The Bottom

by Howard Owen

  I promise to be very good. This is not turning out to be one of my ten favorite days. The sirens obviously aren’t getting any closer.

  “I bet you’ve got some questions,” Kusack says, “you being a reporter and all.”

  MARY KATE HAS told me some of it. How Cord always had Ronnie in his hip pocket when they were single-parent latchkey kids, growing up in some dog-ass mill town in Ohio. How Cord and Ronnie got in trouble, with Cord always leading the way, when they were boys. Fires. Tortured animals. Terrorizing other kids. The usual psychopath-in-training stuff.

  “Ronnie didn’t want to be bad,” she said, back in her living room an hour and a few light-years ago. “But Cord wouldn’t let him alone. He made him do . . . stuff . . . and then threatened to tell everybody afterward if he didn’t obey. He was so much bigger than us.”

  I didn’t get into the “stuff” part, but I had the very strong impression that Mary Kate was forced to do “stuff” with her older brother, too.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “He has this way of making you do things. Not even physical. Well, not just physical. It was like he was inside our heads.”

  Mary Kate and then Ronnie somehow managed to get out of there and be pretty good students. They eventually went off to college, her to Ohio University and him to Virginia Commonwealth. She eventually transferred down here, too. Around the time Mary Kate left for Ohio U., Cord was arrested for a couple of rapes in his hometown. He had a record already, as a juvenile. Ronnie did, too, but compared with his brother, his transgressions were kids’ stuff. I’m thinking VCU wasn’t doing a lot of background checks on incoming freshmen.

  The judge had dealt with Cord before, more than once. He knew a train wreck when he saw one, and he sentenced Cordell Kusack to twenty years, the most he could give him under state guidelines. Both girls were afraid to identify him on the witness stand, and the court had to settle for the testimony of a convenience-store clerk who saw him pull one of the girls into his car.

  Cord managed to get more time added on while he was locked up. Looking at the son of a bitch now, I wonder what moron parole board ever saw redemption in this asshole.

  “My mother had lost track of him,” Mary Kate went on. “She said he just stopped writing. And, well, Ronnie and I, we didn’t get back home much. Too many, you know, bad memories.”

  But Cord did get out, back in 2008. He showed up in Richmond in 2009.

  “We never knew what he did after he got out, but when he got here and found Ronnie, it was like nothing ever changed. And the fact that Ronnie was, like, hanging around with models and all must have just played into Cord’s hands.

  “I never knew what they were doing, but I knew it wasn’t good. But I didn’t know, I swear.”

  The night of September 11, when Ronnie came to her house, she could tell something was wrong.

  “He was all jittery, and then the next day I heard about that girl. And then they made Ronnie a suspect.”

  Mary Kate said she saw her older brother once after he moved to Richmond, and that he made it clear that she was never to tell anyone he was here. He’d busted parole in Ohio and done God knows what in his first year of freedom.

  “I was scared,” she said. “He can make you so scared you’ll wet your pants.”

  Apparently he could make you scared enough to call him and tell him that a nosy-ass newspaper reporter was on his trail.

  And so the best I could glean from today’s little chat, Cordell Kusack, rapist, murderer and who knows what else, has been living incognito in our fair city for four years now. It makes you wonder who else is out there under the radar.

  KUSACK, GOING UNDER the premise that dead men tell no tales, brings me up to speed on his more recent activities.

  While he has me tied to the post, just for fun, he tases me. I’ve passed two kidney stones in my time, and this hurt worse. He gagged me first, so as not to disturb the neighbors.

  “Just a preview of coming attractions,” he says. I hear Ronnie snickering.

  “We’ve been having fun, shithead and me,” big brother says.

  He sued the state of Ohio for letting one of his playmates have access to the razor with which Cordell Kusack’s right eye was ruined. He won, somehow. Good thing he didn’t try that crap in Virginia. So he’s been drawing on that tidy sum for the last five years “plus my disability pay. Uncle Sam’s been kind. And Little Ronnie’s been helping out, right, Bro?”

