New Blood

by Shane Lusher

  “Rassi, you go in first. You take the left. Conover, you take the middle, and Jacobs, you go right.

  “I’ll go in next,” he said. “Nguyen, Hartman, you stay out here.”

  “Uh-uh, Percy,” I said, feeling around for him in the dark. “I’m going in, too.” I wished that I could have seen his face, but I knew that he could hear my breathing right in front of him, agitated and steady.

  “All right,” Percy said after a second. “Nobody shoot Dana when he runs in,” he said.

  I felt him turn away as he continued to speak.

  “Anybody points a gun at you, you take them out,” he said. “You’re going to have about two seconds to do that before they pull the trigger. But unless someone makes a move to shoot at us, or to hurt any of those kids, you don’t shoot at all. You got me?”

  Rassi, Jacobs and Conover whispered their assent. I nodded.

  “You got me?” Percy asked again.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “All right,” he said. “On three. One, two, three!”

  The door exploded in a flash of light.

  I saw the cinder-block room, saw a naked fourteen-year-old girl with blood on her body, her arms and legs chained to the wall, a wadded cloth stuck into her mouth, saw an adult female in leather wearing a Venetian mask and carrying a whip jump away from her, saw five or six people backing away, all of them wearing masks.

  Saw Trueblood standing at the back, his face uncovered, holding a bottle of mineral water, saw the water spill and the look of surprise on his face, his eyes and his mouth wide open as he dropped the bottle and held up his hands.

  In the corner, in a dog cage, I saw Erin. She was naked, squatting down. I saw her open her eyes, tears and grime on her face, saw her focus, saw her see me, saw the recognition and hope written behind the fear.

  Fifty-Seven

  The door flew open, and then the three cops went in, their shotguns held at chest level, yelling at the adults to get back get back get the fuck back, and then Percy hefted the Ruger and joined them, and then Hartman skittered out across the floor, the sound of his running silenced by the ringing the gunshot had left behind in Tuan’s ears.

  He’d been led down this way so many times he’d stopped counting, only the garage had been different then, the basement had been older, moldier, more dank, and rotten, and the cage in the corner had been bigger, or maybe he’d just been smaller.

  They’d called him their little gook, and it wasn’t just the whips and the ball gags, it was electricity and sandpaper and things that dug into his fingernails and clothes pins and rubber bands on his testicles and anything and everything under the sun.

  He glanced up, once, took in the room in its entirety: Wayne Trueblood standing at the back next to Stacy Daniels and Big Red with his shirt off, his paunch hanging over the pair of Speedos he was wearing, five other people wearing masks he couldn’t bear to look at.

  The people had changed over the years, but they were still the same. It was a hell of a homecoming.

  He looked down at his feet, down into the gun barrel he was holding wrong side up, and for the life of him he couldn’t bring himself to walk across that threshold willingly.

  He’d never gone willingly. Never done one single thing they asked of him, told him to do, demanded of him, with one single ounce of his own free will.

  Of his self.

  Tuan looked across at the little girl in the cage, at the look of fear slowly being replaced by relief and, if not happiness-

  Tuan knew there would never be happiness for him, not for them, either, and even though he knew the girl chained to the wall was crying tears of relief, he knew that she would never be happy again—because there was no way Wayne Trueblood was going down for what he’d done, not legally, not even with four cops, because this was unlawful entry and illegal search and seizure and as he watched Trueblood recover from his initial shock and smile again, Tuan knew that he had failed, in the end.

  He’d failed all of them: Maddie most of all, and Darren, and Justin, who’d always been small for his age. Even when he was fourteen, he hadn’t weighed more than eighty pounds, just like Tuan.

  He hadn’t helped them one bit, he’d even kept Trueblood informed all those years, because he thought that it would be best to keep him close, to build a case, to do — what exactly?

  Their little gook. That’s what they’d called him. Then they’d put the chains on him and whipped him until he bawled.

  And that had been the least of it.

  Tuan looked down at his feet and willed them to move.

  Everyone was backed against the wall, their hands on their heads, Percy and Rassi both calling out to the people to get back, and I was still on my way to Erin.

  I hadn’t done anything once I felt Percy rush past, just took off running, stumbled, and got to the cage about the same time I heard Percy yell out:

  “Stop!”

  I heard it, but not really. My ears were ringing so much that the only thing I had left in my head was Erin.

  I heard it, but I would be damned if I was going to stop now. I was going to get my little girl out of that cage.

  I understood now, for the first time, that she was the one thing I had in this life, the one thing I needed to stay alive for, the only thing left that gave me any purpose.

  I looked behind me, saw Tuan come stumbling through the door, saw all the adults still where they were, hands on heads, and then I turned around and sliced through the plastic slip tie they’d used to close the cage.

  “Stop!” Percy called out again. “Tuan!”

  I got Erin out of the cage and put her behind me, between my body and the wall, and raised the shotgun.

  Nguyen was standing, the gun pointed in the correct direction now, the barrel leveled at Wayne Trueblood’s head.

