by Iain Levison
No dogs barking, but you could never be too sure. A dog would ruin everything right now. If there were no dogs, he could get inside the middle house, but he’d have to wait until the person or people watching the TV went to bed. What to do if there’s a dog? Take off running again, Dixon figured.
He sat down far enough back in the trees to remain hidden, even if someone came out onto the back deck. As he leaned his head back against the cold, hard bark, a wave of exhaustion hit him. He was running out of steam, he knew. He’d lost some blood. He couldn’t wait out the night here, he’d pass out. The neighbors would find him torn and bloody under a tree with a pistol in one hand and a bag of money in the other. Think they’d find that suspicious? Get the fuck up, he told himself. No sleeping here.
Dixon struggled to his feet and walked as cautiously as he could over to the window with the flickering lights. Friday, the best day for a bank robbery, was also the worst for a home invasion, because everybody stayed home on a Saturday morning. Couldn’t sit and wait for people to go to work. Maybe some guy in this house had fallen asleep in front of the TV, and he wasn’t getting off the couch until tomorrow morning. The window was wide and low, and if Dixon approached the house at the right angle he would be able to see in.
The night was so quiet that he could hear the TV clearly. The window was open. Damn, now he’d have to be extra quiet. There was some canned laughter. More dialog, more canned laughter. Dixon could see the couch now. There was nobody on it. This was weird. Had they just left the TV on for a pet? Just as he was about to go right up to the window and peer in, an arm came into view and dropped down again. The fucker was on the floor!
He heard a man sigh. Then a girl stood up, naked, and looked around. “Have you seen my bra?” Dixon clearly heard her ask.
Dixon was right out in the open. If they turned on a light, it would illuminate him right in the middle of the yard. Fortunately, a loud, braying commercial came on at that very second, and Dixon used the excessive noise to cover a quick approach to the side of the house. He hunkered down just outside the open window, where he could see in, but duck down if need be.
He felt his heart thumping and heard his breathing coming too heavily, and he made an effort to breathe quietly. The girl was still looking for her bra. “It was a sports bra,” she was saying. “It was really expensive. I can’t go home without my bra, my parents’ll kill me.”
Her parents? What was going on here? The man stood up, and Dixon got a full view of him. Early to mid-thirties, physically fit but slight, not the kind to do manual labor. He had an air of daintiness about him.
“Look under the couch,” he said.
The girl found her bra and they both began dressing. She pulled on a loose-fitting sports T-shirt, on which Dixon could clearly read the words “West Tiburn High School Lacrosse”.
“I think I got everything,” she said, picking up a book bag.
The man went over and stood next to her, reached down and kissed her. “Bye,” he said.
“If my parents ask, you were just helping me with my homework.”
“Why would they ask?”
“I’m just saying. If they ask.”
“OK. What were we studying?”
“Physics.”
“I’m not good at physics.”
“Look, just tell them that,” said the girl, sounding exasperated. “They don’t know what you’re good at. They just know you’re a professor.” Even without the T-shirt, Dixon could tell she was a high school girl by her exaggerated emotion.
This was getting interesting. And useful. Dixon didn’t get to be a thirty-nine-year-old career criminal by not knowing how to make lemons out of lemonade.
“Bye,” the girl said quickly. Then she looked around the room. “Do you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
“Coming from outside,” she said as she left toward the front door. “It smells like gasoline. Did you leave the grill on, or something?”
“The grill’s propane,” said the man. “And I haven’t grilled anything today.” Their voices grew fainter as they left into the front hall.
“Seeya,” he heard the girl say, and then the sound of the front door closing. The girl’s footsteps grew fainter, then, as Dixon was about to go around the side of the house, they grew louder again. She was going to the house next door. A motion detector triggered a light on her front porch as Dixon watched her take some keys out of a bag and fumble with them for a second, then let herself in.
Well I’ll be damned, Dixon thought. Mr Professor here is banging his neighbor’s daughter. Mr Professor came back into the living room – Dixon ducked back down again – and this time he seemed to be sniffing the air. Then he walked over to the window, closed it, turned off the TV and went upstairs to bed.
