Eye for an Eye (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

  We got along alright after that. They left me alone, and I left them alone. The older kid blacked out for a minute but pulled himself out of the wall alright afterwards. We didn’t talk about it, and they told their parents he fell out of a tree. Maybe because they didn’t want to admit they both lost to a younger kid. Maybe because they figured I might see that as further provocation, and they didn’t want to find out if and how I’d retaliate.

  Either way, the only problem it caused me was what to do about the hole in the wall, where the kid’s head had gone through the plaster. There was a gaping maw of crumbling plaster, animal hair, and broken laths.

  I could still remember, clear as day, the ancient, splintered wood of the laths, the coarse horsehair – or whatever type of animal hair it had been. I could remember the old newspaper that had been used as insulation, and the copious amounts of rat shit that had accumulated in the walls through the years.

  And nails. Lots and lots of nails, sticking out of the studs and laths at all kinds of weird angles.

  Looking back, it was probably a miracle the kid didn’t end up with tetanus. The problem, ironically, that I wanted to avoid now.

  Back then, I solved the problem by hiding the hole – by pulling the dresser a few feet to the left and sweeping up the dust. If they ever found it, it was long after I’d been moved to another situation.

  Now, my problem was the reverse. I needed to make a hole, without making noise, and without catching myself on any stray nails that might be behind the plaster. So working with my hands was out. I needed a tool, something sharp enough to break through the plaster. Maybe something with leverage, to snap the laths.

  But unlike before, I didn’t have anything I could drag into place, or haul out of storage. I had an old bed, a dresser, a handful of old clothes and a few thin wire coat hangers. The hangers were too thin and too weak to be of use, and everything else was a nonstarter.

  Chapter Twelve

  I cased the bedroom again, with an eye, metaphorically speaking, for anything I might use. I came up emptyhanded.

  The kids were starting to get impatient now. I’d told them there were people in the other room. I’d promised them that we’d meet them soon. And then, I’d done a whole lot of nothing.

  Daniel wanted me to try picking the lock. He’d done that in videogames before. “It’s easy.”

  Maisie thought we could try without a tool. “Just be really quiet.”

  I started to worry about timing. I didn’t know how long we’d been here. I’d estimated times earlier: half an hour here, half an hour there. But the truth was, they were just estimates. I didn’t really know. Maybe we’d only been here for an hour. Maybe we’d been here for hours and hours.

  Maybe whoever was coming up with our dinner would be here soon. Maybe he’d catch us putting holes in the wall. Not that that would be a concern until we had a tool. But the longer it took, the more worried I grew.

  “I’m going to go ask him if he found anything he can use,” I decided. “I’ll tell him I haven’t yet.”

  “You should know how to pick a lock, Uncle Owen,” Daniel said. “They should have taught you that in the Army.”

  “We were soldiers, Dan, not thieves.”

  “That’s stupid,” he said.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Maisie said.

  I shook my head and felt my way along the wall toward the closet. This day was not shaping up to get better any time quick. That was for damned sure.

  I’d left the door open earlier, so I felt for the doorway and stepped inside slowly, keeping my hands at head level to feel for the shelf with the hatboxes. I didn’t want to give myself a black eye by walking into a board. The way the day had gone so far, that seemed a real possibility. Hell, I’d probably knock myself out in the process.

  I found the shelf and kept my distance. Then, with my hands in front of me to locate the end wall, I stepped forward. I took one step, and on the second, put my foot down on something that wasn’t flooring.

  It wasn’t alive either. It didn’t squash or squeal or squeak. Not a rat or a mouse. But it did crunch, straight in. I grabbed with my left hands to steady myself, and my fingers found purchase on the clothes hanger bar, among the dusty garments and wire hangers.

  I heaved hard on the bar and stopped myself from pitching into the wall. The bar shifted under my weight, but I regained my balance and pulled my foot out of – whatever it was I’d stepped into.

