by Tawni O'Dell
Right now, I wouldn’t mind having my .45 with me. I have a bad feeling about this latest out-of-state plate with a tie to Shannon. Not to mention that things are also starting to get personal. Whoever is renting this car and walking around with a revolver is much too close to my home and my town.
I walk back to my car and write down the name and address and credit card number off the rental agreement and the car’s license plate in a small notebook that I use to keep track of my jobs.
My skirt doesn’t have any pockets to put my keys in so I take everything off the key ring except my car key and hook it on the side of my bikini underwear. I slip my cell phone inside a leather strap inside my boot that’s traditionally used for holding a hunting knife. I put the rest of my keys and the bullets in my glove compartment, lock my car, and start following New Jersey’s trail down the side of the road.
It’s not hard to do. He’s left large, obvious footprints in the mud on the side of the road and the tracks are fairly unique for this area. He’s definitely not wearing the kind of shitkickers most men wear around here. I’d say from the point of the toe, the lack of tread, and the deep indentation from the heel that he’s either wearing cowboy boots or a slick pair of Jersey ankle boots made for clubbing.
The tracks end suddenly when he decided to sneak off into the woods. He didn’t pick a very convenient place to do it. The ground slopes upward, and the undergrowth is thick and brambly. I can see where he slipped and grabbed hold of a branch of mountain laurel that broke off in his hand.
He’s not much of a Boy Scout. I wonder what they’re teaching Boy Scouts these days if they’re giving Girl Scouts anti-stress badges. I suppose they’ve had to adapt to modern-day concerns as well. Gone is the badge for silently tracking wildlife; it’s been replaced by a badge for stalking women across state lines. This guy couldn’t have earned either.
But I will give him credit for figuring out how to get from the road to my property through this roundabout, inconvenient, unnecessary way. He could have driven to my front door and parked in my driveway and been less conspicuous to a passerby, but he apparently wants the element of surprise on his side. He wants to ambush Shannon with a gun. What has she got herself into?
I easily follow his trail through the woods. Before I get close enough to see him, I hear him: sticks snapping underfoot, branches swatting against denim, sporadic quiet cursing.
He finally comes into view. He stops next to a bare old oak, stuffs his gun into the back waistband of his jeans, and lights up a cigarette. He’s wearing a white T-shirt that makes him stand out against the naked, gray trees like a surrender flag. He’s immaculately bald with a bushy, jet-black mustache.
I study him a moment longer, deciding if I can take him. He’s not a terrifically big guy—medium height and medium build—but he looks to be in good shape. The muscles in his arms are well defined, and he has the pumped swagger of a guy who lifts weights.
I could try and have a friendly conversation with him, but I doubt if that would get me anywhere. I could head back to my car and probably arrive at my house before he gets there. Then if he makes his presence known, I’ll be armed, too.
I could call Clay with the car rental information and have this guy picked up for trespassing and carrying a concealed weapon—which I’m also willing to bet isn’t licensed—even though the land isn’t posted and a gun charge is meaningless around here, but that would mean letting people find out about Shannon, and I don’t want that to happen until I know the whole truth for myself.
I wait until he’s done with his smoke and starts moving again, knowing he’ll be unsteady and preoccupied.
He takes his gun out from his waistband and holds it casually in front of him at hip height. It’s chrome- or nickel-plated and throws off glints of silver as he makes his way through the trees. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to run into in these woods. The scariest thing out here, by far, is him.
I get as close to him as possible without him hearing me before I rush him. He starts to twist around just as I’m on top of him, and I hit him full force in his side with my shoulder like I’m trying to take out a linebacker.
The awkward angle of his body and the unexpected force of mine slamming into him makes him lose his balance. He takes a tumble onto his back but still manages to hold on to his gun.
Before he can gather his wits about him, I bring my boot down on his wrist with all my might. He cries out and releases the gun, and I kick it away from him before he grabs my leg with his other hand and tosses me off him.
I’m back up on my feet before he’s on his. I call him an ugly prick, wanting to make sure he comes after me instead of going for his lost revolver.
When he does, I duck his swing and stick out my leg while grabbing the front of his shirt with one fist. His speed and weight carry him forward over my hip, and he flips over onto his back again.
He’s winded but not down for the count. He goes for my leg again as I make a break for the gun. I feel his grasping hand slide down my calf, trying in vain to get a good grip on me. I yank my foot free, leaving him holding my boot.
“Okay, stand up very slowly,” I tell him once I have the gun—a chrome-plated .357 magnum—held two-handed in front of me, pointed at his head.
My heart is beating so loudly, it’s hard to hear the sound of my own voice.
“And put the boot down nicely.”
He glances at my boot in his hand then whips it as hard as he can off into the woods.
“You son of a bitch,” I snarl at him, my attention being briefly averted by the sight of my dearest footwear somersaulting through the air.
He takes advantage of the distraction by making a move toward me, but I recover quickly and train the gun back on him.
