Knife Creek

by Paul Doiron

  “Casey?” I said, pushing myself back up to a standing position.

  Becky’s response was sharp and immediate. “Shut up! Don’t listen to him, Kendall! Remember what I told you? This douche bag wants to break up our family. He pretends like he gives a shit, but he doesn’t. This douche bag wants to kill our husband! He wants to kill all of us.”

  “That’s not true, Casey.”

  “Stop calling her that! Think about it, Kendall. If something happens to the big guy, who’s going to give you your medicine? How did you feel that time we couldn’t get your medicine for you?”

  “Sick.”

  “You thought you were going to die. You probably would have died! This douche bag doesn’t give a shit about you.”

  “Casey—”

  “What do you want to do to him, Kendall?”

  “Hurt him.”

  “So do it!”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Like this!”

  In that instant I felt a boot crushing down on the slender bones on the top of my left foot. My knee buckled and then I felt a second kick glance off my left kneecap. If it had hit directly, the joint would have sprained backward and torn one of the ligaments.

  Reflexively, I dropped to my knees. Another kick landed on my thigh. If I survived the day, I would have some pretty bruises to mark the occasion.

  “Do it, Kendall! Come on, bitch! Do it!”

  I felt another kick—much softer—to the meat of my quad. It had to have come from Casey.

  “Harder!” screamed Becky. “Don’t be a pussy, Kendall. Hurt him! Hurt him or I’ll hurt you!”

  I should have known to press my thighs together. The next kick hit me in the scrotum and sent my balls halfway up into my abdomen. Just as I had nearly retched when I’d been sprayed with capsaicin, I nearly retched again. I toppled forward and was only stopped from hitting the floor by the handcuffs holding my arms behind the pillar.

  I was panting, cantilevered above the concrete, not strong enough to pull myself up, when Becky yanked the blindfold from my eyes.

  The fluorescent brightness caused my tender eyes to blink and water again. Two human shapes loomed before me. The nearer one, with her taut, wiry body, must have been Becky. Casey held back, her arms sort of floating at her sides as if she wasn’t sure what to do next.

  “Hey, douche bag!” Becky screamed. “What did I tell you?”

  Saliva bubbled from my lips. “I don’t—”

  “You’re going to die today. Maybe you don’t believe me? Hold his head up, Kendall. Don’t be a pussy, bitch, do it!”

  Through my smeared vision I saw Casey step to one side of me, almost as if she were afraid I would whip my head around and attach my teeth to her wrist. She pinched my ear and used it to swing my entire head around to the right. My tear ducts were still trickling from the pepper spray. It took me a long time to focus my acid-burned pupils and even longer to recognize the vague shape in the corner for what it was—for what he had been.

  They had tied Steve Nason to another pillar. Like me, he was seated on the floor with his arms secured behind him. Unlike me, he had been tied with rope. Unlike me, he had his pants and boxer shorts down around his ankles. His limp, hairy penis was on full display as if mockery had been part of his torture. His genitals were wet as if he’d urinated all over himself. Unlike me, he had a plastic bag pulled like a hood over his head. I couldn’t see his face through the fogged plastic, but there was no question he was dead. Murder by suffocation: the preferred method of execution used by the Khmer Rouge.

  Casey released my earlobe and my head lolled forward on my neck. I lifted my face in time to see the blurred shape of Becky advancing on me. She’d tossed aside the blindfold and was holding something shapeless and opaque in her hand. The next thing I knew she had pulled the plastic bag down over my chin. I breathed in, but no air would come.

  41

  I began to struggle, tried using my whole body to free myself. Fog clouded the interior of the bag. I attempted to suck in air but only succeeded in pulling the plastic taut across my gaping mouth. I hadn’t even prepared myself by filling my lungs first. My human brain—the product of millions of years of evolution, capable of foresight and logic and self-consciousness—was reduced in an instant to a primordial mass of simple cells at the base of its stem. The lizard brain, scientists called it.

