My Brother's Destroyer

by Clayton Lindemuth

  “Come on, Morgan. Let’s go outside. Your mommy’s in the car up the street.”

  I lead the way and the tingle gets stronger—as much a signal as I’ve got in the last week.

  “Where you at, Cory? I know damn well you’s here.”

  I glance down the hall. Nothing. Shuffle along, fast. Outside comes a sharp red glow like four hundred liars. It’s either the United States Congress come to order on the front lawn or police black and whites.

  “Girls, c’mere! Out the window. Like I come in. Here we go.”

  I sit Joseph on the sofa. God’s on my side; Joseph’s quiet. I sit on the back of the sofa with Morgan. She wriggles through and I dangle her to the ground.

  “Go the end of this wall and hunker down. Bree—c’mere!”

  She steps up like a soldier. I get her out the window. “Go to the back and wait.”

  Now for Joseph. I’ll prob’ly break my back, but they’s no good way. I sit him on my lap and swing my legs through the window. Lean back ‘til my spine’s about to snap, and slip down the sill. Vertebrae pop like Rice Crispies. My chin hits the window. I drop to the ground and freeze.

  A flashlight cuts across the front lawn—a cop covering a lot of ground. I shrink behind a shrub and a man steps around the front corner. I got a baby in my arms and a cop twenty feet off looking something to shoot. The beam flashes me in the eyes but how the hell you know if they see you? Got to wait.

  The light shifts away and I’m half-blind, and they’s raised voices far off—man and woman. Mae.

  Flashlight comes back, parks on the open window. “Hey Bob! I got an open window. Think we got someone inside!”

  You jest go on thinking that.

  “Keep it covered.”

  I’m pinned. I make a break for it, I got a baby liable to scream and two girls can’t run in the dark. I got neighbors cooking marshmallows happy to holler, “He went thataway.”

  The cop with the light moves closer. The beam on the window gets tight. If I move, he sees me. He comes to the window. He’s five feet away and only a bush between us. Then they’s the girls. White, or light blue clothes. This cop’s blind, not seeing em even through the hedges.

  “Hey, John!”

  The copper moves quick and the beam catches me full on and keeps moving. He’s turned away.

  “Yeah?”

  “C’mon up front. It’s Mae looking for Cory. She set off the alarm.”

  Cop John goes back around the front corner and I’m beside Morgan and Bree in three seconds. They huddle tight to the wall, arms around each other.

  “You girls did a real good job,” I whisper.

  We’re on the edge of the bug light glow coming from the neighbor’s.

  “Follow me, girls. Real quiet. Your momma’s out front but the police is talking with her. She’s got to tell em a story, and then we’ll go.”

  I lead along another neighbor’s house. They’s upstairs, judging from the lights. We walk a line, turn the corner. Up front, I get low and scope the goings-on. Two police cars got flashing lights. One’s in front the Smylie house and the other’s behind Mae’s Tercel. She’s talking to four cops by her back bumper.

  I got electric on my arms. I’m surprised Joseph don’t yell for being shocked. This is the best juice I got in a week.

  Morgan gasps and they’s a one-foot shuffle.

  Got a gun agin my head.

  “Hey, Cory.”

  “Hey, kidnapper. Put Joe down.”

  “What you want?”

  “I want to paste your brain against that wall, but we got to wait a few minutes.”

  “You want to do that front of your kids?”

  “Don’t you start that shit too. Morgan, Bree—stay right there.”

  Joseph gurgles.

  “Shhh,” I say. I get him up close, feel the metal press hard to my head. “You go easy with that gun.” I rub my nose on Joseph and he gurgles a little, something not quite as angry as a shout, but not altogether happy. “You want to ease up on that thing? I got your son in my arms, dipshit.”

  Cory backs off. He pulls another gun from his belt and I see right off it ain’t normal. The front is big and square.

  “Put Joseph on the ground.”

  “Cory, it’s cold. This is your son—”

  “Put the fucking kid down!”

  He straightens his arm and points a Taser at my chest.

  “Easy, Cory.” I bend to the ground and sit Joseph down. I stand.

