“Oh, shit,” he rasped. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
The blood cooled on his fingertips. The demon in the back of his head tempted him to lick his fingers. He was very thirsty.
“Those sumbitches shot me!”
He stared at the blood in disbelief. Kitts had thought the pain in his side was just the stitch you got from being old and out of shape. Adrenaline had kept him from knowing any different before, but the high had worn off now, and he felt every step, every year. It was like he’d been holding a handful of top spades heading for that ace-high flush, and then drew a club—right color, wrong suit. The stab to his psyche was almost as painful as the one in his side.
But for one card I coulda won this little poker game. But for one lucky bastard making one lucky shot, I coulda made it.
He turned around and looked behind him, wishing he could turn back the clock now that he knew how the game would end. Groundhog Day it, try again tomorrow, and maybe next time the bastard wouldn’t be such a good shot.
(too late for that)
“Goddammit!”
The blood coursing through his head was loud, too loud. Then he realized the rushing sound was the Trinity. Couldn’t be more than fifty yards in front of him. Now that he looked, Kitts could see the bright light of the moon dancing off white caps in the river. It was high, flooding with the first good Central Texas rain since July. Maybe he could float his way downriver, pick up on the other bank and head out again to boost a car at some all-night stop-and-shop on I-45.
(or maybe you’ll just bleed out)
Kitts took in a deep breath and his lungs stuck him again. It felt like every time he breathed he tore the wound open further. He stuck his finger in the hole and gritted his way through the exploration. He couldn’t find the bullet and that was bad. That meant it was deep. Maybe gotten to the vitals.
Vittles, his grandmother’s voice said in his head. She had always called dinner vittles when he was a boy.
Maybe that was why his lungs ached so badly, why he was so out of breath.
It’s probably just old age and your slovenly ways, his head said in granny’s voice.
(you hope)
If I only had another chance, he thought. I’d break out and they wouldn’t even see me.
He fought a step at a time now for the river. “It was Stu, that stupid fuck,” he told the nettles, struggling through. “Stu is short for stupid fuck!”
He’d reached the river’s edge. A voice told him the water’s roar would keep him from hearing the dogs. Those hounds didn’t need to hear, and they could run a lot faster than he could. And a lot longer.
And they ain’t been shot, the Cooler King in his head said coldly.
He followed the current upriver with his eyes. About a quarter mile down he saw a house on the bank, bright light against the black country night. Kitts knew that house. The warden’s house. Ten years ago he’d been a trusty and almost taken his chance then.
Why didn’t you, at least you were younger and, oh yeah, not shot, said the King.
But the guards had watched him like a hawk, so he hadn’t moved. That was when Deadeye Floyd Parker had been warden. Pretty soon Ramirez had stepped up to the plate and taken his place, and Kitts was back on Shit Patrol, never allowed to leave the walls.
That’s Ramirez’s house, it dawned on him. And he realized in that instant God was on his side after all. He hadn’t lost the game. The rules had just changed. He would make it after all. And he’d get a little more in the kitty to boot.
He dragged along the shallow shore of the Trinity toward the house, keeping one ear cocked for the dogs he hoped he was confusing. He let himself savor the images inside his head. Images of Ramirez begging for his life, of Ramirez’s head caving in—the wet, cracking sound of his skull as Kitts swung a crowbar or baseball bat or anything else he could get his hands on.
Thank you, God, he thought, shivering.
Kitts almost slipped as he came up the muddy bank but caught himself. He ignored the persistent pain in his side as he stood up. He never took his eyes off the house. He saw now that it was the kitchen light that shone on the river. He saw a figure moving inside, only a hazy form at this distance. Kitts picked up his speed, the wound and hounds all but forgotten, the adrenaline flowing again.
He sidled up next to the house and leaned against it for a moment, then sank down to his knees, catching a ragged breath. He could ignore the pain stabbing at him from his lungs, but not so easily the wave of nausea drifting up his gullet. Kitts braced himself and slid forward till he was under the kitchen window. He knew if he let himself sit there, it would be where they’d find him, stuck like a pig and bled out. After another heavy breath, he pushed himself up to a crouch, his popping knee joints protesting. The mud was hard and cold under his knees. He could still hear the hounds, but they didn’t seem any closer. Patting himself on the back for the river trick, Kitts whispered, “Fuck you, bitches.”
