Writing on the Wall

by Jenna Rae

  He was talking. His voice was quiet and pleasant sounding, but there was menace behind it. She was glad that she couldn’t hear his words. No Eyes Man was a bad man. He wasn’t Orrin, but he was bad like Orrin. Like Orrin was before he died. He would hurt her. She was sure of this. And that she would be unable to stop him. She started sliding toward the hole.

  Something stopped her, and the going away feeling left with a snap. She was irritated. In the hole, she would have been safe. No Eyes Man couldn’t hurt her there, not really. But the irritation warred with gratitude. There was something she wanted to remember, wasn’t there? Someone.

  Del! Del was coming. She would get Lola’s message and come here, and the bad man with no eyes would kill Del. It was like in her dream: she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and Del would come and she would die, and Lola couldn’t stop it.

  She was here to stay but helpless to save Del. Tears burned her cheeks, and she began to cry big, ugly sobs. This made her choke on the rag in her mouth. She twisted her wrists in the iron bands of the handcuffs—that’s what they were. It was useless. She was useless. She tried to rise out of the chair, and the man slapped her and sat her back down hard again. He was talking, asking her something, but she still couldn’t understand him. He had eyes now. They were wide and wild, but she barely registered this. It was the gun she saw, big and black and round. It seemed impossibly large, like a gun in a cartoon. Every time he stopped talking, he gestured at her with the gun, and her eyes were fixed on it.

  Then she realized that he wanted her to talk to him. She nodded and locked eyes on him. He stared into her face for a moment and pulled the rag from her mouth with a sneer of disgust at her gagging.

  “You finally done playing around?”

  Lola nodded again. Whatever he wanted, she needed to convince him to leave here, so that Del wouldn’t come and find them and get killed. He was looking for something.

  “Orrin’s money,” she said aloud, and the man jabbed at her shoulder with the gun.

  “Get on with it. Where’s the money, bitch? Where the fuck is it?” His voice was rising in volume and pitch, and it was almost comically high by the end of his question. Lola’s mind raced. What would he believe? She hadn’t decided what to say when she heard herself speaking.

  “He put it in a storage unit in Daly City.”

  “Bullshit. Don’t play games with me, whore. I’ll start getting creative.”

  Creative? What did he mean by that? He put the gun somewhere, and then he had a knife. He used it to lightly draw an invisible line from her collarbone to her pelvis, and she gasped in horror. The kitties! Bile rose in her throat, and she gagged. He laughed, but she could see that he was disgusted. She watched as he put the knife back on his belt. Then the gun was in her face again.

  “Lola, you have one chance here.” His voice was calm now, almost friendly. It was scarier, for some reason.

  “No, mister, I swear. Orrin made me get a storage unit in Daly City. I used a fake name and paid for two years in advance. I’d never even been to Daly City before. Orrin drove me there from Folsom, and he made me get a storage unit and use a fake name. He didn’t tell me what it was for. But I figured it out. I figured it out when those FBI agents—oh!”

  Her mouth dropped open. She stared at the man who held a gun in front of her face. He was the man with the newscaster hair and the piggy eyes and the shark’s smile. Who was he? She wasn’t sure. She should have paid more attention to who all those people were, but she had let the peacock, her lawyer, talk to them as much as possible. I was such a weak, stupid, cowardly ninny!

  “What’s the address?” If he noticed her realization, he gave no sign of it. Maybe he had decided to kill her a long time ago, whether she knew who he was or not.

  “I don’t know. Orrin drove there. He waited in the car while I rented the unit. But I know where it is.”

  She searched her memory. Hadn’t there been a storage place near that mall? It seemed like a million years ago, that day when she’d forgotten her cell phone and Del had been mad at her, and she’d been such a baby.

  There had been a lot of cemeteries, she remembered. But there had been a storage place too. Right by the freeway. She’d gotten lost and had turned around in the driveway, and there had been a metal gate. “That street, the one with the man’s name, the Spanish name. There’s a freeway with the same name—it’s Spanish. Uh, there are two words, like a first name and a last name, something, Herrera Serra?”