  “Who’s your fucking gook now, Trueblood?” he shouted.

  I saw Percy raise the Ruger and draw a bead on Nguyen. Apparently he hadn’t dropped it when we’d run through the door.

  “Tuan,” he said in a calm voice. I noticed that some of the women were weeping, and one of the men as well. “Tuan,” he said again. “Put it down. It’s over.”

  “Go to hell,” Nguyen said. “You’re just saying that because he’s your father.”

  “I could give a shit whether he lives or dies, Tuan,” he said. “Far as I’m concerned, this son of a bitch isn’t my father. But you still need to put the gun down, Tuan.”

  “Why?” he said. “Fuck that. You know as well as I do that these people probably won’t do much jail time.”

  “They will, Tuan,” Percy said.

  I looked into his face, saw him pull down, saw him close one eye.

  “I’m gonna kill this motherfucker,” Nguyen said.

  I heard a click, saw Percy hesitate, his head swing around to look over his shoulder and his gun arm follow, heard someone gasp.

  Then the shot rang out, and then another, and I couldn’t hear anything again for a long time after that.

  Tuesday

  Fifty-Eight

  I was sitting out on the square in front of the Courthouse at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning, drinking a paper cup of Java’s coffee, waiting for Kelly and Erin’s session to finish.

  Earlier, it had been my turn with Erin, and then Kelly had switched places with me. The therapist, a friend of Kelly’s, had said that the prognosis was good. There would be a lot of follow-up, but her initial impression was that Erin was possessed of a strength most children her age didn’t have.

  I wondered about the rest of us.

  The summer heat had finally given us a respite. Since the storm had moved through on Saturday, the temperature had plummeted to eighty degrees, though the humidity had climbed all the way up to 100%. The creek behind the farm was still swollen, the river just beyond the row of buildings on Capitol Street had overrun its banks and then receded, and the corn was finishing its bloom, the rich, fertile smell in the fields a gradually fading memory.r />
  The heat would return, if not within a few days then by the beginning of August, all the moisture finally sucked out of the ground and into the air, and we would all forget about the week or two of nice weather we’d had that summer.

  But for now there was a breeze, and as I sat there, I lay my head back and closed my eyes, inhaling the fragrance of the trees above me. When I opened them and sat back up, I saw Vic Daniels making his way out of the courthouse. He paused a moment, looked around, and then took a stainless steel flask out of his suit coat.

  He took a sip, then a longer one, and then replaced the bottle back in his pocket. When he looked up, he saw me, and started off toward where I was sitting.

  I shook my head and he changed direction, back to his car, where he got in. After a moment he turned the engine and drove away.

  When I’d walked into the sheriff’s department a few hours earlier, Percy had already been at his desk, talking on the phone.

  I walked in past Janine and waved at her. I’d become such a fixture that I was no longer required to go through the metal detector. When I got to Percy’s desk he was on the telephone. I sat down and waited.

  Reaching into my laptop bag, I pulled out a cardboard bull’s-eye and leaned it against the wall of his cubicle.

  He gave me a thumbs up, mouthed ‘Fuck You,’ and then smirked.

  I went over to the pot of tar and got myself a cup, and by the time I returned, Percy was leaning back in his chair, looking at me.

  He held up a handful of papers.

  “This is the part they don’t tell you about,” he said. “Paperwork. That’s what really eats away at your soul.”

  I shrugged. “You still have to do that?”

  “Even though I’m on vacation for two weeks?” he asked. “It’s just about all I’m going to do, from now until August.” He shrugged. “Standard procedure when you fire your weapon in the line of duty.”

  The county board had met the day before, to determine what was going to be done with the remnants of the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department. Rassi had already been suspended, Jacobs and Conover had squeaked by, and Percy had been taken off any active investigations until the Internal Affairs section of the State Police had figured out just what was going on.

  There were four agents clustered in a four-cube section toward the front of the building.

  Percy stood up to look over at them, caught one of the men glance in his direction, and waved.

  “You want to talk about a dickhead,” he said. “That guy Yankowics has no sense of humor whatsoever.”

  He sat down. He took the cardboard target in his hands and traced the bull’s-eye in the middle of it. He was still looking at it when he spoke.

  “You know, Dana,” he began. “They’re not going to find that gun.”

  I blew on my coffee. “I know that,” I said.

  The Illinois River was too muddy. Even if the gun that had killed my brother had not been taken away by the current, there was at least twenty feet of silt at the bottom of it, and a heavy piece of metal like a nine millimeter would sink at least half of the way down.

  And a gun was no use without bullets to match up to it.

  “So, here’s some good news,” Percy said. I looked up at him. “Dubois. They picked him up.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Florida,” he said. “Did an illegal U-Turn, and somebody ran the license plate.”

  “Are they going to extradite him?” I asked.

  “Holzel is looking into it,” he said. “They’re still reviewing Rassi’s credibility. And then, well, there’s the other thing.”

  The other thing was Wayne Trueblood. Since he’d been taken into custody early Sunday morning, he’d been doing a lot of talking. He’d implicated Dubois and Anderson, not to mention all of the people we’d found in his basement as well as a half dozen others who hadn’t been there.

