I hoped.
Until then, though, I had two children on my porch with nowhere to sleep.
I shuffled them inside and had them carry their gift baskets up the stairs. As I put the food away, I asked them their names. Alexis’s big green eyes almost reminded me of Maureen’s, and I scolded myself for liking her simply based on that. Her parents were both arrested for robbing a store. She was eleven and had stayed with her grandmother for a year before running away. When she mentioned her grandmother, she squeezed her hands together and seemed to shift her weight from one foot to another. Quickly, she introduced the boy next to her. Felix was ten like Nick and had lived with his brother before he went to the grocery store and never came back.
That’s as far as I got in Felix’s story before I heard another knock at the door. Nick ran to the window faster than I could. “It’s just some guy; got a flannel shirt on.”
I grabbed him and pulled him from the window. “Get yourself and them to the basement. Now.”
They obeyed. For once, Nick didn’t ask me any questions.
It only took about a minute for the children to slip downstairs. I guessed they were used to following orders and staying out of sight.
As useful as it was, I felt a peculiar aching in my chest, seeing they had to grow so talented at it.
I peered through the peephole at the door. The man didn’t appear dangerous wearing tattered jeans and black shoes…except for the badge in his hand.
This is it. It’s all over. Should I run?
I held my breath as I opened the door. “May I help you?”
The man extended his hand, grasping mine in a shake before I could even raise it all the way forward. “Hello, sir, my name’s Officer Keegan. Marcus, actually. Just call me that.”
I nodded.
“Mind if I come in?”
I shut the door behind me, keeping both of us on the porch. “For what?”
Marcus smiled. He had one of those hidden builds: slender but toned. Toned enough to punish you if you crossed him on the wrong day. “Gosh, I’m sorry. I’ve been gettin’ some calls from members of the congregation at this church.” He leaned in. “Look, I know Father Dominic’s in jail. Nice guy, real nice. People keep callin’ us though, concerned that he just up and left without saying why. And from all the talk of some goodwill mission to some place or other, I figured he didn’t want me to tell them the real reason.”
My muscles relaxed, but not by much. “That’s very nice.”
“Figured if I came by and checked on the place, might ease people’s minds a little. We can tell them one of us came by and Dom’s not lying dead in the basement or something.” He elbowed me in the side as he chuckled. I had to force my lips to part into a smile. “This way I can truly say I came by. Not a lie, just not the whole truth. So if you don’t mind…oh yeah, I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Jack. I…I’m taking care of it while he’s gone. He’s a family friend. My parents are…gone too, so it worked out. Come on in.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself focused.
As we walked around the church, I strained my ears, listening for any sound that might give us away. I heard a rustling, but couldn’t be sure where it was coming from. We were almost to the basement door when Nick fell out of the supply room closet and onto the floor in a pile of brooms and buckets.
I froze. I have to admit it. I froze. I didn’t know whether to run, hide, or hit Officer Keegan over the head with something and hope for the best. So when Nick crawled out of the rubble and came over to us, I thought we were all about to be carted away to jail. Or worse.
Nick looked up at me with his freckled face. “Bro, who’s this?” I remained frozen. For just a moment, I didn’t understand that he had not only recovered beautifully, but he had added another element that made me NOT match the description of Cain Foley. “Jack?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, this is Officer Keegan…uh, Marcus. He’s just checking on the place.”
With the confidence of a presidential candidate, Nick threw his hand out to Officer Keegan. “Pleased to meet you, sir! Are you gonna play Hide and Seek with us?”
Keegan laughed. “Sorry, son, maybe next time.”
The three of us headed toward the door. “Shoot, I didn’t check the basement…oh well, I think I’ve interrupted your game enough.” He ruffled Nick’s hair. There was something about the way he did it that I didn’t like…a little too much force in his fingertips. “Oh, one more thing though, maybe you can help me. Couple of us are trying to find a missing person, asking around town and stuff.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a folded photo. When he opened it so I could see the picture, the hair on my arms stood up and my legs felt like we were on a ship in the middle of a typhoon. “You haven’t seen this guy, have you? He went to…nobody’s seen him since last night. Plain disappeared. Name’s Billy. My brother and one of my best guys. We’ve been on the force together for fifteen years now.” He glanced at Nick then back at me. “You take care of your brother. Can’t be too careful these days.” I had to fight away the dots dancing in front of my eyes. I had seen the man in the picture before, right before Maureen and I stripped him naked and burned his clothes.
“Haven’t seen him.” I hoped the officer didn’t hear the shake in my voice, or see the trembling in my fingers.
After Officer Keegan had safely made his way down the street, I told Nick to lock the door behind me and make sure that the three of them stayed in the upstairs apartment with the curtains drawn until I got back.
I don’t remember walking to Maureen’s house, I don’t even remember flying up the steps and opening the door without knocking. I pretty much blacked out until I found her in her room and pushed her against the wall.
“What the hell? A cop? You didn’t tell me we were burying a cop.”
