Atwater’s presence commands my attention, but I notice other things about the scene. This is not a random stopping place. There are signs of frequent usage, even something that looks like a rough garden at the edge of the clearing.
I don’t have time to look around or ask myself questions. Atwater stands over the child. I don’t recognize him at first, but I know who he is. The small paleness of her makes him look even larger. He looms. There is a knife in his hand. Something long and deadly looking, as though it might be used for fighting. Or gutting a deer. I want to close my eyes, but I know that won’t make it go away.
I feel rather than hear Arden gasp. I feel it in my gut. Atwater is too far away to feel it, but he hears it and my heart sinks. The advantage of surprise was all we had. His head comes up and swivels around like a dog’s.
I want to kill him then. It would have been the simplest thing. Instead, I hear myself say in a loud, clear voice, “Stand back from the child.” A ridiculous thing to say, maybe. But it’s all that comes to me in the moment. And it’s the only thing I really want.
He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t stand back. Maybe I’d known all along he would not. To my surprise, he looks at me—straight at me—and smiles.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. There is a madness in his face, in his voice. I know he is insane. Truly, I knew that going in. But the words chill me nonetheless. Who am I, that he should be waiting?
“Stand back from the child, William. Stand away from her.” The Bersa is in my hand and leveled at his chest. And Arden. I can’t hear her anymore, can’t hear the mother heart in her chest beating. It seems possible she has stopped breathing.
“Fuck you,” he says, quietly. Almost sweetly. He moves towards Ashley. Raises the knife. The child sees or senses the shift and starts to scream.
And scream.
I know I can take him out easily, but I also know there is more here at stake than the life of a single dog. And I am thinking that, whatever happens here, the killing time will come before long. But for now, he is better to me alive than dead. It is the chance I take.
Knowing the risk—knowing that missing this poisonous target might mean I’d kill him anyway—I calculate and aim for the shoulder of the arm that holds the knife. I always underestimate the severity of the Bersa’s kick. There’s a price you have to pay for her small size. The shot is true, but the gun bucks in my hand. I have to hold on tightly so I don’t lose my grip. It’s a good thing another shot isn’t required. I don’t even really have time to think about anything, but I know in my heart I’ve hit my target.
Atwater is on the ground screaming, in that moment not realizing how lucky he is that my aim is accurate.
“You crazy bitch! Look what you did to my arm!”
I motion for Arden to follow me. There is relief on her face now, washed in with the fear. Her ordeal might be nearly over but she fears that, maybe, it has still just begun. Perspective is everything, yes. And luck rides a white horse.
“Get Ashley,” I say to her quietly beneath the din as we move forward. “I’ll just shut him up.”
I don’t have to tell her again.
While she springs instantly towards her daughter, I move in the direction of the van and recoil at first from what I see. Inside, it looks a torture chamber. If I had time to think about what I’m looking at, I would weep. But I don’t have time, so I close my mind and grab the first thing that will suit my purpose: a rubber mallet. The handle fits neatly into my hand. I go to the screaming man and hit him on the head with it. A solid whap, stronger than a tap. I know I risk killing him with the blow, but it is yet another calculated risk. And, as I’d hoped, for better or worse, it shuts him up. He’s out for now. I know we don’t have long, but we have priorities. And, in truth, his death would not be the worst thing in the world. Not the worst thing, at all.
Now Arden has her daughter untied. I see joy on the woman’s face, but also fear; like something might happen that turns the whole thing south again. She can’t believe her good fortune, that’s what I see.
I wonder how close by the police are. Wonder if they are within easy calling distance. Wonder even if I want them to show up or stay away.
Along with all the other stuff in the van, I find a blanket. I toss it to Ashley so she can wrap the child in it. The rough material envelopes the tiny form. With the warmth and proximity of her mother, Ashley’s cries subside. They are no longer screams of terror, just the hiccuppy burbles left behind after your body has forgotten for the moment how to do anything other than articulate distress.
“She’s okay?”
Arden nods, visibly sagging with her relief. “She’s perfect. Nothing broken.” And then, just above a whisper, a thought she is almost afraid to articulate: “I think we got here just in time.”
“I think so, too. Listen, pop her into the passenger seat of the van, okay? Then come help me.”
A fledgling plan is beginning to form. Atwater’s van has everything I need. I find rope, several knives, handcuffs, leg irons, bedsheets. I work quickly, trying hard not to think about what this vehicle has seen. I know we don’t have much time.
I find a couple of T-shirts in the van and tear them into strips to bind his shoulder. It is going to hurt like hell when he wakes, but I don’t care about that. Maybe something even less than care. Compassion is not the reason I want to stop the bleeding. Having him bleed out will not suit my purpose.
I stop the bleeding with an efficiency that surprises me. Once that happens, I bind his hands and feet then ask Arden to help me move him into the van. It is easier said than done. Atwater is probably two hundred pounds, and, at the moment, he is dead weight. At one point as we work, he gets a little restless and I think he might wake up, so I give him another knock on the head. Gentle-like, though, not a full-on bash. Just enough to send him back over. Again, the risk to him is real, but it is necessary. Even damaged, he is dangerous to the two of us: we are much smaller creatures. We have to do everything we can to even the odds.