Elias White was having a bad dream. The instant he awoke from it, he could hardly remember it, but he knew it was bad. He was trapped inside something, he remembered that much. Maybe people were poking him with sticks and taunting him. He didn’t want to remember, shook his head and blinked, and became aware of an overpowering odor of gasoline in the dark room.
“What in God’s name is that?” he mumbled to himself. He turned over on his pillow, hoping it would go away. He took a few deep breaths, but the gasoline odor nearly made him gag. Irritated, he reached up and turned on the lamp on the bedside table.
And screamed.
And instinctively made some attempt to shrink up into a fetal position, his legs kicking savagely under the heavy covers.
“Hi,” said Dixon.
Sitting in Elias White’s father’s favorite velvet-covered chair was a man who stank of gasoline, his face and hands caked with blood, wearing a torn and rumpled business suit and holding a big silver pistol. He was smiling.
“Who . . . who . . . ohmigod.”
“Settle down a minute,” said Dixon. “Just relax and don’t say nothin’. We’re just going to sit here and look at each other for a few minutes, OK?”
“OK.” Elias could feel his heart racing, almost painfully. He opened his mouth and took in gulps of air, feeling himself about to black out.
“Breathe easy,” said Dixon. Elias found his voice oddly comforting, confident and almost paternal. But obviously it was a delusion, because this man was a psychopath who broke into people’s bedrooms in the middle of the night, and he was planning some psychopathic thing. So the voice didn’t really matter. He had clearly been doing psychopathic shit to people for a long time. Elias could tell there was no reaction he could have that this man hadn’t seen before, which was why the intruder seemed so confident. So the low-key, relaxed manner, which Elias knew was supposed to make him feel at ease, was actually giving him the chills.
He waited for the man to talk, but the man didn’t talk, just looked. He had an intelligent eye, was taking in not only Elias but everything around the room. The bedroom was small, and the furniture had mostly been chosen by Elias’s mother some thirty-five years before. The man was looking at the hope chest at the end of the bed, then at the Indian-motif bedspread, which had been a gift from Ann a few years ago. And then at the ceiling, where a carpenter had recently replaced the broad, maple beams.
“What’s your name?” the man said finally.
Elias breathed out, long and hard. “Elias. Elias White.”
“My name’s Phil Dixon,” the man said, and Elias noticed a heavy southern or western accent. Not from around here. He was holding the gun loosely, Elias saw, as if he wasn’t terribly concerned with it right now. That had to be a good sign.
“I got some problems, Elias,” the man said.
Elias nodded. He didn’t want to hear what was next. He imagined the man was going to reveal he heard voices, voices instructing him to kill people in their bedrooms, and that if he didn’t do it some terrible shit would happen to him.
“I want you to help me with them.”
Elias nodded again. Oh god, here comes the psychopathic shit. Elias noticed a black laun
dry bag at the man’s feet bulging with something. Probably rope and knives and duct tape. If this guy came a foot closer, Elias was going to start screaming and fighting and . . .
“Are you a doctor, by any chance?”
“A doctor?” Elias’s voice was almost a whisper. “I have a doctorate . . . In history.”
“That’s about as fucking useless as it gets,” Dixon said, almost conversationally. “You want to hear about my problems?”
Elias nodded. What the hell else was he going to do? Here it comes. He’s going to tell me about his weirdness and then try to do some shit to me with whatever is in that black bag.
“A cop in New Jersey shot me today.”
That wasn’t too weird. Sounded pretty rational, in fact. And it explained the blood dripping off the chair onto the white throw rug.
“I think I’m losing a lot of blood,” he said.
“Yeah,” White said, suddenly thinking the situation might not be as unmanageable as he first suspected. He pointed at the throw rug. “I think you are.”
“I’m gonna need some blood, Elias. A one-pint bag of type A positive blood. Do you follow?”
“I’m O negative,” Elias said.
