by Chuck Dixon
Nestor pulled drawers from the dresser and dumped them on the bed. Socks, briefs, t-shirts and running shorts. Some change fell to the floor and some of the coins sounded heavier than normal currency. Nestor crouched and picked up some colorful coins the size of silver dollars. They were decorated in gold and silver and enamel. One had a diving eagle on one side and a map of Afghanistan on the other. Another had Bart Simpson with a grinning skull face holding a bloody dagger in skeletal hands. They bore acronyms that meant nothing to Nestor except NCIS which he knew from television.
“He is military,” Nestor said tossing a coin to Karp.
Karp laughed at the spooky Bart and stuck the coin in his pocket.
They went into the living room which was as spartan as the bedroom. A pair of cheap armchairs. A pressed wood end table and the last analog television in America. In place of a table and chairs near the kitchenette was an antique roll-top desk and wheeled office chair. These were the only interesting pieces of furniture in the apartment; the only evidence of any kind of the individuality of the occupant.
Nestor pried open the drawers and top to rifle the desk while Karp made sandwiches from the contents of the refrigerator. The younger man sat on a stool at the kitchen counter and went through paper files he found in the desk. Karp played homemaker placing sandwiches and beers between them. Swiss and hot mustard for the big man and peanut butter and jam for his little tovarich. Such an American Nestor had become.
“Bingo,” Nestor said.
Karp grunted through a mouthful of sandwich.
“These are legal papers. Our man Levon is a father. He is suing his father-in-law in court for custody of his daughter,” Nestor said.
“America,” Karp said, spitting crumbs of bread and cheese as he spoke.
“This man was a soldier. You ask me, too smart to come back here. He must know that we know him now.”
Karp nodded.
“Let us go see his father-in-law and see what we might learn.”
“You are so smart, dear one,” Karp said, reaching across the counter to give his partner a tender slap.
Nestor touched the streak of mustard on the bigger man’s cheek.
They finished their sandwiches and left for the house in Twickenham.
34
Levon filled a cart at a Walmart in Corinth, Mississippi.
He bought clothes for Merry that she helped pick out. Shirts, underwear, socks, jeans and a heavier winter coat. Also a pair of boots and a sweater she “just had to have.” A new toothbrush, a bottle of Flintstones, a comb and some coloring books and crayons. A selection of her favorite breakfast cereals went into the cart. She had enough changes of clothes to last a week without laundering.
He paid with cash and the elderly woman at the register remarked that “someone is a very lucky little girl.”
“And it’s not even my birthday.” Merry beamed.
They ate at a Subway before getting back on the highway south towards Tupelo.
Levon took a trio of pills from a plastic carrying case he kept in his pocket. He popped them in his mouth and swallowed with a sip of raspberry ice tea.
“Are you still sick?” Merry said.
“I’m not sick,” he said.
"Grandpa says you are. He says you take pills because you're sick."
“These pills? They’re like vitamins for my brain. I don’t take them because I’m sick. I take them to make me think better.”
“I’d like to think better.”
“You think just fine, honey.”
"Does your friend know we're coming?" Merry said, stabbing a straw into the ice for the last sip of punch at the bottom of the paper cup.
“He doesn’t know.”
“You should call him. We don’t want to be rude.”
“He doesn’t have a phone, Merryberry.”
She knitted her brows. No phone? Unthinkable. Everyone had a phone.
“Why not, Daddy?”
“Well, his wife and him live way out in the woods away from the world. They like it that way.”
“Why’s that?”
“My friend says he’s seen everything in the world he wants to see. He headed back into the trees and built himself a cabin there.”
“So, us coming to see him is a surprise?” she said.
“Something like that,” Levon said.
Merry was silent for a while, stabbing at the ice in her drink cup with her straw.
“Daddy?” she said after a bit.
“Yes, honey?”
“You promised to take me to Disneyworld.”
“Well, I can’t do that right now.”
"It's okay," she said. It was the opposite of okay but she wanted him to know she was going to be brave about it. It was also important that he knows just how brave she was being. She slumped back into the booth as he gathered their sandwich papers to clear the table.
“Merry,” he said standing and holding her coat out to her.
“Yes?” she said, being so very brave but not looking him in the face.
“Last time I was at my friend’s I saw wild ponies in the woods.”
She snatched the coat from his hand and was heading for the store exit in her new boots. He trotted after.
Disneyworld?
Never heard of the place.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“There’s no reasoning with evil.”
35
Dr. Roth heard the doorbell ring but chose to ignore it to finish his morning shave. He was patting his cheeks with cucumber infused witch hazel when he heard Marcia call his name. Her voice quavered like the time she found the garden snake under the water heater.
Dressed only in a bath towel tied around his waist he stepped to the top of the stairs. Down in the foyer, Marcia stood between two men who were dressed in dark leather coats. One of them had Marcia in a chokehold. A gloved fist held a curved knife against his wife's side and angled to go up under her bottom rib. Jordan's vision was drawn to the tattoo on the man's neck. A grinning human skull smoking a cigarette.
