by Knight, Dirk
Who he was before Lutz.
Now he was reduced to his basest, primal functional core. His root menu. All he was capable of at this point were thoughtless actions that predicated his survival and mitigated the pain. Shutting it out.
Carron reached to him and he snarled like a cornered bitch protecting her litter, then postured over the mess of food in the floor. Carron stepped away, one step back and was walloped over the head with a length of dryrotted board, which snapped over his skull. The blow resonated in his brain and rattled his teeth, which clenched out of instinct shearing off the tippy-tip of his tongue.
A tingly-twinge zipped down his neck and spine. The sciatica settled abruptly into his ass and his left leg gave out sprawling him into the dust and hay.
Before Lutz could run a step, Abigail was at the door, gun drawn.
“Freeze, asshole!” she shouted
The unarmed Lutz did just that.
“On your knees, you sick fuck, hands behind your head.” Again, he offered no resistance.
Carron’s head was ringing; he was trailing blood down both sides of his gaping mouth like Bella Lugosi’s Dracula, and his legs were boiled noodles under his weight, but he was able to gain his footing. He stepped towards Lutz with his pistol dangling at his side.
“You okay, Carron?”
He said nothing and leveled his pistol.
“Stand down Carron, we’re hauling him in,” she pleaded, but Carron emptied his clip slowly.
One one-thousand, into his face.
Two one-thousand, into his neck.
Three one-thousand into his chest.
Into his stomach.
Into his groin.
Abigail stopped her pleading, in shock and horror.
Ten one-thousand, again in the face.
Click-click-click-click.
The entire incident played out in super slow motion over and over in her nightmares, she had told him later. She had told him during the divorce.
He couldn’t help himself. There was nothing the justice system could ever do. There was nothing that could ever even scratch the surface of paralleling something that would be considered an adequate punishment for the monster crumpled at his feet, leaking all over the chaff and grit.
Even death was too good for him, especially a quick one at the hands of his .40 Cal Glock, but he had decided to leave it in God’s hands and give the families of the children a small piece of justice.
To help them sleep a little better.
When he saw those teeth in the jar, he knew what had to be done. That he wasn’t going to make any of the survivors or families deal with the unnecessary pain of a legal battle. He wasn’t going to allow some eager defense attorney prick to torture those children more and put them through the hell of reliving this wretched piece of time.
Case closed, sentence executed.
How could he have known? How was he supposed to know that the other stables were empty? That the final boy wasn’t cowering in his own stall with his own bowl of gruel.
McKenna had seen the shed from his chopper, just before they touched down in the clearing by the main house, or they may have never found him. As the Helo had descended, the rotor-wash pushed aside the sycamore bough just enough to reveal a corrugated tin roof less than a half mile from the stables.
This secluded shack was the killing jar. Evidently, he didn’t like to ruin the surprise, and didn’t want the other boys to know what was in store for them. Like a bug collector, he gathered his specimens and when he was ready to pin one to the corkboard, he would pick the lucky slug and seal the lid down tight, asphyxiating his prey and preserving them in his own little petrified forest.
McKenna told Carron to wait by the chopper; relieved him of duty for the time being, and he and Abigail trekked to the killing shack. A hundred yards or so through the harsh rugged woods in the freezing rain, and that’s where they found him.
Heath Brannan.
Wrists and ankles bound over a rusted fifty-five gallon drum with thin blue nylon rope, tied so tight that his hands and feet were purple and gangrenous. His wounds were identical to William Westin’s, as was his fate. Although he wasn’t left by the river, he never made it out of those woods.
Abigail told him that they couldn’t have saved Heath, that he was too far gone. She said that his death was an act of mercy and kindness form the Lord. That God had called him home to end his suffering. Carron didn’t think God had done a goddamn thing to help, and he knew, somehow just knew, that he could have saved Heath if he would have spared Leopold. If God had done anything, anything at all, it had been to punish Carron for taking Leopold.
He didn’t understand, he thought he was serving God, he thought that Leopold deserved to die and be judged, but evidently, God didn’t want to see the son-of-a-whore face to face any more than those poor children had.
If he would have asked first and shot second, Heath may have had a chance to live and overcome the horrors of his eighth year.
Maybe.
Abigail said he would’ve been crippled and permanently psychotic and that Kevin Harting was maybe the unluckiest of them all, because he had to live on and carry the horror, pain, suffering, anger, and confusion for the lot.
Carron’s emotions had been what made him a good agent, a good soldier, and now they are what makes him a good detective, but they had gotten the better of him that day and losing his head had also cost a boy his life.
Abigail never questioned his judgment call. “You had to make a decision in the moment,” she’d said. She forgave him, she said. But he hadn’t. And for the rest of their marriage he couldn’t forgive her for making light of it; for deeming it acceptable.
He didn’t have to be formally dismissed; he resigned out of shame. Abigail had tried to convince him that he was a good agent. That what happened could have been anyone else in the same situation. That he needed to keep working cases. She had friends with connections to Phoenix PD, and she helped get him on. Still, he never came back, not the way she remembered him.
