A Kiss Before I Die

by T. K. Madrid

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Okay. So here’s what. I’m going to knock on the door, tell whoever answers it that I’m bo-f’ing-peep and then I’m sending ‘em all to hell…”

  “Now who’s not thinking clearly?”

  “Sammy, I’m captain of the debate team, two years running, state semi’s this year, and I can out talk any redneck that comes within fifty miles of me.”

  “Which high school?”

  He scoffed.

  “I swear to god, how did you get this far? Junior, Syracuse University, class of twenty-fourteen.”

  She shrugged, feeling oddly embarrassed.

  Shaking his head, he reached into the console and waved a package of beef jerky.

  “Hungry?”

  She was almost faint.

  “Starving.”

  “So am I. Eat this. Let’s get our game face on. I’m not going in there hungry and needing to take a leak. I’ll go first. There’s jug of water behind your seat. Fill your belly.”

  The door opened, the dome briefly lit, and she saw the jug.

  The boy who was not a boy, whose father was dead and whose mother might be dead, stood in the middle of the dark road, enveloped in bitter cold and facing sideways in a snowstorm pissed like a racehorse.

  (17) Thin Ice

  She came from the woods, relieved, and found him sitting on the tailgate of the Bronco, pushing his feet into an old pair of boots. He’d put on a camouflage hunting jacket, pants, and matching hat.

  The engine idled. The sun was gone. There were no other cars on the road.

  “Always this quiet out here?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “This is the boonies of the boonies.”

  “No kidding. I thought I lived in the sticks. Here,” he gave her a black jacket, thicker than the one she wore. “This, too.” A black cotton, hunting cap, a roll down hat, thick.

  “Thanks…”

  She changed swiftly.

  The water and the jerky, the warmth of the clothes, which smelled of tobacco and a sort of musk, all of it made her feel better, had her thinking clearer. She secured the hat over her ears.

  “What’s the biggest thing you’ve killed?”

  “Deer,” he said.

  “What kind of gun?”

  “No gun. Bow and arrow.”

  “You’re kidding…”

  “Check it out. This is awesome.”

  He dug around and found arrows and a bow, the lot of it in two black cases. He unsheathed and unpacked it all and it on the tailgate.

  “I even have these packets I made for flaming arrows. Kerosene, cotton, hay.”

  He held up a plastic bag.

  “Shit smells awful.”

  He put an arrow into the device and pulled its bow as if to fire.

  “He soars through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze…and then, thwack! He’s a dead fucking duck.”

  “You’re taking that?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  She went to the rear passenger door and found two .45’s and matching clips.

  “What’s with these?”

  He was playing with the bow, tweaking it, as if he was tuning a violin.

  “Plain old protection.”

  She nodded.

  “You don’t mind?”

  “No, help yourself.”

  She checked them: safeties on, clips, clean.

  “You really weren’t going to kill me were you?”

  “Nah, I figured I’d wound you at worst.”

  He turned the bow and arrow on her.

  “Make you bleed a little.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Why don’t you leave me?” she asked. “Seriously.”

  “I already said. You’re taking me to dad and I’m not going to leave you out here hobbling around like that guy in The Shining.”

  “Okay. So let’s be clear on what we’re doing.”

  “Fire away…”

  “Number one, you’re not walking through the front door. That’s my job. You’re the rear guard, the outside protection. I want you to go to the barn.”

  She’d come to him now.

  The tailgate was up, the rear window closed.

  He was dressed in his hunting gear, bow and quill slung over his shoulder, the AK in his hands.

  “Okay. I appreciate that,” he said.

  “He’s in the far right corner. I put a tarp over him.”

  “That’s, uh, generous.”

  “Listen, you’re not killing anyone. I’m not. We want these idiots alive. We’re looking to wound them, okay?”

  Tyler gave her a mocking laugh.

  “You thought I thought that. Jesus, Sammy, I want to graduate next year. A little scuff up with a murderer is one thing a good bar story, but killing another human, that’s another world I’m not joining you in.”

  “I didn’t kill your father. Wilcox did.”

  “Prove it.”

  “The gun he used was in his possession. He gave it to me earlier, a trick, so now my prints are on it. The detective I stole the badge from knows this. By now, they have that gun and are running with the belief I killed your father. But what they don’t know is I found your dads wallet and phone in the glove compartment of Wilcox’s truck.”

  “In Wilcox’s truck? My dad’s shit is in Wilcox’s truck?”

  “I put both under the driver’s seat, in the seat. The phone’s been disabled.”

  Tyler looked away from her.

  “You’re saying that’s proof.”

  “I’m saying it’s what happened.”

  He turned his attention to her.

  “It’s thin ice.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  “It’s not believable.”

  “Then why are their men at my house?”

  “Because you’re a murderer.”

  “And why aren’t they the police?”

  He stopped talking.

