American Crow

by Jack Lacey

  I thought about leaving a message for a second then clicked off, cursing. I preferred to talk to her directly, as it was always more personal and always got the better response. That just left the protesters’ café to work a fresh lead in the meantime...An unsettling thought filtered through my mind. What if she had been in the house when the trouble had happened?

  ‘Shit...’

  I eyed the floor again and the chaotic mess. Then I stooped down to pick up one of the broken pictures ripped from its wall mounting. The photo was looked to be of Nancy, crouching down by some river, taking what appeared to be water samples. In one corner was some writing in italics:

  ‘Cumberland mountains, 2008’

  I eyed the biologist intently. Her long hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail this time, revealing more of her attractive oval face and easy smile. She looked happy and relaxed, as if she’d just shared some pertinent joke with the owner of the camera.

  I put the picture back on the wall carefully then stepped back out into the living room, wondering if it was her work that had courted such trouble, then felt a strong hand suddenly grabbed my wrist.

  ‘What the...’

  I flew head first towards the hearth and landed hard on my hands and knees. Quickly, I rolled to one side and tried to set myself up for a defensive kick, but the attacker’s reactions were sharper than mine, and I felt the unforgiving metal of his gun smack hard across my temple. I groaned and threw a lame punch as I fell forwards, then glanced up a final time in a daze, as the stranger brought his weapon down again and again...

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘the forest’

  When I woke up it was dark as it could be, and I was tied to a tree, which judging by its smell was in some sort of pine forest. It felt late too - perhaps the early hours…

  I blinked several times willing my swollen eyes into focus, then stared at the two imposing figures slowly morphing out of the darkness opposite, sat on what appeared to be an uprooted tree as they enjoyed a smoke.

  As if on cue, a streak of moonlight lit up their faces suddenly, revealing one with scruffy brown hair and pig eyes that were far too close together, and another with wispy red locks, sporting a blank expression.

  I scanned them warily, my head thumping. They both looked thickset and in relatively good shape from what I could make out, but not heavy in intelligence judging by their agricultural haircuts and dress sense. I wasn’t there for a picnic whatever way you looked at it...

  ‘What do you want with me?’ I said calmly, trying to appear unfazed.

  ‘We want to know where the girl is you’ve been looking for?’ the guy with pig eyes asked, sounding agitated.

  ‘A girl?’ I said playing it dumb.

  Red-head walked forward, clicked on his torch and shone the powerful beam in my face, making me turn my head to one side in an attempt to escape its brightness. He looked like the guy who’d attacked me at Nancy Stringer’s house.

  ‘We also want to know what your business is with that biologist bitch?’

  Red-head’s tone was more menacing than his partner’s.

  ‘I was looking for somewhere to stay. A friend of a friend said to tap her up if I was in town. That’s why I went around to her house.’

  ‘Bull-sheeit,’ Pig-eyes said sarcastically, strolling up to join the interrogation.

  ‘Yeah, why were you sneaking around her house carrying a poker?’ Red-head pushed, his body tensing like some coiled spring about to snap.

  ‘Well, you can’t be too careful these days can you?’ I said, bracing myself for what I knew was coming. ‘I was worried her house may have been burgled when I got there. You don’t know anything about it do you?’

  I heard his hand cut through the air before it struck the side of my face. I took the hit well even though it was a heavy blow, then stared back at Red-head unfazed.

  ‘Now let’s quit all this nonsense speak. We know why you’re here, boy,’ he continued, a little calmer for his outburst.

  ‘You do?’ I said my face stinging in the cool night air.

  ‘Sure.’

  He edged closer, so that his face was inches from mine, so that I could smell the tobacco on his breath, see the violence in his eyes.

  ‘Just like the other two fellers who have been sticking their noses in. You’re not wanted around here, boy, and if you value your balls, you’ll just turn around and head back to where you came from. You geet it?’

  He prodded a thick finger into my chest, reinforcing his point. I didn’t like that.

