Punishment

by Scott J. Holliday

  Martinez typed and turned dials on the console. She secured the serum, prepped the needle.

  Barnes said, “Thank you for this.”

  “Yeah, well, I hear they’re still looking for help at the Bracken Institute.”

  “I’ll give you a good reference.”

  “Damn right you will.” She squatted to insert the needle into his arm.

  Arturo Perez stood in Parkview Memorial cemetery. A chilly wind ripped across the landscape and cooled the tears on his face. He looked down at three open graves in a row, each one with an expensive coffin lowered into it, piles of dark-brown earth beside. Stabbed into the rightmost pile was a pickax, its handle at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground.

  Perez’s mind was short-circuiting. Confusion pierced by painful jolts of light and sound. A chaotic swirl of emotions, physical senses, disjointed visions. Everything he saw squiggled. He looked at the grave on the left—his mother, Maria. A horrifying image of her dead body, bound, gagged, and flayed, ripped across his vision. It sent searing pain through Barnes’s left eye. In the middle was the grave of Perez’s father, Rodrigo. Another vision came, causing Barnes to blink and cringe—Perez’s father, stripped from the waist down and dangling by his neck from a rope in his kitchen, a white tank top stretched above his distended belly, his ankles bound to his wrists so there’d be room for him to hang. His tongue and genitals had gone purple. Barnes pushed back against the dumpster.

  On the right was the grave of Perez’s younger sister, Margarita. He’d found her bound spread-eagle to her twin bed, almost certainly raped before her throat was cut. The blood had pooled beneath her face, which had been carved with the markings of a sugar-skull mask.

  The Feros, Perez thought. They’d promised, should he ever cross them, what they would do to his family—Margarita in particular. They’d kept their promise, down to the final detail of her dead skin mask. “You know,” a smirking Randall Fero had said of Arturo Perez’s kid sister, “for only thirteen, she’s got some great tits.”

  Perez recalled the contract he’d made with the Fero brothers, a couple of well-known Detroit human and drug traffickers. They were running operations on both the Mexican and Canadian borders. Standing before his family’s southeast Michigan burial plot, Perez could feel the Central American heat, the scents and sounds of the cantina inside which his deal with the Feros had been struck. They would smuggle him and his family across the border and provide them with papers in exchange for five years as a drug mule between Detroit and Windsor. In Canada he’d meet with their contact, swallow a dozen balloons of heroin at a time, and bring them back over the Ambassador Bridge.

  Arturo had done three good months of running. In that short time he’d shat out nearly a thousand heroin balloons for the Feros. He’d pluck them from the toilet, clean them with a toothbrush and hand soap, and deliver them smelling sweet and on time, every time, until the day he came up one balloon short.

  Barnes’s eyes went into REM. He shook his head as a painful, jagged memory dragged its way through Perez’s mind. He arrived home from a trip to Windsor with his stomach taut. He hugged each of his family members in turn, spending extra time with his arms around his kid sister, reveling in her touch, the feel of her chest against his own. Afterward he headed straight for the bathroom. One balloon was lost in his system, caught up like a stubborn bowel movement. His intestines felt tied in a knot.

  After cleaning what he’d managed to pass, he left the house and delivered the goods on time, as usual. He explained to the Feros that he was one balloon short, and promised to deliver the final balloon after it arrived. The Feros laughed. Arturo recalled their smiling faces like demons, their teeth like fangs. They clapped his shoulder and assured him they’d take his delivery once it was ready, recommending he eat some of their mother’s pasta e fagioli to help things along.

  Perez went back home and sat on the toilet. He pushed and pushed until something happened.

  Unfortunately, the something that happened was the balloon bursting.

  Within seconds he fell off the toilet and was face-flat, his body shuddering on the mosaic floor tile. In the precinct parking lot, Barnes’s body trembled from the remembered overdose. His elbows banged the dumpster behind him. His eyes felt like they would pop.

  Perez barfed across the tiles before his throat constricted, pushing his tongue out and gagging him. His arms and legs went stiff. He could hear his family in the next room. They were watching VHS reruns of Seinfeld. He heard the front door burst open, heard Margarita scream as his vision faded to black.

