by Mike Ramon
and started the engine. Before he shifted into reverse to back out, he checked the rearview mirror to make sure that there was nobody behind him. As his eyes moved away from the mirror, and just as he reached to grab the gear selector, he took notice of a car that was parked at the stop light on the street just beyond the grass border of the McDonald’s parking lot. More accurately, he took notice of the driver of that car. He had seen that man before.
The light turned green and the car drove off, and for a moment Paul sat where he was, hand frozen on the gear selector, wondering if he really saw what he thought he saw. The car was different, a Chevy. But it had been a decade, and people did get new cars. How sure could he be? He had only seen the man once, and that was many years before. He had only gotten a look at the man at the stoplight for less than fifteen seconds. But he knew; he was certain.
He shifted into reverse, backed out of his space, shifted into drive and rocketed out of the parking lot, cutting off another guy who was trying to pull out into the street, earning an angry honk that blared and died unheard by him. His world had gone quiet except for the sound of his own heartbeat and the sound of the engine as he raced to catch up with the car that had been stopped at the light.
Paul was starting to think that he had lost the other guy, the guy he thought of in his head as Blue Taurus, no matter what kind of car he was driving now. There were more indignant honks as he slalomed between cars, trying to find the Chevy. He wondered if he should try to call 911 as he drove, to tell them that he had the found the man who took his daughter ten years ago. He decided against it for two reasons. The first was that he was worried that he would get into a crack up if he tried to maintain a phone conversation while driving so fast. The other reason was a shadowy one that he didn’t fully understand yet.
Then he caught sight of it, a red Chevy up ahead. He checked his rate of speed, slowing down and sending thanks up to whatever gods there were above for keeping him from a bad accident.
He followed the vehicle, trying his best to keep at least a couple of cars between them at all times. He had read in a spy novel that this was a good precaution to take to avoid spooking your prey. Now that he wasn’t speeding like a raving lunatic, he thought about making that call to 911 to let them know that he was following the man who the police had never really been convinced existed. But he didn’t make the call. That shadowy reason wouldn’t allow him to.
So he followed, and tried to avoid being noticed. The red Chevy (with Blue Taurus behind the wheel) didn’t speed up suddenly, or make any sharp, unexpected turns, so he thought he was successful on that account. Blue Taurus made no stops except when a traffic light forced him to, and at these moments Paul thought about getting out of his own idling vehicle and running up to the Chevy. He didn’t know what he would do then. Maybe pull the guy of the car and slam his head into the street. Then again, he had been eating a little too much of the junk food lately, and he wasn’t in the best shape anymore. It was entirely possible that Blur Taurus would be the one doing the head slamming.
Eventually Blue Taurus left behind the busier streets and meandered down several quiet residential neighborhoods where the houses stood close to the street. After a while Paul began to wonder if the man had realized he was being tailed after all, and this was some half-assed way of shaking his pursuer. This fear proved unfounded, however, as Blue Taurus pulled his red Chevy into the driveway of a small white house.
Paul passed the house and continued up the block. When he came to a cross street he turned around and headed back the way he had come. He knew that he was taking a chance; if Blue Taurus had noticed Paul pass by before, and saw him driving by again in the opposite direction, it might be a tip off. Paul decided to take the risk; he wanted to get another look at the guy.
When Paul made his second pass of the house he saw that Blue Taurus had gotten out of his car and was standing near the front door of the house. Paul’s breath froze in his throat.
He realized that he had taken his foot off the gas pedal and was slowing down. He pressed down on the pedal gently and drove past. Paul drove home. About halfway home his hands started to shake. He only made them stop by gripping the wheel as hard as he could. When he pulled into his own driveway and into the garage, he shut off the car and sat there for ten minutes, his mind racing with the beginnings of a dozen different plans, discarding each one in turn as completely outlandish.
He eventually got out of the car and went inside. An image burned brightly in his mind, the memory of what he had seen on that second pass of Blue Taurus’s home. The last thing he saw was Blue Taurus bending down and gathering a young girl in his arms, planting a kiss on one plump cheek.
