by Blake Crouch
Donaldson forced a bright smile, hoping he looked both pathetic and non-threatening. It must have worked, because the man hit a switch on his armrest, and the door unlocked.
Must be nice being rich, Donaldson mused at the fancy automatic locks. Then he opened the door and heaved his bulk onto the leather seat.
“Thanks,” he said.
The car was cooler than outside, but not by much. Donaldson wondered if the man’s air worked. He placed his hand against the vent, felt a trickle of cold leaking out.
“Happy to help a fellow traveler. I’m Mr. K.”
“Donaldson.”
Neither made a move to shake hands. Mr. K checked his mirror, then gunned the 8-cylinder engine, spraying gravel as the luxury car fishtailed back onto the asphalt.
Donaldson adjusted his bulk, shifting the .38 he’d crammed into the front pocket of his jeans. The pants were loose enough, and Donaldson portly enough, that he doubted Mr. K noticed.
“You’re sunburned,” Mr. K said.
“Sun’ll do that to you.”
Donaldson touched his bare forearm, lobster red, and winced. Then he flipped down the visor mirror, saw how bad his face was. It looked like his old man had slapped the shit out of him, and hurt almost as much.
“Your car a Pinto?” Mr. K asked.
“My car?”
“A Pinto. Saw one about five miles back.”
Donaldson contemplated the harm in admitting it. He supposed it didn’t matter. Before he’d abandoned the car, he’d wiped it clean of fingerprints.
“Yeah. Blew a rod, I think.”
“Why didn’t you wait for the police?”
Again, Donaldson deliberated before answering. “I don’t like pigs,” he finally said.
Mr. K nodded. Donaldson doubted the man shared his sentiment. His hair was short, he was well-dressed, and he owned a fancy car. Cops wouldn’t hassle him. They were too busy hassling people with long hair and beards and ripped jeans.
People like me.
The highway stretched onward, wiggly heat waves rising off the tarmac. There wasn’t much traffic. Only about twenty cars had passed Donaldson during his long walk, and not one had so much as slowed down. Bastards. Whatever happened to human compassion?
“Did you kill the car’s owner before you stole it?” Mr. K asked.
Alarm bells sounded in Donaldson’s head. He frantically pawed at his .38, but Mr. K slammed on the brakes.
Donaldson bounced off the dashboard, smacking his sunburned nose hard. During the momentary disorientation, he was aware of Mr. K throwing the car into park, unbuckling his seatbelt, and pressing a thin-bladed knife under Donaldson’s double chin with one hand, while digging the .38 from Donaldson’s front pocket with the other.
“You should buckle up,” Mr. K said. “Seatbelts save lives.”
Mr. K stuck the knife into his breast pocket, belted himself back in, then hit the gas. The tires screamed and the Continental shot forward.
“I’m bleeding,” Donaldson said, his hands cupped around his nose. He knew it was a stupid, obvious thing to say, but he was still dazed and trying to buy some time.
“Tissues in the glove compartment.”
Donaldson dug them out, feeling more ashamed than hurt. This guy had gotten the better of him much too easily. As he mopped the blood from his face, Mr. K pressed a button to open the passenger side window.
“Throw the used ones outside, please.”
Donaldson went through ten tissues, tossing each one onto the road whizzing by. Then he ripped one more into pieces, balled them up, and shoved them into each nostril, staunching the trickle. He kept an eye on Mr. K the entire time, alternating between watching the man’s eyes, and watching the .38 pointed at him.
This is a real bad situation.
“I don’t enjoy repeating myself, but you hit that dashboard pretty hard, so I’ll ask one more time. Did you kill the driver before you stole the Pinto?”
Donaldson knew he was screwed, but he didn’t want to get himself even more screwed.
“You a cop?” he asked, not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing.
The barest flash of mirth crossed Mr. K’s face. “No. But your biggest worry right now shouldn’t be getting arrested. Your biggest worry should be the hole I’m going to put in your head if you don’t answer me.”
