Simon stopped to glance back. Let my body drop. I saw my chance to escape, started to move and he swung the branch like a pickaxe at my legs. A pop as my left shin cracked, and I screamed and blacked out.
The second time, everything was still. I was sitting, propped against a tree. I tried to lean forward but couldn’t move. Simon had used the ropes from his hands to bind my arms to the trunk.
He must have broken my other leg while I was out. It lay twisted beneath me, bent at an awkward angle. I tried to move it, felt bone shift in a way it shouldn’t under my skin. Pain shot up my thigh and I squeezed my fists to stop from passing out again.
Movement to my left. I looked around and Simon was there, and the branch came crashing across my face and took most of my teeth with it. My tongue split and my vision cracked in two. He might have done more but I don’t remember.
When I came to for the third time I stayed awake. I’d been out for a while. The sun was different, the shadows longer. The pain in my legs was unbearable. My vision blurry and dark in one eye. There was vomit down my front and a strong smell of piss.
I couldn’t feel my mouth, couldn’t move my tongue. There was blood at the back of my throat and when I swallowed I felt a couple of teeth slide down too. I started crying.
Simon was sitting in front of me. On a tree stump, the branch by his feet. Blue eyes shining. He must have been there the whole time but I never noticed him until he stood up. In my cracked vision he was an eight-foot giant made of shadow and ink. I whimpered and tried to back away. I knew I couldn’t but it was a reflex. My limbs screamed with the effort and I reckon I probably did, too.
“You know, I really did want to work with you,” he sighed. Something metal in his hand. My switchblade. It was covered in blood.
I tried to say something. Not sure what. Please, maybe.
“You were talking in your sleep before,” he said. His face seemed to shift and melt as he spoke, and only his blue eyes remained constant. “You seem stressed, Thomas. I don’t think you’re cut out for this line of work.”
He crouched down until he was at my level.
“I wanted Mary to be a warning to you,” he said, reaching down to pick something up off the ground. “Of what would happen if you came after me. But I guess we can both see how well that turned out.”
When he brought his hand up he had something in his fist, and when he opened it I saw what it was and it saw me too. “You’ll just have to be a warning to everyone else,” he said.
He tossed it onto my chest and it rolled down my front and got caught in the dried vomit. Then he straddled me and my bloodied switchblade gleamed in the dying light.
“I’m going to take your other eye now,” Simon said calmly. “Try not to scream.”
Chapter Forty-Five
He left after that. Nighttime in the afternoon. Left me tied to the tree.
I could hear his footsteps as he walked, the crunch of pine needles fading until the forest had swallowed him whole.
I sat for a long time before I thought of it. I could feel the sun set and the temperature drop. Heard the rustle around me as twilight fell. I think something ran over my foot. The pain was still there, but somehow it was less. Maybe there’s only so much the body can register, or maybe I was just getting used to it. I’d lost all feeling in my hands, had pins and needles something fierce in my arms.
The recorder.
I wasn’t even sure if it had survived the ordeal. Wasn’t sure if Simon had spotted it and smashed it against a tree somewhere.
With what felt like the last of my strength I spat out a couple of teeth that were sitting near the front of my mouth. Managed to get my tongue moving. Thought back to how this had all started. Back to DC, back to Rachel and the bag of pills and driving down that long highway, cracked and uneven. Welcome to Cooper, it had read.
I started to talk. Stumbling at first, and not without some serious pain, but as I went on it got better. Not sure when it was I started now, but I reckon I can feel the warmth of the morning sun on my face so I must have lasted through the night. Don’t think I’ll last another but that’s alright. I’ve got it all out. Everything I did, every bad thing. Might be whoever listens to this finds some use for it, but even if not, well, it got me through the night and that’s a night longer than I thought I had when I started.
Mary had closed her eyes when she’d talked about this place. I wondered what she saw. If she was seeing it now, asleep in her hospital bed. It would have been nice to come here with her. In the fall, when the cottonwoods had gone orange. Spectacular, she’d called it. And somehow, despite everything, I managed to picture the colors forming around me, and I realized I was smiling.
