by Jonas Saul
They exchanged a wry glance, their ineptitude shining through their blank stares. Meth Diet’s shakes had grown worse. If he dove for his gun, would he even be able to get a shot off with any kind of reasonable aim, even from five feet?
“Option one,” she said. “We fight to the death. In which case, you both die here, in this filthy apartment.” She waited for them to grasp what she was saying. Skinny guy number one leaned back on his arms and rested on his elbows on Parkman’s living room floor, exactly where she wanted him to be. “Option number two. I hurt you bad. So bad that you’ll be in the hospital for weeks, but at least you’ll be alive. That’s it. Pick now, or I decide for you. Which one’ll it be?” She finished with a talk show host flare.
Meth Diet blew air out of his mouth, his eyes widened with the shakes. “Oh, man, I like this one. She’s gonna be awesome.”
Skinny guy number one shook his head back and forth, looking down at the carpet. As if in a slow-motion picture, he lifted his head and glared at her, a newfound rage in his features.
“You got some balls for a chick.” He licked those already-wet lips again. “It’s talk like that—” he rolled his head back and forth— “that get pretty young things like you killed by accident. We be fucking you at the same time, making you scream and then, oops, I held the pillow on your face too long.” He grinned like he knew a big secret and snuck a glance at Meth Diet. “Then we fuck you some more. Ain’t that right?”
“Damn right,” Meth Diet shouted. “The ass is always better after you’re dead. The muscles give out and relax. Hey Pete, we could probably both fit in her ass at the same time once she’s dead.”
Sarah shrugged, fighting hard not to dive over the coffee table at Meth Diet for the absolute horrific comment he just made.
“Have it your way. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Sarah lifted her feet and placed them on the edge of the coffee table. Both men frowned and stared at her shoes. A second later, they lunged for their guns.
With a brutal force, Sarah shoved. The table shot forward, the corner clipping Meth Diet just below the chin, indenting his throat. The other edge smacked skinny guy number one, Pete, in the chest, stunning him. When the table shot forward almost three feet, the guns dropped off the edge on Sarah’s side.
But she wasn’t interested in the guns. Too much noise.
The second the table connected with both men, she pulled her feet in, jumped from the couch, and hopped around Pete. While Meth Diet held his throat and tried to breathe again, Sarah pulled the broken TV off its stand and let it fall on top of Pete. The piece of wood still sticking out of the front of the TV landed squarely on the top of Pete’s head. He grunted under the weight of the old TV, but didn’t have the strength to push it off.
Meth Diet took a large squeaky breath as Sarah kicked Pete in the ribs to further weaken his resolve. Then Meth Diet did the unexpected. He dove onto the coffee table, his hands dangling on the other side in search of a weapon.
With no choice left, Sarah pulled her own gun from the back of her jeans and fired at Meth Diet. The report echoed off Parkman’s apartment walls, deafening her briefly. She kept pressure on her finger in case another shot was needed.
A small hole had formed on the side of Meth’s neck and a river of dark blood pooled onto the coffee table. His body relaxed and dangled loosely.
Shit, where did I learn this stuff?
She hadn’t wanted to kill them. Breaking their legs would’ve been enough, but they hadn’t left her much choice.
Meth Diet jerked once more as his body succumbed to death. A moment later, he stopped moving forever.
She lifted the old boxy TV enough to roll it off Pete’s face. He didn’t look like he was breathing.
What the hell?
She bent to check for a pulse.
“Shit.”
When the TV had fallen on his face, the piece of wood had punched into his throat. The weight of Parkman’s TV did the rest. His grunt had been his last breath.
“Why do they always pick the wrong option?” she asked out loud.
With her gun back in her pants, she ran for the door. At the peephole, she looked out into the hallway to see if anyone had been alerted by the gunshot. Then she locked the thumb latch deadbolt and turned around.
The bedroom appeared to be nothing glamourous. Usual bedroom stuff. The office was interesting. Parkman’s desk was ruined from the ransacking. Someone had taken a knife and carved the top of the wood to shit. Posters on the walls were all torn, some still stuck on the wall, faces grotesquely skewed with chicken blood smeared across them.
A locked filing cabinet had been wrenched open, files pulled out and torn to shreds on the floor.
Glass crunched underfoot. When she looked down, her own face stared back from a photo. She picked it up. The frame was broken, but it was a picture of her, Parkman, Dolan and Esmerelda at the hospital after Parkman had saved her from a man named Armond Stuart, whom she later chased to Hungary and then Italy. The image brought it all back. The days when Parkman was her friend.
Italy. The crucifix. The crypt.
