The Heart Has Reasons

by Martine Marchand

  She met Jarvis’ eyes in the rearview mirror. “Why are we here?”

  “I found myself in the mood to do a little target practice and decided to bring you along.”

  As he signed them in at the front desk, Larissa hung back. She didn’t like him paying her range fee any more than she liked that he’d bought her numerous meals, even though it was probably the Bureau’s money he was spending and not his own. But since she’d missed nearly two weeks of work, she could ill afford to pay for herself and, in any case, he’d brought her here against her will.

  She sullenly followed the two men through the heavy doors that led back to the firing range. Jarvis motioned her into a shooting booth and stepped in behind her, while Doctor Harris hovered just outside. He clipped a paper target to the carrier and hit the toggle switch to send it about twenty-five feet down range. He then unzipped a leather gun case, removed a large semi-automatic, and placed both it and a box of ammunition on the shelf before her. “Ladies first.”

  She frowned at him, then looked down at the weapon before her. A Colt .45, the same model Chase had carried. Recalling Jarvis’ suggestion that her kidnapper had killed Sparrow, she realized he wanted to see if she could handle the weapon. To see if she even knew how to fire it.

  Well, he was going to be disappointed yet again. She put on the protective glasses and earmuffs, while Jarvis and Harris did the same. With an economy of motion, she pressed the magazine release button, dropping the magazine from the weapon. She loaded seven rounds into it, slapped the magazine back into place, and racked the slide.

  Stepping her left leg back, she turned sideways to the target in a one-handed shooter’s stance, took careful aim, and fired all seven rounds, the bone-jarring recoil jolting up her arm. When the magazine was empty, she laid the weapon on the shelf, removed her earmuffs, and turned to Jarvis, eyebrows raised in silent challenge.

  He toggled the switch to bring the target back to them, and regarded it expressionlessly before grudgingly admitting, “Nice grouping.”

  “Thank you. May I go home now?”

  CHAPTER 34

  James ‘Mad Dog’ Kavanaugh leaned against the rear brick wall of the public housing apartments and watched a flock of children who should have already been called in for the night run shouting past him.

  The complex was a blighted scar on the urban landscape. The buildings squatted on a barren dirt yard as blighted as the lives of the people who lived here. Everywhere he looked, rubble, broken bottles, and other assorted trash littered the ground. A chain-link fence enclosed a playground area where the rusty swing set’s one remaining seat dangled from a single chain.

  A constant stream of people, many of them clearly drug addicts, entered and exited the common doors of the buildings. Prostitutes lounged on doorsteps, calling out to the men that passed. Televisions blared with mindless sitcoms from wire-embedded glass windows thrown open against the heat.

  The firefly flicker of cigarettes drew his eyes to where a small group of men shot dice in the square of light thrown onto the parched ground from an open window. The place reeked of hopelessness and misery, and he realized with a start that he felt no safer here than he had in Afghanistan.

  Mad Dog knew that he and the big Native American, Randy ‘Roach’ Tallchief, were conspicuous as all hell. Even Travis Barker, who was himself black, stood out from the residents. From the suspicious manner in which people eyed them while giving them a wide berth, Mad Dog knew that most of the inhabitants likely believed them cops, which was probably just as well.

  Just that morning, he, Travis, and Roach had acquired Travell Parnes and Andre Gant and had driven them out to Roach’s desert cabin. The two had, after the judicious application of a little physical persuasion, both agreed to recant their stories against Chase. They'd also informed them as to where they could find Malik Waddell.

  The rear door of the apartment building stood open. The grim, graffitied vestibule reeked of cigarette smoke, stale urine, and cheap whiskey. The stark fluorescent light in the stairway only added to the bleakness. Across the lobby, Travis peered back at him through the propped-open front door. Beyond, Roach was a shadow under a tree.

  Mad Dog looked around as one of the prostitutes cautiously approached him. “You the po-po?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  She was probably no more than thirty, but years of drug use and toothless gums made her appear twice that. “You not vice?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna blowjob? Only five dollars.”

