Sticks and Stones

by Michael Hiebert

  His sweating had returned. First on his face and hair, then his arms, but now his hands were getting moist. This was dangerous. He couldn’t just stop and wipe them off. He’d lose all the work he’d done, so he pressed on, hoping Stork would stay in his house just a little while longer. What the hell did he go in there for anyway? To watch TV? It felt like an eternity had gone by since he’d left Carry all bound up and alone on that hard concrete floor.

  Worried his grip on the wrench might slip from the sweat, he tried sliding the end of the tension wrench deeper into his thumb. It didn’t work. His hands had been sweatier than he thought. The wrench slipped, right across the inside of his palm, before falling near on completely out of the lock. It dangled from the keyhole like a broken flagpole, and Jonathon didn’t need to be told what that meant: All five pins were back in place in the bottom compartment of the plug.

  He took a deep breath and considered giving up.

  He had to start over.

  He didn’t want to start over.

  It was too much. Time had to be running out.

  Using his shirt once more, this time he made sure he cleaned every bit of sweat from his skin he could find. A faint breeze had picked up the smell of the pansies and tulips growing behind him, and it felt a little cooler against his bare chest. But it wasn’t the heat causing him to sweat, it was his nerves. Christ, usually he could’ve gotten through five of these locks by now.

  He collected himself, got his bearings, and did what he had to do. He had no choice but to start over, working from back to front, this time with the T-wrench practically driven into the side of his thumb.

  It went faster this time. Maybe because he was so annoyed with himself. But, one by one, the driver pins cleared the shear line until Jonathon came to the final one. He paused for a breath and wiped his forehead with the back of his right hand.

  Then he set to finish.

  He pushed the last pin up and felt the plug turn, just a bit. He needed more tension. Ever so slowly, he adjusted the wrench while continuing to work that last pin with his hook pick. He held his breath as he felt it go farther and farther back.

  And then . . .

  And then he heard the wonderful quiet click of that last driver pin falling down on the casing. With a twist of the T-wrench, he spun the knob around and the bolt lock opened.

  Letting go of his breath, his panic about Stork returning came back. How long had that taken him? Four, five, maybe six minutes? Way too long, that was for sure.

  From all around him, the sound of those damn cicadas sang out into the night, combining with the flowery smell of summer. He wished he could be anywhere else right now. Anywhere. He figured he couldn’t find a place worse than being behind the door you just unlocked that belonged to the garage of a serial killer holding your girl hostage.

  Whatever made him think he could do this?

  He didn’t give that thought a chance to settle. Instead, he quickly picked up his box, put the two tools away, snapped it back shut, and slid it back into his pocket. He stopped again, listening for Stork’s house door, but heard nothing except those cicadas. Even Carry’s whimpering seemed to have faded.

  Four crows flew from the trees behind him, cawing loudly. Jonathon jumped, and that was all it took to bring his fear and his trembling back full-tilt. He hated himself for it, but what could he do?

  Slowly, he pulled the door open and stepped inside the garage of death.

  The door made no noise, and Jonathon was careful to step gently onto the floor, but somehow Carry knew someone had come in the back. The thin table was blocking her from the back door and she struggled, kicking herself around it far enough to see what was going on. When she saw Jonathon, she froze. For what felt like an eternity, they both stared into each other’s eyes, fearful and wondrous.

  Then her face lit up, the dim and flickering fluorescent lights shining in her blue eyes. Jonathon saw tear streaks on her face, and new tears standing in her eyes. Her lips, a soft pink, broke into a smile. “Jonathon!” she said, much too loud.

  Jonathon held his index finger to his lips and whispered, “Be quiet.” He glanced at her body. “Where’s your shirt?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was blindfolded when he brought me in. Listen, you—”

  Her voice grew louder. She was going to alert Stork at this rate. Once again, Jonathon quietly reminded her to keep quiet.

  Her fear slid back on her. “You can’t be in here!” she whispered anxiously. “If he catches you, he’ll kill you, too!”