  “Why aren’t the police swarming that house right now? You’d think there would be – what? A dozen or more police there, right now, warrants in hand, wrecking the place. They’re not. They’re not because the men that are there are venture capitalists. They’re after a thirty million dollar fortune my godparents willed me. The lawyer Wilcox manages the estate and it’s a good bet that he has been treating it as a piggy bank.”

  “So they killed my dad for your money. That’s still no sense.”

  “Wilcox said it was a mistake. Your father was in my house and Wilcox thought it was me.”

  “Ha! Right!”

  “He said as much. Your father came into my house, broke into it to find me.”

  “Why?”

  “To warn me. To save my life.”

  “Jesus, Sammy…”

  He stepped away but she caught his sleeve.

  “Listen! Three days ago, I didn’t know any of you people. I don’t need this. I have a house and my parent’s inheritance and I can live without you, any man, or other person. But your father, Tyler, your father figured out what was going on. Your mother was preparing to leave him for Wilcox. So your father came to warn me and to stop Wilcox. That’s when Wilcox murdered your father, thinking it was me. It was an accident, manslaughter, because Wilcox intended to murder me.”

  She extended her arm and pointed.

  “The man in the red Ford? Wilcox sent him to snatch me off the street. I fought him, hurt him, so when that didn’t work, he decided it would be easier to have me arrested, to stall me.”

  He examined her face, as she spoke, watched her eyes, her lips, and listened to her voice and inflection.

  “Tyler, I have dyslexia, I have trouble reading. I need another lawyer to verify the will and that’s what frightened Wilcox. It took him almost three months for us to meet. First, he wanted to give me time to grieve, then he wanted to give me time to think, and all he was doing was cooking the books, before I eve
n got close to the accounts. My only escape is to take Wilcox alive. We already have one key – the laptop. It has the contract, records, all of the other things that will prove what your father understood. Don’t you see it, Tyler?”

  He nodded.

  “All of them…alive.”

  “All of them.”

  “Wilcox?”

  “Him, yes, above all, him.”

  He spit.

  “Let’s do this.”

  They got in the Bronco.

  She drove.

  “Drop me at the edge of the property,” Tyler said. “I’ll snake over to the barn, check what you said and we’ll go from there. What’s your angle?”

  “I’m going to walk in as if I owned the place.”

  “Give me ten minutes?”

  “Sounds right.”

  She stopped a quarter mile from the house.

  He looked at her.

  “You know, if we get out of this alive…”

  “Oh, for god’s sakes…”

  “…I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again.”

  (18) The Fiction of Life

  She watched him walk into the snowfall, into woods and darkness. She waited with the lights off. No cars had passed them in well over thirty minutes. She kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, anticipating headlights, looking for any sign of activity.

  She wanted the police now. Let them come in by the busload. Everything would be settled within thirty minutes. The man – or men – in the house would fall like dominoes once she started. The surprise was hers and Tyler was an unaccounted for ace. The cruiser was probably accounted for, and Ruggles, Sebastian, if he was conscious, would be trying to recount things, although it was a good bet his memory would be influenced by embarrassment.

  Debozy, too, no doubt sober and thinking, remembering, would be coming to judgments both right and wrong, and was one of the jokers in the deck. She had no idea of his allegiances or how good a detective he was.

  She didn’t think Chief Augustine Henderson would be accommodating to anything Debozy said in his defense, so she hoped he would proclaim his innocence, tell her of his fear for his life and that would be all.

  Samantha was worried about Mrs. Burleson. She doubted she’d be harmed, but then murderers are rarely rational, and when one mistake occurs – like killing a former cop while in your murderous employ – others tend to follow.

  Her parents had been trained, had been commissioned to commit horrible acts. Her dad in particular had a unique insight when the occasional and horrible piece of news appeared.

  In the months before her father died, he’d said the Benghazi attacks and deaths were the result of a failed C.I.A. operation.

  “I’m telling ya, my people, my sources, they say there’s more than four dead. Next day, one of the C.I.A. annexes takes it in the ass, and that gets no airplay. Somebody screwed the pooch and they clamped the whole operation down. Honey, there’s wars being fought you never see in the papers or on TV, only in fiction. And sometimes the fiction of life nails it.”

  After ten minutes, she turned on the lights, put the SUV into drive and rolled forward for maybe a tenth of a mile before the engine stuttered.

  She tried starting it again.

  She examined the dashboard.

  The gas tank was empty.

  (19) Wondrous Life

  The cold and snow and weapons weighed on her as she limped to the house. The lights of the house illuminated the land around the house.

  She hadn’t thought to tell Tyler about the house lights, the motion sensor lights stationed at the corners of the house that stirred through the night detecting the rural creatures of night.

  That’s when she noticed the snow.

  Fifty feet ahead of her snow was falling.

  Where she stood, no snow fell.

  There was a perfect, straight line across the road, from her house to the open acreage across the road from the house, a veil of falling white, a curtain: a perfect straight line demarking where the snow stopped and started. No wind or force disturbed the snow. It was a long, white curtain that ran from the house to a dark, empty field, to land they owned and left fallow.

  Wondrous life, she thought.