“I should make you get on your hands and knees and crawl over there and find it for me.”
“It was ugly boot,” he says flatly with an accent, possibly Russian.
His eyes are as black as his mustache.
“Let’s see some ID,” I tell him automatically.
I realize instantly how stupid I sound under the circumstances. He does, too, and gives me a slow, mocking smile.
“ID? You sound like cop.”
“Ex-cop.”
“You? You were cop?”
The smile is a grin now.
“Who did you protect?” he asks me. “Ballerinas?”
“I knocked you on your ass twice. What does that make you? The Sugar Plum Fairy?”
He continues smiling as he reaches into his back pocket.
I lower the gun to his crotch.
He holds his hands up and tries to look harmless. It doesn’t work.
“I just want cigarette.”
He waits for me to nod my approval.
“I know you’re not Mike Kennedy,” I tell him, “the name on your car rental agreement.”
He shakes a cigarette out of his pack and pops it between his lips.
“I’m very impressed. I see you were famous detective in your day.”
He pauses to light up with a lighter behind a cupped hand.
“Why you care who I am? It makes no difference.”
I meet his black stare. Short of shooting his balls off I know I’m not going to get him to tell me his name and even then he might not do it. Plus it doesn’t matter. He’s here at someone else’s request; that’s the name I want and the reason why.
“I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say you’re out of your element, Boris. Otherwise, you really suck at this.”
“Suck at what?”
“Your job. You did a very poor job of tracking this girl. You left your car parked on the side of the road where anyone can see it.”
He takes the cigarette out of his mouth and waves it at me unconcerned.
“Nobody drives here.”
“But the few people who do are going to notice. You’d have more anonymity parked on the side of the busiest highway in New Jersey.
“You should have rented a car in PA so it would have PA plates,” I continue. “You left the car doors unlocked so anyone could go through your stuff and your trunk.”
I wait to see if this bit of information ruffles him, but he remains unmoved.
“You left a trail through the woods that would make an elephant proud, and you’re wearing a white shirt that makes you visible from a half mile away.”
I finish by asking him point-blank, “Why are you stalking her?”
“I’m not stalking nobody. I’m tourist who walks in the woods looking for small furry creatures.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m not talking to you.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You think I’m afraid by you?”
I shoot. The .357 jumps in my palms. The recoil climbs up my forearms while the explosion shatters the silence of the woods and starts my ears ringing. The bullet flies by his head close enough for him to feel the breeze.
His hands leap to his ears, and he falls to his knees.
“Shit!” he shouts.
“How much do you know about her?” I ask him with the gun still pointed at him.
He picks up the cigarette that fell out of his mouth and puts it back in his mouth as he gets slowly to his feet.
“Do you know I’m her sister? Do you know my son is a county deputy? Do you know I used to be a cop around here and I still have a lot of friends in law enforcement who would be more than happy to help make sure no trouble came to me if I decided to shoot some smart-assed Russian in the balls? Do you know anything about me? About my reputation? About my dislike for balls attached to rude men? Do you know I’m having a bad couple of days?”
I shoot again. This shot is closer than I intended. It grazes his shoulder. A tear appears in the shoulder of his T-shirt, quickly followed by a small red stain.
He makes a noise that sounds like he’s coughing. I assume he’s swearing in Russian.
The cigarette falls to the ground again.
“Okay! Stop with shooting!”
He touches his shoulder with two fingers and stares incredulously at the blood.
“A friend sent me to talk to her.”
“Talk to her?”
“Yes.”
“Sneaking up on her through the woods with a gun?”
“She promised them baby. It was all arranged. They pay her lots of money then she leaves. The wife of my friend, she’s crazy now. She never leaves house. She takes pills and sits in baby’s room all day.”
He examines his shoulder more closely. I think he’s more upset over the ruined shirt than the damage done to his arm. He doesn’t seem to feel much pain.
He stoops down to pick up the cigarette again and returns it to his mouth.
“My friend finds out she’s pregnant again, he decides this baby must belong to them. He asks me to convince her to give them baby. I’m here to have persuasive conversation with her.”
“You were going to rough up a pregnant woman? Just because she changed her mind and decided to keep her baby?”
Even as I say the part about keeping her baby, I know it’s only wishful thinking.
“She doesn’t keep her baby,” he confirms for me, “which is probably best for baby. She sells it to someone else for more money. This is no ordinary pregnant woman. You say she’s your sister? Then maybe you can’t see what a monster she is. She sells her babies just like farmer sells his pigs for sausages.”
It’s hard for me to hear this about my sister, but the more I learn about her, the more prone I am to believe the worst.
“I’m not defending what she did, but I still don’t see that it makes her a monster and I sure as hell don’t see why it would turn your friend’s wife into a fruitcake.”
“She did terrible things to this poor woman and for no reason,” he tells me. “It wasn’t even to get more money.”
He smokes and stares confidently into my eyes.