  ‘Look, I don’t want any trouble, guys. I’ve come down here looking for someone’s daughter as a favour. And I haven’t found her okay...so I’ll be heading home.’

  Red-head pulled away slightly and looked over at his partner.

  ‘What do you reckon, Irwin? Do we believe him?’

  ‘Don’t reckon we do,’ Pig-eyes replied lightly, making him sound all the more sinister.

  ‘You’re right. I don’t trust this one, at-all...’

  ‘It’s alright, it’s not the first time,’ I said, trying my best at humour.

  It fell flat.

  ‘Maybe we need to teach him a lesson, like we did the other guy,’ Red-head said casually.

  ‘Yeah, this one’s a snake in the grass, I do declare. You gave our friend the slip on the way down here, didn’t you, boy?’ Pig-eyes probed with an unnerving smile. ‘You see, we tried being nice to the last snooper who came around these parts, and he ended up not getting the message either.’

  Now I knew why Henry Deacon had been dumped by both detectives. They were leant on big time, because they’d been treading on the wrong toes...

  ‘I’m sure he was taught a very severe lesson...’ I replied eventually, feeling more and more uneasy.

  ‘Very severe,’ Pig-eyes said, walking away as if to get something of importance from his truck.

  When he returned I knew what it was, and why he needed them. He was holding a pair of vicious-looking pliers. Industrial. The other guy stared at me without expression, as his partner walked behind me, whistling as if he were on some Sunday stroll.

  I readied myself for the torturous pain that I was sure was forthcoming, then cracked a smile to show Red-head I still wasn’t intimidated. I’d been subjected to worse in the past after all. Much worse...

  ‘Look guys...we can talk about this, can’t we?’ I said, trying to save my fingernails.

  ‘You know where the girl is?’ Red-head pushed again.

  ‘No. That’s why I’m here. I told you that.’

  ‘What do you want with the Stringer woman?’

  I looked at him confused.

  ‘I was looking for somewhere to stay.’

  He shook his head as if disappointed.

  ‘You were thinking that she might know where the girl was, right? You’re just another of them private investigators, aint ya?’

  ‘No.’

  Red-head changed tact.

  ‘When was the last time you saw the girl?’

  ‘I haven’t, yet.’

  ‘Why are you trying to find her?’ he snapped, his patience wearing thin.

  ‘Because her father is worried about her…I’m just a friend trying to help out. He hasn’t heard from her in over six weeks, okay. She’s only just turned eighteen for Christ’s sake...’

  I looked into his dead eyes and knew my explanation had fallen upon deaf ears.

  ‘You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, boy,’ Pig-eyes whispered from behind, his rancid breath violating my eardrum.

  Red-head cracked a smile as I felt his accomplice’s hands grab mine. Then I tensed as the cold, hard flange of the metal pliers clamped firmly around one of my fingernails.

  ‘So if we let you go, you’re going to head straight back to Minnesota and just fly right on home, is that it?’

  ‘I swear on my mother’s life, the Queen’s and anyone else worth knowing…yes,’ I said, bracing myself for the excruciating pain that was abou
t to hit me.

  ‘And you’ve never met the girl?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked me up and down.

  ‘What do you reckon, Irwin?’

  ‘I think he might cause some trouble if we don’t teach him a lesson first, Billy. He’s just like the other guy we caught…a lying-Commie-fag.’

  Red-head tilted his head to one side as if thinking about it.

  ‘Yep, that’s why we buried him…alive. Let’s do it, Irwin.’

  I felt the pliers press down hard onto the nail, then clamped my teeth tightly as the nail was wrenched from its housing in one easy action, the resulting pain burning its way up my arm as if I’d been plugged into the mains.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘You don’t know who you’re fucking with, boy,’ Red-head sneered, pulling out a cigarette from his top pocket casually.

  ‘Sure I do,’ I said, grimacing in agony.

