by J. S. Bailey
LUPE HAD cried for awhile after Graham left, but she forced herself to stop when she realized that weeping wouldn’t remedy her situation.
Nor would killing herself. She understood that now. In the past she’d thought she wanted to die, but in reality she simply feared living.
She supposed she had Graham himself to thank for her newfound self-preservation. Telling Randy about her meetings with Graham had taken an enormous weight off of her chest, and even better, Randy didn’t hate her for obeying Graham’s order to vandalize his car. That’s what she had feared the most: losing the only human being who had ever cared about her.
And she wasn’t about to lose him now, either. He would encourage her to be strong, so strong she would be.
She stood with her back to the bedroom door in order to better assess the situation. A: The bedclothes could be cut into strips (with what?) and made into a rope so she could lower herself from the window to the ground outside. B: The window would first need to be smashed. C: She would have to firmly tie the makeshift rope to one of the bedposts. D: In order to smash the window, she would need to use the lamp because there wasn’t anything else available for her to use unless she took the bed apart with tools she didn’t have and broke the window with one of the posts.
Was nothing ever easy?
The lamp base consisted of cheap metal colored to look like brass. If she put enough force behind it, it might cause the glass to shatter anyway.
In order to minimize the mess, she removed the shade and unscrewed the bulb, setting them off to the side. Padre, let this work.
She gripped the lamp in her fist, brought her arm back, and bashed the base against the glass as hard as she could.
The metal bent upon impact but had no effect on the glass.
She gnashed her teeth and tried it again. The glass remained intact in open defiance of her intent.
She sank to the floor, trying not to let her tears flow anew. So she couldn’t break the glass. Big deal.
Lupe stared at the bent-up lamp base. The felt-coated bottom cover had popped off, exposing its wiry guts.
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the bed.
Maybe things were meant to come to this. She was a sinner, far worse than many. Some people spoke of karma. You do horrible things, horrible things happen to you in return.
Thing was, Lupe held great remorse for the things she’d done. She had cried herself to sleep at night begging God for mercy more times than she could count. That had to mean something.
Be free.
Yes, she wanted to do that. Be free from sin and this house. She could only do the former through the grace of God. She would have to do the latter on her own.
She lifted her gaze and stared at the door. For the first time she realized its hinges were in the room with her. If she could remove the metal pins holding them together, she would be able to pull the door out of its frame, run to the nearest house, and ask to borrow the owner’s phone since Graham informed her she would not find one here.
If Graham had wanted to properly contain a prisoner, he should have had the door installed the other direction so the hinges weren’t accessible to those trapped inside the room. This oversight on his part made her wonder what else he hadn’t thought of.
She walked up to the door, pinched the top of the pin in the bottommost hinge, and tugged upward, but it wouldn’t budge. She paused, took a breath, and tried again. Her fingers kept slipping off the metal without getting a decent grip.
She let out a curse in Spanish. Her escape couldn’t be thwarted like this. She would need to use something to pry the pin out of its place. Something like . . .
The lamp base.
Her heart began to flutter.
She picked up the lamp again and hooked the bottom edge of the metal around the head of the hinge pin. This has to work. This has to work. It became a mantra in her mind. Maybe if she believed it with all her heart, it really would work. Faith could move mountains and heal lepers. Surely it could open a door, too.
“I’m going to pull the pins out of the hinges,” she said to the room. “I’m going to do it, and then I’m going to get out of here.”
At first the metal lip at the bottom of the lamp kept slipping off the head of the pin, but finally it caught and she managed to slide the pin upward a few millimeters. She felt a sudden lightness about her. “I’m going to get out of here,” she repeated, “and then I’m going to run.”
There. The first pin was out.
In order to reach the top pin with her makeshift tool, she had to drag the bed over to the door and use it as a ladder. Soon that pin, too, was free.
She pulled the door out of its frame and dragged it aside, then rushed down the stairs. The front door sat mere yards away from the bottom step. It suddenly seemed too good to be true. She was walking into a trap. As soon as she put her hand on the knob, Graham would materialize in the entryway and shoot her.
She shook her head and stepped forward.
When she tried to turn the knob, it wouldn’t budge. Panic welled up inside of her. Graham must have rigged the front door with a lock requiring those leaving the house to have a key.
Perhaps the location of the door hinges wasn’t an oversight at all.
But maybe there was another exit not rigged like the front.
She raced through the kitchen to a mudroom at the back of the house that Graham had never showed her before. There—a rear door! But when she tried it, its knob wouldn’t turn, either.
She’d been stupid to think it would work.
Not knowing what else to do, she ran back into the front room with the purple walls and the crucifix and parted the drapes so she could try to figure out exactly where she was.
Tall conifers lined the roadway on the other side of the street, which lay a slight distance away from her. Someone driving by would be able to see her standing in the window if they happened to divert their attention from the road to look at the house.
