Killer Nashville Noir

by Clay Stafford

  The plastic bag is fat with blood now—a giant, translucent tick rocking in the cradle, its equatorial seam puckering from the pressure of the reddish-black fluid within. A high-pitched electronic tone, nearly as familiar to George as the buzz of his alarm clock, begins to trill, a signal that the bag is full. Blanca clamps the plastic tube with a hemostat to stop the flow of blood, then reaches for the needle to ease it from the vein.

  “Wait,” says George.

  She glances up from the needle. “What?”

  “Wait. Don’t take it out.”

  “I have to take it out, George. He’s done.”

  “Blanca. Wait.”

  She pauses, stares at him. George turns and looks out the windows again. It’s nearly sundown. The building is now casting a shadow on the lower limbs of the live oaks, but the crowns of the trees are still illuminated. Golden Hour has deepened and reddened—the Spanish moss and a few distant pine trunks now glow like molten copper—and George feels himself moved almost to tears by the beauty of it. The spreading live oaks are thickly carpeted with ferns, as if their limbs were not tree branches at all, but long, curving swatches of rainforest floor, somehow sliced free and lifted skyward.

  George motions toward the window with the barrel of the pistol. “Look at those ferns,” he says, his words nearly drowned by the electronic scolding of the scale. “So green and beautiful. It’s because we finally got some rain last night.” It’s not clear whether he’s speaking to Blanca, to the man in the chair, or simply to himself. “Yesterday, they were brown and shriveled. Completely dead. Today, alive again. Amazing how they do that.” He smiles slightly. Wistfully. “I love the name: ‘resurrection ferns.’ Love the miracle, too—the way they rise from the dead. Good trick, if you can swing it.”

  The electronic shrilling grows more insistent. George looks at the bloated bag of blood on the metronomic scale. Tick tock, he thinks. His gaze shifts to the eyes—the angry, defiant eyes—of the involuntary donor, then to Blanca, standing motionless beside the chair, one hand still grasping the needle, two fingertips of the other hand resting feather-light on the vein. Blanca’s gentle deftness with the needle—sliding it in and later easing it out—is unmatched, in George’s years of experience giving blood.

  He looks at her, shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says.

  “No what, George?”

  “No, he’s not done.” He sees the glimmer of understanding in her eyes, coupled with a flicker of fear, as well as something else—something more complicated, something he can’t quite name. Will she or won’t she? he wonders. So far Blanca has stayed calm, has not so much as questioned him, has not challenged either the gun in his hand or the bizarre donation he’s orchestrated. He’s grateful for that, though not particularly surprised—he knows Blanca has kept her head through far worse situations than this. More than that, he knows she likes him and trusts him, for reasons both logical and mysterious. George had been willing to tie her up and draw the blood himself, if necessary—what was the old medical-school adage about surgical procedures? See one, do one, teach one?—and God knows, George’s seen blood drawn plenty of times. But the outcome would likely have been messy and possibly unsuccessful, the effort and risk wasted. Much better that Blanca was drawing the blood. “Do you know who this guy is, Blanca?”

  “I have a guess, George. But why don’t you tell me.”

  The rocking cradle is shrieking now, an electronic version of a boiling teakettle. He waves the gun at it. “Can you make that stop?” She nods, stoops, and switches off the machine, then straightens up and looks at George, waiting. “His name’s Preston Holloman.” George looks out the window again, raises his eyes to the fading treetops and the dying daylight. “He killed Maddie. A year ago today.”

  “I remembered the date,” she says, and somehow he’s not surprised. “I lit a candle and said a prayer to Our Lady this morning. I’m so sorry, George. I know you miss her. It was so sweet, the way you two always came here together. When you stopped coming, I knew it was because it was too sad to be here without her.”

  George’s jaw clenches and unclenches, the knots of muscle pulsing like heartbeats.

  “She was pregnant, Blanca,” he says, and hears a sharp intake of breath from her. “That’s why she didn’t come with me to give blood that day. We’d been trying for three years, and it finally happened. She was just getting over her morning sickness, just starting to feel the baby moving, just starting to believe in it, you know?”