The gears began to turn in Donaldson’s head. How the hell do I get through this? Talk my way out?
“You won’t shoot me,” Donaldson said, surprised by how calm he sounded.
“No?”
“You’d ruin your car.”
Again, a faint hint of a smile. “It’s not my car. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
Mr. K thumbed back the hammer on the pistol.
Donaldson contemplated his own death—the first time in his life he ever had—and decided dying would be a very bad thing.
“I killed him,” Donaldson said quickly.
Mr. K seemed to think about this. He nodded slowly. “Was it someone you knew?”
“No. Jumped him in a parking lot in Sarasota. Wouldn’t have wasted the bullet if I knew what a piece of crap his car was.”
Donaldson watched Mr. K’s eyes. They betrayed nothing. The two of them might as well have been talking about the weather.
“How’d it feel?” Mr. K asked.
“How did what feel?”
“Killing that man.”
What kind of freaky talk is this? Donaldson thought, but all he said was, “I dunno.”
“Sure you do. Did it feel good? Bad? Numb? Did it get you excited? Did you feel guilty afterward?”
Donaldson thought back to the day before. To holding the gun to the man’s ribs. Seeing the shock in his eyes when he squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times. Watching him flop to the ground in a way that had struck him as funny. The holes in his chest had made sucking sounds, blowing tiny blood bubbles.
“Excited,” Donaldson said.
“Did he die right away?”
“No.”
“Did you stay and watch him die?”
“Yeah.”
“How long did it take?”
It’s so strange that we’re both so calm about this.
Donaldson shrugged. “Few minutes, I guess.”
“Did you do anything else to him?”
“Like what?”
“Did you hurt him first?” Mr. K raised an eyebrow. “Rape him?”
Donaldson scowled. “Do I look like a queer to you?”
“What does being a homosexual have to do with it? You had a human being at your mercy. That excited you. I’m asking if you capitalized on that opportunity. If you made the most of it.”
Donaldson thought about it. The guy had been at his mercy. He’d begged for a while when Donaldson pulled the gun, and that was kind of a turn-on.
“I didn’t rape him,” Donaldson said.
“Could you have raped him?”
Donaldson licked some dried blood off of his top lip, let the salty, copper taste linger on his tongue. “Yeah. I could’ve.”
This answer seemed to satisfy Mr. K. He was quiet for over a minute.
The road stretched out ahead of them like a giant black snake.
Empty swampland and blue skies as far as Donaldson could see.
I can’t believe I’m telling him this stuff. Is it because he’s threatening to kill me?
Or because he understands?
“How’d you know?” Donaldson asked.
“Know what?”
“That I stole that car?”
Mr. K offered a half-smile. “I saw the gun in your pocket when you stopped, along with your clumsy attempt to hide it. You should get an ankle holster, or stuff it in your belt at the small of your back. You obviously aren’t a Florida native, or you’d have a tan already. That means you flew in or drove in. If you flew, you probably would’ve had a rental car, and those are usually new. That Pinto was an old model. When you first got in, I noticed the powder
burns on your shirt, and under your rather oppressive body odor, you smell like gunpowder.”
Donaldson was impressed, but he refused to show it. He knew a lot about being victimized. One way to stop being a victim was to stop acting like a victim.
“I asked how you knew about the car, not my gun,” Donaldson said, sticking out his lower jaw.
If Mr. K noticed Donaldson’s display of bravado, he didn’t react. “Your loose jeans didn’t jingle when you sat down in the car. When people abandon their vehicles, they take their keys with them. So I assumed it wasn’t yours.”
Donaldson appraised Mr. K again. This was a smart guy.
“How about you?” Donaldson ventured. “Did you kill the owner of this car?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“He’s tied up in the trunk. I’m taking him someplace private.”
Donald worded his next question carefully. “Do you want to kill me?”
Mr. K drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
Donaldson counted his own heartbeats, trying to keep cool until Mr. K finally replied.