  She stopped and watched.

  Miracles and wonders, she thought, remembering an old song.

  Then the lights of the house winked out and all that remained was the snow and the white glow of clouds, the glow of the earth itself, the ambient light of the world, the radiation of life.

  She limped forward toward the house and realized that not only were the motion sensor lights off but the lights of the entire house were extinguished.

  An arrow landed close by, a sharp thump in soft light.

  She ran and limped into the woods by the house.

  He thoughts were scattered between statements and questions, facts and conjecture.

  The power to the house was off.

  Was the lack of light defensive or offensive?

  Had the arrow been a warning or a threat?

  Run. Now.

  She jogged into the dark, into the danger of her home, fearful of nothing, not afraid to die.

  Living once was enough.

  (20) Shadows

  Other sounds, other voices. In the white glow of her world, the house stood out like the shadow of a ghost, there but not.

  She heard the clatter of feet on the porch.

  She saw the shadow of a Chevy Silverado in the long driveway, the faint outline of a police car, and the shifting words of the emblem of Foursquare Police, To Protect and Serve.

  She heard glass shatter.

  A moment later, the door opened.

  She recognized the man from the red Ford, his beard, the high forehead, his hair, and the white glow of a bandage on his face. He had a gun.

  She raised her gun and leveled it at him.

  He staggered down the porch, acting drunk.

  She fired. Instinct and fright colliding. She fired again.

  He stepped off the porch, spinning with the shots, seemed to look around, moving toward the Silverado, and collapsed. An arrow extended from his left shoulder, an odd exclamation point on a writhing body, nerves and synapses firing uncontrollably before fading to black.

  A bullet flew through the door. Then four more, rapidly, blind panic shots.

  There were more shots from the rear of the home and she heard them as she melted into the woods to her right, away from the house.

  A weird orange glow seemed to flicker from the top of the house and then another and another, rapid bolts of flame and light from the top of the house, the light coming from the woods, from left of the barn.

  Crazy.

  Flaming arrows.

  First he’d shut the power off.

  Now he was terrorizing and burning them out.

  She followed his lead, limped to the rear porch, and fired into the red Ford truck, deflating tires, shattering windows. It had the courtesy not to ignite until she rounded the front of it, pushing one bullet into its big block engine, catching a fuel line, sparking and then bursting into flame up and smoke.

  “You stupid…!”

  Wilcox was on the porch.

  “Just die!”

  “You killed Burleson!”

  “Who cares?

  He fired at her, four shots. One. Two. Three. Four. The fourth punctured her right leg, crippling her, sending her flat, and she cried out in anger and pain.

  Wilcox was unaware or uncaring of the arrows as the next flaming bolt of light came in so quickly he had no time to react. She saw the flicker of recognition, the shock and awe on his face. He staggered, an arrow in his left arm.

  She leaned up on her right elbow and emptied a clip at the house. Wilcox disappeared into its darkness. Then she saw a sharp light from inside the house, a gunshot, and then nothing.

  Her home was burning.

  At the top of the house were attic shutters, and two of them were open, the windows shattered, and f
rom them came orange and red flames and clouds of smoke. She’d played up there as a child, had been up there just a few days ago, opening trunks, finding old toys and mementos and memories. It was a beautiful room.

  Then a voice came from inside the house.

  “I’m coming out! Don’t shoot!”

  The voice was familiar.

  “I’m coming out! Stop firing! Wilcox is dead!”

  She said nothing.

  Vomit, acid, and bile roiled up from her stomach and she spit into the snow.

  The snow whipped around her.

  She waited.

  Say nothing.

  The spreading patch from her leg looked black and it twinkled in the orange flickering light of her dying home…it made her think of summer snow-cones on the pier at Sylvan Beach, her mom cradling her.

  “Here’s my gun!”

  A handgun landed in the snow maybe ten feet from her. She could feel the heat of the truck as it burned. She began to push away. The thing would explode.

  Detective Jeffery Debozy came into view, hands over his head, looking beat up, stunned.

  “I’m not armed! Where are you?”

  “Here,” she said. “Here...”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here!”

  “Oh, Jesus, shit!” he said. “It’s you…!”

  He put his hands down.

  She smiled.

  “Me.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  She was breathing heavily and her vision was distorted. Her right leg throbbed and her left foot was tingling.

  “What…?”

  “Ever see Die Hard?” He pulled a gun from his hoodie. “Shit-howdy!”

  She felt her heart pumping and her face sweating.

  “I don’t…”

  He squatted next to her, reached out, and pushed her hair from her eyes.

  “What a hangover, Jesus! You should’ve just gone out with me. We could’ve avoided all this mess.” He whistled. “You are hot. You know that, right…?”

  “You’re…?”

  “Look, I appreciate the confession and everything but you were wrong about Augustine. That daffy bitch couldn’t figure out to tie her shoes if she didn’t have her husband do it for her. Seriously, she’s like the best example for not having diversity in the work place. She’s a grade-A bully and not bright, neither.”