The girl, Paul thought, must be the man’s daughter.
4
That evening Paul didn’t eat dinner. He made dinner (if putting a Hungry Man in the microwave and pushing a few buttons could be called making dinner), but he didn’t eat a bite. He sat at the table staring at the wall across from him, his food getting cold on the table in front of him.
Several times he looked at the phone hanging on the wall (sometimes he thought he was the last man in America who still had a landline), telling himself that what he needed to do was call the police. He would tell them that he had found the man who had taken his daughter. He would lead them to the man’s house, and they would lead Blue Taurus out of his home in handcuffs. Paul was a realist, and he knew there was virtually no chance that his daughter was still alive, but at least there was a chance that Blue Taurus would tell the cops where to find her. She could get a proper burial. And Blue Taurus? He would spend the rest of his life in prison. Maybe he would even get the needle.
But would the cops arrest the man? Would they believe that, after getting one brief look at a man ten years earlier, Paul’s identification of him could be trusted now? They might think it was just wishful thinking, a father still grieving over the loss of his daughter and wanting to believe so badly that he had found the man who took her. And after all, wasn’t it true that the detective who originally worked the case suspected that the man with the blue Taurus never existed?
It was all these things, and one other, that stopped him from making that call. That one other reason still hadn’t come out fully into the light; it was content to wait in the shadows for just a little while longer.
Paul got up from the table and threw the Hungry Man in the garbage. He thought about watching a little TV before bed, but decided against it. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to follow what was happening on any show that night. Instead he jumped in the shower, letting the water get as hot as he could stand it. Then he got into bed. It was a warm night, so he only wore a pair of checkered boxers. He lay in the darkness of his room, the bed sheet kicked down so that it was tangled around his ankles.
The man had said that with his luck the tow truck would break down before it got to him. He kept looking under the hood, but he wasn’t actually doing anything; he hadn’t removed any caps, hadn’t been poking around the engine. The engine hadn’t been smoking. Maybe Paul should have noticed that. Anyone could pop the hood of their car and stand around looking down into the engine compartment with a worried look on their face. It didn’t mean that there was something actually wrong with their car. Paul should have been suspicious. He should never have let Sam stay behind at the park alone.
No, it wasn’t his fault. He was just going across the street for a minute. If it hadn’t been for that old hag and her damn lotto ticket…but no, it wasn’t her fault either. There was only one person to blame. The man with the blue fucking Taurus.
Paul thought about that day. He wished like hell that he had stopped Sam so could have given her that kiss. But he hadn’t. Instead he had bought Sam a pack of Skittles. Her favorite.
It was then that the reason, the one that had been sticking to the shadows of his mind, the one that had kept him from calling the police, decided to boogie on out and make itself clear to him. Paul kicked the sheet free of his ankles and swung his
legs over the side of his bed. He got up, standing in the darkness for a moment. Then he left went downstairs and into his study. He went to the desk where he sat every month when it was time to figure out the bills. After turning on the desk lamp he took a seat, opened a drawer and pulled out a legal pad, setting it on the desk and taking a black pen in hand.
Paul sat for a minute looking down at the yellow paper with blue lines. Then he began to write. He wrote slowly, tentatively, at first, but as he continued to write his pace sped up as a jumble of ideas struggled to pull themselves together in his head. What he was writing was the rough draft of a plan.
5
Paul did a little research. He turned on his old PC and spent three hours bathing in its soft blue glow as he surfed the web, looking for the things he thought he would need. It was important that he not go into this thing underprepared; he knew that he couldn’t prepare for every eventuality, but he would damn sure try. He made a checklist of things he needed, and the places he hoped to find them. When he finally shut off the computer and got back into bed his head was thrumming. He didn’t think he would be able to get to sleep. He turned out to be wrong about that.
