by Paul Cleave
“Water tastes better here,” he says. “In prison, by the time the water makes it to us about half a dozen guards have already spat in it. Or worse.”
“Dad. .”
“Kingsly was the driver, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, minus the man you ran over, there are five more.”
“Three more.”
“Three?”
I give him the details. “The monster got them,” I add.
“Okay, son. Well, I have another name that can help.”
“Who?”
“Not so fast.”
“What?”
“Twenty years is a long time,” he says. “The air inside, it tastes different. It tastes stale, it tastes of desperation. At night, tough men who try to kill you during the day cry. In winter it’s always so damn cold and in the summer it’s so damn hot and. . twenty years, son, twenty years is a long time.”
“It’s still better than what the women you killed got.”
“Is it? Is it really?”
“I think if you could ask them, they’d agree.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says.
“The name?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“What?”
“You want that name, you have to take me with you.”
“They have Sam, Dad. Give me the goddamn name.”
“I know they have Sam.”
I point the shotgun at my father’s chest. He flinches. “I’m not messing around, Dad.”
“You going to shoot me?”
“If I have to.”
“How’s that going to help you?”
“It’ll make me feel better.”
“That’s my boy,” he says, and then smiles. “But you’re not going to pull that trigger.”
“Oh?”
“Too noisy. You won’t make it out of here.”
“Don’t be so sure about that.”
“And you’d be leaving without a name. You could look around, maybe try to find some drugs or tools to torture me, but the quickest and easiest option,” he says, then rattles the handcuff against the frame, “is to take me with you.”
“I can’t.”
“You can if you want to get your daughter back.”
Take him with us. Things will go a lot quicker.
“Keys?” I ask, pointing the gun at the guard.
“I, ah. . don’t have them.”
“Yeah you do,” Dad says. “They have to in case they need to rush me back into surgery.”
The guard stands up slowly and digs into his pocket.
“There was a time when there’d be more people guarding me,” Dad says. “Back when I was younger, when I was somebody to be feared. Now, nobody knows who I am.”
“That’s funny,” I say, “because everybody knows who I am.”
The security guard leans in and unlocks the cuff, then pulls away fast, expecting my dad to try dragging a scalpel across his throat. Nothing happens. My dad lies in the same position and massages his wrist.
“I’m going to need a wheelchair,” he says.
“You can’t walk?”
“I got stabbed today, son, so no, I can’t walk. At least not that well.”
I point the shotgun at the guard again and give him a fresh set of instructions, and a few seconds later he’s lying on the floor naked with one hand wrapped through the base of the bed frame and cuffed to his ankle. I take his phone and keys and step back to the other side of the curtain. The other five men still appear to be asleep. A nurse walks past the open doorway to the corridor but doesn’t look in. She’s probably so used to never seeing a security guard sitting outside the room that she doesn’t notice him missing. I give her a few seconds’ head start, then follow her out. She goes one way and I go the other, heading toward a row of wheelchairs I spotted earlier.
I get back to my father and half of me expects him to be gone and the other half expects him to have killed the guard, but nothing has changed-he’s still lying on the bed. I slip the IV needle out of his wrist and help him into the security guard’s clothes, which are a bit big but better than the hospital gown. He winces and breathes heavily, and does more of the same when I get him into the wheelchair. He holds his hands over the area where half a day ago surgeons were busy at work, and he keeps them snug against the wound as if trying to hold parts of himself inside.
“Stay quiet,” I say to the guard. “Let us get out of here without having to shoot any nurses.”
“Okay.”
I have to put the gun in my father’s lap so I can push the wheelchair. We reach the corridor. Dad’s hands don’t ever extend beyond the wound. We reach the elevators. I hide the shotgun behind my body when the doors open on the ground floor, then put it back in my father’s lap when nobody shows up. I wheel him out of the hospital and out into the parking lot and past the same group of teenagers leaning against the van, who show interest in the shotgun by all becoming immensely quiet. I help Dad into the car and can’t figure out how to fold the wheelchair into the boot, so leave it behind. I figure this entire thing should have been more difficult. I figure getting in to see my dad should have been hard enough, let alone getting him out. I figure a few years ago it would have been. A few years ago there were enough people left to care enough about paying one or two cops overtime or shifting some resources to have them sit beside him. If they can’t pay them enough to protect my daughter, they sure won’t pay them enough to guard an old man.
“Where to?” I ask.
“First I need some food.”
“Dad. .”
“I haven’t had a real meal in twenty years, son.”
“We don’t have time.”
“We’ll make the time. I’m sure there’ll be a McDonald’s on the way.”
“On the way to where?”
“On the way to the next name on the list,” he says, and I pull away from the curb and follow my father’s directions.
chapter fifty
Turns out the Serial Killer choice of food isn’t a Happy Meal, but a Big Mac. Dad complains how it falls apart in his hands but still eats it as I drive, probably faster than any Big Mac has ever been eaten.
