by Jonas Saul
“Narcissism is such a harsh word, isn’t it?” Deborah stopped moving just out of reach. “What’s wrong with loving oneself? What’s wrong with loving oneself so much that you take the people out of your life who would otherwise do you harm?”
“Untie me and I’ll show you how much I love myself and the things I would do to someone who would do me harm.”
“Exactly. And because of that, are you narcissistic? How about ego? Isn’t the human ego a wonderful thing?”
“Aren’t we all ghosts wrapped in a meat suit, made from atoms and particles that comprise everything else in this world?” Sarah asked. “Once the suit’s discarded, the spirit moves on. I have nothing to worry about.” She pulled on her ankle restraints, harder this time. Her skin tore where the rope had abraded it, blood dripped off her heel.
Luck had come Sarah’s way many times. She had never needed to knock on wood, nor had she ever been superstitious. But tied up on a couch and locked in a basement with a homicidal murderer who eats her victims wasn’t looking too good.
Was this a test for what Parkman went through as he was forced to his knees while she held a gun on him? Parkman knew her well. He knew that she wouldn’t pull a weapon on him unless she intended to use it. And yet Parkman didn’t beg for his life. She recalled his face and how it calmed in that moment. How he must’ve felt at that second, knowing it was his last.
Karma can be a whore. What a nasty bitch karma was to turn the scenario around and have Sarah at the precipice, looking over at certain death. Talking to Deborah, waiting her out was only stalling the inevitable. The restraints were so tight, she couldn’t move. There was no play here and no one knew where she was.
As Parkman must’ve felt in those last moments, Sarah felt now.
“I’m sorry, Aaron,” Sarah whispered, knowing this was the price she had to pay for the betrayal of her trust. “I’m so sorry, Parkman.”
“What was that?” Deborah asked.
Tears streamed down her face as blood dripped from her straining ankles. She had to try to loosen them. She always had to try. Sarah was no quitter.
“I’m sorry for what I did to you …”
“You’re sorry for nothing,” Deborah shouted. “I’ll show you sorry, you stupid, meddling piece of shit!”
Deborah brought her hand out of her pocket, swung her arm wide and slammed the side of her fist into Sarah’s thigh.
It was so sudden, Sarah didn’t react. Her reflex, a tiny jerk, only caused her to pull on all the ropes securing her. More blood dripped off her ankles and her breathing was momentarily choked off.
“What the hell was that?” Sarah screamed as she struggled with her feet, kicking them back and forth.
“Something for the pain.” Deborah smiled. It was the kind of smile a clown might use to ignite fear in the children he was about to terrorize at a cannibal county fair.
“What something and what pain?” Sarah asked, already feeling the effects of the drug.
Deborah walked the length of the couch. “You’ve been such a pain in the ass,” she said as she bent out of sight to pick something up. “So I’ve decided to eat as much of you as I can while doing my best to keep you alive over the coming weeks. How does that sound? You don’t have to die right away. Hopefully you’ll be around long enough that your torso will be a stump. Isn’t that what you want? To not die right away?”
“Well, kinda, but not on those terms.” She couldn’t believe she was answering that question so rationally.
She struggled to look the length of the sofa at Deborah who was now holding something in her hands. Her visionary field wavered, then righted and she saw what it was.
Deborah held a thick sledgehammer with a long handle.
“Whas … that for?” Sarah managed to get out.
“I always wanted to reenact what Kathy Bates did to James Caan in Stephen King’s movie, Misery. Did you ever see it? I’ve always been a big fan of Mr. King. Read everything.”
“Nooo …” Sarah said. But she wasn’t sure if it was just a thought or did the words come out.
The sledgehammer rose close to the basement ceiling. When it came down, Deborah swung it sideways.
Sarah felt the blow to her left foot like a freight train had bumped her as it raced past. Then extreme pain shot through body, contorting her in an awkward position, the ropes forcefully pulling on her neck. Moans came to her from somewhere.
The sledgehammer rose again above Deborah’s demonic, evil face. Her eyes were wide and hungry, her lips parted, her tongue stuck out between them, sluicing back and forth.
The sledgehammer fell.
Sarah’s body jerked again.
She was out before the second wave of pain arrived home.
Chapter 28
Detective Colin Lang stared at the ID in his hand and shook his head. Then he examined the papers that authorized the man in front of him to view all their files and do a walkthrough of the crime scene.
“I’m not sure how we can help you.” Lang handed the ID back.
“You only need to show me the murder scene. I will examine the files on my own time.”
“There have been enough people tramping through that house in the last twenty-four hours, you’d think a frat party had taken place there. What could you see that was any different from what we saw? My best guys are on this.”
