Dig Two Graves

by Kim Powers

  “That’s your . . . wait. You didn’t tell me it was your niece. I thought you said you got the guy.”

  “We did. We just didn’t get her. Janice. Not in time, anyway.”

  Now I saw it, looking beyond the Facebook photo to the rest of the page: RIP’s and posts that said “you are our angel now.”

  “My sister decided to keep her page up, even after she was gone. Said it was a way to remember her. A place for all her little friends to say their goodbyes. I thought it was a bad idea, but my sister and I . . . well, we don’t agree on anything. When my niece was born, I told my sister, ‘Now what kind of name is Janice for a little black girl?’ For once, Aretha sounded good. Janice.”

  Mizell shook her head, smiling, a perfect memory. A heartbreaking memory. “I called her Ja-niece, just to give it some flavor. It was our little joke, ’cause she was my niece. See that little charm bracelet on her wrist?”

  With one of her nails, Mizell tapped at the photo, where Janice’s chin was resting on her hand. You could see it there, dangling from her skinny wrist: a silver bracelet, laden down with charms.

  “That got lost, the bracelet . . . somewhere . . . when he tied her up,” Mizell said, forcing herself to tell me the story. “I gave it to her, on her seventh birthday. Every birthday after that, I gave her a new charm. A unicorn, the year she got taken. She was into unicorns that year. Aren’t they supposed to bring you good luck? They didn’t, not to her. He killed her. That’s when my hair fell out. That’s why my hair fell out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, so quietly. I didn’t want to intrude on the reverence of the moment. I was glad it was so dark, so I couldn’t see her eyes. They probably looked like mine.

  “They’d have my head, what’s left of it, if they knew I told you this. They’d have my head if they even knew you were here with me. I’m supposed to make you think everything’s gonna turn out fine. You could even be the kidnapper for all I know. But I know you’re not.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Her finger was scrolling down the page, to a link. She clicked on it and a newspaper obituary popped up. Mizell looked at it and read back to me, with so much pride. And agony. “See? There I am, right there. ‘Survived by her mother, Diana Sherwood, and her aunt, Aretha Mizell.’ Should’a said, ‘who just had to be smarter than everybody else and think she could fix everything.’ I couldn’t. I didn’t.”

  She shook her head again, another memory I couldn’t imagine. Or maybe I could.

  “That’s why I’m gonna find Skip for you. In time. This time.”

  Then I said the thing I could only say in the dark, to a virtual stranger. The thing I could barely say to myself, as I put my hand over hers. “What if I’m not smart enough? What if I’m not strong enough? To get her back. To figure it all out.”

  “You have to be. She’s counting on you.”

  A ping on my cell phone told me that something had just been posted on my Facebook page. I grabbed the computer back from Mizell and clicked back to my page.

  And there, finally, a “comment,” under the photo of the hydra I’d posted:

  You’ve passed the second test, but it’s no time to rest.

  To get number three, go live on TV.

  And if you’re going crazy, thinking who I could be . . .

  Just think how I felt, waiting for you to come see me.

  But it wasn’t just the poem that made Mizell gasp, her hand now in a vise around my wrist. It was the name of the person who had posted the comment. She saw it before I did, the way the photo attaches to the name, in that rectangle where a new comment appears. That tiny little squared-off photo. That smile, one hand under her chin, that charm bracelet . . .

  Mizell said it out loud for the both of us, even though we’d just been saying it, seconds before.

  “Janice Miner.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Don’t you just love. Facebook?” He laughed. “So many passwords. So little time.”

  Skip heard him clacking on the keyboard of a laptop computer, then a computer lid closing, as he spoke again from the other room. “So father does know best. Two down, ten to go.”

  She was glad he was distracted, so he couldn’t see the confusion in her eyes, at what was up on the walls. The fear in her eyes too, that he might discover what she doing behind the desk, trying to cut into the duct tape on her wrists. She kept looking from the wall, to behind her, from the wall, to behind her, and then . . .

