One Kick: A Novel

by Chelsea Cain

  She had learned to redirect her anger since then, and to reduce triggers that led to aggression. She had used that last bit of pop psych to get out of her mother’s house during the emancipation hearing, because her mother—she was one giant walking rage-trigger. But redirecting was the most useful, and it was the only thing stopping her from body-slamming Bishop to the ground, because she wanted to, she really, really did.

  Instead, she stalked past him, over to the steps, and picked up the blue chalk. Take a time-out—that was always the first step on the anger management lists. Kick concentrated on the chalk. The edges were smooth where it had been dragged over rough concrete, used by a kid to draw pictures on the sidewalk. Kick’s fingers were blue with chalk dust. She smiled. What was the second redirection strategy? Identify possible solutions. She had to get inside the house and see for herself what was going on. Bishop was clearly some sort of unreliable psychopath. Kick snuck a peek at him, then looked away when their eyes met. She returned her attention to the chalk, rolling it between her hands until her palms were entirely blue.

  “Catch,” she said, and she tossed the chalk to Bishop—or, more accurately, tossed it at him.

  He snatched it easily out of the air.

  Kick nudged the heel of one boot off with the toe of the other.

  “That’s a bad idea,” Bishop said.

  She didn’t like that, how he seemed to know what she was going to do almost as soon as she did. What was the third redirection strategy? Think before you speak. Now, there was a lesson that had been drilled into her as a kid. She was thinking Bishop was a fuckwad, so she didn’t say anything. She got one boot off and then the other, and set it beside the first. Then she tucked the Glock in her backpack, strapped it on her back, and started walking the perimeter of the house, looking for her way in.

  “You don’t take constructive criticism very well, do you?” Bishop asked.

  Kick kept her eyes skyward. Even with the sun gone, light pollution from the city kept the clouds bright. For her purposes, it was better than a full moon.

  The second-story deck was her best shot. She visually backtracked down the side of the house, identifying her route: water meter, windowsill, gutter bracket, cable box, railing. What was the fourth redirection strategy? Get some exercise. She put the toe of her socked foot on the water meter, hooked a chalked hand around the window frame, and lifted herself upward.

  The barking started almost instantaneously, a steady yap yap yap, like artillery fire. It sounded like the same dog as before, close, but not too close, just some neighborhood K-9 wannabe who didn’t know how to mind his own business.

  She had to ignore it, to focus.

  Scaling the side of a house is a lot like rock climbing: it’s all about adequate handholds and footholds. The chalk helped with traction. Kick kept her center of gravity over her feet and pushed up with her legs, her braid smacking against her shoulder blades. The fading light was a challenge. She groped for another handhold, using the chalk for traction, and managed to find a cable box, then she found another foothold. The dog was going ballistic. The noise it made was crawling under her skin, made it hard to concentrate. She willed the dog to shut up. Climbing was all about solving one problem at a time. Power was relative to body size. Balance and flexibility were paramount. As long as you had three points of body in contact with the wall and you didn’t panic, you were fine. Having a high percentage of Lycra in your pants didn’t hurt either.