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Is there anything I can do to, uh, persuade you that I’m worth keeping alive?”
“Maybe. The Pinto owner you killed. He wasn’t the first.”
Donaldson thought back to his father, to beating the old man to death with a baseball bat. “No, he wasn’t.”
“But he was the first stranger.”
This guy is uncanny. “Yeah.”
“Who was it before that? Girlfriend? Family member?”
“My dad.”
“But you didn’t use a gun on him, did you? You made it more personal.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you use?”
“A Louisville Slugger.”
“How did it feel?”
Donaldson closed his eyes. He could still feel the sting of the bat in his palms when he cracked it against his father’s head, still see the blood that spurted out of split skin like a lawn sprinkler.
“I felt like Reggie Jackson hitting one out of Yankee Stadium. Afterward, I even went out and bought a Reggie Bar.”
Mr. K gave him a sideways glance. “Why buy candy? Why didn’t you eat part of your father? Just imagine the expression on his face.”
Donaldson was about to protest, but he stopped himself. When he broke Dad’s jaw with the bat, the old man had looked more surprised than hurt. How would he have reacted if Donaldson had cut off one of his fingers and eaten it in front of him?
That would have shown the son of bitch. Bite the hand that feeds you.
“I should have done that,” Donaldson said.
“He hurt you when you were a child.” Mr. K said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yeah. He used to beat the shit out of me.”
“Did he sexually abuse you?”
“Naw. Nothing like that. But every time I got into trouble, he’d take his belt to me. And he hit hard enough to draw blood. What kind of asshole does that to a five-year-old kid?”
“Think hard, Donaldson. Do you believe your father beat you, and that turned you into what you are? Or did he beat you because of what you are?”
Donaldson frowned. “What do you mean what you are? What am I?”
Mr. K turned and stared deep into his soul, his eyes like gun barrels. “You’re a killer, Donaldson.”
Donaldson considered the label. It didn’t take him long to embrace it.
“So what was the question again?”
“Are you a killer because your father beat you, or did your father beat you because you’re a killer?”
Donaldson could remember that first beating when he was five. He’d taken his pet gerbil and put it in the blender. Used the pulse button, grinding it up a little at a time, so it didn’t die right away.
“I think my dad knew. Tried to beat the devil out of me. Used to tell me that, when he was whipping my ass.”
“You don’t have the devil in you, Donaldson. You’re simply unique. Exceptional. Unrestrained by morality or guilt.”
Exceptional? Donaldson had never felt like he was exceptional at anything. He did badly in school. Dropped out of college. Never had any friends, or a woman he didn’t pay for. Bummed around the country, job to job, occasionally ripping someone off. How is that exceptional?
But somehow, he felt that the description fit him.
Maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been trying to be normal all of these years, but I’m not. I’m better than normal.
I’m exceptional.
“How do you know this stuff?” Donaldson asked.
“The more you understand death,” Mr. K said, “the more you appreciate life.”
“Sounds like fortune cookie bullshit.”
“It was something I learned in the war.”
“Vietnam?” Donaldson had been exempt from the draft because he didn’t pass the physical.
“A villager in Ca Lu said it to me, before I removed his intestines with a bayonet.”
“Was he talking about himself?” Donaldson asked. “Or you?”
“You tell me. Did you feel alive when you killed your father, Donaldson?”
Donaldson nodded.
“And when you killed the owner of the Pinto?” Mr. K continued.
“Goddamn piece of crap car. I wish I could kill that guy again.”
“How about someone else in his place?”
Donaldson squinted at Mr. K. “What do you mean?”
Another half smile. “The man in my trunk. If I gave you the chance to kill him, would you?”
“What’d he do?”
“What did the Pinto owner do?” Mr. K countered.
“Nothing. But I wanted his car.”
“So you killed him for his car?”
“Yeah.”
“Couldn’t you have just pointed the gun and told him to give you his keys?”
