by Ray Garton
“Toby, could you take Barnabas out to the kitchen and give him some food?” Cherie turned the police officer. “If there’s food in front of him, he won’t pay attention to anything else.”
Toby slapped his thigh and said, “Hey, Barnabas. C’mon, boy, let’s go get a snack, huh?” He led Barnabas out of the living room at a quick pace, moving past Cherie and the cop. As Barnabas followed Toby out, the dog eyed Officer Graham cautiously.
Cherie turned to the officer and said, “What happened here? I hope no one was hurt.”
“There was an incident earlier,” Officer Graham said, nodding, “but I’d prefer to wait until your husband comes back so I don’t have to repeat myself.”
“When was this?” Cherie said. “Toby and I were at work all day, so we might not have been home when it happened.”
As they talked, Falczek noticed that the officer was eyeing him intensely. It made Falczek uncomfortable. Then he noticed something unsettling. Officer Graham’s rain slicker was open in front and he was not wearing a typical police officer’s belt—no baton, no radio, no pepper spray, no gun.
“It was just a few hours ago,” Officer Graham said. He nodded toward Falczek. “Are you a guest?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cherie said. She turned toward Falczek, smiling, and said, “This is an old friend of ours from California. John Fal—”
Falczek did not know where the knife came from, but it suddenly was in Officer Graham’s right hand. The cop stepped up behind Cherie, wrapped his left arm around her chest, then pressed the knife’s blade to Cherie’s throat and pulled it across hard from left to right.
Blood sprayed and dribbled from Cherie’s throat and she made a horrible gurgling sound as her back stiffened and she began to struggle.
Falczek shot to his feet with a ragged gasp, but shock froze him there. He stood with his mouth hanging open as Officer Graham moved the knife away from Cherie’s throat. He held it out in front of her, blade pointing inward, then stabbed it into her abdomen to the hilt and twisted it.
Toby’s footsteps neared the living room as he returned from feeding Barnabas.
As blood cascaded over Cherie’s chest, the cop let go of her and took a step back, leaving the knife in her abdomen. She dropped to her knees, then hit the floor face-down. She slowly rolled onto her left side with another gurgle.
As Toby entered the room, two things happened at once. Falczek shouted in a hoarse voice, “Toby, look out!” as Officer Graham reached under his rain slicker and produced a gun equipped with a silencer and spun around.
Falczek rushed to Cherie’s side and dropped to one knee, taking his cell phone from his pocket.
Officer Graham raised his gun, and when Toby entered the room, he fired. A black spot appeared just above Toby’s left eye and for a moment, a halo of red mist appeared around the back of his head. Toby collapsed to the floor in a lifeless heap.
As Falczek was punching the 9 with his thumb to call 911, the cop spun around and leveled the gun at him.
“Put the phone down.”
Falczek looked up at the man. As small as it was, the opening at the end of the silencer seemed cavernous and as black as cancer. He closed the phone and set it down on the floor.
“John Falczek?” the phony cop said.
Falczek stared slack-jawed at the man, unable to speak. A pleasant, relaxed evening had gone terribly wrong in a heartbeat and his mind was trying to process everything.
He knows who I am, Falczek thought, and the words continued to pass through his mind in an uninterrupted stream: HeknowswhoIam, heknowswhoIam, heknowswhoIam –
“On your feet,” the man said.
Falczek stood.
“Back in the chair.” He gestured with the gun toward the chair in which Falczek had been sitting only a moment ago.
At first, he had difficulty moving at all. His joints felt calcified, his skin numb, his body detached from his thoughts. Walking in a sideways, crablike manner, he went to the chair and stood in front of it, but could not make himself sit down. He was too tense and stiff and terrified.
As Falczek moved, the man slid his left arm out of the sleeve of the slicker, then switched his gun from right hand to left and shed the slicker altogether. It fell to the floor at his feet.
