Victim

by Gary Kinder

  Gary talked with one owner till late in the afternoon. When he left, he realized he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. The Novocain had worn off long ago and he was getting hungry. He thought, Maybe I’ll just drop by Mom and Dad’s and see what’s for dinner.

  He was driving to his parents’ house when he had second thoughts about seeing them again so soon. On Friday they had returned from two weeks in Hong Kong, and he had spent the entire weekend with them and Cortney. His father had shot every roll of film on the trip at the wrong film speed, but Gary and Cortney had taken the film to Inkley’s for special processing. The pictures would be ready on Monday or Tuesday. It had been an enjoyable weekend, but Gary didn’t want to return to their house so soon.

  No, I was just home all weekend, he reasoned, and if I show up again today, they’ll wonder why I’m here, and they’re always interested in whether I’m working and making money, and I haven’t done anything for a while, so what have I got to report?

  Then he remembered the TV set he was to pick up at his uncle’s house just two blocks away. Oh, well, he decided, I’ll just stop for a minute, say hi and be friendly, maybe stay for dinner.

  His mother was lying on the couch in the den. Carol Naisbitt was a diminutive woman. Her fine-spun blond hair was short and puffed in a medium coiffure, wispy bangs hanging across her forehead. Perhaps because of her vivacity, Carol’s figure was still trim and petite at fifty-two. She was not a beautiful woman, not to the extent that her husband was a strikingly handsome man. But Carol was possessed of two lasting qualities that made her unusually appealing: exquisite taste and a high-energy charm that had drawn people to her since she was a little girl.

  Gary opened with his standard “What’s going on?”

  “Hi,” his mother responded. “Not much, just doing a little reading.”

  “A little reading,” Gary repeated. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Better,” said his mother. “I’ve got this same headache I’ve had all weekend, but other than that not too bad.”

  “Probably just jet lag,” said Gary. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, until he remembered the pictures. “Hey, are the pictures back from Inkley’s yet?”

  His mother said no, but that Cortney was still out at the airport. “Why don’t you call and see if they’re ready,” she suggested. “Then have Cortney pick them up on his way home.”

  Gary called Inkley’s. The pictures had been successfully processed and were ready to be picked up, so he dialed Cortney at the airport.

  “Hold on a minute,” said the secretary who answered. “He’s just heading out the door.” Gary could hear her in the background. “Cortney, you’ve got a telephone call.”

  Cortney picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Cort? I’m glad I caught you before you left.”

  “Oh, hi, Gary.”

  “How was your flight lesson today?”

  “Well, I … uh, it was good, yeah, it was good.”

  “You sound funny.”

  “Funny ha-ha, or funny weird?”

  “Okay, never mind,” said Gary. “How about doing me a favor on your way home? It’ll only take a minute.” Cortney said nothing. “I want you to stop by Inkley’s and pick up those pictures of Mom and Dad’s trip.”

  “Gary, I … well, I kinda wanted to get home, you know. I’ve got ground school at seven, I’ve got to eat dinner and get ready.”

  Gary asked him again, and Cortney said, “Oh, all right, I guess it’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” said Gary, “save me a trip. You can park either behind the bank and they’ll validate the parking ticket for you in Inkley’s, or you can park behind the Hi-Fi Shop, but if you do that, don’t stand around talking to Brent all day, come on home. I’m anxious to see if those pictures came out all right.”

  “Okay, okay, no problem. Are you staying for dinner, again?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then, I’ve got to get going.”

  “Thanks, Cort.”

  Cortney hung up before Gary could say good-bye.

  Gary said to his mother, “Boy, Cort sure was antsy over the phone, what’s his problem?”

  “I don’t know,” said his mother, “maybe he soloed today. Wolfgang won’t ever tell them, but Cortney said he had it all figured out.” She chuckled softly. “Maybe he wants to surprise us.”

