The Butterfly Tattoo

by M. D. Thomas

  Feeling better, with her breathing under control and the threat of another panic attack diminished for the moment, she raised her aching head and examined the room.

  She could hear a steady rain outside and the air was filled with the perfume smell of powdered carpet cleaner. A fan was motionless overhead, while a single window on the wall to her left let a shred of pale light into the room past the edges of blinds that looked like they might be made of real wood. There were two doors, one past the end of the bed, the other on her right. Both were closed, one perhaps a closet or bathroom. A fancy dresser sat against the wall to the right, its shiny top bare except for a glass vase of fake flowers. The big bed had a wooden frame that matched the dresser and a pair of nightstands. It had to be the shrew’s house. She wondered where the husband was hiding.

  Elle looked at the knotted rope around her left wrist and started breathing fast again, closed her eyes until her breaths evened out. If she lost control, the rag in her mouth might shift and make her gag, and with no one to help her she might retch over and over again until she finally puked and drowned in her own rank vomit, heading to whatever miserable afterlife there might be with the taste of vodka and orange juice filling her mouth.

  Hell if I’m making this easy for her…

  The rope was thin, maybe a quarter of an inch, but still too large to break. That left the knot, which pressed against the inside of her wrist. She was no Boy Scout, but there didn’t seem to be anything exotic about it. Nothing but a couple of square knots with an inch or two of leftover rope sticking out. She bent her wrist and flexed her fingers toward the knot, was able to touch it but not enough to do anything other than feel it brush against her fingertips.

  I shouldn’t have thrashed around before…

  She’d probably tightened the goddamn knots. Her wrists and ankles sure as hell hurt where the ropes dug into and dimpled the flesh. She flexed her fingers again, wondered if she was getting enough blood supply past the rope. There was no deadness or pins and needles, but she didn’t think she’d been tied up long. She looked at her other wrist, couldn’t even graze that knot.

  For the first time in her life she wished she was one of those double-jointed freaks.

  I’m not getting out of these damn things…

  Not by herself. Anything she did to try and loosen the knots would only tighten them more and then she might be looking at losing a hand or a foot if the shrew left her restrained for a long time.

  Elle felt panic brushing against the edge of her mind again and forced herself to breathe deeper. She looked up at the fan, inhaled and exhaled slowly, tried and failed to ignore the rag in her mouth. She attempted to force it out with her tongue, but the loop that ran behind her head made it impossible.

  She was about to raise her head to get a look at the ropes binding her ankles when the door past the end of the bed opened and the shrew came in again.

  Ding dong dead dead dead tied to the witch’s bed bed bed…

  The shrew stared at her for a long time, her eyes narrow, her mouth set in a straight line. There was a hardness to the woman that reminded Elle of her father, a man whose face held the same blank expression whether he was teaching you how to throw a ball or beating you senseless.

  “I’ll take the gag out,” said the shrew after a moment. “But if you scream it goes right back in. Do you understand?”

  Elle wanted to tell the shrew to go fuck herself, but she nodded.

  The shrew bent over and jerked the looping gag down around Elle’s neck, then she grabbed a corner of the rag that was in her mouth and plucked it out. Elle gulped in a huge rush of air, reveling in the feeling of a clear mouth.

  “There was a man in the car with you that night,” the shrew said as she looked down at Elle. “Tell me who he is and where I can find him.”

  The only way out of the ropes was if the shrew untied her, but the vodka and her tongue betrayed her as usual. “Look lady, I’m sorry about what happened to your kid. But he’s okay now, so why don’t you just let it go?”

  The shrew’s eyes narrowed.

  “Okay?” repeated the shrew, her voice quiet. “Okay.” She spoke as if she were tasting the word, trying to understand what it meant. “My son is lying in a hospital bed, unresponsive, with a piece of his skull removed so that his swollen brain won’t be damaged even farther. He has a feeding tube stuck into his stomach. He’s got a catheter and a urinary tract that keeps getting infected. He has to be moved so that he doesn’t get bed sores. And you have the nerve to say he’s… okay?”

