Cut to the Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  “Yes. Yes,” she whispered.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  He was squatting down now so his face was level with hers, watching her closely as he twisted again. Smiling as he saw the agony in her eyes. “Say ‘Yes, sir, you’re right.’ ”

  “Yes, sir, you’re right.” She was starting to cry now, involuntary tears of pain and fury rolling down her cheeks. God, she hated being so helpless to resist, but more than that, even, she hated to cry—hated it for the weakness it showed; hated it, too, because she knew this asshole was getting off on it.

  “Get out of the car, nice and easy. Here, I’ll help you.” He added some upward force, and she staggered out, almost vomiting from the pain in her thumb and her wrist. “That’s it. Now up that little path there.” He walked behind her, using the shrieking thumb and torqued arm to steer her, as if her arm were the tiller of a small boat.

  Fifty yards up the trail he stopped and turned her to face him. “All right now, show me how you wiggle out of those jeans.” She glared at him, arms at her sides, not moving. He unbuckled his belt—a wide leather strap with a heavy brass buckle—and yanked the buckle. The strap seethed and snapped through the belt loops like an angry snake, then popped free of the final loop and writhed in the air between them, nearly hitting her in the face. “Don’t make me tell you again,” he said. Doubling the strap, he slapped it lightly against his thigh. Hands shaking, she fumbled with the button in her waistband, finally got it, and then unzipped the jeans and began pushing them down over her hips. “Not like that,” he said. “Work it. Make it good. Put on a show for me.”

  “Fuck you, asshole,” she hissed.

  The backhanded swing of the doubled belt caught her on the right ear and cheek; the force of the blow knocked her to the ground, laying her cheek open and causing her to black out briefly. When she came to, he was dragging her to her feet. “Let’s try this again,” he said. “Show me how you wiggle out of those. Slow and sexy. Put some shimmy in it. You need to put the ‘service’ in ‘customer service,’ sweetheart.”

  Her breath coming in jerky gasps, she began to twitch her hips and sway. He kept time with both hands: his left hand flipping the belt against his leg, his right hand rubbing himself to an erection. His eyes feasted on the fear she knew was showing in hers.

  NAKED NOW, SHE SQUATTED in front of him, twigs and rocks jabbing the soles of her feet. His left hand encircled her throat; his right gripped the back of her head, his fingers entwined in her hair, so he could push or pull with equal ease. “Open up and say ‘ah,’ ” he ordered. “And show me how much you want it. Suck it like your life depends on it.”

  His final words were accompanied by a steady tightening of the pressure on her windpipe. The pressure eased, but only slightly, when she gasped, “I want it. So much. Give it to me, baby. Please.”

  Wrapping her right hand around him, she opened her mouth, sizing him up, wondering, Could I bite it off? As she guided him in, between her lips, past her incisors, across her tongue, she imagined it all—the swift, savage clamp of her strong jaws, the gasp and then the howl of pain, the gratifying geyser of blood pulsing from his severed stump, the spurts diminishing until there was no more blood to be shed. He’d still kill me, she realized—a quick clench of the hand around her throat, first as a reflexive response to the pain, followed by the full force of his vengeful fury. But he’ll kill me no matter what. Unless I get away. But how?

  Fighting for breath, fighting back the need to gag, Janelle began cooing and moaning—softly at first, then steadily louder—feigning the desire he demanded. With her left hand, she caressed the front of his thigh, her nails lightly raking the skin. He seemed to like that—his thrusts grew more insistent, and his right hand kept time, slamming her face against his crotch harder and harder.

  Releasing the shaft of his penis, Janelle now reached both hands behind him and squeezed his clenching buttocks, drawing a low groan from him. That’s right, asshole, she thought, you just think about gettin’ off. Slowly she ran her fingernails down the backs of his thighs, his knees, his calves, until her hands reached his ankles, where his pants were bunched. Taking the crotch of his bunched-up pants in both hands, she gripped it tight, then—drawing momentum from the next forward yank of the hand entwined in her hair—she drove her head into his belly. At the same instant she straightened her legs and yanked the pants toward her, turning all her terror into strength. The man grunted and toppled backward, arms flailing, whacking his head on the trunk of a fallen tree.