  Arturo fell to his knees before his family’s graves. New tears erupted and spilled down. He’d saved most of what the Feros had paid him—envisioning a nice home in a clean suburb for his family—and now half the money was gone, spent on these burial plots, their well-adorned coffins. He screamed at the sky. It was like a megaphone of feedback in Barnes’s ears.

  Perez looked to his left, out across the cemetery. The land was riddled with headstones and crypts, but there was no one visiting. He scanned left to right across the entire grounds, all the way back to the archway at the front. No one. An ocean of loved ones lost, and no one to be with them, no one to care. His family, here in this unfamiliar land, had been given no funeral. There had been no preacher saying words above them. They only had their son, their brother, who couldn’t shit a drug balloon to save their lives, as witness to their interment.

  Arturo rose from his knees. He picked up the pickax and used it to begin shoveling dirt onto his mother’s grave. The tool wasn’t right for the job, but given time it would get it done. He chopped at the dirt, recalling his mother’s gratitude for what he’d done for them in working with the Feros. Her tears. The way they’d collected in the wrinkles around her mouth and traveled down to hang from her chin before falling to dampen her clothing. She had thanked him for finding them this new home, this new life.

  Arturo was caked in dirt by the time his mother was buried and the earth above her coffin was tamped flat. He threw off his jacket and began burying his father, recalling the man’s bloated body hanging from a rope, the strange shape of his bruised genitals.

  Barnes was exhausted by the time Perez began burying his sister. His arms hung limply at his sides, his legs were like fallen logs, his hands full of phantom blisters. The tireless Perez furiously chopped the dirt and scooped it onto his sister’s coffin. He recalled her smile, her laughter, her love for peanut-butter cups and milk. He watched her chase a butterfly, watched her hold a stiff upper lip over a skinned knee, watched her stand up to Mom and get slapped for her defiance. He recalled how much joy she’d expressed at her new American crush. A boy in her school. For a while it was only Andrew this, Andrew that.

  The bad memory followed. The day Arturo expressed his love to her. “Of course you love me, Artie,” she’d said, her smile dazzling, her eyes bubbling. “You’re my brother.” She reached up to touch his cheek. He gripped her wrist and pulled her close, kissed her lips.

  Margarita screamed.

  He let her go.

  She ran.

  Barnes felt pain in Arturo’s chest. An aching wound beneath the skin, the bones. The taste of the young girl’s saliva on Arturo’s lips.

  His family now buried, Arturo Perez walked through the empty cemetery toward the gate. His jacket was in his hand, his starched shirt now torn and tattered, his pants and shoes destroyed.

  “Hey!”

  Perez stopped, looked back. A thing stood there. He struggled to recall its name. Sharon something. He’d met it yesterday, bringing in his drug-mule money to buy the holes and coffins in which his family would rest, paying extra to expedite their burials. Through his malfunctioning mind he saw Sharon as a pig, frothy-mouthed and standing on hind legs, its trotters splitting wide at the ground to keep it balanced and upright. He blinked and shook his head, but the vision remained.

  “You’re pretty good with that pickax,” Sharon Bruckheimer said, showing sharp teeth and a fa
t tongue.

  Arturo stared.

  “You looking for work?”

  Arturo shrugged. He felt like the pig might look better bleeding from multiple wounds or yelping in pain. Maybe its head on a spike, vacant eyes.

  “Take some time to mourn. Come back when you’re ready. I’ll find something for you.”

  Arturo Perez passed under the cemetery archway. He began down the sidewalk. A vehicle pulled up next to him.

  “Thought you were dead in that bathroom.”

  It was Gerald Fero, or at least an animal wearing his face. He was leaning out the passenger side of a black pickup truck, an over-under shotgun pointed at Perez. Behind him, in the driver’s seat, was a pig wearing a Randall Fero mask. Perez wondered how they’d both look lying on the ground with holes in them, their legs twitching in death throes.

  “Can’t believe you survived a burst balloon,” the Gerald animal said. “Guess you weren’t trying to rip us off, after all.”

