The Dime

by Kathleen Kent

  She said cleansed, not cleaned.

  Her knees and ankles are pressed tightly together, sturdy shoes planted squarely on the floor. Her eyes have lost the drug-rattled stupor and she looks like a respectable grandmother now, but the arch of the brows and the shape of the nose are unmistakable: she’s the woman in the mug shot from the Smith County jail that Ryan showed me.

  “You’re Evangeline Roy,” I tell her.

  Her smile broadens, as though she’s delighted I’ve figured it out so soon. “And you’re Elizabeth Rhyzyk. Detective Rhyzyk,” she says coyly. “Had you ever noticed that our initials are the same?”

  Her look of pleasure makes my jaw tighten. “You’ve murdered a decorated police officer. You know what they do to people who kill cops?”

  Her blue eyes widen and her mouth turns down sadly, but it’s a fake pity. I might as well be talking about dryer lint.

  “What’s important,” she says, “is that you’re all right.”

  “I’ve just witnessed my partner shot and killed. I’ve been attacked and k-kidnapped,” I stutter. “Fuck you, I’m not all right. What the hell is going on…” My hands clench and unclench, straining wildly against the cuffs.

  “Elizabeth,” she says, holding up a hand as though I’ve threatened to strike her. “There’s no need for such language. Not between you and I.” She winks at me. “You gave my boys quite a struggle, though, didn’t you? It threw off their timing.”

  Her boys. Does that mean her sons, Curtis and Tommy Roy? They’d be in their early thirties if they hadn’t actually died in the house fire. About the same age as the fake cops. Or is she just using a Southern cliché, a group of good ol’ boys out for a romp?

  “Was I raped?” I demand.

  One brow comes up, as though she’s amused, but she says, “Not that I know.”

  She points to my legs and my arms and says admiringly, “It’s so good to see that you haven’t trashed your body with tattoos when so many young females have. It shows that you have respect for your body.”

  “What do you want with me?” I yell, flecks of spittle flying from my mouth. Something about her unruffled pose enrages and frightens me at the same time.

  “What do I want?” she asks. She regards me with something more than warmth. Something closer to hunger. “I want what only you can give me.”

  I’m trying to imagine what she needs—assistance in eradicating her competition, information, the release of one of her own who’s incarcerated in exchange for my freedom—but she smiles at me in a conspiratorial way that makes the spit in my mouth dry up.

  “Why, Elizabeth,” she says cheerfully, leaning forward to give her words more weight. “I want grandbabies, of course.”

  30

  Any cop will tell you that some of the most dangerous interactions occur when you’re dealing with a calm psychopath. The raging, ranting bug jobs often give a tell before the attack comes, a vocal crescendo or an obscenity-laced preamble, the guy screaming at you about how he’s going to bury the ax he’s wielding deep in your skull and then have long, satisfying sex with your shattered cranium.

  But the serene, reasonable-sounding lunatic, the next-door neighbor who has always been neat and tidy, returning the borrowed hedge trimmer on time, is the one who will end up scooping out your kidneys with a spoon before you can say “Jeffrey Dahmer.”

  I stare at the woman sitting across from me, blinking for a moment before I begin a frantic, hiccupping laughter. You never tell a crazy person that he or she is crazy, but my unchecked, hysterical cackling says it all.

  Her head tilts again, but she’s not smiling now.

  She takes a deep, steadying breath and tells me, “You’re tired, Elizabeth, and you don’t yet understand the work you are meant to do. You need to rest and then we’ll talk again.”

  Evangeline stands from the chair and walks to the door, looking not so much pained as disappointed. But her eyes rest briefly on the wall behind me and she regains her composure.

  “Where are my clothes? Give me back my goddamned clothes,” I demand.

  She closes the door behind her, leaving me alone in the room.

  “Hey!” I call out, but I hear nothing but her retreating footsteps. Immediately, I rattle and test the chains, but they’re heavy and newly bought, and there’s no way I can escape them. I need a hairpin or paper clip to try and work the locks, but the room is almost empty, pristine, sterile, like it was staged.