  Janelle didn’t wait to see if he was hurt. Oblivious to the damage being done to her bare feet, she ran down the trail, out of the woods, and then—stark naked—darted across the dead-end lane, up the grassy embankment, and onto the shoulder of Interstate 40, frantically waving her arms for help.

  Two cars whizzed by, horns blaring, but then a tractor-trailer rig smoked to a stop just beyond her, and another tucked in behind the first. The astonished truckers clambered down from their cabs and converged on her just in time to see a neon-orange Mustang fishtail up the dead-end lane, skid around a corner, and vanish up a serpentine road into the backwoods of east Knox County.

  PART 2

  The Fall

  . . . your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

  —GENESIS 3:5

  OCTOBER 1992

  CHAPTER 23

  Satterfield

  THE LIGHT AT MAGNOLIA Avenue and Cherry Street flipped to yellow, and Satterfield braked for once instead of punching the gas. For one thing, he was moving at a crawl anyhow, trolling for the woman who’d slipped from his grasp a few hours before; for another, he wasn’t in the Mustang, but in the van, with its anemic engine and sissy automatic transmission. The camo paint was gone, scrubbed off; anybody who bothered to glance his way would see an ordinary work van—a painter’s van—with a pair of battered, spattered aluminum ladders clattering on the roof racks.

  At the far right corner of the intersection was a Family Dollar store, and Satterfield eyed it through the windshield. The Magnolia Avenue hookers tended to congregate there, or at least cross paths there. Maybe it was because Magnolia and Cherry was a high-traffic intersection, or maybe simply because Family Dollar was a cheap place to get snacks or nail polish or stockings or other tools of the trade. Does Family Dollar sell rubbers? he wondered idly. Lube? Ironic, that hookers were regulars in Family Dollar. He noticed a bail-bonding company conveniently located in the next block, and, across Magnolia, a run-down motel, probably a hot-sheet motel. Hell, if there was a Waffle House and a beer joint and a VD clinic, you could just live right here, he thought sardonically. He snapped to attention when a leggy woman in a short skirt strutted out of Family Dollar, a blond wig swaying as she walked. The strut was right and the skirt was tight, but the skin was wrong—it was black skin. As he scanned the fringes of the store’s parking lot, Satterfield’s jaw muscles throbbed, pulsing like venom glands. He’d spotted two or three other hookers along Magnolia in his first pass out and back, but not the one he wanted to find. The one he really, really needed to find.

  He’d made a mistake. It was the only one he’d made—the only one, at least, since that beginner’s mistake, with that first woman. That one had cost him dearly; had cost him a career and a future. This one might be as bad. Would she go to the cops? Probably not, he told himself, for the hundredth time. Hookers hate cops. He drummed his fingers on the wheel. Then again, he fretted, hookers don’t fight back. And they damned sure don’t win. Don’t get away. Not from me, they don’t. But she did; she had. So clearly she wasn’t like most hookers. And even if she didn’t go to the cops, she could put the word out on the street about him, warn the others against him, and sooner or later that could circle back to bite him in the ass. If he didn’t spot her by midnight, he’d have to start asking around, loosening some lips with some cash or some crack. The girl—shi
t, he hadn’t even bothered to ask her street name—was a serious loose end, one that had to be tied up, fast and tight. This is not good, the voice in his head shouted again. Not good.

  Behind him, a horn honked—he hadn’t noticed the light turn green—and Satterfield thrust his arm out the window and gave the guy the finger. The gesture was answered by the squawk of a police siren and the strobing of blue lights. “Shit,” he hissed. Distracted and distraught, he hadn’t even noticed the KPD cruiser come up behind him at the red light. “Shit, shit, shit.” He eased the van forward and turned into the Family Dollar lot so he wouldn’t block traffic. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” He slapped the right side of his face so hard he saw stars. “Stupid.” The stinging pain helped focus his mind.