She tried to get away from me but I blocked her with my arms on both sides. “I didn’t know, I swear!”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear.”
I beat both my fists against the wall next to her. Plaster from the ceiling rained down into her hair. “Okay, fine, I knew. But I needed your help. You wouldn’t have helped me otherwise.”
I released her. “Yes, I would have.”
I walked over to her bed and sat down, facing away from her. A dead father, a dead mother, and now I had helped a cop killer.
Maybe jail won’t be so bad. Can’t be any worse than living with Dad. At least I wouldn’t be the only one getting the shit kicked out of me.
I stared at the wall. Maybe if I had run, just taken the car and drove, maybe then I could have made it. Every different scenario, everything I could have done, played out in my head.
But I couldn’t help but notice I wasn’t leaving Maureen’s bedroom.
She sat down by my side, staring into space right along with me. “The late shift…at the police station. They take turns coming in; each gets one night a week. No one else is at the station so they cover for each other. Or so they tell me.” She squeezed the bedspread tightly in her hands, and swayed back and forth. “Can I ask you something?”
I said nothing.
“When you killed your father…what did it feel like?”
My arm fell around her before I told it to. “As I hit him…I felt like…like I could finally breathe. Like I had never breathed until that moment…like I was taking out the devil himself.” I paused for a moment, but forced myself to continue. “Then he stopped moving and I wished I could take it all back.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “Like no matter how much I felt like my life had just started… when the life left his eyes it felt like mine had stopped all over again.”
“Even if nothing changed…even if you still lived there and he was still…him…would you take it back if you could?”
Without hesitating for even an instant, I said, “Yeah. Without question, yeah.”
She looked up at me. “That’s the thing. I wouldn’t.”
/> We just sat there in the quiet for a long time. The only sound between us was her steady breathing, and the creaking of the antique wooden floors as the world continued beneath our feet. The smell of lasagna wafted up through the walls. She smiled a mischievous smile at me. “I guess that makes us murder buddies, huh?”
A smirk passed over my lips. “Murder buddies?”
“Yeah! Come on, friends have to have similar interests and all, right?”
“Well I don’t know how interested I am in it. And I doubt you are either.”
“True, they did just kinda fall into our laps. But still.” She jumped off the bed and extended her hand. “Does my Murder Buddy want to stay for lunch?”
I took it and followed her downstairs.
I didn’t look at her while I ate. Several of the children sat around the table with us, all with straight backs, chewing with their mouths closed. I couldn’t help but notice all the seats were still full. “I thought there were twelve of them. I took three. There’s still twelve here.”
I could hear her scoff at me from across the table. I tightened the grip around my fork. “Plenty of runaways around here. Small town, no jobs. When you buy one there’s always another.” I glanced up at her as she smiled and stuck a forkful of lasagna in her mouth. “Always.”
After inhaling my food as fast as I could, I wanted out. I wanted to go back to the church and do something normal, like clean a bathroom. Anything that wasn’t life and death, something unimportant. Maybe I would play a board game with the kids, and try not to think about the fact that Dom’s money wasn’t going to last very long. I pushed the thought out of my mind, not wanting to picture his face after he came back from jail and saw that not only was the church covered in dust and the paint flaking off but there was a slumber party going on in his apartment.
As I was heading for the door, I heard the voice of the beautiful blonde woman from the TV come on the radio. The sound was so soft when it echoed from the living room that if I didn’t know her, if she hadn’t been with me all those nights at my parents, comforting me with her words, I wouldn’t have heard it.
Maureen had walked me to the door but I pushed past her. When I found the radio, I crouched next to it and listened. “We’re getting close, getting close to a solution. You know the situation that has rotted through the nation better than anyone. Our town is crawling with gangs, like an infestation of cockroaches. But they will not survive this. We will save the children from their clutches, from the streets, and from a life of crime. All you have to do is vote yes.”
They better hurry.
CHAPTER FOUR
That night, as much as I wanted us to have a feast, I made sure we each had an apple, a bowl of cereal, and some milk. What I wouldn’t have given to have the juices of a medium rare New York steak drip down my chin. Just about the only good thing about living with my parents was that we always ate well. Dad did know how to appreciate a great chunk of meat.
I hoped that was the only thing he passed on to me.
But for Nick, Alexis, and Felix, I pretended that bowl of Cheerios and that apple was the best thing I’d ever had. The three of them smiled back at me as we ate. Maybe they were just doing it to humor me, but their big smiles made me forget for just a minute that when you got right down to it, all four of us were criminals.
When I heard a loud banging on the front door, I almost spit out my cereal. Nick ran to the window and peered out. “Looks like the top of Maureen’s head.”
I resolved to remember to tell her to come through the back.
She didn’t smile at me when I opened the door. “Get in the car.”
“What, no hello?”
“There’s something you need to see. So you don’t do anything stupid.”
We drove down to the opposite end of town from where she lived and parked in the shadow of a giant tree, across the street from a small white building. I then saw why she lived where she did. She wanted to be as far from the police station as possible.