Although they had slowed down a bit, the same words were racing through Falczek’s mind, along with a few new ones: He knows who I am he knows who I am he’s here for me for me for me he knows who I am he knows—
The man raised the gun and pointed it directly at Falczek’s head as he moved toward him quickly, with purpose. As he moved, he reached behind him and removed something from a back pocket. Falczek did not see what it was because he could not look away from the man’s cold, expressionless eyes.
Smoothly and without effort, the man kicked his right leg up and slammed his foot hard into Falczek’s chest.
Everything inside of Falczek seemed to explode out of him with the thudding blow of the man’s foot. He was knocked back into the chair. For several seconds, he could not draw in a breath, as if his lungs had been crushed. He felt as if his mind were folding in on itself as he gasped for air.
The man dropped to his knees in front of the chair and pressed the gun to Falczek’s crotch. “Listen to me, John Falczek, and listen carefully, because I won’t repeat myself,” he said. His voice was clear, words enunciated precisely. “I’m going to ask you some questions. You will answer the questions. If you don’t—” He held up his left hand to reveal what looked like a particularly sinister pair of pruning shears. The handles were black and short, with broad blades that curved to sharp points. He snapped the shears once with a crisp clack. “You get one non-answer or wrong answer. After that, if you don’t answer me, or if I know you’re lying, I will cut off one of your fingers. I will do this until I run out of fingers. Then I’ll start cutting off other things.”
Falczek finally got air back into his lungs, but he couldn’t quite catch his breath. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he breathed hard through his open mouth and gawked in horror at the shears. Something was battering violently against the inside of his ribcage, trying to burst out of his body—his heart. The man stowed the gun under his waistband in the small of his back, then grabbed Falczek’s right hand.
Falczek struggled, but the man’s grip was hard steel and he pulled the hand toward him with great strength. He put Falczek’s index finger between the blades.
“How did you know about the Paaxone deal?” the man said. “Who told you?”
Falczek’s eyes widened until they felt ready to pop out of their sockets as he coughed out incomplete words. “Whuh? Whuh? The Paa—the whuh?”
“That was your free non-answer. I’ll ask again. Give me an answer or I’ll cut off your finger. Who told you about the Paaxone deal?”
The deadly-sharp edges of the blades tightened on Falczek’s finger.
4.
Chloe was worried.
Slumped on the couch, she ate popcorn she didn’t taste while she watched an old movie on television that she couldn’t follow. It was nearing her bedtime, but she did not feel sleepy. She was too worried.
Eli had come away from the computer earlier for dinner—a dinner he had not eaten. Chloe could sense that something serious was on his mind; she’d kept up a running monologue about her day hoping to distract him from whatever was bothering him. As she talked, he’d poked at the food, taken a couple of bites, poked some more. Then he’d gotten up and paced for awhile before sitting down to poke at his food again.
“Honey, what is wrong?” Chloe said.
He looked up from his food, a frown tightening his features. “What? Oh. I just... don’t feel well.”
“Don’t feel well how? Are you nauseated? Do you have a headache? Are you feverish or—”
”I just don’t feel well, okay?” he barked. He threw his fork down on the plate with a clatter and stood so suddenly that his chair nearly fell over. “I’m not hungry.” He turned and started to
leave the room, then stopped and stood with his back to her for a moment. Finally, he turned to her and the frown was gone. His eyebrows slanted up in the middle and his eyes looked pained and vulnerable. For a moment, Chloe thought he was going to cry. He came to her, put a hand to the back of her head, bent down and kissed her forehead. “Really, I just don’t feel well. It’s not you. Just... bear with me, okay?” Then he left the room.
For the last few hours, he’d been at the computer while she stared at the TV. She absently put popcorn in her mouth and chewed mechanically.
Is he doing drugs again? she wondered. Is he thinking of doing drugs again? Is he having second thoughts about us?