What was it about the memory of Parkman on a crucifix that bothered her so much? She remembered Parkman as a friend, but the image in her head of the night she was shot was irrefutable. His gun was out. He fired. The bullet hit her in the head. He tried to kill her. There was no going back. Parkman was her mortal enemy.
She stared at Dolan and Esmerelda a little longer. If only they were still around. She cried, longing to see them, talk with Dolan, laugh with Esmerelda. They had been good people, taken from this world by men like the two in Parkman’s living room. How many good people had to die for society to wake up and change their antiquated laws?
She couldn’t fix the world. She couldn’t save everybody from themselves. But for every bit of good she did, there was change. For every bit, there was less bad. Altering the seesaw to her side had always been her agenda, bit by bit. At least since Vivian started talking to her all those years ago. Where had that inner drive gone? When she almost died in Italy? She had almost died several times. Why was the last one any different?
Then it came back. Because of her love for Aaron and the internal clock, the need, the want to settle down, have a normal life, have kids.
She let the picture fall from her grasp, wiped her eyes, and took a deep breath. Would she really want to bring children into this world? Into a world where men like the two lying dead in Parkman’s living room existed?
Would she deny the gift of being able to receive messages from her dead sister and her work saving lives?
No, not anymore.
Her purpose, her path, had been chosen. Talk of quitting was the only thing she would quit.
She turned to leave Parkman’s office. A metallic noise stopped her. She put her back to the wall and pulled her gun out slowly, listening for the sound again.
Someone tried the door handle.
What now?
Sarah edged into the hall, gun first, barrel parallel with the floor.
The door handle twisted again until whoever was on the other side realized it was locked.
Then came a soft knocking from the corridor.
“Hey, guys. It’s me, Derek.”
Derek? Who the hell was Derek? Probably someone Violeta sent to help clean her body up.
She moved closer to the door, unlocked the deadbolt and got ready.
The door opened slowly. Just as it was almost completely open, Derek started inside and Sarah dove at the door with her shoulder. Derek, caught unaware, got jammed between the door and its frame. Stunned by the unexpected blow, he stood long enough for Sarah to smash the door into him again.
Without looking to see if he was incapacitated or not, she ran a third time at the door. He had moved back after the second blow, but his face hadn’t cleared yet. The edge of the door smashed into his cheek, knocking the other cheek into the door frame with such force that his eyes rolled back in his head
and he dropped to the floor like a heavy lump of wet mud.
She opened the door and peeked down the empty hall. She pulled Derek’s dead weight into the apartment.
Once he was lying beside the two dead skinny guys, she touched her temple gingerly.
“You fucking three,” she whispered, “have given me a headache. Damn, this one is really going to hurt.”
She headed for the bathroom, hoping Parkman had some pain reliever in his medicine cabinet.
How many more people did Violeta have working for her? Would more show up? Were they waiting for Parkman as friends or foes?
The answers to all her questions lie with Violeta.
After finding a bottle with 400mg-strength Advil, she downed three and walked back to the living room.
Sarah stepped over Derek’s unconscious form and found Pete’s cell phone next to him.
She hit redial.
A woman answered. “Are you finished with her yet? Come on, tell me, was it deliciously fun?”
Sarah caught her breath. Was this woman for real?
“Are you there?” the woman asked, her tone turning hostile.
“Your two meth addicts are dead. They’re on Parkman’s living room floor. Derek, the other man you sent over, is also out of commission. I’m coming for you, Violeta Payne, and I’m really fucking pissed.”
She threw the phone against the wall where it broke into pieces.
Chapter 32
After arriving at the clinic, Tam looked at herself in the rearview mirror of the Mustang GT her mother had bought her six months ago. She wiped her tears away, grabbed a Kleenex and spit onto it. She used the saliva to clean off some of the dried blood around the cut on her cheek.
With one last look at herself in the mirror, Tam got out, locked the car, and headed toward the main doors of the Reed Clinic where her father was recently admitted. At least that’s what her mother had said. In minutes, she would be sure.
How could her mother expect her to drive to Parkman’s apartment and kill another human being? What had happened that pushed her mother so far? She had never been this out of control.
Ever since Tam’s dad had walked away, nothing had been the same. The level of violence had increased. The screaming, the drinking, and the irrational decisions turned her mother into everything Tam hated.
Maybe her father could help pull things back together.
The sun had gone down, but the air was still charged from the day’s heat. A chill ran down her back at the thought of what Sarah Roberts was going through at that very moment with those two horrible men. Poor Sarah. She had been accidentally shot and then came home to Santa Rosa to her friend’s apartment only to be given to the junkies as a sexual treat. Tam didn’t understand anything her mother was doing anymore.