The smaller of the two men, a young man with a baby face and hair to his shoulders, began to climb the stairs toward Jordan.
Jordan moved away down the hallway seeking options as he ran. The towel slipped down to his ankles tripping him. The doctor was back on his feet and sprinting for the end of the hall.
He owned no firearms. He’d read a study that proved that a gun in the home was 67% more likely to be used as a murder weapon than in an incident of home defense. The only phones, landlines, were downstairs in his office and the kitchen. A Danish study posited that cell and cordless phones significantly increased the risk of brain cancers. The Roths did not have an alarm system of any kind because Jordan saw it as a waste of funds as they’d spent so much to buy a home in a safe neighborhood.
Dr. Roth took the only alternative that remained for his continued survival.
He locked himself in the bathroom.
Braced against the sink cabinet, he listened to footsteps approaching on the hardwood floor. Cucumber infused sweat dripped from his face. The door between him and the invading strangers was a hollow fill door made of Masonite and recycled materials. It was part of the eco-friendly restoration of the house that Jordan insisted on before they moved in thirty years earlier. It would never stand up to whoever was in the hallway. The only window in the room was a double-glazed insulated window fixed in its frame with no opening options. It was only a matter of time before the door came down and they had him.
Jordan surprised the man in the hallway by pulling open the bathroom door.
The man stepped back raising a pistol of some kind at the naked doctor.
“I’m not resisting. There’s no call for violence,” Jordan said holding his palms out.
The long-haired young man’s expression melted from surprise to a cruel leer. He used his gloved gun hand to brush the hair from his eyes.
When he saw this man’s eyes the doctor reassessed his decision to
give in so easily and admitted it might not have been the wisest course. The eyes looked like he imagined a hawk’s might when soaring high above the earth looking for prey.
"Say nothing more, or I shoot you. Come with me or I shoot you," the young man said in accented English.
“May I put on some clothes?” Jordan said.
The young man raised the gun to aim at the doctor’s face.
Naked, Jordan led the way to the head of the steps with the young man following.
36
Hands bound with tape behind his back, Jordan Roth was packed into the confines of a car truck where he lay pressed against Marcia’s back. Still naked. He shivered in the cold while searching the invisible organ of his mind for a solution that would save their lives.
This had to be about Levon Cade, his son-in-law. What kind of trouble was he in? What had he done that brought these men to the door of the Roth home?
Marcia was crying and whispering incoherently. It was a prayer. The sound of it made it difficult for Jordan to concentrate on his thoughts.
“Please, please,” he whispered and nudged her back with his knees.
She mistook it for an effort to comfort her and reduced the noises she made to intermittent whimpering.
They rode a long way. The doctor lost track of time but it seemed like a long drive with many turns. They came to rest a moment. A rhythmic metallic rattling. A garage door going up. The car started forward again. The sound of the motor resonated now in echoes. They had pulled inside a building rather than a garage. The car stopped. The engine died. Two doors opened and slammed shut.
The trunk popped open. The young man and the brute were there. They hauled the Roths from the trunk and walked/dragged them over a concrete floor to a metal chair by a table. Jordan was placed in the chair. His wife dropped to the floor.
The building was a cavernous empty space — an industrial warehouse abandoned for many years. Stacks of debris were pushed against the wall. There was a tang of rust and oil in the air.
The brute busied himself taping Jordan securely in the chair. The glue tugged at his naked flesh. Jordan remained silent. He would not plead. He would not bargain. He would wait to see what these men wanted and then decide his course. This was the decision he’d come to on the ride to this forgotten place. They would set the conditions of the game. He would play their game and win. They were thugs with simple minds and simple motives. He was an educated man with an agile mind.
The objects on the table were cause for alarm. A battery operated power drill. A hammer. A box of four-inch nails. A can of charcoal lighter. A pair of adjustable pliers.
The younger of the two leaned back on the table.
“Levon Cade is your son-in-law?” Nestor said.
“Yes. He was. Until my daughter died,” Jordan said, voice level, eyes turned away from the tools on the table.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I do not know where—”
Nestor nodded.
Karp pulled the Browning from his waistband and shot Marcia twice through the head.
Jordan stared. First at his wife lying shrunken and dead still in a spreading lake of blood. Then into the predator eyes of the younger man.
"That is to show that we are serious. Continue to lie and, believe me; you will envy your wife."
“But I don’t know where he is. I’d tell you if I knew. I’d have told the police if I knew.”
“Police?” Karp said, glancing at Nestor.
“What do you mean by police?” Nestor said, stepping from the table to lean close to Jordan’s face.
Jordan began to speak. Nestor held up a hand.
“Wait. Wait. Wait.”
Nestor took his tablet from an inside pocket of his coat. He poked and swiped. A voice speaking a foreign language came from the device. A gruff voice with a basso tone that was discernible even through the tinny speakers of the tablet. Nestor answered in the same language. A curt exchange followed.
