Outburst

by R. D. Zimmerman

  “Move it!” he ordered, shoving her on.

  It suddenly became clear why he'd removed her blindfold, for it would have been next to impossible to drag her through this maze of ruin. The farm was old. And long abandoned. Surely a once-thriving homestead, it had obviously been cannibalized by either hungry neighbors or corporate giants, every square inch of the prized black soil planted, and everything else—house, windmill, that leaning barn out there, silo, outbuildings too—left to die. Her feet and eyes now free but her mouth and hands still bound, Janice led the way around the van, up the rutted drive, and through a graveyard of farm life. Walking around the skeleton of an ancient combine—half collapsed in a death kneel—she passed a disc plow, a hay chopper, a seeder, all of them once mighty and hulking machinery, now all of them rusted and sinking into the fertile earth.

  Surrounded by splintered and half-dead elms, the farmhouse stood on a small rise to the right, a ghostly two-story clapboard Victorian house, tall and narrow with the delicate remains of fretwork half clinging to the eaves of the steep roof. Surely once painted a proud, clean white by either the German or Scandinavian immigrants who had taken over this area like locusts, the elements had scoured it of paint. The front porch, where families had once gathered on hot summer days such as this to shell peas or drink lemonade, was a wreck of its former splendor, the vine-covered columns doing Herculean effort to hold the porch roof, which was sagging like a broken wing. Almost every window was broken, surely by neighboring farm boys. And the red-brick chimney was all but gone, truncated either by moisture or tornadoes or both.

  These things end somewhere, thought Janice. And looking at the dismal house, she saw that hers was to end there. He was going to lead her in there and pose the murder as carefully as a Hollywood director. One very dead lawyer, all posed for Todd the reporter to discover. And broadcast. But why? And what did it mean, that this masked jerk was the one who'd killed Mark Forrest? That he'd been rigging things all along, even the California murder of Dave Ravell?

  What Janice feared, of course, was that she would never find out.

  Catching a vision of what was to come, her stomach heaved. Okay, call me vain, she thought, but I don't want to go like that, splattered all over hell. I don't want Todd to find me like that either. No, God, no! Walking through weeds, her vision became dappled with memories. Todd and her at college, struggling to date, struggling to emerge sexually. Christine, her onetime partner. And the family—Zeb, the son she had long ago given up for adoption, and his baby—she had so recently rediscovered.

  “Go up to the side of the house,” he ordered.

  Janice looked for a path, but it was gone, long sunk beneath a sea of daylilies, all of which were now blooming orange and yellow. Certainly once a nice, cherished perennial patch, the lilies had gone mad, Janice now saw, taking over not only the path but the yard, flooding everything and encircling the house, which, like an ark, barely floated above it all. Wading through the sea of green leaves and colorful flowers, winding around a fallen elm, she glanced over, saw the remains of a bicycle, strands of green lilies poking and pushing through every spoke. And a couple of those old metal lawn chairs, the seats rusted and crumbling, shoots of yellow flowers poking through. Mosquitoes too. This was Minnesota. This was summer. It was as hot and humid as hell. And as the two of them traversed this bizarre sea, swarms of blood-hungry mosquitoes swirled up and around them. Janice ducked to the right, rubbed her cheek on her shoulder, got one off. But with her hands strapped behind her back, she could do nothing about the two or three on her forehead or the handful feasting on her neck. She squirmed and twisted, hurried her pace, realized what she was running toward, but didn't care.

  A sharp noise cracked, not something dulled with distance, but something close and definitive. No question, they were going to get dumped on.

  “Hurry up!” he shouted. “Go to that side door.”

  Emerging from the daylilies, Janice clambered up the slope and approached the house, then stopped at three wooden steps that led to the porch. Her heart thumping, she realized she was a fool to go any farther.

  “Move it!”

  A tornadic gust of wind whirled out of the fields and around the edge of the house, blasting them. Sweat swelling from every fiber of his wool ski mask, her captor gazed toward the death-star clouds that were descending upon them, then turned and grabbed Janice.