“I don’t want your blood, you fuckhead,” Dixon snapped, and it made Elias feel surprisingly more at ease. The easygoing persona that Elias had feared developing into pure evil weirdness had been replaced by a human with emotions, someone whom Elias could reason with and understand. As soon as he heard the word fuckhead, Elias White knew he was going to live through the night. “What do you think, I want you to be my donor?”
Elias just stared.
Dixon continued slowly, as if he were talking to an idiot. “I want a pint of type A positive blood. Maybe two. I want a professional, a phlebotomist or a nurse, to give it to me using sterilized surgical equipment. I want someone who knows what the fuck they’re looking at to have a look at this bullet wound. I think the bullet went through me, but I need some shit put in there to prevent infection. I need it all bandaged up and I need it done right. And most of all . . . most of fucking all . . . are you listening?”
Elias nodded.
“I want some fucking painkillers.”
Elias nodded again. “They have all those things at the hospital,” he suggested. “Would you like me to drive you there?”
Despite himself, Dixon laughed. The laughter caused a pain to shoot through his side, and he winced.
“No, I don’t want you to drive me to the hospital. But I do want something to eat. Let’s go downstairs and get something to eat. We’ll talk while we eat. I’m fucking starvin’.”
“Eggs,” said Dixon as he pulled up a chair at the kitchen table. “Cheese and eggs and sausages, if you got ’em.” He was no longer pointing the gun at Elias, because by now the guy knew he had it, and that was usually enough. You didn’t need to keep making your point. But Dixon did need to watch the exit routes, back up the stairs or through the back door, and he chose the chair with the best view of both. Elias looked like he wasn’t much of a fighter, but Dixon figured he could move pretty fast if escape became an option.
“I’ve got eggs, but no cheese or sausages,” said Elias.
“Make what you’ve got.”
Dixon watched Elias’s hands as he took the eggs out of the fridge. They were shaking slightly. A little fear was good. If they were shaking too much, Dixon would have to sit him down, talk to him again, calm him down. He wanted a rational conversation, not the usual sobbing and begging. If they weren’t shaking at all, that would be bad, too. You had to be extra careful if the hostage wasn’t scared.
Elias fired up the frying pan, threw in some butter. He was preoccupied enough with cooking now that Dixon could start talking again.
“Who’s that little filly you’re carrying on with next door?”
Elias had been about to crack an egg over the frying pan. He stopped and stared. “She’s a friend,” he said finally.
“A friend, huh?” Dixon leaned back in his chair. “You get naked on the floor with all your friends?”
Elias broke two eggs and looked at him, as if wounded by the remark. “Is this what you do, then? Go around and spy on people?”
Dixon laughed, enjoying himself. He could tell when people were acting. This guy was angry, but didn’t have the steel to show anger, so he went with playing hurt. Dixon leaned back in his chair and drank in the warm, greasy smell of the eggs, aware that his mouth was watering. God, he was hungry. “How old is that girl, anyway?”
“Early twenties,” muttered Elias. “Or something like that. She locked herself out.”
Dixon had held enough people hostage at gunpoint for long enough to know a danger period was approaching. Elias had already undergone a minor attitude shift. He had become accustomed to being a hostage, now, and his mind was starting to whir. Dixon could read his eyes and body language. His speech had dropped in volume, a sign that he was trying to speak and think at the same time. He was thinking of poisonous things he could put in the eggs. It was natural. Dixon didn’t hold it against him, but he did say, “When you hand me those eggs, if there’s anything on the plate but eggs, I’m gonna shoot you before I eat ’em.”
Elias looked at him, wide-eyed with the terror that Dixon had noticed subsiding.
“That includes salt and pepper.”
“I’m just frying eggs,” Elias said, with such an exaggerated sense of innocence that Dixon knew he had pegged him dead on.
“Well, keep fryin’ ’em, then.”
“OK.”
This guy had been showing a little fire, but now it was out again. He was going to be a great hostage. He had very little steel in him, Dixon figured, the type of guy who lasted in prison by hooking himself up with the White Aryan Brotherhood so the coons wouldn’t use him for a sex toy. He wasn’t even as clever as he seemed at first glance. Professor or not, Dixon liked his chances at staying one step ahead of him.
