by Lee Thompson
*****
Nina was not expecting the reporter—Caitlin Reno—who had interviewed Richard Stark about his daughter’s disappearance, to question her over the phone, and she was just as surprised to find that she liked, if only for a moment, to be able to give someone else something they needed. At that point in time she had no idea how involved she was in other people’s troubles, or how much more those problems would escalate into a cataclysm of events that would violently strip her of her innocence.
She sat at the kitchen table and listened to her stepfather recount Victor’s visit to her mother. Rick paced the living room and kept telling her that he thought he should go out first thing tomorrow and buy a shotgun. He knew how to use it and Nina was old enough that she wouldn’t play with it and he could keep it loaded and near the headboard of their bed.
Their chatter made it difficult to hear the reporter, and Nina was tired from all the activity lately, and really all she wanted to do was take a hot shower and bury herself beneath her covers, hoping that she would be able to sleep without dreaming.
“I can’t hear you,” she said. “And I’m tired. Can you call back tomorrow?”
Ms. Reno grunted, then breathed sharply through her teeth. “How about we meet tomorrow?”
“Okay. Call me in the morning. We could set up a time to meet.”
The reporter thanked her. When Nina set the phone on the table, she saw her mom crossing the room, this little woman, this powerhouse who worked in the steel room at the Maytag plant, and her mother wrapped her arms around Nina’s shoulders and hugged her without saying a word. At first Nina didn’t know why she was doing it until her mom asked her, “Are you okay?”
And she thought about how easily Victor had subdued Clint’s dad and the patrolwoman. She realized her head was a mess. She thought, He could have shot them right in front of us, with their own guns, and then he could have come across the street for me and Rick…
She patted her mom’s upper arm because her mother was squeezing too hard.
“I’m fine,” she said, “but you’re killing me.”
Her mother laughed nervously, straightened and wiped her eyes. She sat at the table. Rick made coffee. He said, “That guy, Victor, the cops will pick him up. Friendly is going to have a personal grudge with him, and no cop likes someone assaulting one of their own, much less two in one sitting. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about seeing him again.” It sounded like a lie, which was something Nina wasn’t used to from him. He shrugged and looked away from her and her mother and raked his fingers slowly through his hair. She could see the top portion of his dog tag tattoo sticking out of the top of his shirt. He didn’t talk about what he’d done as a soldier, but she imagined that he’d been very brave.
Then the doorbell rang and all of them looked at the window, then each other.
She said, “Don’t answer it.”
Her skin felt cold and her breathing labored. She didn’t think anybody should have to worry about a psychopath taking a personal interest in them, and she wondered, briefly, if Richard and his wife’s feelings of violation were worse. She imagined so. Probably much worse, and she was ashamed of worrying for herself and her family when other people actually had horrible events happen to them, but she couldn’t help it.
She said, “What if it’s him?”
Rick walked into his bedroom and came back out with a baseball bat. His forehead shone with sweat and his eyes were red-rimmed. The muscles in his sunburned arms bounced. He looked determined to protect his home but there was no illusion trapped in his eyes of what would happen if he attacked Victor. Nina had never thought about her mother or Rick dying, and doing so now, made her feel like crying.
Her mom said, “We can’t cower.” She pulled a butcher knife from a drawer and took a deep breath, walked to the front of the house as whoever was outside rang the bell again. The air felt hot and still in the house. It looked too dark outside, as if someone had shot out the streetlights.
Nina could see it all so clearly, what would happen in the next few seconds, almost as if it were a premonition: Her mother opening the door, Victor grabbing her by the throat, lifting her off her feet, her kicking wildly as his fingers crushed her windpipe, and the fear bright in her eyes, brighter even than the anger that lived inside her, the frustration how someone could come into their life uninvited and slaughter them like cattle.
And he would, he would slaughter them all…
Then she heard her mother open the door for real; saw Rick moving into the hallway, carrying the bat; found that she could not move, both of her arms braced on the table.
A moment later, Rick walked back into the room. He said, “Just a visitor for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Clint.”
She was happy, very happy. A tear slipped down her cheek. Clint came into the kitchen. Her mother’s face was paler than normal, behind Clint. She said, “Why don’t you pour us some of that coffee, honey? I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway. I’ll grab the kids some orange juice. That okay with you Clint?”
He nodded, his eyes locked on Nina’s and hers locking on his. He looked confused, yet still had those boyish good looks, his soft hands smoothing creases in his jeans as he sat at the table, and said, “You guys okay?”
She nodded. “How is your dad?”
“He’ll survive,” he said. He looked at the window, the darkness outside. “He’s never had anybody do that to him. I think he’s a little shook up. He’s brave though, is what everybody is saying, they say this guy is a mountain, that he makes my dad look small.”
“He does,” Rick said.
Clint nodded. “Dad thought his old Corps reflexes would kick in and help him, but now he’s drinking a lot again, and he says he’s gotten soft. He says he knows that guy could have killed him without any trouble at all.”
Rick nodded again.
Clint said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad scared of anything. He is now, but he’s mad too. They’re going to find that guy and probably beat him to death.”
