by David Beers
Mary leaned over his chair, looking at the computer screen. “What are you looking at?”
“I just wanted to check up on a customer, that’s all.”
Mary looked a little closer and said, “A black customer, huh? And I’m the racist?”
Quillian shook his head, definitely not wanting to go into it now. The whole thing had been silly. Dumb. The news, that’s all it did anymore, was get people to start worrying about things that they really had no business worrying about at all. The man paid, didn’t tried to rob anyone, and whatever he did with those pieces of wood after, that was his business. It was the government’s business to stop criminals and Quillian’s business to sell lumber.
“Come on, let’s get to the front,” he told Mary, standing up from his chair.
He walked from the office, Mary in tow, and stepped out into the aisled store. Not as big as a Home Depot by any means, but to hell with Home Depot, and God forgive him for swearing. People just didn’t understand what the corporations were doing to America and Quillian couldn’t really even describe it. He would try, of course, but he ended up just getting angry and not making a whole lot of sense, at least according to his wife. Fine. That was fine. People could shop at huge corporations if they wanted, Quillian would just keep selling his lumber in his store until the whole world said they didn’t want his store anymore—
Quillian quit thinking because the tall black man was standing ten feet down the aisle in front of him. The man was turned, looking at the merchandise, nails apparently. He wore a hat and sunglasses this time. It wasn’t even noon yet, who wore sunglasses before the sun was really even up?
“How are ya doing, sir?” Quillian said.
“I’m doing well. How are you?” The man asked, not turning away, but still looking at the nails. Comparing prices, maybe.
“Doing fine. Anything I can help you with?” Quillian was going through his normal routine, but nothing about this felt normal. Mary had taken another aisle and gone back up to the register, so she wasn’t seeing any of it. Why was this man back here? Why on the very day that Quillian decided to try and look at the security tape had this man come back to the store?
“Well.” The man put the nails back down in their container. “I was wanting to know if anyone had come around here asking about me?”
“Excuse me?” Quillian asked. The answer felt preposterously stupid but was the only answer that came to his mind. The fight or flight response had been activated but Quillian felt like he couldn’t move. Like this man in front of him was a car’s headlights and he a deer.
“Anyone called asking if you’ve sold any type of lumber to a black man lately?” The man was walking towards Quillian now, and Quillian’s seventy year-old feet just wouldn’t budge. He wanted them to, wanted them to run like they had when he was sixteen and had egged a house in his neighborhood, the owner coming out and trying to chase them but being too old, just like Quillian now.
The black man stood in front of him, not taking his glasses off, looking down on him. “Has anyone called looking for me?” The man asked once more.
Quillian watched as the man’s hands reached up to Quillian’s head, and after a sharp, quick pain, Quillian watched no more.
Matthew looked down at the woman. She had put up more of a fight than the old man, but that hadn’t mattered in the end. He could still see her chest moving up and down, so he hadn’t killed her quite yet, and why not? Why was he letting her live?
Oh just let me have her once. Just once. Just let me touch her once.
The words rose up in his head like hot water from a geyser, shockingly fast and making everyone around it pause and stare. Those weren’t Rally’s words. They weren’t Sheeb’s words. This was Arthur Morgant himself speaking up.
Matthew felt his cock harden. His stomach churned at the same time. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the old woman nor could he stop the dual thoughts in his brain. He saw her as an old, fat woman—wrinkled, dying, and used up. He saw her as flesh, as something to be used, to be used carnally and then to be discarded. He saw her as an entity to be used, but one that should be used with a purpose. He saw that the purpose, the only purpose all women should be used for, is for one’s own pleasure.
His own thoughts colliding with Morgant’s.
His dick pressed against his jeans with a force that strained the zipper.
“Don’t do this. Don’t do it. Think. Think. Think.” He repeated the mantra to himself. DNA. Without a doubt, if he raped this woman here, now, there would be something of him left over when the cops arrived. He couldn’t hide it all unless he burned the whole place down.
Then burn it down! Burn the whole fucking thing to the ground, just let me have heeerrrrrr!
It was insatiable.
It was unspeakable, what was being asked of him.
And still, Matthew pulled his pants down and climbed on top of the woman that was barely breathing.
13
Art placed the mask over his face as he stepped out of the car. The building still radiated off heat and smoke, despite water soaking the entire place. The store must have gotten hot, real hot, because there was nearly nothing left. Everything inside had gone up, and by the time the fire department arrived, their main job was to keep the flames from spreading to other stores. They had let this one burn out.
“How many bodies?” Art asked the first cop who came up to shake his hand.
“Two. The owners, Quillian and Mary Woodall, been residents here their whole lives.”
“Jesus Christ,” Art said, looking over the burnt sign that used to proclaim Woodall’s Wood, but now lay on the ground before the store, a black mess. “You going to be able to find anything in there at all?”
“Doubtful. It’s still too hot to send anyone in, but this thing burnt for a while.”
Jake updated Art on everything during the ride down here. The fire began five hours ago; it took them three hours to get it under control, and now everyone was waiting outside as the fire department tried different techniques to cool it all down.