  “Go on!” he said, jabbing her in the ribs with his gun.

  Janice climbed the half-rotted steps, circled a hole in the porch floor. The screen door was half torn off, the rusty screen curled and hanging, and the main door shut.

  Janice's heart gurgled into her throat and she stopped. Don't go in there. Her mind started leaping ahead, maniacally leaping from scenario to scenario. Just how was he going to do this? And how much time did she have? Was he going to kill her now, outright? Or would he wait until Todd was here?

  Think!

  Her hands felt numb, and she wiggled her sweaty wrists, the plastic packing tape crinkling. The noise of it flashed her back not simply to the last time she moved and had packed countless boxes of crap, but to just last month when she'd put together one very special package of gifts and silly things for Zeb and the baby in New Mexico. This shit, this tape, was stronger than hell, for sure. But it did have an Achilles' heel: As untearable and indestructible as it seemed, one little chink on the side and it ripped as easy as sandwich wrap. Sure. She hadn't been able to find her scissors when she'd fixed the package and hence had been forced to break the tape simply—and easily—with her teeth.

  He shoved past her to the door, and Janice stepped back. Her bound hands collided with the rusted, torn screen, and she seized the chance, desperately trying to saw the fine metal wires against the tape. As she stood staring at him, watching as he kicked in the door, she lifted and lowered her hands behind her back. The screen, though, was much too fine and therefore much too weak, simply not strong enough to take a bite out of anything.

  “Come on!”

  He grabbed Janice by the arm, shoved her into the house. Stumbling across the threshold, she entered some sort of dark hall. She glanced to the left, saw a faded yellow kitchen with an old electric range—an aluminum coffeepot still perched on the back burner—then green plaid linoleum and a small wooden table with four chairs perfectly arranged around it. He pushed Janice to the right, next steered her into a living room. Her feet stirring up a lunar coating of dust, Janice quickly apprised the situation, seeing not a deserted space stripped of every and any sign of life, but a quaintly arranged—albeit grayed with dirt and spiderwebs—collection of furniture. An ancient brown davenport sat in front of one window, in front of that a coffee table replete with a large glass ashtray, then two armchairs to the side, both with tidy little doilies on the backs. But there was something even more bizarre than a well-furnished house that looked as if it hadn't been inhabited for twenty or thirty years: a tangle of vines. Her eyes quickly flashed to the broken windows, saw that the vines, like the day-lilies, had gone mad, crawling inside and climbing not only up the legs and arms of the furniture, but slithering up the walls and across the ceiling, from which they hung here and there. Even a standing lamp had been gobbled up and stood encrusted and strangled with the snake-like plant. Studying this bizarre time capsule of life on the farm, Janice surmised that someone's grandfather or grandmother—the last of a family who'd tended the land for generations—had died, and the kids, who'd surely escaped to the city, perhaps the coasts, hadn't come back for anything, not a single stick of memory, perhaps not even the funeral. They'd just put the family homestead on the market, had a lawyer handle it all, hired someone else to straighten up and dump the clothes—unless they, too, were still packed in drawers upstairs—and sold the old place. But the new owners hadn't wanted the house. No, they'd only been after the rich soil that was so capable of producing bushels and bushels and bushels of corn.

  But there was nothing, Janice realized, surveying the soft, lumpy, u
pholstered furniture, on which to even nick the tape.

  Wait.

  She saw it.

  Two springs.

  They were poking out of the davenport, right out of the corner of it. Not a couch or a fancy city sofa, it was a true midwestern davenport, the likes of which no farm would be without, for it could be converted into a bed. After all, before the days of cars and highways, guests didn't just come for dinner and then bop on home. They stayed the night. And then there was family that came from afar for Thanksgiving. Christmas as well. And when there was a blizzard, friends and family, even strangers, stayed and stayed. Or when a barn was raised, the old auntie or widowed granny would come to help with the cooking. And this was where they slept, on this old rotting piece of furniture.

  Yes, this davenport's glory days were long gone, the material around the back had long ago disintegrated, and two rusty springs had sprung out. Janice saw them and knew it was quite possibly her only chance.