  Cortney’s aeronautics ground school was at Weber State College, only a few blocks from the Naisbitt home. His mother had dinner ready for him at six. At six thirty he still had not shown up. She had put his food back in the oven to keep it warm.

  “I wonder where Cortney is,” she said to Gary. “He’s going to be late for class.”

  Gary was glancing through the evening paper.

  “He’s probably in the shop talking to Brent. I told him not to stop and talk, but if he soloed today he’s probably telling Brent about it.”

  As Gary and his mother were discussing Cortney, Byron Naisbitt arrived home from the hospital. In Ogden medical circles the swarthy, hazel-eyed obstetrician was known as the Silver Fox. At fifty-one, his gleaming hair was the crowning touch to a rugged, almost Latin countenance. His voice was low and raspy, and though he sang off-key, he seemed always to be singing. When he wasn’t singing, he puckered his lips and whistled. When he was neither singing nor whistling, he hummed. He was a thick-chested, robust man, and though he was reputed to be aloof outside of his office, he was charming to his patients and they adored him. He delivered nearly four hundred babies a year. Into his hands and those of his younger brother, Paul, a large part of the population of Ogden under twenty-one had been born.

  The back door snapped shut, and he walked into the den adjacent to the kitchen.

  “Howdy! Hey, Garrr! Where’s Cort?”

  “I don’t know, By,” said Carol walking over to him. “I’ve had his dinner ready for him for half an hour so he could get right to class, but he hasn’t come home yet.”

  “Do you think the little bugger soloed today?”

  “We’re not sure. Gary talked to him on the phone about an hour ago and he sounded excited about something, but he wouldn’t say anything else.”

  “Wellll, for hell’s sakes, if you’re worried about him that’s your answer right there. That little clinker’s still out at the airport celebrating with his friends.”

  “By, it’s not like him to stay out there without at least calling. You know that.”

  “Well now, calm down, Shorty,” he said, using her nickname. “It’s only been a half hour.” He gave his wife a quick, playful hug. “If we got upset every time one of the kids was a half hour late, we’d both be frittering around the funny farm. Right, Gar?” He winked at Gary and let go of his wife. “Let’s eat! All this talking’s got me hungry.”

  At dinner Byron and Gary discussed a recent real estate transaction that was beginning to turn sour on them. Carol half listened while she dragged her fork around her plate, picking at her food. Each time a car passed by the house, her eyes snapped to the ceiling and darted back and forth while she listened. As each sound faded, her head lowered and she went back to pushing her food around her plate.

  Byron watched her out of the corner of his eye. Finally, he put down his fork.

  “Okay. Gary, what did Cortney tell you when you talked to him on the phone?”

  Carol turned and looked at Gary.

  “I just called him out at the airport, and he hemmed and hawed a little bit and said he’d had a good lesson, and I asked him to stop by Inkley’s on his way home and pick up the pictures of your trip, the ones you blew… .”

  “Ricky-tick cameras,” said Byron.

  Gary chuckled and glanced at his mother. Her expression hadn’t changed. She was still staring at him, waiting for him to tell the rest of his story.

  “Anyhow,” Gary continued, “I told him he could probably park behind Brent’s store, but not to stop and talk to
Brent all day. Then he asked me if I was staying for dinner, I said I probably was, and he said, ‘Okay, I’ll see you when I get home.’ He’s probably still down there talking to Brent.”

  “The Hi-Fi Shop closes at six o’clock,” Carol reminded them both. “It’s now after seven.”

  Byron thought about this for a second.

  “I imagine he got to talking with Brent and hung around for a while after the shop closed and then realized how late it was and decided to go straight to class without coming home. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  Carol jerked her head to look at her husband. “Does it make sense that he wouldn’t call home and let us know what he’s doing?”

  “In all the excitement,” said Byron, “he probably forgot. It’s not like he’s never forgotten to call home before.”

  Carol stood up and began grabbing the empty dishes from the table. “I don’t care what you two say, I know something’s wrong and you’re not going to talk me out of it!”