It was not lost on Art that he had relieved Allison Moore of her duties for something extremely similar to this. Maybe this was a bit less public, but not by much. Art turned away from the cop and started walking back to the car. Jake turned and walked in stride.
“Well, you were right about how he got the wood, just too late in finding out who he bought it from. Why the fuck didn’t you ask for more people?”
“I guess I didn’t think he would think of it.”
Art stopped and turned to the kid. Both of them wore suits, both of their shoes had picked up ash during their short walk across the parking lot of the late Woodall’s Wood. “You didn’t think he would think of it? What the fuck do you mean, exactly?” Art had never spoken to Moore this way, and maybe that’s because the whole world hadn’t been on the line back then, just a few dead cops. Or maybe it was because he liked Moore, respected her. Maybe it was because Moore was older, not in her late twenties, and not picked up off the street in the greatest act of kindness seen since Jesus himself was healing people. Art didn’t know, but what he did know is what the kid said made no sense at all. That Matthew Brand would not think of what this young, once upon a time detective kid had thought of?
“I thought he had moved on. I thought he was, I guess, focusing on what came next.” Jake didn’t look down. He and Art stared at each other, eye to eye, and that was something at least. Looking down, putting his tail between his legs, Art couldn’t have stomached that.
“I need you to pay attention to me now, Jake. This man, I don’t care what he says on the phone to me. I don’t care what the news stations say about him. I don’t care if he’s losing his mind or lost a goddamn step. He. Is. Better. Than. You. You hear me? He was better than Moore, who was better than you. Everything you think of, just because I haven’t thought about it, don’t assume he hasn’t. He will, or he has, or he is. Do you think heads of nations are calling the President
daily because they’re worried about some Ted Bundy style serial killer? They’re calling because everyone in this world, apparently besides you, sees the big picture; that we are dealing with a criminal unlike anything ever seen. So, for the future, I’m going to need you to assume that he’s already thought about whatever it is you’re wanting to do. Ask for more fucking men next time.”
Art walked away to the car, leaving the smoldering building behind him.
Jake wasn’t crying, but he was close to it.
Where did you cry when you were constantly working? It was a question he had never asked himself. He had, at least, managed to hold off these emotions until he managed to get behind the local police station the FBI had co-opted during their brief visit. Now he stood behind the building, hands in his pocket, and looked out at the woods surrounding the back of the building. Art was already heading back to Boston and Jake would be returning soon.
He hadn’t called his father yet. He wanted to, but what was he going to say? Yeah, you left the country because I’ve been assigned to the Brand case, and no, I haven’t been able to do a single thing to capture him yet.
His dad wouldn’t care. His dad would tell him it was okay and just to keep plugging away. That didn’t matter though, what mattered was that he would be calling his dad without any forward movement. He would be calling his dad letting him know that he was at a standstill and that whatever trust his parents had put in him was misplaced, because he wasn’t able to produce.
He couldn’t be mad at Art because Art was right. Jake had acted stupid, had been naive and vain in thinking that Brand wouldn’t consider killing whoever sold him the wood. In fact, Jake was surprised now that Brand hadn’t done it earlier. He was surprised that the married couple had lived as long as they had with Brand knowing they were possible liabilities. Jake could deal with the reprimand. It wasn’t that which had him back here fighting tears that wanted to well in his eyes.
The idea had been right.
His execution wrong.
The idea, had he moved quicker, might have led him somewhere. There were a lot of routes to go with once they knew which store Brand bought at and when it happened. Instead of moving closer to Brand, though, Jake’s hands were in his pockets and he was feeling a light breeze against his cheek. Instead of checking video recordings of major highways on certain dates and times, he was standing with his black shoes on grass, looking at the woods before him. Instead of making progress, he was doing nothing.
He couldn’t call his father with that message. He might be able to call and say something else, but not that he was standing still. Not that he had no other ideas.
Jake closed his eyes and lowered his head.
Take this moment. When you go back in that police station, you get your things, and you head back to Boston. This isn’t over. This was one mistake and not one with your mind, but with how quickly you moved your hand. Your mind is there, just like Moore’s was. Your mind is there just like your dad’s. You go back to Boston and you get back to thinking.
Joe had gone back to Boston. He didn’t know exactly what he needed, but he knew he wouldn’t find it in Licent. He thought a prostitute might be the best place to start. If there were any prostitutes in Licent, they certainly wouldn’t know anything about what he was looking for.
He went back to Boston and back to the same hotel he stayed in previously, spending the same three hundred dollars a night. He hadn’t checked his bank account in months, and while he had been a bit frightened about looking at it before, he didn’t care that much now. He didn’t think he had enough time left here to actually drain the account fully. He might get close at this rate, but close wouldn’t matter when he was dead. He really didn’t know how many nights he would even be in this hotel room. If things went fast, he might never be in another hotel room again, or he might be in jail for the questions he planned on asking the prostitute when she arrived.
Sometimes he drew when he was really coked up, like he was now. He sat at the wooden desk in his hotel room, the single lamp on the table casting the only light in the room. A sheet piece of white paper sat before him, and a pencil in his hand. He scribbled on the paper, not drawing anything discernable, but shapes upon shapes. Circles that built off squares that connected with straight lines. All of it slowly taking up the entire paper. He didn’t know what he was trying to create, didn’t know if he was trying to create anything at all.