“I don’t think your doctor would approve,” I say.
“Probably not,” he answers, following it with a Coke, “but he probably wouldn’t have approved of me being stabbed either.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Not much to tell,” he says, then takes another bite.
I keep driving. Dad works away at the fries. When he’s done, he balls up the wrappers and tosses everything out the window.
“Dad. .”
“What?” he says. “People don’t throw things out the window these days?”
“Where are we heading?”
“It all looks the same,” he says. “Newer, maybe, but not much. A couple of apartment complexes, some new homes, other than that it’s like I was here yesterday.”
“Fascinating, Dad, it really is. Now, where are we heading?”
“You’ve killed four men starting with Shane Kingsly, is that right?”
“Something like that.”
“So you’ve been listening to the monster, as you call it.”
“Something like that.”
“And now the rest of them have Sam and you’re going to do what it takes to get her back.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that we’re certainly alike.”
“We’re nothing alike.”
“Whatever you say, Jack.”
“Where to?”
“You know what, son, suddenly I don’t feel so good,” he says, and he grips his stomach.
I slow down. “I’ll take you back to the hospital.”
“No, no, it’s not that. My stomach’s bloated. Oh shit, I need to find a bathroom. This food, I haven’t eaten food like this in twenty years, oh shit, oh shit, this is going to be bad.”
“Just hold on,” I
say.
“That’s great advice, son,” he says, doubling over and holding an arm across his stomach.
I make a left and drive to a nearby service station, pulling up around the side where there’s a bathroom door and Dad, hunched over, makes his way inside. I wait inside the car and five minutes later he comes back out, his skin even paler than when he went in.
“It’s going to take a while getting used to the outside world,” he says.
“Don’t get too used to it. Once I get Sam back I’m taking you in.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Get in the car, Dad.”
He gets in the car and we’re back on the road. His skin is clammy and he doesn’t look too good: I’m not sure whether it’s the food or the stabbing he took earlier in the day. The roads are empty except for an occasional taxi taking the drunk home, or other killers out there looking for their daughters.
Dad gives me the address and I punch it into the GPS unit and it gives us the directions. Dad stares out the window watching the city, remembering it as best as he can. Occasionally we come across a new intersection that confuses him, but for the most part he knows his way around. I wonder if I’d be doing as good a job as him if I’d been inside for twenty years. I suspect there are plenty of other things my dad is still good at, other things that instinct and muscle memory would help him complete.
The neighborhood the GPS directs us into is another of the areas hit heavy by the virus-only this one has been hit by a rust epidemic too: the cars parked out front are all beaten up and gardens as dry as a bone. It’s all out of date, as if the GPS has brought us to 1982 instead. Dad’s still wobbly when I get him out of the car, but nowhere near as clammy as he was ten minutes ago.
“Tyler Layton,” Dad says.
“He one of the guys?”
“He’s why we’re here.”
I look at the street and the houses and the cars and I think, I’ve been here before, maybe not this exact location but certainly one just like it, certainly in a similar frame of mind to the one I’m in now, except instead of the monster in the passenger seat it’s my father-a different type of monster but a monster nonetheless. Maybe we’re all here, Dad’s darkness and my monster riding in the backseat, chatting to each other, comparing stories and wagering on the outcome of the night. Schroder was wrong when he said the city is on a precipice. He’s wrong in thinking it can still be saved. Just ask Jodie.
“Tell me about him,” I say.
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“There has to be something.”
“What do you want to hear, son? That he’s a bad person who has whatever is coming to him coming to him?”
“Something like that.”
“Let’s go inside.”
I follow Dad up to the front doorstep. We’re only a couple of hours away until the dawn lights up this part of the world. It’s becoming routine to me now. I knock on the door a couple of times and wait a minute before knocking again, and when the guy comes to the door I jam the shotgun into his face-and the rest is so familiar now I don’t even need the monster.
Tyler Layton is exactly like the kind of person you’d expect to hold up a service station or a bank with a shotgun-except maybe a bit older than I’d expected. A shaved head with tattoos adorning his scalp, prison tear tattoos raining down his face, he’s around ten years shy of Dad’s age. He doesn’t say a single word from the moment he sees the shotgun to the moment my dad finishes tying him up with cord he cuts from the venetian blinds. We don’t get into any semantics about right and wrong and the ends justifying the means.
“Start talking,” I say.
“About what?”
“About my daughter. Where is she?”
“This your son, Jack?” Tyler asks, watching my father.
“Answer the damn question,” I say to Tyler.
“I don’t know anything about your daughter,” he says, keeping his eyes on Dad. “Been a long time, Jack. The security guard uniform doesn’t suit you.”
“Not that long,” my dad says. “Not for me. Seems like it was only yesterday.”
“It’s been four years,” Tyler says.