The tablet was held up before the doctor’s face. On the screen was the face of a hard-looking man of perhaps Jordan’s age, maybe older or younger. The man locked eyes with Jordan over the link as intensely as if they were in the same room.
“You talk to police? Of what do you talk to police?”
“My son-in-law. He took my granddaughter without permission. I filed charges. I told the police all I knew.”
“It’s true. We saw the legal papers, shef,” Nestor said.
“You told police all you know. What is it you tell them?” the man on the tablet asked.
“That Cade is insane. He’s dangerous. He suffers from PTSD. He’s on psychotropic drugs, mood altering medications. He’s capable of anything and he has my granddaughter with him.” Jordan stated his case clearly. They both wanted the same thing. They could all be reasonable men.
“He is crazy. He is dangerous. This I know. Where is he? That is what I need from you,” the tablet said.
“I don’t know where he is. I told you that. I would tell you where he is if I knew.”
“Will he call you? Will he be contacting you?”
“No. He hates me as much as I hate him. He won’t call.”
“Your granddaughter. Maybe she call?”
“She’s nine years old. I’m not sure she remembers the house number.”
“She have phone. All kids got phones.”
“Not Meredith. I forbade her to have a cell phone.” The doctor caught himself before making mention of the Danish studies.
“I believe you. You do not know. A liar would make up a story to tell me.”
Jordan relaxed at the words. His muscles ached from the strain of the tension and the cold.
“Nestor?” the tablet said. Nestor held the tablet before him and there was a new exchange in what sounded like Russian now. Nestor tapped the screen, killing the call. He nodded to Karp.
Karp pulled his Browning once again.
Jordan was more irritated than surprised.
"You want to prove that you're idiots? You want to do the stupid thing? Then go ahead and kill me," the doctor said. He sounded impatient with them like they were stubborn children.
Nestor held a hand up to Karp. This was a first. Nestor had seen people in this same situation beg, pray, pass out, weep and make all kinds of promises. He’d been offered drugs, money, cars, pussy, and blow jobs by others taped in chairs, suspended by their heels or buried to their necks.
This is the first time he was ever scolded.
“We are stupid? We killed your wife. We have a gun to your head. But we’re the idiots.”
“Yes.”
“You have balls, my man. Big ones. But who holds the gun?”
"You want Cade. I'm your only possible contact. The man is a classic loner. He has no family. No friends. If I'm gone, you lose any chance you would ever have had of finding him."
“You told us you don’t know where he is.”
“That doesn’t mean that I can’t find out. Given time to think about it, without the threat of pain or death, I would be able to help you locate him.”
“You really hate his ass.”
“He killed my daughter,” Jordan said.
“Give me one more reason or my tovarich brings this to an end.”
“I’m a doctor. A surgeon. Surely your people, your organization, the man on the tablet, would have use for a surgeon now and then.”
Nestor glanced at Karp then back at the doctor.
“You can write prescriptions?”
“Whatever you’re looking for. Whatever amounts you need. I’m on the board at Huntsville and Crestwood.”
Nestor shrugged and reached out to pat Karp’s gun hand. The brute returned the Browning to his waistband. Nestor cut the tape holding the doctor to the chair with his clasp knife. Together they carried/dragged the doctor to the car and placed him in the back seat. Marcia went into the trunk along with the sack of tools from the table. The pair settled back in the front seat.
“Yes. Could you turn the heat up, please?” the doctor said.
Karp cranked up the fan and warm air washed over Jordan. He allowed his body to unknot from the tension built up over the past hours. He fell asleep as they drove, awakened once when the corpse in the trunk rocked against the wall behind the backseat. The doctor fell back into a doze, his invisible organ free to dream of warm streams and green grass under a summer sun.
37
They were a half hour off the county road and following a switchback coursing around hills covered in white birch. Levon slowed to a stop twice to allow deer to cross the road.
He turned the truck onto a driveway marked with a battered mailbox with a faded Marine Corps globe and anchor painted on it. The driveway had a hard-packed stone surface. It snaked alongside a dry wash to ford a shallow creek fringed with winter ice as thin as lace.
A fringe of tall pines acted like a gateway either side of the roadway. A one-level log cabin was visible ahead. White smoke curled from the wide chimney of stacked stone. A Dodge Ram sat high on lifts and knobby tires in the gravel yard before the house. A waxed-shiny Range Rover was in the shade of a carport on a concrete hardstand. In the center of the yard was a walled flower bed empty now but for a flagpole atop of which an American flag fluttered above a smaller USMC flag.
A man stood on the deep porch that ran across the face of the cabin. He came down the steps with a double-barrel shotgun cradled easily in his arms. A black man with steel gray hair cropped close. He had massive shoulders and a thick neck visible under a denim farm coat. His eyes were hidden behind dark wraparounds. Beneath the glasses was a scowl that looked as if it were frozen there for all time. He walked out to meet the approach of the Avalanche.