Zero at the Bone

by Jane Seville

  He could see that this not-so-veiled threat didn’t faze Jack all that much. “What are you afraid of?” he asked. “That I can’t handle it? That I’ll run screaming into the woods? I know you think I’m some kind of city-boy softie—”

  “I don’t think that,” D said.

  “Whatever,” Jack said, flapping a hand. “Point is that I’ve done time at hospitals in neighborhoods that even you’d be scared to walk around in. I’ve seen things that’d make you puke up your whole intestinal tract, so don’t treat me like I’m made of bone china and can’t handle hearing about what you do.”

  D sighed. “Usedta do, ya mean.”

  “So let’s have it. All of it.”

  He met Jack’s eyes, blue and chipped, and he couldn’t think of another reason not to tell him what he wanted to know. “All right. You asked for it.” He started in on another cup of coffee. “What you wanna know?”

  “Who was the last one?”

  “Art dealer. Thief, really. Took art that the Nazis looted and made it so it couldn’t be proved, so he could sell it for a bundle a cash when it belonged ta the families a the survivors.”

  Jack blinked. “And you thought he deserved death for that?”

  “He was a bad man. And it wasn’t me wanted him dead, anyhow.”

  Jack had his hands folded on the table. He looked like he was processing this information, to uncertain results. “So… what about the rest?”

  “What, you want a complete list? Hafta check my day planner.”

  “Are you trying to piss me off?”

  “No, I am tryin’ ta tell ya that there ain’t no point ta me quotin’ ya chapter ‘n’ verse about all the people I killed in my time!”

  “I just want to know who they were!” Jack exclaimed, his face reddening.

  Understanding bloomed in D’s mind and spread. He don’t wanna know who they were. Wants ta know how much like him they were. Wants ta see how close he came ta bein’ one more. He sighed. “A lot of ’em were killers theirselves. If you only knew how many a them guys get off on technicalities, it’s enough ta turn yer stomach. Some were rapists, or child molesters… court cases real hard ta prove fer those types.” Jack was nodding along.

  “But… who pays to have them killed? You get, what, contracts? Who puts them up, and how? You can’t exactly look up ‘killers for hire’ in the yellow pages.”

  D chuckled. “Not really, no. Actually….” He hesitated. “I shouldn’t be tellin’ ya this. Lotsa times, my services are paid for by families a victims. Sometimes the cops ‘n’ lawyers pitch in too. It ain’t talked about. And most a the time, the family gets an anonymous letter, or a card, tellin’ ’em who ta call.”

  Jack’s eyes were getting wide. “Who’s sending these cards?”

  “Most a the time somebody like Josey, my handler. They keep careful track a the big cases. Court TV, newspapers… they got people watchin’ all over the country that tips ’em off too, so they know when some low-life killer’s got off, or some rapist got acquitted. On occasion, when the case is real bad… well, sometimes, a cop or a lawyer clues the family in.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Anonymously, a course. They cain’t be condonin’ what I do. But sometimes they jus’ cain’t take it. Bad folks gettin’ off ’cause the system’s set up ta prevent mistakes. I get why. Better the guilty go free than the innocent go ta jail. If the guilty go free… well, there’s folks like me ta deal with it.” He refilled Jack’s coffee cup. “Big part a my business. Most a the rest is criminals bumpin’ off their own. Warrin’ amongst themselves. Some are folks doin’ bad that ain’t never been caught, or ain’t never gonna be caught. Folks the law cain’t touch.”

  “So someone calls your handler—”

  “Right. Calls Josey, tells her who they want done, she does an assessment, quotes ’em a price. Price goes up for a high-profile target, goes up for high-risk, like if the guy’s got bodyguards or anythin’, goes up for a rush job, stuff like that. Part a that price is her fee, rest goes ta me if I take the job.”

  “Who are these people that you won’t kill?”

  D shook his head. “Jack, people want other people dead for all kinds a reasons, not all a which wash with me. A lot a those hits that come up are witnesses, like you. Ton a those. I’ve seen hits on cheatin’ wives, and hits on kids ta punish their parents fer whatever, and hits out on whistle-blowers and business competitors and just people pissed someone off.”

