by Chelsea Cain
“I was subduing him,” Kick said.
“I know,” Bishop said. He straightened up and faced her, full frontal. “But it makes the next part harder.”
“The next part?” Kick looked away, exasperated. “You know you’re naked, right?”
“I sleep naked,” Bishop said. “That way I’m ready to go when the ladies drop by in the middle of the night ‘to talk.’ ”
“Well, I would like you to put on some pants,” Kick said.
“I will,” Bishop said. He smiled to himself as he extracted a pair of handcuffs and a roll of duct tape from the bag. Klugman was already backing against the wall. “In a minute.”
35
KICK KNEW SOMETHING ABOUT being scared. James was scared, every night in that basement, when the rats would come out through the toilet pipes. Kick had lived in terror, in the dark, for months before she was allowed into the rest of the house. Her childhood had been defined by fear: fear of Mel; fear of being taken away from him. So she was not particularly concerned when Bishop wrestled Klugman to the ground, handcuffed him to the metal frame at the bottom corner of the bed, taped his mouth, and left him bug-eyed and moaning as Bishop went about casually putting on his pants.
Kick understood then why the TV had to be so loud.
The stained orange reading chair smelled like dirty socks. Kick sat in it with her bare legs pulled tightly under her, her eyes on Klugman, who was huddled on the floor against the bed, blood bubbling from his nose as he struggled for breath.
On the TV, Chuck Norris was making the Total Gym workout look easy.
“He’s suffocating,” Kick said.
“Remember when I said that breaking his nose was a bad idea?” Bishop said, buttoning his pants. “That’s what I meant.”
He got a roll of plastic sheeting out of the duffel bag and rolled it out on the carpet in front of Klugman. Then he grabbed Klugman by the back of the collar and wrenched him forward, on top of the plastic. “We need to talk about James,” Bishop said.
Klugman twisted his head toward Kick, his eyes rolling in their sockets. She could smell his sweat and blood, the chemical odor of the plastic.
“Don’t look at her,” Bishop said, taking Klugman firmly by the chin. “Look at me. Do you remember James?”
Klugman was right to be scared. Bishop was scary. He was scarred and scratched and stitched together. The angles of his face made him look hard. It was like that night he had come for her in her apartment, like he could make himself into a different person when he wanted to.
“Well?” Bishop said.
Klugman hesitated and then made a little noise under the duct tape.
“No?” Bishop said. He frowned and released Klugman’s chin. “The little boy you kept behind the wall in your basement with all the travel posters and the broken toilet?” He pulled the photograph from his jeans and held it in front of Klugman’s face. “Bring back any memories?”
Kick was filled with loathing. Klugman hadn’t recognized her at first. But James? He had sold James like he was some used piece of furniture.
She wanted Bishop to make him pay.
“Give me the name of the man who bought him,” Bishop said.
Blood frothed from Klugman’s deformed nose. It gurgled and popped as he tried to breathe. The tendons on his neck were like rails and his face was growing steadily more purple.
On the TV, Chuck Norris was talking to someone who’d lost thirty pounds working out just ten minutes a day on the Total Gym.
“Do you have something you want to say?” Bishop asked, ripping off the tape.
Klugman sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I can’t breathe,” he gasped.
Bishop dangled the piece of tape in front of Klugman’s face. “How can you expect me to help you with your problems if you don’t help me with mine?” Bishop asked.
“I never met him,” Klugman said, still panting. Blood ran from his nose like snot, his white shirt already stained with it. “We made arrangements online.”
“How did you make the transfer?” Bishop asked.
Klugman didn’t answer.
“He took James somewhere,” Kick said. “He left the house with James and came back with a new car.”
Bishop reached for the duffel bag. The muscles in his torso cast shadows as he moved. The tiny black stitches poked out of his back like quills on a porcupine. “Do you think of yourself as lucky?” he asked Klugman.
Klugman’s eyes were huge.
“Look at this,” Bishop said, showing Klugman his neck. “You see this scar? My brother was abducted and murdered by a man like you when we were kids.”