  Slowly, carefully, I knelt to examine the item that had tripped me up. It was about ten inches tall, maybe a foot wide. A circle with a flat top, made out of some kind of solid cardboard. Another hat box.

  Dammit. I scooted the box to the side and stood up again.

  Then, I paused, groping for the hanger bar again. In a moment, my hand found it: a thick, solid thing. Steel, probably, about one inch in diameter. An old pipe I figured.

  Probably an extra length, or the last section after a burst pipe – something that had been pulled out and repurposed years earlier. And now, I was going to repurpose it again.

  A thick steel pipe could chisel through plaster and laths no problem. It’d probably double as a good weapon, too. I’d felt it shift when I caught my weight against it. I didn’t doubt I could get it down. But as with everything else, doing so quietly would be the challenge.

  So I took hold of it with both hands and propped myself against the far wall. I rocked against it, gently at first. The bar shuddered but stayed put.

  I tried again, pulling harder this time. It stayed put.

  I lifted up and pulled down. I hauled and twisted, slowly. Carefully. The bar stayed where it was.

  So I gritted my teeth and pulled again, as hard as I could. A loud sound of wood snapping filled the room a moment before the right end of the bar broke free.

  I held my breath and waited and listened for footsteps.

  Nothing.

  So slowly, gently, I eased the bar toward the wall. The left slid out of whatever fastener still held it. Probably a section of scrap lumber, a one-inch hole bored by Mr. Miller himself decades earlier. Probably the twin of the righthand piece that had snapped.

  Then I tapped out a message to the guy in the next room. I told him I was ready to begin. A few seconds later, he tapped out his own message: understood.

  So I got to work. It was awkward for all kinds of reasons. The noise factor, obviously, but space was a whole consideration of its own. The pipe was six feet long. The room was six feet long, and maybe eight feet tall.

  Which meant I had some room to angle it for a downward strike. Some, but not a lot. And I couldn’t do much striking anyway, for fear of rousing the guys downstairs.

  So I propped the pipe up at an angle, maybe a foot and a half off the floor. I pressed it into the wall and scraped, up and down, up and down, like a rat trying to gnaw through something.

  At first, nothing happened – nothing but a muted, sawing sound. Then I heard different sounds, like tearing.

  I kept at it for maybe thirty seconds, then felt the wall where I’d been working. I’d gotten through most of the wallpaper. There were rough strips left on the wall, and lots gone.

  I got back to work, applying more pressure this time. Treated paper would tear more readily than solid plaster. But pressure and the right angles and a hard edge would do the trick.

  And it did, slowly but surely. I worked a narrow furrow into the wall. Then I reached the laths. The sound grew louder. I was thumping boards instead of grinding my way through plaster.

  I decided to expand my damage to the plaster first. I’d need more room to work with the laths.

  It would have been an easy job, if noise hadn’t been a factor. Seconds of work, maybe. A few quick kicks. But noise was a factor, so it was slow, repetitive work, slowly scraping my way through.

  Sometimes I got lucky. It would crumble and big chunks would fall away. Sometimes I didn’t, and I had to get through it layer after layer.

  I kept at it for a long
time. Half an hour, by my estimate. Maybe more. Then again, maybe it seemed longer than it really was.

  Either way, Maisie tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Someone’s coming, Uncle Owen.”

  I scrambled back, using my hands and arms to guide me. I shut the closet door softly behind me and hurried back to the corner of the room.

  Then, I thought about what whoever it was might see: plaster dust all over my hands and maybe even my clothes.

  I stumbled to the center of the room, to the bed. I brushed my palms against the old bedspread, like a dog trying to leech water out of its coat. I used a corner of it to brush my jeans vigorously.

  I could hear the footsteps now, loud and near.

  “They’re almost here,” Daniel said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Just act normal.”

  Then the lock turned with a click, and the door opened. A sliver of late afternoon light entered the room. It seemed overwhelmingly bright. I raised a hand against it, to shield my eyes.