  I hear a zip sound and feel two bee stings in my chest and I got electric coursing through me for three full seconds. Feel like I’m a battery got plugged into the wall. Feel like a tired man just ate a three-pound steak. My whole body shakes and damned if I never felt so good and strong and surly in my life. The juice ends and then another juice, the kind I’m familiar with starts and the hair on my forearms shoots straight out inside my sleeves and Cory’s eyes flame red like I was sober, twenty-four years old and just saw Nixon say I ain’t a crook.

  Cory Smylie healed me.

  He’s still got his arm stretched. I knock the wires loose, step in close and bring my fist from low and smash it into his jaw. Cory’s head pops back and he drops agin the neighbor’s house wall, then crumples to a hedge.

  Joseph cries and I grab him off the dirt and nuzzle him to my stubble. “Hey son, you’re all right. Yessir. Whooeeee.” But he keeps on. Maybe the cops’ll think he’s with the neighbor’s kids, roasting weenies. Cory groans—the gun in his other hand points thisaway and that. I grab it. Bring the hammer forward, check the chamber. Dumb fuck was ready to shoot with his babies right here. I smash the grip to the back of his skull. He’s stunned like a thumped rabbit.

  The girls’ve run back the way we came.

  I kiss Joseph’s forehead and make a fart sound with my lips. Joseph giggles like he’s on the edge of tears.

  The neighbor’s front light goes on. “Who’s there?” comes the shout.

  I tuck the gun in my pants while I run and stumble on the girls waiting at the back of the house. Again Joseph wails.

  Mae gives the cops a hard time, or her voice carries better than cop voices. Joseph’s liable to end this rescue if he don’t stop his confused whimpering and giggling.

  “Morgan, you got to settle Joseph.”

  I put him in her arms and it’s a miracle. The little girl’s already got the momma know-how. She coos and cuddles him, and it’s just pure-ass crazy, this whole thing. Out here with only the hardiest crickets still chirping, and the moon out, and them marshmallow people, and the four cops sassing Mae, Mae talking shit back, and Cory knocked out cold—in the middle of all that they’s six-year-old Morgan got an infant in her arms, making him believe he’s the safest critter in the night. Just pure fucking uncanny.

  “Now girls, you listen good. Them police think your mother maybe busted into the house to get you—and she’ll prob’ly let em think that so’s we got time to scoot. We find a place we can watch, maybe they let her go in a little bit, and we’ll go find her.”

  Bree takes ahold my leg like I’m not getting away. Morgan looks up from Joseph.

  “Okay, here we go. Now we got everybody in the neighborhood riled up, so we got to head straight to the woods—all the way through these people’s back yards. We’ll circle around and watch for your momma from up the road.”

  Safest bet’s crossing well behind all the houses. Morgan passes Joseph back to me and we set off. These people got back yards used to be wheat fields, I guess. Goes on and on, and a hundred yards out, I cut right. Ain’t no way they can see us. “You girls, if I say drop, you drop quick. I see a spotlight, they won’t be no time to think, you hear?”

  Police lights flash against trees opposite the road, and the houses between us. Bet the neighbors is happy, heading for bed with strobe lights making they bedrooms into discos.

  After a hundred yards, I angle at Mae’s car, then hunker with Morgan and Bree. “All right, girls, you see that police car up there? Right in
front, that’s your momma’s car. She’s talking with em. We’ll get a little closer and wait on them coppers. They leave, we go up and surprise your momma. I’ll tell her you deserve a vacation.”

  Bree seems to doubt vacations is good.

  I stay low long enough my knees is about to bust and I plop back on the grass. Joseph’s got these little snores going on.

  Morgan pulls my collar. “Uncle Baer—they’re taking Mommy.”

  “What?” I shift a little sideways, roll to my feet and take a few steps. They take Mae to the closest cop car. Put her in the back seat—do that number with the hand on the back of her head. Mae stares out the window at Cory’s house. A streetlight shines in the back of the car, and Mae looks about unglued.

  “They’re taking Mommy,” Bree says.

  The police cars turn around in different driveways, and they’s gone.