At the clinic’s front desk, a woman in her fifties, graying hair, high cheekbones, hovered over a computer screen, one hand typing something.
“Excuse me,” Tam said softly so as not to startle her.
Without looking up, the woman said, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for my father, Oliver Payne. I understand he was admitted here tonight.”
The woman stopped typing and met Tam’s gaze. “Oliver Payne is your father?”
Tam nodded. The expression on the woman’s face looked as if she was surprised, like Oliver had told her he was childless or something.
She pointed. “Down that hall, by the back exit, room 106.”
“Thank you,” Tam said as she started down the hall.
She felt the eyes of the woman on her back the entire way. Just before the door to 106, Tam glanced over her shoulder quickly and caught her still staring.
Weird.
Tam knocked on the door. Someone shuffled about behind the door. Then more shuffling. She knocked again.
“Just a second.” Her father’s voice.
Warmth coursed through her, but also fear of what he was now. How would life be like for him? Could her mother really have had anything to do with what happened to him? Even though she denied it in her flamboyant style, something told Tam she was in on it somehow.
“Come in.”
Tam turned the knob and opened the door. Her father lay on a bed, a lamp on either side of the bed illuminating his damaged face. She left the door open wide and stepped closer to the bed.
“Oh, Daddy, what happened?”
“What happened to your cheek?” he asked.
“It’s nothing,” Tam said, self-consciously holding a hand over it.
A nurse stood by his side, a clipboard in her hand.
“I didn’t expect you here,” Oliver’s voice was weak, reserved. “I thought your mother was coming.”
“I think she’s on her way, but I wanted to get to you first because she’s done some horrible things—” Her voice caught in her throat.
“Come come, now, Tam. Move closer.”
Tam shuddered with sobs and leaned into her father. A moment later, as his warm and loving arms wrapped around her, she cried uncontrollably, her body wracked with grief.
“How could she, Daddy? How could Mom be so mean?”
He pushed her up. “Come on, Tam. Tell me what you’re talking about, okay, honey.”
Tam wiped at her eyes, now swollen from all the tears.
“Mom hired a detective to find you in Greece.”
“I know about that, honey.”
“She said you could never leave her. She wouldn’t allow it.”
“Here I am,” he said.
“Then she tried to get that private detective in trouble and tried to make me do her dirty work.”
“What?” His voice took on new interest. Like he wasn’t tired or lethargic anymore. “Really?”
“The man’s name is Parkman. After he found you, he refused to do more. He quit working for her. So she went after him and his friend, a girl named Sarah Roberts.”
“What has she done?” he asked.
The nurse set her clipboard down and leaned closer, but Tam didn’t care anymore. Someone needed to know what her mother was doing.
“She hired two scary men to hurt Sarah. They’re in Parkman’s apartment right now doing horrible, disgusting things to her. Mom just ordered me to go to that apartment and she wanted me to …” Her throat closed again with emotion. She swallowed and took a deep breath.
“She wanted you to what?”
“She told me to go and kill Sarah Roberts. She said that Sarah wouldn’t be able to use her plumbing down there for some time.” Tam gestured to her pubic area. “How could she hurt another person like that? And how could my own mom ask me to kill someone?”
“I know, honey. Come here.”
He opened his arms and Tam fell into them again. More tears working their way down her cheeks, stinging in the cut, wetting her father’s shirt.
The closet door opened behind her. She bolted up thinking her mother had been listening in. Two burly men stepped out from hiding.
“What’s this?” Tam asked, suddenly frightened. She looked at her dad as she straightened up. “Who are they?”
“Those two men work for the Santa Rosa Police Department.”
“What’s going on, Dad?”
“It’s a long story, and one I want to tell you, but first, I think these men will want to hear more of what your mom has been doing since I’ve been away.”
Tam looked at the two men. They stepped closer, peaceful, calm expressions on both their faces.
“Can you tell us what’s happening right now at this man’s apartment?”
Tam laid it all out for them, covering as many details as she could, and ended with Parkman’s home address. One man spoke directly to her, while the other wrote furiously onto a small pad of paper he had produced from a back pocket.
“Did she do this to your face?” the officer asked.
Tam nodded.
“Okay, we’re going to step outside for a moment, let you two get reacquainted. I have to call this in. We need
to have officers respond to this address to see what’s going on. Everyone okay with that?”
“What happens if Violeta shows up here?” Oliver asked.
“We’ll be right outside.”
They turned to go. Tam’s stomach twisted with nausea.
Her mother was due at any second.
Violeta got Martin to pull the car up to the front entrance of the Reed Clinic.
