by Dan Lawton
The hospital felt Frank was ready to be released six months shy of his completed five-year sentence, and the judge agreed. It may have just been an overcrowding situation, but we didn’t ask many questions. No one did. Our father agreed to take Frank in and watch over him, so that might have helped, considering his status in the community at the time. When he died, I couldn’t just let Frank try to survive on his own. His symptoms are manageable with prescription medication, and social awkwardness is really the only lasting indicator of the disorder. He’s a little slow, certain people make him feel uncomfortable, and certain activities can overstimulate him, but for the most part he’s fairly normal. Whatever normal is.
---
it’s 8:15 A.M. and I’m walking up the stairs of City Hall and making my way toward Alicia’s desk. I push past the line of customers and nudge an old lady aside, then I press my face close to the glass that separates Alicia’s desk from me. Alicia’s eyes bulge and she’s apologetic to the line of people, especially to the old woman who I nearly knocked to the floor.
“What are you doing here?” Alicia sternly whispers to me through the glass.
“We have to go, now. It’s time.”
Alicia’s face lights up and she reacts without hesitation. I turn around, rush out of the building, and down the steps. I pull the van in front of the steps and wait with the engine running. It doesn’t matter if anyone sees us anymore as we’ll be out of here in a matter of days. Alicia comes storming out of the front door less than one minute later and she’s in the van moments after. I peel away as the door closes and head home to pick up Frank.
I whip the van into the driveway and park it halfway on the grass. Alicia and I open our doors, jump out, and run inside.
“Frank!” I yell as I kick open the door. “Get up, we’ve got to move!”
Frank falls off the couch at the startle. It takes him a moment, but he does slowly get to his feet and look to me. “What’s goin’ on?” he asks, still shaken from his surprise wake up call.
“It’s happening, get your stuff together.”
A giant smile comes across Frank’s face and he quickly rushes past me and into the spare bedroom, his bedroom, or mine depending on how you look at it, and disappears. He almost slips and falls again as his twisted sock catches the corner of the doorframe. Alicia makes her way to the end of the hall and slides into the bedroom. I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the number that is written on the open notepad on the table. It rings four or five times then goes directly to voicemail. I hang up and dial again. He answers before the second ring.
“Hello.”
“Is this George Sanders?” I ask.
“Yeah, who’s this?” his voice is deeper than I remember, although I didn’t hear too much of him besides what I overheard at the coffee shop.
“Do you know an Alicia Diaz?”
“Who is this?”
“Do you know an Alicia Diaz?”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Do you know an Alicia Diaz?”
“Tell me who this is.”
“If you know an Alicia Diaz, meet me at Josie’s Bar and Pub in thirty minutes.”
“What the hell is going on? How did you get this number?”
“I’ll be waiting.” I hang up before he can counter. I place the phone on the table and turn around. Alicia and Frank are both standing behind me, waiting. Alicia has changed her clothes and Frank has put some on. Alicia hands me a change of clothes and I take them from her. I strip off my uniform and put on the chosen outfit. “Kiss this place goodbye. We can never come back here again.”
I take one final look at my first home before leaving for good. I lead the way out the front door with Alicia and Frank trailing closely behind. They both carry some bags of personal belongings and supplies, and I have similar ones waiting for me in the van that I’ve had prepared for weeks. I kill the lights and lock the front door on the way out, leaving my uniform in a wrinkled mess in the middle of the kitchen floor for whoever to find.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
GEORGE
Back to square one.
Billy, Frank, and I are back at Snake's house, searching for something we missed. We're wearing our masks again just in case, although the busted front door should have aired the house out to a safe level by now. Billy is working on the side of the house, peeling more siding off near the hole where the safe is. Frank is sorting through the destroyed interior of the house again. I'm outside, walking the perimeter of the small yard.
Much of the grass is uncared for and burnt. I can tell the soil is sandy, so it's probably difficult to grow anything. Clumps of weeds crumble beneath me as I step. I scan the flatlands as I make my way around the perimeter, searching for the unknown. My shoes sink in the occasional weak spot as I make small squares inside of larger squares as I pace. A young garter snake slithers past me at one point, but nothing else catches my attention.
When my squares have covered the entire yard, I make my way toward the side of the house to check in on the progress Billy has made. The right side of the house is almost completely stripped of the vinyl siding, much of it broken into pieces on the ground below. Some of the wooden studs are rotted and splitting, which could be the result of termite damage. Billy’s not there, so I head inside.
The upstairs is empty and Billy and Frank are nowhere to be found. I can spot the van through the window in the living room, confirming they haven't gone anywhere. It would’ve been nice if they had. The door in the hallway is cracked open slightly and I hear a noise from behind it. I approach it, pull it open, and head down the stairs. I hold onto the railing as I climb down so I don't slip on the fluids left behind. Snake's body still lays on the concrete below. The mask conceals the smell of the decomposing body a bit, but my stomach still churns as I get closer to it. I shield myself and refuse to look directly at it for fear I may vomit in my own face. Billy notices me right away as I stumble around the corpse.