  Glancing at the plaque again, I remember James Earle’s voice on the phone—how many hours earlier?—warning me that we were in their jungle now. He was an MP, and once a cop, always a cop. He felt intuitively that something was wrong about our being so lost, and he knew that we were only a few miles from Caddo, on our way to Karnack, and that we had been redirected with detour signs. He’ll tell Jackie or burn up the phone lines getting someone else to listen to him. They’ll start looking for me soon.

  With a twisting motion, I squelch around in the vinyl chair to examine what’s in back of me, expecting to see another blank and unblemished wall. But when I see what’s there, I startle, my neck muscles straining, my eyes wide and disbelieving. On the wall is a large canvas, a painting of Saint Michael slaying the devil, the background of which is daubed with dark and murky colors. The archangel is muscular and pale, his slender arm upraised, poised to bring the blue-metal sword down onto the figure below one sandaled foot, his enemy, a writhing, dark-skinned man with horns. Saint Michael’s cape, a deep crimson, swirls in a bright tempest about his wings. His hair, also red, flies up behind him as though the angel has only just landed on the earth, ready for the final battle.

  The angel is traditionally androgynous, sinewy, graceful, the pectoral muscles beneath the breastplate molded to a feminine roundness. The painting is a reproduction—it can’t be the original one by Reni—but it’s a good copy, filled with righteous anger and ritual vengeance. It is, in picture form, the Deuteronomy verse that was written on the note brought to me by Tony Ha.

  When I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.

  The door opens then and the tall cop, the one with the blue-winged tattoo, walks into the room. He’s not wearing the cop’s uniform, though; he’s changed into khaki pants and a work shirt.

  I steel myself for an assault, a beating, another session with the cattle prod, but his hands are empty, and he unties the rope securing me to the chair. Without looking at my face, he yanks at my elbow, pulling me to my feet. The vinyl pulls wetly at the backs of my legs, and he leads me, shuffling and barefoot, toward the door.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask. He pulls harder at my arm, drags me through the doorway and down a hall. There are several doors on either side of the hall, but they are all closed and the building is completely quiet. It’s a house, poorly constructed, with ill-fitting doors and narrow baseboards. It might well be one of the redbrick, work-neglected homes we passed on our way toward Karnack.

  At the end of the hallway, he opens the last door into a room the size of a large closet, carpeted and with a twin mattress and box spring on the floor covered with a thin sheet, a near-flat pillow with no pillowcase, and nothing else. There are no windows or closets and the walls are painted a dark, bilious green. The only light source is from an old-fashioned glass-plate light fixture overhead. The one door has a hatch that opens and closes, about face-high and covered with a screen, so they can keep an eye on me.

  He begins to shove me into the room, but I tell him, “I need a bathroom.”

  Kicking at a plastic bedpan next to the door, the kind used in hospitals, he pushes me farther into the room and unlocks and removes the belly strap and ankle restraints, leaving my wrists cuffed but free enough for me to use the bedpan. He backs away from me as if from a dangerous animal and then closes the door. I can hear the lock turning and, after a moment, his heavy footsteps retreating down the hallway.

  I sit on the b
ed and look around the room. To the right of the mattress, about a foot off the floor, is a ringbolt fastened to the wall. I turn my head and see the same kind of bolt secured to the wall to the left of the mattress as well. There is only one reason I can think of why ringbolts would be screwed firmly into a wall: to restrain a prisoner.

  My fingers reach for my own Saint Michael’s image, but I feel nothing but skin. It’s no longer hanging from a chain around my neck. I shake my hair frantically like a dog, thinking that it had gotten caught up in the tangled strands, hoping that the chain will come loose and fall again with a familiar and comforting weight around my neck.

  But it’s gone, torn loose during the struggle or taken along with my clothes and the phone that was in the left pocket of my jacket. I’m near naked and barefoot in a monk-like cell, my bladder about to burst, and I’m beyond confounded. A best-case hostage situation would mean a relatively short uncomfortable period being held captive before a negotiating team successfully secured my release by giving the kidnappers, at least temporarily, what they wanted. Or before a special tactical team was sent in to red-dot every one of their down-home, country-bred foreheads.