  Byron looked at Gary, and motioned with his head that the two of them should retire to the den.

  In silence Carol rinsed the dishes and loaded the dishwasher. It was now seven thirty. She took Cortney’s dry dinner out of the oven and threw it down the disposal. Then she untied her apron, turned off the kitchen lights, and marched past her husband and son without saying a word. They heard the jangle of her car keys and watched her walk back through the den and out the back door, never looking in their direction.

  The basement of the Hi-Fi Shop brightened, then quickly turned gray again, as the back door opened and closed. With their backs to Cortney, the two men stood in the shadow to the side of the staircase, their guns drawn. The footsteps paused at the top of the stairs. Then they moved slowly into the sound room. They were not as distinct, not as purposeful, as the footsteps of the two men, but rather contemplative, as though strolling through a museum. They passed above Cortney’s head, avoided the fire grating, then stopped where the office would be. From the office one could see all the way to the front of the store.

  For a short while the footsteps remained still and the shop was silent. Then suddenly they turned and were coming back, now more forthright, a little quicker. They touched lightly on the grating. The short man crept up the stairs, his body sideways and snug against the banister. The footsteps padded above Cortney’s head into the middle of the sound room. The taller man stepped silently to the base of the stairs and aimed his gun upward. The other man crouched at the top. The footsteps neared the back door. They turned the corner to come down the stairs. The short man raised his gun to eye level. Cortney heard someone gasp.

  The taller man started. “What are you doin’ here, man!” he yelled up the stairs.

  There was no answer. The short man flicked his gun toward the basement. The footsteps, now heavier, descended the stairs. The taller man followed them with the barrel of his revolver.

  A man appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He was thick through the arms and barrel-chested. He stepped slowly to the middle of the room and stood, his hands at his side, as the two men held their guns on him.

  Cortney heard Stan moan, “Why’d you have to come down, Dad?”

  His last word was no sooner spoken than the sound of a gunshot exploded against the acoustical walls.

  The taller man jumped, whirled to the short man behind him.

  “What’d you do that for, man?”

  There was another flash, another explosion.

  Michelle screamed, “I’m just nineteen, I don’t want to die!”

  Cortney screamed at the wall. “I’m too young to die!”

  The smell of burnt gunpowder drifted about the room.

  Then Stan said, “Just take the stuff and go, we can’t identify you.”

  “Take the gear and leave,” added his father. “We can’t identify you, we won’t identify you.”

  Mr. Walker was still standing in the middle of the room. Cortney could hear Stan and Michelle pleading with the two men. No one was shot. In a sudden frenzy the short man had pumped two bullets into the wall.

  The two men stood at the bottom of the steps, holding their guns and arguing. The short man waved his gun angrily toward the south wall.

  “What about me being booked?” he said. His speech was peculiar, almost singsong, yet deep and proper-sounding.

  “You been booked before,” said the taller one, “but I ain’t got a record, man.”

  From the middle of the room Mr. Walker said, “If you guys’ll just take the stuff and get out of here, we won’t identify you.”

  Cortney still faced the wall. In the alley he heard another car pull in. A car door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps, short and hurried, went into the back of the Kandy Korn shop next door. The short man stopped his arguing and bounded up the steps. He eased the back door open, then slipped into the alley. Light footsteps were shuffling around the car that had just parked.

  “Your fodder in dere?” said the man.

  “What?” It was the voice of a young girl.

  “Your fodder in dere, in dat shop?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “I can’t understand you.”

  “Your fodder, is he in dat shop?”

  “Oh. No, my mother’s in there, she owns it.”

  The voices stopped. The taller man stood at the base of the stairs, holding his gun on Mr. Walker. His eyes darted from the basement up to the back door and down again. Cortney heard the short man slip inside the door and start down the stairs. The taller man looked up.

  “What’re you gonna do now?” he asked.