  ‘Now, in the morning, you’re going to tell us everything you know about the girl, and why you really want to find her,’ he reiterated, spraying me with flecks of spittle.

  ‘I’ve told you everything already, okay?’

  ‘We’re going to leave you to cool down for a bit and think things over, then later if the bears haven’t got you during the night, we might just come and cut you down...’

  Pig-eyes checked my bindings then headed off after his colleague, melting back into the darkness as if he’d never been there. Eventually I heard their pick-up growl into life, then saw its tail-lights flicker and fade like some prowling monster that had come to check on its prey.

  When it was quiet again I started wrestling furiously with the bindings, intent on not being there when they next returned. After five minutes of struggling I realized it was futile. These guys knew how to tie a rope if nothing else…

  I rested my head back against the bark, cursing under my breath as I tried to think of a plan. A few seconds later, a twig snapping close-by, curtailed my ramblings. I stared out into the darkness for a shape or an outline. Nothing. Just the heaving shadows of the damp forest where I’d been left for the night.

  Did they get bears in this part of the world as they’d said? Or were they just trying to scare the hell out of me? Hell if I knew. A bird squawked overhead suddenly making me tense further. Was it warning me that some beast was indeed lumbering my way, sensing defenceless prey?

  I wrestled in my bonds desperately, puffed out my chest and pushed out my arms trying to create a millimetre of slack, trying to create something to work with, without success. Gradually everything fell silent again; unnervingly so…I took a deep breath and exhaled heavily then decided to save my energy until morning when I’d need it more. There was nothing I could do. Nothing…

  My mind drifted. Who in the hell were these guys working for anyway? Whoever it was, they’d tailed me since Minnesota and were connected to Tony Lutz. So either they knew about me before the gallery and were just waiting for me to turn up there, or Finch himself was under surveillance and I’d walked straight into some other heap of crap that Olivia had got involved in as well.

  If it was the latter, then it looked as if Tug’s brother-in-law was being watched because of something that was going on down in Kentucky. Was he linked to Nancy Stringer and the protests in some way? He didn’t seem the type to be interested in any environmental concerns. If anything, he hated that sort from what he’d said.

  Whatever way you looked at it, a straight forward search for a teenage girl had become a damned quagmire, one that I now had unwittingly walked into, right up to my frigging neck…

  I worked through all the possible scenarios, over everything Lenny had told me before I’d left, then Henry, his housekeeper, and finally Izzy. Something was glaringly wrong and I just wasn’t seeing it. Had Olivia jay-walked into something seriously heavy, and it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was there something else going on that I hadn’t been privy too from the very beginning, that Lenny knew about as well?

  I thought about the private investigators who’d been scared off, then the last who sounded as if he’d been killed. Whatever these thugs were trying to protect, it was something serious enough to warrant a load of guys armed to the teeth, tailing people, trashing people’s houses, and pulling peoples’ fingernails out over.

  I shook my head bewildered then felt exhausted all of a sudden. My mind was in a fog, as dank and murky as the Kentucky forest I was now tied up in. I tried to relax and think of a plan then quickly gave up. I was just going to have to wait until morning to find out then face the consequences. Whatever they ended up being...

  *

  I must have fallen asleep, for how long I wasn’t sure, until another set of headlights yanked me back to the sinister forest. Instinctively I tried to raise my hands to shield my eyes from their glare, until I realized that I couldn’t again.

  The lights went off for a few seconds, then on again, just as my eyes were re-adjusting to the darkness. The same sequence continued for a good half an hour, until the truck retreated slowly back into the trees leaving me alone once more.

  I drifted for a while semi-conscious, then fell asleep for a few more hours until the growl of an engine roused me again. I looked up in a numb haze as the same set of headlights worked their way back to the clearing and repeated the same pattern of torture. This time I kept my eyes closed until I heard the truck reverse away and finally fade back into the night.

  When I woke for a third time it wasn’t bright lights or the sound of the truck that greeted my awakening, it was the snap of branches behind me. This time closer...