  But what Evangeline Roy seems to want from me is so fuck-all weird, so out of the realm of rational thought, that either she’s playing with me, trying to unseat my own reason, or she’s utterly crazy, in which case all rules of the known universe have been suspended. But she’s not so crazy that she hasn’t taken on one of the most dangerous cartels and managed to maintain, at least for the time being, the winning hand.

  The woman has to know that two police officers disappearing, especially two cops who have worked with the Feds, will bring a battery of state, county, and city officials to beat down and search every scrawny bush behind the Pine Curtain. ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshal Service—they’ll all be alerted and on the hunt.

  Looking around the room, I take stock of what I have to work with. The possibilities are bleak. I can pull up a corner piece of the carpet, pry loose one of the tack strips, utilize the rows of little nails against a bare neck where the carotid artery lies or on an unprotected pair of eyes. And you never know when a longer nail, a paper clip, even a razor blade used to scrape away old wallpaper, has fallen between the wall and the carpet padding.

  I can’t concentrate anymore without emptying my bladder and am about to relieve myself over the bedpan when the hatch on the door opens and the tall guy’s face is there. I didn’t hear him coming up the hallway, which means he’s a stealthy, sneaky bastard. Stealthy and clever enough to gain entrance into my locked apartment.

  The pressure in my groin is beyond painful. I can wait tensely for him to come into the room, or I can derail his peep show. I put up my middle finger, then turn my back to him, pull down my underwear, and squat over the bedpan. Immediately, the hatch snaps shut and my shoulders sag with relief.

  Then the room goes dark.

  There must be a light switch on the outside wall. I realize I haven’t seen any switches on the inside wall. When I finish, I stand, pull up my underwear, gently ease the bedpan toward the wall with one foot, and then remain motionless until I hear him plodding down the hallway again.

  The room is dark but not completely featureless. The cracks around the door let in some ambient light and soon I can make out the white sheet on the mattress. I sit on the edge of the bed and listen for any other sounds, but the house is silent. I scoot to the top of the mattress, lean my back and head against the wall, and wait.

  Soon the hours of struggle and the fear all work to numb my waking brain, and I find myself easing into sleep, only to jerk my head back when my chin starts to droop. It keeps drooping, and the thought of leaving my eyes closed, if only for a short while, is suddenly too powerful to fight.

  At once, I see Hoskins sitting next to me in the car, his smiling face in profile. He reaches into his pocket to pull out his badge, and next to the passenger-side window appears, not the tall cop, but the young cowboy from Marshall, his hat shadowing his features, the Smith and Wesson pistol pointed at Hoskins’s head.

  Then comes the inevitable bang, and my eyes open to my prison room, lit again from the overhead bulb. The noise has come from the hatch in the door being opened, and the eyes of Hoskins’s killer are watching me. He unlocks and opens the door, holding in his hands the transport strap and chains. Standing behind him in the hallway is the shorter cop—maybe he is a cop, as he’s still in uniform—wearing a sidearm and holding the cattle prod.

  I’m instantly alert, but I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep. It could have been a few minutes; it could have been hours. There’s a thin drizzle of spittle on my chin, so it must have been a deep sleep, however long it was.

  The taller one walks into the room and tells me to stand up. Quickly and expertly, he puts the restraints back on. His voice is flat, matter-of-fact, and I’m relieved that he’s apparently not in the least aroused by my near nakedness. I may not be his type; I’m tall and muscular, and maybe he likes his women petite and pork-stuffed, but whatever the reason, there is no change in his breathing when he bends down to fasten the cuffs around my ankles, no brushing of fingertips over my calves or thighs, no flaring nostrils that signal carnal thoughts when he cinches the belly strap. There is a blankness about his face, a lack of any emotional engagement. He might as well be trussing a store mannequin.