When we are done, when he is once again out cold and has been secured in the back of the van, I indicate that Arden should join Ashley on the passenger seat. She clutches the child to her in a relieved-mother’s death grip, and we bump back through the forest to my rental car.
I look at Arden and hope I can trust her with this next part, realizing that I have no choice and maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. From here, the success of the plan that is forming will be a matter of timing and fate.
I meet her eyes. “I need you to help me get him into the trunk of my car,” I say, glad that the car rental company had upgraded me to a full-sized vehicle at the airport, not the compact I’d initially ordered.
She looks startled for a second, regards me with big, questioning eyes, which, on this day, have seen too much. But when she speaks, all she says is, “Okay.”
Her agreement is one thing. Actually pulling it off is another. It takes us a long time; longer than it should. He seems to start to rouse again, but when he hits his head on the hard metal around the edge of the trunk, I don’t save him from the bump. The knock on his skull this time is loud enough that even I, who don’t wish him well, cringe. But the hit of his head on the edge of the trunk seems to send him back over, saving me from having to give him another bonk with the mallet.
As we work, I am aware of a certain ambivalence growing inside me. I have a goal and a plan. If Atwater dies before I achieve it, I would be perfectly comfortable shunting him to the forest floor and leaving him for the vultures. I know I would do so without real regret. There are things I need him alive for, but if he dies in the course of getting him there, well, maybe that’s okay, too.
When it is done, and Atwater is neatly tucked into the trunk of the car with the lid closed, I grab everything I think I’ll need from the back of the van. I move quickly while I do it. He’s taken a few good bonks to the head, but I don’t know how long he’ll be out.
“Now take the van and Ashle
y to the police. If you could give me an hour’s head start, that would be perfect.”
“What’ll I tell them?”
“Just … everything, I guess.” I hadn’t really thought that part through. “I mean, if you forgot the color of this car, that would be a bit of a help, but they’ll need to know everything else that happened so that they can deal with it all in the best possible way. That van is full of evidence—more than we can see, I’m sure. And some of it might help other parents know what happened to their kids.” I blanch a bit thinking about it. Meet her eyes. So much that doesn’t need to be said. “There’ll be DNA, etcetera.” Thinking of that reminds me that I’ll need to be careful to leave none of my own.
“Are you going to kill him?” There is nothing beyond mild interest as she asks this. She will not fight me either way on the outcome. She has her daughter back, so she cares less now what happens to the monster. She has her daughter back and she is looking cool and under control, but there is a wildness at the edge of her eyes, a sort of surprised joy that she is containing. The ordeal is not over yet, but her daughter is alive. Once they are both in a safe place, I think she might collapse with the pure post-shock of it, but for now, adrenalin keeps her moving forward.
“I’m not sure yet,” I reply. Even I am surprised by this answer. I keep thinking the correct outcome will present itself. But right now, I am not sure what that is. “I’m going to try and get information out of him. But I guess it could happen that he ends up dead.”
“Good,” she says. Something hard and unexpected glitters in her eyes. “Good.”
She gives me a quick hug, then secures Ashley in the passenger seat of the van. She hops into the van and drives away. I imagine she doesn’t look over her shoulder. I wouldn’t. The future is waiting for both of them.
I have a lot to do. I watch the van’s taillights fade to distant red specks and then disappear. After a couple of minutes thinking, I get into my now heavily laden rental car and do the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THERE ARE MOMENTS in all of our lives that we understand to be pivotal. Not a lot of them. That is, we mostly don’t recognize them while they occur. You can spot them looking back over your shoulder. Sure, that’s easy. But while they are happening? I think maybe each of us gets less than six of those in our lifetimes. Of course, I’m making the number up. It feels right, though. It’s how it seems to me.
Leaving the nearly hidden driveway at Hoyo Lago, and pointing my rented car west, towards the ocean, I get one of those moments. I have the sense that nothing will ever be the same again. And I’m not even really sure why.
I take Highway 46 towards the coast. Before long, I hear furtive noises from the trunk and pull the car over at a wide vista point. I am at the top of the world. The hills roll out and over towards the ocean. The sun is falling fast in a darkening sky. It is as though the gold and blue are bathed in blood. It is beautiful.
I watch the sun set and the darkness grow, not certain I’ve ever seen a more beautiful end of day. Before full dark, though, while the sky is still shot through with indigo and red, I open the trunk and meet angry eyes. Before I silence him again, I see a hatred in those eyes so thorough I almost think it can kill me. But it doesn’t kill me. Maybe it even makes me stronger.
I shut the trunk. Toss the mallet onto the back seat. Keep driving.
When I get to the coast, I head the car and my precious cargo north. I’m not sure why. I just keep following the Pacific Coast Highway while dark falls properly. I am driving into a darkening sky.