  His finger returned to his lips and he shushed her. Then he asked, “Where did he go?”

  “To get me a glass of water,” Carry whispered back.

  He’d been gone a pretty fair stretch of time to just be fetching water. He was doing something else in that house, something Jonathon didn’t even want to imagine. What he needed was a plan. The faster, the better.

  He quickly scanned the workbench for something to cut through the rope binding Carry’s ankles and wrists together behind her back. He couldn’t find anything. His heart skipped a beat for a moment when he found a wooden box full of gardening supplies. He really wanted a pair of shears or even a dead-bolt cutter. Christ, he’d settle for a box cutter at this point.

  A pegboard hung on the wall adjacent to the window with handheld power tools assembled on it. He looked them up and down. Two drills, a router, a biscuit joiner, and a circular saw. He briefly considered the saw, but knew it would be far too dangerous. Besides, the sound of an electric saw going off in this quiet corner of the world would not be inconspicuous by any means.

  Jonathon scrambled for an idea. The garage door was firmly closed. Opening it would cause a ruckus far bigger than it would take to bring Stork running. Besides, the way she’d been hog-tied all backward like that—Jonathon worried he might not be able to carry her.

  If Stork only went for water, he wasn’t going to be gone long. Jonathon couldn’t go back outside. He’d never get another chance like this.

  That was when he remembered the ax or the sledgehammer or whatever it was sitting on its head at the far end of the garage by the door. He marched over, pleading for it to be an ax and to be a sharp one at that.

  Half his wish came true. It was an ax, and the thing propped up against the wall beside it was a wooden stake with a stickman drawing stapled to its top. Jonathon didn’t have to look at the paper. He knew what he’d see. A stickman with hair that turned up on both sides of its face and two circles on its chest where breasts should be.

  The stickman was meant to be Carry, and the stake was to be pounded through her chest somewhere in the dark trails of Cherry Park Forest. And even all that wouldn’t be the thing that killed her. He remembered enough from the killings fifteen years ago to know that the police figured the victims were already dead by the time they were dumped at the crime scene. The real death happened someplace they’d never managed to find back then. A place Jonathon once saw a newspaper refer to as the “Stickman’s slaughterhouse.” An abattoir. Jonathon knew, as he stood under the only working fluorescent light in the garage, that he’d found that place. From in here, the dried bloodstains telling stories dating as far back as 1973 hit him even more vividly than they had through the window. And then there were the two across the room. The ones that weren’t a burnt sienna color from fading over time, the two that looked like someone had just shot the wall with a goddamn paint gun.

  He felt bile roil inside him. Fought to keep it from coming up his throat. He retched, but managed to hold everything down. He grabbed the top of the ax’s handle and dragged the head down the cement floor to where Carry lay, her face turned away toward the open back door, her eyes streaming tears and her body jerking, as quietly, she cried to herself.

  Jonathon knelt down beside her and felt the ax’s blade with the inside of his palm. It wasn’t that sharp. It would take a while to get through the rope.

  He made a quick look around from his lower position
now on the floor. Beneath the tool bench were two cabinets, both made of hardwood left unfinished. Jonathon guessed they were homemade. The smaller of the two had a camping cooler tucked away on top of it. The larger one stood beside the other, much larger and much wider. He wondered how far back it went.

  He didn’t see any more tools. Nothing to cut through the rope. He would have to go with the ax.

  “Okay,” he whispered, bringing it around so he could talk to Carry face-to-face. “I’m goin’ to use this to cut your rope and free you. Then we’ll run out and head straight for the woods. They’re deep and thick and dark. Stork will never find us.”

  “Where’s my mother?” Carry asked, confused.

  Jonathon shushed her again.

  “But does she—”

  Jonathon shushed her again, cutting her off as he worked the blade of the ax against the edge of the rope. “I’ll tell you everything once we’re safely away from Tommy Stork.”

  Carry gave him a weird look. “Who’s Tommy Stork?”

