The Drowning Game

by LS Hawker

  Mitch didn’t say anything, just stood gazing down at Dekker. I moved a little closer, the water now on both sides of me, only feet away.

  “Let’s get him out of here,” I said. “If you’re planning on dumping him in the pond, I don’t care how deep it is, they’ll find him. Let’s let him go. Then you and I will be together. Forever. You don’t have to—­”

  “You’ll try to get away,” Mitch shouted.

  “I’m here,” I said, holding my arms out, walking closer still. I tottered a little, feeling the pull of the water. I forced myself to look at him. “I came to you, remember? You didn’t find me, I found you.”

  Mitch blinked behind his frosted glasses.

  “I’ve come home. If Dekker goes in the pond, he’ll be between us forever.” I couldn’t look at Dekker.

  “He won’t,” Mitch said, “because—­”

  “Because I’ll be dissolved within a ­couple of days,” Dekker said in a hoarse voice. “Remember how he said this is some of the most acidic water on earth? Pyrite plus oxygen plus water makes sulfuric acid.”

  I didn’t understand what he was saying. “Acid?”

  “Don’t go near it, whatever you do,” Dekker said.

  My heart dropped to my feet. I was surrounded by acid, millions of gallons of it, and the ground beneath my feet seemed to ripple, to quake, threatening my balance.

  Mitch smiled hopefully at me. “He’ll just disappear,” he said. “As if he never existed to begin with.”

  Like Randy.

  “If you put him in there,” I said, edging nearer, “I’ll have to go in after him. If you let him go, you and I will go back to your cabin and we’ll be together.” I was shaking violently.

  It seemed to me that one way or another, I was going to end up in that lake, and it was going to hurt. Badly.

  “Your choice, Mitch,” I said. “He goes in, I go in.” I held my arms out. “Or you can come to me right now. Come to Marianne.”

  Mitch’s tiny eyes were unfocused, distant.

  “Marianne?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s me. Hold me. I’m so cold.”

  Mitch stepped over Dekker, his feet inches from the acid. I hoped Dekker had the presence of mind not to make any sudden moves, because if Mitch went in, at the very least Dekker would be splashed with acid and there would be no way to help him out here.

  Mitch walked toward me. He still held my Glock. I kept my arms out toward him, locking eyes with him. I slid my arms around his waist inside his open jacket.

  He groaned, an animal sound. “Wait,” he said, and moved away, settling the rifle strap over his shoulder. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist and bent down to kiss me on the lips.

  Chapter 30

  THE REVULSION I felt as Mitch touched his lips to Petty’s made me light-­headed. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, which were crushed beneath me on the hard snowy ground, but I had to get free somehow. I struggled to a sitting position but my dizziness remained. If I stood, would I be able to keep from falling over, possibly into the acid?

  Suddenly, Petty reached for the rifle.

  “No, Petty!” I shouted. Mitch was too big for her to overpower, no matter how much training she had.

  They each clenched it with both hands, parallel to the ground. Petty suddenly let go, causing Mitch to stumble backward, then unleashed a mighty high kick, dislodging the rifle from his grasp. He was stunned, watching it fly and land with a plop in the pond. While Mitch was preoccupied, Petty turned and kicked his knees forward, dropping him onto them.

  As he fell, he got hold of her ankle. She grunted and caught herself before her face hit the ground. Mitch grabbed the other ankle and flipped her onto her back, her left hand inches from the water.

  He straddled her. “You lied to me.”

  I rocked from side to side, trying to move forward, frantic to stop what was happening. I tried to pull my knees under me but only succeeded in moving closer to the acid.

  “Get off and I’ll go to your cabin with you,” Petty said.

  “I’m not falling for your lies anymore. I’m not going to wait that long,” Mitch said. “I’m going to take you right here, and then you’re mine for good.”

  To my horror, he pinned her arms with his knees and began unfastening his belt. I bucked, desperate to do something, anything. Was Mitch really going to do this here? Outside? In the cold and snow?