  She was almost there. But the dog was rattling her. She wished she had her worry book so she could add the dog to the list and worry about it later, but the book was in the car, so she had no choice but to do the worrying now. She craned her head over her left shoulder, in the direction it sounded like the noise was coming from. The laurel hedge that separated the house she was attempting to climb from the house next door had a dead spot where the leaves had shriveled, and it made a kind of window. There was light coming from the other side, and Kick swore she saw a flash of movement. She snapped her head forward. Sometimes it was better not to see the things that go bump in the night. Don’t look. Eyes forward. She managed to get a toehold on the cable box and was in the process of shifting her weight to it, when a sudden blast of pain shot through her foot. She caught herself as she cried out, biting her tongue so that her shriek came out more like a startled turkey gobble. It didn’t matter. The dog went bonkers. Kick lost her footing and barely managed to catch herself with her hands, clinging to the slats of the upper-deck railing as her feet scrambled in midair, searching for solid ground. The dog sounded like Cujo now, like it was horse-size and rabid. But one problem at a time. Kick knew she’d lost a toenail. She’d felt the pop as it caught. She found the cable box again with her foot, pushed off it with a grunt, and, using all her arm strength, pulled herself up just enough that she was able to hook her foot between the railing slats. She clung horizontally to the railing, twenty feet off the ground, and hoped that Bishop could see this. Not the slipping part but the awesome, badass recovery. The idea gave her strength as she clawed her way slowly over the side of the railing. She had to take a moment to catch her breath. Her big toe throbbed. Cujo was howling even louder than before. Kick moved onto her knees and crawled across the patio deck, to the railing nearest the dog. The house was dark but an outdoor fixture had been left on, and Kick could make out the general geography of the yard and the movement of a manic, barking shadow in the grass. There was an ancient cherry tree in the yard, massive and gnarled, and the dog was circling it. No, he was tied to it, or at least to a stake near the base of the trunk. From up there, the dog looked small and hobbled, pacing along with a weird hopping limp. As it moved closer to the light, its silhouette sharpened, and Kick recognized the distinctive shape of its long snout and pointed ears. Not Cujo. Lassie. Kick realized then, as it rounded the tree, why it moved so strangely. Her nemesis was a three-legged collie.

  Her fury at the dog was momentarily supplanted by her fury for its owner. What kind of jackass tied a dog up outside all night like that? The backyard was fenced in. It didn’t even need to be tethered.

  Then the dog’s howl went up a decibel and her sympathy for it instantly faded. Lassie was clearly on a mission, intent to wake up the whole block.

  Kick crawled along the balcony deck over to the sliding glass door and gave the handle a try. It was locked. She sat down, shrugged her backpack into her lap, and unzipped it.

  It was the sound that tipped her off, the bright, familiar, everyday zwippp of all those zipper teeth parting. The barking had stopped. Had Lassie thrown in the towel? Kick looked back over her shoulder. The twisted black branches of the neighbor’s cherry tree seemed to reach for her. Kick was tempted to peek back over the railing, to check on the beast, but she didn’t want to risk setting it off again.

  Focus on a task.

  That was the fifth redirection strategy.

  Mel had given her her first padlock the Christmas she turned eight. A Kwikset. He showed her how to pick the lock with a bobby pin. By New Year’s she could get it open in under ten seconds. Anyone could get into any lock. He brought her home a new lock every few weeks, each one heavier and shinier than the last. She kept them on a shelf in her bedroom and displayed them like dolls. By Presidents’ Day she could get into an Abloy Protec padlock in under five minutes. After that, Mel said she was ready for doors.

  Sliding glass doors were the easiest.

  Some people used crowbars to pop the handle off, but Mel had taught Kick how to leverage her body weight and push down at just the right angle. She leaned into it, using both hands, pushing so hard she wasn’t even breathing, and after ten seconds of pressure the handle snapped off cleanly into one hand.

  Kick was sweating now. But the handle was perfect. It had popped right off its screws like it was supposed to. She put the handle in her jacket pocket, and then took off the jacket and laid it on the deck. She dug the Leatherman out of he
r backpack, along with a penlight, folded out the flathead screwdriver, put the penlight between her teeth, and knelt down in front of the now-exposed lock mechanism. She had honed her lock-picking skills by practicing on the sliding glass door at her mother’s house. Out the front door in the middle of the night, around the side yard, and back inside through the sliding doors that her mother had paid for with Today Show money. Ten times a night sometimes. Her mother never had a clue.

  The mechanism on this door looked standard. The threaded shanks of the two screws that had held the handle in place were now exposed, as were two holes that hid the screwheads that operated the lock. Kick inserted the flathead screwdriver into each of the holes and turned the screwhead inside clockwise. This unsprung the lock. It was that easy. A clean entry, Mel had called it. When you left, all you had to do was use the screwdriver again to relock the door from the outside, then screw the handle back on, and there’d be no trace you were ever there. Any junkie with a brick could break into a house, but it took some skill to break in and out again without someone noticing.

