She walks to the sink and picks up the toilet plunger and tries to pull out the handle. That doesn’t work, it won’t budge, so she tries to unscrew it, first one way, then the other, and that does work. After four counter-clockwise turns the handle is free of the black rubber suction cup. Hopefully the sink doesn’t get clogged between now and her escape. If it does Henry will notice that the handle is missing and know she’s up to something. He’ll suspect it, anyway, and that will be enough. He’ll be mad. He’ll stand looking at her as his face goes red and his hands open and close, open and close, open and close. His nostrils will flare in his diseased nose. He’ll reach into his pocket and pull out a roll of those things he eats and thumb one into his mouth and chew. He’ll ask her what she’s up to and no matter what she says he will call her a liar. Finally, once he’s worked himself up enough, he’ll come after her. She’ll run, but he will catch up. He’ll knock her down and kick her in the gut. All the air will rush out of her. She’ll look up at his red face, and then he’ll kick again. Darkness will come then. When she wakes up she will be hanging from the punishment hook. Her wrists will be bleeding. He will have found her weapon and he will walk toward her with it in his hand. He’ll grin as he walks toward her. There will be no humor in his grin.
One two three four five six seven eight. She used to try counting down, so she could deal with large numbers right away, numbers that filled her head, but counting down made her feel that when she was finished something terrible would happen. Five. . four. . three. . two. .
She opens a box of rags and pulls out a yellowed and torn T-shirt. It smells like Henry, a peculiar combination of garlic and sweat and beer and bleach. Just the stink of him causes her chest to go tight, makes it difficult to draw in breath. Her mouth is dry.
With some effort she manages to tear the shirt into strips. She has to use her teeth to get the strips started, and it hurts her teeth and gums, and the cloth comes away from her mouth pink with blood and saliva, but once she gets the shreds started the fabric rips easily. After she has several strips of fabric ready she uses them to tie the shard of plate to the toilet plunger handle. She has to tie several knots and wrap one of the strips tightly around the handle just beneath the blade, putting an X around its base, to keep it from sliding down, but once she’s done with it the blade is in place securely and hardly wiggles at all. She’s pretty sure the glass would break before it came loose from the handle.
Now: how will she do this?
She closes her eyes and tries to picture it happening. She imagines several scenarios. In all of them there is blood.
After a few minutes she opens her eyes. Tomorrow night after Henry has left for work she will wait under the stairs for Beatrice to bring down her dinner. Henry will have been gone at least an hour by then. There will be a much better chance of things going her way if he is miles and miles away. She will wait under the stairs for Beatrice with the home-made knife in her hand. If Donald comes over to eat as he sometimes does, rather than simply picking up a plate to take back to his mobile home parked behind the house, she will wait till the night after tomorrow. But if things are as they usually are, if she and Beatrice are home alone tomorrow night, she will wait under the stairs with the home-made knife in her hand and when Beatrice walks down them she will thrust the blade between the steps. She will slice Beatrice’s ankles. Beatrice will fall down the stairs. She will scream but the walls are concrete: no one will hear. She will scream and fall down the stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs she will hit her head on the concrete floor. She will be knocked unconscious. Then Maggie will simply run up the stairs and out the front door. She will run through the woods to the street. She will run down the street to the phone. She will call her daddy and her daddy will come and pick her up and take her home. He will let her sleep in his arms. She will be safe.
If Donald is here she will wait till the night after tomorrow-she does not want to have to confront him if she doesn’t have to-but no longer than that. She cannot stand to wait longer than that. She has to get out. She would do it tonight if she could, but can hear Donald upstairs already. She can hear him laughing at something on TV. But that means he’ll almost certainly not come over tomorrow night. It is a rare night when he eats dinner here.
She can do this.
Tomorrow night she will feel her daddy’s arms wrapped around her.
And she will not feel afraid.
Henry pushes his way into the second-floor ladies’ room, leaving the cart in the doorway. He pulls a pair of yellow rubber gloves from the back pocket of his dirty Levis and slips his hands into them. The insides are still wet with sweat from the last time he wore them and slick, so his hands slide right in. He flexes his fingers within them, then pushes into the first toilet stall, its brown-painted metal door swinging open and hitting the inside wall.
Bracketed inside each stall is a stainless steel receptacle for tampons and sanitary napkins. He pulls this one from its bracket and walks it to his cart and turns it upside down over the trash can and shakes. He glances inside. Bloody pads stick to the stainless steel walls. He bangs it against the inside of the trash can. He hates the smell of this part of the job: a musty stink of curdled blood and pussy. He glances inside the receptacle. One blood-streaked pad still sticking to the bottom. He reaches in and pinches it between two gloved fingers, index and middle, and pulls it out and drops it into the trash can.
Then back to the toilet stall and sliding the receptacle into place.
It is strange to him to be doing this. He remembers when this college wasn’t even here. When he was a boy this was just trees and weeds and mustang grapevines and blackberry bushes. He remembers climbing the vines. They grew so thick they weaved themselves into baskets and sagged between the branches of the hickory and oak trees. He would climb in those baskets of vines and lie in them like hammocks.