  Behind him, the Randall animal chuckled. “Want your job back?”

  Arturo shook his head no.

  “Wasn’t really a question, idiot,” the Randall animal said. “Take the job or my brother pulls the trigger.”

  Arturo dropped his jacket and spread out his arms. Barnes’s knuckles rapped against the dumpster wall. Perez stood there waiting. The Gerald animal shook its head in disbelief. It lifted the gun to its shoulder and fired.

  Darkness and silence.

  “End of transmission.”

  The Vitruvian Man test pattern.

  Please Stand By.

  Barnes popped the suction cups from his own temples. He pulled the needle out of his arm. Martinez was holding his cell phone, reading the screen. Barnes stood to find his legs unsteady, his arms throbbing in pain. The Fero brothers. They’d disappeared nearly a decade ago in what was thought to be a gangland hit. Gone like Jimmy Hoffa. No suspects. Now Barnes knew better. Squealer and Napoleon.

  “They’ve got a new crime scene,” Martinez said. “Just came in off dispatch. You know that teacher Dale Wilson had a thing for?”

  Barnes’s heart fell, his stomach shriveled. He steadied himself with a hand against the dumpster.

  “You okay?” Martinez said.

  She reached out for him, but he put up a palm to stop her. “Just tell me.”

  “Cruisers are headed to her place right now,” she said. “Something went down. No code yet. Just a nine-one-one called in by a neighbor.”

  Barnes took his phone from her. He checked the messages. After the dispatch message, there was a new one from Jessica’s number.

  10-3, good buddy ;)

  33

  Barnes turned off Plum Street to see red-and-blue gumball lights spinning and spraying the nearby buildings. The street was blocked by cruisers parked at angles. He slammed the brakes, threw it in park, and hopped out of the car. He ran toward Jessica’s building.

  His legs grew weaker as he approached. He stumbled, fell, got back up. Kept going.

  A uniform stopped him at the edge of the scene. He showed his badge and the man let him pass. He moved up the sidewalk toward the brownstone’s outer door.

  “You did this!”

  Barnes stopped and looked up. It was the umbrella woman from the second floor. She was crying, her face twisted in pain.

  “You led him here!”

  Her accusation cracked him, drained his value into the gutter. He continued forward in desperation.

  The brownstone’s outer door had been kicked open. It had fallen into the building. The wooden jamb was splintered. There were flower petals on the floor leading up the stairs. Barnes climbed the steps, smashing petals as he went, turning them dark. He heard voices and sounds from above. Men talking. Feet moving. He imagined Warden standing over Jessica’s dead body, shaving circles into her temples. He imagined her foot still sticking out from beneath the covers, just as it was when he left.

  He came around the corner to find her apartment door open. There were uniformed officers inside, technicians doing fingerprint work, flashbulbs popping and then warming back up with their high-pitched screams.

  Barnes stopped at the threshold. How long ago had he left? Three hours? He stepped into the apartment, looked left. The altar. It was stacked on the countertop in Jessica’s kitchen, three rows high. Sugar skulls lined the base in a variety of colors. There were candles and flowers, sweets, and tiny bottles of Cuervo Gold. On each of the shelves there were small black picture frames, nine in total.

  Barnes examined the pictures, starting at the bottom left. The first held the funeral program for Mildred Smith, the woman who’d given Edith MacKenzie the horse that would cripple her daughter. Mildred was smiling as she looked back over her shoulder in a professional photo session, her hand awkwardly touching her chin. Next came the program for Verna Philips, whose son, she said, would never amount to anything. Her photo looked like it was taken during a backyard barbecue. Chunk was there, at her side, his face round, his eyes buried. After that was the program for Robert Morris Chamberlain, unlucky enough to have been born to two crack addicts. His photo was that of a newborn child wearing patches and wires.

  The people in Barnes’s head cried out at the sight of their loved ones lost. Barnes gripped the countertop to keep his balance. He glanced at the remaining programs until he came to David Fulmer, a face he recognized. The strangest immortalization of them all. This man had been killed by his own sister, who was then killed by a madman because she never visited his grave. If that wasn’t odd enough, the man who killed her had built an altar to him. As the wicked witch might say, What a world.