  “What I told you we would do,” said the short man. He told the taller man to get out the bottle, that he would find something in the back room to pour it in.

  The short man pulled aside the sliding panel door leading to the workshop, reached up on tiptoe and with a flick of his wrist screwed a bare light bulb loosely into its socket. In a few seconds he returned with a green plastic cup. The panel door he left ajar, allowing a sliver of light to fall from the workshop into the front room, which was rapidly growing darker.

  Mr. Walker still stood in the middle of the room. The taller man held his gun on him. With his other hand he grasped a container nearly a foot high, wrapped in a brown paper bag. He unscrewed the lid and poured a thick blue liquid into the green cup the short man held out to him.

  Cortney heard Michelle say, “What is that?”

  “It’s a mixture of vodka and a German drug,” said the taller man. “It’ll make you sleep for a coupla hours.”

  The short man chuckled deep in his throat but said nothing. He handed the cup to Mr. Walker and motioned for him to administer the liquid to the three young people lying on the floor. Mr. Walker stood still. The man pushed the cup closer to him, but Mr. Walker looked away.

  The taller man gave a sharp twist to the cylinder in his revolver. “Man, there is a gun at your head!”

  Mr. Walker did not move.

  The short man set the cup on a stool. With his gun he motioned for Mr. Walker to step in front of the doorway leading to the workshop. He pulled a length of cord from a pile on the floor and tied Mr. Walker’s hands behind his back.

  “Lay down,” he ordered.

  Mr. Walker knelt on a plastic runner reaching from the foot of the stairs to the workshop door. The short man grunted as he pulled tight the last knots around Mr. Walker’s ankles, then left him lying on his stomach.

  He rose from the floor and picked up his gun. The other man had replaced the cap on the bottle and was holding his revolver on Mr. Walker.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  The short man pulled him over near the bottom step, where the two men talked in a terse whisper, the short one waving his gun over the room and saying again that he had been booked. But the other man hadn’t been booked and he didn’t seem to care about being identified. He was beginning to sound less sure of himself.

  “I can’t go through with this,” he said to the short man. “I’m c
hicken.”

  Before he could say anything else, another car drove into the alley and parked. A car door slammed. Footsteps started toward the Hi-Fi Shop door. The young girl to whom the short man had spoken only minutes earlier called out.

  “Ma’am, you left your lights on.”

  Carol Naisbitt had screeched out of the driveway from their home on the east bench overlooking Ogden. Then she had slammed the car to a stop, popped it into drive, and punched the accelerator. If her husband and son were not concerned about Cortney, she was not afraid to go looking for him by herself.

  She drove the family station wagon to Weber State College and cruised through the parking lots of the small campus looking for Cortney’s old brown Buick. When she didn’t see the car, she parked and found his classroom. She peered in. Cortney wasn’t there. She returned home, ignored her husband and son, proceeded up to her bedroom and called Cortney’s friend, Chris Southwick.

  “No, Mrs. Naisbitt,” said Chris, “I haven’t seen Cort since school this afternoon.”

  She called two more of Cortney’s friends, but neither could add to Chris’s story.

  With this new information she stomped downstairs and confronted Byron and Gary. Neither had a chance to look up before she started in.

  “Cortney’s car is not anywhere on the campus. Cortney is not in his classroom. Chris has not seen him since school. Neither has Dave, neither has Kelly. The Hi-Fi Shop has been closed for two hours… .” She was in tears as she ticked off the facts.

  Gary had witnessed this scene before. As far back as he could remember, his mother was constantly worrying about one of her four children.

  “Mom, look,” he said, “Cortney is sixteen years old now, he can take care of himself. You worried about me, you worried about Brett, you worried about Claire, and did anything ever happen to us? No. All that worrying for nothing. I know Cort’s the baby, but you’re going to have to let him grow up sometime. Now just settle down, if something was wrong you’d hear from him. He’s just gotten sidetracked somewhere.”