  Mad Dog had no idea what the going price was for a blowjob but, in his considered opinion, the woman was severely overcharging. She had a sore in the middle of her lower lip — hopefully nothing more serious than a crack-pipe burn — and his stomach clenched at the thought of that mouth touching any part of his anatomy. “No, thanks. But I might be willing to part with a five for some information.” Seeing the interest quicken in her face, he asked, “Do you know Malik Waddell.”

  Her face rearranged itself into harder lines. “Yeah, I knows that motherfucker.” She eyed him for a moment. “You the one what put him in that chair?”

  “Sadly, no. Have you seen him around today?”

  Her expression changed to one of trepidation. She glanced uneasily about and lowered her voice. “He at his mama’s.” Jutting her chin upward, she added, “Second floor.”

  That was exactly what Parnes and Gant had said. Relieved at the confirmation, he pulled out a five and handed it to her. A crafty expression came over her face as she eyed his wallet. “You sho’ you don’ want no blowjob?”

  Suppressing a shudder, he pasted on a strained smile. “I’m sure. Thanks anyway.”

  Clutching the bill, she wandered off in search of the nearest street-corner pharmacist.

  * * * * *

  Malik Waddell shifted his weight to one side and shoved his gatt under one leg. He hated being crippled, hated being in this fucking chair. And the worst part was that it’d be another month before the casts came off.

  Leaving his mom passed out and snoring on the couch, he took the elevator to the first floor. As he rolled through the lobby, soft footsteps approached from behind. He twisted his head around to see a red-haired white man coming toward him. When he rolled through the front door, a light-skinned, black man pushed off the wall. The two men were big, and, by the look of them, 5-0.

  The black cop said, “What’s up, Malik?”

  “Who the fuck you?” he snarled.

  “There’s no need for hostilities. We just want a word with you.”

  Motherfucker. If they found the gatt, he’d be going back inside for parole violation. His chair lurched forward as the white cop started pushing him down the short ramp, moving quickly. When Malik grabbed a wheel with his one good hand and tried to stop the chair, something pressed against the back of his neck with a crisp crackling sound. He instinctively tried to flinch away, but too late. Pain blazed along his spine and through his torso as his entire body tensed into one huge muscle cramp. Invisible flames singed his toes, his fingers, the top of his head. Jerking and flopping, his body refused to respond to his commands.

  Finally, the worst of it stopped and the violent spasming diminished to a nervous twitching. His head lolled on his shoulders as the white cop pushed his chair toward the street, one hand on his shoulder to keep him from pitching forward out of the chair.

  Ahead of them, the black man hurried down the sidewalk toward two dark sedans. A huge, pockmarked Indian, his long black hair plaited into two braids that hung forward over his wide shoulders, waited beside the open trunk of a Crown Vic

  Belatedly, Malik remembered the gatt beneath his thigh. He commanded his good arm to reach for it, but the arm refused to obey. When he tried to shout for help, the only sound out of his mouth was an inarticulate groan.

  The black man and the Indian hoisted him out of the chair as easily as if he were a child and dumped him unceremoniously into the trunk, heedless of his plaster-casted limbs. “Well,
well,” said the white man. “Look what Malik was sitting on.”

  The fact that they’d found the gatt was, at that moment, not his most pressing concern. What the fuck was going on? Who were these motherfuckers. Cops wouldn’t be putting him in the trunk. As the black man shoved a ball gag into his mouth and velcroed the strap behind his neck, an image of the woman tied up and gagged in the back of the van flashed into his mind.

  Was that what this was about? Were these three motherfuckers friends of the motherfucker in the ski mask who’d jacked him up?

  The black man grabbed him by the throat, cutting off his air, and leaned down until their faces were only inches apart. “If I hear any noise back here, any thumping or banging, I’m gonna stop, Taser you again, and rebreak your legs. Feel me?”

  Malik had regained just enough motor control to nod his understanding. The trunk lid came down, leaving him in total darkness. Two car doors thumped shut, and then a third from the second vehicle. Two engines started and the car shifted into motion.

  Over the soft shush of wheels on pavement, the ragged draw of his breath was loud in the darkness. Through the intervening wall of upholstery, he could barely hear the two men talking, their voices muffled. Where were they taking him? More to the point, were they going to kill him?