  “I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry.” Nancy Fulmer.

  Barnes came to the top of the altar. The photo here wasn’t from a funeral program, but a cutout from a newspaper article covering the untimely death of young Richard M. Barnes, tragically taken too early. Hit by a train while trying to cross the tracks on his bike. No mention of the chain snapping and trapping him there, helpless.

  Barnes walked away from the altar toward the bedroom. His heart pounded as he neared the door. There were voices inside, officers moving, elbows and feet flashing in and out of his vision. A female officer was standing with her back bent over the bed. Jessica was there.

  Not dead.

  She was sitting up, elbows on her knees, eyes closed and facing the female officer, who was wiping the paint from her face. She’d been painted into a death bride—a skull of white, dark circles around her eyes, teeth painted over her lips, which had been stretched to the point where they cracked and bled. She’d been crying. Her wrists and ankles were ripped and raw where she’d been bound. Her hands shook.

  This is what Barnes had brought to her door. This is what it meant to know John and all his friends. To try to love them. A searing pain emerged in Barnes’s stomach. It made its way up through his chest and into his head, where it locked on like a vise.

  He backed out of the doorway.

  34

  Barnes arrived at Calvary Junction. He parked his car at the gas station where Mania Challenge had once been, where he and Ricky had played so many games. The station was open. There was one man pumping gas into an SUV. Barnes waited for the man to finish and drive away, leaving the gas station empty save for the old attendant inside, whose head was bent over a magazine.

  Barnes got out of the car and dropped his keys on the asphalt, peeled off his jacket, and threw it on the hood of his sedan. He went to the three white crosses at the junction, knelt down before them, and looked for Ricky’s name.

  There.

  Richard M. Barnes. His own handwriting from twenty years ago. Someone had written another name over most of it, but he could see Ricky was still there. Barnes kissed his fingertips and pressed them against his brother’s name.

  The ground beneath his knees began to shake. The crossing came to life with its bells and lights. The barrier arms came down. Barnes stood. He moved past the near barrier arm and onto the tracks. He stood on the
ties and faced the oncoming train. The train grew as it approached, blooming like a thundercloud on the horizon. The cinders at his feet began to hop. He reached toward his jacket pocket for the coin purse, but the jacket wasn’t there; he’d taken it off at the car.

  Barnes ran from the tracks, ducked the barrier, and sprinted back to the gas station. There was a second car parked next to his own. He grabbed his jacket, reached into the inside pocket. Empty. The train sounded its horn. He checked the left outer pocket. Empty. He checked the right outer pocket. The coin purse was there, next to the bag of salt Jessica had given him at the cemetery. He snatched up the coin purse and started back toward the tracks but found himself tackled to the ground.

  Barnes turned over to find Jeremiah Holston getting up, dusting himself off.

  Barnes got up to run, but Holston shoved him back down. “Stay down, moron.”

  Again Barnes tried to run, but Holston grabbed him and threw him against his car, pinned him there with his body weight. Barnes looked over Holston’s shoulder. The train barreled through the junction. A big Canadian Pacific, pulling boxcar after boxcar overflowing with black coal. The nearby leaves lifted into the air, the barrier arms rippled in the wind.

  Too late.

  Barnes screamed. He head-butted Holston, sent him reeling. He ran toward the train and whipped the coin purse at the passing cars. It exploded against the rusty metal, sending quarters flying. He stopped and fell to his knees when he saw the serial numbers painted on the outer walls of the passing cars.

  CP-898412 . . . CP-878527 . . . CP-965471.

  35

  Barnes snatched up his keys from the asphalt. He put on his jacket. Holston was leaning against his own car. He held a wadded tissue over his left eye to stem the dripping blood.

  “You’re still following me?” Barnes said.

  Holston shrugged. “Slow day at the office.”

  “Why do you care what happens to me?”

  Holston sighed and looked off. “I gotta sleep at night.”