She wasn’t the way he remembered her either. When she answered the phone, she sounded older, harder, and more distant. He was sure he wasn’t imagining the distance. She had gone to great lengths to put distance between the two of them. He spoke to her for five minutes: just the length of time needed to tell her about Evie, and to convince her to do him a favor, knowing that McKenna would have her ass if he were to catch wind of it.
“He’s a ghost, Abbie, and I know you can help me find him. I know he’s up north, somewhere, and I have no one else to turn to.”
“I’m only helping you because it’s her, you understand? I’ll meet you at the coffee shop in an hour. You know the one.”
“Thank you Abbz—”
“Don’t ever call me that again . . . not anymore. See you in an hour.”
She hung up the phone hard enough to rattle his eardrum, but he was just glad he had been able to enlist her help.
She was a bloodhound.
He was a hunter, but she was a magician.
After sitting down with a cup of coffee he doesn’t need, in a place he never liked, Carron gets to look across a table at her again. He has missed her. She is still beautiful. Classy.
“How’s Molly?” she asks. “Still think she’s trying to kill you?”
“It’s obvious she’s trying to kill me, but we’re getting on alright, I guess. You look great, Abbie.”
“Thanks Carron. You look like shit. I guess you’re not sleeping again? Although I can’t say I blame you given the situation with Evie.”
“Not really, no. What did you come up with?”
“The reason you couldn’t find anything is because you were looking for Dennis Foster, who, point of fact, doesn’t exist. Or, at least he was never born, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that his records were sealed. He has gone to a great deal of effort and spent a lot of legal dollars to change his past, and make it inacc
essible. You could not find Dennis Foster before ’94, because until ’94 he was Dean, Harold Michael Dean II, to be precise.”
“Just like the architect.”
“So, stop me if you’ve heard this. Anyway, the kid’s father, some well-known architect, committed suicide right in front of him—on the kid’s fucking birthday, no less—because he found out the old lady was cheating on him. Kid watched the whole thing and was alone in the apartment with the body for almost an hour . . . didn’t call for help, or leave, just sat there.”
“Harold-fucking-Dean, it was right there in front of me?”
“So, you have heard this before, I take it?”
“Not exactly. Just before I got spooked in the guy’s apartment, I saw his name in some old newspaper clipping.”
“Never could play by the rules, could ya?”
“Go on,” he says with a hint of a smile. The smile he feels perching in the corners of his mouth reminds him how incredibly lonely he has been.
How sad that the one living person who had truly understood him doesn’t want a fucking thing to do with him. And what’s more, he did it semi-on-purpose, because he was afraid not to push her away.
“Okay, so the kid lives with his mother for the next year or so but the father had set up almost all of the family’s wealth into a trust that she couldn’t touch. She would’ve gotten a truckload in the divorce, but the old man punched his own ticket and insurance don’t pay out on self-service jobs. She gets a little stipend as arranged by probate lawyers, but the only person with access to the real money is little Harold, or Dennis, whatever, who can’t do anything until he turns eighteen. She, Carla Dean, who now has the kid to herself, had earned a reputation around town as some kind of floozy, a couple of arrests for possession, solicitation, DUI, a real winner. Also racked up a couple other divorces from rich older guys and split with half their shit; kind of a grifter working the long con. Then, check this out, a few years—and I mean three years to the day—after his father’s suicide, mom kicks the bucket too.”
“What a great way to celebrate your birthday.”
“It was ruled to be accidental death by medical examiners, and the cops up in Show Low, who found her in the shower—busted-up face, drowned to death wrapped in the shower curtain.”
“Hold off, she was beaten and smothered in a shower curtain? This gets better all the time.”
“Officially, it was ruled an accidental drowning. She was a type one diabetic, and the autopsy confirmed that she had overdosed on insulin and fell in the shower, blacked out from low blood sugar. She was double the legal limit on blood alcohol content to boot. Case closed. The kid, with no next of kin, was placed in foster care and the trust set up by his father sat and collected interest.
“He was bounced from foster home to foster home for four years, until, when he was seventeen, he became a ward of the State. When he reached legal age, he got access to his trust.
“He changed his name to Foster when he turned eighteen. Kinda funny, in an odd sort of way. Foster kid, changes his name to Foster.”
"Funny, maybe, but nothing else about this guy is funny. I think it’s pretty obvious he had something to do with his mom’s death. We found another of his VICs done up the same in a shower. No insulin this time, but beaten to bloody hell. Fucking hick cops. Anyway . . .” he trails off.
“Sounds like your boy has a thing for bathrooms. There’s really not much worth mentioning after that, as far as events in his life; the foster parents cited various reasons for returning the kid to the state. Nothing violent. He excelled in school. When he turned eighteen, he broke up the trust, sold off all but one piece of property, and went to college at ASU. Moved to the city.”
“What property did he keep?”
“The summer cottage his father built; the home where his mother passed away. Here’s the address. It’s a fortress. Secluded, massive, gated.