It is strange how a town can grow up around a person. You’re standing still but all around you the world is moving, and one day you look up from your tiny piece of it and you’re lost: all the landmarks you used to know are gone, replaced by new landmarks that might mean something to someone but mean nothing to you. The woods in which you played as a boy were cut down for cordwood and have been smoke in the wind for decades, replaced by a city college you’re now expected to clean.
And when you look in the mirror you don’t even recognize the face looking back at you. Who is that old man with his fat, fleshy face, with eyes like unpolished wood buttons, with a mouth like an angry scribble? Some stranger, surely. No one you’ve ever met before.
There was a story in the Tonkawa County Democrat this morning about a girl who was kidnapped seven years ago, about a girl who made a single phone call only to vanish once more into the ether, and in that story there was a description of her kidnapper, and that description could easily be of the man you daily see in the mirror. Maybe they’re one and the same. But if they are it can’t possibly be you you see. A small, innocent boy who used to climb in trees pretending he was Tarzan could not possibly grow to be a man who kidnapped a seven-year-old girl from her own bedroom in the dead of night, who did that and worse. So why does that man gaze back at you when you look in the mirror?
Why do his memories hold a place in your mind?
The answer is clear: stop lying to yourself, Henry.
Yes: he is that man. If it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be. But if it weren’t for Beatrice he wouldn’t be anything. He’d have killed himself long ago. He’d have drowned in his own vomit in the dirt parking lot outside O’Connell’s or the paved one outside Roberta’s. He’d have drunkenly driven himself into a tree. He’d have accidentally shot himself in the face. She is the only person who made him believe he might have something to offer someone. Despite the fact he’s not the sharpest axe in the shed, despite his temper, despite occasional trips to the county jail for public drunkenness or a fight (when drinking or incredibly angry he sometimes forgets his boy-howdy smile and back-patting pers
onality; he forgets to keep what he really is locked in a room in the back of the house). She has stood by him. Unlike his momma who always told him he was just like his daddy, a useless hunk of no good who couldn’t find his ass with both hands free. Probably gonna grow up to be a drunkard whoremonger too.
Beatrice has always stood by him. Always. So how can he be a bad man for standing by her too? He just did what he had to to keep Bee happy.
Newspapers don’t understand those kinds of things. They describe everything as black and white: they have to have a villain. But he just did what any loving husband would do. Newspapers don’t understand that nor mirrors.
Henry sprays the toilet down and then wipes it off with a thick blue paper towel. When he’s done with it he walks to the next stall and gets to work cleaning that one.
Ian does not drive straight home after work. Instead of taking Crouch Avenue down to Crockett, he cuts south at Wallace, drives past the U-Haul rental place, and pulls into the dirt parking lot in front of Paulson’s Feed Store. He could lose his job for doing what he’s about to do, but somehow he doesn’t care. He cannot let Andy continue to hold Genevieve and Thalia hostage in that house. It isn’t right. He has to do something.
He pushes open his car door and walks across the dirt to the front door, and then through it. The feed store is filled with the dusty but not unpleasant smell of feed pellets and hay. Andy is nowhere to be seen. The place seems abandoned. It is silent and still. Then the sound of movement from behind the store.
Ian walks through the place and into the shed area out back.
Andy is there with hooks in his hands, loading three bales of hay into the back of Vicki Dodd’s old Chevy pickup truck. When he is done, he throws the hooks onto a stack of hay bales and slaps the back of the truck two times. ‘See you next week,’ he says.
Vicki’s liver-spotted hand pops out the window, her truck starts, and then she’s gone, leaving Ian and Andy alone.
Andy turns to him and smiles. ‘Ian,’ he says. ‘What can I do you for?’
‘We need to talk.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s about Genevieve.’
‘Aw, hell, Ian, I feel awful sorry about that. I swear it’ll-’
But Ian doesn’t let him finish. He rushes Andy and grabs him by the throat with his left hand, drawing his SIG with his right. He slams Andy against the sheet-metal wall, which sends a noise like thunder through the entire place, and puts the gun to Andy’s temple.
‘You’re goddamn right it’ll never happen again.’
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I’m telling you, you dumb son of a bitch, that if you so much as touch a hair on Genevieve’s head again, I’ll kill you. You got me?’
‘She was trying to leave. She was gonna take Thalia. You of all people must understand that. She’s all I got and she was-’
Ian slams the butt of his gun against Andy’s temple. Andy lets out a grunt of pain, and his knees buckle. Ian continues to hold him up by his throat. After a few choking gasps, Andy manages to get his feet back under him.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’
‘Listen, Ian-’
‘Shhh. I don’t care. She tries to leave again, you just let her leave. If she stays you’ll ruin that little girl. She’ll end up with some fuck-up like you. You love her, you let her out of your grip. You understand that?’
‘I’m trying not-’
‘There’s no trying here, Andy. I’ll kill you if you touch Genevieve again. I will kill you dead and put you where no one will ever find the body. Do you believe me?’
Andy nods.