“It’s understandable,” she said. “Victor didn’t do anything to me and I’m shook up.”
Rick said, “Your dad is lucky, if you ask me. So is that lady cop.”
“Lucky?” Clint said.
“That guy held their lives in his hands. He could have snuffed their flames,” he said, snapping his fingers, “easy as that. They should just let him find the guy he’s looking for and go back to where he came from. They confront him and there could be collateral damage. He could have killed us just for being witnesses to the beating he gave your father and that woman. Men like that don’t feel anything. Their eyes are completely dead, they’re like a hollowed out tree that a strong wind could blow over and whoever is standing in the way is going to get squashed.”
Clint trembled. He shook his head. “Nobody knows who he is?”
“I think Rick is right,” Nina’s mom said, “he’s a hitman or something. He followed that guy here. Jacob. They’re both from New York from what Nina told us.”
“He had a picture of Jacob and his wife, he showed it to me and Dad,” Nina said.
Her mom put her hand on Rick’s shoulder and squeezed, smiling. He smiled back up at her. They seemed proud of Nina all the sudden and she didn’t understand why.
Clint lifted his chin. “My dad says he’ll have a record. Anybody who can do that to two cops like he’s swatting flies, doesn’t remain invisible. I don’t know. I don’t think they should bother him, like you said, Mr. Torrent. Just let him find the guy he’s looking for and do whatever he’s going to do, you know? It’s not our problem. That homeless guy probably stole from him or something. But then there’s another part of me that would like to meet up with him, for what he did to my dad, and show him that he can’t knock people around without some type of consequences, you know?”
He cracked his knuckles. Nina thought he might have that young boy fantasy of defending his father, but she kn
ew that it would be suicide if Clint did find Victor. It’d be suicide for Clint’s dad if he found him.
She pushed back from the table and helped her mom fill two coffee cups and poured orange juice for her and Clint. When she sat back down, he said, “Are you guys worried about him coming back around?”
“We’re worried,” Rick said. “But there isn’t anything we can do about it but be ready if he does.”
“I just wanted to make sure you guys were okay,” Clint said.
“Thank you,” Nina’s mom said. She patted his shoulder absently. The coffeepot made a lot of noise during the break in conversation, but the kitchen smelled wonderful to all of them suddenly, it smelled safe and familiar, as if it were any other normal evening.
Nina glanced at the window again. With the interior light reflecting off the glass it was too dark to see if anyone was sitting in the gazebo or on one of the benches at the playground across the road. She sniffled. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep at all, and for some reason it made her angry.
She said automatically, “There’s a reporter that wants to talk to me.”
Clint wiped at his face and his hand trembled slightly. “About the strangers?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”
“Does all of this tie into that little black girl getting kidnapped, you think?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
She looked at her mom and then Rick.
They looked back at her sadly, as if she were slightly stupid.
“I don’t,” she said, thinking that if she sounded serious enough they would think she was. But she didn’t know what to think other than the timing was too close together for them not to be related, and that broke her heart a little because she had thought, had believed, that she’d seen something beautiful, albeit sad, in Jacob.
Nina shrugged. She said, “Maybe I was wrong about him.”
5
Jacob stopped at a gas station. There wasn’t much traffic out, but then he realized there were only about forty-thousand people in the whole town and that was a drop in a bucket compared to Manhattan. He asked the clerk for a phone book and searched for anyone with Santana’s maiden name but didn’t find a single lead. He gave the phone book back and walked outside into the warm autumn air feeling defeated. It would have been easy to beat himself up about not bringing her down to her old stomping grounds before her death, but he was sick of feeling sorry for himself when she was gone and he had the privilege of living. She would have wanted him to make the most of it, and she would have told him that focusing on what he’d lost would have darkened the good memories they’d shared.
For a brief moment he could almost feel her presence, as if she were there walking beside him and his palm tingled and he closed his fingers around her hand but couldn’t find the courage to look over and see a spirit in the dusky hour, the shadows stretching long around them and the wind and trees swaying high above him.
It seemed he passed a church every few blocks. He walked into a dirtier part of town. He could still sense a presence nearby but when he spun around he didn’t see anyone following him. The shacks that lined the street were grimy and buckled. For a moment the world seemed to take on an otherworldly quality. His limbs felt like feathers and his breath grew shallow and tiny black dots filled his vision.
Terrified of another hallucination, not wanting anyone to see him talking to himself, he paused for a moment and listened intently for the sounds of traffic and a dog baying, but he could hear nothing but his own exhalations.
He turned slowly in a circle and watched a dark cloud speed across the sky. He feared, if only for a second, that he had just watched a whole day pass in the span of a few seconds. The weight of his limbs returned when he looked back down the street, and he could smell his body odor, and taste the sourness in his mouth, the weight of Santana’s ashes in the hoodie’s belly pocket.
