by Lee Thompson
He parked the Lincoln on the shoulder an eighth of a mile past Friendly’s residence, just now realizing that he should check the pistol’s magazine to make sure it was loaded. He took a minute to familiarize himself with the weapon. He found the magazine catch and released it from the well. There were bullets in it. He replaced the magazine and it felt solid against the heel of his palm. He pulled the slide back and released it quickly, watching a bullet seat itself in the chamber. He decided to leave the safety on until he was close to the house. He took the car keys with him, out of the car, across the shallow ditch, into the woods bordering the road.
It took him five minutes to reach the edge of the yard. The house had a beaten look to it, an ancient look, its clapboard sides faded and parts of the shingles baked nearly to nothing from the sun.
He figured there were about twenty yards between him and the front door. He could sprint it easily, but then what? He saw no vehicles in the driveway and couldn’t be certain anyone was home. The choices between waiting for someone to return and confronting them in the driveway, or breaking into the house (would a cop’s home have an alarm?) were tough to choose between.
But a few minutes later, with the shadows stretching long across the yard, his choice was made for him when Clint pulled his Camaro into the drive, climbed out and ran around the front end. He opened the passenger door and jerked Nina from the passenger seat by her arm.
Jacob watched him drag the girl to the front door and push her inside.
Clint slammed the door shut behind them.
The boy had left the car running.
Jacob ran to it, waited a minute, listening, before he turned the ignition off, pulled the keys and threw them out into the weeds.
He flipped the safety off the pistol and crouched next to the passenger fender, waiting to hear the boy come back out to see why his Camaro had quit running.
11
Nina had never expected the Friendly household to appear so poor, or for its walls to be so bare, the vibe in the air itself so much unlike a home, when all she had known, all her mother had truly strived for, was to succeed at that one thing…
But the house looked similar to what she imagined the end of the world was look like: there were magazines thrown here and there; food sat on plates, mold growing on them; dirty socks and clothes scattered in what seemed random piles; and she noticed dust bunnies shifting along the base boards of the walls as Clint held firmly to her arm and dragged her deeper into the house.
The look on his face was one of incredible fear and extreme focus. She kept quiet without his having to order her to because she was afraid of what he’d do if she even made a peep. Her plans for clubbing him with something seemed short-lived and childish now. Whatever fate had in store for them, she felt its pull, and that pull was nearly impossible to fight.
The utter sense of powerlessness was overwhelming.
Clint stopped outside a door and he looked at her and said, “Okay, this is it.”
“The basement?”
She wondered, What’s down there?
He nodded, and opened the door, and placed his foot on the first step, holding tightly to her elbow as he said, “It’s going to get really ugly now. I apologize for that, but it is what it is. Are you ready?”
She shook her head. She was so far from ready it wasn’t funny.
The steps were there before them, old steps, decrepit steps, and she didn’t know how they would hold either of their weight, let alone both of them. His grip loosened on her arm and Nina, wanting to be ferocious like her mother had once been ferocious, said, “Good bye,” and jerked her arm free and shoved him high in the shoulders.
She didn’t care if he reached out and grabbed her and she fell with him; she just wanted to hear his neck snap, for his face to look like her face felt after he’d backhanded her.
But Clint didn’t fall at all; he threw his hands to either side of the narrow stairwell and caught himself. He glared at her over his shoulder and Nina thought, Run, run, run, but she couldn’t move. He turned around and grabbed just above her wrist and pulled her to him. His breath was rank as he said, “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you, but you need to stop, all right?”
“You know what’s wrong with me.”
He wrapped his arms around her and grunted as he lifted her off her feet, and she fought against him, hoping she could drive a knee between his legs, but there was no room between them for her to generate any force. The blows that landed were of little consequence.
He carried her awkwardly down the steps and when they reached the bottom, the room before them lay gathered in shadow. He set her down and said, “I know this isn’t easy. It hasn’t been for me either, all right?”
“What am I doing here?” Nina said.
Clint moved to the wall and placed a finger to the switch and flipped on the light.
Nina squinted against the sudden brightness.
Clint said, “I think he killed my mom.”
“What? Who?”
“My dad,” Clint said. “He told me she left us, but I don’t think she did. I think she knew what he was doing and it weighed on her conscience and he knew she was going to crack and he killed her.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, facing him. And she hadn’t felt this afraid since first meeting Victor, and meeting Sebastian, both of whom she thought to be terrible men, guilty men, but she wasn’t so sure of that anymore.
“I’m talking about that,” he said, with tears in his eyes, his hand lifted, the boy pointing at the corner of the room behind Nina. She didn’t want to turn around but she had to, because she wanted to know what he was pointing at, and because she believed if she didn’t turn around he would make her, and she didn’t want him to ever touch her again.
She turned slowly, feeling weightless, as if she didn’t exist and never had.
There, in the corner lay a bed, and on it, a young black girl Nina had never seen before but knew on sight because the girl looked so much like her parents, Richard and Loretta. And Robin looked so small even though the bed itself was small.
