by Kit Frazier
I climbed out the doorless entry and selected the cheapest fuel grade. In my peripheral vision, a shadow flickered in the pink neon light.
“Great,” I grumbled, glancing around the empty parking lot, thinking of Ramsey’s ominous warning earlier in the evening. “He finally has me completely paranoid.”
I pumped the gas and muttered a prayer to the Visa gods as I swiped my card through the slot, looking nervously over my shoulder. The pump chugged and churned, then took my card. I sighed in relief.
Tearing the receipt from the slot, I climbed back into the Jeep and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing.
“Perfect,” I said to no one. I jumped out of the Jeep, pulled a toolbox from the back cargo area and popped the hood. I have one tool. A hammer. I’ve found that if you can’t beat an auto part into working, you can beat it into submission.
Extracting the hammer from the box, I reared back and smacked the crap out of the starter. A good solid clang of metal on metal, and I leaned in the driver’s side, still staring at the exposed motor. Holding my breath, I turned the key.
The starter ratcheted. The engine coughed, sputtered, and turned over. Smiling a little smugly, I got out, slammed the hood and wiped my free hand on my jeans.
I climbed back into the driver’s seat and pulled up short when I came face to face with a big bald man with little beady eyes.
I couldn’t stop staring at the misshapen nub the size of a baby’s finger in the place where his left ear should’ve been.
“Oh!” I tried to scream, but it came out as a squeak and I could practically feel his caustic gaze rake the length of my body.
My heart banged against my ribcage so hard I thought I’d go into cardiac arrest. I wondered if the bald guy knew CPR. My gaze dropped to his fat, wet lips. I hoped not.
“Ew, ew, ew,” I said, knowing it’s not nice to make fun of the infirmed, but I stopped talking when he pulled out a big knife with an odd, bone handle. The blade glinted pink in the neon light. My breath caught in my throat.
In a weird, feathery voice, he said, “Shut up and drive, Hure.”
“Hure? Who the hell is Hure?” I said. “Look, Mister. You’ve got the wrong girl.”
The man slugged me hard in the back of my head. I nearly wet my pants. And I would have, if my brain hadn’t shut down all my involuntary functions.
I write obituaries for a living and I know a little about the way these things turn out. It’s better to fight an attacker at the scene of the crime and risk getting killed than to leave with him, which almost guarantees getting killed, and usually involves some pretty gruesome pre-mortem activities.
“Be a clever girl and fucking drive,” he wheezed in some sort of muddled German accent.
I stared at his missing ear. Great. I was about to get carjacked by Van Gogh.
Panic pulsed through my veins and my brain tumbled through two million thoughts. The gun in my purse. Was it loaded? Did it matter? What if I just showed him the gun and he got so scared he wet his pants?
I looked at him in the dim, neon light. His eyes seemed glazed and lifeless, and frankly, kind of stupid. Maybe I could distract him. It was worth a shot. Plus, I still had my hammer…
“Wait!” I yelled, pointing over his shoulder. “What the hell is that?”
“What the fuck you talk about,” he said, but he twisted his fat neck in the direction I’d pointed. I heaved back and swung the hammer at his head.
“I don’t see nothing…Ow!” The blow bounced off his big, bald head. He didn’t fall over unconscious like they do in the movies, but he was bleeding and he appeared to be momentarily stunned. His knife clattered to the bare floorboard. I grabbed my purse.
Frantically, I rummaged. Lipstick, wallet, mini recorder…weapon! I caught hold of the grip and juggled the gun, aiming it in the vicinity of his missing ear.
“Freeze!” I yelled, just like I’d seen the SWAT guys do with the pizza kid, with only one real difference. I don’t think the SWAT guys’ hands shook. Swallowing hard, I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t make me go Annie Oakley on your ass!”
The bald guy stared at me, rubbing the bloody dent on his head. “You hit me!”
He might have said, You heet me, but his “I’s” sounded like “E’s”, so it was hard to tell.
He rubbed the gash on his head. “You fucking hit me! What, are you crazy?”