  He transferred the money to a joint bank account with Ronnie and has been drawing off of it. He’s been off the grid since then.

  “Had to move a couple of times, but this place looks like it’ll do for a long time to come. We don’t get too many visitors, though. Just the girls.”

  There are cloths over the windows, blacking out everything inside, but somehow we have a little bit of light. I’m just starting to wonder where it’s coming from when Cord says, “Here, let me show you what I’ve done with the place.”

  Suddenly the far side of the room, which had been dark as a coal mine, is lit up like midday. I wish it hadn’t been.

  There, in living color on the brick interior wall, are the girls. I recognize them. Kelli Jonas. Chanelle Williams. Lorrie Estrada. And little Jessica Caldwell. None of them are dead yet in the first set of photographs, blown up to about three feet by four, which makes it all the more horrible. They all have arrived at a point at which death would be a mercy. Ronnie Sax’s masterpiece: gagged and already put through hell, their eyes all say, “Kill me.” I am afraid I’ll throw up in my gag and choke to death.

  “Ronnie does good work, don’t you think?” my captor asks. He raises the Taser again, and I nod as emphatically as I can.

  He explains how they managed to lure them all into this hellhole with drugs or force or both, and then scattered their bodies around town.

  It apparently was quite the game for the Kusack boys, leaving the remains at well-known places around the city.

  Kusack laughs, relating how easy it was to lure the women to dark, helpless places.

  “They are so gullible,” he says. “And I appreciate that. I really do.”

  Kusack is working off a generator and batteries here. Not all the comforts of home, but enough.

  He learned about tattooing inside and then outside prison. He thought he might want to do that for a living. Richmond, to the anguish of the West End bluebloods, is America’s tattoo capital. Go figure.

  “But with the lawsuit money, well, I decided it’d be more fun to pursue my life’s passion, make my masterpiece as it were.”

  He tells me about a couple of “practice sessions” he enlisted Ronnie in, where prostitutes suddenly disappeared and nobody really gave a shit.

  I do have a vague recollection of a couple of hookers going missing, back when I was still covering the crooks in the General Assembly instead of the street variety.

  “And then we got serious.”

  Kusack had been in town for nearly three years when he and Ronnie made their first grab.

  “I wanted to leave a signature,” he says, “so people wouldn’t think this was some kind of mindless killing. I wanted it to have meaning.”

  They tattooed the girls here. Ronnie proudly adds that the silver dollars in the girls’ clothing was his idea.

  “Just a little calling card,” big brother says. “After the second one, I wondered if the cops would even figure it out. They finally did. Do you know what a thrill it is, Mr. Reporter, to have a whole town scared shitless?”

  Well I know what it feels like to be on the other end of that emotion.

  I wonder, though, how this is going to work. Even after they kill me, the whole police force and whatever help they can bring in from outside is going to be looking for Ronnie Sax. Right now a large chunk of Saturday’s crew must be a mile away. From where I’m standing, things don’t look so good for Ronnie. I wonder if he’s smart enough to know that.

  “The key,” Kusack says, “is to do one every six months
, then lie low, just kind of letting the suspense build. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to wait. Well, you’ll provide us with a little entertainment in the meantime.”

  He knows his sister told me where he was. He doesn’t know that Cindy Peroni shares that secret. For Cindy’s sake, he’s not going to find that out from me, no matter what.

  He seems especially proud of the way he got Ronnie out of jail. He’s been staying indoors most of the daylight hours and then using Ronnie’s car at night, in addition to those throwaway cell phones, to convince our boys in blue, through me, that Ronnie Sax couldn’t possibly have committed those terrible crimes.

  He says he wore sunglasses so as not to spook the 7-Eleven clerks and other citizens.

  “Ronnie knew I’d get him out,” he says. “Hey, we’re family. Can’t let my little brother take the rap, can I?”

  I’m thinking that Kusack’s motives, humanitarian that he is, might not be quite that pure. Even if, as Cord says, Ronnie had sworn to forever hide his brother’s identity, forever is a long time, especially if you’re looking at a chemically induced dirt nap down at the prison where they put people like Ronnie out of our misery. Ronnie is capable of singing like a goddamn Tweety Bird. I think his brother and I both know that.