  “What do you think?” he snickered. “Should we get it over with now, or shall we wait some?”

  Janice turned around and backed up against the davenport. Behind her she jabbed out her hands, but she missed, striking her fists against the rotted upholstery. She took blind aim again. And again missed.

  “You know what? I'm hotter than hades in this fucking mask. What do you say we just get it over with? I mean, wouldn't that make you feel better too? I mean, waiting is such a pisser. Particularly waiting for death.”

  This time she hit it directly, piercing the plastic tape with one of the springs.

  “Janice, dear, that's a pretty good place. Why don't you stay right there?”

  As she stared at him, Janice went ass-crazy on the spring, jabbing her wrists on it over and over again, poking the rusty metal through the tape just as often as scraping and scratching her skin. Frantic, Janice kept at it, then worked even faster as she felt the tape weaken, as she sensed her wrists shifting loose ever so slightly. And then it happened—the tape ripped. Finding strength she never knew she had, Janice wrenched her wrists and, once and for all, ripped them apart. She shivered with hope, but stood still, holding her wrists behind her back, telling herself: not yet.

  Something flashed, an atomic-white blast of light, which for a mere moment brightly lit the room. Instinctively, they turned. And the next second everything exploded.

  The storm was upon them.

  As if some great fan had been turned on, the wind came up, not a gust, but a solid, strong blast. The broken windows rattled, the leaves on the vines in the living room tremored. And Janice knew this was her chance.

  Into her gag, she screamed.

  She probably should have plotted it all out a little better. She probably should have scoped out a real weapon—the standing lamp, a chair, a piece of wood. In the moment, though, her hand formed a fist, and as he approached she swung back and walloped him as hard as she could. At first, with no idea that her hands were free, he showed no alarm. Then he realized what was transpiring.

  “What the—”

  Janice was a baseball dyke from the get-go. Granted, she'd never played hardball, only softball, but everyone always said it, said she had a hell of an arm, better than half the guys. And taking her best aim and using every bit of strength she could muster, she punched him as hard as she could right on the jaw.

  “Fuck!” he cried out.

  Janice didn't stop. As he fell back, she lunged forward, scooping up the large glass ashtray sitting on the coffee table. Bringing her arm back, she hurled it right at him, striking him square on the forehead. Blood spurted out one of the eyeholes of his mask, and Janice dove on him, grabbing him by the collar, shoving him to the side. He fell to the floor, his right hand protectively clutching the gun to his gut, his left hand groping his head.

  “Christ …” he moaned.

  Janice made a snap decision. She could probably outthrow him. But she knew she couldn't outwrestle him. If she descended on him now, he'd simply pull the gun on her and blow her apart.

  Ripping the gag from her mouth, she tore out of the living room, ducking down the short hall and out the side door. She jumped over the hole in the porch floor, flew down the steps, and ran down the small ridge and into the sea of daylilies. Glancing back, she saw no sign of him. Just a minute or two, that was all she needed.

  The wind came up, lightning and thunder started to pop burst after burst, and the clouds, like some great extraterrestrial creature about to blot out life, covered the sky, sucking up any sign of day. But rather than descending into blackness, a strange, terribly eerie light suffused everything, a light that was all at once both gray and green. Looking up, Janice, a native midwesterner, knew this wasn't good, not at all. Were this the city, the sirens would be blaring, screaming: Time to head to the basements.

  Hoping beyond hope, Janice ran to the van and threw open the driver's door and clambered over the seat. But good fortune wasn't hers: no keys.

  “Shit!” cursed Janice.

  Suddenly glass shattered up at the house. Janice turned, saw a hand and a gun jab out of one of the windows.

  “You won't get away!” he screamed.

  There was a crack, not of lightning but of gunfire, and the next instant the van's windshield dissolved into a million spidery cracks. Ducking, she glanced back between the seats, her eyes searching for a weapon of any kind but seeing only Kris's body. There was another burst of gunfire, and the next instant a bullet tore into the far side of the van, twanging itself deep into the metal.

  Now what?