  “And you see those files, and… what? Just say ‘Thanks but no thanks’?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What happens to those hits then?”

  “Well… Josey keeps ’em… until….” He was treading on very dangerous ground here, and by his darkening expression, Jack thought so too.

  “Until she can give them to someone else who will take them, right?”

  “Reckon so.” D stared down at his coffee cup.

  “So you’ve seen these files on these innocent people, kids and women and whistle-blowers and witnesses, and you just pass on by, knowing that someone else will do what you won’t, and what do you do? Do you do anything?”

  “What’m I sposed ta do?”

  “Warn them?”

  D shook his head. “I cain’t warn ’em. Give myself away sure as shit.”

  Jack stood up and took a few steps backward. “Then why the hell didn’t you just kill them yourself? Why the big act, like you’re too good for it? You knew they’d be killed, you did nothing… you might as well have gotten paid for it!” he shouted.

  “Jack, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

  “Ya knew who I was when ya asked.”

  “I knew what you told me, but you didn’t tell me all of it, did you? You told me you only killed people who deserved it.”

  “Right.”

  “You left out the part about standing by and doing nothing while people who didn’t deserve it were killed by others!”

  D gripped his coffee cup hard. He cain’t know. Not yet. He cain’t fuckin’ know. Keep yer stupid trap shut, no matter how much ya wanna tell him. “Weren’t my job ta save them,” he said.

  Jack’s face twisted into an expression of such disgust that D had to look away. “You’re no better than the ones who did kill them,” he spat. “I should have let you die of that gunshot wound.” He turned around and stalked into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. D could hear him pacing, then he heard something smash where it was thrown.