She felt that thickness growing in her chest, and she didn’t want to feel that anymore either, but she looked, and she saw: Robin Stark had an IV hooked to her arm. Her wrists were handcuffed to the steel rail-style headboard. And someone had recently cut off her feet; the stumps were wrapped in heavy white bandages. The scent of her blood and sweat hung heavily in the air.
An older model VHS camera, black and bulky, sat on a tripod near the foot of the bed.
She said, “What did you do to her?”
“It wasn’t me,” Clint said, angry. “It was my dad. I told you that. He’s sick. Why don’t you listen to me? I think my dad killed your mom, too. I took one of his tapes. He must have noticed it missing and thought I’d taken it to you to hide for me. He trashed your room looking for it, didn’t he?”
“We have to get her out of here, we can deal with everything else once she’s safe,” Nina said, unsure how they could even move Robin without her suffering an extreme amount of pain. She said, “He cut her feet off…”
“I know,” he said. “I think it was so she couldn’t run away.”
“How could she run away when she’s handcuffed?” she said, wiping her tears away. “How the hell is she supposed to run away? How could you know about this and wait so long to do something about it? How?”
“I just…” he said, unable to finish.
She moved to the bed.
Robin’s eyes were closed. Nina wasn’t sure if she was sleeping or had blacked out from the pain she had endured. And Nina didn’t want to imagine what the child had been through. As much as she hated how her mother was killed, Nina thought it was good that it was so quick for her, just a bullet in her forehead, no suffering like this, no imprisonment, no torture and sadism. She looked around the room, hoping she’d see the key to the handcuffs, but there was only the empty space under the steps, a dirty window h
igh in the wall, a small table with amber bottles of painkillers and antibiotics, a shelf with dozens of video tapes. She stared at the video tapes for a minute, unable to breathe.
Clint said, “There’s not a key down here. I think he keeps it on him.”
“Get something else then,” she said. “A hacksaw. Anything.”
He nodded but he didn’t move. Nina worried that something was still very wrong, her mind running in a dozen directions, and the one that it followed most was also the most disturbing: Clint was disturbed, she knew that, but he was also complacent. And she worried that part of him shared that same abnormality that he claimed his father had.
Nina smacked him. She said, “Move. Right now.”
He looked stunned for a second, his cheek reddening, but he moved. He fled upstairs and came back a minute later with a hacksaw. She said, “Cut her loose. Hurry up.”
Clint worked, sweat forming on his brow, the muscles in his forearm bunched. By the time he’d cut through the chain of the handcuff on Robin’s right wrist, the child stirred. Her eyelids fluttered and she opened her mouth to speak, her face riddled with pain and confusion, and Nina saw that the tongue in her mouth was nothing more than a stump. She stepped back, dizzy, thinking she might faint.
Clint paused, and said, “I know. I know. Don’t talk about it.”
She squeezed her arms around herself, trying to imagine this crippled, beaten child in the Stark home, with Richard and Loretta, in her own bedroom, playing with her toy horses, dreaming of god-knew-what. It seemed so long ago when Nina was six that she couldn’t remember what one so young might imagine, dream about, hope for.
She sat on the bed as Clint rounded it and started sawing on the chain of the handcuff attached to Robin’s left hand. She stroked Robin’s cheek and whispered, “It’s going to be all right. I promise. You’ll be home soon. We’ll take you there. Your parents love you and they miss you and you need them and they need you. I know. I know.”
She sniffled and looked at Clint.
He worked as quickly as he could but it was apparent to her that he wasn’t use to any type of physical movement. For all his looks, she thought he was a very weak boy. But what he was doing, risking everything for this girl his father had abducted, moved her heart.
She cleared her throat and said, “What are you going to do if he comes home before we can get her out?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. His arm slowed, and the sound of the hacksaw was loud. He looked at it and sped up again, trying to hurry, and Nina thought, Good, free her. We have to get out of here as quickly as we can…
But something thumped repeatedly upstairs, and it sounded to Nina as if someone was walking around on the rotting floorboards above them.
She looked up and saw dust fall, and the dust hung like golden flakes in the air.
She looked at Clint and whispered, “Someone is here, hurry up!”
He sawed faster, his face a mask of concentration, the noise of the blade against the chain much too loud in the basement. When the chain parted, he fell against the bed and wiped his forehead and looked up at the ceiling and then to Nina and then to the wall where one lone window, a small one not much larger than the width of Nina’s shoulders, was built high in the wall. Blades of grass, so green and so soft, were right outside and the wind pushed them against the glass.
He whispered, “Can you get her out the window?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to,” he said.
“And then what?”
“Carry her to the neighbors and call 911,” he said.
“What about you?”
“I’ll face my dad,” he said, and his face grew pale and he smeared the sweat and dirt on his forehead as he wiped a hand across his brow. “You have to get out of here though, in case he kills me, you know?”
“Don’t say that,” she said, wanting to cry. “Seriously. I can’t hear that.”
“Come on,” he said. He pulled the needle from Robin Stark’s arm and picked her up and to Nina the child seemed as insubstantial as a shadow in his arms.