  He leaned forward, trying to get his pants undone with one hand while pinning Petty with his opposite elbow. She wheeled her arms and legs, at once trying to pull her bra knife loose and get a punch in, but she had no leverage. He was so large and heavy it must have been like trying to fight a boulder.

  “No! Stop!” I yelled. I’d never felt so helpless, so useless, in my life.

  Mitch fumbled with his zipper. “I need to show you,” he said. “You are mine.”

  IT WAS A trick of the light, maybe—­or the snowflakes in my eyes had warped my vision—­but suddenly I was in a bathtub with huge hands pinning me underwater.

  And just like that it came to me.

  Of course it hadn’t been Michael Rhones who’d tried to drown me. It was Mitch and his huge hands. To get my mom to go with him. I saw it all now, heard it all. Mom screamed in the background, “Let her go! Let her go!”

  “Let’s play a new game,” Mitch was saying to two-­year-­old me. “Let’s play the drowning game.”

  PETTY STOPPED FIGHTING.

  “No!” I yelled. “Petty, this is what your dad trained you for, all those years, your whole life.”

  Mitch lifted his head and smiled victoriously at me.

  “Petty,” I said. “This is the moment. This is your moment. Your mom couldn’t stop him, but you can.”

  Mitch licked his lips and turned his attention back to his fly. As he did, Petty thrust her hips upward, knocking him off balance. He scrambled to regain his stability, but he rolled forward onto his right shoulder, and then Petty was on top of him, one of his feet dangerously near the water.

  Suddenly Petty let loose. And it was glorious to behold.

  She drove her elbow into Mitch’s nose. Fine droplets of blood burst outward, misting in the frozen air before Mitch covered his face with his hands. I’d seen fights before, and somehow the punches had always seemed restrained. Not this time. Petty pounded his face so fast and hard, I couldn’t count the blows. One of the lenses of Mitch’s glasses was suddenly gone, the frames bent.

  But once Mitch recovered from the surprise of the broken nose, he was able to collar Petty’s throat with both bloody hands and squeeze. She punched his elbows, but he wouldn’t let go. Petty rose to her knees and threw her weight straight down into his midsection. As she forced the air out of him, his grip loosened on her throat. Then she punched him in the Adam’s apple, and he made a loud heeeeeeee noise as he tried to inhale. She finally got hold of her bra knife and held it to his throat.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Petty said. “I’m taking you to the police. You’re going to pay for what you did to my mother. Now get up.”

  Mitch recovered enough to struggle to his feet. He shuffled toward her, his right hand covering his nose, blood dripping off his chin.

  “Give me that knife, young lady,” he said through his hand.

  “Walk back to the car,” she said to him.

  Mitch turned toward the lake’s shore and lifted his hands into the air. His pants fell down.

  Petty bent and helped me to my feet then turned me around. Suddenly my hands were free, and I was grateful her knife hadn’t ended up in the lake along with her gun. It was a few minutes before my arms started to work again, though not very well. I stuffed my bloody and ruined hands under my shirt into my armpits.

  Still brandishing her knife at Mitch, Petty said, “Pull your pants up.”

  He did.
/>   “Wow,” I said. “You know what? You really are like Sarah Connor. Except without the crazy.”

  Petty gave me a strangely pleased and surprised look, then smiled at me, that beautiful, dimpled smile.

  I KEPT THE knife in Mitch’s view as he yanked his pants up, zipped and buttoned them.

  “Now walk toward the car.” He did as he was told, and I followed with Dekker close behind me. He was unsteady, and I was concerned he was going to tip over into the pond. My shredded left calf muscle screamed in pain as I limped.

  “Where’s Randy?” I said.

  “I took him to the hospital,” Mitch said.

  “No you didn’t.”

  “He’s gone,” Mitch said, trudging toward the shore, holding his pants with one hand and his belt with the other. “He won’t bother you anymore.”