He took a pair of latex gloves out of the bag and put them on, stretching them and snapping them into place like a surgeon.
“He could have taken both of us,” he said. “But he cut my throat and left me for dead.”
The room was cold, but the AC didn’t switch off. Kick’s arms were covered in goose bumps, but she didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe.
“I don’t know why he took my brother and not me,” Bishop said. He extracted a straight razor from the bag and set it on the plastic sheeting.
Klugman looked terrified, his eyes pleading at Kick. She didn’t offer anything in response; she kept her face expressionless.
“Do you think that makes me lucky?” Bishop asked. He took Klugman by the chin again, forcing Klugman to look at him. Tears streamed down Klugman’s face. “Yeah,” Bishop said slowly. “I go back and forth on that one too.” He dropped his hand and sat back on his heels. “It made me angry for a long time,” he said. “I’ll admit, it led to some unhealthy life choices.” His hand moved back to the bag, and Kick saw Klugman start to blubber before she even saw the orange Black & Decker drill. “But then I had the opportunity to spend time with that man again. And I—” Bishop glanced at Kick and then leaned in close to Klugman. “Let’s just say that I was able to work through some of my anger,” he said.
Klugman squirmed and wrenched his wrists against the cuffs.
“And you know,” Bishop said, sitting back with a wistful smile, “ever since, I’ve felt a lot better.”
Klugman was shaking now. “You’re crazy,” he rasped.
Bishop picked up the straight razor. He did look crazy. “But I’m fun.”
The moment Bishop started to move that razor toward him, Klugman went to pieces. “He left the cash at a bus stop,” Klugman stammered, sniveling. “And I left him the boy.”
“What do you mean you left him the boy?” Bishop asked.
“I told him his mother wanted him back,” Klugman said, cringing against the side of the bed. “I told him to wait right there on the bench for her.”
The image of James sitting on that bench, buoyant with anticipation, made Kick’s throat burn. “You son of a bitch,” she said.
“That’s all I know,” Klugman whimpered.
“I need you to go back to your room, Kick,” Bishop said.
The razor was still in his hand.
Kick hesitated. She studied Bishop for some clue, some indication of what she was supposed to do. But he gave her nothing. She took a deep breath. “I want to watch,” she said.
Bishop looked at her, but his face was a mask. “This isn’t pretend,” he said carefully. “I’m going to start hurting him. So if you’re uncomfortable with that, you should go now.”
Klugman was crying, shoulders heaving, sputtering blood. If he was holding back anything, they would know. If they were going to sell it, Kick knew she had to play along. “I’m not uncomfortable with that,” she said.
Bishop moved so quickly, Kick wasn’t sure what happened next. He held Klugman’s head to the ground, on the plastic, and then Kick saw the razor in the air, and Klugman howled. Bishop cupped his hand over Klugman’s mouth until the howls turned to quiet weeping.
Then he let him go and sat back on his heels, slightly out of breath, a fine spray of blood on his bare chest.
Vomit burned in Kick’s throat. Klu
gman was in a fetal position, blood where his ear used to be.
“Holy fuck,” she said through her hands.
Bishop dropped a small chunk of flesh on the plastic sheeting. “I told you it wasn’t pretend,” he said as he wiped the blood off the blade onto the thigh of Klugman’s white pants.
An overwhelming smell of urine filled the room.
Kick suppressed a gag.
“I know his online handle,” Klugman croaked through his sobs.
“I’m listening,” Bishop said.
“It’s Iron Jacket,” Klugman said. “I don’t know anything else, I swear.”
Bishop exhaled. “Okay,” he said. He closed the straight razor and dropped it back in the duffel bag. “That name mean anything to you?” he asked.
The first infomercial had ended, and now dozens of people were doing Zumba on the TV screen while an instructor shouted encouragement over Latin dance music.
“The name, Kick, does it mean anything?” Bishop said.
Kick took a shaky breath and lowered her hands from her mouth. “No,” she said.