His eyes crept up over the window sill. He blinked, adjusting to the kitchen light, then ducked quickly as a figure moved into view not two feet on the other side of the window. He heard the clank of dinner dishes, scraps grinding down the disposal, plates slipping into neat rows in the sonic dishwasher. Kitts chanced another glance inside. He saw her then, the light shining around her.
Caroline.
Ho-ho-ho, Ramirez’s wife now, not just some piece of the week. Well, well, well.
He’d only seen her that one time before, when Ramirez had humbled him thirty years ago. Kitts remembered her coming to visit her beau on duty like it was yesterday, that day he’d been scoping out the fence and Ramirez busted his balls. Her name had stayed in his brain like a brand.
Caroline.
Kitts wrapped his tongue around her name, caressed it. He licked it into existence.
“Caroline,” he whispered.
She had been in her late twenties then, Kitts guessed, remembering what he’d seen. A brunette in jeans, cowboy boots, a sleeveless buttoned shirt, sunglasses.
A walking-talking reason to escape was what she’d been.
Full breasts and narrow hips, the slimmest hips he had ever seen on a woman, and he could tell just by looking at them they hadn’t yet birthed any babies. She had given Ramirez a sweet smile of promise and affection, and Kitts had stopped his escape planning and recorded the moment as she’d leaned up to kiss the sergeant on his cocksucking mouth, her scarf blowing in the breeze. Kitts had imagined her soft closeness, the smell of a woman, the thing he thought he missed most about sex with them. As she’d her beau, Kitts’s own lips had pursed as if he were Ramirez. He’d kissed her name on the wind.
Caroline.
He’d masturbated in his bunk for weeks to the vision of her on that basketball court until her face had been lost among the thousands of women they smuggled in over the Web. Eventually, he’d forgotten her in a blonde, brunette, and redheaded montage of tits, cunts, and asses. That is to say, he’d forgotten her face. But never her name.
Caroline.
And now, here she was on the other side of the window. Anything but his vision, anything but his fantasy.
Wrinkled. Tired. Washing dishes.
Her skin resembled the dishrag slung over the lip of the sink—used up, wrung out one too many times.
Look what Ramirez has done to her.
Kitts couldn’t believe his eyes. The vision of her reaching up, kissing her then-boyfriend. Sometimes he substituted himself in Ramirez’s place when he remembered it. It all came rushing back to him, as if he were standing on the court again, three decades ago, watching her lean up and kiss Ramirez all over again.
It should’ve been you. Cheated again, he thought.
The old woman washing dishes inside the house seemed a surreal corruption of the woman he’d first met. Someone had abducted the body of that goddess and sucked the life out of it. Kitts cursed the fact that he could still recognize her, because that meant it was really her. Caroline. Not as he’d remember
ed her—until he’d forgotten her—but what she had become.
Old.
She glanced without seeing toward the window, and he ducked his head again. Moving on his hands and knees, Kitts made his way to the front of the house. There was no car in the front driveway, so Ramirez must be gone.
(prisoner escape)
Of course he’s gone, dumbass. Jesus, worse than Stu.
“Fuck off,” he whispered.
Kitts staggered to his feet and slowly climbed the wooden steps of the porch. He turned the front doorknob slightly. The knob was a little squeaky but not locked. He cracked it open and heard the dishes still clinking in the kitchen.
Moving inside, he slowly closed the door behind him. Looking around, he allowed himself a moment to notice the normalcy of it all. The coat closet, the family portrait of someone’s ancestors on the wall. Prob’ly hers. They’re white, he thought. The hardwood floor. The light from the living room. Insignificant things, unless you haven’t seen them in thirty years.