“I’m merely an observer.”
“I don’t like this one bit,” Lang said, already forgetting the guest’s name.
“You don’t have to like it. This document isn’t a suggestion. It’s an order.”
Lang instantly hated this man and his documents. He hated his confidence and his swagger. And he looked like he had just finished a steak dinner with that fucking toothpick in his mouth. Lang had spent some time in Texas over the past decade, where he had heard them call a toothpick a raccoon bone.
“Fine,” Lang said to the Raccoon. “We’ll take my car.”
The detective led the way out of the police building. Once they were in his car and headed toward McKinley Landing, he asked, “Why would they send you all the way up from California?”
“Do you know who Sarah Roberts is?” Raccoon asked.
“A cop-killing homicidal maniac? That about sum it up?”
“Not exactly.”
Lang rushed to anger. “What the fuck are you talking about? She rented that house. The mutilated corpse of an RCMP officer was found in her basement, after, I might add, she was seen taking that RCMP officer inside the house blindfolded and cuffed. We even have the Jeep she drove with the officer’s DNA in the back. There’s no doubt.”
Raccoon looked out the window.
“Speak,” Lang ordered. “What did you mean by not exactly?”
“There’s nothing to say. I won’t be able to convince you. All you have so far is circumstantial evidence.”
“Circumstantial? Circumstantial? You want me to turn this car around?” Lang smacked the steering wheel. “Don’t sit there all smug and think you know more about this case than I do. I’ve been interrogating Greg Wright, the guy that entered the Garden of Eden with Sarah and helped her kidnap our Mountie. I know more about this case than you know about your own mama.”
Raccoon remained quiet, a demure look on his face as he stared out the windshield, chewing a colored toothpick.
“Okay.” Lang raised a hand in surrender. “I’ll stay calm. We’ll view the crime scene together. When we’re done, you can go back to your superiors in California and report your findings. I understand procedure. I don’t know what you think you’ll find at the horror house, but Sarah’s long gone. We’ve checked everywhere. I’ve got men at each bus depot and train station this side of Katmandu.”
“I’m sure you have. The RCMP is doing a fine job.”
“Is that sarcasm?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Hmmph.”
“If the grass is green when you go to bed at night and in the morning when you wake up, there’s
snow blanketing the yard, you can assume it snowed. The evidence that it snowed is on your grass.” Raccoon raised a finger. “But you didn’t see it snow because you were sleeping. You didn’t actually see it fall from the sky. The only proof you have is that the snow is there, covering your grass. That is circumstantial evidence. The circumstances are there, the evidence is clear, but you didn’t witness the act.”
“What are you saying? She kidnaps a Mountie, ties him up, is seen taking him inside the house he was murdered in, and then she disappears. When we find the Mountie’s body, you’re saying that someone else might have killed him and we’re only assuming Sarah did it? Are you proposing that Sarah didn’t do this? Or that our Mountie isn’t dead?”
“Just keep what I said in mind. Unless you have a witness who can claim that Sarah killed your Mountie, all you have is circumstantial evidence.”
Lang drove for a while in silence, afraid he would pull over and shoot the American. But he couldn’t hold his silence long. “Why are you here again? Your bosses think we’re too close to this?”
“Sarah Roberts is an American citizen. If she has come to Canada to kill cops, we need to know.”
“Why’s that?”
“Sarah is a valuable American asset. She has done a lot for our country.”
“Like what?”
As Lang turned onto McKinley Road, he detected the Raccoon looking at him.
“You didn’t take the time to Google who you’re after?” Raccoon asked.
“It’s been one day. We’ve been doing police work, tracking the perp like we always do. Leg work. Door-to-door stuff. I’m not sitting on a computer playing with a Google.”
“Hmmph,” Raccoon said.
Now he had a sudden urge to pull the car over and kick the guy’s teeth in. The pressure the Mounties had been under in the past twenty-four hours had been immense. Losing one of theirs was a tragedy and it killed something in each and every member of the force. Guys like his passenger didn’t understand that. They rode in on their high horses, examined the evidence, made conclusions, gathered their manila envelopes with their white forms inside, and rode off into the sunset with a few dozen paragraphs written about the life of Lang’s friend.
Just like when the Mounties took him on fresh out of high school. He worked in a restaurant downtown Vancouver. Did the dishes, bused the tables, and finally worked his way up to serving. He developed a hatred for the fellow humans he shared the planet with after serving them food and cleaning up after them for minimum wage. Disgusting idiots and assholes, the whole lot of them. Nothing caused more abhorrence for the human race than having to clean up after them. Just look at oil spills and nuclear plant meltdowns.
They turned onto Bennett Road. Minutes away now. The sooner he got rid of this meddling American, the better.