Bishop peeled off a bloody latex glove. “Why don’t you go to your room and get dressed,” he said to her. He gazed around the room. “It will take me a few minutes to pack and clean up.”
Kick nodded and got up and walked wordlessly to the door. The plastic orange juice jug was still on the carpet.
“Iron Jacket tried to buy you,” Klugman called after her. “He offered Mel ten grand, but Mel said he wouldn’t part with you for less than fifteen.”
“That’s a lie,” Kick said. She faced forward, not looking back. “Mel was nothing like you.”
36
KICK HAD PACKED HER plastic Target bag and was perched on her psychedelic tropical-print bedspread, waiting, when Bishop knocked. She opened the door to her room and found him fully dressed, the suitcase in one hand, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He was in a jaunty mood.
“You ready?” he asked. “We’re all checked out.” He offered her a stale-looking pastry on a small, limp paper plate. “Danish,” he said. “From the lobby.”
Kick looked down at the Danish. Then up at Bishop. “Did you kill him?” she asked.
She could see her reflection in Bishop’s sunglasses, but she couldn’t see his eyes. He leaned forward, his expression unchanged. “No,” he said quietly. “I called the police. They’ll be by to pick him up by checkout. I left the TV on so he can learn to Zumba. Can we go now?” He adjusted the shoulder strap of the duffel bag. “Or am I going after Iron Jacket by myself?”
Kick picked up her purse and the Target bag and followed him out the door with the Danish. The sky was bright peach and the motel had started to come alive. A couple of kids played in the pool while their dad drank coffee and looked at his phone on a deck chair. A housekeeper in a pink dress pushed a cart full of folded white towels along the veranda. Kick glanced across the courtyard at Bishop’s room, where a Do Not Disturb sign hung on the doorknob. Her hair was wet and fell in heavy curtains on either side of her face. It smelled like hotel shampoo, a scent she recognized but couldn’t place. They were crossing the concrete deck near the pool’s edge when Kick stopped. She studied the pool around her feet.
“Bishop,” she called hoarsely.
He turned and sighed and walked back to her with his bags.
“This is the spot,” she whispered. She had punched him hard. He had bled. She’d seen him bleed. Kick’s voice caught in her throat. “The blood’s gone.”
“I cleaned it up,” Bishop said.
Kick glanced around the courtyard. The pool vac, the skimmer, all of it was gone.
Now she felt bad for taking a shower when he’d been so hard at work. “I have incredibly long hair,” she tried to explain. It took a lot of upkeep. People didn’t understand.
“I didn’t notice that,” Bishop said, starting to walk again.
Kick could see the roof of the Impala over the concrete-block wall that separated the courtyard from the parking lot.
“We have to talk,” Kick said.
Bishop stopped. “Can we do it in the car?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No.”
Bishop exhaled. “Okay.” He dropped his bags and walked back to her. He scratched the back of his neck. “Which talk do we need to have?” He raised his eyebrows. “The sex talk?”
“Oh,” Kick said, alarmed. “No. I’m fine about the sex.”
Bishop visibly relaxed. “That’s a relief,” he said. “Okay, what, then?”
“You cut off his ear,” Kick hissed. She sucked in a breath and put her hand over her mouth. She looked around. The kids were splashing and squealing. The father was half asleep.
“Part of his ear,” Bishop corrected her, lowering his voice. “He’ll be fine. If he has anything to worry about, it’s his nose”—he pushed his sunglasses up—“which I had nothing to do with.”
Kick hesitated. “So that was all an act?” she asked. “You weren’t really going to torture him?”
“Of course not,” Bishop said.
Kick laughed with relief. Bishop had been trying to scare Klugman. And it had worked, and now they had a lead. They were that much closer to the man who had hurt Monster and James. This was all very, very excellent. She tore off a piece of Danish and ate it, and her eyes fell back on the door to Bishop’s room.
Bishop started for the car.
The back of Kick’s neck itched.