One final message, and then I’m done.
I just bet this damn machine’s broken.
Rookie comes to collect me today. He can’t bear to look me in the eyes. I try to crack a joke on the way up, a real classic I heard back in Duluth that never left me. Why can’t Stevie Wonder see his pals? Because he’s married.
But Rookie isn’t really feeling it. His top button is done up and his tie is pulled tight, and just before we reach the top of the stairs I notice he’s shined his shoes.
Two men are waiting for us in the corridor. Both dressed in snappy suits, freshly pressed, with shirts so white I have to avert my eyes. I’m passed over to them and they lead me the rest of the way. I try to flash Rookie a smile but he can’t walk away fast enough.
They take me to a room—a different room, thank Christ. Still small, though; two chairs and a desk between them. I sit down on one and they uncuff me, ask if I want anything to drink and I say is a double Jimmy on the rocks out of the question and they say I’m afraid so, sir, and I’m not expecting to be called that, and I don’t like it, so I tell them I’m fine and they leave me alone.
I wonder where Tubby and Cumstain are today. Maybe they got taken off the case. Maybe they quit. Just woke up this morning and realized they couldn’t crack me. That they’ve been wasting their time trying. These new boys on the scene, clean-shaven and pressed suits, might be my deal has finally come through.
Luckily I don’t have to wait long to find out. Door opens and a woman walks in who I’ve never seen before. She’s short, with these big, stocky shoulders and a scrunched-up face. Her nose makes me think of a cartoon pig. She gives me a cold look, closes the door, and pulls up a chair. She’s got a paper folder in her hands and she slides it onto the table. I get so excited I feel my legs bouncing.
She tells me she’s Detective Pig Nose from Omaha. Something about working a connected case back in Cooper and being kept on to wrap everything up. I dunno, I kind of lose interest. The paper folder is all I can seem to focus on. Just open it, Pig Nose. Just open it!
She keeps on talking but I barely hear her. My eyes keep darting to the folder, my fingers dancing along the edge of the table. I lean forward and I guess I must look like I’m going to make a grab for it because Pig Nose pulls her gun and sets it next to the folder. All casual like. Barrel pointed right at my chest. I give a giddy laugh and sit back. I say Relax, Pig Nose, Piggy Piggy Pig Nose, and I hold my hands up.
Pig Nose stares at me with those cold eyes for a long while. Says that if this had been left to her we’d have an answer by now. Says she doesn’t usually make deals with people like me. I say gee, you kill a couple girls and no one bats an eyelid. You kill a cop and—
She slaps me. Hard across the face. I blink and jerk back, nearly knock myself off my chair. Pig Nose says I may have gotten the district attorney to agree to keep the death penalty off the table, but if there’s any justice in the world I’ll get shanked in the showers good and proper and left to bleed out down a dirty drain. I laugh at that and I swing back on my chair. I already know there’s no justice in the world and I tell her that.
Then Pig Nose spins the folder around and opens it up. Pushes it across the table for me to read. I lean forward and she takes her gun back but I don’t care about that. I’m
hardly about to risk what I’ve been holding out for these past few weeks. Pig Nose explains it to me as I read, like I’m stupid. Says that the agreement only stands so long as I cooperate with their investigation. Once I’m finished reading, I nod and she gives me a pen and I sign it. She closes the folder and moves it to one side.
She says they kept up their end of the bargain.
Says it’s time for me to keep up mine.
I say sure, what do you want to know.
She says she wants to know what happened in the woods. Says she wants to know what happened after. Says she wants to know where it all took place. Maybe I look confused or something because she asks me if any of this is getting through. She reaches into a pocket and unfolds a map. Spreads it across the table between us.