  “Oh, God. Oh, George.” She reaches across the chair, takes George’s free hand, gives it a squeeze. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  He nods, and a pair of tears trickles down his face and falls to the floor. She squeezes his hand again with strength George himself would have been proud to have, and holds the pressure until he looks at her.

  “But it was an accident, George,” she says gently.

  “It started as an accident. It ended as murder.” He extricates his hand from her grasp. She watches, waits. “She was out for a run. It was seven in the morning, just getting light. I always worried when she ran that early, but she loved being out in the dark and the quiet. ‘Nobody but me and the foxes,’ she’d say. When she left, I took a shower and fixed a pot of tea. Then I came here.”

  Blanca nods. “You were waiting in the parking lot when we opened at eight. You wanted to make sure you were the first donor of the year. I remember.”

  “Remember how happy I was?” She nods again. “I wanted to tell you about the baby, but Maddie asked me to wait till next time, just to make sure.” He inhales slowly, exhales even more slowly. “I ran a bunch of errands—stupid, mindless errands—after I left here. I didn’t get home till noon. The pot of tea was still on the stove, right where I’d left it. I saw it and I knew. Somehow I knew. Maddie had a five-mile loop she liked to run—through the neighborhood and out Miccosukee Road, along the greenway. I drove the loop. The second time around, I saw one of her shoes on the shoulder of the road.”

  He draws a ragged breath, then another, before continuing. “The police said the impact knocked her twenty feet. There were skid marks, also tire tracks and footprints on the shoulder. The person who hit her pulled over, got out, and looked at her—he looked at her, Blanca, he saw how hurt she was. And then he jumped in his Hummer and drove away. He left Maddie to die in the ditch like a dog.”

  Blanca’s stricken gaze shifts from George to Holloman. Holloman stares back at her, his eyes as cold and sinister as a viper’s.

  “He had a rich daddy and a slick lawyer,” George says. “Didn’t have to go to court, didn’t have to face a jury, didn’t have to face me. Community service and probation. Never even said he was sorry.” George takes another long breath, holds it a moment, and then expels it swiftly, forcefully. “So no, he’s not done yet. Get another bag, Blanca.”

  • • •

  The machine begins humming again as the second bag swells. This time Blanca silences it immediately before clamping off the flow. She looks a question at George, but instead of answering, he reaches for the rag that’s stuffed in Holloman’s mouth. Before he removes it, he presses the barrel of the pistol to the young man’s forehead, which has gone pale and clammy.

  “How you feeling, Preston?” he asks softly. “You’re only down two pints. Maddie was still alive at this point. Alive, alone, and scared. In pain and in shock. The medical examiner said it took her a long time to bleed out. Talk to me, Preston.”

  “Fuck you, cocksucker,” Holloman hisses. “Fuck your dead wife and dead baby.” He turns to Blanca. “Fuck you, too, bitch,” he sneers. “Fat-ass, wetback bitch.” George hears Blanca take a long, deep breath through her nostrils. Holloman clears his throat, then launches a ropy tendril of spit onto George’s face. “You’ll both rot in jail for this.”

  “I don’t think so, Preston,” George says softly. He wipes his face with a tissue from a box on the table, then—with the heel of his gun hand—he forces the young man’s jaw open and jams t
he rag back into his mouth. “I have some friends in law enforcement, Blanca—detectives and prosecutors, victim advocates. One of them called me from Miami after Maddie died. Seems our boy Preston here raped a girl—a thirteen-year-old Latina girl—when he was a fresh-faced lad of seventeen. The Hollomans paid off the girl’s family and hushed up the case. Girl started using drugs, ran away at fourteen. Nobody knows where she is now.” George catches her eye. “We disappear people in America, too.” He shakes his head. “I was hoping he’d be done after two, Blanca, but I guess he’s not.”

  • • •

  Blanca chews her lower lip, thinking; praying to the dark-skinned Madonna. She studies the man in the chair, the man with the eyes of a snake.