  “Is Randy in the tailings pond?” I asked.

  “Of course he is,” Dekker said.

  “Is my mother in there?” I said.

  Mitch said nothing, and I realized I already knew the answer. I looked out over the pond, the gallons of acid within it, and watched the snow disappear as it touched the surface. I was overwhelmed by a compulsion to join the snowflakes, to dissolve and blend with them and my mother, who had vanished into those depths so many years ago.

  But I had to live. I had to see that this monster got what was coming to him.

  When we got to the Taurus, I turned to open the back door and suddenly heard a choking sound and scuffling behind me.

  I turned back around, and Mitch was strangling Dekker with his belt with one hand while struggling to pull Baby Glock out of his pocket with the other.

  I let go of my knife and gave Mitch an elbow shot to the chin, forcing him to release Dekker, who fell to the ground. Then I kicked Mitch in the groin, just like my dad had taught me. He dropped to his knees, and my gun popped out of his hand. I jumped on top of him, landing punch after punch, breaking teeth and bone, his and mine, head butting his face over and over, never wanting to stop—­

  thisisthesonofabitchwhokilledmymomandmademydadacrazymotherfucker

  —­until I realized that Dekker was shouting in my ear and pulling me away.

  I looked at my battered hands, my skull ringing, blood running down my face, and tasted it in my mouth. I hawked it back and spat it into Mitch’s pulverized face. He panted and moaned, but didn’t bother to wipe his face.

  “You can’t make me go with you,” he groaned.

  I picked up Baby Glock, pulled back the slide and aimed it at his head.

  “You’re going to get in your car,” I said, “and we’re going to drive you down to the hospital, where we’re going to call the cops. And if you try to escape, if you try to run, I will shoot you, and I don’t care if I go to jail for the rest of my life. My father, Michael Rhones . . .”

  I could no longer speak. My father. I’d cursed him, even hated him, for most of my life, hated him for the endless drills and the training and the working out, his silences, his rules.

  I’d asked myself Why? thousands of times, wondered endlessly why he’d raised me like he had. Somehow, he’d known this day would come, and he sacrificed his whole life to give me the tools he knew I’d need one day. Suddenly the love I’d felt for him as a little girl flooded me with such potency it nearly knocked me over.

  I forced myself to stop crying and stood straight and tall as I faced the man who destroyed my family.

  “Like Dekker said, Dad trained me for this moment. He trained me to kill. And I will kill you.”

  “She will,” Dekker said.

  “Get in the fucking car,” I said.

  I SAT IN the front seat facing backward, my gun pointed at Mitch.

  “You’re just like your mother,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “It’s not a compliment. She was a—­”

  “Did you not hear what she said?” Dekker asked him. He had to use the heels of his hands to drive because some of his fingers were broken and the skin looked gray. “You probably want to keep your fucking mouth shut.”

  “You’re going to prison,” I said to Mitch.

  He tried to smile, his broken face looking like a watermelon dropped from the top of a ten-­story building. “But I’ll get out,” he said. “No matter what you do, no matter where you go, I will find you.”

  I held his gaze silently for a moment. “Oh,” I said, letting myself smile back at him. “You better hope to God you don’t.”

  He stopped smiling and looked out the window. He didn’t utter another sound the rest of the way to the hospital.

  Dekker laughed. “You are such a badass.”

  He parked in front of the emergency room.

  “You go on in,” I said. “I’ll guard him until the cops get here.”

  Dekker pointed to a black-­and-­white idling at the curb, exhaust fumes making clouds in the cold night. “They’re already here.” He got out of the car and knocked on the cruiser’s window.

  Inside the ER, the lady at the admissions desk did a double take when she saw the three of us accompanied by the deputy.

  “Car accident?” she asked, jumping to her feet and picking up the phone.

  “No,” I said and pointed at Dekker. “He’s got a head injury.” I pointed at Mitch. “This guy tried to rape me and kill both of us.”

  Orderlies appeared and put Dekker into a wheelchair and wheeled him right in.