  He knew what she meant. She could see it in his face. She watched him consider her with a kind of cool detachment. He wanted to believe her.

  She fought impatience and rested against the back of the chair. Don’t let him see that you want to leave. She saw him decide and let out her breath. They would go. They would get in his car and drive to Daly City, and he would be somewhere that Del wasn’t. She almost smiled but instead chewed on her lip.

  “You have the key?”

  She hadn’t thought of that. Storage units have keys? She had assumed there was one key for all of them and you showed a receipt to the man and he opened it for you. She tried to think of a key she could present as the right one. Did they have special keys, or did they look like regular keys? She couldn’t think. She licked her lips.

  “Orrin kept the original one and made a copy for me in case of an emergency. He said I could only open the unit if he told me to. I kept the key in my music box. In my purse.” She was babbling, but she couldn’t stop herself. “He didn’t kick me out for real. It was all part of his plan to trick his partner. I went to the motel, and he was supposed to fake his death. When I saw the story about the accident on the news, I thought it was staged, and that he’d show up any minute and tell me we were going to get the money.”

  ****

  Del listened to this from the laundry room and bit her lip. Lola was the worst liar in history. Her voice gave her away. And Del would bet that her face was giving it away too. How could I have suspected she was a criminal? She shrugged away the question. She could castigate herself later, when Lola was safe. Lola was still babbling away.

  “But he never showed up. And I thought maybe he decided to get the money by himself and leave me behind. That’s why I came down to the Bay Area. I figured I’d check on the place, and it would be empty. But I was afraid to check it. I didn’t know for sure if Orrin was still alive, if he was going to show up someday and kill me if I’d taken the money. So I’ve been waiting. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Del chewed on the inside of her cheek. He was the Feeb, and he’d been across the table from her, two feet away, not two hours before. How could I not have seen that he was the guy? What did I miss? Again, that was a question for later. Del signaled to Phan and snuck forward.

  “Well, Lola, that’s not half bad.” James’s voice sounded amused. “Really. I admire a bitch with a good imagination. I bet you like to use that imagination in bed, don’t you? I bet you do, you clever little whore.”

  Lola gasped, and James laughed. Del tightened her mouth. The woman’s not shocked by a gun in her face, but a reference to sex knocks her on her ass? She shook away the thought. That wasn’t Lola in there. It was a victim. Anonymous. Not Lola.

  She could see James’s back now. He had a Luger trained on the victim’s chest. But his stance was off. He was distracted, wasn’t paying attention. If she and Phan could get close enough, if the victim didn’t look at them and give it away, they might have a chance at ending this without firing a shot. She glanced at Phan, and he eased to the right. He would cover her. She crept forward and saw that James was off purpose again.

  Del forced herself to relax, to slow her breathing, to steady her weapon hand. All we have to do is keep her alive. That’s all. If she gets hurt, it’s okay. I’ll take care of her. She just has to be alive. He wants her alive too. Not Lola, she reminded herself yet again. A nameless victim.

  He was breathing hard, standing too close to Lola. Not like a Feeb. Not like a cop. Not eve
n like a regular bad guy. He could have grabbed her months ago, if he’d wanted to. But he’d been playing. She imagined a cat batting around a helpless little mouse. He wanted the money, but there was something else. Something about Lola had turned him on, twisted him off purpose. Otherwise he would have just taken her that first time. He’d been watching her, enjoying her. He’d gotten distracted. Turned on.

  Darkness swirled around her vision, and she swallowed hard. That wasn’t Lola. She was a victim, someone with no face and no name and no soft lips and no big, pleading eyes. She shook her head to clear it. It worked, she noted with some detachment. It was a bad guy and a victim, and she’d only lost a second to her distraction. She flexed her hand. She’d been gripping her weapon with tight fingers, like a rookie. She softened her knees, blinked until her focus on James was sharper than a razor.