  “Where they take Mommy?” Bree says.

  “I’m cold,” Morgan says.

  “Me too,” says Bree.

  The sky’s clear. Whatever heat’s been sticking to the ground’ll leave soon enough. By midnight, I’m thinking frost. These girls got they shirts and pants and jackets on.

  “Morgan, I want you to take your brother a minute. I’m going to the car. Be right back. You okay? Can you watch Joseph?”

  “You coming back?”

  “I’ll be right back. You’ll see me the whole time—straight to the car and straight back.”

  She nods somber-like, and it’s the first time in my life I wish someone had a wisp of my talent, enough to know they’s one person won’t ever lie to her.

  I set off quick and low, Cory’s pistol in hand. Everything’s quiet. Don’t know if Cory’s had the sense to go back inside the house, or if he might be along the police station. I listen at the edge of the lawn.

  Mae’s driver-side door is locked. Passenger opens. I unlock the back and grab the blanket covering the back seat. Try to yank it but this baby seat’s buckled on top, and now I’m thinking I walked square into another trap. Blind under the dome light, ass hanging out the door.

  But the girls is cold.

  I unclasp the buckle and that ain’t enough. Another rig somewhere holds it down. I lean deep inside and see another buckle. Pop it loose, thread the strap through the hole, toss the car seat. Mae’s cut holes for the seat belts but the blanket’ll do. I poke around for anything useful and find my rifle on the floor agin the seat. Mae must’ve thought quick and tucked it under the blanket draped over the side.

  I worm back out the car, lock the door, close it. Expect to hear “You’re a dead man” or some Hollywood horseshit, but it’s just me in the dark. Street’s quiet and the houses is mostly dark. Ain’t a dog anywhere got a problem with anything.

  It’s downright eerie, expecting to be caught, and not.

  I find the girls where I left em. “I got a blanket, keep you warm tonight.”

  “Where we going, Uncle Baer?”

  “Camping,” I say. “Just a little ways. I know a place where we can get warm and snug with a fire, and you girls can bed down. Maybe I’ll tell a ghost story, something.”

  Bree looks at me.

  “Maybe not.”

  *

  Mae sat in a straight-backed metal chair and squinted under fluorescent lights. She imagined her babies in Cory’s parents’ car, speeding to some distant state where she’d never find them.

  Officer Randy James sat across the desk. They’d graduated from the same high school class—he’d asked her out six or eight times, and never acknowledged her disinterest.

  He probed his incisors with a toothpick. “Mae, none of this makes sense.” Randy removed his hat, spun it so she glimpsed the stained headband, and placed it on his desk.

  The Gleason police headquarters was a narrow two-story sandwiched between a travel agency and a boutique picture-frame store that survived on tourist dollars. Mae looked around the station and listened to the deputies’ voices coming from the hallway. Each member of the four-man force had been academy-trained and walked and talked with uniform rigidity. It was a good presentation. But Chief Smylie had recently groused in a newspaper article about not having the budget to hold suspects in the basement jail. While the deputies’ crew cuts proclaimed they wanted every trespassing charge to lead to breaking and entering and the discovery of a moldering corpse, in reality, if a crime didn’t involve a bucket of spilled human blood, or couldn’t be handled with a ticket, the accused walked. Gleason hadn’t had a murder since the fifties.

  “The logic don’t make sense,” Randy continued. “You say you knocked on the front door and triggered the alarm. But we got the open window in the back that did it.”

  Baer made it inside! “What I have repeatedly said is that I knocked on the door and eventually the alarm went off. I didn’t say that I triggered the alarm. I was never at the back of the house.”

  “The back side. It was on the side of the house. But you knew that, right?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. Was anything missing from the house?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll ask the questions.”

  “I don’t mind. Was anything missing from the house?”

  “As you know, Chief Smylie and Mrs. Smylie are away all week at a conference. So we don’t know what’s missing just yet.”

  “I didn’t know they were gone.”

  Randy paused. Studied her with a trick behind his eyes. He grinned. “We pulled fingerprints from the window. Big ol’ prints, clear as can be.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “You know that, don’t you? Come on. We’ve got Asheville running those fingerprints through the database. Why don’t you tell me your version of the events one more time?”