  I had become nothing more than a dying animal.

  Suffocating, I banged the back of my skull against the steel post for no reason. Felt intense pain in my thumbs as I pulled them hard against the handcuffs, willing to sacrifice my hands to save my life. Sucked the plastic into my mouth again with one deep inhale, then bit down hard with my canines. I chewed down and thrashed my head with the bag mashed between my teeth.

  Somehow I tore a hole. A trickle of air entered. I gasped at it, the ripped plastic still in my mouth. Inhaled hard through my nostrils.

  Not enough. Not enough.

  I tried biting again but couldn’t reach the torn edge of the plastic rubbing against my upper lip.

  I felt myself beginning to slip away—the adrenaline in my blood insufficient to the task of keeping me conscious.

  Then suddenly the bag was gone.

  “Weird,” I heard Becky say. I blinked my burning eyes, but the room seemed off-kilter. Everything was tilted. She had poked a finger through the hole I’d chewed through the plastic. “Guess we need a thicker bag, Kendall.”

  I was hyperventilating. I still couldn’t get enough oxygen no matter how hard I gasped.

  But the neurons in my cerebral cortex had begun to spark again.

  Remember your first-aid training. What is the treatment for a hyperventilating individual? Tell them to breathe from their diaphragm.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on my abdomen below my rib cage. Pulled with my stomach muscles upward. Felt them ripple as they pushed the breath from my lungs, then forced myself to suck air through my pursed lips. My heart was a metronome set at the highest setting.

  “That was just a test run, anyway,” Becky said to me. “So you know what’s going to happen. The next time it’s for real.”

  Other sensations began to return as I regained control of my breathing. My wrists were bleeding from where I had cut them on the edge of the cuffs. I had worsened my probable concussion when I’d slammed my head against the pole.

  “The worst thing is having time to think about it,” Becky continued. “Knowing what’s coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  The room had seemed angled because I was leaning. I fought to right myself.

  Both of the women had removed their ridiculous wigs. That’s all they’d done, and yet they seemed utterly transformed.

  Becky had dirty-blond hair, longer on top than in the back or on the sides. I hadn’t expected her to be a blonde. Her eyes still had the same squinty meanness, her lips were just as flaky and raw, and the V-shape of her chin gave her an overall resemblance to some sort of goblin. She wore a man’s T-shirt commemorating a past Fryeburg Fair, cutoff denim shorts, and boots appropriate for thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Her bare arms and legs were thin, but I could see muscles shift beneath the pale skin when she moved.

  Casey looked even worse than when I’d glimpsed her in the house. Her hair hung in tendrils around her face. Her skin had a waxy pallor. A cold sore had erupted on her lip. She, too, wore an oversize man’s shirt, a standard white T, and those boxy shorts worn by high-school girls who play team sports. She was barefoot, I noticed. Her toenails were painted pink.

  When she’d kicked me before, it had probably hurt her more than it had hurt me.

  I noticed one last thing, the most important thing, the detail that explained so much.

  Casey Donaldson, unlike Becky Cobb, had needle tracks on the insides of both of her arms.

  So that was how they were controlling her.

  That was why she hadn’t tried to escape.

  “Casey, my name is Mike Bo
wditch.” My voice was hoarse from the pepper spray and the minutes I’d spent suffocating. “I’m the one who found your baby girl.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Becky studied me with undisguised disdain.

  “Your baby was being eaten by a pig.”

  “I said, ‘Shut up.’”

  “They buried her there so that would happen, so that the pigs would eat her flesh and bones and there would be no evidence.”

  Before I could say another word Becky kicked me in the crotch again.

  I doubled over, my arms outstretched behind me around the pillar, and sank down to my knees.

  “I knew I should’ve brought duct tape. We’ll just have to use a rag. Go find something to gag him with, Kendall.”