  Kick returned the Leatherman and penlight to her backpack, shrugged the shoulder straps back on, and slid open the door. Venetian blinds were a bitch. They were ugly and loud and you could get tangled up in them if you weren’t careful. Kick took her time, inching sideways around the blinds. The room was dark and smelled overwhelmingly like bleach. Kick’s skin prickled. She could make out the general shape of the room, a box spring on the floor. A bedroom. The blinds shuddered in the wind behind her. The fumes from the bleach made her eyes water. Kick stepped forward, her socked feet padding silently on carpet.

  “It took you long enough,” a voice said. The room filled with light. Kick aimed the Glock in the direction of the voice, finger on the trigger. It was Bishop. He stood in the doorway, across the room from her. Between them were the remnants of a child’s bedroom: circus wallpaper, purple carpeting, broken toys strewn in the corner. She looked to Bishop for an explanation. The ugly expression on his face made her insides go cold. He was as still as ever, but now Kick recognized the stillness for what it was: contained violence. He held a dog collar out, jangling its tags.

  “I had the code to the lockbox,” he said. He tossed the dog collar at her feet. “If we’d done it my way, I wouldn’t have had to kill the dog.”

  7

  VISUALIZE A RELAXING EXPERIENCE. Close your eyes and travel there in your mind.

  Kick is in her backyard. It is before Mel, before everything. She still has only one father, her real one, and he still loves her. The grass is thick and green and thatched with clover. She is on a tire swing, and she is swinging back and forth, and she is so high she can almost touch the clouds.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Bishop said.

  Kick opened her eyes. Sometimes she could convince herself that the backyard was real, but not tonight.

  “Smell that?” Bishop asked. He hadn’t moved from the door.

  The faint, harsh odor of bleach burned slightly at Kick’s nostrils.

  Bishop sniffed the air. “They cleaned up,” he said.

  “I’m calling 911,” Kick said, reaching for her phone. If he came near her, she would punch him in the throat.

  “What are the police going to do?” Bishop asked.

  “Collect trace evidence,” Kick said. “See if it matches Adam Rice or Mia Turner.”

  “They bathed the place in industrial bleach,” Bishop said. He pointed at the carpet. “It’s new,” he said. “The place is clean. There is no trace evidence.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile. “But the cops will certainly be interested in the blue handprints leading up the side of the house.”

  Kick looked down at the phone in her hand. It was powdered with blue chalk dust. She wiped it on her shirt and then rubbed her palms against her thighs.

  “I told you I had my people here,” Bishop said.

  His people, again. But Kick had other things to worry about. The chalk dust was everywhere. On her pants. All over her shirt. She looked like she’d fallen into a vat of 1980s eye shadow. It had mixed with her hand sweat and formed a kind of Smurf epoxy.

  Bishop held a white handkerchief out.

  Who even carried handkerchiefs anymore?

  She snatched the handkerchief from his hand and blew her nose. Her snot came out blue.

  “Keep it,” Bishop said.

  She glared at him.

  He’d positioned himself well. She wouldn’t be able to get back through the sliding doors easily without getting past him. She could make a run for the door, but clearly he knew the house better than she did. The cops had her fingerprints on file. They were part of her missing-person file.

  “This wasn’t a setup,” Bishop said. “I didn’t know that you’d coat your hands with blue dust and climb the outside of a house.”

  He had a point.

  “Here’s my problem,” Bishop said. “The satellite photos aren’t admissible because they were illegally acquired. Having a kid’s room when you don’t have a kid is weird, but it is not probable cause to search a house. Adam was here. The car from the Mia Turner Amber Alert was here. This house is somehow connected to their abductions.”