  The admissions nurse said, “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I said. Then I collapsed to the floor.

  Chapter 31

  Saturday

  I HOPED PETTY was okay.

  “What did he hit you with?” the attending nurse asked me. She was about my grandma’s age, dressed in hot pink scrubs, her dyed-­blond hair cut in a pixie. Her name tag said Sally.

  “His car, for one thing,” I said. “And I think he might have pistol-­whipped me.”

  “Follow my finger with your eyes, please,” Sally said, shining a light into my eyes and moving her finger from left to right and then up and down.

  Moving my eyes didn’t feel too good, but I didn’t have any problem tracking.

  “We need to clean up those cuts on your scalp,” Sally said. “See if you need any sutures.”

  My head seemed huge, twanging with a dull, heavy ache. My hands and feet felt sunburned, and four of my fingers were splinted.

  “Can you help me make a phone call?” I asked her.

  She picked up the receiver from the wall phone. I told her the number, which she punched in then gave me the handset. “I’m going to grab the antiseptic and some gauze.”

  She left the room as Uncle Curt answered the phone.

  “Dekker,” he said, his voice raw, sounding a lot older than he was. “Are you okay? Where are you? Did you get my fax?”

  “We were already in Paiute by the time it came through. Randy King got it.”

  A pause. Then Uncle Curt whispered, “What?”

  I gave him the short version, which he repeated to Aunt Rita as I told it.

  “We just landed in Denver,” Curt said. “We rented a car and we should be up there in a ­couple of hours.”

  “But wait,” I said. “How did you know to—­”

  “When Rita got home she read the letters and put it all together—­she’s the brains in this outfit, as you well know—­she figured out Michael Rhones didn’t write them, and that you were headed straight for the place he never wanted Petty to go or even know about.”

  “Mitch shot Randy,” I said. “He’s dead.” And just like that, I was crying hard. I was more tired than I realized.

  “It’s not your fault, Dekker,” Curt said. “It’s not your fault, and it’s not Petty’s fault.”

  I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t stop crying for
a good minute and a half. I blew my nose and averted my face when the nurse stopped in the doorway. She discreetly stepped away.

  “I knew there was something weird about Mitch,” I said, sniffling. “And I think Petty knew it too. But she wanted him to be her dad so bad she couldn’t hear me, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I kinda wish you could have seen her though,” I said, brightening a little. “This guy outweighed her by a hundred and fifty pounds and she kicked his ass. It was sick.”

  “I wish I’d been there.”

  I knew he meant he wished he’d been there from the time we left his house.

  “Hey, listen,” Uncle Curt said. “I need you to write down a number for Petty to call.”

  “Hang on,” I said. I hollered toward the door, “Sally? Can you help me with something?”

  She walked into the room.

  “Can you write down a number for me?”

  She found a pen and a pad of paper and wrote the number down as I repeated it.

  “It’s my lawyer buddy’s private cell number,” Uncle Curt said. “George Engle, remember? Can you have her call him? He said it doesn’t matter what time it is.”

  “Hang on,” I said. Then to Sally: “Can you take this to Petty for me and have her call this number? Tell her it’s her lawyer.”

  “Sure,” Sally said, and left the room again.

  “We’re on our way,” Uncle Curt said. “Then we’re going to bring you and Petty home. Love you, punk.”

  I choked up again. “Love you too, hippie.”

  “See you soon.”

  I WOKE UP under blankets in a hospital room with an IV in my arm and my hands wrapped up like a mummy’s. My face felt huge, and I remembered head-­butting Mitch. When I opened my eyes, a police officer rose from a nearby chair and walked toward me holding the backpack we’d left at Mitch’s cabin.

  “I’m Officer Pearson,” he said. “I wondered if I could—­”

  “Where’s Mitch?” I said. “He shot Randy and hit Dekker with his car. You’ve got to—­”

  “He’s in surgery right now and under guard,” the cop said.