70
“Goddamn, girl, you sure know how to make a mess.”
Nova has just stepped out of the elevator, the elevator that now has the out of service sign back on it, shaking his head at me.
“So do you think you can take care of it?”
He shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”
“James will be here any minute. He’s bringing back my car. Atticus said he’ll help you.”
Three hours have passed since killing Javier Diaz and his two men. The first thing I had to do was make sure everyone else in the building knew the elevator wasn’t working again. The second thing I had to do was start cleaning up my mess, which was easier said than done. I’d called Nova but there was no answer on his cell. I then called Atticus, explained the situation, and for the last hour I’d been calling Nova again and again, thinking maybe Walter was wrong, he had drowned, until Nova showed up himself. Said he had just gotten out and wanted to see if I had bought him his new pickup yet.
“You know,” Nova says, “you’re starting to take advantage of me being a nice guy. All these favors you’re racking up ... I don’t know, it’s becoming a bit excessive.”
“Put it on my tab.”
“So what did these guys do to you again?”
“They pissed me off.”
The lobby door opens, an old Korean woman coming in with a bunch of groceries. She gives us a suspicious look, probably because we’re standing in front of the elevator that is once again out of order, then she shakes her head, sighs, and starts for the stairwell.
Nova says, “You really going to go through with this?”
“I can’t stay here anymore.”
“But where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. California, maybe.”
“Do you have money?”
“Enough to get me started.”
“And”—he clears throat—“what about the other thing?”
“Atticus said he’ll give me a hand with that.”
Nova’s eyes get really big, and he pouts his lip. “What—you don’t want my help?”
“Like you said before, I’m starting to take advantage of you being a nice guy.”
“I was just saying that.”
“I know. But you’re not involved in any of this shit. I started it, which means I need to finish it.”
“It’s not going to be easy.”
“I know.”
“The man’s going to be very well protected.”
“I know.”
“But that’s not going to stop you at all, is it?”
I shake my head. “When he finds out what I did to his son, that truce my father set up will be finished. Nobody in my family will be safe. So I have to kill him before he kills them. ”
Nova looks away at a stain on the wall. “And then that’s it?”
I nod, slowly. “That’s it.”
“You really think you can walk away from it, just like that?”
I think of that gradual decline I’ve been on, the slope so steep Walter said I could never find my way back. “I hope so.”
“Because ... I mean, this is what you do. What you are.”
“Every time I take a life, a piece of me falls away. I don’t want to get to the point where there’s nothing left.”
Nova touches the stubble on his chin. “It could be the opposite. Every time you take a life, a piece is added on. You grow stronger. Did you ever think of that?”
“I have.”
“And?”
I step forward, place my hand on Nova’s arm. “And I’m still not changing my mind.”
The lobby door opens again, this time James walking through.
I turn, nod to him, then think of something and glance back at Nova. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“For awhile there I thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, and let me guess—for awhile there you regretted the chance never going to bed with me.”
“Not quite. But I did miss you. You’ve been a really good friend to me.” I pause, then say, “So what did they do to you in there?”
“Locked me in a room, asked me a bunch of questions.”
“None of which you answered, right?”
“Why, girl, you know me so well.”
I start to turn away again but turn back. “So how did you get out?”
“Walter came in.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He came in and sat down at the table and offered me a job.”
“What’d you say?”
“Me?” Nova grins. “I told him I’m already self-employed.”
71
Despite the fact this is my car, it has a different feel to it, a car that is mine but is not mine. When I get the chance, I’ll have to get rid of it, buy a new one. A new used one, because it’s not like I have that much money. But still, first things first ...
I pull into my mother’s driveway. It’s almost noontime. Thankfully this is one of her days off work. She’s probably sitting in the living room, watching her soaps, or some talk show, or some game show. Maybe she’s knitting. Maybe she’s reading. Maybe she’s playing video games.
Fact is, I don’t know much about my mother.
I don’t know her favorite song, her favorite color, her favorite meal. I don’t know what kind of prayers she says before she goes to bed. I don’t know how she spends her weekends or who her friends are at work. All I know is that she is my mother, I am her daughter, and to save her—to save my sister and my brother-in-law, my nephews, to save everyone I care about—I have to kill Ernesto Diaz.
How I’m going to do this, I don’t know. My mother will take one look at my face, see the bruises, and immediately start fussing. No matter what I tell her, she won’t believe me. In fact, it would be best to just leave right now, send her a postcard, an e-mail. But I can’t do that. She deserves more. Not the truth exactly—I will not tell her about her husband, cannot tell her about her husband—but a half-truth, a quarter-truth, just enough so she will understand I am going away and will never be back.