  He sat where he was, the coffee cup pressed between his palms, and stared at the tabletop until it stopped swimming.

  ~~~~~

  This is a fucking fine situation you’ve gotten yourself into, Jack. Stuck in a cabin with a killer in the middle of nowhere while the bad guys prowl around trying to find you and kill you.

  He’d been lying on his bed for over an hour, working himself up into a lather… or trying to. Cursing D, picturing the innocent people who’d died because he did nothing, imagining him putting bullets through people’s heads (Did he shoot them through the head? Or somewhere else?), imagining him waving off some file about a charity-donating, volunteer-working, church-going mother of five who someone wanted dead and not giving her fate another thought, going about his business, eating bad food and smoking like a chimney and maybe picking up hookers just for kicks.

  I want to hate him. Why can’t I hate him?

  He saved me. He should have killed me. He didn’t, he couldn’t. He saved me again, and again. He put himself in danger.

  Why for me, and not for any of those others? Why am I so goddamned special?

  There was a quiet knock on the door. “Jack?”

  Jack sighed. “What?”

  He heard an awkward throat-clearing. “You, uh… gonna stay in there all day?”

  “Maybe!”

  There was a pause. “Well… I was jus’ thinkin’… reckon we oughta talk.”

  Jack sat up, glaring at the door. “Oh, now you
want to talk, huh?”

  “C’mon, Jack. Lemme in.”

  He flopped back onto the bed. “It isn’t locked.”

  The door edged open a crack and D peered in. Seeing Jack just lying there, he came in further and lurked near the door, seeming loath to intrude on Jack’s personal space. “Let’s go out ta the porch, somethin’.”

  “Why? I spent enough time in your bedroom when we first got here.”

  “But it’s… such a nice day ‘n’ all.”

  Jack laughed. “Oh, of course! Beautiful day! Like you care. We’ll walk among the trees and hear the pretty birds and sing tra la la.”

  D rolled his eyes. “Will ya cut that out? I don’t much like you like this.”

  “Oh! You don’t like me! That is rich!”

  “Look, it must be real nice and comfy on top a that high horse,” D said, suddenly snarling, “but you ain’t lived in my world and it’s jus’ fine fer you ta judge when you don’t gotta make them kinda choices.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jack said, jumping off the bed to face him. “How about deciding whether you’re going to treat the woman with the head trauma or the drunk driver who mowed her down? Or whether to let a man die of gunshot wounds because you know he shot a cop on his way down? How about treating a woman who’s been beaten nearly to death and having to watch her walk out the door back to the husband who nearly killed her while she tells you that he didn’t mean it, not really! Don’t you fucking talk to me about hard choices, and harsh reality. Just because I didn’t tote a rifle around Kuwait and never put a bullet between someone’s eyes doesn’t mean I live in some world of sunshine and rainbows, D. I live in a world where I spend months putting a four-year-old’s face back together after her own father smashed it in with a bowling ball. You think you’ve got it so hard, and maybe you do, but the shit is tough all over. Fucking suck it up, man.”

  He held D’s furious gaze, willing himself not to blink first. After a few moments, D sagged and the fight seemed to go out of him. He sat down on Jack’s bed, holding himself carefully like he was in pain, or expected to be at any moment. He spoke quietly, his tone measured. “I couldn’t help them folks,” he said. “I wanted to. Saw their faces and knew what they were in for, and I can still see every one a those faces. I learned ta shut it off, shut everythin’ off, and the best I could do for ’em was ta pass ’em by.” He sighed. “The jobs come ta me first ’cause I’m the best, Jack. I get it done, I don’t get caught, and I don’t flinch. So all I could do was hope that whoever took them other jobs would get sloppy. I know it don’t sound like much, but more woulda been the death a me in short order. Maybe that woulda been better fer everyone. I sure as shit don’t know what I was protectin’ myself for, or livin’ for.”

  The dead, uninflected recitation of this fatalism chilled Jack straight through. He sat down at D’s side, his anger sidelined for the moment. “How’d you get yourself into this?” he asked. “What happened to you?”

  He shook his head at once. Jack could see the reflexiveness, as if he’d hit his knee with a hammer to see it jerk. “Don’t matter.”

  It does matter. It matters to me. You matter to me, and that is scarier than anything you can tell me about yourself. “If it didn’t matter, you could tell me,” Jack said.

  D looked up at him, then away again quickly. “Don’t wanna say.”

  Jack tried another tack. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

  “A cowboy,” D said, almost immediately.

  “Really?” Jack didn’t think he could be more surprised if D had said that he’d wanted to be a ballerina.

  “Yeah,” D said, smiling a little ruefully at himself. “Stupid, huh?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Worked on ranches when I was a kid.”

  “So… why didn’t you—”

  “Enlisted when I was eighteen. Hadta.”

  “Why?”

  D took a deep breath and let it out. “Had me a brand new wife in the family way, Jack. Not too many options.”

  Jack watched his profile, the stillness there, the control of every muscle and tic down to the roots of his hair, each strand standing up at regimented attention, brutally cut off when they got long enough to bend their own way. “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Sharon. Course she ain’t… wasn’t—”