“Early twenties, eh?” Dixon asked. “I put her at about sixteen, tops.”
“She’s older than that,” Elias said, staring at the eggs.
“Let’s you and me stop the bullshit,” Dixon said, as Elias dumped the eggs unceremoniously on a plate and tossed the plate down in front of Dixon with enough force for him to be able to detect a burning hostility. Showing fire again. Good. And he was going to put it out again. “Get me some fucking shit to eat with,” he said with a motion of the pistol. Elias dug into the drawer for some silverware and Dixon wolfed down the two eggs in about five seconds. “Make some more.”
Elias opened the fridge and cracked six more eggs as Dixon continued talking.
“As I said, let’s stop the bullshit, OK? That girl is the neighbor’s daughter and she’s not sixteen yet and you and I know it . . .”
“She’s seventeen,” snapped Elias.
“Oh, now she’s seventeen. A minute ago she was in her early twenties.”
Elias stared at him, and Dixon knew he was reeling from being tricked so easily.
“I even doubt that. I think sixteen tops.”
“What do you care?” Elias asked, with a hint of resignation, like he already knew the answer.
“What’s the age of legal consent around here?” asked Dixon.
Elias said nothing.
“What if it’s eighteen?” Dixon pushed. “That’d put you and me on the same side of the law, wouldn’t it?”
Elias dropped several eggs onto Dixon’s plate, then a couple onto his own, and sat down across the table. “What did you do, anyway? I mean, why did a cop shoot you?”
Dixon felt he had made his point and permitted the subject change. Blackmail was a sleazy affair, and he wouldn’t even touch it were he not so desperate. He wanted the discussion over with. “I have a career in weapons-based financial reallocation.”
“I . . . I’ve never heard of that.”
“I rob banks.”
Elias nodded, as Dixon watched him piece it together. “So you robbed a bank tod
ay?”
“I did.”
“And afterwards you decided to come to my house?”
“Wasn’t a decision, really. Just wound up here.”
“Hmm,” said Elias, finishing his eggs, standing up and putting the plate in the sink. “So that black laundry bag . . . that’s . . .”
“The money,” said Dixon. He realized that this information was comforting Elias, that this small-town college professor had expected to be killed, but was now noticing a logical thread behind Dixon’s actions. He was starting to understand The Deal. “You let me stay here for two weeks, until this wound heals up, until I get my shit together and everyone stops looking for me, and I don’t say a word about the girl. Sound like a deal?”
Elias was looking at him, and Dixon could read his thoughts. To agree would be to admit that he wanted the incident with the girl kept quiet. Up until now, he had been pretending it was no big deal, that he wouldn’t care if the whole town knew. But Dixon was from a small town, too, and he knew better. Especially this guy; young, ambitious, aggressive. Dixon didn’t know how long this little affair had been going on, but he knew people weren’t supposed to know.
“If my parents ask, you were just helping me with my homework,” Dixon said, mimicking Melissa’s voice.
Elias shook his head, pale. “Jesus, how long were you out there?”
“Long enough. Look, this is an old house. I’ll throw in a couple of thousand to help you fix it up after I’ve left.” Dammit, why did he just offer that? Guilt over the blackmail, over making this man put his head in his hands. Why had that been necessary? Who hadn’t sinned? “You keep your mouth shut about me being here, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Got it?”
Elias took Dixon’s plate. “Two weeks?” he said, as if he had a choice.
“I’ll be gone in two weeks.”
Elias shrugged as he began washing the plates, his shoulders hunched. “You gotta take a shower, though. You must take a shower. Now. You’re making my whole house stink of gasoline.”
It took him half an hour to get his clothes off. The dress shirt had sealed itself into his wound as the blood had dried, and he had to carefully peel the cotton away from the bloody, damaged skin, and as he gently yanked out each thread it was a new experience in agony. Tears streamed down his face and blood started pouring down his ribcage and splattering on the white linoleum tiles of the bathroom floor. By the time he was finally naked, the pain had exhausted him to the point that all he could do was slump against the cool porcelain of the bathtub, his tear-streaked face pressed against the tiles.
