’m fucking serious, call the police! Go!”

  He stumbled backwards, hand tracing the wall until he found his room again. The door slammed shut behind him, and I was up again, running down the stairs. The front desk was still empty, the door to the employee room still open. Where the hell was the guy who’d checked us in?

  In case the frightened man upstairs was huddling under his covers, I grabbed the phone at the front desk and decided to call the cops myself. The line was dead, was probably dead in every room, so I let the headpiece fall and dangle on its cord, spinning like my mind.

  From outside near the lake I heard a scream, a hollow shrieking that was abruptly cut off in mid stream. It was Mandy, somehow I just knew it. It could have been cats fucking on a television right in front of me and it wouldn’t have convinced me otherwise. A father knows the sound of his little girl in trouble.

  Having no clue where the back door was I ran out the front into the cold night. The air sandblasted me with a chill so abrasive it felt like my skin was drying and cracking open on contact. Wasn’t until my heel jammed down onto a rock that I realized I’d left my shoes up in the room, along with my coat.

  “Mandy!” As I rounded the corner to the back of the property, I saw shadows, three of them, moving in the trees surrounding the lake. They were heading down to the small pier, toward the canoe rental shed. “Angie!”

  “Pete!” Angie’s reply did something to me, jolted me like electricity. It was the first real connection I had to reality. There were no more maybes and what ifs. What was happening was really happening: my family was being kidnapped.

  The path to the pier came into view, a dirt walkway covered in stones and pebbles and other bits of nature, segmented by railroad ties to create a semblance of steps (no wheelchair ramps in Birchville). My feet were hesitant, a matter of self-preservation, knowing that if I jammed a toe or struck a nerve on a sharp rock I was done for. So instead I speed-shuffled down the path, my breath freezing in front of me.

  A gunshot echoed out across the lake, seizing me up.

  “Mandy!”

  “Dad!” Her voice was faint, but energetic. I screamed again and Angie’s voice answered this time. They were both alive, for now. But who’d been shot? And where? I felt faint.

  Down the trail, there were two tall light posts near the canoe rental shed, casting yellow ribbons across ice at the edge of the lake and the black water beyond. The snow, intermixed with patchworks of newly fallen pine needles and dead tree branches, helped light up the edges of the faux steps as I made my way down.

  At the bottom, trying desperately to ignore the pain in the soles of my feet, I saw that the canoe rental shed had a “Closed For Winter” sign on it. Beneath it was another sign reading “Check With Inn Before Ice Fishing. Thin Ice Can Kill.”

  The door to the shed was open, the lock had been shot, the bullet still in the metal frame. I breathed a little easier knowing one of my girls didn’t have a bullet in them, but not much.

  “Dad!” came Mandy’s voice again, from somewhere out on the lake. Now that I listened I could hear the slapping of oars against water. Just then, the clouds swept in front of the moon and the lake became so dark I couldn’t make out where the water ended and the night sky began. I knew I had no choice but to follow, tracking them aurally.

  Still, I hesitated. Tick. A single moment flying through my consciousness: He wants you to follow, Pete. He wants you alone. Tick. So what? It’s my family.

  Tick.

>   I was in the shed grabbing a canoe, my frozen fingers shaking against the metal hull. Fucking thing weighed a ton and I was forced to drag it across the dirt to the edge of the lake. Then I slid it out on the ice, just to where it started to crack. I put the gun on the bench and went back for two oars. When I returned and sat on the cold metal, my nuts shriveled into raisins and my body went into a spasm of shivers. The boat was a giant slab of frozen metal, and when it fell through the thin ice and settled in the water a second later, the bottom got even colder. Before me, the gun stared back but offered no answers. I was going to have to deal with it.

  Momentarily I considered shooting across the lake at them, but knew I wasn’t a good enough shot to hit my target. Chances were I’d kill Mandy or Angie. Besides, all I had to go on was the sound of their rowing; I still couldn’t see them.

  With a grunt I stuck the oars in the water and paddled, the boat moving sideways and in a circular motion. I was so frantic I couldn’t steer the damned thing. “Come on, you piece of shit!” Steadying myself, I finally managed to move in a straight line. Through the trees I could see lights on the top floor of the inn and wondered if that old guy had used a cell to call the cops or not.

  The lake was maybe a quarter mile across all told, a short enough distance to swim across in warm weather if you put your mind to it. When I was halfway across, I heard Angie and Mandy yelping again, moving into the woods on the far shore. “If you hurt them I’ll kill you!” I shouted. Nobody answered.

  The smell of mud disappeared for a few minutes, then kicked up again as the shore came into view. I barely remember rowing my mind was so frazzled. My arms and legs were shaking so badly now I was sure hypothermia was setting in. Even if I found my family, we’d be ice sculptures before we could run for help.

  Creaking tree limbs sang to me as I forcefully cut the canoe through the thin ice along the bank. To my left, I could see the other canoe against the shore, half on and half off the ice. This was the risky part—if I jumped out and the ice was too thin, I’d fall in. That would mean game over. Instead, I took the oar and whacked it against the ice, three times. It didn’t crack. Considering what was at stake, I decided to risk it.