Dig Two Graves

by Kim Powers

  There. I’d almost driven past it, until I saw the street numbers ascending. Seven, nine . . . back up, five. Number 5 River Run, with a rusted horse medallion knocker sticking out in front of the door.

  A horse. A river. Crack. The right address. Number five. My past. Somewhere I’d been with Patti. Check check check check check. It was all there. I’d come to the right place.

  One last look at my phone: should I call Mizell? Her name was there, spelled out in LED and attached to a number; she’d borrowed the phone to add it in herself.

  No.

  I had a job to do, and I had twenty-eight hours left to do it.

  And we’d already traded places. I was just like him now. Insane.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  LaTrice’s blanket was still there—the shape of her body practically outlined in it, knees drawn up to her chest, the way she liked to sleep—but she wasn’t.

  Aretha Mizell wasn’t going to panic. Nothing was wrong. The blanket was even still warm, from her body heat. She’d just woken up and had to go to the bathroom. Who didn’t? Aretha had to get up and go three times in the middle of the night. Like mother, like daughter.

  Mizell was just being paranoid, working on a case like this. Maybe she should have said it was a conflict of interest, too close to home; that she couldn’t do another child abduction after everything she’d gone through with her niece Janice, but then they’d start taking cases away from her. They’d say she was weak and hormonal and not as strong as them, just because she was a woman. They’d think she was soft and leave her off the big gets. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to walk nice and slow to the bathroom. No big deal. Everybody had to go. The men on the force had to go. That’s where LaTrice was.

  Only she wasn’t.

  It wasn’t a big room; Aretha barely had to say her baby’s name for there to be a sort of echo, bouncing back at her from the pink tiles. Honestly. A woman’s bathroom in a police station, and they put in pink tiles? There were two stalls, and that girl was gonna get a whopping if she was hiding in one of those, standing up on top of the commode with the door closed, just to fake out her momma. Ain’t nobody got time for that, a joke in the middle of an investigation.

  “LaTrice Elaine Mizell, you are gonna pay holy hell if I find you in there . . . ”

  But she didn’t. Neither stall.

  Well, there were plenty of other places her baby could be. She was always playing practical jokes on her mother, and this was just another one of them. Not even a joke. A police station was a fascinating place. Lots of places to wander off to and look at, when no one was around to say you couldn’t. The evidence room had fun stuff in it, although it was locked up this late. (Thank God, because it had guns in it too. Aretha had taught her daughter about guns, not to play with them. She’d even gone to her school and given speeches about it.) Or the snack room. That’s where Aretha would go, if she woke up here in the middle of the night. Make a beeline for those vending machines with potato chips and cookies and soda. Those little orange crackers with peanut butter? Those were Aretha’s own personal Waterloo. She couldn’t remember if LaTrice had her little purse with her, but maybe she’d sweet-talked one of the squad guys into giving her some change.

  But she wasn’t in there either. The vending machine room, or the evidence room.

  LaTrice wasn’t in any of those places.

  Mizell was running out of places to look.

  Maybe the interrogation room. A little girl would like that, with a one-way mirror she could look into. She’d be running back and forth, outside the room looking in, where she could see everything, then inside the room looking out, where she couldn’t see anything. LaTrice would get such a kick out of that. Or inside, fiddling with all the gizmos they had in there. The filming equipment. If Mizell went in there and found out that LaTrice had filled up those things with nonsense . . .

  But she wasn’t there either. The room was locked. Dark. Mizell caught a glimpse of herself in the one-way mirror. It wasn’t good, what she saw staring back at her.

  Okay, now she was panicking.

  Why did you bring that child here with you tonight, here, of all places, with so much evil out in the world? So much evil staring you in the face?

  “What’s wrong, chief?” one of her guys called out.

  “We’ve got a problem. Stop whatever you’re doing.” She called it out to all their tables; that’s what they called them, their working units. Tables. One for robbery, one for vice, one for domestics, one for kidnapping.

  They’d never had to use that one very much. Except for Janice. And Skip.

  She couldn’t go through it with another little girl.

  Not her own.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The narrow hallway was littered with crack vials and condoms, and there was a smell in the air. Not just acrid, stinging pot, but presence. Sweat, which never washed off. Desperation, for a high. A hothouse of smells, trapped inside for who knows how long. I could almost imagine that I heard rolling papers, crinkling and burning, turning to ash. Outside, cars cruised by, heavy bass blasting from their mega-speakers, making the rickety walls of the place seem to vibrate.

  I’d never been in a crack den before, but this seemed to fit the bill.

  I’d never burned down anything either, but that was next on the agenda.

  I had the cigarette lighter I always carried with me, the one that my father had thrown at me, right after he burned his own ankles with it, instead of mine. My only inheritance.

  “Gold,” he’d said. “The only color that matters.” He’d held the lighter in front of my face for just a second before he turned it on his own ankles. Through gritted teeth, he hissed out that gold was the only color I should ever see, from then on.

  Ironic, considering it was one of the last colors they had seen, my parents. They’d died in a fire. Both of them, in our burning house, after my father had fallen asleep smoking in bed.