  Bishop didn’t have the microexpressions other people did. He didn’t give anything away with gestures or posture. He had learned that somewhere, which meant that he had also learned how to read microexpressions and body language in other people. Maybe he was reading her right now. Kick straightened up and tried to relax the muscles in her face.

  How had he done it? she wondered. How had he killed the dog? He said he didn’t like guns. Had he strangled it?

  “I need your help,” Bishop said.

  He was taller than she was, and this close the angle of his face changed. She could see the shadow of his lower eyelashes, the million light-brown dots of facial hair pressing against the surface of his chin and jaw. The color didn’t match the black of his hair.

  “I have a gun,” she said. “I will shoot you if you come closer.”

  “You have a gun,” Bishop said, “in your backpack.”

  “I can get to it in under four seconds,” Kick said. “Try me.”

  “You should keep your hands free,” Bishop said. “You’re more dangerous with your hands free.”

  “I will shoot you,” Kick said. “I swear I will.”

  “I believe you,” Bishop said.

  Something changed in his eyes, in the way that he was looking at her, and he blinked and looked away. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said. “This was a mistake.” He backed away from her and then turned and headed for the door like he was going to leave her there, alone, in that terrible room with its circus trains, its rows of elephants marched trunk to tail, its girls standing on horses, its poodles walking on their hind legs, and its men brandishing whips at lions.

  “The houses we stayed in,” Kick called. “There was always a box. A place to hide if anyone ever came looking.” Her stomach twisted as the words left her mouth.

  Bishop appeared back in the doorway. “Put the gun away,” he said.

  She looked down to see her hand inside her backpack, fingers already curling around the grip of the Glock. She hadn’t reached for it consciously.

  “You carry that thing around enough, you’ll end up shooting someone,” Bishop said. “And I don’t want it to be me.”

  Kick didn’t need the gun. She knew 571 ways to take someone to the ground with her left hand alone. She left the weapon in the backpack. “Fine,” she said, securing the backpack straps over her shoulders.

  Bishop lifted his eyes from his phone and turned the screen toward her. It was displaying some sort of architectural blueprints. Kick peered at it. “That’s here,” she said. She didn’t bother asking how he’d managed to acquire them so quickly.

  He scrolled through sev
eral pages of the prints and then tapped his finger over a faded line of blue ink. “Let’s start here,” he said. “Stay behind me.”

  Kick followed him. Plan B was to punch him in the kidney and make a quick exit back through the sliding doors and down the side of the house. Plans C through F were variations of Plan B, and Plan G involved the Glock.

  She walked a few steps behind him, through the bedroom door into the hallway, where the lilac carpet continued. The white walls still had nails where pictures had hung a week before. Bishop had left a trail of lights on when he’d come upstairs, and now they retraced his steps downstairs. All that empty space and lilac carpeting made the house seem especially desolate.

  The smell of bleach wasn’t as strong on the first floor, or maybe Kick was just getting used to it. She was a good adapter. Wasn’t that what the shrinks said?

  Bishop’s eyes moved back and forth between the walls and his phone, like he was comparing every spec. Kick kept her distance, a good arm’s length back. Bishop led her down another lilac hall past a closed door, then stopped at a second one. He stepped past the door before he opened it, she noticed, so that he pushed it in from the doorknob side. It was how you opened a door if you wanted to lessen the chance that someone would shoot you through it. Frank had taught Kick that. Bishop seemed to know it by rote. This room was bigger than the bedroom, with a small double-paned window and a louvered closet. The walls had recently gotten a sloppy coat of white paint. A bulletin board still hung at desk height on one wall. Kick wandered over to it. All of the pushpins were lined up along one edge of the board, separated into rows by color.

  What did it say about her, Kick wondered, that when she saw pushpins she thought Missing kids?

  “That’s not right,” Bishop muttered.

  Kick glanced back at him. He was scrutinizing the louvered closet. It was a standard-enough-looking closet, the kind of thing that you can buy in kit form from Home Depot and install yourself. Standard enough that it didn’t attract attention.