by W Winters
Unless they opened the safe and found the secret door in the back of it. It leads to a winding iron staircase, down to a long hall in the basement with a vault door to a room.
The skinny hallway that leads to the room reminds me of the old warehouse I’d sneak off to when I was a boy. Back when I needed to be alone and get away. It was quiet, and offered the comfort of both safety and a place to simply be alone.
The room in that basement exists for one purpose. And one purpose only.
The men who find themselves here aren’t feeling the security I did when I was younger and hiding in the warehouse.
No, the men who end up in this room are here to die, although they would say and do anything to believe that they’ll get out of here still breathing.
The vault door opens with a slow, plaintive cry. It’s heavy and made of thick steel. With Seth behind me, we enter the room comprised of four smooth concrete walls. It’s soundproof and the floors are made of steel grids with a drain in the center of the room.
There’s no furniture in the room, save an old iron chair bolted to the floor over the drain. I bring everything I need with me each time.
This time I’ve brought a pair of hedge clippers, the kind most people use for their gardens. They’re in my back pocket, as is my pocket knife.
The muffled screams that come from behind the balled cloth in Luke Stevens’s mouth fill the room as the two of us walk in.
His skin’s paler and almost gray in this light than it was in the video we had of him and another man talking about where Marcus wanted Jenny Parks delivered. That’s the word that came out of his mouth. Delivered. As if she were only an object to be shipped off.
The steel cuffs leave bright red marks around his wrists and ankles, along with a trail of dried blood as he wrestles with his restraints, still screaming. Like it would do him any good to fight.
My nostrils flare with the stench of piss in the damp underground as I get a few feet from him and then look to my right to ask Seth, “How long?”
“Twelve hours now.”
He stands closer to the prisoner than I do. We have a system that works. When something works, you don’t fuck it up. He knows that and he stands where he always does, just behind the subject of our interrogation, where he can’t be seen.
Crouching in front of Luke, a man who may know where Jenny is, I look into his dark eyes, taking in how dilated they are. Wondering what the hell he’s on.
“You think twelve hours is enough?” I ask Seth and he shrugs. Luke struggles to look behind him, and his ass comes off the chair just slightly, but the chain wrapped around his waist keeps him down.
Standing up straighter, I pull the clippers from my back pocket and unlock them to look at the blade. “They’re dull,” I comment as if I didn’t notice before.
“They’ll still work,” Seth says and this time he places a hand on either side of the back of the chair, close enough to Luke so our victim notices, but still not touching him.
I can imagine how Luke’s heart races, how the adrenaline takes over. The fight or flight response failing him and every instinct in his body screaming for him to beg. Just like he’s screaming now, behind the old shirt shoved in his mouth. Seth’s silent and that’s how he’ll stay until I ask him if there’s any reason not to kill the man in the chair.
“Take it out.” On my command, Seth removes the shirt from Luke’s mouth, ripping the duct tape across his skin in a swift motion. The bright pink skin left behind marks where the tape once laid.
“I didn’t do it,” Luke screams immediately. Even as the pain tears through him and he’s forced to wince, he continues to plead. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it. I didn’t fuck with you guys.”
“Jenny Parks,” I say quietly, and it’s all I say. Realization dawns on the man that he did, in fact, do it. He fucked with us. And it shuts him up, although his bottom lip still quivers.
There’s a knowing look of fear in his eyes. The lack of an exhale, the stale gaze he gives me. “You know her name.”
His mouth closes before he speaks and he visibly swallows.
“Every time you hesitate, I take something from you,” I tell him easily, crouched in front of him and waiting for him to acknowledge what I’ve said.
The second his mouth opens to speak, I grip his hand, choosing his pointer first. The clank of the cuffs and his protests mix in the damp air that still smells like piss. Seth does his part, shoving the shirt in the man’s mouth as I clamp down on the clippers. My left hand keeps the other fingers bent, stopping them from interfering. My right hand closes the blades around his pointer. The flesh cuts easily; blood flows just as easily as he lets out a high-pitched muffled scream, but the bone I have to break away from the ligament first before it’s cleanly gone.
I take a half step back, watching the blood pour from where his finger was moments ago. It streams out steadily and more blood creeps from under the metal cuffs that keep him held down as he struggles. Seth keeps his hand over the shirt, and watches Luke’s face turn bright red, struggling to breathe, screaming with everything he has in him.
His chest heaves. But it never lasts long. The screaming is only temporary. Just like the hesitation and the lies.
“I’ve done this a few times, Mr. Stevens,” I comment as I wipe the blade on his dark blue denim jeans. Although he’s stopped screaming, the shirt stays where it is. Seth knows to only remove it once I’m ready for the man to speak.
I let out a heavy exhale and then crouch down in front of him again as I say, “I don’t like to waste my time.” My tone is easy, consoling even as I stare into his bloodshot eyes, noting the desperation that flows from his sweaty skin. I tell him, “I just want answers, and then all of this is over.”
He tries to shriek through the shirt, his neck craning as he more than likely pleads with Seth to remove the gag. The tendons in his neck tense and he keeps it up, which only pisses me off.