I thought about that. I was sitting in an open Jeep in the middle of the night with a gun that may or may not be loaded next to a big bald guy, who at best, intended to kill me, at worst…I didn’t want to think about it.
“I’m so crazy it’d make your head spin,” I said in my best Bogart.
He shook his bleeding head.
“Give me that,” he said, and he reached over the console and took my gun.
I couldn’t believe it. I was about to get shot with my own gun.
“You took my gun,” I said, and I heard my voice crack. “Give it back!”
He looked at me like I’d spoken Swahili, but at this point, I had nothing to lose. I didn’t want the Colonel, not to mention Mark, to read in the morning paper that I’d been loitering in a dark, deserted parking lot where an earless bald guy took my gun and used it on me.
Van Gogh shoved the cold, hard barrel under my chin. “We have a party, you and me.”
I reached for the bloody hammer but he yanked it out of my hand and tossed it into the parking lot.
“Drive. Don’t talk. And keep your fucking hands on the wheel where I see them.”
Chapter Five
“Drive,” he growled. Van Gogh was fat, but it was hard fat, the kind that fighters get as they age, and his neck was as big as my waist. He pressed the barrel of the gun beneath my chin, and despite the heat of the summer night, I broke out in a cold sweat. My teeth chattered and my hands were shaking, but I jammed the stick shift into first and pulled out of the parking lot, aware of gravel crunching as we inched over the shoulder and onto the deserted road.
“What did he say?” Van Gogh snarled, and I couldn’t help staring at his mangled stump of an ear in my rearview mirror.
“What?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Hure,” he said. “Mr. Barnes has taken something that does not belong to him.”
He slammed the pistol against my temple.
I screamed. Pain burst through my brain, my body rocked to the left as the Jeep ran off the road. I could smell the man’s rancid breath from where I was sitting, and if I’d had some Tic Tacs, I’d have offered him a handful.
“Pull over!” he yelled, which was moot, because I’d already lost control of the Jeep. We were careening into the parking area at Lakeside Park, high on the limestone cliff overlooking Lake Austin.
The sweet scent of the lake after a good rain loomed in the air. Romantic, if you weren’t tearing around in a topless Jeep with an earless homicidal maniac.
Over the noise of the engine I heard water lapping against the shoreline below. My stomach pitched. I was going to be sick.
Van Gogh reached over and jammed the stick shift into park. The gears ground and the Jeep jerked to a stop, bouncing my forehead off the steering wheel.
“I lost my patience when you brain me with that hammer. You must tell me what happen in that shed.”
My head pounded like thunder. My nose was running and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. “Honest to God,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Barnes! What happen with Barnes?” He reached over and grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked. “I am not kidding with you. You must tell me where he put it!”
“Put what?” I said, and he jerked my hair hard. Pain streaked from my scalp to my collarbone. “I swear,” I squeaked. “I don’t know!”
“You want to go hard?” he said. “We go hard.”
He laughed a horrible, wheezy little laugh and wrapped my hair around his fist. My head jerked painfully downward as he grappled for his knife on the floorboard. “You know what i
t feel like to lose an ear?”
Here’s the thing. I’m often critical of myself, but I kind of like my ears, and every other part of my body, right where they are.
Van Gogh had my head wedged beneath the dash and I could smell the sweat that pooled in the apex of his polyester pants. A surge of hot adrenaline rushed to the back of my brain.
“No!” I heard myself scream. I yanked up and hit the shift with the back of my head.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as the Jeep began to roll. Van Gogh still had me by the hair, so I stomped on the gas. The Jeep lurched and I floored it.
I saw my life flash before my eyes. I wondered who would write my obituary. I hoped it wasn’t Mark.
“Stop!” Van Gogh yelled. I couldn’t see over the dash, but we were picking up speed. He jerked my hair hard and I screamed in pain and then strangely, felt my stomach lurch, the way it does on the downward swing of a roller coaster.
We were airborne.
“Fu-u-u-uck!” Van Gogh roared. Right before we hit the water.
The Jeep slammed into the lake. The impact smashed me into the dash and my head hit so hard I thought I’d split my skull. Stars burst behind my eyes and the rebound sent me flying.