  If I were Ronnie Sax, I wouldn’t be buying any green bananas.

  But you’ll have to excuse me if Ronnie’s health isn’t my primary concern right now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  X

  I come to. My first thought is that I’m going to be breaking yet another date with the lovely Cindy Peroni. My second thought is that I could definitely use a Camel and a Miller. And then the pain hits me.

  Before they did the tattoo, the brothers dragged me over to a chair in the back of the room and tied me to it, my arms behind me and my ankles strapped to the legs. I was advised by Cordell Kusack to “shut the fuck up and hold still.” It was as good a bit of advice as I was going to get under the circumstances. It hurt like a bitch when I thrashed around, which was hard not to do when he went to work on me with the needle. This was my first tattoo. I hope it’s my last. It definitely was not on my bucket list. The bucket, by the way, seems well placed for that final kick right now.

  The whole procedure took maybe twenty minutes but felt like a lot more.

  “That way,” Kusack says, “they won’t have to wonder who did this to you.”

  “This,” I understand, is going to be a lot more than a tattoo. There is a knife lying on the table not ten feet away. Kusack sees me looking at it.

  “Not yet,” he says. When he smiles, two gold teeth shine in the upper part of his mouth. Where they’re positioned, they look like fangs. “Part of the fun is the anticipation. Not your fun, you understand. Me and Ronnie, we always have fun before the end, although you might not be as much fun as those girls were. But you’ve had about all the fun you’re going to have, asshole.”

  I don’t know what was on the rag he used to put me under. I just remember feeling like I was going to suffocate, and then nothing.

  NOW WAKING UP, I get past this burning pain and try to focus. My ankle is on fire. I look down, and there it is, all bright and shiny and bruised. Tweety Bird.

  Looking around the room, the only life form I see in the dim light is Ronnie Sax. He’s sitting in an easy chair that looks like it came off a trash heap. He’s reading what looks like an illustrated comic book, although closer examination reveals it to be one that could only be sold at the local fuckbook emporium. He seems to be reading it with one hand.

  I make as much noise as I can through the gag. Ronnie puts his porn down and walks over.

  “Whatta you want?”

  He’s trying to be Mr. Tough Guy, disremembering that we used to work together and I know what a putz he is. He’s still Ronnie Sax, a wheezy little guy who’s mostly a threat to those smaller than himself.

  “If I take the gag off,” he says, “you gotta promise not to yell, or I’ll have to hurt you.”

  He puts his right hand on the Taser. Compared with what big brother is planning, Ronnie’s threats aren’t adding to my anxiety.

  He tells me that his brother has gone out.

  “He’s got to get some money from the ATM,” Ronnie says. “He told me we’re probably going to have to get out of town, maybe go to Canada for a while.”

  I thank him for removing the gag. And then I start in. They always said, on Oregon Hill, that I could sell refrigerators to the Eskimos. A lot is riding on my still having the gift of gab.

  “So you and Cordell are gonna skip town.”

  Nothing from Ronnie.

  “You know, Cordell seems like a smart guy. Know what I’m betting?”

  He’s still not talking to me, but he stops what he’s doing. I know he’s listening.

  “I’m betting that Cordell has already figured that he can travel faster alone . . .”

  “Shut up.”

  “Well,” I continue, keeping my voice just loud enough that he can hear me without doing something that’ll encourage him to silence me again, “here’s the thing. If Cord is really dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, he won’t want anybody around who can get caught and maybe tell the police who’s really responsible for all this.”

  Ronnie turns toward me.

  “He knows I’d never tell on him. I never did. Not to Momma or anybody.”

  “But, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that he was to come back here, do whatever he’s planning to do to me. Then wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to shoot you and leave you lying here dead on the floor? Maybe make it look like a suicide?”

  “I’m gonna put that gag back in your mouth. You’re talking bullshit, man.”

  But he doesn’t put the gag back.

  I take a deep breath.