He was married for six years and had never once seen a prostitute. Hell, he’d barely watched porn if Patricia hadn’t been involved. Now though, four years after her death, he was about to see his first one, but not for sex. He couldn’t remember what Patricia’s voice sounded like anymore. He hadn’t been able to remember it for the past two years and at first he had sobbed and sobbed and then accepted it as reality. His wife was gone from this world and somehow his mind was erasing her as well. Except for the ability to continually see her death. His mind wouldn’t do him that favor, apparently. Larry always asked him what Patricia would say, had been asking the same question for years, and Joe never once told him he didn’t know because he couldn’t hear her voice anymore. He didn’t know what his wife would say about him sitting in this room, drawing an unfocused picture with an open bag of cocaine lying on the bed behind him.
What would her voice sound like?
Would she be terrified at the person he was?
Would she understand it? Condone it? Pity it?
This was all for her and yet he couldn’t figure out what she would think of it. He thought he remembered considering this question when he first started out, years ago, but a lot of drugs and a lot of time had passed since then. He thought he remembered himself facing the fact that she would want him to live more than anything else, but pushing that fact away because there wasn’t anything left to live for.
Was that memory true or was that Larry guilting him in some way?
Joe didn’t know. He knew he was in this room, wearing out a pencil, and waiting on a prostitute to show up so that he could ask her some pretty insane questions. His wife wasn’t here, she wouldn’t ever be here, and even if this was all for her...
Joe didn’t know how to finish the thought. It was for her. And so he would continue it.
He heard the soft knock on the door.
The woman was beautiful, Joe wasn’t going to deny that. How long had it been since Joe had a woman? He would have to think back to Patti and try to remember the last time they made love. Four years and two weeks maybe? He tried not to think about shit like that, and when he did, a bit of cocaine kept the thoughts at bay. Here was a woman though, in his room, and looking like God himself may have sculpted her. And he could have her right now, the money was in an envelope on the dresser and she was already on his bed with her legs crossed.
“Party favors?” She asked, looking at the lines of cocaine laid out on the dresser next to the money.
“You’re welcome to them if you want them,” Joe said.
“I’m okay for now. What’s your name, babe?”
Joe hadn’t thought a lot of this out. It really had been a lightning bolt of thought that struck him while he was on the phone with Larry and then he simply rushed to make things happen. He found a call girl, got her up to the room, and now planned to start asking her questions about the sex trade. He hadn’t planned on whether or not he would tell her his real name or anything else nearing the truth.
“Joe,” he spit out, unable to come up with anything else.
“I’m Sally, Joe.” The woman extended her hand. Joe accepted it, shook, and released. “You want to have some fun?”
He did. God, he did. And it would be so easy. He could roll around on top of these covers for a little while, probably no longer than five minutes if he was being honest with himself, and then pay her more money to talk.
Joe saw Patti’s eyes. Deep in his head those eyes burned all the time, unable to turn off. Eyes that knew what pain felt like, eyes that said, “Oh, God. This is it
. This is everything. It’s all over and there is nothing I can do.” Eyes that said without a single word that someone was slitting their throat open and that blood was starting to poor down to the floor.
Whatever desire had built up inside Joe died.
“I’m really not looking for fun, ma’am. I’m looking for information more than anything.”
Sally laughed. “Babe, I’m not an Encyclopedia Britannica. This isn’t college unless you’re looking for some physical education. That’s the game I play, not whatever one you’re trying to. So if you’re not interested, let’s go ahead and part ways with no hard feelings.” She didn’t move from the bed, didn’t uncross her legs to stand, only smiled at Joe.
“That’s three hundred dollars over there in the envelope. It’s yours just for walking up here. That cocaine, that’s yours if you want it, and if you don’t, that’s fine too. I don’t need sex, and if you’re not someone that can help me, then I’ll just move down the list of girls. If you can help me find what I’m looking for, I’ll give you ten grand, cash.”
The woman’s head tilted slightly to the right, but her smile didn’t disappear. She wasn’t an amateur at this from the looks of it. Joe saw she wasn’t fazed by what he said, although she might not be enthralled either.
“Ten grand. Not an outrageous sum, but nothing to sneer at either. What are you looking for?” She asked. “A girl? Because I can go ahead and tell you, honey, I’m not in the business of giving up anyone’s name for money. If they’re working girls, they’re working girls because they want to be. Pray to God that she comes home because He’ll act faster than I’m going to.”
“No. Not a girl. I...well, I don’t even know how to say it, really.” Joe didn’t think, he just walked over to the dresser and put his nose to one of the lines of cocaine. When he stood up he was no longer looking at the prostitute, but at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look in mirrors much anymore, and this was why. He could see the bones move at his temples when he opened and closed his jaw. His cheekbones were stark and the bags under his eyes dark. He didn’t really want to see what he looked like when he took his shirt off. He’d caught glimpses, but that was all. To stare at it like this? He might have to ask himself some hard questions, like was he in danger of dying?