  He came closer. Away from that other room. Near her. And what she saw when she turned her head around was as confusing as the photos up on the wall: the rubber tips, then the two metal cylinders hitting the floor before his actual legs did.

  He was on crutches? She’d been taken by somebody on crutches? Skip thought to herself. And not the kind you use when you break your leg or something, that support you from underneath your armpits, but the serious kind. Where you have to grip two handles that stick out at about waist height, and there are metal bands for each arm, that your upper arms go into on either side of your body. And even with those, his legs seemed to really scrape the floor behind his body. The crutches were his legs; Skip could tell how his weight was planted in them, how the legs of his pants seemed almost empty. Toothpicks inside. The material just hung there; it didn’t fill out, like it did on her father. And now that she knew what to listen for, she could hear it: the rubber tips squeaking on the floor, the slightest little creak of the metal of the crutches. Four sounds of things hitting the floor, where two would be normal.

  He stopped just short of her, so she could see his legs, but nothing else. Not his face.

  She whipped her head forward, so he wouldn’t see that she knew.

  She could get away from a guy on crutches. She didn’t know how, but she knew she could. It was one step easier. One step she could make, that he couldn’t. She had to celebrate each little thing she figured out, or she would die. She had to go back to cutting the duct tape and wait ’til he was asleep and . . .

  “I hope you like my little gallery show. If your father does what he’s supposed to, maybe you’ll have one someday. With your little . . . snowballs.”

  “But how did you get up the stairs? I mean, on those?” It just came out, without her meaning to say it. “Shit.”

  “Shit indeed. You noticed. My ‘footprint.’ ‘Let your . . . crutches do the walking.’ I got up the stairs, it just took more . . . strain. More time. Which we don’t have.”

  “I’m sorry. I mean . . . that you . . . can’t walk so well. What happened to them? Your legs.”

  “You’ll hear the whole. Story. Soon enough. All good things. To those who wait.”

  Now she just had to wait too, until he was gone. Night. Asleep.

  A man on crutches. Two legs that didn’t work. Hers that did, from all those morning runs with her father.

  She just had to keep sawing off the duct tape, and wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was six thirty in the morning and the house was still as crowded as it had been the very first night that Skip had been taken. Sig had pretty much moved in, and three or four police were here around the clock, working with all the computers and recording equipment. Wendy was still in the hospital but getting better; I’d called her, waking her up, to let her know I was about to go on TV, as per the kidnapper’s latest instructions. He’d gone from wanting no police to wanting the world to know, and I was obliging.

  I had to, to get to the next clue.

  “But why’s he changing now? Why not just keep putting them on my Facebook page? Why not just . . . ” I ran out of “why nots.”

  “Because he can.” That was Mizell’s only answer. “But now we’re upping the ante, with your reward.”

  “Won’t that piss him off? That people are looking?”

  “He already knows people are looking. He knows I’m looking.”

  I gave her wig a helpful tug to get it back into place; she kept scratchi
ng under it and making it go off kilter. “I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.” That’s what she’d said, back in my office, when she saw the name “Janice Miner” pop up with his latest rhyme. When she saw that, I think she would have pulled out her hair, if she’d had any left.

  She’d put her tech people into overdrive, trying to trace who had hacked into her niece’s page—to dig at her, as much as he was digging at me. He’d have to have known the password to access it, and to know the password, he’d have to be some kind of hacker. That gave them more info to go on. Now this had become as personal to her as it was to me; it was like he’d kidnapped both girls. “He’s fucking with us. So now we’re going to fuck with him.”

  Mizell had called the local TV station in Pittsfield for our broadcast, and they’d been here setting up ever since. She wanted it to take place at our house, instead of the police station or TV studio; she didn’t want it to look like just another press conference with a cop behind a podium.

  “We want him to see how comfy it is here, how homey. Just be real. Be yourself. A wonderful dad. Show what Skip’s been ripped away from.”