“Where’s my daughter?” I ask.
“What’s he talking about, Jack?” he asks my father.
“What the hell is going on here?” I ask.
“I knew your father real well,” Tyler says, “if you catch my drift. Quite a few times if I remember correctly-though after the first few times I stopped remembering. Was it the same for you, Jack?”
“Tyler here was kind enough to introduce me to one of the darker elements of prison,” my father says, but there is nothing kind-sounding about his voice at all. “He was there when I first got thrown in jail. My first night there and he broke four of my fingers and cracked two molars and shredded my asshole so hard I couldn’t sit down for a month. I was barely fixed up before he went at it again. He was in and out of jail over the years, but he always came looking for me.”
“And now you’ve come looking for me,” he says.
“What the hell, Dad? Does he have anything to do with Jodie or Sam?”
“No,” Dad says.
“Then why are we here?”
“If we had more time,” Dad says, talking to Tyler, “I’d cut you apart piece by piece.”
Tyler doesn’t answer him. For all his attempts to act as if he doesn’t care, like this is just one more day in the life of one really tough bastard, there is a fear in his eyes identical to the look in that dog’s eyes twenty years ago when it was chomping on a steak full of nails. He tightens the muscles in his arms.
“I always knew prison was going to be tough,” Dad says. “I always knew it was going to be one of those places that turns out exactly as awful as you figured it would be before you ever set foot in the place. Thing is-” he says, and then I interrupt him.
“Dad, we don’t have time for this. Sam is out there, we have to find her.”
He looks at me, his eyes sharp, cutting into me. After a few seconds, he nods.
“You’re right, son,” he says. He puts his hands out. “The shotgun?”
“No,” I say. “I didn’t free you so you could kill people.”
“Yes you did.”
“Not people who have nothing to do with what happened.”
“Give me the gun, son.”
“Don’t give it to him,” Tyler says.
Give it to him. Let him take control for a bit. We’ll get over this speed bump and find Sam.
“He’s a bad man, son. If we turn our back on him other people will suffer for it.”
Give him the shotgun.
“Do you want to know how many people he’s hurt? How many women he’s raped? Women like Jodie? Teenagers like the kind of girl Sam will become?”
I hand him the shotgun.
chapter fifty-one
It’s all happening so fast. The night is becoming absolute chaos. Jack Hunter has escaped-helped by Edward-and Schroder has to push that fact to the back of his mind right at this moment and deal with it soon. At this rate he’s doubting he’ll make it home on Christmas Day for even five minutes. His wife will hate him, his daughter might too. Thankfully his son is only a few months old so at least somebody won’t be pissed at him.
The Armed Offenders Unit is running at about 50 percent, the other half having already left for the holidays or drunk already and not returning Schroder’s calls, giving him a team short on manpower but a team nonetheless, still extremely capable. Schroder has already died once tonight and doesn’t want that to be the start of a pattern. He has a better use for the team than he did half an hour ago, with them driving around looking for Hunter.
When his cell phone rings again, it’s Anthony Watts, a detective who is currently with Edward Hunter’s in-laws.
“They don’t recognize any of the photos from the files,” Watts says. “I mean, the only one they recognize is the victim lying dead on their living-room floor.”
Kelvin Johnson is on the top of the list of six names he printed out, predominantly because three of the other people are dead-including Ryan Hann, who died by pencil. Bracken wasn’t on the list, giving Johnson a one-in-three chance of being the first. Incarcerated nine years ago for the robbery of a jewelry store in which a sales assistant permanently lost the use of one arm after he shot her, Johnson was released four years ago and upon his release had contact with his parole officer once a week for two years, then once a month for the following year. As of a year ago the justice system was satisfied that Kelvin Johnson was a model Christchurch citizen, having undergone the exact amount necessary of jail time and a probation period afterward.
Johnson lives in a government-subsidized house in an area of town that seems to attract violence the same way rotten food attracts flies. At the moment they’re all parked four blocks away, a miniature command post set up.
“Two things,” Schroder says, and the team of men listen intently. “First, we don’t know for a fact Johnson was part of the robbery. Second thing is, even if he was, we don’t know that he has anything to do with Sam Hunter being kidnapped, or if she is here. That means we need to be careful; we need to make sure there are no slipups, and that we get him in one piece. Any questions?”
There are always questions. They spend another ten minutes going over it. When they’re ready, two vans pull in to the street where Johnson lives, one from each side. A drive-by three minutes earlier had confirmed there were no lights on inside the house, and no signs of life. A team of two people are parked on the street behind the house in case Johnson climbs the back fence in an attempt to get away.
The Armed Offenders Unit members move quickly. They’re all dressed in black and they hit the house hard and fast, busting in the door, and then there’s thirty seconds of shouting and no gunfire. Schroder and Landry wait out on the street, and a minute later Johnson is led out in a pair of pajama bottoms and handcuffs.