She remained transfixed by the sight of the outside world. Normal people lived out there. They didn’t know she was here. They didn’t know she existed. Which made her wonder: how many houses had she driven by in her life that contained someone like herself trapped behind its walls?
She put her hand on the glass. Be free.
But how could she be free? She would have to have tools . . .
That was it.
Tools. Which Graham kept in the basement.
She swiftly descended to the basement floor and held her hand over her nose. It didn’t smell right down here. Graham had admitted to killing God knew how many people, so maybe everything in the dank room had become permeated with the smell of death over the years. Like blood and sweat and corruption all combined.
It wasn’t something she wanted to think about, but she couldn’t stop. There was the table where Mary had lain. Clean now, but not so clean. Dozens of people could have died in that very place over the years. Maybe even hundreds.
When had he found the time to do it?
As Lupe scanned the shelves for anything approximating a sledgehammer, a red spiral notebook lying on a workbench caught her eye.
An odd compulsion made her flip the cover open to see what Graham wrote in it.
The upper right-hand corner of the first page was dated October 5, 2000—almost fifteen years before. Then, in Graham’s neat script, the following had been written:
Lindsey Montgomery. 36 years old. Religious background: Episcopalian. Thinks “diet Catholic” jokes are funny. Has one sister who lives in Idaho; doesn’t often speak with her. Loves milkshakes and always dreamed of being a singer. Did some volunteer work at a soup kitchen in Eugene. Has cystic fibrosis. Not expected to live much longer. Says she can’t wait to see God.
Halfway down the page, the ink switched from blue to black and the handwriting became slightly less legible.
She wouldn’t stop screaming. It can’t have been that bad. They say they want to see God but the second the
y realize they’re dying they suddenly regain the will to live. Hypocrites! She’s no different than the others. She kept saying her sister’s name and then started calling for her parents. Wouldn’t tell me what she saw. And to think of all I did for her!
Lupe glanced at the ceiling. No sound came from above. As much as she wanted to hurry up and find something to aid in her escape, the contents of the notebook had rooted her to the floor.
Hands shaking, she leafed to another page at random.
August 3, 2001.
James Arnett. 57 years old. Religious background: Catholic, but hasn’t attended Mass for years. Says he believes in God but doesn’t see the point of going to church and sitting in a pew for an hour each week. Worked as a mechanic for 35 years; had to quit because of health. He isn’t sure he wants to meet God because God allowed his wife to leave him for another man.
In his final moments James said he saw light. I hope he was telling the truth and wasn’t merely trying to appease me.
It scared Lupe to see into Graham’s most personal thoughts like this.
It scared her even more when she realized she’d just wasted valuable minutes doing so.
She slipped the notebook inside her sweatshirt so she could study it more later on. Cursing herself for becoming distracted, she eyed a hammer hanging from a pair of nails protruding from a large piece of plywood leaning against the wall.
Perfect.
She lifted it from the nails and carried it upstairs. Breaking out the front picture window might draw the attention of a motorist, but it would also instantly alert Graham to the fact that she had escaped once he returned to the house. Breaking out the back might buy her a little time because Graham might not immediately realize she’d gone and might even still be there when the police arrived to take him into custody.
That is, if he didn’t go upstairs and notice the bedroom door was no longer in its frame.
She returned to the back mudroom. The south-facing window seemed to beckon her. Be free.
“I’m going to escape,” she said. “And everything is going to be okay.”
She drew back the hammer.
BOBBY FELT an odd case of the giggles well up in his chest when he backed his Nissan into the driveway of a vacant house across the street and about a hundred feet down the road from Randy’s home.
It was probably nerves. Nothing about their situation should have elicited laughter.
Bobby forced back his inappropriate mirth to better focus on the situation. They hadn’t seen the gray car on the route back to Randy’s house, and none of them had any desire to sneak up the lane and report back on whether or not the car still occupied the driveway.
“How long are we going to sit here?” Bobby asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the driveway entrance. Trees completely hid Randy’s house and garage. Living that far back from the road might have made Randy more comfortable, but right now not seeing what was going on back there created a huge inconvenience for them.
“As long as it takes,” said Randy.
Phil leaned forward so his head was between the two front seats. “He might not even be here anymore. We could be wasting our time.”
“But we don’t know that. If you have a better idea, please let us know. I’m all ears.”
“You know my idea,” Phil said. “Call the police and let them handle this. But you won’t listen to me, so I don’t know why you bother asking my opinion.”
“Maybe we should all be quiet and pay attention,” Bobby suggested. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a dark look pass between Randy and Phil, and thankfully neither felt the need to reply.
Minutes ticked by in silence. The sun passed in and out of clouds, and Bobby had to roll down the windows when heat began to build inside the car.
Phil slouched back in the rear seat with his gun resting in his lap, but in front of him Randy remained leaning forward in rapt attention.
More minutes passed. Bobby wondered how members of law enforcement stayed alert during stakeouts because his own consciousness was starting to ebb like Phil’s.