  The ax wasn’t making much headway. A few strands of string had split, but Jonathon really felt like he was getting nowhere. “Stork’s the maniac who just left to get you water.”

  Carry started to say something else, but this time Jonathon actually snapped at her. “For Christ’s sake. Be quiet until we’re out of here.”

  It worked. She stopped talking. Jonathon wished he had the same control with this ax as he did with her.

  “Shit, this isn’t workin’.”

  “Don’t you have to swing it?” she asked.

  “What? Are you nuts? How accurate do you think I am with an ax? I’ll cut your goddamn hand off or worse. Christ, I could split your back right open.”

  “Okay,” Carry said, sounding almost calm. “Bad idea.”

  “No,” Jonathon said, “we’re gonna have—” He stopped talking. Carry’s head rose from the floor, her eyes steeped in fear. Jonathon could tell she was about to speak, so he shushed her without even giving her the chance.

  He had to think, but there was no point in thinking. They’d run out of time and they both knew it the moment they heard the sound of Stork’s front door closing, followed by his footsteps coming across the porch.

  “Shit!” Jonathon whispered.

  “Chop off my hand!” Carry said. “Go ahead! Do it! Just get me untied. I don’t care ’bout my damn hand!”

  “Shh,” Jonathon said. “Let me think before we do something that drastic.”

  “Jonathon! Trust me! We need drastic! Cut off my goddamn hand!”

  But there was no time even for that. Stork was right in front of the garage. His footsteps stopped as he bent down. They were completely out of time.

  Any second now, that garage door would come sailing up, and then, all hell would break loose.

  CHAPTER 66

  “I’m gonna try home again, see if she made it back there, maybe.” Leah said, lifting the heavy phone again.

  As soon as she’d said it, she could tell Dan didn’t concur with her brainy idea. He let out a big sigh, in fact.

  “What?” she asked.

  “First, you’re doing sixty-five down these rabbit trails, just askin’ to wipe us out into one of those damn hell pits. And second, don’t you think Caroline would’ve called you if she was home?”

  “I’ll slow down while I’m talkin’ if that makes you happier.”

  Dan ran his hand through his hair. The hand not hanging onto the car for dear life.

  “Think about it, Leah. At the very least, Jonathon would’ve called you. I mean, maybe I can see your boy, or even your daughter, neglectin’ something like that, but that Jonathon kid seems to actually have most of his shit together.”

  She looked at him sideways for as long as she possibly could without going off the road. When she spoke again, it was with a voice tempered with, well, temper. “First off, you sanctimonious bastard, where do you get off putting down my kids? I’ll have you know, Abe’s a pretty smart button. Do I have to remind you that he was the one who found the blood that solved the case you guys couldn’t make any headway on for ten goddamn years? And how many of you tried? No, it took the genius of my thirteen-year-old to finally make the break that might bring the Cahaba River Strangler to justice!”

  Dan held up his palm. Again, the one not keeping him in his seat. “Okay,” he said, “you’re right. I apologize. I was way off-base. The kid’s smart as a . . .” He drifted off, apparently trying rapidly to think of a comparison “Smart as a goddamn bullwhip. That’s what he is. A bullwhip! The minute he gets out of school, I’m goin’ to offer him a job.”

  “He’s going to college, Dan.”

  “Okay, the minute he’s out of college.”

  Leah checked her anger, noticing it was displaced. Something else was weighing on her. “And . . .” she started.

  “And?” Dan asked. “And what?”

  “And I have recent reason to wonder about Jonathon. Doesn’t he come off a little ‘too’ nice to you? Like, too perfect?”

  “Now you’re persecuting people for bein’ nice? You know, given time, I think you’d start to suspect every single person in this county of somethin’.” He gave out a little laugh. “Maybe, just maybe, you’ve actually met a genuinely nice guy for the first time ever.”

  “He picks locks.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “He picks locks. For fun. Has a whole kit and everythin’. They came home the other night and Caroline had forgotten her key and he said, ‘Now don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,’ and he pulled out his lock-picking kit and went ahead and picked my dead bolt. Caroline said he did it in a blink.”

