by John Penney
“Where is she?” Roger said, catching his breath.
Kincaid grimaced in agony, blood pooled around his crushed leg. But Roger wasn’t going to sit around and wait for an answer; this was his show now. Roger reared back and kicked Kincaid hard in the ribs.
Kincaid coughed and spit up blood. “Wh…who?” He growled in pain.
“You know who. My daughter. You took her from my car.”
Kincaid shook his head “I…I didn’t.”
Roger kicked him hard again. “Don’t fuck with me. You saw her in my car when I got here. You waited until I went into the diner. Where the fuck is she?”
A strange, twisted smile crossed Kincaid’s bloody lips. He coughed, sputtered and started to laugh. “You…you’re crazier…than I am.”
Roger boiled over; he crushed his foot down onto Kincaid’s shoulder. “Tell me!”
Kincaid grimaced in pain and gasped, “Okay, okay. Just get this…engine off my…leg.”
“Not a fucking chance. Not until you tell me.”
Kincaid’s steely eyes shot a look up at Roger as he tried to catch his breath. “You…you really want to know?”
“Talk!”
Kincaid coughed, spit up more blood, and a crooked smile twisted his thin lips. “I…cut off her head, and then I…I fucked her skull.”
Kat gasped, horrified, and turned away. This was too much.
Kincaid continued, “Then I…I plowed through her little cunt with a…chainsaw.”
Roger trembled with rage, overwhelmed by the vile monster.
Kincaid’s eyes lit up, enjoying Roger’s hell; his gasping laughter swelled. “Finally, I…I tore her little titties off with pliers and took a shit all over her.”
Roger let out an enraged roar and slammed the heavy wrench down onto Kincaid’s shoulder. The demon bellowed in agony.
“Liar! She’s not dead! I know she’s not dead! I didn’t see her on the other side! I would have seen her!” Roger exploded.
Kincaid gasped for air, his breathing was ragged and shallow. “And…I told you I didn’t…see her either.” He shook his head. “Man, there was no one…in your…car when you got here.”
Roger glared down at the monster, and a dark determination overwhelmed him. “You want to play it this way? I can play it this way. I’ll do this all night until you….“
Then he heard it. A faint voice calling out from the distance. “Daddy! Daddy?”
Roger froze instantly. He stopped breathing. His heart stopped. He heard it again. A faint, small, far-away little voice. “Daddy! Where are you?”
Roger looked toward the open garage door. It was her.
“Lilly!” He dropped the wrench, looked over at Kat. “It’s her. It’s Lilly.” He bolted away.
“Roger! Wait!” Kat yelled after him, but he was already out the door.
__________
Roger raced outside the garage and paused. He scanned the dark junkyard in the distance. “Lilly!”
“Daddy!” her little voice called back. Roger locked on the direction. It was coming from the parking lot in front.
“Lilly, where are you?”
“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here!”
Roger took off up the side of the truck stop and cut into the parking lot. He paused, catching his breath. There was no sign of her. “Honey! Where are you?”
“Daddy!” she called back. Then he zeroed in on the direction. It was coming from inside his car.
Roger raced over, splashing through the mud puddles. “Oh God, Lilly.” He peered in the wet window on the passenger side.
Lilly was right there, under the blanket in back, her pink rabbit in her arms.
A flood of relief and joy overwhelmed Roger. He trembled ecstatically as he tried the door handle, but it was locked. “Open the door, honey. It’s me. I’m right here.”
“I can’t, Daddy, I can’t,” Lilly’s muffled little voice replied.
Roger frantically searched his pockets and dug out his keys. “It’s okay, it’s all right. Hold on. Just hold on.”
He flipped through the ring for his car key; his shaking fingers fumbled them. They splashed into the mud puddle below the door. “Shit!” he cursed.
Roger dropped to his knees and started frantically feeling for the keys under the murky water.
Kat appeared around the corner of the truck stop, out of breath. She saw him searching the mud puddle. “Roger?” she called out, puzzled.
Roger looked up at her, smiling. “She’s here! She’s in my car!”
Kat started toward Roger; this was all happening so fast it was hard for Kat to figure out what was going on. “What? What did you say?”
“She found her way back. Somehow she found her way back,” Roger explained.
Kat reached the car as Roger found his keys under the water. He yanked them out. “Got ‘em!”
Roger looked up at Kat triumphantly. Then everything went horribly wrong.
Kincaid was hobbling on a bleeding leg into the parking lot behind Kat; his shotgun was aimed and ready.
“NO!” Roger leaped up and shoved Kat out of the way just as….
BOOM!
The slug meant for Kat slammed into Roger’s chest. He plunged to the wet pavement.
“Roger!” Kat yelled, horrified.
Kincaid racked his shotgun, took aim at Kat.
BOOM BOOM BOOM! New gunfire erupted from somewhere else in the parking lot. The bullets pelted Kincaid. He crumpled to the ground, revealing two newly arrived policemen behind him. They moved in, covering him.
Kat crawled over to Roger. She reached down and cradled his head in her hands. Blood oozed from his chest. “Roger,” she said. “Roger, can you hear me?”
Roger looked up at her desperately. “She…she’s in the back seat. She’s there. Help her.” He weakly raised his hand, holding the keys.
Kat took them and hesitated.
“Get her out of there,” he insisted.
Kat lowered Roger’s head back to the ground. She pulled herself to her feet and turned to the car. She carefully slipped the key in the lock, gave it a turn and pulled open the door.