  I heard Jimmy’s voice outside the room. “Dinnertime.”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Maisie said.

  “Me too,” Daniel said.

  “Me three,” I said.

  “Not my problem,” Jimmy said. “It’s not time for the bathroom.”

  “Jesus,” a woman’s voice said. “Let them pee.”

  Jimmy sighed. “Joey said –”

  “Joey’s an idiot. You want to be hiding out in a place that smells of piss? Or cleaning that up?”

  “I’m not cleaning anything.”

  “Then let them use the bathroom.”

  “Fine. Alright, dumbasses, time to use the bathroom. One at a time. You follow me. Anyone of you makes any stupid moves, you get shot. And don’t think I won’t shoot you because you’re kids, because I will.”

  “He will, too,” the woman said. “So will I.”

  “If it was up to me, I’d have shot you already. You can thank the boss that you’re still here to bother me. Come on: the girl first.”

  “They don’t go without me,” I said.

  “Then they don’t go at all,” Jimmy said. “They can piss themselves.”

  “Relax, cowboy,” the woman said. “As long as they don’t do anything stupid, no one’s going to hurt them.”

  Maisie squeezed my hand. “I’ll be fine, Uncle Owen.” Then she headed toward the light, out of the room.

  Jimmy escorted her to one of the doors down the hall from us. He turned the handle and it opened. It wasn’t locked, then. He stood back and ushered Maisie in. “Hurry up.”

  She scuttled past him and slammed the door. I heard the metallic chink of a lock engaging.

  “You should let us go,” Daniel said.

  Jimmy glanced back at our room, at the open door and the pair of us inside. “That so?”

  “Yes. My uncle was in the Army. He’ll kill you if you don’t.”

  Jimmy glanced me over and laughed.

  “Dan,” I warned.

  He didn’t take the hint, though. “He’s killed people before. He’ll kill you too.”

  “That so?” Jimmy said again.

  Daniel nodded.

  “He’s just upset,” I said.

  “I mean, you’re welcome to try, Army boy. Go for it.”

  I said nothing.

  The woman called, “Come on kid, time’s up. Out of the bathroom.” I still couldn’t see her. She’d angled herself just past the door. She might as well have been invisible.

  “Nothing?” Jimmy asked. “That’s what I thought. Disappointing.”

  The lock on the bathroom door clicked again, and Maisie emerged.

  “Back to the room,” the woman directed. “Now.”

  Maisie glanced around with big, wide eyes. Then she headed back to our room.

  “Now for the other one,” the woman called. “The boy.”

  Daniel looked up at me.

  I nodded. “It’s okay, Dan. I’m right here.”

  Jimmy shook his head and made a show of sighing impatiently.

  Daniel headed to the bathroom, throwing a glance over his shoulder as if to confirm we were really still there before stepping out of sight.

  The same process followed: the quiet smack of the door closing, the clink of the lock engaging, and the wait that followed.

  Then Daniel exited and it was my turn. Jimmy watched me with a smug grin. He held a handgun this time, a Beretta M9 pistol. A civilian version of the United States’ military’s standard sidearm.

  He saw me looking, and he grinned a little broader. “Like it?”

  I said nothing. I just shut the door after myself and took stock of my surroundings.

  The bathroom was a small room, maybe five by five. It was a half bathroom, with a toilet and sink crammed in behind the door.

  There was a shelf on the wall, where towels or toiletries might go; a medicine cabinet and mirror above the sink, and a small window above the toilet. The medicine cabinet contained a hairbrush, an ancient tube of toothpaste, and a can of shaving cream. The shelf held a spare roll of tissue paper.

  The room had nothing else. Nothing that might be useful later on.

  So I used the toilet and washed my hands, without soap since there was none. I took the opportunity to scrub the plaster away, just in case anyone noticed it on my way back.

  Jimmy called, “Move it in there, Princess.”

  I threw a second glance around, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything the first time. I hadn’t. So I shut the water off, flung the droplets off my fingers into the sink, and headed out.