  They just needed to look at my haggard face to see what she’d been ripped away from. My face looked as bloody and bruised as it had after Mark Casey slugged me, but this time, no one had touched a thing. It was all me. Not sleeping. Dying inside. Hair wild, hadn’t shaved in days, the bags under my eyes almost cadaverous.

  My first time back on TV since the Olympics.

  “Not that many people catch this early broadcast,” said Dana Rossen, the local reporter assigned to the story, as the TV people finished their prep, clipping a little microphone to the collar of the button-down shirt I’d put on. Dana ran her hands under her honey-golden hair and fluffed it out one last time. “If this moves the needle, we’ll run it again at noon and five, but your best bet’s the ten o’clock tonight.”

  “I don’t have that long. We’ve gotta get it on now. He’s gotta see that I’m following his clues. He’s gotta see that . . . ”

  “If he’s looking for it, he will,” she said.

  Dana switched to her camera face and gave a “Go” nod to the cameraman, who started her countdown. “Five, four, three,” he said out loud, then went quiet, switching to just his fingers for “two” and “one.” Dana’s smile glided on, a perfect segue to air, picking up the relay toss from the guy in the studio who had just introduced her.

  “Thanks, Chuck. We’re here on Drummond Court at the home of Canaan College professor Ethan Holt, with the developing story of an apparent kidnap . . . ”

  That’s when I blew it. A few seconds in, and I lost it, looking straight into the camera.

  You want the real me? This is it.

  You want me to be the “face” of the kidnapping? Then just take a look.

  “There’s nothing apparent about it. It happened. It’s happening. Right now. My daughter’s been kidnapped and . . . ”

  “Of course. As I said . . . was saying, I’m joined by Professor Ethan Holt—Herc Holt, some of you may remember him as—from the 2000 Olympics, before he traded his medal for . . . ”

  Now I really didn’t need her. I didn’t need then. I just needed now.

  “I did it,” I said, straight to camera. I knew how sound bites work. I knew what got attention. I’d been doing it in a classroom for years now.

  “I figured it out, the thing you wanted, the second thing, the Hydra, the Labors . . . ” I grabbed the bucket that the plant was in and practically shook it at the camera, water spilling over and sloshing everywhere. “‘One is done, now two is due.’ I did two. I posted it. You saw it. You responded. Then you promised three. ‘Go on TV, I’ll give you three.’ So I’m ready. The Third Labor. Just tell me.”

  Nobody but one person watching would be able to understand these sound bites. Only one person watching needed to understand them.

  “I’ll do them, all of them. I don’t know what I did, how I kept you waiting, but I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m begging you. It’s me you want, so just let her go . . . let Skip go so it’s just me and you.”

  I finally took a breath and looked at Dana for the first time, as if I were seeking her permission for what I was about to do. “I’m posting a reward. Twenty thousand dollars. It’s all I’ve got, but take it. Anybody who knows something, it’s yours. Just give me back my baby.”

  I hadn’t planned the next thing, but I did it anyway: what else did I have to lose? I grabbed the portable ENG camera from the guy recording us, and everything went haywire, except in my head. I was being real, in the moment, exactly what Mizell told me to be. You couldn’t get any more real than this. I was calling the shots now, as I raced through the house with the camera, putting our lives on display, electrical cords straining and pulling down light stands. I didn’t care, as long as the camera was still running.

  I aimed it at our kitchen, a house tour on crack, the camera weaving everywhere to show my demented POV. “Look. This is where we eat. This is where I fix Skip breakfast. Cereal. Toast. Eggs. I don’t let her go to school hungry. I’m a good dad. I am. I swear.”

  I flung open cabinets to show that they were stacked full to bursting: olive oil and vinegars and pasta and half-full bags of nuts and confectioner’s sugar and coconut that were rolled down and clipped with those colorful pins you buy in grocery stores. “Look at this. All this stuff left over from the party she had for me, the night before you took her. She made me a cake. A little girl. No mother. And she’s making me a cake, all by herself.”