The day after following Blue Taurus to his home, Paul set out with his list, having called in sick to work, the first sick day he had taken in two years. He didn’t bother with breakfast; to tell the truth, he wasn’t hungry at all. His first stop was at the Lowe’s near downtown. He asked a few questions and got a few helpful answers, and left there with a power drill that came with an assortment of carbon steel bits coated with titanium nitride, a pack of heavy-duty drywall screws, two C-clamps, three twelve-foot lashing straps, a pair of safety goggles, and a 2 ft. by 3 ft. sheet of cold-rolled steel. The helpful worker who answered Paul’s questions had warned him that cold-rolled steel had a tendency to rust when exposed to the elements, and that if this was a problem for him he should choose galvanized steel instead. Paul went for the cold-rolled. He was already on the hook for $160.49, plus sales tax, and he still had more crap to buy.
Next Paul drove across town to Tom’s Music City. Paul walked past rows of guitars on display and walked up to the counter. The counterman was a white guy who sported both Jimi Hendrix hair and thick Buddy Holly glasses. It was a strange look. Paul wondered if this guy was the eponymous Tom. The guy was too busy reading an issue of Maxim to notice Paul’s presence until Paul cleared his throat to get the man’s attention.
“What do you need?” the man asked.
“Where can I find panels of acoustic foam?”
Jimi Holly nodded toward the back of the store.
“Thanks,” Paul said.
Paul made his way to the back of the store and found what he was looking for. He picked out two packs of black Auralstar SonoFoam, one pack larger than the other. The black foam was expensive, and set him back another hundred dollars. Paul loaded the packs of foam into the trunk with the stuff he had bought at Lowe’s.
The last place Paul made a visit to was Walmart. From here he picked up a pack of zip ties, a roll of duct tape, a baby monitor, the biggest potty training toilet he could find, a 120 oz. container of bleach, a few YA novels, a lock kit that he could install himself, and a three-hole 100% acrylic ski mask. He was worried that he might attract attention with this purchase of such an odd assemblage of items (especially the ski mask, as it was high summer), but the cashier didn’t bat an eye. He supposed she had seen stranger purchases.
All told his shopping spree had cost him almost four hundred dollars. It was a real hit to his wallet, but it was necessary. Paul drove home and lugged his purchases inside in three trips. He was out of breath after the third trip, another reminder that he had to do away with the TV dinners and fast food. He made a mental note to make a trip to the grocery store when he got a chance, to pick up some food that wouldn’t clog up his arteries.
The potty training toilet (it had images of cartoon characters pasted all around it), and most of the other items were left in the living room; it was the items purchased at Lowe’s that Paul wanted to deal with first. He carried them down to the basement, first the sheet metal and then the rest.
Under the harsh light of a bank of fluorescents Paul went to work. He cleared off a solid wooden table that had stood in a corner of the basement since he had moved into the house with Georgia. The table was a bit dusty, but it didn’t matter much. Paul laid the sheet metal on the table and secured the sheet to the table with a C-clamp at the midway point of each longer side. The drill was taken out of its box, and Paul chose the right bit by comparing them to the size of the drywall screws. After affixing the bit to the drill he searched around for an electrical outlet (it had been so long since he had used an outlet in the basement that he had forgotten where they were). He plugged the drill in and gave the trigger a short pull; the drill purred to life. The power cord was long enough that he didn’t have to worry about being able to reach the table with the drill.
After laying the drill on top of the sheet metal Paul donned the safety goggles. He picked up the drill and moved to one corner of the sheet metal. He had never drilled through steel before, and he was nervous. He set the point of the drill bit against the cold steel and depressed the trigger. Holding on tight to keep control of the drill, he quickly made it through the metal. The pitch of the drill changed as the bit started digging into the wooden face of the table beneath the sheet, and Paul let go of the trigger. He compared one of the drywall nails to the hole he had just drilled, and decided it was a good fit. He drilled more holes along the perimeter of the sheet, until he had worked his way all around the table.