“Detective Lang?”
“Yeah?” His tone was harsher than he meant it to be.
“Would you agree what Hitler did was horrible?”
“What? What is this? How does that have anything to do with the murder of Barry Ashford? Now we’re talking about World War II?”
“Just answer the question. Humor me.”
It grated on his nerves that his guest never changed the sound of his voice. No inflection. Just monotone the whole time. Like Steven Wright, the comedian.
“Yes, what Hitler did was horrible.”
A police cruiser was coming their way. Lang rolled his window down. The cruiser came even with them and stopped.
“Where are you headed?” Lang asked the uniform.
“Off site.”
“Why?”
“Was called off. Apparently by special request of Mrs. Ashford. She wants to grieve without the constant reminder of us at her front door.”
“And this was authorized?” Lang asked.
“Yeah, strange, but it was.”
“The murder house still open?”
“Yellow taped but open.”
“Fine.” Lang pulled away. “What was that about Hitler?” he asked the raccoon bone man.
“In 1894, a priest saved a four-year-old boy from drowning. That boy’s name was Adolf Hitler.”
“So?”
“Don’t you find that ironic? A man of God saved one of the greatest murderers of our time?”
Lang slowed his unmarked cruiser two houses short of Deborah Ashford’s home so she wouldn’t see the car. If she wanted officers off her street for a while, the last thing he wanted to do was park right in front. She deserved all the respect the Mounties could offer her in her time of loss and grief.
“How has that got anything to do with this scenario?” Lang angled sideways in the seat to face his guest, who was turning out to be some kind of enigmatic lunatic.
“Think about it.” The guest opened his door and stopped. “The thing to focus on was the priest, the man of God.” He looked back at Lang. “When you do your research, you’ll see who Sarah is and why she was here. Maybe then you won’t be so blinded by anger and revenge.”
It was a good thing his American guest got out of the car at that moment, because Lang had the urge to shoot him.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Lang whispered to the empty car.
He followed the Raccoon to the front door of the house. The American stood on the front stoop and looked inside for a few seconds. Then he closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and opened his eyes.
Lang frowned. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Taking everything in. If our killer walked across this threshold, I want to feel everything they felt, do everything they did. I need to walk the crime scene and deduce what I can, organizing everything in something like a mental filing cabinet. You okay with that?”
“Whatever.”
“You’re angry with me?” Raccoon asked, turning to face Lang.
“I’m angry at the whole situation. Cops shouldn’t be shot and cut to pieces.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“What was Barry Ashford doing associated with a place like the Garden of Eden? Wasn’t there a conflict of interest somewhere in there?”
Lang frowned. “Are you kidding? Ashford was killed and cut up and you’re wondering why he owned a small business on the side?”
“You’re right. Forget about it.”
“No, I will not forget about it.” Lang shot past him and entered the house, bumping Raccoon’s shoulder as he went by. He stopped in the kitchen. “Do this walkthrough thing. Then I take you back and you can leave my city.”
Raccoon moved by him, taking the kitchen in, staring at counters, touching them, looking over at the living room.
“It just seems like a risqué kind of business to own for a decorated police officer.”
“Would you stop with the trashing Barry shit,” Lang yelled, his temper on a thin piece of string ready to snap. “He was a good guy. He was one of the guys. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. And in Canada, it’s legal to have a massage parlor. They license those things. They even struck down the prostitution laws a while back. It’s legal for private citizens to do what they want within the confines of the law. Fucking bawdy houses are opening up in all the major cities across Canada. What Barry Ashford was doing was child’s play compared to some out there. Now get off his back.”
Raccoon didn’t blink, flinch, or even crack a smile. Cool as a cucumber, his guest moved by him, turned at the top of the stairs and stopped.
“That thing you’re feeling on the inside,” the guest fluttered his hand near his solar plexus. “That pain in the gut, isn’t because of something I said and it’s not grief. It’s the part of your mind,” he touched his temple with his finger, “that agrees with me. You’re offended by the truth. It’s okay, though. You’re not alone. Everyone does it.”
Lang stood open-mouthed as the man walked down the stairs.
“Why do I get all the shit jobs?” Lang asked himself. “Taxiing this asshole around.”
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nbsp; He followed the American down the stairs and kept an eye on him as he examined the crime scene. The man walked by the metal chair that once held Lang’s colleague and friend, leaned down and looked at the light that was angled toward the chair. He checked the rolled-up carpet on the side of the room. Raccoon walked circles around the death chair until he stopped by the window. The sun shone behind the man with the toothpick. He paid the view of the lake behind him, with the two water-skiers, no attention. Instead he stared at the far wall.