‘I want you to say it.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Good.’ And it is good, because though Ian only came here to frighten Andy, he finds that he is telling the truth. He has it in him to do what he is threatening. He could pull the trigger and simply be done with it. But he does not. He reholsters his weapon and takes a step back.
‘See you around,’ he says.
When he gets home, he pulls out the phone book and sets it on his lap, flipping through it till he finds PAULSON, A. amp; G. He dials the number and waits. Genevieve picks up after four rings, and a tentative ‘Hello?’ escapes her mouth.
‘Genevieve,’ he says. ‘It’s Ian Hunt.’
‘Ian. .? Oh, hi, did. . did something happen to Andy?’ Ian might be mistaken, but he believes he hears hope in her voice.
‘No,’ Ian says. ‘But I wanted you to know that if you should decide to leave, he won’t try and stop you. We had us a serious talk, and he knows better now than to do again what he did this morning.’
With a saucepan in hand, he walks to the couch and sits down. He sets the pan on the table and stirs the ramen noodles inside before forking a dripping mass of them into his mouth. Then he grabs the files the sheriff’s department photocopied for him and sets them in his lap. He flips one open. Jamie Donovan was kidnapped from the bedroom of her home in Mencken in 2002. She was eleven. Her body was found in a ditch four days after she went missing. It had been posthumously sodomized and mutilated. There is a picture of her in the file, a color photocopy on a letter-size sheet of paper. Brunette. Sad brown eyes. Something timid in the way she held herself.
His cell phone rings. His first thought is that it’s Jeffrey. He drops the fork into the pan and picks up his phone. He glances at the number. It isn’t Jeffrey.
‘Hello.’
‘Ian.’
‘Deb.’
‘How are you?’
Ian scratches his face. His beard is growing in. It itches. ‘I don’t have any updates on Maggie. I’m sorry.’
‘I know.’
‘You do?’
‘Bill.’
‘Right. I guess he’d know.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So why are you calling?’
Debbie doesn’t answer for a long time, though Ian can hear her breathing.
After a while Ian says, ‘Are you and Bill fighting?’
‘No, it’s not that. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve called.’
‘It’s okay. I’m not busy.’
‘You never stopped believing she was alive, did you?’
‘I never stopped hoping she was alive.’
‘You never doubted?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘But you never gave up hope.’
‘No.’ Ian grabs a bottle of Guinness from the coffee table and takes a swallow.
‘How did you. .’ More silence. Then: ‘I saw the way you looked at me yesterday.’
‘How did I look at you?’
‘Like you wanted to strangle me. Like you hated me.’
‘I didn’t mean-’
‘I guess I deserved it.’
‘You didn’t. You have a life-a new husband, the twins-and you have every right to want to live it. I shouldn’t blame you for that.’
‘But how did you-’
‘Because it’s all I have.’ He looks down at Jamie Donovan’s picture, and then closes the file on it. The image is still in his mind. He takes another swallow of his Guinness. The mental image changes. Maggie. She smiles at him. Then she looks over her shoulder. A man appears behind her. He is out of focus, so Ian cannot identify him. His face a blur, as if smudged out with a wet eraser. Maggie screams and turns back to look at him. ‘Help me,’ she says. ‘Daddy, please.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Debbie says.
‘ “Now I am dead you sing to me.” ’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. What else do I have, Deb?’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘I don’t get drunk anymore.’
‘You quit drinking?’
‘No. I just don’t get drunk.’
Debbie is silent for a long time. Then: ‘Do you think if what happened with Maggie didn’t, hadn’t, do you think we would have made it? You and me, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘Why not? We were good for a long time.’
Not even breathing from the other end of the line: silence.
‘Deb?’
‘I’m glad she’s alive, you know.’
‘I know. You just wanted an answer and you gave yourself one. The only answer that made any sense, really. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you would have been right. Seven days later it would have made sense to assume the worst. Seven years later it would have been insane to think anything else.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
She sniffles on the other end of the line. ‘Have you told Jeffrey?’ she says.
‘No.’
‘You should. He feels responsible, you know.’
‘I know, but I don’t know if he wants to hear from me.’
‘I don’t either,’ Debbie says, ‘but he needs to know and you need to tell him.’
‘I still love you, you know.’
‘But life happens.’
‘Right.’
‘Okay, Ian.’
‘Okay,’ he says, then hangs up the phone. He opens the next file.
THREE
Ian makes a right onto Crockett Street and heads north toward work. As he drives he passes the Skating Palace, Bulls Mouth Theater (where they play whatever was on most screens six months ago, the scratched film rolling through a projector that runs louder than the sound system), Wok House, Morton’s Steakhouse, a Dairy Queen, and several other places.
He makes a left onto Crouch Avenue and drives past Interstate 10, Bulls Mouth Baptist Church, the petting zoo, and is rounding the bend that borders the north side of the Dean woods when he sees a police cruiser up ahead. It’s rolling in the opposite direction, headed toward him. Its horn honks and the driver’s side window comes down. The two cars stop side by side and Diego nods at him.
The Dispatcher Page 9