“I want to know where he is,” she says to me. “You understand? I want you to take your finger and I want you to point to him on this map. You show me where he is, or I take that agreement and shove it down your fucking throat. Now point. Goddamn it, point. Where’s Thomas? Where did you leave his body?”
And so I tell her.
I tell her how I was picked up by two greasy Russians as I tried to leave town. How they trussed me up like a prize pig and left me in the trunk of a car. I tell her about Thomas, about finally waking up and waiting patiently for him to let me out. She wants to know where and I tell her to hold on now, don’t get snappy at me, I didn’t mean nothing by that prize pig comment.
I talk about how Thomas beat on me a little when he stopped driving. Cut my head with his gun and I’ve got the marks to prove it, see? Pig Nose wants to know what I’m laughing at and I tell her that I can’t understand why everyone’s so interested in this guy. I mean, he’s a shit heel of a cop and Pig Nose says he’s still a cop and I say oh so it’s like some old boys’ club and she bangs on the table and says just get to the goods or some such.
Then it’s onto the hill, and how I got my ropes undone and managed to knock him out. I explain how he was going to kill me up there and what I did next, well, it was self-defense, wasn’t it. Any jury would see that. Pig Nose asks what I did next and I tell her about his broken bones and so on. She doesn’t say anything then but I see her gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles go white.
After that I talk about how I made my way out of the forest and back onto the main road. How Thomas’s piece-of-crap Impala refused to start. How I managed to flag down a lift from some chump in an SUV with an exhaust that rattled all the way to the next town. Chadron, it was. Bought myself a bus ticket for California because I was just about sick to the back teeth of this weather and fancied myself some sun. Course I didn’t even make it out of the state before your boys picked me up about an hour and a half into the journey. I’d just spent fourteen dollars on snacks and a copy of Hustler too, and wasn’t that just a waste of money.
Pig Nose shakes her head. It’s not enough, she says, and pushes the map toward me. Show me where Thomas took you, she says. Show me where you left him, she says.
I look down at the map. Tell her I never was a Boy Scout. She points to something and says that’s Cooper, alright? That’s Cooper and this is the highway leading out, just here, you see that? This is where Thomas would have taken you. Now you follow that road a while and you hit the Pine Ridge National Forest. Do you get this? Is this too hard to understand? You need to show me where in those woods he is. Where did the man in the SUV pick you up? He dropped you off in Chadron, and you were pulled from your Greyhound just outside Wyoming so that narrows it down but goddammit just point out the spot on the map so we can all go home.
And I sit there for a while. A long while. And suddenly I’m not sure if I can remember. I mean, obviously I can remember, but what happens once I tell her? Everything comes to an end, doesn’t it?
Wasn’t something I was rightly expecting to feel, and I thought I’d planned this thing out pretty well.
But there’s just no getting away from it. I’ve enjoyed my time here. And maybe some people would say that’s a sign of how shitty my life was before now, and they’d probably be speaking the truth. Or maybe I feel like I’ve just had enough. Little Jesse Kane and my mom, they taught me to go out on my own terms.
So I take a deep breath, sit back, look Pig Nose dead in the eye, and tell her where she can stick her fucking map.
Couple days pass. Nothing much happens.
I’m starting to think maybe I made a mistake, got caught up in the moment. I’ve been told I do that sometimes. I’m just about to start the last chapter of my book and I’m practically reading each letter aloud to stretch it out.
And then the door swings open. I pause, eyes glancing upward to see who’s come to visit me. I can hear voices talking in hushed whispers. A woman’s voice, at that. Telling someone she’ll be fine. I close the book and sit up straight, intrigued.
Tap tap tap.
Something is tapping against the sides of the stairwell. I see feet, pumps by the looks of them. Slip-ons, no laces. The beginning of dark jeans and a white stick going tap tap tap.
Holy shit, I think to myself. She’s come to visit me.
And true enough, after a slightly fumbling descent of the stairs, Mary is standing in front of the cell door. Walking forward until her stick clinks against solid steel. She stops then. Takes a step back.