“We don’t have time for your comments or questions. Now answer mine. Do you know Jenny Parks?”
With the question asked, Seth removes the rag and the man in the chair stumbles over his words.
“She’s the girl I took to the bridge.” He does well with the first statement, but then he backtracks and barters. My irritation would show, if I weren’t expecting it. After all, I have done this more than a few times. He started off strong, thinking it was a negotiation, but the tilt of my head changed his tone to one of a beggar.
“If I tell you everything… will you just let me go? Please! I’ll tell you everything!”
I stare at the clippers and take in a breath. A single breath waiting for more information and then my gaze moves to Luke, my eyebrows raising in warning.
He looks to his left quickly, as if anything is there. He tries to get up as if the cuffs had disappeared. What he doesn’t do, is give me the information I need.
The shirt is shoved back into his mouth and his ring finger goes next, leaving the middle finger on his left hand easily available for the next time I need to prove a point.
Tears leak from the man’s eyes and his cries turn morbid as he mourns his mistake. I feel… I feel nothing but anger for him. Anger I don’t show.
“Mr. Stevens, I read your file. You killed your mistress and then your wife. Or no,” I feign a correction as I keep eye contact with Seth, not the man I’m determined to kill tonight. “Was it his wife first and then his mistress?”
“You’ve got it a little wrong, Boss,” Seth tells me casually, the shirt still balled up in Luke’s mouth, even though he’s only crying, no longer screaming. “It was his sister and then his wife.”
“No mistress then?”
Seth shakes his head in time with a sputtering of heaving coughs from Luke. “They stole his dope, or something like that.” I stoop in front of the man and ask him, “Is that right?”
He’s nodding his head even before the shirt’s taken from him. As the damp cloth leaves his mouth, he nearly chokes trying to spe
ak too soon. With a quick intake of air he explains himself. “They were going to take it all.”
“Oh,” I say and nod in understanding. “I see.” Again I wipe the blades of the clippers on Luke’s jeans. He glances down and then his head falls back as he tries desperately not to cry again.
“And you took Jenny Parks.”
“I didn’t take her!” He shakes his head as he denies what I said. And I wait a fraction of a second for him to explain. Which he does this time, the information flowing from his lips. “She wanted to go to Marcus. I was dropping her off! I was just supposed to drop her off at the bridge!”
“What bridge?”
“On Fifth and Park. The overpass.” He nearly says more, but stops himself. With a knowing look I lean forward, but he continues. Just barely in time. “It’s where I do all the drops for Marcus.” His pale skin turns nearly white and his voice lowers. “Every three weeks or so, I have a pickup from out of state and a drop-off at the bridge. He gives an address. I go, pick up the unmarked package and drop it off at the bridge. A few weeks ago, he gave a name instead of an address. He told me to go to her, and to tell her Marcus was ready.”
I can feel my brow pinch and a crease deepen in my forehead as I ask, “Do you know what he wanted with her?”
“No!” His head shakes violently with the answer. “I just had to pick her up and drop her off. That’s all!”
“And what about the other drops?” I question him. “You ever take a peek at what’s inside?”
Instead of answering, he swallows. Poor fucker.
His cry this time isn’t at all like the last two. Seth covers his mouth as Luke’s head falls back, and his middle finger drops to the grated floor alongside the other two severed extremities.
“Please, please.” I know that’s what he’s saying behind the gag. Please, stop. I’ve heard it so many times in my life.
But in this world, there is no stopping.
I take a moment, wondering how he killed his wife. How he looked her in the eyes and stabbed her to death. Fourteen stab wounds. His sister was a gunshot to the back of the head. That one, that type of kill sounds like someone who stole from him. But fourteen stab wounds… that’s anger. The twin sister of passion.
When Seth removes the shirt, Luke’s head hangs heavy in front of him. He sucks in air like he’s been going without it for too long. I could change that, but that’s not in my favor.
“I want answers, Luke.”
“Drugs. Lots of them. That’s what the packages were.”
“What kind of drugs?” I ask and for the first time, I grit my teeth, letting him hear the frustration.
He doesn’t answer immediately and I stand up straighter, quickly gripping the hair at the back of his head and pulling it back so I can bring the clippers to his throat.
Seth takes a step back and I can feel his eyes on me, knowing this isn’t the way it goes down. I couldn’t give two shits about that right now.
“Heroin, coke, pot, you name it.” Luke’s answers are strained with his throat stretched out.
“And sweets?” I ask him.
The dumb fuck tries to nod and the blade slips across his skin. It’s only a scratch, one he probably can’t even feel with all the other pain rushing through him.
“Marcus doesn’t need to deal. What’s he doing with it?” I ask as I release him, turning my back to him and taking a few steps away to calm down.
“I don’t know,” is Luke’s first answer but before I can even fully turn around the words rush out of him. “I think it’s experiments and setups. He needs the drugs for planting them and I think a month or so ago, that deputy who OD’d? I think that was Marcus.”