“We’re gonna sit here till every one of those jerk-offs comes out. So you can see what they look like. And know who to shut up to.”
Her car was stuffy, and I felt like I was cooking even though the weather outside wasn’t even warm. “What if one of them goes out the back and we don’t see?”
“There’s only one door. I checked.”
“Oh. Seems weird for a police station to only have one door.”
She scolded me through clenched teeth. “Here they come. Pay attention.”
From the shadows, we watched each of them come out. In our town there was always someone doing something illegal, somewhere. The real shock was how slow they were getting there. A few smoked cigarettes before getting in their squad car; if you could even call it a squad car. It was so old and worn with rust I couldn’t even tell what model it was. The only thing distinguishing it as a police car was the siren on the roof.
After seeing each of the men, I understood why Maureen had wanted to make sure I knew who they were. As seemingly civil as Officer Keegan had been, the first thing I saw him do when he stepped out was throw a soda can at a stray dog.
We stayed there until Maureen had pointed out every one of them. The last piece of trash who called himself a police officer started whistling at a girl walking by. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. When she didn’t look up, he called her a cunt and spit in her general direction.
I had a drug deal to do that night, so I asked Maureen to drop me off where I was supposed to meet the customer. She just rolled her eyes. “Cain, I can’t be seen with you. If I wanted the strung-out freaks to know who I was, why would I need you?”
She did have a point.
I shut the car door hard behind me and watched as she drove off back to her house. Once she was out of sight, I started walking in the opposite direction of the police station. I was supposed to meet my customer in the back storage room of a warehouse.
When I slid silently through the back door, I was surrounded by tall wooden crates stacked to the ceiling. A bulb burned dimly overhead. I smelled old paper and fresh paint, and I had to fight off the lightheadedness that came with it.
The woman emerged from behind the crates; long green dress, shiny fabric, something Maureen would wear. I had no idea why she’d wanted to meet in a warehouse; she couldn’t have worked there in that outfit. Then I saw her bodyguards.
Three men with muscles barely contained by their shirts emerged from the same dark corner. My guess was they were the ones who worked at the warehouse. She was just there so they could keep an eye on her.
I’d met her before, but never at that place. She’d been very easy to deal with the last couple times I was around her. I had no idea why she would think she would need bodyguards, until I counted the cash she gave me. “This is only half. Where’s the rest?”
One of the men spoke. “She doesn’t have it. You’re gonna have to give her a discount today.”
Maybe it was stupid. Maureen probably would have told me it was stupid. But drug deal or not, fair is fair. And I needed that money. When I pictured Nick, Felix, and Alexis’s smiling happy faces, cheery in spite of cereal and apples for dinner, I knew what I had to do. And I was not in the mood to negotiate. “Sorry, fresh out of discounts. No money, no heroin.”
The men tightened around me, and the woman stepped away. The second man spoke. “You sure about that?”
The third man: “Look kid, just give her the drugs.”
My grip tightened around my switchblades. “No.”
As they stepped toward me from all sides, my knives seemed to fly out toward them on their own, as if they knew their job was to save my life. The first man, bigger than the other two, didn’t pay them any attention until I slashed through the skin on his forearm.
It didn’t slow him down.
His heavy body pounded toward me. I kicked my leg forward and made contact with his groin. He clutched himself as he fell.
I felt the whisper of the
second man’s hands moving swiftly threw the air toward my neck. Before they could get there, I thrust the knife backward and into his right thigh. The tight, thick muscle seemed to swallow the blade whole.
As the third man charged toward me, I gripped my other knife and held it in front of me. The woman was screaming behind us, but it sounded distant, as if from another place entirely. I shouted to him, told him not to come closer, but he had already reached my side. He grabbed my knife arm with his paw, squeezing so hard the tendons felt as if they would rip apart. He threw me toward the ground and my blade went skittering across the floor.
Suddenly I was back in the basement, my father hovering over me, grinning, taking pleasure as he broke my bones and tore my flesh. The man’s face leaned toward me, whispered something to me, but it was my father’s face, my father’s voice.
With my one free hand, I grabbed his nose and twisted it as hard as I could. The sound of it snapping hit me between the noises of the warehouse and the other wounded men.
I heard the clacking of the woman’s stilettos as she ran. The man released me and his hands fell across his own eyes. Blood slid down the sides of his hands.
Despite his deep wound, the second man was still breathing. He sat there, bleeding to death, using his last breaths to beg for his life. “Please, please I don’t even know these guys. I don’t even know her. I just needed money. That’s all.”
He looked at me. The bags under his eyes told a story of a guy just trying to survive. If the world weren’t so fucked up, he probably would have had a desk job somewhere, delightfully nine to five, with plenty of time to make his kids mac and cheese for dinner. I went over to the first man and pulled off the shirt he was wearing; it had blood all over it but the sleeves would still work as a tourniquet. The wounded man jumped as I lunged toward him. “I need to tighten this.”
Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series Page 6