His own eyes remind me of the pieces of bony Shannon and I used to find on the side of the road. I knew what they were but I let Shannon believe they were black jewels in the rough. We polished them and kept them in a jar until one day Dad found us on the front porch with our collection laid out, shining darkly in the sun, and he sent all the pieces flying into the yard with a kick of his boot and told us it was shit coal, bony, slag, worthless.
I picked up as many pieces as I could find after he left. Shannon didn’t want to have anything to do with it once she found out it wasn’t anything special, but I still thought it was pretty and definitely not worthless.
The Jersey Russian begins to regale me with tales of Shannon’s behavior.
“She sent her condolence card on Mother’s Day, which says, ‘With my deepest sympathy,’ and inside she writes it was too bad this lady never could have children herself.
“One time she threatened to have abortion and sends her pictures of dead fetuses, you know, the pro-life propaganda shit? Another time she tells her even if the woman adopts baby she’s going to come back someday when baby is older and tell him she’s real mother and he was stolen from her. She tortured this woman.”
I tighten my grip on the gun. My arms are trembling from the aftermath of the shooting, not from the physical act as much as from the fact that I haven’t shot at a person in a very long time.
“Who’s your friend?” I ask him.
“It’s unimportant.”
He takes a step toward me and I tell him to stop. He smiles and shrugs and takes a step backward.
“How did you know where to find her? No one knows she’s here. How did you even know she was pregnant again?”
“Kozlowski.”
“Kozlowski?” I cry and instantly regret allowing too much emotion and surprise into my voice.
“You know him? That Polish pimp. He arranged everything.”
“He told you she was here in Jolly Mount?”
“He told my friend she was here. Kozlowski promised him baby but told him she will need encouragement besides money. Even if he’s making my friend pay plenty.”
“How much?”
“More than ballerina cop can dream. Maybe you should make babies like your sister. Then you wouldn’t have to dress like redneck whore.”
I have to use every ounce of my self-restraint not to shoot him. He seems to sense this and bursts out with a deep, hearty laugh.
“You don’t look very happy with me anymore. What are you going to do with me now? Is it time to shoot my balls off?”
“You’re going to go back to New Jersey and tell your friend he’s not going to get this baby either,” I tell him icily. “Tell him he has my condolences, too. I can’t help it if his wife can’t have a baby. Or maybe it’s him. Maybe he shoots blanks. Too bad. Some people just aren’t meant to have kids.”
His black eyes sparkle with what I think is rage. I brace myself in case he decides to try his luck and charge me, but he takes another long drag off his cigarette instead.
“I agree,” he says. “And I don’t like the wife of my friend, but out of respect for him I won’t give him your entire message, only the part about condolences.
“So I can go?” he asks me.
“Yes, but I’m keeping your gun.”
“Oh, that’s tough for me,” he pouts and shakes his head in mock sadness. “I’ll never be able to get another one.”
I lower the revolver. He doesn’t move immediately. He turns his back toward me and looks off through the trees down over the hillside.
A chill passes through me. I’m not sure if it comes from the events of the past fifteen minutes or the ongoing drop in the temperature. I glance above me. The sky is a dirty white and ready to burst with either snow or sleet.
“I feel very bad,” the Russian says, turning back around to face me. “I feel like we got off on wrong foot. At least let me go get your boot for you.”
“I can get it myself.”
“Please.”
He starts walking
in the direction where he threw my boot.
I don’t see any harm in it. I’m going to let him go anyway. What are my options? I’m not going to involve cops. For the time being I don’t want anyone to know what Shannon’s been doing.
And I’m not going to shoot him. I’m tempted but not tempted enough. I slip his gun into the waistband of my skirt and consider leaving and heading back to my car without him, but I want my boot.
He spends a couple minutes searching for it. I have no trouble keeping track of his white shirt.
He comes walking back toward me, victorious, holding the boot aloft.
I’m usually a good judge of people’s characters and intentions, and I also have great reflexes. These are two qualities that served me well as a police officer and as a woman who spent a fair amount of time hanging out in bars.
I’ve decided that the Russian—although potentially deadly—has currently been rendered harmless by a combination of my defensive skills and feminine charms. Plus he has nothing to gain by trying to harm me at this point.
He gets closer and closer, swinging the boot at his side, until he’s standing directly in front of me.
By the time I realize I’ve misread him, my reflexes can’t help me.
My hand leaps to the gun in my waistband, but I’m too late.
The boot catches me full in the face, blinding me, causing my nose to gush with blood, and making me stumble backward.
He tackles me to the ground and easily rips the gun from my hand. He could shoot me or he could stand up and walk away and it would be all over, but he chooses to straddle me and hit me instead. A slap; not a punch. Not too hard. It’s meant to make a statement, not to necessarily cause pain in a face that’s already burning from being smashed with a boot. I know the difference well between a blow only meant to harm and one meant to show dominance.
I spit at him. Flecks of my own blood appear on his face. He jerks his head away and I take advantage of his momentary discomfort by jamming the heel of my hand into the balls that I should have shot off when I had the chance.