  They drove for what seemed like hours. Despite the fact that the night had grown cool, he poured sweat. The car left whatever highway upon which they were traveling, and bumped down what seemed to be a gravel road.

  Aw, fuck. He was too young to die.

  When the car braked to an abrupt halt, he pitched forward, banging his casted arm painfully against the wall of the trunk. The engine shut off and the car rocked with the shifting of weight as the two men got out. Doors thumped shut, and he could hear the heavy crunch, crunch, crunch of feet coming toward the rear of the vehicle.

  A key sounded in the lock, the trunk lid opened, and two sets of hands reached in to yank him to an upright position. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim light coming from the moon high overhead.

  The second dark sedan was parked next to the Crown Vic. Nearby, a small, neat cinderblock cabin stood one story tall and barely twenty-five-feet wide beneath a roof that sloped toward the rear. A deep porch ran the width of the house and two massive clumps of pampas grass stood to either side of the wooden steps. The bladelike leaves stirred and rustled in the warm desert breeze, the tall, feathery panicles glowing white in the moonlight. Off to one side, another cinderblock building squatted, this one clearly a tin-roofed garage. They were the only two buildings in sight.

  The surrounding moon-silvered parched landscape of the desert stretched away in all directions for miles, without so much as a single tree to relieve the utter starkness. Overhead, a multitude of stars freckled the night sky.

  Ah, fuck. The motherfuckers were gonna put a cap in him and bury him out here in the middle of nowhere. Then a terrible memory flashed into his mind, the scene from the movie Casino in which Joe Pesci’s character was buried alive in the desert. The thought that they might do the same to him made him nearly piss himself.

  The distant, lonely ululations of coyotes interrupted the quiet desolation, causing goose bumps to prickle his skin. Or maybe they weren’t gonna bury him at all. Maybe they were just gonna dump his body and let the coyotes and buzzards eat him.

  Absolute terror made him reckless. When they hauled him roughly from the trunk and set him to balance on his good leg, he struck out at the nearest one, the big, pockmarked Indian. With a movement that was almost casual, the man knocked his arm aside and, with a hand like a steel vise, grabbed him at the juncture of neck and shoulder and squeezed.

  A scream ripped from Malik’s throat as he frantically tried to lower himself away from the pain. As his chair struck the back of his calves, he collapsed back into it. The Taser connected with the back of his neck and, once again, his eyes rolled back in his head as his muscles cramped with a mind-numbing agony. He flopped and jerked in his chair like a puppet under the control of an epileptic master.

  Someone began wheeling him across the sandy ground toward the garage. His chair bumped over the doorsill, and then he was inside. In the moonlight that streamed through the open door and two opposing windows, he got a glimpse of two pairs of wide, frightened eyes blinking in the darkness.

  A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling flared into life. When his eyes finally adjusted, his bowels went hot and liquidy to see Travell and Andre handcuffed, gagged, and tied to chairs. Pouring sweat, both were much the worse for wear. Both appeared to have pissed themselves, which he himself was at serious risk of doing.

  The three men rolled him up to a bare wooden table and stood staring down at him. The white man cracked his knuckles with a sound like fireworks. When the black man removed the gag from his mouth, Malik sputtered, “You ain’t no motherfuckin’ po-lice.”

  “We never claimed to be the ‘po-lice’. But it was somewhat remiss of us not to introduce ourselves. I’m Mr. Black.” He jabbed a thumb at the big Indian. “This is Mr. Red. And my pale-faced friend over here is Mr. White.”

  What the fuck? Mr. White? Mr. Red? Managing to paste on a manufactured façade of bravado, he demanded, “You motherfuckers think this be some kinda ‘Reservoir Dogs’ shit?”

  The black man turned to the big Indian. “Mr. Red, it appears Malik’s a movie fan. How about you show him what you can do with a straight razor.”

  A dribble of piss escaped Malik’s body. “No, man, I ain’t no fan!”

  “No? Well, I guess we’ll just have to improvise.”