"What did you find out?" he asks.
I shrug. "Nothing, what about you?"
Billy shakes his head, then Frank does the same. Billy lets out a long sigh. He sounds exhausted. The basement is musty and dry and has a cracked window that leads out to the backyard. Some light is shining through the bulkhead stairway. Billy and Frank stand next to one another and talk quietly, trying to come up with a new idea I suppose.
Many of the pipes overhead are separated and cracked, probably from when Billy did his damage previously. A stack of collapsed moving boxes fill one of the corners and a nest of dead spiders fill another. Standard yard maintenance tools line the wall to my left: a rake, shovel, push-style lawn mower, and a garbage barrel full of grass clippings. It seems as if someone actually did care about this place at one point in time. That must have been before Snake moved in.
As the sun changes its direction outside, the small window moves a shadow away from the stairway leading to the bulkhead. I didn’t notice before, but a thin trail of something, maybe a water stain or line of animal droppings, lead toward the wall of landscaping tools. As I move closer to get a better look, it becomes apparent that the trail is actually a line of dirt. The dirt path leads directly to the barrel with the grass clippings. It looks like the barrel was dragged from the bulkhead staircase to its current position resting against the foundation wall. I’m no expert by any means, but it must be relatively fresh, or it would have been kicked around at some point from people walking through it. Curious, I crouch down next to the shovel and rub my finger across the blade. A line of dirt wipes onto my fingertip.
“Hey,” I say, capturing the attention of Billy and Frank, “check this out.”
They approach and Billy crouches next to me. “What is it?” he asks.
“This shovel has some dirt on it.”
Billy looks at me, dumfounded. “Yeah, that’s because it’s a shovel.”
Frank giggles, and the sarcasm pisses me off. I’m the one doing all the work here. I push it away. “So does th
e barrel. It feels kind of fresh.”
Billy swipes his finger across the blade of the shovel, just as I did, and a line of dirt imprints his fingertip. Billy stands and passes the shovel over to Frank, who grabs it by the wooden handle. Billy motions in the direction of the barrel, then Frank jams the head of the shovel inside. He tosses the first layer of grass clippings to the cement floor. Billy watches intently as Frank repeats the process three times over. On the fourth toss, a pile of dirt falls on top of the pile of grass clippings on the floor. Billy approaches the mess and looks into the barrel.
“The rest is full of dirt,” he says.
I stand and look into the barrel myself, confirming what Billy has just announced. Frank takes a peek too, feeling left out. Billy turns to me and meets my eyes; we’re both thinking the same thing I think.
“Why would there be barrel full of dirt?” Frank asks.
“Maybe someone dug a hole and there was some left over dirt,” Billy says.
I nod in agreement.
He continues, “And they had to put the extra dirt somewhere.”
Frank nods, but he doesn’t look like he understands.
Billy turns to me. “Okay, so where?”
I think about it for a moment and come up with an idea. “Can I see that note?”
Billy fetches the torn paper from his pocket and hands it to me. I study it briefly and hand it back to him.
“Do you have a compass?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BILLY
Alicia, Frank, and I wait in the van across the street from Josie’s Bar and Pub with an eye on the parking lot. Alicia is sitting next to me in the front while Frank is in the back, preparing for action.
Alicia and I are together now, as in a couple, and we’re most certainly on the same page. Our relationship has grown over the last six weeks, and I trust her completely. We haven’t slept together yet, but I’m working on that. Our relationship is still new, and we’ve had some arguments and disagreements, but I expect those to fade out over time as we spend more time together. I know she’s still having a hard time with having to do this to George, but it’s what needs to be done. She’s still not convinced about what should happen when this is all over, but there is no time to deal with that now. We’ll have to figure it out when the time comes.
It’s been just about thirty minutes since the call, so I expect George will be rolling in at any moment. Just as this thought crosses my mind, I catch his car whirling around the corner.
“Here he comes,” I say. “Right on time.”
Alicia tenses as she spots the car and Frank makes a strange noise in celebration from the back. I observe as George gets out of his car and makes his way toward the pub. I start the engine as George pulls on the double doors across the street.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say. “Hang on tight back there.”
I jam the van into gear and take off toward the parking lot. The tires squeal as I whip around the corner and speed toward George as he approaches his car. He stops and turns to face the van, then I slam on the brakes and spin the wheel hard to the left, whirling the back end toward him. The van comes to a stop and Frank pushes open the back doors. He reaches his arm out toward George, grabs his collar, and pulls him into the van. Before George can even process what has happened, Frank grabs my unloaded gun from the bench behind him and slams it into the back of George’s head. George falls face first onto the floor of the van and is knocked out cold.
Alicia gasps at the sound of the thud of George’s head hitting the floor.
---
We have made a few of changes to the old police station while we waited for the need to use it. With Frank’s help, I had installed one of those sensors in the back that will open the garage door when a vehicle drives over it. There is a minimum weight threshold needed to engage the sensor, which the van does meet.