I turn off the car and then just sit there, listening to the engine tick.
I glance at the phone on the passenger seat, Zane’s phone.
I reach out, pick it up, and scroll through the recent calls list.
I highlight the number with the 011 + 33 in front of it, the foreign exchange.
I press send and place the phone to my ear and wait until it’s connected and then wait four rings before a familiar yet unfamiliar voice answers with one simple word:
“Yes?”
I close my eyes. Think about hanging up. Think about crying. Think about screaming.
I say, “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Zane is dead.”
Silence.
I say, “I don’t know what you’ve become or why you became that way, but you disgust me.”
More silence.
I say, “You are no longer my father.”
Even more silence.
I say, “You should have killed me back in that alleyway in Paris, because the next time we meet?”
Still more silence, the quiet so heavy that I wonder if maybe the connection has been lost. But no, I can hear him breathing, a soft, shallow sound, and I picture him wherever he is in the world right this moment, sitting in a chair, by a window, staring out at a world he doesn’t agree with, that doesn’t make sense to him, a world in which everyone else are bad guys and he is the hero.
I open my mouth, start to say something else, but then decide I’ve already said enough.
I disconnect the call.
I turn off the power.
I toss the phone aside.
Then I get out of the car and start up the walkway to my mother’s house, up the steps to the porch, where I open the screen door and knock. I stand there then, waiting, thinking how easy it would be to go back to the car, run away, never have to face her.
But I can’t do th
at. I can’t run away. I need to stay here, talk to my mother, who always knows what to say and do. And who, hopefully, will explain to me why just because everything turns out good, doesn’t mean it’s a happy ending.
About the Author:
Robert Swartwood’s work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Daily Beast, ChiZine, Postscripts, Space and Time, and PANK. He is the author of several novels and the editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer. Visit him online at www.robertswartwood.com.
To stay updated on Robert’s latest ebook releases, sign up for his newsletter or follow him on Twitter: @RobertSwartwood.
Continue reading for an excerpt from Robert Swartwood’s thriller The Serial Killer’s Wife
Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni’s husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life.
Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband’s trophies — the fingers he cut off each of his victims.
With a deadline of 100 hours, Elizabeth has no choice but to return to the life she once fled, where she will soon realize that everything she thought she knew is a lie, and what’s more shocking than Cain’s identity is the truth about her husband.
“This is a scary, thrilling, page-turning, race-against-the-clock novel if ever there was one, with a true shocker of an ending. Miss this one at your own peril.”
— Blake Crouch
CHAPTER 1
THEY WERE DISCUSSING the different ways to kill the child molester.
Or rather Chad Cooper was discussing the different ways, sitting at his place at the lunchroom table, slicing an apple, while the rest of them stared at him in stunned silence.
“Drowning him might not be the best idea,” he said, his focus on the apple, “as it raises the question of just how you get a chance to push and then keep his head under water. Maybe a hit-and-run would be better. No, you know what would be best? An icicle. Don’t they say that’s the perfect murder weapon?”
He paused, suddenly noticing the palpable silence, and looked up. He was in his forties, his brown hair thinning, his potbelly beginning to grow more pronounced by the semester. A social studies teacher for eleven years, he was known for being one of the students’ favorite teachers in the middle school. He always incorporated movies into his lessons and would sometimes bring in his guitar and play popular songs whose words he’d change around to help the students remember certain vocabulary words and important dates and places that would appear on their tests.
“I’m sorry”—his voice now suddenly gruff—“did I say something inappropriate?”
How the conversation had even turned to Reginald Moore nobody could begin to guess, but they all knew Chad’s frustrations, what with the convicted sex offender having moved into his neighborhood just a few weeks ago.
“Chad,” Eileen Peters sighed, an English teacher for fifteen years, the eighth grade team leader who seemed to always have her auburn hair in a bun, “we all know how you feel—”
“No you don’t. Especially you, Eileen. You don’t even have kids.”
The silence that followed this was more than palpable. Eileen’s face had begun to redden. It was true, she had no kids, because, according to gossip, she was barren.
Chad, who normally had a cheery disposition, didn’t even seem fazed by the fact Eileen now looked like she was about to cry.
“And the worst part?” He shoved an apple slice into his mouth. “They let him move into a house less than three miles away from the elementary school. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is that?”
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Nobody even looked at Chad now as he chewed his apple slice and shook his head. He scanned the table, trying to find supporters, somebody to back him up with just a simple nod, but none of his colleagues would meet his eyes. And so it made sense that, after having exhausted the normal route, he would turn to her.