  Malik suddenly realized that coming across hostile might not be in his best interests. Pasting on an expression of friendly entreaty, he looked up at Mr. Black. “Why you doin’ this, my brother?”

  Two huge hands shot out, the fingers stabbing into his armpits, the thumbs digging into the muscles at the edge of his chest. His breath involuntarily hissed in between his clenched teeth as a wave of agony engulfed him. When the man finally released him, he leaned down so their faces were only inches apart. “Bitch, I am not your brother. You’d best remember that.”

  Malik sucked in a deep breath. When the pain eased enough that he could speak, he asked in a very small voice, “Why you doin’ this?”

  “Our friend is in jail because of you punks, and we’ve brought you here to persuade you to recant your stories.”

  “What ‘recant’ mean?”

  “It means you’re going to tell the FBI that you lied about seeing a woman in our friend’s vehicle. Your homeys have already agreed.”

  Mr. White went over to remove Travell and Andre’s gags. “Tell him.”

  Abject terror distorted Travell’s face. “Malik, man, you gots to do what they says.”

  “Yeah, bro,” Andre agreed. “They gonna hurt you bad if’n you don’t.”

  Mr. White uncapped a bottle of water and held it to Travell’s mouth. After Travell had greedily drained the bottle, he did the same for Andre. Watching this performance gave Malik hope. Maybe he wasn’t about to die after all. But since Travell and Andre were watching, he needed to man-up and stop acting like a little bitch. They looked up to him. “Man, I ain’t recantin’ a motherfuckin’ thang.”

  Mr. Black’s hands shot out and stabbed into his armpits again. He struggled to accept the pain that lanced through his torso, ripping at muscles and tendons, but his mind and body refused.

  After a seeming eternity, Mr. Black released him. “What I’m doing is known as a pain-compliance technique. In other words, I administer pain to you and, in return, you comply with my wishes. This particular technique is rather mild compared to some others I know. So, did you, or did you not, break into my friend’s vehicle?”

  Malik swiped at the tears streaming down his face. His armpits throbbed with a pain that refused to abate. “Man, I’s on parole. If’n I tells them that, my black ass goin’ back inside.”

  “Yeah, I heard you did time for raping a fourteen-year-old girl. I also heard y
ou were preparing to rape the woman in my friend’s vehicle. Does it make you feel like a man to force yourself on a woman?”

  It did, of course, but assuming that “yes” would not be the best possible answer, he simply shrugged.

  “I heard you sodomized that little girl. You ever been sodomized, Malik?”

  “Fuck, no!”

  Mr. Black grinned. “Guess that means I’m getting a virgin.”

  Before Malik could protest, the other two men yanked him up from his wheelchair and shoved him facedown across the table. Due to the two Tazings, he was unable to summon enough motor control to put up much of a fight. Mr. White snapped a handcuff around his left wrist and fastened the other end around one of the table legs. Mr. Red duct-taped his casted wrist into place around another. Mr. Black then yanked his pants and drawers down to his ankles, baring his ass.

  Thrashing wildly, he screamed, “Wha’ the fuck you doin?”

  “I want you to see what it’s like to be raped.”

  The big Indian, Mr. Red, said, “Mr. Black, you need some Crisco or something?”

  “I’m sure this bitch doesn’t give his victims the benefit of lubrication, so why should I do so for him?”

  The black man walked around behind him. Malik screamed, “No, man, please!” Travell and Andre would be sure to tell everyone how this motherfucker had fucked him up the ass like a bitch. He’d lose all street cred. “You can’t do this to me.”

  Behind him, he heard a zipper slide down and then something hard shoved against his asshole. Clenching his buttocks together as tightly as he could, he screamed, “Please! Don’t do it!”

  A moment later, Mr. Black appeared in front of him. Malik blinked through tears to see that the man’s jeans were zipped. He clutched a four-foot length of one-inch diameter bamboo in his hands, and Malik realized with relief that the bamboo was what had prodded him.

  Although Mr. Black’s face was deceptively placid, there was something very scary in his eyes. “Unlike you, I’m no rapist. Not to mention that you aren’t my type. But you’re going to pay for what you’ve done. You ever heard of caning?”