To keep Frank busy and involved, I had him clean up the place a bit. I wasn’t going to hire a cleaning company, obviously, as the inspector suggested, but I agreed that it needed to be cleaned up a bit. We’re going to be spending quite a bit of time here for the next handful of days, so it needs to be livable. The final addition we made to the building is being tested out right now. Frank spent a couple days tearing up a section of the floor in the open holding area and installing a chair. He used a rented jackhammer and a chair we found in one of the old offices and cemented it to the floor.
Alicia, Frank, and I are looking through a two-way mirror that separates the holding area that George is in from the old interrogation room that we are in. Even though the lights are off in the room, we can see him pretty well thanks to the reflection of the light from our room against the mirror. George is strapped to the chair, his wrists and ankles tied to the arms and legs. He’s been unconscious for a couple of hours since Frank knocked him out in the van. The idea wasn’t to hurt him, but we needed to make sure he cooperated. We struggled to carry his limp body inside through the garage and keep him upright long enough to strap him down. He was breathing then, and I can see he still is now as the rhythm of his chest compressions have been regular and consistent.
Finally, George begins to stir. He gathers himself and looks around in a panic. It takes him a few minutes to realize that he’s strapped down, and he screams out for help when he does. I look to Frank and motion toward the door of the interrogation room. He leaves and heads toward the holding room. When Alicia and I are alone, I pull out a knife from my pocket and open it up.
“Wait,” Alicia says.
“What?” I hold the knife still as I wait further information.
“I can’t do this.”
“Jesus Christ, I thought we talked about this,” I snap.
“I know. We did. I thought I would be okay with it, but seeing him like this, I just can’t do it.”
“Well too bad. We’ve made it this far, there’s no turning back now.”
“But-”
“No. Not buts. You don’t have no choice in the matter anymore. You will do as I say or-”
“Or what, Billy? Are you going to shoot me?” She stares at me, challenging me.
“Don’t test me.” I stare back at her, and she backs down. “Now sit down so we can do this. Please.”
Alicia reluctantly sits in the chair that is in front of the two-way mirror and crosses her arms. I kneel down and stretch her blouse out in front of her. I use the knife to cut a jagged sliver into the material to make it look like it was torn in a struggle. I grab a handful of dirt and dust from the floor and rub it on to her knees. While still crouched in front of her, I loosely tie her ankles to the legs of the chair. I don’t tighten the knots, so she can move her legs freely if she wants, but it looks the part. I rise to my feet and do the same thing to her wrists.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I say, then I take a handful of her hair from the back and push it over her face before leaving the room.
A few minutes later, I head back to the interrogation room, steaming from George trying to attack me. He saw Alicia through the mirror and flipped. It served its purpose, but I didn’t expect him to act so aggressively that quickly. As I enter the room, I see that Alicia has freed herself from the chair and is violently pacing the room. She has tears streaming down her face.
“You son of a bitch!” she says, then she runs over to me and starts pounding on my upper torso with her open hands as she screams profanities at me. I catch her wrists and overpower her, pushing her against the wall with her arms above her head.
“Calm down.”
“You said you weren’t going to hurt him!”
“I had no choice, he was going for my weapon.”
Tears continue to pour down her cheeks and her makeup is starting to run. I take a deep breath and slowly release some tension from my grasp of her wrists. I move one hand down to her face to wipe the tears, but she slaps my hand away with her free one.
“I’m done. I can’t do this. I want out.”
Her resist
ance is starting to push me over the edge, and now is not the time to have this conversation. I grab her wrists again and push her with a greater degree of force into the wall. I can see the fear in her eyes as the frustration pours out of me.
“Stop,” she says, “you’re hurting me!”
“Shut up!” I grab the knife from my pocket and flip the blade out. I bring it close to her neck and I move my face close to hers. “The only way you get out is in a body bag. If you say another thing about it, I will cut your fucking throat and leave you to bleed to death on the floor. You got that?”
She looks helpless, and I feel a little guilty for that, but I need her to understand that I’m not screwing around. Not anymore. I pull the blade away from her neck and fold it before putting it back in my pocket. I slide my hand from her wrists and grab her around the waist.
I struggle to restrain her as she fights while I drag her down the hallway. She’s kicking my legs and screaming at me, but it’s all just noise. I swing open the closet door near the holding room and throw Alicia inside where George is already waiting.
“Two minutes,” I say. I think she falls to the floor when I push her, but I slam the door without getting a good look to confirm.
I pace up and down the hallway for a couple of minutes and try to regain my composure. I thought she had come around and was on my side and I thought that I could trust her. Obviously I cannot. I’m going to have to take extra precautions to ensure she stays in line. I was hoping to avoid this, but I’ve been preparing for the possibility of it. I’ll now have to treat her like a prisoner and not a partner in this. I hate to do it, but I can’t risk her trying to run. She has just made double the work for me.