The dishes clinked and clanked. Kitts stepped quickly into the living room. It was a dull yellow in color, and he thought it fit Ramirez to a tee to have a piss-yellow living room. A couch, two chairs, a coffee table, a 3V center, all the amenities of home. Ramirez’s home, anyway.
But Ramirez wasn’t home.
(prisoner escape)
Which meant that Caroline was likely alone. Ramirez had never had any children; it was common knowledge and a running joke around the prison. No Deadeye Floyd Parker, this one. Ramirez cain’t shoot straight, haw-haw.
Kitts walked over to the mantel piece. He picked out a poker from the fireplace tools and leaned on it for a minute as his side flared up again. His belly felt bloated, though he hadn’t eaten in hours. But strangely, after all his exertion to escape, he wasn’t hungry. In fact, the thought of food made him more nauseous. But he ignored that, feeling the cold steel of the fireplace poker in his hand. Lost one poker game earlier, he thought, smiling at his own word-play. Now I’ve got me a new hand to play.
He heard the dishwasher begin to hum. She was finishing up in the kitchen. No, not she.
Caroline.
Kitts sat down in what he assumed was Ramirez’s recliner and waited for her to come out. Can Caroline come out to play? his thought giggled. But he didn’t laugh out loud. His side hurt too much.
“Rudy?”
The chair faced the 3V center, away from the kitchen door. All Caroline could see was the top of a man’s head in the chair. It was gray like her husband’s but dirty. She thought it strange that she didn’t really recognize the back of her own husband’s head.
“Hello, Caroline.”
Not quite her husband’s voice. Not even close.
Against all common sense, she walked over to the chair. The man stood up and Caroline rared back. An abomination clotted with mud and blood stood in front of her. The now-battered cardboard armor that had protected Kitts as he climbed over the razor wire made him look like he’d donned a hellish version of a child’s robot costume for Halloween. His left side was wet. Caroline looked down and had the fleeting thought that the blood stain where he’d sat in Rudy’s chair would be hell to get out of the fabric.
“Wha-what do you want?”
The abomination smiled. “Thirty years ago, if you’d only asked me that question. Instead, you laughed at me.”
Kitts raised the poker in his right hand. Caroline’s mind screamed at her to run, but her feet seemed deaf.
She knitted her eyebrows, trying to see past the dirt and years. “I don’t even know you.”
“You don’t . . .” The man gasped, the poker faltering. Caroline assumed it was the stitch in his side. She had been married to law enforcement long enough to know a gunshot wound when she saw one. “How can you say that to me?” the dirty old man asked.
Caroline’s feet were waking up now. She began to back away from him. Kitts advanced on her, step for step.
“I’m telling you, we’ve never met,” she said. “I have no idea who you are.”
The man deflated in front of her, then seeing she saw it, bowed up again and raised his weapon. “You’re not my Caroline. You stole her body and used it all up.”
“What . . .?” But she stopped, realizing that everything she’d said so far had only made things worse. “What do you want?” she finally repeated.
Kitts stopped, considering her question. Then, pointing to the phone with the poker, he said, “I want you to call your husband. Tell him there’s a fire. The cat died. There’s a cockroach in the kitchen. I don’t give a shit what you tell him. But you get him here. Without suspicion.”
Caroline shook her head. “I’m not bringing him here for you. You’re that escaped prisoner they called him in for, aren’t you? You’ll just kill him.”
Kitts raised a finger and wagged it from side to side. “I promise to let you both live. But I want to see him first. Talk to him face-to-face. Do that and I let you both live. I’ll even turn myself in. It’ll be a big coup for Rudy. Don’t do it, and I promise you he’ll die soon after you do.”
She made the call.
“He says he’s coming, but he’s not happy about it, I can tell.”
“Poor Rudy. Now, turn around and face the wall.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m going to tie you up. Turn around and face the wall.”
She did as she was told. When she heard his next words, she knew it had been a mistake.
“You stole it and used it all up, you bitch. And now you’ve tainted my memories too.”
She heard the thin whoosh before she felt it, and then she felt nothing. Kitts smiled as he murdered the usurper harpy, hacking the curved tooth of the poker into her skull.