I felt my body arc high in the air like a rag doll right before I belly-flopped hard into the lake. The water was cold and as I went under, it closed around me like a liquid grave, the slimy hydrilla weeds snaking around my arms and legs.
My temple throbbed where Van Gogh had hit me, and I was dizzy and nauseated. I felt frozen, and I couldn’t move my arms or legs. As I sank into the cold water, I thought, “Huh. So this is how I’m going to die.”
I supposed it was better than getting carved up by the likes of Van Gogh. Sinking deep in the dark water, I thought about how easy it would be to close my eyes and let the lake take me.
Then I heard it. A deep, smoky voice whispering beyond the waves.
“Swim, Cauley.”
I blinked and my eyes stung in the murky water.
“Swim.”
It was my father’s voice, just as it was the summer he’d taught me to swim.
“Swim, Cauley.” His voice was young and strong and sure, just as I remembered it.
“Swim,” he whispered. And I swam.
My head hurt, my lungs burned and my eyes stung, but my body seemed to come back to my brain, and I bucked, fighting the duckweed. My jeans and tee shirt clung heavily in the water, threatening to draw me down, but I kicked as hard as I could. Fighting my way to the surface, I gasped in a big, warm, welcoming gulp of air. Sputtering and coughing, I struggled to catch my breath. Kicking my legs toward the surface, I stretched out on my back, filling my lungs with air. For a few heartbeats, I floated, breathing until my lungs got used to the idea. I felt the cold, wet pull of the water at my back and the warm, dark sky above. The stars were bright in the sapphire night, and the North Star seemed to flash, and in that fleeting moment, I thought, “I’m going to be all right.”
In the near distance, I heard Van Gogh choking. “I can’t swim!”
I blinked, suddenly sucked back to the present. “You should have thought about that before you tried to cut my ear off!” I yelled into the darkness.
I righted myself and began to tread water, trying to get my bearings. Under normal circumstances, swimming is the one form of exercise I actually enjoy. You can work out, get a tan, and if you go to the right places you can get poolside margaritas served by men who look like finalists for Chippendales. But here in the cold, weed-infested lake, I could hear Van Gogh and his big, puffy lips desperately gasping for air.
The man had just tried to slice off one of my favorite body parts, but did I really want him dead? It was Darwinian, really nature’s way of thinning the herd…
I didn’t worry about it long, because a big, fat forearm buckled around my neck.
Van Gogh.
“Let go!” I gasped. “Get off me or we’re both going to drown!” He squeezed harder, choking me, and I did the only thing I could think to do.
I bit him.
He made some guttural, unintelligible sound and I sputtered as he dragged me under. I wasn’t prepared, and I sucked water up my nose as we sank. We hit the muddy, weed-choked bottom, where I scrambled and found foothold against a rock. I pushed off, hard.
Struggling up and wheezing under Van Gogh’s grip, my face broke the surface and I gasped, coughing up water. My lungs stung and my nose hurt, but hey, I was tough. I’d lived through a truly bad marriage and two years of night school. I was not a quitter.
Turning my head as much as I could in his corpulent grip, I scanned the darkness for shoreline. We were about fifteen feet deep, I guessed. If I could get just a few yards inland, I could stand up and wade right out.
Then what? Van Gogh had me in a chokehold. If we both made it to shore, he would catch his breath and find new and inventive ways to inflict pain on my body. His arm was bleeding where I’d bitten him and he still hadn’t let go. Apparently Van Gogh was no quitter either.
In the dark, I squinted toward the shadowy strip of land beneath the cliffs. There was no way I could climb the steep rockface, but there was a shallow bit of shoreline that went on about a half-mile upstream. It was clear that whatever I planned to do was going to involve a great deal of running. I wished I’d gone ahead and dropped the dough for that damned treadmill.
My gun, cell phone and hammer were history, and my Tupperware of fried chicken was floating across the narrows somewhere near the Fat Farm on the other side of the lake. I could kiss that chicken goodbye.
Van Gogh still had a death grip on my neck, so I flipped over until I was floating half out of the water on top of his whale-like body. I paddled for all I was worth.