  “And maybe he’ll want to get rid of your sister. She’s already told me about Cord. Sure she called and warned him, but who knows when she might get scared into talking to the cops?”

  “Mary Kate? He wouldn’t hurt Mary Kate.”

  I let that one hang while Ronnie Sax mulls it over in his feeble mind, maybe trying to drown out that little voice I’ve planted there.

  He comes back over, his face red and furious in the light.

  “No! Cord wouldn’t do that. He said if we did what he said, nothing bad would happen.”

  “But you got caught. And Mary Kate talked.”

  He gets right in my face. There is actual spittle on his chin.

  It is my chance, maybe my only one. Another thing I was known for on the Hill, growing up, was my hard head. I did that thing a couple of times in fights, where you walk up to some guy who’s ready to tear you apart, and you just headbump him. Hard. I don’t know why some people can do this and some can’t. Maybe I have an overload of calcium. Maybe my family is just naturally thickskulled. Look at Peggy.

  When Ronnie’s maybe six inches away, I spring out of the chair with all the energy I have left, more or less throwing myself at the idiot.

  Ronnie drops like he’s been shot. I have knocked out the softheaded son of a bitch. For how long, I don’t know, but it’s a break, and I’m desperately in need of one.

  I see the knife shining in the dim light. I manage to wrestle that chair across the room. I back up to the knife, praying that Ronnie Sax is out for at least the next twenty minutes.

  I can feel the knife cutting into my skin behind me as I wedge it against the side of the table, trying to get in just the right position to saw the rope holding my hands in place. It feels like I’m taking as much skin as rope, but finally, after maybe ten minutes, I feel the rope loosen a little bit, then a little more, until I can get one hand out and then the other.

  I reach down, still trying to get some feeling back in my hands, and undo the straps holding my ankles. My right wrist is kind of a mess. I look like a bungled suicide attempt and my ankle’s on fire from the involuntary tattoo. But who gives a damn? I’m free. I have a fighting chance. More than one editor
has called me a hard-headed bastard. Well, you use what you’ve got.

  And that’s when I hear footsteps outside. As far as I can tell, there’s only one way out of this hellhole, the window frames being some kind of metal, and it sounds like either Cordell Kusack or a police posse come to rescue me is outside right now. The way my luck’s been going lately, I’m not betting on the posse.

  And so I retreat back into the dark. Beyond the light, this warehouse is black as the pits of hell. It must go back a couple of hundred feet. I go about halfway back to hide until I find out who’s out there.

  And, of course, it’s Kusack. He looks a little wild-eyed, even by his standards.

  “What the fuck?” he says when he sees his brother lying on the floor, still in la-la land.

  He talks to him like he thinks Ronnie can hear him.

  “Goddammit, man. I leave you to do one thing, one thing, and you fuck it up.”

  He sounds more sad than angry.

  “Well, this just makes it a little easier.”

  He’s probably thirty yards away, and I can just make out the pistol in his hand. I can barely hear him when he says it: “Bye-bye, Bro.”

  The gunfire makes me jump. He shoots into Ronnie Sax’s unconscious body five times. I can see what is now a corpse jump from the impact.

  Kusack looks around the room, looking first at the door and then staring into the darkness, right at me although he can’t possibly see me from where he is.

  He reaches around behind his head and rubs his neck.

  “Well,” he says, raising his voice as if he is expecting someone else to hear him, “that door hadn’t been touched since I left, and there ain’t but one way out of here.

  “So,” he says, saying it like he’s playing a game with a kid, “come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  What a dumbass I am. Ronnie had a pistol on him, too, and I didn’t take it off him. In my panic, I didn’t even think to grab the knife. Well you can’t think of everything.

  So here comes a six-foot-seven nightmare with a gun. It just doesn’t seem fair. I’d like to claim my Second Amendment rights to have some heat, but it’s a little late for that. Glenn Walker, the present husband of my first wife, once gave me a pistol when it appeared I might need one. I think I turned it in to the cops at one of those drives to cut down on the city’s firepower. Like that ever works.