For the Trees

by Brett Baker

  With no gun in her hand, she decided to fight back with her body, and grabbed my head in her hands, pulled me toward her, and head butted me, square in the bridge of my nose. I thought I would die. No matter how much training one receives, nor how many physical altercations one is in, a hard shot to the nose will make even the toughest person want to cry like a noodle-armed sixth-grader in his first fist fight against the school bully. I covered my face with my hands, and cried out in pain as she pushed my shoulders, hurling me off of her, and onto my back on the bathroom floor. She pounced on top of me, straddled my stomach, and punched me four times in the face before I had time to react. I blocked a fifth punch with my hand, and sat up, wrapping my arms around her chest, squeezing her arms against her side, and—I hoped—constricting her lungs and making it difficult for her to breathe. I needed just a few seconds to gather myself after the shot to the nose. My eyes watered, I felt a trickle of blood running along the outline of my lips, toward my chin, and it hurt like hell.

  She struggled like a patient in a straight jacket, but I locked my hands behind her back, and held firm. She tried to head butt me again, but I saw it coming and buried my face in her neck. With little distance between my face and her head, she couldn’t leverage enough force to hurt me, and her head butt attempts felt more like an innocent chick pecking at the dirt.

  I knew I couldn’t hold her like that forever though. If we stood up she’d have her feet under her, and depending on her training, she might be able to fight herself loose. I obviously didn’t want to let her go, both because she seemed a capable fighter, and because the gun sat just a few feet away, and I had no confidence that my eyes would stop watering enough to allow me to protect myself. With one quick motion I leaned back toward the floor and twisted to my right, pulling her off of me, and slamming her back into the tub. I broke my hold on her, and brought my knees up from under me and planted my left knee firmly into her chest, while also grabbing a handful of her dark brown hair and slamming the back of her head against the tub. She flailed her arms toward my face, but couldn’t make contact. I adjusted my body and pulled her hair so that her head snapped back, creating a space for me to lodge my shin against her neck, under her chin. I applied just enough pressure to restrict her airflow, but refrained from crushing her throat.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. I eased the pressure on her throat to permit her to talk if she chose. She felt the pressure ease though, and instead used the moment to push up on my knee, while using her feet to push off of the tub. She created just enough space between my shin and her body that she pulled her own legs up toward her chest and kneed me in the shin. The crunching sound of bone against bone would have disgusted an observer, but she and I were too involved to be grossed out.

  She reached toward my face and before I could react, she planted a finger in each of my eyes. I screamed in pain. Eye poking had somehow become humorous when associated with slapstick comedy, but very few techniques provided a more reliable way to incapacitate an opponent. I immediately fell to the floor, and assumed the fetal position, while writhing back and forth. I reached out to grasp my attacker, hoping to grab any part of her that would allow me to subdue her long enough to recover and properly defend myself, but as she ran away all I could manage was a tenuous grip on her ankle.

  She stopped and used her other foot to kick me in the forehead, a shot that I never saw coming, thanks to my temporary inability to open my eyes. I collapsed to the floor, continued screaming, and remembered the gun. She’d proven herself a capable fighter, but she’d already made it clear that she preferred to shoot rather than fight. I’d managed to avoid being shot due to pure luck, but when lying almost blind, with a potentially broken nose, and a relentless attacker about to pickup a gun, my luck appeared to have run out. I struggled to my feet, and stood straight up, expecting a bullet to end my story at any second. As I rubbed my eyes and struggled to open them, I tried to tune in to the sounds of the room. If she picked up the gun it would make some sort of noise in her hand, and I wanted to hear it. Audio cues seemed my only chance for survival.

  Despite The Summit’s training, I’d never become very good at using non-visual senses in my defense. I had a good innate sense that let me know when something didn’t feel right, but as I listened for the sound of that gun in her hand, I was reminded of my poorly-developed hearing, and decided to work on it if I survived.

  In almost every encounter there’s a moment at which the outcome can be shifted one way or the other. Recognizing that moment can be the difference between life and death. A combatant who lets the moment pass and can’t capitalize on it might then face the last moment of life.

  When I felt the hard barrel of the gun against my temple, I knew the moment had arrived. No subtlety this time. I had to act. She had given away the biggest advantage she had: my temporary blindness. Before I felt the gun against my head I had no idea whether she was right next to me, or fifteen feet away. She could have stood near me, taken careful aim, and eliminated me. By pressing the gun against my head she gave away her location.

  I brought my left hand straight up, and in one quick motion hit her wrist so hard with my open palm that I could hear her bone crack. The gun flew into the air, and with my right hand I hit her once in the middle of the chest with my knuckles. I felt her crouch toward me and I wrapped my arms around her and threw her to the ground. As I tried to get on top of her, my foot tangled up on her arm and I tripped and fell on top of her. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids would not cooperate. I flailed a series of punches toward her face, but missed more than I landed. She struggled beneath me, and seemed content with trying to break free of me instead of trying to assault me. I assumed she could see the gun, and thought that if she could once again get to it she wouldn’t make the same mistake again, and she’d just kill me. She lifted her legs up, and used her knees and arms to push me up and off of her, over her head. My shoulder jammed into the toilet bowl, and I felt her try to squirm away beneath me. I knew if she escaped my reach it’d spell the end for me. I thrashed about with my arms, grasping for anything that I could use to pummel her.