  I kept going, no stopping now, still moving the camera with me, yanking the electrical cord into the den. “And this couch. I help her with her homework here. She puts her books in front of her on the coffee table here, and I help. If I can. I’m not that great at math, but she is. She’s great at everything.”

  I stopped, before I started crying.

  I started crying anyway.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but . . . take me. Please. Take me for her. Me for Skip.”

  I put the camera down on the cushion next to me. I looked in the monitor they’d set up and saw that it was pointing at nothing: just a space on a wall. The camera guy snuck up behind me on the couch and grabbed the camera back, trying to hold it steady. You could see it still heaving up and down, as he tried to get his breath under control from chasing me around.

  That’s when Dana moved back into the frame, her mouth still hanging open in shock, lipstick smearing her teeth. “Uh . . . uh . . . we can all understand your grief . . . heartbreaking, really . . . and as you at home just saw . . . ”

  Mizell stepped in next to Dana, to try to get this thing back on track. “I’m Detective Aretha Mizell from the Mt. Gresh Police Department. I hadn’t planned on speaking . . . ”

  “Quite a morning here, wouldn’t you agree?” Dana said, her tongue sliding across her upper row of teeth to try to wipe away the stray lipstick smears.

  “Professor Holt is understandably upset, as any parent would be.” Thank God for Mizell, picking up the narrative, as the camera finally settled into something resembling a professional shot. “But as Professor Holt just said, there’s a reward for any information that could lead to Skip’s safe rescue and return. So if anyone watching has information—any information at all—that could help us, just call the station at 413-732-6675. That stands for ‘tip line.’ Thank you so much, Dana,” Mizell finally said, walking out of camera range.

  Dana barely had time to squeak out a wide-eyed “Back to you, Chuck,” before the camera went dark. And when it did, it wasn’t me that she reamed into—but Mizell.

  “Why the hell did you cut him off? That was ratings gold. That was the lead story at noon and five and ten and going national . . . ”

  Dana was going so full-throttle at Mizell that I was surprised any of us even heard the landline ring. But the minute we did, everything went quiet. A call so fast, right after the TV report, and on the same phone the first call from the kidnapper had come in on. I grab
bed the phone, and that voice filled the room, once again.

  “What a. Performance. What a. House tour.”

  “If you touch one hair on her head . . . ”

  “Well, to find. That head. You have to. Find me. And to find me. You have to do the Labors. All of them,” he said, in a voice that sounded like it was gasping for air.

  “Put Skip on. Now.”

  “I suggest you. Take an order. Instead of. Give one. Take a . . . number. Number three.”

  Over the recording system, the sound of a piece of paper moving into place, to be read from. We could almost hear the hands that were holding it shake, or maybe that was just the paper itself, wrinkled and creased and worked over so many times to get it just right, his one mad rhyme. Read in a voice that was now bizarrely steady.

  So far so good, but you’re still in the wood.

  The Arcadian Deer is next; where is in this text.

  Tame the deer, don’t hurt the body,

  To keep me from getting much more naughty.

  You had the body, I had the brains . . .

  But you forgot me, so I have her in chains.

  No matter how much I wanted to make contact—and how much Mizell had tried to prepare me for it—nothing could have prepared me for the madness I was hearing. For the terror.

  Naughty. Forgot. Have her in chains.

  “Please, I’m begging you. Just tell me . . . what did I do? She’s a little girl, she’s just a little girl. She didn’t do anything. She’s all I’ve got. You heard me. Take me . . . ”

  Now, a new sound on the other end of the line. A button being pressed, along with a sort of digitized sound. Numbers falling. A computer clicking away. Click click click. Time, disappearing.

  If all’s not done in forty-eight hours,

  You’ll next see Skip pushing up flowers.

  If a mere two days seems unduly cold,

  It’s what you had to win the gold.

  Start running numbers, or else she slumbers.

  I looked at everyone in the room, as if I had to convince them, instead of the madman.