  Elle answered without thought, admitted what she couldn’t tell Harvey the night before. “I just saw him the other day at the park. He was playing baseball.” Ah fuck… Her jaws hadn’t clacked shut before the shrew leaned forward and slapped her so hard across the cheek that Elle’s head lifted off the mattress. The throbbing in her skull ratcheted up a few notches and—feeling almost sober—she wondered if she would pass out again.

  “How dare you,” the shrew said from between clenched teeth, her chest heaving, the hand that slapped Elle balled into a quivering fist. “If you ever say anything about my son again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

  Elle stared back, her mind a knot of anger, fear, and confusion, all blurred by vodka, but if she knew anything it was how to survive. She nodded.

  “Good,” the shrew said. “Now tell me where I can find the man that was in the car with you.”

  Elle swallowed, and—drunk or not—could barely believe the words that came out of her mouth. “How do I know you won’t just kill me once you find him?”

  “Were you the one driving?”

  “No.”

  “So—assuming you’re not lying—you don’t have anything to worry about. Help me find him and I’ll let you go.”

  That didn’t mesh with the expression she saw on the woman’s face, the expression that reminded her so much of her father. Elle didn’t believe a word the shrew was saying.

  So there she was, tied to the damn bed, forced to choose between two losing options. Well, the bitch had hit her over the head, abducted her, tied her up and then slapped her, so damn if she’d do what the shrew wanted. She’d out-toughed her father and he made this crazy bitch look like a saint. She’d sooner die than give the shrew what she wanted. “Look, I don’t know where he lives. I don’t even know his last name. But his first name is Harvey. That’s everything I know.”

  “That’s not good enough. It’s not enough to find him.”

  “It’s all I know.”

  “Then you’ll be here for a while.”

  Elle held the shrew’s gaze for a moment, then said, “Rot in hell, lady.”

  Twenty-Four

  HARVEY

  Harvey walked out of Rainbow Pines in a daze. The rain had eased while he’d been inside, but it still soaked his hair and coat in moments, his umbrella forgotten in his hand.

  If Lee Young is in there, then who’s been following me? Does he have a twin brother? A cousin?

  He wondered again if he was losing his mind, had been seeing things that weren’t really there. You knew he was still in that bed. You knew and so you kept seeing him. Him and that baseball… He’d met more weird people than he cared to think about in his years on the police force, and weird people had weird things happen to them. It was just natural for them, a sort of magnetism—perhaps that’s what he’d become. Another weirdo who saw things that weren’t there.

  No.

  No, he wasn’t the weirdo type. He didn’t have visions. He didn't believe in those kinds of things. He hadn’t seen a ghost or some kind of spirit.

  He’d seen a kid.

  The question was, what kid?

  Harvey sat in the Cherokee and watched the rain bead on the windshield.

  Worrying about the kid following him around had been bad enough, now he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about the boy slowly rotting inside Rainbow Pines. The boy he’d put there.

  I’ve got to end this somehow…
He had to focus on work. On Robertson. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that until the kid left him alone.

  He needed to talk to Elle again. Fidgety as she'd been the other day, she’d known something. He was sure of it.

  It was time to find out what.

  Harvey made it to Shady Acres just after noon, parked right in front of Elle’s building a spot away from the beater she’d tossed a bag into before their disastrous trip down the Accotink parkway.

  He ran through the rain and climbed the stairs swiftly, thought of how he’d tell her the news. But when he knocked, she didn’t answer.

  “Wake up, Elle!” he shouted, banged even harder on the door as the wind-driven rain slashed into him. “It’s Harvey!”

  Still no answer. Probably sleeping off some kind of binge…

  He tried the door and was surprised when it turned smoothly beneath his palm.

  “Elle?” he called as he pushed inside the dark apartment. “Elle!”

  When there was still no answer, Harvey groped for a switch. The light illuminated a scene much the same as he remembered from his one night there, the apartment spare and depressing.