Kitts caught her as she crumpled, wrinkling his nose at the brains leaking onto his arm. He slid her to the floor, the strain stretching his side. He stood up with a deep breath and raised the steel rod again. And again. He pounded her skull, obliterating her face until there was nothing left but a bloody ruin, a madman’s pumpkin carving of jagged lines and dripping holes. The pale yellow of the living room wall was dotted with red now, the floor slashed with red blood and gray brains. Kitts stood up and stared at his handiwork, glad that he’d taken revenge on Caroline’s doppelgänger, knowing that somewhere her spirit was silently thanking him for trying his best to preserve her perfection in his mind’s eye.
He returned to the recliner in the living room, sat down with a heave of exhaustion only the old can really understand. His belly felt full to bursting now. He sat and waited.
It took almost fifteen minutes for the warden to get back home, and he wasn’t sure what to expect as he stepped out of his car and onto the porch. When Carrie had told him she needed him home, he’d gotten mad. His job was on the line, and of all the sumbitches to escape, it had to be Kitts! Just had to be. And then Carrie had mentioned her hip giving her fits and their still-missing cat and how worried she was. But they didn’t have a cat.
So he’d rounded up six county officers and asked them to give him a five-minute head start so he could scope out the situation. And now, as he mounted the steps to his own home—certain in the knowledge Kitts had violated that sanctity and burning with anger at the thought—he wasn’t sure what waited for him.
The front door was hard to open, had become wedged against something. Kitts must’ve moved a bureau in front of it. Best to move quickly, thought Ramirez, putting his shoulder against the door. It scraped open slowly as Ramirez forced his way into the room, expecting to see Kitts there, possibly armed, waiting to cap him. What he saw instead was the dead weight of Caroline’s body, pressed hard between the door and the wall.
Ramirez stared in shock. Her face was an ugly mess. His heart stopped in his chest as he stood, transfixed, looking at the bloody monster that had once been his beautiful wife, the best part of his life. His hands began to sweat, his chest expanding with the cold certainty of being too late.
“Caroline—”
In the moment of Ramirez’s awe, the murderer came at him from the living room with the poker. Gasping for breath against his burning side wound, Kitts leaned forward, hoping to add his body weight to the waning strength in his arm. The rod fell short, embedding itself high on Ramirez’s collarbone and raking down across his chest. Shouting his horror, the warden pushed himself backward, away from the blow. Kitts fell to the floor on top of Caroline, crying out as the shock of the fall brought new pain from his side. He lifted himself off the dead husk that had once been his wet dream
(wet work dream now)
and grabbed for the weapon he’d let go. Kitts pushed himself up to stand, crooked and leaning to his left to avoid stretching the wound again. Ramirez was still on the floor fumbling for his pistol, and Kitts knew if he didn’t move now, he’d be dead.
He lurched forward as Ramirez pulled the pistol out of its holster.
“You murdering bastard!” Ramirez screamed through the tears of his loss.
His eyes sharpened to clarity by pain, Kitts swung hard, knocking the gun from Ramirez’s hand. The warden watched the blurry arc of the poker as Kitts raised it for a backswing. Ramirez used all his strength to push himself backward along the floor. The rod wooshed through the space he’d been a second before. The warden shook his eyes clear.
Kitts seemed to be enjoying the game. Raising the poker again, he said, “I told you I’d kill you, you motherfucker.” But Ramirez moved forward, not away, in and under the arc of the swing as it came down. He took the old murderer’s legs out from under him, and Kitts fell on top of him, his weapon clanging to the floor. Before Kitts could recover, Ramirez turned him over, pinning him to the ground with his weight, pummeling and screaming at him. Kitts reached out a hand and, remarkably, found the poker with one grab. He brought it up clumsily to bash the side of the warden’s head. The blow wasn’t piercing but still dazed Ramirez, who fell to one side. Kitts struggled up slowly, powered by the widower’s moans and the memory of that day on the basketball court when a sergeant had humbled a defenseless prisoner in front of a woman. In front of Caroline.
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