The back seat was empty except for a rumpled blanket.
Lilly wasn’t there.
Kat searched the front seat. Nothing. No sign of the little girl.
Kat turned back, kneeled at Roger’s side. “Roger? Roger, what did you see? There’s no one there. There’s no one in the car.”
Dear God, no. Roger felt a bleak darkness begin to swallow him up. Of all the times he had been cruelly tortured by his visions, this was the cruelest.
“Roger?” Kat could see Roger’s expression become distant and lost, and he didn’t answer her.
One of the policemen who had just arrived ran up, barking into his radio. “I need emergency services. Stat! I’ve got a gunshot wound to the chest.” He clicked off. “Ma’am. Are you all right?” he asked Kat.
Kat could only nod vaguely as she held Roger.
“This is Dalton, isn’t it? Roger Dalton?”
Kat nodded again “Yeah.”
The policeman pulled out a satellite phone and punched a number.
__________
Zoe’s street in the aging tract home development in Las Vegas was lit up with the flickering lights from the emergency vehicles. There were several police cars, a forensics truck, an ambulance, and a morgue van. Uniformed police and detectives swarmed the walkway up to Zoe’s condo.
The evidence from the firefight inside the condo was everywhere. Bullet holes in the walls, shattered lamps and tables.
A homicide detective in his early 60s was on his satellite phone, talking to the policeman at Cedar Mountain Truck Stop. “Dalton? Are you sure? This is one weird fucking night. All right, it’s gonna take a while to sort all of this out. Anything changes, let me know.”
He punched off the phone and looked down at the bullet-riddled body of Roger’s ex-wife, Zoe. Next to her was Jack, her drug-dealing boyfriend.
But this wasn’t a fr
esh crime scene.
Both bodies were starting to smell and decay; they were pale, and the dark blood had pooled on the bottom of their torsos, arms and legs.
Another detective approached. “The condo next door is vacant,” he said to his colleague. “No one heard the shots. If we hadn’t come looking for the daughter, who knows how long before this would’ve been found.”
The detective looked down at Zoe’s boyfriend. “Jack Murphy, that piece of shit. Let’s hope this puts an end to the fucking drug war he started.”
The detective wasn’t surprised that he had found Jack this way—he knew it would happen some day. Jack had pissed off a lot of low level mobsters in Las Vegas.
A uniformed policeman called from the hallway. “Detective! We’ve got something else in here.”
The detective crossed to the hallway and approached an officer who was standing at an open bedroom door; the officer was pale and shaken.
“Oh, Jesus.” The detective stopped cold, choking back a reaction. He’d seen a lot through his years on the force, but things like this never got easier.
Lilly’s body was under the bloodstained bed covers.
The detective looked away, sickened. “Get forensics in here.”
The policeman nodded and started away. The detective hesitated a moment, then looked back into the room. The details. It was always the details of things like this that made it so hard. He could see Lilly’s little hand still clutching her favorite stuffed animal, its pink fur soaked with dried blood. The detective had bought one just like it for his granddaughter.
It was a popular toy, and it looked similar to the muddy remains that Roger had found in the junkyard; it was understandable how he had been mistaken.
The detective looked away again; he would read the forensics report and learn more than he ever wanted to learn about this little girl’s last moments on earth.
But he still wouldn’t know everything. He’d never know that two nights ago Lilly had waited for her daddy to come. She never got his message that he was going to be a couple of days late; her mother was too strung out to remember to tell her. Lilly had told Jimmie Jerry that her daddy was coming, and he would take her away from all this soon. It hadn’t been soon enough.
Lilly had just kissed Jimmie Jerry goodnight when she heard the arguing and the gunshots in the living room. She called out for her mother, but there was no answer. Before she could get out of bed, the man appeared in her doorway.
The last thing Lilly saw was the flash from the pistol barrel that took her life-.
The night before Roger arrived to pick her up.
__________
The sky at the Cedar Mountain Truck Stop was beginning to glow with a dull grey light. It wouldn’t be long now before the sun rose.
“Roger. Roger, stay with us,” Kat pleaded as she held Roger’s hand; there were tears in her eyes as the policeman frantically did compressions on his chest and listened for any signs that he would resume breathing.
“Come on. Come on, breathe for me!” the policeman gasped.
Kat clung to Roger’s limp hand. “Roger! Roger, please.”
The policeman paused, put his ear to Roger’s lips and heard a long, slow exhale. He did several more pumps, then turned to Kat, exhausted. “It’s no use, he’s…I’m sorry.”
Kat placed Roger’s hand on his chest. She reached up and gently brushed the hair from his eyes, and that’s when she noticed that there was a warm smile on Roger’s lifeless face. He was somewhere else now, seeing something else…
He was seeing Lilly.
__________
The dead-world had never looked so beautiful to Roger. The sun was breaking over the mountains surrounding the truck stop as he kneeled in front of his daughter with his arms outstretched.
The little girl ran to him and he held her tight. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry. I won’t leave you with your mommy again, I promise. I know it’s not safe there.”
Lilly clung to her father, and there was wisdom in her eyes far beyond her years as she whispered into his ear, “It’s okay, Daddy. I came with you. I’ve been with you the whole time. I’ll never let you go.”
Tears brimmed in Roger’s eyes. He was home now in her arms, right where he knew he was always meant to be.
THE END