Communication had never been a problem between them. More than any other man she’d been involved with, Eli had always been open with his thoughts and feelings. But now, something was eating at him that he seemed unable or unwilling to share with her. That frightened her.
By the time the movie ended, Chloe had eaten almost all of the popcorn in the microwavable bag, and she hadn’t even been hungry. She turned off the TV with the remote, went into the kitchen, and tossed the popcorn into the garbage.
She put her hands on the lip of the counter and leaned forward, elbows locked. She needed to go to bed, but she wasn’t going to be able to sleep if Eli stayed up, doing whatever he was doing online, pacing, brooding. She didn’t want to pester him. She had countless childhood memories of her father shouting at her mother, “Stop being such a fucking nag!” Of course, there were few times when they hadn’t been shouting at each other, but the word “nag” came up a lot, and Chloe remembered thinking that her mother did harp on Dad a lot. She was never satisfied, always telling him he was doing things the wrong way, complaining about everything from the way he dressed to the way he ate his food. More than once back then, Chloe had thought to herself, I’ll never be a nag when I grow up.
She wondered if she was being a nag because she wanted to know what was eating at Eli. She decided she wasn’t, and left the kitchen to go down the hall. She stepped just inside the door of the guest room and felt a sharp clutching in her chest when she saw Eli.
He sat at the computer with his elbows on the desktop, head bent forward, a hand on each side of his head with fingers buried in his hair. He looked miserable.
She spoke quietly, not wanting to startle him again. “Um, honey? I’m going to get ready for bed.”
He lifted his head but did not turn to her.
“You want to come to bed?” she said.
“No. I’m gonna stay up awhile.”
She went to him and placed her hands gently on his shoulders. “Eli, something’s wrong. Please tell me what it is. I don’t think I can sleep if I know you’re sitting here feeling—”
He reached up and put a hand over hers. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“But you’re not fine. If you don’t feel well, you should sleep. Otherwise you’re going to be miserable at work tomorrow, and you don’t want to—”
Chloe jumped when he slammed a fist on the desk and shouted, “I’ll be fine, goddammit!” He stood and put his hands on her, turned her around and pushed her toward the door. “Just go to bed and leave me alone, okay? I-I can’t—I’m not able to—I can’t explain things right now, but I will, so don’t worry, just go to bed, please.” He herded her into the hall, then backed into the room and slammed the door.
She’d gotten a glimpse of his face before he’d turned her around and started pushing, and his eyes had looked puffy and red. She stood in the hall and stared at the door for several second, then hurried to the bedroom.
Chloe had seen Eli upset before. She’d seen him depressed, craving a hit of cocaine, a drink, and at those times, even at his worst, he’d never been quite like this. He seemed more than upset—he seemed afraid of something.
She sat on the bed, picked up the phone, and called Roger.
“It’s Chloe,” she said when he answered. She heard music playing loudly in the background. “I’m sorry for calling so late.”
“Late?” Roger said. “Are you joking? We’re just getting started here. A couple of Jandie’s friends came over and we’re playing strip Twister.”
“I’m worried, Roger.”
“About what?”
“About Eli. Something’s wrong.” She didn’t want to cry, but her throat began to get thick, her eyes began to sting. “I mean, something’s really wrong.”
“What’s the problem?”
“He’s been on the computer all night and he just kicked me out of the room. I mean, he shouted at me and pushed me out of the room.”
“Were you arguing?”
“No, but he’s been acting weird all night. Something’s bothering him. He started smoking again today.”
“Smoking again? Really?”
“He’s not himself. He’s like somebody in that old pod-people movie.”
“Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”
“Yeah. Something is really eating at him. He seems upset and angry and I-I-I... Roger, I’m afraid.”
“Afraid? He hasn’t been using, has he?”
“No. Well... I don’t think so. Oh, god, I hope not. But it’s like, like... he’s scared of something. He’s all wound up and he won’t tell me why.”
“Put him on the line.”