  Blanca flashes back to a moment three decades before: She was hoeing weeds in the mission’s bean patch when she caught sight of a serpent—a tommygoff, a big fer-de-lance, as thick as her arm. It was two feet in front of her, drawing into an S-shape to strike. Blanca struck first, the hoe hitting six inches behind the broad, triangular head, the freshly honed edge slicing halfway through the fat body. Guermo, a twelve-year-old boy working two rows away, turned to look, just as Blanca raised the hoe a second time.

  “Don’t cut it off!” he shrieked, leaping over the low rows of strings that supported the young vines.

  But by then Blanca’s hoe was already slashing down again, chopping the snake in two. For an instant everything seemed frozen in time, then—leaving the writhing, dying body behind—the snake’s head and neck thrashed forward, its fury and murderous intent seeming to triumph over even death itself. Guermo dove forward, his arms outstretched, his scrabbling hands catching the snake’s neck and yanking the head away from Blanca’s leg just as the mouth gaped and the fangs emerged. The boy lay in the weeds clutching the head long after the jaws had ceased to snap, long after the reptilian heart and spurting blood had stopped. Even then, the creature’s eyes still stared at her: lifeless, hateful eyes. That’s when Blanca knew that true evil was about to befall them—her and Guermo and everyone else in the village.

  Blanca closes her eyes, squeezing them tightly to shut out the image from the past. When she reopens them, she is no longer in the hot, sunlit bean field; she’s back in the cool, fluorescent-bathed donor room. But reptilian eyes still stare at her from the donor chair. She looks away, looks at George. “You want this blood to be useful, yes? I mean, you want it to save lives, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then come with me. We need to check something.” She glances again at Holloman, or rather, at the ropes binding him to the chair. “You trust your knots, George?”

  “I was a Boy Scout. Knot-craft merit badge. Houdini couldn’t get out of that chair.”

  She leads George out of the donation room and up to the reception desk, where she wakes up the computer and logs in. As she scrolls through the donor database, her tongue ticks like a metronome against the roof of her mouth. “Ah,” she says proudly. “Looks like we’re in luck—Holloman is in the system. He donated at an FSU blood drive three years ago.”

  “You’re kidding,” says George. “That arrogant prick gave blood? You sure it’s the same one, not another guy with the same name?”

  She clicks the mouse to call up the photo embedded in the file; the expression is smug—smirking, almost—but the face is the same. “The Greek Week blood drive,” she says. “It’s a contest between the fraternities. So the frat boys—the new pledges, anyhow—turn out in big numbers.” She checks the data. “Hmm. You’ve got something in common with him, George—he’s O-negative. Doesn’t have baby blood, though.”

  Blanca frowns, chews her lip again, the way she does when she’s wrestling with a problem. “I’ll have to go back and fudge the paperwork, but I think I can make it work. I’ll find some O-negative donors who haven’t given in a few years. Put their names on the forms and pray they don’t show up again.” She takes a breath and blows it out through pursed lips, causing her cheeks to puff out. “Jesus, George, this will take me till midnight.”

  An unspoken question hangs in the air. She considers giving voice to it, but then bites it back. Deep down, she knows the answer already.

  She stands and returns to the donation room.

  • • •

  The third bag is nearly full, but the flow of blood has slowed to a trickle. George checks his watch and groans in exasperation. “Sheesh, he’s still got, what, another six pints in him?”

  She shrugs. “Six, for sure. Maybe seven.”

  “So how come number three’s barely trickling?”

  “The vein’s shutting down,” she says. “That can happen when the body loses a lot of blood fast. It’s like an emergency shut-off valve. Keeps you from bleeding out.”

  “I guess Maddie’s shut-off valve didn’t work, huh?”

  She gives him a sad, sympathetic smile. “It’s a reflex, not a miracle. Severe hemorrhage or multiple internal injuries? The reflex can’t stop those. Sorry, George.”

  He heaves a sigh. “So that’s all we’re gonna get out of him? Three measly pints?”