  Not wanting to draw an audience he closed the door behind him, water dripping off his clothes onto the worn carpet.

  Harvey didn’t call out again, walked to the bedroom where he expected to see Elle passed out. But when he looked through the door there were only rumpled sheets on the bed and discarded clothes on the floor. He checked the bathroom, but it was empty as well.

  He went back to the kitchen and looked around. There was booze on the counter but that wasn’t unusual. There was some water on the floor but in this weather that didn’t mean a damn thing. No, what was unusual was her car out front and the door unlocked. It was unlikely she’d decided to take a walk on such a nasty day, but she might be in a friend’s nearby apartment. But if either of those things had happened, Harvey thought Elle would’ve locked the door. Even if she didn’t own a big TV or a computer, the residents of a place like Shady Acres would be just as likely to steal food or booze.

  Harvey was about to do a second search of the apartment when his cell phone buzzed.

  It was Dave.

  Shit…

  “What’s up?” Harvey asked as his eyes continued to scan the apartment.

  “You got time for lunch and a beer?”

  Dave sounded normal enough, but Harvey sensed something in the undercurrents of his partner’s voice and any doubts he’d had about what Dave saw evaporated. “I’ve got lunch plans already, but I can swing a beer.”

  “Good enough,” Dave said. “Macho Burrito in half an hour?”

  “Yeah,” Harvey said. He hung up, tried to ignore the tightening of his guts.

  One thing at a time…

  He walked through the apartment again, was about to give up when he noticed keys and a money clip on the table by the door. Harvey went closer, saw that the clip held a few bucks and Elle’s driver’s license.

  She should be here, Harvey thought. Something’s wrong…

  Dave sat in their regular booth when Harvey made it to Macho Burrito. There were two Pacificos on the table and the obligatory chips and salsa, which looked untouched. Add that to the little something that was off in his voice earlier and Harvey felt his guts tighten even farther.

  “Forgot your umbrella on a day like this?” Dave asked as Harvey dripped into the booth. He didn’t smile.

  “Been one of those days,” Harvey said. He took a long swig of beer, resisted the urge to chug it in one go and order another. “What’s up, Dave?”

  Dave took a gulp of his beer and scrubbed one hand through his thinning hair. “I had a meeting with Robertson this morning.”

  His mind leapt to the worst, but Harvey was determined to let Dave spin out the story on his own terms.

  Dave swallowed. “He didn’t beat around the goddamn bush. He told me internal affairs had evidence you were on the take and wanted to know if I’d ever noticed you do anything odd.”

  Oh Nonna…

  Harvey forced himself to take just a sip of beer. He’d known the moment might come. Had hoped it wouldn’t, but still, he’d known. “What’d you tell him?”

  “That I’d never seen anything and that you’ve never said anything that made me think you were.”

  Harvey wondered if Dave was wired. It was certainly possible. Internal affairs wasn’t above trying to sting one of their own. He didn’t think Dave would ever agree to it, but Dave had a wife and kids and Harvey knew who came first.

  He looked into Dave’s eyes. “You’re not sure though, are you?”

  “Jesus, Harvey,” Dave said. “Are you?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly living a life of luxury,” Harvey said.

  “Good,” Dave said, although the look on his face said he knew Harvey hadn’t denied anything. He took a gulp of beer. “He’s planning to talk to you tomorrow morning.”

  “He ask you to tell me that?”

  “No, you prick!” Dave barked as he rocked back in his seat, finally sounding like himself. “I’m telling you because you’re my partner. I don’t know what you did to get their attention but you’d better make sure it was just a misunderstanding.”

  He had to stay calm, shouldn't assume internal affairs had enough on him to cause real trouble. He’d lay low and go along with what they asked of him. Sometimes if you didn’t dig yourself in any deeper, you could come out on the other side not much worse for wear. Internal affairs scared him a lot less than Robertson. “Robertson tell you what kind of evidence they had?”