“Oh, no, this wouldn’t be a good time. Really. He’s on edge. If I even suggested it, he would—”
”Do you want me to come over?”
She thought about that and decided it might only make things worse. Whatever was bothering Eli, he was not in the mood to share it with anyone right now, and bringing Roger into it might just make him worse.
“No,” she said. “Thank you, but... no, I don’t think so.”
“What can I do?”
She released a single breathy laugh as she wiped a tear from her cheek. “Nothing, I guess. I just... needed to talk to someone.”
“Look, I know he’s been worried about not being able to get his pills. That’s really made him—”
”Pills?”
“His antidepressant.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh. Uh... you didn’t know? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”
“About what?”
“For some reason, his antidepressant hasn’t been available. None of the pharmacies in town can get it. He’s talked to Everett about it. There’s some kind of shortage, or a problem with the manufacturer, something like that. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but he can’t get it, and he’s been worried about that. I think he’s afraid he’ll... you know... slip back to his old self. That’s probably not going to happen, and I’m sure that whatever’s holding up the drug will be cleared up before—”
”When did this happen?” Chloe asked, frowning now.
“A few days ago. But don’t tell him I told you. If he hasn’t told you about it, he probably just doesn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry me? He’s scaring the piss out of me!”
“Look, tell you what. I’ll give him a call in the morning and we’ll have lunch together. I’ll talk to him. Okay?”
“But he’s so... I don’t know... so not himself.”
“Don’t worry, Chloe. He’ll be fine. Just leave him alone tonight and I’m sure he’ll feel better tomorrow. I’ll talk to him then, okay?”
After hanging up, she undressed, brushed and flossed her teeth, set her alarm, then got into bed. She lay there worrying, wondering why Eli hadn’t told her he was unable to refill his Paaxone prescription, wondering if that was what was bothering him or if there was more to it... and worrying that she would be unable to sleep.
5.
As the blades pinched together on Falczek’s finger, everything came into hyperfocus and the world took on a vivid clarity he had never known before. It cleared his head, calmed his fears, and somehow allowed him to catch his breath.
The gaze of the man who called himself Officer Graham never left Falczek as he wai
ted for an answer to his question.
“There was a chain of sources,” Falczek said. His voice had a dry rasp to it.
“Start naming them. All of them.”
He gulped as he shook his head back and forth, hoping to stall until... until... until he could think of... something. “It wasn’t like that, I don’t know who all of them are because—”
The blades closed hard and cut through the skin on each side of the base of his finger and drew blood. Falczek cried out in pain.
“Don’t fuck around! Give me names!”
“Lionel Renquist!” he shouted. It infuriated him to have to give up a source, even a slimy worm like Renny.
“The other names?”
“I’m not sure I—”
The blades closed even tighter as the man said, “You’re about to lose this finger, John Falczek, unless you—”
Barnabas attacked without making a sound. The dog didn’t bark or growl or pant. He simply pounced on the man from behind without warning and closed his large jaws on his shoulder.
The shears fell away from Falczek’s finger and the man dropped them as he was pulled backward by Barnabas’s teeth. He released a long, grunting groan through clenched teeth as he reached back and struggled to pry the dog’s snout off of his shoulder. He twisted his body in an attempt to roll over, and the gun fell from the waist of his pants. Barnabas only clenched his jaws harder and finally released a low growl. The man screamed and kicked and rolled as he fought wildly to separate himself from the hulking dog.
Falczek wasted no time. He threw himself forward out of the chair and swept the gun off the floor, clutching it with both hands as he put some distance between himself and Officer Graham. He turned around and aimed the gun at the man writhing on the floor.
“Help me!” the man cried.
Falczek said, “What’re you, high?” His voice was hoarse and his hand trembled as he held the silencer-equipped gun on the intruder. He could feel his heart throbbing inside his skull while nausea roiled in his stomach at the thought of his two old friends lying dead on the floor behind him. He vaguely hoped he did not have to shoot this man.