  “I don’t have a version, Randy. You got any coffee?”

  He stared. “Sure. Lots of cream and sugar?”

  “Black.”

  He disappeared to an anteroom.

  Deputy Leroy Dupont entered from the hallway, trailed by Cory Smylie. By the addled cant of his gaze and the disgust on his lips, Cory had crashed from his high. He rubbed the back of his head. Leroy stood at the open anteroom and reported to Randy.

  “Cory here says he was inside, asleep, and stumbled down the steps when the alarm went off. He likes to sleep at the top of the staircase. Knocked his head on an end table. He went through the house, and nothing appeared out of order.”

  Randy sighed. “All that work on his skull come from a night table?”

  “I’ll have my dad check the alarm,” Cory said. “Maybe get a nightlight.”

  Randy snorted. Shoved the form he was writing on a few inches away. “All right, for now.”

  Leroy led between the desks and paused at the front. Cory stood behind him. “You want, I’ll take Mae back to her car,” Cory said.

  “’Preciate you,” Randy said. “But I’ll take her back. I want to look things over one more time. You understand.”

  Cory grinned. Dimples. “See you later, honey.”

  Randy handed her a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  Mae placed the cup on the desk. “I guess this means we’re through.”

  “Let’s get another look at your car.” He remained standing.

  Mae stretched her back. Saw Randy appraise her chest.

  “Don’t forget your coffee,” he said.

  “Styrofoam emits xenoestrogens. But thanks.”

  She rode in the back of the Chevy Caprice cruiser and her thoughts returned to worry. An image flashed to mind: three terrified kids looking through the back window of a car speeding into darkness.

  She’d kill Cory yet.

  The rifle! She’d left it under the backseat blanket.

  Could she challenge Randy? Didn’t a search require probable cause? Or had the Supreme Court decided cops could do anything they wanted? She’d talk her way out of it. Wait—if Baer had the kids, wouldn’t he have taken them home in the car? Unless he wiled himself out of the thought. The rifle—she’d use Baer’s lo
gic. She had kids, therefore she had a gun. Randy would understand. Besides, it wasn’t concealed… yes it was. Under the blanket.

  Cory had been willing to drop the issue at the station. Did he still have the kids, or did he fear an investigation might escalate beyond his father’s protection? The window finger-print had to belong to Baer, and Baer owned the damage on Cory’s head. But what if the children hadn’t been at the house at all?

  And what about the rifle in her back seat?

  “You know, Mae, times are tough for women, and all.”

  “What’s that mean? And all?”

  “You got that cut on your face. We got Cory Smylie, back of his noggin looks like someone took a sledge to it. How long you and him been an item?”

  “An item?”

  “You don’t like a word I say.” Randy turned onto the road that led to the Smylie house. “What happened? He knock you around, and you come back for him? Maybe talk? Maybe settle the score?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to your eye?”

  “I fell and hit it on an end table.”

  “No call to get smart.”

  “I don’t appreciate harassment, Randy.”

  “Cory’s folks are out of town. You ain’t clear yet. Chief gets back and Cory gives him a different story, you might find yourself answering a new set of questions back at the station.”

  Mae looked through the windshield, saw her car beside the road. Randy slowed; Mae watched as they passed the Smylie house. Cory’s truck was in the driveway, and he sat like a sleepy sentry on the front step, elbows braced on his knees. He watched.

  “There’s your boy right there,” Randy said. “Waiting.” Randy parked behind Mae’s Tercel. “Anything you want to tell me before I search the vehicle?”

  Yeah—that rifle in the back seat—Cory stole my kids, and if you hadn’t shown up, I would’ve killed him. “I disapprove, on principle.”

  “Right.” Randy got out and approached the Tercel like it was a slumbering beast. He approached the passenger side, cast the flashlight beam over the trunk, license plate. He knelt and shined the light on the tire tracks. Back to the car. The rust hole on the trunk probably revealed the spare tire inside. Randy leaned close to the hole, then continued to the back door.