  This time, I was facing our room, so I saw the woman, Shannon. She had a tray in one hand, and a gun in the other. The gun was another Beretta M9. The tray was a plastic lunch tray, like the kind you find in a cafeteria. It had three cans of off-brand raviolis and three plastic forks on it.

  Shannon looked like Jimmy, but pretty, somehow. She had the same general shape to her face and eyes, but none of the fleshiness in her cheeks. She might have been a year or two older, but not more than five. She was at least seventy-five pounds lighter. “Move,” she told me.

  I did. Then she followed, stopping just inside the door. She set the tray on the floor while Jimmy kept his pistol trained on me. She started to close the door, and Jimmy called, “Bon appétit.”

  Then darkness returned. The lock clicked, and two sets of footsteps receded down the hall. We sat in silence for a long moment.

  Daniel broke it. “You should have killed him, Uncle Owen.”

  “They both had guns,” I said.

  “You could have taken them.”

  As much as I appreciated his faith in me, I wasn’t Superman. I couldn’t stop bullets with my bare hands, and to take two armed people at opposite ends of a hallway at once, I’d basically have to be Superman. “Not yet,” I said. “You don’t worry about that, okay? I’ll take care of it when the time is right.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “You will. But we have to make sure we do its safely.”

  “You don’t want to get shot, do you?” Maisie asked.

  “Mais,” I said, “that’s not helping.”

  “But it’s true,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “No one is going to get shot.”

  “Except the bad guys,” Daniel said.

  “Let’s just eat, okay? I’ll take care of getting us out of here safely. You guys don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Okay,” Maisie said. “But I got you a razor, just in case it would help.”

  “What?”

  “In the bathroom. There was a razor, like the kind grandpa uses. A straight razor.”

  She meant her mom’s dad, since her father’s was dead. “You got a straight razor?” I asked, not a little surprised. “Where?”

  “In the cabinet, above the mirror. By the shaving cream.”

  She took my hand and placed the razor in my palm. It was closed, but it was definitely a straight razor. “Wow. Good work
, Maisie.”

  “I want to go home,” Daniel said again. “I’m hungry and it’s hot.”

  I slipped the razor into my empty pocket, and said, “Okay, then let’s eat.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Deputy Austin Wagner, 9:27 PM

  I filed the last of my paperwork just before 8:30. It had been another stellar night: a fight at a country tavern between drunk tourists; a boating accident involving drunk tourists; and a diner calling in about someone trashing the place after their steak came out too pink.

  A drunk tourist, naturally.

  I thought about going home. Technically, I could have done that hours ago, since I’d already wrapped up my twelve. But we were understaffed, and the overtime was good. And going home meant going home to an empty place.

  A place without Jade.

  And I was really trying not to think about that, or deal with that. So I leaned back in my chair and tried to think of a good reason to stay put.

  I thought about Owen Day. He might be a good reason. He might be a hell of a break on a big, federal case. Maybe there’d be a promotion riding on it, for the local boy who cracked it. Me.

  But I hadn’t got a return call from him. Then again, I’d been on the road a lot, dealing with dumbass tourists. A lot. So maybe he had called. Maybe the call had come in while I was in one of the dead zones where you couldn’t get a cell signal to save your life.

  I checked hopefully. No missed calls. No voicemails.

  I drummed my fingers on my desktop. Then, I dialed his number again. He’d had hours to get back to me. And this was a big case, after all. Maybe his body had nothing to do with it. But maybe it did. Maybe it would be the break we needed to catch a guy on the FBI’s most wanted list.

  A longshot among longshots, I knew. But I didn’t gamble. This was my version of buying a lottery ticket. Somehow, it seemed like the answer to my problems. Like maybe Jade would be more understanding if this ended up something big and important.

  Not just a weirdo or a crank call.

  It rang and rang. I got his voicemail a second time. I thought about leaving another message but decided against it. He’d see my missed call in his history. That’d be good enough.