  The first thing I felt was the plastic handle of the toilet brush. I grasped it with my right hand, threw myself back onto her body, and punched her with my left hand. After the last punch I clamped on to her throat and squeezed, constricting her airway, causing her mouth to gape open in a useless attempt for air. I shoved the toilet brush into her wide open mouth, guided it as deep into her throat as it would go, and then used both hands to twist it back and forth, trying to send it deeper. She began kicking her legs, and thrashing beneath me. I planted my knees into her shoulders and kept twisting the toilet brush. A horrendous guttural sound of the brush annihilating her epiglottis sent a chill through me.

  Within a minute she went limp. I remained on top of her for another minute, before standing up, taking a couple of steps into the hallway, and collapsing onto the floor. Blood flowed out of my nose, and down my cheek, as I remained motionless, eyes closed, afraid that any movement would rekindle the furious battle that just concluded. My nose felt tender to the touch, but to my untrained hand it didn’t seem broken as I rubbed it. After three or four minutes my eyelids complied, and began to open. I sat up and looked toward the woman on my bathroom floor, and breathed a sigh of relief that she was still dead.

  The gun lay between the woman’s feet, and I wondered if she felt it as she kicked in the last seconds of her life. It must have been agonizing to know she could save her own life if she could only reach that gun.

  As I got my first good look at the woman, she appeared at least a decade younger than me. She wore her dark, straight hair in a ponytail. She wore gym shoes, blue jeans, and a Cubs t-shirt. She looked like an average, unassuming woman. No one who saw her walking on the street would have guessed she planned to kill me. And although she broke into my apartment rather than trying to kill me in public, in the middle of the day, she reminded me that I had to assume that everyone
I encountered might want to kill me.

  I checked her pockets for any clues about who she was or who sent her, but found absolutely nothing. Empty pockets usually indicated a hired gun. If an assassin fails in their mission and becomes the victim, they don’t want the intended target to trace them back to the person who hired them. I could run her fingerprints, but someone skilled and knowledgeable enough to remove any identifying information from her body before going on a job would have also ensured that her fingerprints weren’t on file. I had no intention of involving Chicago police, so unless The Summit could identify her, she would remain anonymous.

  19

  Chapter 19

  With a dead woman in my bathroom, I thought it best not to leave my apartment, but I needed to talk to Stanley at The Summit. We hadn’t spoken for days, and I hoped that he might have uncovered some information about who was shooting at me, but I also had to fill him in on Abner Chamberlain, and now the Toilet Brush woman.

  I dialed Stanley’s number. He picked up on the fourth ring, and sounded winded.

  “Stanley, it’s Mia. Are you okay? You sound like you’re racing up the stairs.”

  “Mia! You’re alive. I have to say, I’m a little surprised by that. Pleasantly so.”

  “You sure know how to impart a girl with confidence in the system. Isn’t it your job to make sure I’m alive?”

  “You know better than that, Mia. Staying alive is your job. All I can do is give you the tools to do so.”

  “Oh, well thanks for the toilet brush!” I said.

  “Toilet brush?” Stanley asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It’s a long story, but…”

  “Wait a minute,” Stanley interrupted. “I hope you just called to talk about the weather. It’s awfully nice out there.”

  “Really Stanley? This is urgent. Do we have to do this?”

  “The rules are in place for a reason,” Stanley said. “I can’t talk now.”

  “I can’t leave now,” I said.

  “Why is that?” Stanley asked. “Cough once if you’re not alone.”

  I coughed once.

  “Are you at home? Do you need us to send someone over? Are you in danger at the moment?”

  “I’m fine. I’m at home, and there’s nothing going on here at the moment, but I can’t leave. We need to talk though.”

  Stanley didn’t respond. Our conversations often contained a fair amount of dead air, which alarmed me at first, but I’d come to realize that it just meant that Stanley was thinking.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re in Chicago?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Do you want me to come over there?” he asked, ignoring my question.

  “Yes, we need to talk. Unless you want to do it on the phone.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” Stanley said.

  I checked on Toilet Brush. Still dead. I stood over her and peered down and considered removing the brush just to end the grotesqueness of it, but I thought Stanley should see it. No one likes killing another person, but I’d learned over the years not to fight the flicker of innate satisfaction I felt upon disposing of someone who thought so little of me that they wanted me dead. Although I’d never spoken of it to other members of The Summit, we clearly took some pride in the inventive ways in which we eliminated adversaries. No agent would ever outwardly brag about their resourcefulness, but the more eclectic techniques had a way of working themselves into a conversation. I’d never heard of anyone using a toilet brush before.