  The sins of the fathers. And now, I was following in his footsteps—up a set of tumble-down stairs to the second floor—about to start a fire of my own.

  Debris was everywhere; it would be so easy. I just had to rub the tip of my rough-hewn thumb against that tiny metal cylinder on the lighter, and the place would go up in a flash, every man for himself; if you’re too strung-out to get out then you deserved to die. . . .

  No. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. Skip’s captor couldn’t push me to that.

  Yes. He could.

  I was running down a hallway, banging on doors, yelling, nobody yelling back, nobody threatening me, all good signs, coast clear, no light except the flash and butane from my father’s lighter . . .

  And then, a door, open, at the end of the hall.

  Like all those other open doors I’d seen over the past days.

  I walked through it, a small room, no windows inside, like the eaves under an attic . . .

  . . . and that’s when I felt the hands behind me.

  Pushing me.

  And then slamming the door behind me. Locked from the outside. No give, except for flakes of rust coming off the doorknob in my hand.

  From outside, I heard footsteps running down the stairs I’d just used, and then another door slamming shut, the one I used to come in from off the street.

  “Hey! I’m in here! HEY!”

  Pitch dark. Down on the floor. I tried to find my cigarette lighter so I could see, but it was gone. Flown from my hands when I was pushed inside. My cell phone too. I heard the clack it made when it hit the ground. The floors were slatted, so it could have fallen through.

  I reached for the doorknob again—but it was hot to the touch. And getting hotter, almost glowing orange. Smoke was beginning to waft in, from under the door. And a stronger smell with it, something that overpowered my puny little butane.

  Gasoline.

  I’d gotten the poem all wrong: it was burn the place down, but with me in it. />
  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  How many prayers had Skip said? Had the hours she’d spent in this place been one long prayer? Afraid to go to sleep, her mind too frazzled to think, to even form complete thoughts, but every thought was to God. And her father. Father God, God the Father . . .

  Save me, save me, help me, please God, please Daddy . . .

  She wouldn’t let her kidnapper hear her; she wouldn’t even let him see her lips move, but she kept it going, a chant in her head. Please God, please Daddy, tell me what to do, I’ll hear you, I’ll hear you in my head . . .

  But it wasn’t working. Now the only thing she heard was the van returning outside. She knew what one sounded like, from helping out with the drama department: the extra heavy sound that the two back doors made when they were being opened. And then the sound of his crutches and . . . him coming inside. He was making more noise than usual, as if, now that he knew that Skip knew about the crutches, he didn’t care what he sounded like anymore, or that she could track his comings and goings.

  “Surprise!” he called out, from the hallway. “Are you decent? We’ve got company!”

  Skip could hear more commotion in the hall; the other guy, the big one, the only one who was left, carrying in something. His footsteps even heavier and slower outside the hall than they normally were.

  “Thank God for my helpers. Well, helper. So many errands we’ve been running. Dropping things off. Like Hippocrates’ body. Picking things up. Pushing things in . . . lighting things up. Since we’re down a helper, I decided to get some extra company for you. So we could be a. Threesome. Again.”

  “Who? Who else is here?”

  “All good things to those who wait. And I am one. Who has. Waited. Now, you will too.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  I was not going to burn to death in a crack den.

  In just seconds, the fire had jumped from just a smell—a crackle—to what seemed like a conflagration. Like the Olympic torch my year. Cathy Freeman had run into the stadium with it, dipped it into that bizarre, UFO-looking Olympic cauldron, and in all of five or six seconds . . . a giant ring of fire, for the whole world to see. An explosion, kicking off the games.

  More smoke was coming in from underneath the door; it was getting harder to breathe, as the smoke rose up. But in such a small room, there wasn’t anywhere for it to go. I couldn’t get out the door—I heard flames there, falling beams; there wasn’t a window—so I had to get out through one of the walls.

  I began feeling around with my palms.

  Peeling wallpaper on all four sides of me; I could detect strips of something underneath it, layered on top of each other. Maybe this had once been a make-do bedroom, for a stable boy. I knocked on it; it sounded hollow, so at least I knew there wasn’t anything solid underneath the wallpaper. Maybe it adjoined another room.

  A room with a window I could jump out of.

  I scooted around on my back and laid flat on the floor so I could brace myself and kick into the wall with my legs, using every bit of muscle I had. Thank God I’d kept up with my running; I still had power in my thighs.

  But now, the smoke had nowhere to go. It had finished rising and was now filling the room, as low down to the floor as I was. Every panic-fueled breath I took brought more of it into my lungs. There was no time to do anything except keep kicking, and it worked: the wall was so paper-thin, I was pushing through a lattice work of wooden strips and crumbling lath. Dry-as-bone plaster, that would soon be eaten up by the fire. Broken edges of lumber and rusty nails ripped into my legs with every thrust, but my adrenaline had almost anesthetized me. I barely felt anything, even as I scooted closer to the disintegrating wall, up to my thighs now with dry wood and rot disintegrating around my body.

  One more push, two, then three—I thought of Patti pushing Skip out, the doctor urging her on, Push, push, push—so I did it for her. For both of them. Patti and Skip. Feeling like I didn’t have any more in me left to give, but the baby still hadn’t been born.