  I flick my eyes to his shorter companion with the cattle prod, and his face tells a different story. He’s staring at my underwear at crotch level, and there’s clearly plenty of lust-driven thoughts going on between those ears. If I am going to be raped, it will be initiated by him. There was plenty of rage, too, on his face as he was tossing me into the car trunk. I’d more than thrown off his timing. I had fought back, almost broken his nose, and I’d run like hell. Had I gotten away, it would have threatened his very existence.

  The fact that I’ve seen both their faces and could testify in court to all they’ve done or are about to do—especially when their usual MO is to go masked—is not reassuring.

  After the restraints are secured, I’m led back down the hallway into the formerly bright and cheerful room, which is now in shadows, lit by the same overhead light fixture as in my tiny closet, the large window behind the gauzy curtains pitch-black. It’s full-on night. I’ve been missing for hours and there has to be a massive search under way for me and my partner. I just have to stay on my guard and hang on.

  The shadows in the painting of Saint Michael are more pronounced, more sinister in their somber hues. Only the crimson burst of his cape and hair and the white reflective highlights on his face and glinting sword shine aggressively. The devil is completely lost in the ocher tones of the earth at the bottom of the scene.

  Evangeline perches in her chair, observing me observing the painting. She says, “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

  The tall one forces me to sit, and I’m tied again to the vinyl chair. Then he exits the room without a backward glance. The shorter one takes one last look at my breasts, cold nipples prominent beneath the thin fabric of the T-shirt, and smirks at me before leaving.

  “Did you have a nice rest, Elizabeth?” Evangeline asks.

  “If that’s what you want to call passing out in a prison cell,” I say. “And the name is Detective Rhyzyk.”

  “Are you hungry?” she asks.

  A sandwich, a bowl of soup, and a glass of milk are arranged on a plastic tray on the table next to the chair. I hadn’t experienced any hunger until she pointed out the food, and my stomach rumbles. I don’t want to eat, not certain what’s been added to the food, but if I don’t eat, I can’t stay strong.

  “After you,” I say, and she takes a tiny bite of the sandwich and a spoonful of soup.

  “The milk,” I prompt her, and she sips at the milk.

  She picks up the bowl and the spoon and comes to stand in front of me.

  “Are you going to untie me so I can eat?” I ask.

  Smiling, she shakes her head, dips the spoon in
to the soup, and then holds it to my lips. I slurp at the tepid soup and swallow it.

  I want to ask her what’s going on, if she’s aware that the entire Dallas Police Department is probably looking for me, but Evangeline wipes at my chin maternally with a tissue pulled out of her pocket. Her skirt and sweater smell of dry cleaning and some papery eau de toilette. The room is dark, but I can see that her flawless Dolly Parton–esque complexion is actually a thick spackling of makeup covering meth scars. The overdone hair is definitely a wig.

  “The painting is from a church in Louisiana,” she says. “I took shelter there one night when that was the only place available to me. I was about as far down as a person could possibly be and still be breathing. Many of the details of my addiction you probably already know from my arrest records.”

  She feeds me more of the soup, which tastes like the watery, canned stuff my mom used to serve with grilled cheese sandwiches.

  “The church was abandoned. Burned out, overgrown, infested with rats, but it still had a kind of dignity to it. I fell asleep under one of the pews and woke to the moon shining through the holes in the roof. It had been raining, but the clouds had cleared, and this shaft of light fell across the floor and onto that very painting. That’s when I saw him. And that’s when he spoke to me.”

  As she talks, her attention returns again to the painting. At some point she realizes that I haven’t opened my mouth to the spoon, and she catches me eyeing her.

  “Oh, yes,” she assures me. “He spoke to me. Just like I’m speaking to you now. He appeared to me in the form of a man, a tall redheaded man, but he was the archangel incarnate.”

  She wipes at my lips again, a little more insistently this time.

  “I know it happened, because from that moment on, I was cured of my addiction. It was as though it had never been. Vanished into the air.”

  She returns the bowl to the table and picks up the plate with the sandwich. There’s a thoughtful moment when she faces the black rectangle of the window.