  “You told me your daughter’s name was Jill.”

  D nodded. His mouth was tightening like a drawstring, closing off the hood, shutting away the face.

  “D, where are they now? Do you get to see Jill?”

  He straightened by degrees, like putting on a suit, then turned to face Jack, his face that granite shadow again. “They’re dead, Jack. Is that what ya wanted ta know? Sharon ‘n’ Jill are both dead, and it’s on my head.” He stood up and went to the door. “You let me know when yer done judgin’ me, ’cause we got some shit ta work out and we cain’t stay holed up here forever. I’ll be out back.” He shut the door behind him, leaving Jack sitting there on the bed, staring at the depression D’s body had left in the mattress where he’d been sitting.

  Chapter Nine

  Jack emerged from his bedroom after a good hour of lying on his bed berating himself and D in turn.

  Why’d you have to keep pushing him? The guy’s wound tighter than a suspension bridge. So why is it up to you to unwind him, jerkwad?

  He didn’t have to tell me.

  Probably did it just to shut you up. You should have guessed that something awful had happened to him.

  What am I, the Amazing Kreskin? He doesn’t give anything away.

  He didn’t want to talk about it, and you kept at him until he lost it.

  He didn’t lose it. He never had it; he never lets it go.

  Finally, he’d just put it aside and gotten up. It was done with, after all.

  D wasn’t in the house. Jack found him outside, sitting in his favorite chair on the patio. He’s a killer. He doesn’t deserve your pity, or your sympathy, or your gratitude, or your… whatever else. Jack could tell himself that, and he could even agree, but that didn’t change the fact that whether D deserved them or not, somehow he had all of those things.

  He didn’t give any sign that he’d heard Jack come out the patio door. He came up behind D’s chair and stood there for a moment, waiting to be acknowledged. You’re going to be waiting a long fucking time, he thought. He lifted a hand; it hovered there in the air for a moment, undecided, before finally falling on D’s uninjured shoulder. He felt D twitch just a little at the contact, but he didn’t move. His skin was warm through his T-shirt. “When did it happen?” he finally asked.

  D shifted in his chair, looking away from where Jack stood behind him. Jack stepped to the side, letting his hand slide from D’s shoulder, and sat down in the chair he usually sat in, on D’s right side.

  D shook his head. “Ain’t sayin’ no more about that jus’ now.”

  Jack shoved down his curiosity with difficulty. “Okay.”

  Finally, D turned and looked at him. “You ain’t gonna yell at me for bein’ a crazed killer lettin’ innocent folks die no more?”

  Jack drew one knee up. “It bothers me, and I won’t say that it doesn’t just to make you happy.”

  “You lyin’ wouldn’t make me happy.”

  “The world’s full of people trying to atone for things they regret.”

  “That what you think I’m doin’? Makin’ amends?”

  “Maybe. And maybe you’re trying to atone for more than just the contracts you didn’t take.”

  D snorted. “Maybe I oughta lie down on a couch fer this psychoanalysis, ya think?”

  “You can play it off all you want, but there’s something eating away at you, D. I’ve known you less than a week and I can see it plain as the nose on your face.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out, nodding. “Well, if somethin’s eatin’ away at me it mus’ be getting awful hungry, ’cause there cain’t be much left a me ta eat.” His
fingers were twitching. “Jesus, I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “That can be arranged,” D said, but he cut Jack a sidelong glance that had a bit of a twinkle to it so Jack knew he wasn’t serious.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Jack stared out at the lake, letting the nothingness crowd out the noise inside his brain, just for a short time. A very short time. “So, you said we had things to talk about,” he finally said.

  D made a noncommittal grunting noise. “Gotta decide what ta do.”

  “About what?”

  “Cain’t stay here forever. Someone’ll find us.”

  “But… we’ve been here a few days now and no one’s found us. Doesn’t that mean we’re pretty safe here?”

  D just looked at him, the dumbass written all over his face. “Jack, that’s like sayin’ that if you ain’t got cancer by the time yer forty that yer safe. Gets riskier the more time passes, not safer. More time goes by the more’s the chance somebody’ll dig inta yer past and find yer connection ta this place. Besides, yer father-in-law’ll get wise soon enough.”

  “I told you he never comes here except for—”

  “He sure as hell might notice a big increase in the electric bill on this place and wonder why, though.”

  “Oh,” Jack said, feeling like an idiot for not having thought of that.

  “At some point we’re gonna hafta tell the Marshals that you ain’t dead too. Let ’em know that ya still intend ta testify. You jus’ vanish, and the trial’s like ta be postponed if the prosecutor can swing it, or worse it’ll go ahead without you on the stand and that’s real bad.”

  “We’ve got a few months ’til the trial.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll bet that prosecutor’s spittin’ nails about you bein’ off the reservation too.”

  “I only have one contact. I guess I could call him. But what do I say? He’ll want me to come in, and put me back in custody.”

  “You jus’ say you don’t feel safe, that someone found ya and was gonna kill ya but ya got away, and yer hidin’ out on yer own but you’ll be in Baltimore fer the trial. He ain’t gonna like it but he ain’t gonna have much choice. You don’t mention me.”