  It was dig in, or die. For both of us. Me and Skip.

  “Aaahhhhh . . . ahh!” There, with a grunted-out scream.

  One last push, and the opening was big enough for me to climb through, a miraculous whoosh of cool air on the other side.

  There was a window. It was open.

  That’s when I remembered the second thing I knew about fire: not just that it rises, but that it abhors a vacuum. It would do anything it could, to fill it up. And it already had.

  The room I was in now was worse than the one I had just escaped: licks of fire were whipping up the walls and cascading across the ceiling. All of it beginning to grow into one big mass of fireball that wanted to fly out of that lone window.

  Just like I did.

  Beams from the ceiling were crashing into the room, fire was raining down on me. Wood, ceiling, lath, wallpaper, even the air seemed to be on fire.

  I ran to the window and straddled myself over the ledge, hanging on by my fingertips.

  Then the fire burned the ledge away, and me with it.

  I was in free fall—airborne—down two stories: no air-filled mattress to land on this time, just gravel and glass and needles.

  What little breath I still had was knocked out of me; my right ankle, now tattooed with real flame, was slammed against the ground . . . but I was alive.

  In agony, but alive and grabbing air, rolling on the ground to put out the fire that had traveled through the air with me, a ridgeback of flame shooting off my spine.

  In the distance now, sirens and the heavy honking that went with them. Flashing red lights, against the huge spiral of black smoke I’d just flown out of.

  He wouldn’t need a Facebook photo now, with that as evidence.

  His crime, and now mine I thought, as I crawled to my car to drive to Wendy, for her to patch me up. And for us to patch things up.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”

  It was the homemade sign that TJ had posted months ago outside the door to his tiny study carrel in the library, back when he thought it was funny. Back when he was trying to be despairing and ironic—look how hard my life is! lol—like the “cool kids.” Back before any of this had become all too real. A familiar line borrowed from Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy—actually, the original LOL—the welcome sign to Hell. Now that TJ had actually lived there for a few days, he wondered if he could ever get out, or if he would be dragging the scent of sulfur and smoke with him for the rest of his life.

  Now, with the library closed and everyone else gone home for the night, TJ ripped the sign down and replaced it with something that told a more accurate story, ready and waiting for the next geek who would inherit the tiny room: the wanted poster of the man with ginger hair and glasses who gave TJ the poem that he had deliberately kept from Ethan and the police. The Identi-Kit artist had done a good job, but TJ thought she hadn’t gone far enough. The poster should have had a flip side, with a drawing of TJ on the back.

  “Wanted Dead or Alive: TJ Markson: Accomplice.”

  It would be the only time he’d ever be “wanted.”

  He was going to be kicked out of school, after what he’d done. Maybe they wouldn’t kick him out, but they’d certainly take away his scholarship so it was pretty much the same thing. He couldn’t stay at Canaan without the money. Without the money, he couldn’t afford his apartment, but that didn’t matter because he wouldn’t need to be in Mt. Gresh anymore. He wouldn’t have classes to go to. Without going to classes, he wouldn’t graduate and without graduating, he wouldn’t be able to get a job, certainly not a teaching job, which is all he’d ever wanted. At least once he actually got to Canaan. And without a job, he wouldn’t be able to pay back the student loans he’d already used up, even before they took away his scholarship. And without . . .

  He was fucked, no matter how he looked at it, and he’d been looking at it every way possible since they let him leave the police stati
on.

  “What about me?” TJ had said, the last thing he’d ever said to Ethan. And there wasn’t even an answer; that’s how pitiful TJ had become. They hadn’t arrested him for anything, they hadn’t kept him at the police station or really even interrogated him, they’d just . . . left him there, while they went to work out the next Labor. TJ had been forgotten, standing there like an idiot while the rest of the station went back to work.

  Why had he even done it? That’s the only question that was in TJ’s head anymore—well, after “What the fuck do I do for the rest of my life?” It’s not like four years of Greek and Latin were a big calling card on a resume, a job application for flipping burgers. He’d come to Canaan with revenge in his heart; he was going to get back at the great Ethan “Hercules” Holt after what he’d caused his father to do. Kill himself. That deserved payback, didn’t it? TJ’s father hadn’t left a note telling his son to go after Ethan, but TJ was sure that’s what he would have wanted. TJ had always been fascinated by the past, and classics is what he would have studied anywhere, so he didn’t have to fake anything to get into Ethan’s classes.

  But when TJ got to Canaan he found out that he was better at studying than getting revenge. (Even when Rodger with a d had dumped him, he couldn’t get revenge. He just figured he deserved it, for being a bad boyfriend.) The classics were all about it—getting revenge, declaring enemies, going to war—but TJ couldn’t actually pull it off in real life. He didn’t want to get back at Ethan, he wanted to learn from him. TJ didn’t see evil in him; he didn’t see a man who went after people. He just saw a good teacher. A good father. A good man, who’d lost his wife. And Skip . . . she was a good daughter. Always hanging around school. Already so grown up, because she’d been around adults so much of her life. Because she’d grown up like TJ had, an only child.