“As a friend I can tell you, if this guy is hiding something, or someone, you would do best to check here. And since I know you, I know you are going up there, so be smart and bring backup. But, as an agent, Carron, I can tell you this is where my involvement with you has to end. I can’t risk McKenna finding out I helped you on a hunch. What we had ended in the divorce. I only helped you this much because I still love her.”
“Understood. Thank you, Abigail. I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t mention it. And Carron, one more thing,”
“Yeah?”
“You really should stop wearing the ring.”
It’s Just a Little Blood
Evalyn Chambers wakes up in a haze, confused and sweatier than she’s ever been. The overdose of Rohypnol and GHB is still crippling her cognitive abilities. She has no idea how long she has been out, nor any recollection of the events that have transpired.
All she knows for sure is that she has shit the bed. Or the cot, rather.
And what’s worse, is she has no underwear on, so the excrement has been wallowed in for at least one evening.
She flickers recollection on how her panties came to be removed, and screams in anger. She is getting bits of her last moments with Dennis back in little flashes, the panties, the food, the cut on her face.
The carafe.
Just before he came in she was working her way off the Godforsaken cot, and then he had paralyzed her and left her in her own feces.
Tensing with all of her might, she tests the bindings again. Her ankle, swollen to the point of constriction, is numbed and worthless under the confining tape. Her toes are nonresponsive and numb; she fears they may become gangrenous. Her right wrist is still somewhat moveable. Though only fractions of an inch, it will have to do.
The light entering the room is again on her face; morning. Her second? Maybe her third, she isn’t sure anymore. In any case, the light is weak, it is early and there will still be frost on the grass outside. She can see her breath, little wisps, even in the confines of the cellar. She can also get a fairish view of her wrists.
She is able to see through the gap she created during her earlier struggles, just enough to make out the floor below. She raises her head, craning against the band of tape threatening to choke her if she continues, and spits toward the gap, hoping to lubricate the tape and adhesive somewhat. There is little more than white foamy cottonmouth that flings from her split and sore lips. She tries again, but nothing.
A sudden bout of unabashed sobbing racks her tiny frame and consumes her for the entirety of a minute, her split lips and tortured throat warn her to stop, but she continues until she realizes the moisture she must be wasting on tears.
She is so fucking thirsty.
She tries, again, to piston the arm, to force a more sizable gap in the binding, but she is thirsty, defeated by her dry mouth, and the effects of the drugs are still weakening her.
While weeping she had pulled her lips back, tightened against her teeth, causing her already cracked and bruised mouth to tear open. Little patches of blood are beginning to stain her teeth and run into her mouth. The taste, so metallic and glorious, opens her eyes again. She knows what she must do to live.
It reminds her of the feeling when she pierced her own belly button. The sensation, the near audible pop, when the flesh was pierced. She feels it again when her tongue ruptures between her teeth. The flood of liquid into her mouth is immediate. Not only the blood, but also an unexpected backup supply of saliva has welled up beneath her tongue, like when you bite off an inflamed taste bud and the fluid brims up over your lower teeth.
The duct tape is reddening her throat now, as she cranes up again, for a better angle, to get a better shot, and takes aim. One coppery mouthful at a time she delivers the bloody saliva mixture into the widening gap, and adrenaline keeps her slender arm pumping and writhing as the moisture causes the adhesive to lose purchase on her skin. One by one, she delivers buckets of gore. She is sweating in the cold; steam is now coming off her legs and shooting like dragon’s fire from her nostrils. Her pump
ing and twisting is putting tension on the other bindings and she can feel the sweat reaching the places the maroon saliva cannot.
With one final, body tightening, and scream-filled tug, she tears her hand free from the worst Indian burn of her life.
She throws her head down onto the cot in victory and yells, blood boiling over from her open mouth, down her cheeks, and into her hair as she does. Reaching across her slender frame, she fails numerous times to get a handle on the tape confining her left arm. The red-tinged spit has coated her fingertips in a thick layer of plasma like mucus. Her fingers continue to slip from the tiny finger hold she had created with her nail.
Her eyes find the carafe, again.
Arching her body, straining her chest and forearms, her fingertips finally contact the cheap unpainted table. It wobbles under her slight pressure, causing the carafe to sway ever so slightly. She reaches farther still and, again, cannot manage the last inch to the smooth glass surface of the vessel. She pulls her hand back into her body, her cot, before desperately lunging a third and final time. The cot teeters in the slightest under her momentum, her spindly arm juts out like a missile, she has the momentum, she thinks she is going to make it, when pain snaps through her thoughts and interrupts her progress.
Her little finger catches on the lightweight table, bending the digit back in a flurry of firing synapses, the audible snap as it gives is louder than her memory of the car crash. She doesn’t have time to react to the broken pinky, though, because the table is in motion, and the carafe is falling away.
Instinctively she swipes her gnarled hand again, lower. She catches the leg of the stand just enough to bump it back upright, and send the glass tumbling her way.
Catch.
Oh dear sweet Jesus yes, she says to herself, feeling the cold surface pressed against her palm; her gimpy claw flapping uselessly against the smooth jar.