  Almost precisely fifteen minutes after I hung up the phone with Stanley, I heard a knock on the door. I briefly considered picking up Toilet Brush’s gun, just in case, but those things are dangerous. Instead I looked through the peephole, and saw a balding man, who looked somewhat slight, but powerful. He wore a grey suit with a purple shirt and tie, and seemed like the sort of man whose idea of relaxing meant loosening the knot on his tie.

  “Who is it?” I called out.

  “Stanley. We just talked on the phone.”

  “Six years ago I almost died from eating a bowl of bad fish ball noodle soup. What city was I in at the time?”

  “Danang,” Stanley repeated, without hesitation.

  I unlocked the door, opened it, and greeted Stanley. “I lost eight pounds in two days. I haven’t touched seafood since.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. Food can bring back memories instantaneously, you know. I doubt you want to relive that experience.”

  “Come on in,” I said. Stanley stepped into my living room and looked around, making no effort to hide the surprise on his face.

  “This isn’t what I was expecting,” he said.

  “I know. The Summit advises against having a place like this, but I have to have something of my own. I’ve given my entire life to them for almost twenty years. They can cut me some slack on the place where I live.”

  “I suppose so. But you know, that doesn’t change the procedure.”

  “I know,” I said. “If I have to go, I have to go. I’ll leave it all behind if need be. But until that happens I figure I might as well enjoy it while I’m here.”

  Stanley nodded but said nothing. Despite his tightly-wound appearance, in my conversations with him he’d shown himself to flexible, and always on my side, even when something I wanted to do directly contradicted The Summit’s guidelines. Despite his failure to warn me of any of the encounters of the previous few days, I trusted him. He accepted my explanation of the apartment, and I suspected he wouldn’t bring it up again.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you get everything settled with your parents? Where does that stand?”

  “We buried them this morning,” I said, feeling slightly choked up, which surprised the hell out of me. I took a deep breath, gave Stanley a fake smile, and continued. “It’s been a difficult few days, but I think the worst is behind us. No news on the investigation yet. Local police were supposed to come talk to us, but they hadn’t made contact by the time I’d left.”

  “Two people are dead and they haven’t talked to the children yet? Seems unusual, don’t you think?”

  “It’s a small town, Stanley. They don’t have many murders. They’re going into this blind, and have to figure things out as they go.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” Stanley asked.

  “There’s not much I can do about it,” I said. “If I go in there and start telling them how to do their jobs they’re going to ask why a technical writer knows so much about criminal investigations. My brother is still down there and he’s going to try to talk to them and see if they’re making progress.”

  “Do you still think this is unrelated to The Summit?”

  “I don’t know. So many things are happening it’s tough to figure out what’s what.” I told him about the man breaking into my parents’ house, and my subsequent altercation. Johnny and Justine only knew the sanitized, half-truth version of the story, and in the chaos of dealing with funeral arrangements I’d managed to dodge repeated suggestions that I report the assault to the police. I promised Johnny that I’d mention it when the police called us to interview us about our parents’ murder, but since they never called, I never mentioned it. Stanley got the full, truthful version though. It’s impossible to know when even the smallest nugget of information might lead to a grand discovery, so I wanted Stanley to know everything. None of it made sense to him, but he agreed that the man’s entrance into my parents’ house was related to the murders.

  “You’re not even safe in your hometown,” Stanley said.

  “I just assume I’m not safe anywhere,” I said. “In fact, I’m not even safe in my apartment anymore.” I motioned for him to follow me, and led him to the bathroom. He saw Toilet Brush’s feet near the door to the hallway before he saw the rest of her.

  “Oh dear God,” he said. “Here?” I nodded, stood to the side of the door, and waved my ha
nds toward the bathroom, as if presenting a prize. “What the fuck happened here?” Stanley asked when he peeked around the corner and saw the toilet brush sticking out of her mouth.

  “I came in from the airport this afternoon, went into the bathroom, and she greeted me with a single gunshot.”

  “Were you hit?” he asked, examining me for a wound.

  “No, saved by a Diet Coke can. It deflected the bullet. We had a little tussle in here, she fired a couple of more shots, gave me a nice head butt to the nose, tried to blind me, and then it was over.”

  “And I presume you ended it with the toilet brush? That wasn’t done after the fact?”

  “After the fact? What kind of barbarian do you think I am? No, it wasn’t done after the fact! I had to the tools at my disposal, and at that moment all I could reach was the toilet brush.”

  “You get points for originality,” Stanley said. “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. I asked her during our melee, but she didn’t have anything to say. No identification on her. Probably not even worth checking for prints.”

  “No, don’t bother,” Stanley said. “There won’t be anything there. This all just happened?”

  “Feel the body,” I said. “I’m sure she’s still warm.”