  He was standing right in front of the victim now, grinding his pelvis against her head. His breathing was hectic, and his weapon hand was playing with her hair, barely holding the Luger. He was murmuring, pushing against her. Del ignored the victim’s crying.

  The kitchen was too small, too enclosed. Del’s breathing accelerated, and she slowed it down. She was only three feet from James, but he was practically on top of the victim who was trying without success to pull away from him. Del felt black flames of rage flare inside her head but squelched them. Hate him later.

  “Think you’re clever, huh? You think you’re a clever little bitch, don’t you? Oh, my Lola, you’re a good little whore. A clever little whore.” He was whispering now, a lover sharing sweet nothings. His voice was husky. He wanted to put the gun down. His weapon hand kept twitching down toward the knife in its belt sheath. He wanted to play with his new toy. He’d been watching her for weeks, imagining what he would do with his pretty toy and his ugly knife.

  Del was two feet away now. She felt Phan’s position rather than seeing it. He was three feet to her right and back maybe eight or nine inches.

  “I figured you must have stashed the cash someplace clever. A clever little whore like you loves to play games, don’t you? I knew you’d make it tough. Someplace most people wouldn’t think of. You wanted to make me work for it, didn’t you? That’s exactly what you whores do, isn’t that right? Nothin’ for free? Huh? Yeah, that’s right.”

  Del realized that the victim had seen Phan. Her one visible feature was a puffy, blood-smeared, teary eye. It widened, but she gave no other sign. Good girl. Not that James was looking at her face. He was too busy humping it.

  James slipped his gun into the holster at his waist and pulled the knife up. He ran it lightly over the victim’s hair in what could have been a gentle caress. His breath was a shudder. The victim’s eye followed the path of the knife, and she moaned. This seemed to get James all worked up, and he started pushing harder against her, bouncing her head back further and further.

  Del worked to suck in air, but it felt like wet concrete. Her body was loose, her weapon hand steady. It was time. She took the last step before the go as lightly as possible, easing the ball of her foot down.

  “You were a bad girl, weren’t you, Lola? A bad little whore. You tried to trick me, didn’t you?” He laughed, a breathless gasping wheeze. He was speeding up, jamming his groin into the victim’s face, bending her neck at an impossible angle, his balance off as he braced against her body. Del tried to pick her moment, while he was off balance, but the knife was too close to the victim. If Del went at him, he’d slice the victim’s neck open without even meaning to.

  Lola’s neck hurt, her face hurt. Her shoulders were jammed against the back of the chair, and it felt like her spine would snap. The chair tipped back an inch or two, landed, tipped and landed, over and over. A jarring pain ran through her whole body every time the chair’s front legs hit the ground again. She couldn’t see through her tears, but she knew that Tom was right there, which meant that Del was right there too. He would kill Del and Tom, just like he killed the kitties.

  She shuddered as he pressed her open, crying mouth harder against him. She couldn’t breathe. She was going to choke to death on his pants while he ground himself against her. A high keening rose in her body as she struggled to free herself and get air. He reached down behind her, and suddenly her hands were freed from the handcuffs. He pulled one of her hands up and pushed it toward his groin. She didn’t try to resist. Then he was grabbing for her hair again. At least with her hand there, she could breathe.

  Del forced herself to wait another second, to let his knife hand wrap around the victim’s head to hold it close. She didn’t like seeing the knife right there by the victim, but James was too focused on getting off to think clearly, and that gave her the advantage she needed. She finally saw the right moment. She lunged forward in silence and pressed the barrel of her service revolver against James’s spine. Phan was there, reaching to snag James’s gun. His weapon was trained on James.

  “Drop the knife.” Del’s hand and voice were steady.

  She was okay until she saw Lola’s face, and she wasn’t the victim but Lola, and she drew in a quick breath that hurt. She was refocused in only a second, and it should have been okay.