  “How fast is a blink?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t know. A minute, maybe? Maybe five? Dan, that’s not the point. The point ended with, ‘And he picked my dead bolt.’ ”

  Dan rubbed his chin and watched the forest whipping by in a big blur of shadowy green. “Really, eh?” he asked. “Jonathon. Hmm. Kid has more depth than I expected. Maybe I should be offering him a job. Before he goes and bats for the dark side.”

  “Don’t goof with it, Dan,” Leah chided. “I don’t even want to think what some of his other ‘hobbies’ might be. You know, because ‘stealing cars’ didn’t pop into my mind immediately after Caroline orated her little tale about my dead bolt.”

  A weird grin came to Dan’s face. “You really do scamper to the worst possible case about everything, don’t you? Anyway, don’t think about shit like that. If you want us to call home, fine. But I’ll make the call. You concentrate on staying between the gulleys.”

  Leah knew Dan was right. Calling home was just stupid. She would have heard if Caroline had returned. But that was—

  “Make the call.” She glanced at him, then back at the road. “I know, I know! It’s crazy, but I need you to make the call.”

  “Fine, makin’ the call.” He picked up the phone and had to hold it almost an arm’s length from his eyes to read the buttons. “Are these written in Braille?”

  “You didn’t bring your glasses?” It had surprised her that until recently, she’d had no idea Dan even wore glasses to read.

  “I’m good,” he said, and started hitting buttons. “Eight six four eight, right?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Your number. I knew the first three.”

  “Yeah, you got them all.”

  He held the phone to his ear and waited for the call to go through.

  Leah wasn’t as patient as him. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Jesus, woman, it has to ring?”

  “It isn’t ringin’?”

  Dan nodded. “Has done. Twice now.”

  “Where is everybody?”

  Dan kept waiting for someone to answer.

  “Goddammit!” Leah said, hitting her steering wheel. “Where the hell are those kids?”

  Dan lifted a finger at her, cutting her off. “Ah, uh, hi, Abe. How are you?”

  “Is Carry
back?” Leah asked over top of him.

  “Hang on,” Dan said, and put his hand over the receiver. “Just be patient.”

  “Patient?”

  Dan spoke into the phone. “No, Abe, not yet. Listen, can I speak to Jonathon?”

  A pocket of silence went by, and Leah figured he was waiting for Jonathon to take the phone, but his face was a strange mess of confusion and fear. “What do you mean . . . ? He what?” Dan raised his volume, clearly agitated. “When? How long ago?” Another pause while Dan pressed his left hand to the side of his head. “What address? How did you—”

  Finally, he hung up, his face ashen.

  Leah’s heart was beating a syncopated rhythm as she waited impatiently for Dan to say something. “What?” she asked. “What is it? What’s goin’ on?”

  “He ... Jonathon ... Man, this even sounds nuts ... but ...”

  “But what?” Leah was ready to hear that the world was ending the way Dan was going on.

  When he spoke, it turned out she was right. It was. “It’s Jonathon,” he said. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Their eyes gripped each other’s. “Gone to save Carry.”

  Time went by without either of them saying a word until finally Leah shook her head as though trying to clear a mess of puzzle pieces somebody just dumped on her brain with no finished picture to go with it. “What do you mean, Dan? What do you mean, he’s gone to save Carry? He doesn’t know where to go. Last time I talked to him, even I didn’t know where to go.”

  “That’s just it. He overheard you tell Chris that Tommy Stork was the Stickman.”

  “And? He never showed up at Tommy’s place. Tommy was the last guy, Dan. Big ol’ redneck with a Fairlane. Remember? If he gets there now, it hardly matters.”

  “Leah,” Dan said, his eyes going to the road. “Abe gave him Tommy’s address.”

  “How does Abe even—” But she realized he might know. He did read through all her files. “Even still. Nobody’s at Tommy’s. It’s not like—”

  “Abe gave him Tommy’s report from 1974.”