“What about you, Sarah?”
Lunchtime on Fridays had always been a treat for her, the Oakville Middle School eighth grade teachers winding down after a stressful week, the men going without ties, the women wearing jeans, happy to know that in only a few hours the weekend would start and it would be another two days off before they had to come back in on Monday and do it all over again. They’d sit around the three long tables pushed together to create one large table, their brown-bagged lunches placed in front of them. During the week one or two teachers might work at one of the half dozen desks set up around the room, grading papers or prepping tests. But not on Friday. No, Friday was a time when everyone shared lunch together, joking, laughing, telling stories.
She found herself clearing her throat in a demure sort of way. “I’m sorry?”
“You have a son. He’s what—five, six years old?”
She gave a cautious glance around the table. “Five.”
“So then how would you feel if a registered sex offender moved in right down the block from you? Wouldn’t you be a little, oh I don’t know, upset?”
For the first time in a long while she reminded herself that she wasn’t supposed to be here. She was a teacher’s assistant, yes, but this room, this table, was for the teachers. Those men and women who had taken four years of college to earn their education degrees, some who had gone on to earn their master’s, who applied and interviewed and were eventually hired as first-year teachers, always the toughest job for any teacher, having to prove your worth not just to the faculty and staff and school board but to the students, yourself.
Where she should be right now was in the cinder-block room connected to the cafeteria, a sterile place filled only with the continuous buzz of the Coke machine in the corner, of myriad conversations from the seventh and eight graders out beyond the door propped open with a makeshift wooden stopper. There she should be with the other teacher assistants, the other substitutes, but over the past two years she had slowly stopped eating her lunch in that room and transitioned to this room, with the real teachers, the place that felt more comfortable, and they had welcomed her with open arms and she had enjoyed every moment of it, every moment except this one.
“Well?” Chad said, chopping off another slice of apple much harder than was necessary, his focus on her turning into a glare.
“I imagine I would not be happy about the situation, no.”
That glare continued, but only for a moment, and then Chad grinned, gave one of those half-laughs, and turned back to the rest of the table.
“See?” he said. “Even Sarah wouldn’t be happy about a child molester moving in next door. And the truth is, none of you would either.”
“Chad,” Dick Cummings sighed, a Phys Ed teacher of fourteen years who had no choice but to endure his name, “none of us said—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Chad snapped. He’d brought up the paring knife so it was pointed toward Dick, held it there for a second or two before he noticed the expressions on everyone’s faces. Pulling himself together, he quickly lowered the knife, placed it on the table beside his napkin and the remains of his apple, and stood up. “I’m ... sorry. I think I just need to take a walk.”
And then before anyone could say a word he was gone, the door closing behind him with the finality of a period, and at once everyone released a breath at the same time.
The phone on Eileen’s desk rang.
As Eileen got up and went to her desk, everyone else started talking.
“The ironic thing?” Gail Costello said, an Art teacher. “He considers himself so liberal. Always about pro-choice this, no death penalty that. I mean, I wouldn’t be happy if that pervert moved in down the street from me either, but don’t be a hypocrite.”
This was followed by nods of assent, more murmuring, and before she knew it Eileen called her name.
“Sarah? You have a phone call.”
She frowned as she met Eileen at her desk, wondering who would be calling her at this extension. Maybe Todd if he had a free period that coincided with this lunch hour. Anybody else would have her cell phone number and would try her there first, and when she didn’t answer they’d leave a message if whatever they wanted to discuss with her was important enough. Then again, that was doubtful too, as pretty much nobody had her cell phone number.
Eileen gave her a forced smile, one that reminded her she wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place, was just a lowly teacher’s assistant whose lunchtime was meant to be sequestered in that cinder-block room just outside the cafeteria with the rest of the non-faculty.
She took the phone with her own forced smile, then waited until Eileen had started away before placing the phone to her ear and saying hello.
“Elizabeth Piccioni?” said a dark robotic voice on the other end.
She let only a moment pass before saying, “I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person.”
“Elizabeth”—that dark robotic voice having no emotion whatsoever—“how would you like me to kill your son—fast or slow?”
CHAPTER 2
SHE WAS IN the hallway, headed directly toward room 218—Mary Boyle’s Earth Science—when Chad Cooper came out of the men’s room and stood directly in front of her.
“I want to apologize,” he said.
Her body was shaking, blood was pounding away in her ears, that for an instant she didn’t hear him—didn’t even see him standing there—and automatically went to step around him.
No Shelter (Holly Lin, No. 1) Page 26