“Of course not, it wasn’t an act?” she asked, running to catch up with him. “Or of course not, you weren’t really going to torture him?”
37
KICK STARED STRAIGHT AHEAD out the windshield and tried not to think about the fact that she was speeding through the desert in a dirty Impala with a trunkful of torture implements and a man who packed plastic sheeting and duct tape in his carry-on.
Bishop was eating sunflower seeds he’d bought at a gas station a few miles back. Adam Rice’s face had been on a Missing Child poster on the gas station’s front door; Kick spotted it when she went in to ask for the bathroom key. But if Bishop had noticed it, he didn’t say anything. Every so often he spit five or six sunflower seed shells into a Styrofoam to-go coffee cup. The sound rattled Kick’s nerves.
“Does the name help?” she asked.
Bishop had been texting or on the phone since they’d left the motel. He glanced over at her. “Iron Jacket,” he said. “Catchy, right?” The road in front of them was reflected in his aviator sunglasses, empty desert on both sides.
“That’s a no, isn’t it?”
“It gets us closer.”
Kick rested her head against the seat back. The Impala’s windshield was spattered with dead bugs. They passed a billboard for some tribal casino.
“There’s a lot of data to sift through,” Bishop said. “The big users are actively monitored. He’s not one of them, at least not with that handle. It may take a little time.” He dribbled some more sunflower seed shells into the coffee cup.
Kick fiddled with her seat belt. Then adjusted the sun visor. Then readjusted the sun visor.
She dialed up James’s digital medical chart. His blood pressure was down and they’d started him on broad-spectrum antibiotics.
Kick let her eyes drift out the side window. In front of them, the foothills were shades of violet. Except for the occasional billboards, the landscape, as far as Kick could see, was barren. The window was hot from the sun.
Another billboard for the same casino appeared on the horizon. An Indian chief in full headdress was extending a peace pipe in apparent celebration of the fact that Dionne Warwick would be appearing. But the illustrator had given the chief a pipe tomahawk. It could be used as a pipe or as a hatchet in close combat. One end was the pipe of peace, the other was the ax of war.
“Can I see the photo?” she asked Bishop.
He dipped into his pocket and handed her the photo of James as a kid with Klugman. Kick held it delicately in her palm. The corners of the photo w
ere soft, and it was warm from Bishop’s body heat. It smelled like mildew.
“Mel said that Iron Jacket posted pictures,” Kick said. “And Klugman said he communicated with him online. If Iron Jacket is a pedophile and he’s on the Internet, then he’s on the porn sites. You have to upload new images before they give you access. So he’s communicating with people. There’s an online trail.”
“If he’s trading images, he’s careful,” Bishop said. “He probably uses peer-to-peer file sharing.”
“Someone knows who he is,” Kick said. “It’s a community. And he’s putting the community in danger. He makes them look bad.”
“He makes pedophiles look bad?”
“He’s a sadist,” Kick said. “A killer. Yeah, I’d say he makes pedophiles look bad. But they’re all too afraid to report him because if they know him, he knows them.”
“How does that help us?”
“Put me in a chat room,” Kick said. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. “I grew up with these people. I know how to talk to them. Someone knows who this guy is. We’ll do a video. So they can see me. We can upload it to a few of the popular sites. I’m a legend, Bishop. Someone will want to impress me.”
Bishop’s attention wavered between Kick and the highway. He didn’t exactly leap at the idea.
“You took me to see Mel,” Kick pressed.
“Yeah,” Bishop said. “One dying pedophile strapped to a bed. And for the record,” he added, “I was against that. You’re talking about going in front of a million pedophiles, many of whom have probably jacked off to your image.”
“I know,” Kick said. She fiddled with the wire ring. She had done all kinds of things that scared her. She had jumped out of an airplane with a parachute on her back; she had testified in court; she had gone off with Bishop despite the fact that she knew she couldn’t trust him. She could do this one thing, for James.
Bishop was looking at the road. Heat rippled the pavement ahead of them. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll set it up. I know some people in Portland who are good with computers.”