When he was finished he stood surveying his work, wiping the sweat away from his brow. He was famished, and he decided that he had done enough for one day. He needed to eat. He tossed the goggles onto the sheet metal, unplugged the drill and climbed upstairs, hitting the light switch before closing the basement door, leaving that space in darkness broken only by whatever weak, dirty light managed to make it through the two basement windows that gave a view of the outdoors at ground level.
6
Bright and early the next morning (after letting his boss know that his summer cold hadn’t quite cleared up), Paul put the finishing touches on his preparations around the house. He opened up the packs of acoustic foam, which were made to absorb noise. He took two of the larger wedges upstairs to what had once been intended for use as a guest bedroom, though the only guest who had ever stayed there was Georgia’s deadbeat brother, who had stayed over for three weeks once when he got evicted from an apartment.
After making sure that the bedroom’s one window was secured, Paul doubled up the two wedges and fit them into the window frame. Then came the hard part. He nearly threw out his back lugging the sheet metal up from the basement, twisting and turning his body to maneuver the sheet up the narrow staircase. After another trip to the basement to retrieve the power drill and the drywall screws, Paul had all that he needed.
He set the sheet metal on the windowsill and did his best to hold it in place as he drilled screws through the holes he had made in the metal, securing the sheet to the wall. The finishing touch was bringing up the YA books, the baby monitor and the plastic toilet that was meant for parents to potty train their children. He tossed the books on the bed, put the baby monitor on the dresser and placed the toilet in the corner of the room. The last thing he did in that room was install the lock from the kit he had bought at the store. There hadn’t been a lock of any kind on the door before; now he could lock the door from the outside. Then he headed back down to the basement. He tried to fit one of the smaller acoustic foam wedges into each of the basement windows, but they were too large. He cut them down to size, and taped them in place so they wouldn’t fall out.
There was one item he needed that he didn’t have to purchase. It was tucked away in a shoe box that had sat on a shelf in his closet collecting dust since he had moved into the house with Georgia. It had once belonged to his father, and after the old man had kicked
off back in ’94 it had been handed down to Paul.
Paul brought the shoebox off the shelf in the closet, set it on top of his dresser, lifted off the lid and looked inside. Inside the box rested a Smith & Wesson Model 36 in a leather holster, and a box of .38 Special cartridges. Paul had always meant to spend some time at a firing range, but he had never gotten around to it. He put the lid back on top of the box and took it downstairs with him. He grabbed the ski mask and the package of zip ties and took all of the items out to the car. He put the zip ties and ski mask in the glove compartment; the shoe box he slid under the driver’s seat.
Paul drove away from his home and headed for that other man’s home. He intended to scope the place out, maybe try to find a way to observe the house without being noticed. And wait for an opportunity.
7
The only good that came out of that first day’s stakeout was that he realized one thing that he needed that he hadn’t thought of--a good pair of binoculars. He knew he had a pair at home, and it took him an hour of rummaging around in boxes until he found it. The pair of binoculars was made by Bushnell, and if he remembered correctly they had cost a pretty penny once upon a time. Georgia had bought the binoculars for some reason he couldn’t recall now.
On his second stakeout day Paul parked in the parking lot of a gas station from which (with the aid if the binoculars) he could watch the end of the street on which Blue Taurus lived. The day before, he had noticed some kids getting dropped off by a school bus at this very street corner. He hadn’t seen Blue Taurus’s daughter, but it was possible that there was more than one bus that stopped there.
Paul sat sipping a lime Big Freeze and watching. At 3 o’clock a yellow school bus stopped at the corner and dropped off a load of kids. Paul scanned over the kids with the binocs. None of them was the girl he was looking for. When the children had scattered to the winds Paul sat back again and resumed sipping his drink.
At 3:16 another bus pulled up to the same corner as the last. Paul tossed the Big Freeze cup (now empty) into the passenger side footwell and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. As he watched, four children got off the bus. Two were boys, and one was a girl who was much younger than Blue Taurus’s daughter. The last kid was a girl, as well, and she looked about the right age, but she was turned away from Paul and he couldn’t be