“He could be waiting for you to come home,” Phil said at last. A fly had entered the car through one of the open windows and he waved a hand to shoo it away.
Randy shrugged. “True.”
“We could be waiting here for hours.”
“Somebody’s got to cave eventually.”
“You think Graham’s going to be the one to do it? For all we know he’s planning on camping out until you show up.”
“Fine,” Randy said. “If he doesn’t show within the next fifteen minutes, you can march yourself right up the driveway and take a peek at what he’s doing.”
Bobby pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you want someone to go take a look, I can do it. If I cut through the woods he probably won’t see me.” Not that he had any real desire to get out of the car.
Phil began to interject. “I don’t really think that’s—”
A gray vehicle became visible through the trees across the street and paused at the entrance of Randy’s driveway with its right blinker on.
Bobby’s heart nearly leapt into his throat. He started the engine and eased out onto the road the same instant the other car pulled out and headed for town.
“Keep back a little bit,” Randy said in a low voice as if he feared Graham would hear him at that distance. “Try not to make it look like we’re following him.”
Bobby nodded. He wasn’t stupid.
A bead of sweat rolled down his neck and into his shirt as Randy’s driveway and the surrounding woods disappeared into the distance. He strained to see the person in the vehicle in front of him but all he could see was the back of a dark-haired head.
He tailed the car back into Autumn Ridge, allowing a car to merge between them to help avoid suspicion. They traveled a few blocks into the denser part of town and turned. Traveled a few more blocks. Let another car merge between them. Turned again. Traveled a few more blocks. Turned again.
Just as Bobby realized he’d passed the same Starbucks twice, Phil let out a mild oath. “He’s taking us in circles!”
Bobby tried not to let despair take hold of him. “Maybe he just does this normally to make sure nobody’s following him.”
“Or he’s smart enough to realize that a particular silver Nissan has been behind him this whole time.”
Randy remained silent. Bobby sent him a mental thank-you. He wouldn’t have been able to pay attention to their quarry if they started arguing again.
Bobby began to pride himself in keeping them on Graham’s tail, thinking that following the man who wasn’t named Paul last night had been God’s way of giving him some practice in the art of vehicular stalking.
No sooner had he thought this when his pride received a hearty slap in the face. Bobby got stuck at a traffic light, and Graham didn’t.
The three of them watched helplessly as the gray car receded into the distance and disappeared as it turned onto another street several blocks away.
“Nice,” Randy said. “Did anyone get a look at his plate?”
Bobby felt his pride take another blow. In the heat of excitement at following the car, he’d forgotten to look. “I think there were some letters in it.”
Phil began massaging his temples.
When the light changed to green a minute later, Bobby was at a loss about what to do. Even if he happened to guess the correct side street that Graham had taken, the old man would be long gone.
“Any ideas?” he asked as he brought the car up to speed.
Beside him, Randy cleared his throat. “Do you want to show us that house you found?”
“What house?”
“The one you followed that guy to last night.”
Bobby tore his gaze away from the busy street to glance over at his passenger. “Why do you want to go there?”
“Just an idea I had all the sudden. That’s all.”
“Any objections?” Bobby asked, lifting his eyes to the rearview m
irror.
“At this point I don’t care anymore,” Phil said, looking resigned. “Just do whatever Randy says.”
THEY ARRIVED at “Paul’s” house several minutes later only to discover that, like earlier that morning, nobody was home.
They sat in the driveway in silence. Bobby drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and glanced at the road behind him. Beyond it lay an abandoned auto parts store of some sort. Too bad they couldn’t go over there and ask about who lived in the house.
“Now what?” Phil asked. “Surely you don’t think whoever Bobby saw at church last night was Graham.”
“I don’t think that at all,” Randy said. “Bobby, you said Paul needed to speak with me. Right?”
“That’s what he said. But I guess he could have been sent there to kill you and invented the whole needing-to-meet-somebody thing when he found out I wasn’t you.”
“Or he really intended to meet someone there, and he really wanted to talk to me.” Randy unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door. “You coming?”
Bobby pointed at the empty place where a vehicle should have been parked in front of the small garage. “Nobody’s here.”
“That’s what you think.”
Bobby glanced to Phil, who merely shrugged and put his gun away once more.
They got out and followed Randy to the porch. Randy immediately began rapping on the door.
Bobby opened his mouth. “I said—”
Randy waved his hand in dismissal. “You assume too much.” He knocked again to no avail, then stepped back and eyed the door as if contemplating sending a kick through it.
Phil folded his arms. “Randy, I strongly suggest—”
Randy cupped his hands around his mouth and started to bellow. “Hey, Paul! Are you home? There’s some people out here who want to see you.”
Bobby felt his cheeks turn pink. It was starting to look like Randy’s mind had finally cracked under pressure like an egg.
Phil ran a hand over his face. “God, help me.”