  “What, you thought it was like getting an oil change?” She frowns, looking toward the windows. Day has given way to the deepening dusk of evening, transforming the wall of windows into mirrors. “How far you plan to take this, George? He’s alive. You’ve gotten three units of blood out of him, and he’s still alive.” She checks the pulse. “His pulse is getting thready. He’s going into shock, George. If he gets to the ER fast, gets a couple units of blood back, he’ll be okay. He’s right, of course—you’ll go to jail, but not for murder. Not if we hurry.” She raises her eyebrows questioningly. “I can testify about how distraught you were. Something snapped. Not in your right mind. Whatever would help.”

  George looks at her, wavering. Just then the eyes flicker open. George searches them for some sign of contrition, some plea for mercy. He finds none. Holloman’s eyes flicker over their faces like a serpent’s tongue. George emits a brief, ironic, decisive laugh. “Thing is, my life has turned to shit, Blanca; I’m not attached to it any more. If this guy had shown any remorse—a year ago, two hours ago, two seconds ago—I’d say sure, call an ambulance and call the cops. But he hasn’t—not then, not now. So I’m ready to go Old Testament on his ass. An eye for an eye; blood for blood. I could’ve just blown him away, then turned the gun on myself. But wouldn’t it be better to do something good on the way out? ‘Not with a bang, but a benefice’?”

  “But you’re asking me to go Old Testament, too, George,” she says. “The gun only gets me off the hook up to a certain point. I’ve already crossed the line, but any further, and I’m complicit in murder.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true. Sorry, Blanca. Not fair to put you in that position.” He lays the gun on the table beside him and raises his arms to the sides, his palms open and facing upward. “Your call.”

  “Just out of curiosity, George,” she says, “were you figuring on just leaving him here in the chair? Drained dry, like one of Dracula’s empties? You think the police and the blood bank would actually let us use the blood of a murder victim?”

  “Hey, I’m a gringo, but I’m not stupid.” He smiles. “You know the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge, twenty miles south?” She nods slowly. “I ride my bike there once or twice a week. There’s a wooden bridge over the river, and every time I ride across it, I see a couple gators hanging out underneath. I’m talking big ones—ten, twelve feet. This guy wouldn’t be more than a few mouthfuls for those suckers.” She waits. “I’ve got chains and cinder blocks in the back of my truck. If you can fudge the paperwork, this guy’s blood is free and clear. Manna from heaven.”

  • • •

  Blanca’s brow furrows. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it, looks again at the reflection in the wall of windows: not just her own reflection this time, but all three of them—their bizarre tableau vivant—as if she were merely observing the scene, rather than playing a pivotal, decisive role. When she fina
lly speaks, slowly and softly, she directs her words toward the window. “I was a nun, back in El Salvador.”

  “How could I forget?” says George. “Somewhere, I’ve still got all that old footage of you. Giving vaccinations in the clinic. Weeding the bean patch. Playing soccer with the kids. All in that penguin-suit of a habit.”

  “I was a nun,” she repeats in a murmur, and George grows silent and still. “So young, so naïve. I fell in love with poor, simple people, and I believed that their poverty and simplicity and honest work could prevail over power, privilege, and corruption.” She fingers the medallion around her neck. “We helped the farmers form a cooperative and buy a truck, so they could take their produce to the market in the city. The big landowners were angry; they saw the cooperative as a threat. As competition. One day twelve soldiers came to the village. They shot the men and boys, then they raped the women and girls. Girls as young as six.” She stops; draws a deep breath, still staring at the mirrored scene, at her own reflection, as if the middle-aged woman she sees there were someone to whom she feels moved to tell her story—like a kind-eyed stranger on an airplane. “The last soldier who raped me couldn’t get an erection, so he used the barrel of a pistol instead. He spit on me and called me filthy names. He looked at me the same way this pedazo de mierda looked at me tonight, when he called me a fat, wetback bitch.”

  She turns from her reflection, turns back to George, and shrugs slightly before looking down at the pale man tied to the donor chair. “We could elevate his feet, put some ice packs on him. I could switch to his other arm, tap a fresh vein.” She reaches across, flicks a vein in the man’s right arm, and frowns, shaking her head. “But that will only get us another pint. Maybe not even that much. His whole circulatory system is about to shut down, George.”

  She chews her lip again. “There’s one other thing we could try.”