He rushed to the window and urged her to open it but Nina couldn’t reach it.
Clint said, “Take her,” and handed Robin Stark to Nina.
He flipped the latch and the window opened and swung down.
The footsteps upstairs neared the basement door.
12
Jacob approached the basement stairwell, his fingers cramped from gripping the pistol so tightly. He flipped off the safety and tried to moderate his breathing, but it had a fervent, excited pace of its own, much like the pounding of his heart. He knew he needed to get downstairs quickly, because he’d checked the rest of the house and had found no sign of either Clint or Nina. But he didn’t want to cost the girl her life by rushing in like he was some kind of hero—since he wasn’t, and he had never fired a gun in his life, and he imagined a dozen ways things could go wrong.
He told himself to keep it simple. First he had to leave the darkening ground floor, descend the dark steps and enter the bright basement, from which rose Clint’s muffled orders and Nina’s cries.
Jacob thought: I have to get down there and stop him before he can hurt her anymore.
He tested the first step with only a fraction of his weight and heard it creak from the pressure. He allowed his full weight to fall on it, and then the next step, the air musty and stale rising up to meet him, and he could also smell blood and burned flesh and those scents, and what he associated with them, made his eyes water.
Jacob held the pistol with one hand and kept his other hand on the wall. The basement floor wasn’t so far off, only ten feet, and he was thinking, I can do this, it’s nothing, until his shoe hit something on the step and sent it tumbling down the remaining risers in a racket of noise that seemed as loud as gunshots.
A paint can rolled in a tight circle on the concrete floor below. He cursed himself and rushed after it, raising the pistol and sweeping it from one side of the room to the other, looking for the boy and the girl.
They stood near the wall to his right, fifteen feet away, Nina facing away from him and Clint grabbing a hold of her to prevent her from escaping out an open window.
The boy looked over his shoulder and there was such terror on his face Jacob almost pitied the monster. But he couldn’t feel sorry for a boy who would intentionally hurt or terrorize a girl. And he saw his wife’s face in his mind’s eye, and Victor being shot down like a rabid dog by this boy’s father, and he wanted to protect Nina from being a victim since she couldn’t protect herself.
She was turning slightly as Clint opened his mouth to say something, and Jacob saw that Nina was holding a young colored girl in her arms, and he looked at the little girl’s ankles and how they ended there, and he couldn’t make sense of where her feet were for a second, couldn’t make much sense of anything, other than he had warned Nina about this boy…
…and he thought that Clint and his father were involved in destroying innocent children together, almost as a hobby, the father and son making a sport of it, and he could picture the back clapping, the pride in Officer Friendly’s voice the first time his son had successfully nabbed a child from the street.
Clint’s fingers tightened on Nina’s shoulders and Jacob believed the boy intended to jerk her around and use her as a shield…
He pointed the gun at the center of Clint’s back and pulled the trigger.
13
Nina heard something crash down the stairs and she squeezed Robin tighter, heard the child moan softly, and felt her bones sharp against her ribcage and biceps. She glanced up at the window and said to Clint, “Lift us up!”
He had frozen though, his hands on her shoulders, his breath hot and rank against the back of her head. And she wanted to push Robin up through the window, out into the evening’s light, knowing that Robin hadn’t breathed the cool autumn air in days, and Nina wanted to weep because she heard shoes hit the floor and the creak of Clint’s
neck as he turned to face his father.
She wanted to face him too, but she held Robin tight to her chest, jerking as a gunshot boomed like an explosive, causing her ears to ring, causing Clint to fall against her and knock her down.
Her knees hit the floor hard and she desperately clung to Robin, leaning over her, trying to hide the child with her own body.
Clint lay close by, breathing rapidly and his mouth opening and closing, and he looked so pale, his eyes so wide, and Nina wanted to turn and face Officer Friendly but she was too afraid for herself and for Robin, so she buried her face against the top of the child’s head and clung tighter, afraid the little girl might crumble in her embrace, but believing that it was a better way to go out of this world than the way Clint’s father had planned.
But then she felt hands on her shoulders again, gentle but insistent hands, and she hoped, with her eyes closed now, that when she opened them she’d find herself waking in her own bed. And then she heard Jacob say, “Get up, kid.”
She looked around, and there he was, hunched over, trying to pick her and Robin up at the same time, only he didn’t look like himself since he’d shaved. He looked younger, more beautiful than ever, and there was Clint next to him, and she noticed that her boyfriend, who had waited too long to do the right thing, stared at the ceiling with unmoving eyes.
She waited a second for him to blink, but he didn’t. Nina said, “Clint?”
“He’s gone,” Jacob said, kneeling next to her. “We have to get you out of here.” And she saw that he really didn’t want to leave.
“It was his dad,” she cried. “It wasn’t him. It was his dad.”
“What?” Jacob said.
But before Nina could explain, before she could even open her mouth she saw Sebastian back in the shadows by the base of the steps and his face was not the baleful, hateful thing she remembered, but more subdued, possibly stricken by misery, and she thought he looked just like Clint, only a decade older, carrying several lifetimes of sorrow in his eyes.