  ‘What the…’ I murmured, coming around.

  I stared into the night, my heart thumping wildly. Jesus, I hoped that it wasn’t some fucking bear fresh out of hibernation that had picked up on my scent. Whatever it was, I couldn’t do a damned thing to protect myself. I was easy meat.

  Another eerie sound echoed out. I wondered if it was simply pig-eyes and his friend returning, trying to mess with my head.

  ‘Fuck you…I know you’re out there, you idiots!’ I yelled feeling exhausted.

  No reply.

  I heard a muffled crunch, as if a rotten log or branch had given way under the weight of something sizeable.

  ‘I said I’d leave in the morning, okay. I’ve got the message...’

  No response again. The sound worked its way nearer. I felt the vein thump painfully in my neck as my pulse rate increased. God, was this how I was going to go out? Eaten alive in the fucking wilderness, my remains never to be found?

  Something rough and wet flicked the back of my hand suddenly, making me jump. The beast was directly behind me now. Behind me.

  ‘What the...’

  I felt a warm tongue curl itself around my fingers, stinging the open wound where the nail had been pulled.

  ‘Mother of God…’

  I shut my eyes as the beast snorted, then watched in muted horror as its massive silhouette lumbered slowly out of the darkness to my left. I drew a sharp breath and held onto it, fearing it would be my last, then saw the faint outline of antlers shape-shifting through the night towards me. Antlers. It was a deer. A fucking deer…

  ‘Oh my god.’

  I lowered my head with relief as it trotted harmlessly back into the trees, then laughed hard for a while, feeling almost euphoric that I hadn’t been attacked or eaten. Jesus, I’d almost shit myself there for a moment...

  I shook my head in disbelief as my exhaustion returned, then felt the darkness of the forest wrap itself gently around me as I slipped slowly into unconsciousness once again, just happy to be alive…

  *

  When I tentatively opened my eyes again, it was sunshine not headlights that greeted my awakening. I eyed my immediate surroundings warily. I was still alone...I licked my cracked lips desperate for water, then felt a sizeable water droplet land on my head as if to goad me.

  I looked up and stretched out my tongue, waiting an age for another tha
t didn’t come as the chatter of the dawn chorus broke all around. Cursing, I lowered my head, then stared out into the forest, annoyed and dehydrated.

  Wherever I had been taken was pretty remote, otherwise they would have risked me being discovered by some passing hiker or hunter. And it looked pretty damned wild judging by the groundcover. The only signs of human interference were the sets of footprints my captors had made when they’d walked in, and those they’d made when they’d left...

  I drifted for a while in an uncomfortable haze, until a bird squawking in the distance heralded the return of yet another vehicle. This time I hoped the pricks would cut me down at the very least, or put me out of my misery. I’d reached my limit...

  A few seconds later the engine fell silent, then a door slammed ominously. I stiffened. Finally, a solitary figure broke from the trees and headed straight for me. As the person got closer I realized it wasn’t one of the original guys who’d tortured me previously. It was Tony Lutz, the gunman from the barn. I looked him up and down. His face was a mess, but he was looking mightily pleased with himself.

  ‘Hey, how ya doing?’ he said casually, as if we’d just met in the supermarket.

  I stared at his bandaged hand, then at his black eyes and tried to suppress my amusement, then realized I probably looked worse.

  ‘I’m great...How are you?’

  ‘Thought I’d better check on you, buddy,’ he said with a smirk. ‘God, you look a bit rough...’

  He unzipped his jacket and stuck a thumb in his belt like some smug cowboy.

  ‘That’s real kind of you, Tony. Did you bring me some water?’ I asked, knowing my request futile.

  ‘Sure. It’s in the truck.’

  ‘Can I have some?’

  ‘If you’re good?’

  I felt my nerves tighten like piano wire.

  ‘What does that mean?’ I said, watching his hand snake its way into his jacket.