She’s not changed much—beyond the obvious, I mean. No pink streak, mirrored sunglasses. I think back to how all this started. To the first time we met. Standing in the falling rain, watching her through her window. The music in her living room and the hushed sound of my wet shoes rolling along her wooden floor. It all seems such a long time ago now.
She stares forward, or at least does an uncanny impression of someone doing so. Her jaw set; a look of defiance.
“Simon Jacobs,” she says. Her voice is strong.
I slink back slightly into my bunk. I don’t want to speak to her.
“Simon Jacobs!” she says again.
I wish I hadn’t sat up after all. My brain keeps telling me she can’t see me but damn if it’s not unnerving. I start to stretch back out again, hoping she’ll get bored and go away.
My book slides off and clatters to the ground. Mary’s head tilts at the sound.
“I can hear you in there,” she says. “And I know you can hear me. So I’m just going to say what I came here to say and then I’m going to leave.”
I thought I heard her voice crack a little on that one. I keep quiet, my heart racing.
She says that she didn’t know Thomas very long. She says they weren’t close friends, but they might have been one day, and that she doesn’t have many of those back in Cooper. She says she knows I was with him at the end, and that she doesn’t care for what went on between us and that’s fine. At the end of the day it’s none of her business. She says that what I did to her she won’t ever be able to forgive. She says she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to move on. That her legs are covered in bruises just from trying to move around her apartment. She says she can’t work her record player anymore, and that’s maybe the worst thing of all. She says that Thomas was lost and that whatever point I was trying to make by killing him is made, and that there’s nothing left to gain from leaving him out there in a shallow grave, or worse, in none at all. Left for the animals to strip right down to his bones. She says Thomas was troubled, and that was alright because so was she. And that she hadn’t ever thought about what would happen if she met someone as messed up as she was, hadn’t ever thought about how it would end, but even if she had it wouldn’t be like this.
Don’t let it end this way, she says.
Then she starts to cry. There’s footsteps from above and a guard comes down to see if she needs help but she waves him away. She’s strong. Stronger than I thought. She stands there for nearly a minute, waiting to see what I’ll say.
I say nothing.
After the longest time she nods. Sniffs. Says that she had to try. Turns and starts to walk away. Tap tap tap. I
watch her leave and I think about what she said. The part about two messed-up people meeting. I guess spending the last few weeks here talking about my past has affected me more than I thought, because that part makes me think of my mom.
So I watch her climb the stairs, her body slowly disappearing from the top down. I get to my feet to keep her in view. And then, when all that’s left is the tip of her cane and the cuffs of her dark jeans and her slip-on pumps, I step up to the bars and press my mouth through the gap.
“Wait,” I say.
Epilogue
It’s been a few months now since it all happened. Life, I guess, is starting to normalize. It’s not the same, obviously. But nothing ever will be. My therapist tells me I need to find that “new normal”; a way of living that I can cope with. That I can look back over as I lie in bed at night and think: This was a good day.
I’m getting there. It’s slow going. Today was better than yesterday, yesterday better than the day before. I think the worst thing about it is the bruising. Not on my neck—that doesn’t hurt anymore—but on my legs. My shins ache constantly. I’ve knocked them into everything from the coffee table to the TV cabinet. I don’t even know why I still have a TV cabinet. I should get rid of it, I know, only then it would feel like the cabinet won.
So I’m just going to have to learn to get my bearings properly. I’ll get there. And I’ll work out a way to listen to my records, too. I can work the machine well enough, I just don’t have a clue what I’m putting on. Lionel Richie has been spinning on my turntable for the last three weeks now I think, and he was just an accident. (I was hoping for Pink Floyd.)
But maybe that’s not true, maybe the bruises aren’t the worst thing. Sometimes I can still see his face. I still see faces even though I can’t, you know, see faces. Other people talk about it happening at night. When they go to bed, when they close their eyes. And maybe that’s how it is for them.
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