  “No details. But he said the amounts the dealers have been reporting hasn’t been squaring with what’s been turned in lately.”

  “Doesn’t mean a damn thing,” Harvey said. “They lie all the time. Robertson knows that.”

  Dave nodded. “Yeah. But you remember Crazy Tom?”

  They’d busted Crazy Tom about three months ago for cooking and selling meth. “What about him?”

  “It came out later he had a thing for numbers. Had all these notebooks filled with crazy records about everything—the weight of every batch he cooked down to the milligram, the amounts of final product, how he divided it up, how much he sold it all for. Everything. Numbers out the ass. Kept real close track of his cash the same way.”

  “So?” Harvey said, but he already knew what Dave would say next.

  “So he said he knew exactly how much was in his place when we busted him, down to the penny. And what we turned in was quite a bit less.”

  More than Four-thousand less…“That’s it?”

  Dave shrugged. “That’s all Robertson mentioned.”

  “Okay. Good to know.” Harvey finished his beer and slid back out of the booth, took a five dollar bill out of his wallet and set it down on the table, resisted the urge to spill everything to Dave—not just the skimming, but the kid, Elle, everything. He didn’t like lying to his partner, especially when Dave probably knew he was lying. They were too close, too familiar. Well, he could keep him out of at least. “Thanks for the warning, Dave. I appreciate it.”

  Dave stared at him for a moment, then rolled his eyes and finally picked up a tortilla chip that he loaded with salsa. “You’d do the same thing for me, asshole.”

  Twenty-Five

  ELLE

  When the shrew left, Elle abandoned the idea of not struggling. If the ropes tightened enough that she cut off the blood supply to a hand then so be it. She wasn’t sitting and waiting for the crazy bitch to come back and do god knows what else to her. She’d pissed the shrew off, which might have been a mistake, but fuck it and fuck her.

  Gotta be smart… gotta be patient. She didn’t have much of either trait, but hey.

  Her head still aching, she looked at her right hand again, turned her wrist to check each side of the rope and knot. The rope was smooth, not the rough sort. She supposed that meant it was made from nylon or some poly-something shit. She didn’t know if that m
ade any difference in how easy or hard it would be to get free. Maybe since it was smooth she’d have a better chance of sliding a hand out. The knot, like she’d seen earlier, was plain. Plain and tight, no gaps. The other end of the rope disappeared below the edge of the mattress, anchored out of sight.

  She flexed until the rope was just tight and then twisted her wrist slowly, saw that the rope was still while her wrist spun.

  That’s gotta be a good thing…

  She ignored the urge to pull right away and turned her head to look at the other wrist. She flexed and twisted as before, but the rope moved with her, tighter than the other side. Maybe from when she’d panicked, or maybe because the shrew had tied that knot a bit tighter.

  She raised her head to look at the knots around her ankles but couldn’t see them very well. A slight wiggle of each leg told her the knots were pretty tight. Unlike the ropes around her wrists, the two binding her ankles were tied around the bedposts where she could see them. She lay her head back down, her neck muscles already tight.

  It’s the right hand or nothing…

  She forced herself to breathe even slower—thank god she wasn’t congested or she might be dead already. She listened for sounds of the shrew but heard nothing. She could be gone for all Elle knew, though she doubted the shrew would leave her alone, gagged or not. She wondered where the husband was and if he knew what his insane wife had done.

  When she felt calm—which was probably amped up compared to most people—she pulled gently against the rope on her right side, rocking her wrist back and forth at the same time. The rope slipped from her wrist to the base of her hand, the knot against the heel of her palm, and then bound there. She touched her thumb to her pinky finger to narrow her hand and the rope slipped another half an inch before it stuck. Still breathing slow, she pulled harder, continued to rock her wrist, willing the rope to slip past the fat part of her hand and off, but it didn’t budge. She felt herself breathing harder, gave into it, and strained as hard as she could, a muffled grunt escaping her mouth as the pain increased.