“He would’ve called the cops.”
“You could’ve knocked him out. Or tied him up.”
“I guess.”
“But you didn’t.”
Donaldson folded his chubby arms across his chest. “No. I didn’t.”
“This man in the trunk. I promised him it would take a long time for him to die. Do you think you could do something like that? Draw out a man’s agony for a long time?”
Donaldson wasn’t sure what Mr. K’s angle was. “Sure.”
“Is that something you’d like to do?”
Donaldson shrugged. “I dunno. Never tried it before.”
“You know what the alternative is, don’t you?”
“You kill me.”
Mr. K nodded.
Donaldson made his decision in a nanosecond. “How do you want me to do it?”
“You can use your imagination. I have plenty of tools you can choose from.”
Donaldson stared off into the miles and miles of endless marshland. Thought about this strange request. Found himself becoming aroused.
“I’ll kill him,” he said. “And I’ll make it hurt.”
Mr. K checked his rearview mirror, eased his foot off the gas, and then drove onto the shoulder. He put on his emergency lights, then ordered Donaldson out of the car.
Donaldson didn’t even attempt to run away. He walked around to the rear of the car without being told and waited, butterflies amassing in his stomach.
The man in the trunk was awake, completely naked, his wrists and ankles tied with rope. He was older, late forties maybe, and he squinted in the powerful sun. In his mouth was a gag made out of a rubber ball.
He looks positively out of his mind with terror.
Donaldson licked his lips again.
“I prefer clothesline,” Mr. K said. “You can buy it everywhere, so it’s untraceable. And it won’t hold a fingerprint. Get him out of the car. Hurry, before another car comes by.”
Donaldson muscled the man out. It wasn’t easy. The guy squirmed and fought, and he was pretty h
eavy and tough to lift. Donaldson quickly gave up trying. Instead, he dragged him nude across the asphalt as the man moaned around his gag.
That’s gotta hurt, Donaldson thought. But that’s nothing compared to what I’m gonna do.
Mr. K took a tool case and a gas can out of the trunk, then closed it. He instructed Donaldson to pull the man into the marsh. It was wet, moss clinging to Donaldson’s shoes, muck seeping through. High reeds seemed to reach out and tug at the bound man, making it even harder to pull him.
After fifty yards, Donaldson was exhausted.
After a hundred yards, Donaldson was seriously pissed off. He hated being in the sun again, hated the throbbing in his nose and muscles, and hated this heavy son of a bitch for squirming so much and for being so goddamn heavy.
“That’s far enough,” Mr. K said. He set down the tool chest and opened it up.
Donaldson stared inside at the contents like a kid ogling presents under a Christmas tree.
“Can you give me my ball gag back?” Mr. K held out a rag. “It’s my last one.”
Donaldson unbuckled the gag from the man’s mouth, disgusted by the spit dripping from it. He handed it to Mr. K and then kicked the naked man in the stomach for making such a mess.
The man screamed. The first of many to come.
“I’ll pay!” he cried. “I’ll pay!”
“What should I use first?” Donaldson asked Mr. K.
“Try the ball-peen hammer. Breaking before cutting or burning always seems to work better.”
The next two hours blurred by for Donaldson, his entire world reduced to hurting this unknown, screaming, naked man in this deserted marsh. Even Mr. K seemed to vanish to Donaldson, though he took pictures during the proceedings, and occasionally interrupted to offer advice or encouragement:
Don’t cut there too deep. He’ll bleed to death.
Try the pliers.
Tell him what you’re going to do next. It makes it worse.
That part’s particularly sensitive. Use the blowtorch.
He’s not looking at you. Make him look at you, or cut off his eyelids.
He’s passed out again. Use the ammonia rag to wake him up.
There’s still a patch of skin there.
Now would be a good time for the salt and vinegar. Rub it in good.
It doesn’t make you gay. Enjoy yourself. He’s at your mercy.
How does it taste? Different than that other part you tried?