  The command took a while to register in Casey’s drugged mind. Slowly she made her way back up the basement stairs.

  “This is all your fault, you know. What’s happened to you. What’s about to happen. See that sad sack of shit over there.” Becky pointed at Nason, with the clouded bag around his head and his pants down around his ankles. “He wouldn’t be dead if not for you. Think about that.”

  I became aware of a sudden change in the house. The blower upstairs had stopped. Now I could hear footsteps overhead, two sets, heavy ones and softer ones. A man was up there. I could hear him speaking but couldn’t make out his words through the ceiling joists.

  Becky’s head whipped around. “Oh, shit,” she muttered to herself. “Oh, damn.”

  For the first time, I saw her stiffen with nervousness. Like a girl whose prom date has just arrived.

  She began glancing around the floor until she located the blindfold where she’d tossed it. Quickly she tied the cloth back around my head and knotted it hard. Once more I found myself in darkness.

  I heard Becky start up on the stairs, then a door opened at the top and she said, “I was just coming up.”

  There was no answer.

  The door closed. Then slowly a man began to descend the steps with her. I could tell from the way the boards creaked.

  Casey must have remained upstairs. Clearly, they had no fear of her running off or calling for help.

  I listened carefully as the two of them paused at the base of the stairs. Instead of approaching me, they went first to the opposite corner, where their former accomplice Steve Nason sat dead.

  The words spilled out of Becky’s mouth at a torrential rate. “I know I shouldn’t have done it, baby, but I didn’t know where else to bring them. Maybe we can spray the place down with some bleach or something. Would that work? We don’t have to burn your house down. There’s got to be another way. I’ll find a way to erase all the traces of us. You can trust me. You know you can trust me.”

  The man whispered something harsh into her ear.

  “I don’t know why I pulled his pants down. I thought it would be funny, I guess. After having to suck his itty-bitty prick all those times. That’s why I sprayed him with the pepper. You should have seen him thrash, though. He was so scared. I know you would have liked watching him plead and cry. You told me you always hated him. I didn’t think you’d mind. Do you mind? You can punish me for that, too. I deserve to be punished.”

  The man let out a sigh.

  I heard them coming in my direction. As they drew near, I became aware of a new smell in the room. Cinnamon chewing gum.

  “Hello, Nisbet,” I said.

  But it was Becky who replied. “Shut up!”

  For half a minute the room was utterly silent. Then came clapping. Slow, sharp, mocking clapping.

  “Take off his blindfold,” Nisbet said. “He never needed it, anyway. It wasn’t like he was ever going to leave this room.”

  I felt Becky’s strong little fingers around my ears.

  Before me stood the overweight reserve police officer I had derisively nicknamed Fat Elvis. He was dressed the same as he’d been at the Swan’s Falls boat landing in Fryeburg. Dressed all in blue with a sliver of white belly peeking out above his gun belt.

  “Becky, go upstairs and keep Kendall occupied. I don’t want her thinking too much about what’s going on down here.” His tone was different from what I remembered, more confident, more educated sounding. “The warden and I need to have a talk.”

  42

  After Becky had left us, Nisbet dragged a sawhorse from the corner of the room and set it in front of me. If it had been made of wood, it probably would have snapped when he sat down on it, but this adjustable steel model merely squeaked. He crossed his hands in his lap and smiled. He had a handsome face under the layers of fat. He actually bore a slight resemblance to Elvis Presley.

  “My girls really did a job on you, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t suppose your department ever sent you to the police academy?” I rasped.

  “They don’t bother sending reserve officers. We’re just summer help.”

  “Then you don’t know what it’s like to be pepper-sprayed or tased.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “It must have been bad enough for you to have ended up here.” He pressed the pads of his fingertips together. “What about putting a plastic bag over your head? Did they do that to you at the academy, too?”

  My nose was still running from the capsaicin. I licked the mucus from my upper lip and spat it on the floor.