“Let go,” I gasped, but he was choking and sputtering, squeezing my neck until I thought my collarbone would break.
He’s going to kill me, I thought. Here in the water, or when we reach shore, this man is going to kill me.
He squeezed harder. I fought to swim with his fat arms around my neck, but his big body felt like I was dragging my Jeep instead of a person as I struggled, propelling us slowly toward the shore. I wasn’t going to let this idiot drown me, and from somewhere deep inside, I found a strength I didn’t know I had. As I paddled, I periodically did a half-dive, submerging his big face until he gurgled for air. If I couldn’t make him let go, I could at least keep him breathless.
When I got close enough to shore to make a break for it, I gave him one final shove, pushing with every ounce of strength. He was still sputtering from the last time we’d gone under, and this time, he stayed under. I wriggled out of his grip and swam wildly for the shallows.
I didn’t look back. Choking in big breaths of air, I scrambled up the slick, wet bank, grabbing at twigs and rocks until I could dig my waterlogged Keds into the mud, slipping and sliding up the shoreline, where I ran.
My lungs burned and my body ached. My teeth were still chattering and I was muddy and soaked to the skin when I made it to the gas station where I called Cantu collect from the pay phone. He arrived, siren blaring, lights flashing at the Texaco, and I still couldn’t shake the feeling someone was watching me. The adrenaline that had rushed hot was gone and my blood felt like cold sludge oozing through my veins. The muscles in my arms and legs felt like I’d been stricken with Polio. I had to get back to the gym.
“I’m really sorry about this,” I said. “When Arlene answered I told her I could call somebody else.”
Cantu snorted. “She said she’d knock me into next week if I passed off the call,” he said. He was smiling, but the smile was tight, and I could see he was mad as hell.
“You’re mad?” I said, watching as two uniforms roared onto the scene.
“Not at you,” he said. Draping his jacket over my shoulders, Cantu listened as I told him what happened. He drove me back to the cliffs, where I stood, shivering as we watched the tow truck from Shay’s Auto Body pull my CJ-7 out of the lake. I always
hated calling Shay Turner for help.
Shay is one of my neighbors, and he’s always trying to give me appliances and vehicles with no traceable serial numbers. He reminds me of a big dopey Lab puppy entirely too friendly and always goes straight for the crotch.
“So this earless guy was asking you about what happened in the shed with Scott Barnes?” Cantu said.
“Yeah,” I said. Shay’s tow truck beeped loudly as it backed to the cliff’s edge.
“Did you ask him why he wanted to know?”
“I was busy worrying about not getting my ears chopped off,” I said. “I didn’t have time to quiz him about motivation. But he said Scooter had something that didn’t belong to him.”
“And he had an accent?”
I nodded. “Almost like German,” I said, and Cantu frowned.
“Did you see what he was driving? We found a hopped up blue El Camino abandoned out behind the Texaco.”
“I never saw him coming,” I said. “I’m going to be a helluva reporter. I should have gone to cooking school.”
Cantu snorted. “Warn me if you do.”
The tow truck was still beeping and the lift-gears made a metallic, grinding sound as my Jeep topped the cliff, water gushing from the open doorways. The wheels made contact with dry land and the Jeep tipped, crashing a big wave of lake water all over me and Cantu.
“You know, if it was anybody else, this might seem unusual,” Cantu said, wiping strands of duckweed out of his face. “How in the hell do you get yourself into these things?”
“If I knew that, I could avoid it,” I said, wringing out the front of my shirt.
A long shadow passed over us. I turned to look and saw the white-faced dog peering out of a clump of sage. It stood, staring at me.
“Did you see that?” I said.
“What?” Cantu said.
“A white-faced dog. Right there.” I pointed toward the bushes, but the dog was gone.
Cantu looked at me like I had finally lost my mind. Maybe I had. I’d never been threatened before. Hell, I’d never even hit anybody before, and now I’d brained somebody with a hammer and left him in the lake. Yes, he was a thug, and yes, he had it coming, but I didn’t like the way it made me feel.