I think a lot while driving. I think about what to do. I have done all of this with no real plan in mind, so now I think about what needs doing: what is going to be required of me in this special situation. All of the steps.
And I have a sense of standing up. There would have been easy things to do in this situation. Killing him. Leaving him for the police. And then there is what I am doing now. This is the hard way. I am certain of it. But it is also the right way. I am doing what has to be done. There is something good in that. Noble, almost. I have a sense of things coming together in the right order. Contrary to some of the details, there is a rightness in all of this.
When I see the sign for camping at a large state park on the ocean, I pull up. I have arrived at something like a plan. I tell the park ranger at the entrance I am coming back to camp later, but could I please drive up now and pick a spot then pay for it? I am told that will be fine; that there is a map right there showing what spots are available. That she is leaving in the next few minutes, but she tells me the procedure for selecting a spot and leaving my money and the parking spot number I choose in a metal contraption that looks like a mailbox but that she calls the Iron Ranger.
I choose the high camping area, farthest from the ocean, figuring that will be less busy on a weekday in a shoulder season. I drive around until I find a spot that backs onto an area of tall trees and high grass. It is full dark now, but I am imagining a beautiful vista, looking away from the sea. And it is private, making it perfect for what I have in mind. As I figured, the campground is nearly deserted and at the spot I choose there is no one around. It is a state park, but it might as well be the middle of nowhere and I have a strong feeling it will stay that way.
I back the car into the spot. There is no one around and darkness is now complete. I spend the next hour getting William Atwater’s prone form out of the trunk of the car. It is much more difficult on my own than I’d imagined it would be, but there is no alternative. I have to stop several times to catch my breath. By the time I finally manage to pull, push, and leverage him out and into the tall grass at the edge of my camping spot, my clothes stick to me damply and I feel sweat running in smooth rivulets down my forehead and between my breasts. But I am pleased with the results of my labor. Atwater is out of the car; the tall grass and the tree shield him from casual viewing.
I check him over with some distaste. It has been the most difficult part of all of this: the necessity to touch him. His wound has started bleeding again, but not strongly enough that I need to do anything. I figure it will stop on its own after a while. His breathing seems normal and is not ragged. I’m not a nurse, but he looks healthy enough to me. It seems likely he is in pain, but I’m certain none of it will kill him.
He feels warm, slightly feverish, but considering what he’s been through, that seems normal to me, as well.
I do a good job of tying him up. And I gag him so that, if he does wake, no one will hear him hollering. Then I drop the tarp over him and leave him there. I know there is a small chance that someone might find him before I get back, but I have to risk that possibility. A calculated risk. If he is discovered, it won’t be the end of the world, but I’d prefer it not happen. And the park is so quiet, he seems more at risk from a wild animal than unwanted human discovery but, just to be on the safe side, I pay for the spot I’ve taken and the ones on either side, feeling confident that Atwater will be left alone to ferment in his own misery.
I drive back to San Pasado with the aid of the light of a nearly full moon. I drop the keys in the after-hours box as I leave the rental car behind, then take a cab to my hotel where I drop onto the bed fully clothed and sleep for six solid hours. The sleep of the righteous. The sleep of the damned. I’m not sure which, but six solid is a rarity for me so I don’t ask any questions, just sleep until I can’t anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IN THE MORNING, I am more clearheaded than I have been for what feels like weeks. I stand in the shower and let hot water pummel me so hard it is almost painful, but it feels good, too. Painfully good. I know it will help me get through what promises to be a full day.
After the shower, it doesn’t take long for me to get myself together, and I am packed and standing in the hotel lobby ready for my Uber within a half hour of waking.
The address I give the driver is just a few minutes from my hotel and on the main road out of town. After the car drops me off, it feels a lit
tle awkward wheeling my suitcase into the sales office at the RV dealership, but at least they can tell I mean business.
“I’m looking for an RV.”
“You’ve come to the right place.” The salesman is my age, even though his hair is retreating from his forehead and the middle of his body shows the signs of decades of riding a desk. When he grins at me, I get a glimpse of an almost imperceptible hole in his smile, at the corner of his mouth, near the back. He points to a sign above his head: “Renfrew RV,” the sign says. “Used. New. In Between. We’ve got what you need.”
“I’m Jack Renfrew,” he says after he follows my glance. “How can I help you?”
“I want something small but roomy. An RV. Not flashy. It should be used, but in good enough condition that it doesn’t stand out.”
“Stand out from what?”
“It shouldn’t be trashed. Or trashy,” I add, almost as an afterthought. “It shouldn’t draw attention to itself in any way.”
“How many does it need to sleep?”
“Two. Tops. Maybe not even that.”
He arches an eyebrow in my direction but chooses not to comment, taking things, instead, to a different, more neutral place.
“All of our used vehicles are in good condition,” he says, a hint of defensiveness in his tone. I ignore it.
“Good,” I say. “Then we won’t have a problem. Show me.”
He indicates the suitcase. “I gather you’re planning on making a deal today.”
Endings Page 12