There in the distance was another church, this one made of rough stone that seemed to glow softly beneath a streetlight. He had no idea what denomination it was and didn’t care. He had never been one for church and God had seemed mostly useless as something to pray to. It confused him a little why he was closing the distance and how he ended up on the wide concrete steps staring at the heavy, mahogany double doors, and feeling as if he was about to enter a fortress. He thought the doors might be locked at this late of an hour. But the one on the right pulled open easily despite its size. The smells of the church were foreign to him.
Friday
Richard had not slept well. When he woke Friday morning, Loretta was already up and he didn’t think she’d slept at all. She was in the kitchen and breakfast was on the table, cooling. When he asked her if she was okay she ignored him. He ate in silence. He thought and rinsed his plate. He called the detective who had talked to him. Williams, Reeve’s partner, said that they would check for local sex offenders in the area. He got on the task quickly and called Richard back within two hours.
“I hate discovering things like this,” the detective said.
“What?”
“There are ten sex offenders within a half mile from your residence.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I wish I was. The good news is that only three of them are child predators, so that cuts the odds down.”
“You’re pissing me off,” Richard said, “you ever hear of sensitivity?”
“I mean, it’s easier for us with it only being three child predators. We can interview them quickly, get on their premises and search their property for any sign of your daughter. It’s a good thing.”
Loretta was watching him talk on the phone. Her expression about broke his heart. He knew how badly she wanted her daughter back, and how much she wanted to rip him apart for not saving her, but she didn’t know how bad he felt, she couldn’t imagine it because she was in her shoes, not his. He didn’t think about anything except how he had left Robin there by herself thinking that she’d be okay, she’d always been okay before, and he couldn’t help but think about how all it took was one time: One time to fuck your life, fuck yourself, fuck your marriage.
And where was their Robin? And what kind of shape was she in? Lord knew he would give anything, including his own life, to get her back. But God wasn’t answering his prayers, at least not yet. He’d always thought that God was like that, God liked to make a man sweat it, and then when you think all is lost, you find some saving grace, and everything is right in the end, you learn how to accept what happened and salvage what remains, and move on even if past events have crippled you…
2
Despite what Nina had said the night before about possibly being wrong about Jacob, she took to the streets Friday morning as soon as Rick left for work. Her mother was still sleeping. As she crept outside, wearing a hoodie because the day was still cool in the midst of its birthing, she noticed the park was empty and felt a pang in her stomach. Not just because Jacob had never come back—although that was part of it, her being worried that he was either wandering around, or more alarming, that the man Victor had found him—but mainly because she knew that a little girl had been playing over there and someone had lured Robin away, and Nina knew what evil men did to each other, let alone to one so small and helpless.
She didn’t understand how anybody could hurt another grownup, let alone a little kid, especially someone so small and young. Tears stung her eyes as she thought about how helpless and afraid Robin probably was at that very moment, the same moment that everybody else except Robin’s parents and the law enforcement agencies working her case carried on as if the child had never existed, which to those who didn’t know her, she never had…
Nina wiped her tears away, and walked down to the corner convenience store where she suspected Jacob had used his credit card and Victor had traced it to the area. A dark-skinned man sat behind a thick plate of bulletproof glass. He ignored her when she came in. His hair seemed to thin more every time she saw him and som
ehow he always managed to look more bored than he had on her previous visit. He slowly turned the pages of a newspaper without reading anything, glanced at her for a moment and then looked away. She wandered the aisles until she found what she was looking for. She had very little money and couldn’t afford it, so she stuck the small can of pepper spray into her pants, beneath her hoodie, and swallowed hard, a bit ashamed.
She felt a little bad for stealing, but not as bad as she would feel if she was out on the street and Victor grabbed her, and she wanted something to protect herself with, and as bad as some parts of Cleveland, Tennessee were, it wasn’t anything like Chattanooga or Memphis.
If Victor came for her, planning to take her to some remote place where he could extract what she knew through devilish means, she would prevent it by spraying him in the eyes and running. It seemed a simple plan, one that, on the surface, appeared reasonable to her. Then she thought of how easily he had beaten the two police officers, both of whom were armed, and that bad feeling she had about stealing went away. On her way toward the counter she grabbed a pack of Skittles and carried them to the metal tray. The cashier yawned, spun the tray, scanned the item and told her the price. She paid, tried to avoid looking guilty, and fled the store.
On the street, a couple blocks over, she pulled the pepper spray from its packaging, tossed the wrapping in somebody’s garbage can near the road, and cupped the small, cold tube in her right hand. She looked around. There wasn’t anybody out yet, at least not on the back streets. Most people would be on Ocoee Street, or Keith Street, or buzzing around Lee University. She had the urge to walk that way, toward the university, to try and catch her sister. She was a little angry with her for not coming home to check on their family after a child had been taken and Victor came knocking on their door. But then again, she didn’t know if Patricia even knew what had happened. It wasn’t like their mom let those things slow down her own life, or Rick for that matter, though both were set on edge, poised to do something, she didn’t know what, but she could feel it. And she could feel it in herself. At first she didn’t know what it was, why she was really out, and then it came to her quickly: She needed to see where Jacob was staying to see if there was any trace of Robin Stark’s presence wherever he’d set up camp.