  But James seized the chance she gave him, and he was fast. He grabbed the victim, spun around, and stood her in front of him before Del could react. How had that happened? How had she let that happen? Lola’s eyes were dark and wide, her skin chalky except where it was stained with blood. Bruises were already sprouting on her neck, her face, her arms. Her pupils were huge. She would, if she survived, look like one of those kids who’ve been tortured past what a human being can withstand without going insane. Black, black eyes with no color and nothing in them but pain and fear and emptiness. Del’s heart stopped.

  ***

  Lola couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. Del and Tom were talking to the bad man. They seemed quiet and calm, but Del’s eyes snapped. The bad man was holding her tight against his chest. His arm was crushing her. Something bad was by her neck. He would kill her. Or he would use her as a hostage to get to a car and leave. That wasn’t great. But he used to have a gun, and the gun could have hurt all of them. Now that was gone, and the knife could only hurt her, not Del. So that was better. And while being held too tight by the bad man was scary and painful, it was better than choking on his crotch. His pants had tasted really, really bad.

  Lola got the giggles. She tried to stop, tried to summon Orrin’s angry voice to say, this is inappropriate, how could you, but she couldn’t seem to muster it. The giggles got worse, and she was gasping for air, really losing breath, and she began to panic. She felt herself collapsing. The bad man was trying to hold her up and hold his knife, and he was having a hard time.

  “Because I’m too fat.”

  Was that out loud?

  “My lips hurt.”

  They really hurt a lot. From, she realized, being rubbed against his crotch! Lola laughed almost hard enough to pee her pants. Which the embarrassing possibility made her laugh again. She remembered Orrin’s face when she peed on the carpet. He was so angry! And now he was dead. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard his voice. What made him go away?

  “It was you,” she explained to Del, who was pointing a gun at the bad man and ignored her. “You made Orrin go away.”

  ***

  James frowned, and Del saw that he was reassessing the situation. He looked from Lola to Del and back again.

  “What’s she talking about?”

  Del shrugged, trying to play for time. “Listen, James, we can work something out, the three of us.” She gestured with a casual wave at Lola. “She’ll do what I say. Phan and I want this to end well for everyone.”

  James was trying to decide, and Phan jumped in. “You figure it was a coincidence, Beckett’s wife moves in down the street from a cop? We had to keep an eye on her.”

  James shook his head. “Bullshit. You think I’m stupid?”

  Del rolled her eyes, eased back on her heels, tried to look
relaxed and friendly. Well, as relaxed and friendly as a person can look while pointing a weapon at a bad guy. “Remember the partner, Davis? We found him two months ago, put him on ice. We just needed to wait a while for the heat to die down. We’re not as impatient as you are. Fuckin’ Feebs can never play things out, always rush in. Premature, if you know what I mean.” She made a face, and Phan laughed.

  “Bullshit. This is bullshit.” James’s gaze shot from her to Phan and back again.

  “Think about it, James. You pulled the case because you saw a chance to make a little money, right? Think you’re the only one who wants to make a little money? Davis was a suspect in a fraud case. One of the patients has a daughter who lives here. She came in, made a big stink. Phan was working fraud at the time. He kept an eye on Davis, saw some hinky shit, and then the old man was dead. He pulled me into it, knew he needed somebody to work the bitch.” She gestured at the victim, who gaped at her.

  He was thinking about it. Del held her breath, waited one beat, two. “Nobody has to die, here, James. But we can’t let you take our money. I don’t have a problem with sharing. There’s enough to go around.”

  He shook his head. “You must think I’m a fucking retard.”

  ***

  Lola realized that Del and Tom were trying to trick the bad man, and for a moment she thought it might be working. But the man was crushing her to him even harder, and it was hard to breathe. She started to struggle in earnest, and her body started to jerk and flail in its fight for air. Panic filled her and emptied her mind. She started to slide into the hole. But she heard a voice, was that Orrin? James was crushing her chest, just like Orrin, just like that bad man when she was a little girl. Why do some men think they can hurt people and get away with it?