  Keeping his eyes locked now on the outside mirror, he watched the cruiser pull into the lot behind him. Satterfield tugged his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open, removing the driver’s license from the clear sleeve and laying both items on the dash, the license on top of the wallet. Then he reached behind him and tucked his hand into the deep pocket on the back of the seat. There, his searching fingers closed around the serrated slide of the Glock, and he slid out the pistol, which felt heavy and reassuring in his hand. He racked the slide to chamber a round and laid the gun across his lap, the muzzle pointing at the center of the driver’s door. Then he covered it with the wrapper from the Hardee’s burger he’d just eaten. The shreds of lettuce littering the wrapper were still crisp, the smears of ketchup still bright as blood.

  In the mirror, he watched as the door of the cruiser opened and the cop got out—a red-faced kid, probably no more than a year out of the academy, Satterfield guessed. He was already porking up, his blue shirt straining and bulging over his belt from a surfeit of sausage biscuits or Krispy Kremes or Coors; a few years from now, by the time he was Satterfield’s age, the porky kid would probably be on blood-pressure and cholesterol meds. Was his face flushed because he had a drinking problem, too, on top of the eating problem? Or was that just sunburn, or maybe a rookie’s anger at being flipped off?

  Satterfield was on high alert—coiled—debating between playing it cool and striking preemptively. Maybe all he’d need to do was grovel. Gosh, officer, I am so sorry, he rehearsed. Some punk was tailgating me a couple blocks back, and I thought . . . But what if the girl had already gone to the police? What if all the patrol units already had his description? And what if this guy, eager to prove himself, had memorized the description—had seen Satterfield trolling for her and had recognized him?

  Satterfield’s finger tightened as the blue uniform loomed closer and larger, now filling the mirror. If he fired through the door, Porky would never even see it coming. His piglike eyes and jowls would open wide in surprise, and then—just as the sound of the shot registered in his brain—he’d crumple to the asphalt. Shooting him through the door might require a second shot to finish him, though—time-consuming and riskier, potentially exposing Satterfield to more witnesses. What if he held on to his license when the cop tried to take it? Would that distract the guy long enough for Satterfield to raise the gun and take a clean headshot?

  “Sir, I need to see your license and registration,” Porky said, peering through the window at Satterfield’s face.

  “Officer, I am so sorry,” Satterfield began, reaching for the license with his left hand, shaking his head in a show of embarrassment and contrition. “I had no idea that was you behind me.” He picked up the license by one corner, gripping it tightly as he extended it toward the window. “My father was a police officer,” he added, laying it on thick as syrup. “I respect the hell out of you guys.”

  Instead of taking the bait—and instead of taking the license—the cop said, “Sir, would you remove your sunglasses, please?”

  Satterfield hadn’t expected that. Shit, now what? he thought. Do I put down the license, or let go of the gun? Or do I shoot now? He stalled for time. “Excuse me?”

  “I said take off your sunglasses, please.”

  Fuck. Is he just seeing if I’m stoned, or does he have a description? The day was cool, but Satterfield felt a crown of sweat beading his scalp, felt moisture gather under his arms and trickle down his sides. The Glock had a six-pound trigger pull, and Satterfield’s finger pressure was already pushing three pounds, easy—maybe four—and climbing.

  Suddenly the cop’s face swiveled toward the cruiser, and Satterfield heard a radio call blaring through the loudspeaker. “All units, all units. Armed robbery in progress, Home Federal Bank, 3001 East Magnolia.”

  Without a word, the cop spun and lumbered away. Slamming the cruiser into gear, he whipped it around, almost clipping the van’s bumper, and fishtailed out of the Family Dollar lot, tires smoking and siren shrieking.

  Satterfield took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then bent forward and rested his head on the steering wheel. After three more such breaths, he straightened up. Lifting the hinged lid of the console, he took out a pack of unfiltered Camels and a lighter. With shaking hands he tapped out a cigarette and lit it, taking a deep drag and holding it, forcing the nicotine into his bloodstream as he replaced the pack and the lighter and closed the lid. Then, expelling a tight plume of smoke, he turned his right palm upward on the console. “You stupid piece of shit,” he whispered, in a voice that he hadn’t heard in years.