He insists he doesn’t know after that, giving examples that he thinks Marcus may be responsible for, but not saying for sure that his guesses are true.
“You were in it for the money?” I question and to my surprise, the man shakes his head.
“At first… but then I wanted to be in with him. I wanted a place on his team.”
The last sentence brings a chill to flow over my skin. “His team?”
Luke nods once. “I wanted to work with him.”
“Marcus works alone,” I tell him and he actually laughs. It’s a sad, sick kind of laugh that graces his lips for only a fraction of a second, but then he shakes his head, looking me in the eyes. “That’s not what Jenny said. She said he needed her. That she was going to make things right with Marcus.”
“And what did you think that meant?” I ask him, feeling a frigid bite taking over my limbs. It grows colder and colder.
“That he was giving her an in to control it all.”
“Control it all? You think that’s what Marcus does?”
With hope fleeing Luke’s eyes, he nods. “He has an army.”
“And you think that’s what Jenny was there for? To be in his army?” I ask him, getting closer to him.
He nods.
“Do you know anyone else in his army?”
He slowly shakes his head. “But she told me that’s what she was doing. She said she was joining his army.”
An army of men working under Marcus. I share a look with Seth and he shrugs but doesn’t look so sure.
“I’m not convinced,” I say offhandedly and Luke’s body jolts up as his voice raises. He’s adamant it’s the truth. All the while he continues to spill his thoughts that mean nothing to me, I consider what he’s saying. There’s simply no way Marcus would trust anyone to be involved with his plans.
“So what’s he doing with Jenny then?” I raise my gaze to the now silent Luke Stevens. “What is he going to do with her?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that I dropped her off securely. I held up my end of the bargain.”
“And what did you get in return?” I ask him. He hesitates, but I don’t bother removing anything else from him.
“Money,” he finally answers. “Four grand.”
“Is there anything else we should ask him?” I direct my question to Seth, who merely shakes his head before suffocating the man with his shirt.
Luke fights to breathe, but it’s useless. It takes a few minutes and still Seth keeps the shirt over his face when Luke’s body is motionless for another minute longer.
“You think he’ll keep her alive?” I ask Seth once the rustling and muted screams have settled to silence.
“To start an army?”
I shake my head and agree with the expression on his face. That it’s unrealistic for Marcus to have an army. It may have been what he led her to believe, but there is no army.
“Any reason at all that he’d keep her alive,” I answer him.
“Marcus doesn’t do loose ends.” Seth’s answer causes a chill to travel down the back of my neck. The feeling of loss and failure intertwine and wrap around my throat as I ask him, “What am I going to tell Bethany?”
His answer is simple and I already know it’s what I should do, even if it’s not what she’d want. “Nothing. Don’t bring her into this any more than she already is.”
Bethany
The Coverless Book plays tricks on me. I was certain Emmy’s mother would fire the caretaker for poisoning her daughter. But she says it’s only medicine that was poured into the soup. With the bottle in her hand, the mother does nothing but reprimand Emmy. She doesn’t look any deeper into it. She only tells Jake that he’s out of line and that Miss Caroline did nothing wrong. Emmy begs her mother to hire someone else and fire Miss Caroline, all to no avail.
Hate consumes me. For the women who are supposed to protect and love Emmy. And for the situation the young girl is in.
I read about how Jake is no longer welcome on the property, but Emmy sneaks out to see him, refusing to go on with life as she has been.
She doesn’t eat what Caroline cooks so Caroline stops cooking for her altogether, crying outside of the kitchen all while Emmy cries in her bedroom and her mother does God knows what.
It’s only at night that an
ything seems right. Only when Emmy climbs out of her bedroom window to meet Jake. It’s the two of them against the world.
There’s a passage that makes me feel alive, a passage that warms everything in my body.
“Take my hand and trust me,” he tells her. “I promise to save you, because I love you.”
That’s what you do when you love someone, he said. You save them.
And that’s where I had to stop.
Three more sentences are underlined. I don’t have my journal with me though to add them to the list. It’s useless to add them anyway. I’ve accepted that there’s no message buried in the lines. Maybe Jenny just wanted me to read the story. Maybe she fell in love with Emmy and Jake like I have. So many maybes and questions that will never be answered.
I lay the book on its pages, so I don’t lose where I’m at. I have to rub my eyes, and take a break after reading the last line I underlined, the line Emmy’s mother told Jake. Hope is a long way of saying goodbye. It’s in the book.
The words I gave to her, she saw it here. I wonder when she read it. Which came first. Not that it matters. None of it matters anymore.
I don’t know why I bother to keep reading when it only makes me sad inside. When I know there’s no message buried beneath the black and white letters.
It makes no sense at all, either, that I reach out to the phone to text Miranda, Jenny’s friend who gave me the book.
I want to text Jenny and I’m conscious of that. I nearly do. I nearly text her, Why this book? What did you want me to get from it?
I’m not that crazy yet, so I text Miranda instead. Or maybe that makes me crazier. I’m not sure anymore.
Thank you for giving me the book.
It takes a minute before my phone vibrates in my hand with a response. Bethany?