  Janice had no idea. The rain was starting now, fine drops whipped along by the wind. She couldn't dash down the road; he'd catch up with her. Nor could she tear to the barn; he'd pick her off, no problem. She turned around, saw the corn, lush and tall, a neon-green mass as dense as a rain forest.

  Keeping low, she tore toward the field as the thunder cracked and the rain fell. She scrambled over a rusted string of barbed wire, through a weedy ditch, then dove into a narrow row of corn. Weaseling her way between the stalks, her feet scrambling over the dirt, Janice pushed and pawed her way along, no longer cursing the heat and humidity, but thanking God for the outrageously perfect growing weather that had sent the corn soaring six and seven feet tall. Using her hands and arms like machetes, she chopped her way along, slicing through the sharp fronds, a riotous vision of green stalks that blossomed and thrived all around. Janice glanced back, saw that the edge of the field, some twenty feet behind, was already invisible.

  The rain was picking up, tumbling through the thick leaves, and Janice ran one hand across her face, wiping the sweaty moisture away. Something cracked. What the hell was that? Another car? The roar of rain? She heard something rustling and she froze. A deep chill ran up her spine, and she turned and focused every bit of her energy toward the farmhouse. Was he coming now? Was he diving into the cornstalks? Was he going to catch up with her so quickly?

  She heard it again, and her stomach seemed to cave in. Oh, God. That was the sound of someone coming, of course. The sound of someone rushing through the corn. But it wasn't someone chasing her from the farmhouse. No, it was coming from right behind her. Scrambling in the dirt, Janice spun around. And there, squatting in the soil, was a man, his gun trained right on her.

  She gasped, “Rawlins!”

  His brow furrowed like the tilled soil he knelt in, Rawlins took a deep breath, lowered his gun, and asked, “Are you all right?”

  She wasn't going to cry. She'd made it this far. She was going to be okay.

  Taking a deep breath, Janice said, “Yeah.”

  Clutching her eyes shut, Janice reached to the dark soil, braced herself. Only then did she start shaking. Only then did the fear start catching up with her. Rawlins scrambled toward her, kneeling before her, wrapping his arms around her. And Janice let herself fall into him. He's a cop, he's got a gun, it's over. Turning her head to the side, she put the left side of her face against his shoulder and clutched him. Above them lightning and thu
nder burst and danced.

  But then in the distance she heard something else—the sound of an engine. Someone was driving up the road to the farm. Oh, God, no, she thought. It can't be him.

  Desperate, she pulled away from Rawlins and said, “Tell me that's not—”

  “Todd,” quietly said Rawlins.

  45

  Just as he drove up the lane and the farmhouse came into view, Todd's phone started ringing again. Oh, no. Not another call from Kenney. Not another set of instructions. This could screw up everything Rawlins and Todd had planned.

  He grabbed the slim phone from his pocket and said, “Yeah?”

  “This is McNamee.”

  McNamee? He was the police officer they'd called to trace the rental car Russ Fugle had seen.

  “Did you get something?” demanded Todd.

  “Yeah, we got it.”

  “Who?”

  “Let me speak to Rawlins.”

  “Rawlins isn't here.”

  “But—”

  “Quit fucking around and tell me who rented that car! We got a kidnapping going on right now!”

  McNamee hesitated another second or two, then told Todd that Enterprise did in fact have a white Toyota with the last three letters GMF. And the car was in fact rented on the day Mark Forrest was killed.

  Hearing the name as he drove into the farmyard, Todd demanded, “What? Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “But …” Todd shook his head. “Listen, I gotta go. We need some assistance out here—now!”

  He gave McNamee his location, hung up, and threw the phone on the passenger seat. This didn't make sense, any of it, and Todd hoped just one thing—that he wasn't too late.

  He pulled up behind a van, stopping just some fifteen feet behind it. He saw the shattered windshield, prayed that it had just been hailing here, prayed there'd been no bullets flying, not yet anyway. Rawlins and he had counted on one thing and one thing alone, that Todd hadn't been called to discover a murder but, like before, to witness one.