  The flesh hissed and smoked as he pressed the burning cigarette to his palm. Satterfield flinched, but he did not whimper or cry out. He hadn’t whimpered since he was twelve, and he’d be damned to hell if he’d ever whimper again.

  CHAPTER 24

  Kittredge

  KITTREDGE FROWNED, RUBBING HIS left hand across his mouth, the stubble on his upper lip and chin rasping like sandpaper across his fingers and palm. The stubble rubbing was the detective’s version of a worry stone; the sound and sensation distracted his mind, turned down the distracting, unhelpful inner chatter. Kittredge rubbed his chin religiously, ritualistically, the way a baseball player might tap dirt from his spikes with the bat before stepping into the batter’s box, focusing on his shoes instead of the cowhide-covered cannonball about to come screaming in at ninety-five miles an hour—and by distracting himself from it, giving himself a better shot at hitting the damned thing.

  “I’m having a little trouble here, Ms. . . .” Kittredge stole a glance at the complaint form on his desk. “Ms. Mayfield. You’re saying this man raped you. But you also say you got into his car with him. Agreed to have sex with him. For money. You see my problem here? How am I supposed to arrest a man for raping a woman who agreed to have sex with him?”

  The woman looked away, appeared to be wavering. Probably deciding to cut her losses, Kittredge figured—just get up and walk out, knowing she was lucky to be alive. Instead, she turned and looked him in the eye. “But I unagreed,” she said. “I canceled the deal. I said no.” Now her gaze did not waver. “Look, Detective, I know I’m just a whore,” she said bluntly. “I sell my body on the street. I let strangers screw me for fifty bucks—twenty if I’m desperate.” She pressed on. “It’s not much of a life, and you probably think I’m scum. I sure as hell do, lots of the time. But there’s one tiny little scrap of dignity I still cling to, and you know what that is, Detective?” He could tell she didn’t expect him to answer—didn’t even want him to answer—so he waited. “It’s that I get to decide. I get to say yes—and God knows, I say yes just about every chance I get. But every once in a great while, I say no. Out there today, I said no, and you know what happened when I said no? That sick sonofabitch damn near broke my arm, and then he busted my face open with a belt. And then he forced me to strip naked and kneel down at his feet and take his dick in my mouth. After I said no. After.”

  She stared at her hands, which had started to tremble on the table, as silent tears rolled down her cheeks and plopped onto the metal surface. Kittredge expected to see sadness in her face, but what he saw instead was fury. Fury a
t what had happened to her out in the woods? Fury at how her life had gone off the rails so badly? Fury at her own complicity in annihilating goodness and grace from her life? “I said no,” she repeated through clenched teeth, still looking down, as if speaking to her quaking fingers. Then she looked up at Kittredge again and resumed speaking, her voice clear and strong now: “Tell me, Detective. If some strange man did that to you—knocked the shit out of you, and made you strip and kneel down and suck his dick, and tell him you loved it—how would you like it?”

  Kittredge had never thought about it, and didn’t want to think about it now, but there it was, the unwelcome and disgusting image in his mind, like some sort of brain STD he’d just caught from her. “I wouldn’t like it,” he finally said. It was a vast, absurd understatement. Kittredge felt something shifting inside him—something besides the contagion of the image. Kittredge felt something opening up, making room to accommodate this woman’s sense of injustice, enough to admire her for not giving up and just taking what the guy had done. “Honest truth, Janelle? I’d hate it like hell.”

  “SO,” KITTREDGE SAID AS they took the Asheville Highway exit off I-40, “left here?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Cross the river, then take the first right.”

  Kittredge slowed to thirty crossing the Holston. The river was spanned here by a steel truss bridge, fifty years old if it was a day. The bridge was narrow and rickety, but Kittredge liked the angles and rivets, liked the way the emerald-green paint matched the color of the river below. He also liked being able to see through the railings and down to the water. Modern bridges, like the I-40 bridge that spanned the river a half mile downstream from here, blocked your view of the water; all you could see was the concrete sides. When Kittredge crossed a river, he wanted to see the river.