  “How much do you weigh?” he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “One ninety.”

  “The last time I weighed one ninety I was a freshman in high school. These days I yo-yo between two fifty and two eighty. Right now I’m at two fifty-six because of the heat. I always find it easier to lose in the summer.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “The reason I ask is that there’s an advantage to being fat. Really only one advantage, and I bet you don’t know what it is because you’ve never been overweight in your life. I can tell that by looking at you. The advantage is that people assume you’re dumb. They conclude that you’re fat because you don’t know enough to eat healthy. Or that you’re weak willed. When you’re a tub like me, you go through life being underestimated.”

  Nisbet was correct in one regard. I hadn’t given him enough credit. I should have noted his inquisitiveness that day Charley and I met him at Swan’s Falls.

  “I didn’t underestimate you,” I lied. “I figured out it was you.”

  “Yeah, but too late. I mean, look at where we are at the moment.” He pushed his black pompadour back with one big hand. “What gave me away, though? I need to make a note for future reference.”

  “You mentioned you had a ‘cousin’ who rented from the Nasons. You went out of your way to make me suspicious of them.” I nodded at the dead man in the corner. “Steve was always going to be your fall guy, wasn’t he? He was easy to manipulate. You had Becky treat him to blow jobs in exchange for keeping quiet. What did he think you were really doing in his rentals?”

  “Selling drugs—which I do. Nothing big-time. Just some heroin and pills for a little extra income. Easy enough to do when I’m working the river.”

  “I saw the needle tracks on Casey’s arms.”

  “Keeping a woman in line is hard work. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

  “Especially when it comes to sex slaves.”

  The smile never left his handsome face, but his eyes narrowed. “I researched you after we met on the river. I read up on your past cases. You’ve had quite a colorful career! I’ve never had a real adversary, someone with enough smarts to catch me. Do you know why ninety-nine percent of cops are so dumb? Because ninety-nine percent of criminals are so dumb. There’s no incentive for departments to hire people with superior intelligence. I had high hopes for you, Mike, based on what I found online. You seemed like someone who could keep me on my toes and help me improve my game. But you’ve turned into such a disappointment.”

  “Instead of insulting me you could just kill me and get it over with.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to kil
l you.”

  This time, I was the one who laughed.

  He slid off the sawhorse. He took a step toward me, and I could smell his halitosis now that the gum in his mouth had lost its flavor. “In fact, I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

  “What about Nason over there?”

  “That was Becky. That girl is a stone-cold killer. I saw it in her the first time I picked her up on the side of the road. She was a runaway. Her brothers were sexually abusing her until she cracked one of them over the head with a hammer. She might have killed him, but she didn’t stick around Jersey long enough to find out. Becky has always been willing to do whatever I ask.”

  “Including killing Connie Fales. She’s leaving quite a body count.”

  His teeth gleamed when he smiled. “Yes, she is.”

  “Did you kill Martha Tarbox, too?”

  “Martha? No, she’s away in Texas for the time being with her family. One of the advantages to being a cop is that I know which homes are occupied and which aren’t. Martha is such an odd duck, I knew you couldn’t help but show up at her property with your guard down.”

  He was right, and I had to admit his craftiness before I could respond. “Maybe you’re unfamiliar with the legal concept of conspiracy to commit murder—never having graduated from the police academy.”

  The capillaries in his cheeks flushed with blood as he scowled. For the first time I seemed to have found a soft spot where I could stick in the shiv.

  “I know what you’re trying to do now. You’re trying to provoke me. But it won’t work. I have too much self-control. As I said, people assume that obese individuals are lacking in willpower. But I have more willpower than anyone you have ever met.”

  “So that’s what this is about? Secretly exerting your godlike power over women? While everyone who thinks they know you assumes you’re a stupid, harmless oaf?”

  “There are two types of people in the world. Those who bend to reality and those who bend reality to suit their desires.”

  “Who said that?”