  He had also stated that Randall Dubois, acting of his own free will, had placed the gun into Alisha Stamm’s hands moments before she shot Tad.

  “We can get Dubois on the kidnapping,” Percy said. “We think. Stamm also positively identified him from a photograph, but, again, you have her credibility to think about as well.”

  “Roe, Sweeney and Stevens are no longer my concern, though,” Percy said. “There is that, at least.”

  He’d leaned back in his chair again, his hands clasped on top of his head. “State’s taking that, and most likely the Feds will have it later, since Madeleine Nguyen has long since left the county and probably the state.”

  He trailed off, his eyes taking on a faraway look.

  No one was sure what was going to happen, since so few of the children we had located, the majority of them grown adults, were willing to talk about what had happened.

  Percy and I were in the clear, criminally at least.

  I’m not sure how it was worded, but it involved using necessary force to save a life, and both Glenn Holzel and the state’s attorney who came up from Springfield saw it that way.

  “It doesn’t matter what we think,” the state’s attorney had said to Holzel, who’d sent Tina Graciano as the official messenger. “Good luck finding a jury to convict any of those guys for what they did.”

  Civil law was still a labyrinth where anything was possible, I supposed, but I wasn’t worried about that. Erin was safe, and, for the most part, healthy, and that was all that I really cared about at that point.

  We sat there and drank our coffee, and after a few minutes, Percy pointed at the phone.

  “That was the hospital,” he said. “Hannah’s awake now, and talking. We also got the toxicology this morning.”

  “And?” I asked when he didn’t immediately continue.

  He picked up another piece of paper. “Alcohol, Buproprion, Xanax.” He tossed the sheet of paper down onto the desk. “Breakfast of champions.”

  “What is she saying, though?” I asked.

  “She’s saying it was all Trueblood,” Percy said. Since the night two days prior, Percy had taken to referring to his father not as “my dad,” but by his last name. I wondered how that rang in his ears. I’d twice asked him about it, but he refused to comment, twisting his lip and changing the subject.

  I thought it best not to ask him a third time.

  “What about the alibi?” I asked.

  Percy popped his knuckles. “Nobody at the hotel or the restaurants recognizes either one of them,” he said. “They do recognize Big Red Menassian.”

  “So, this whole thing was planned ahead of time?” I asked.

  Percy shrugged. “You can fake these kinds of things,” he said. He waved his hand dismissively.

  I didn’t want to ask, but I still wanted to know.

  “What does Trueblood say?”

  Percy took a moment answering, chewing on his lip.

  “He claims Colby discovered the truth about his little parties and had actually willingly become involved in them. The beating she took the night of her death was mainly what happened when they had her strapped against that wall.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. He exhaled loudly. “Trueblood says that Hannah was the one who killed her, though. He says things got a little out of hand, and then her mother saw the marks from the beating, and she went ape shit.”

  He wiped his hands over his face and leaned down on his desk. Since the shooting early Sunday morning, he’d lost some of his spark, which was to be expected. When I watched him turn and followed his gun arm toward Hannah Trueblood as she stood in the doorway holding a rifle to her shoulder, my first thought had been for Erin, shielded by my body though she was. And then when I saw him pause a moment and shoot Hannah in the shoulder, my thoughts turned back to Tuan, and what he was going to do.

  In the end, Hannah had gone down and Tuan, jarred out of his psychosis by the sound of the gunshot, had just lowered his weapon and allowed the deputies to take over.

  Hannah had lost a lot of blood, b
ut she was lucky she wasn’t dead. The shot she’d fired before Percy had gotten his off had been destined for Trueblood, but that had missed, ricocheted once, and then imbedded itself in the wall opposite.

  I realized later that Percy had paused in order to aim effectively, and if he hadn’t, he would have hit her in the torso and she would most likely have died.

  “So, she beat her own daughter to death,” I said quietly.

  Percy clamped his lips together and picked up the bull’s-eye again. “I need to get out of here for a few days,” he said.

  I nodded and got up to leave.

  As I was walking out the front, he called out. I turned around and looked past the four Illinois State Police agents sitting in the front of the room.

  Percy was standing, holding the target I’d given him in one hand.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He watched me for a moment, and then I broke eye contact and walked out the front door.

  Fifty-Nine

  Kelly and the two girls walked out across Court Street and onto the square, where I was just finishing my coffee.

  I hugged Erin, and then Kelly took my hand and we walked across Capitol and down the alley to the river. Kelly spread a blanket out in the grass, and I set down the picnic basket I’d been carrying. A few hundred feet away, a solitary man sat in a fishing boat. I watched as he casted out, yanked on the line, and then began slowly reeling it in.

  “I don’t understand why I need to go,” Erin said. “It’s not like someone died.”

  I didn’t mention that someone dear to her had died, not long ago, but the past few days had taught me that children are much more resilient than we hold them to be. Perhaps it’s only when you add memory and nostalgia, and chances untaken, that you start having serious problems.