A Study in Crimson

by Chris Orcutt

  Big Red started after Sally, but I jumped in front of him and shuffled side to side in a loose fighting stance, cutting him off. He betrayed his frustration by throwing a wild haymaker at my head—which, luckily, I ducked.

  Dakota, this guy might be slow, but he’s a good four inches taller than you, fifty pounds heavier, and he’s as brawny as a lumberjack. This is life or death. You have to strike to kill.

  His arm was still across his body from his punch follow-through, exposing his entire side and elongating his neck. I sprang forward, planted my feet, and, with every fiber of strength I possessed, smashed the heel of my fist and the butt of the baton handle into his larynx. It lurched in his throat.

  But the human body can be remarkably tough and resilient, and certain men, like Big Red, are a lot tougher than the average person. Although he grunted and coughed, after a moment he shook off the blow. When he looked at me again, his lip was quivering and his eyes gleamed with rage.

  Squatting slightly in a wrestler’s stance, tucking in his chin to protect his throat, he crept toward me. I shuffled to the side, set my feet, and delivered a combination of two stiff jabs to his nose, followed rapidly by a slash with the baton that glanced off his skull. But before I could withdraw my baton arm, he grabbed me by the wrist, spun and hammer-threw me into some brush off the trail.

  Somewhere behind me, a woman shrieked and went quiet. Sally! Scrabbling to my feet, I sprinted down the trail with Big Red galumphing in pursuit. In a clearing ahead, Malone and Jean-Luc held a squirming Sally by the arm. I moved toward them, but when I entered the clearing, Jean-Luc, smiling wolfishly with nicotine-stained teeth, pointed a snub-nosed revolver at me.

  I stopped. He dragged the barrel across Sally’s temple and drilled it into her cheek. She whimpered and gazed pleadingly at me. She flicked her eyes to Malone, who was calmly smoking a cigarette.

  “Geoff, make him stop!” she said. “He’s hurting me!”

  Malone flicked his cigarette at her, hitting her in the face. It bounced off onto the trail, where it smoldered in the dirt.

  “Ow!” Sally said. “You bastard—you almost hit my eye!”

  “Shut up, Sally. You are not to speak unless you are answering my questions.” Malone removed his sunglasses and dangled them from his fingers. He stepped closer to her and examined her neck. “Where is your collar, Sally?”

  She stared at the dirt and didn’t say anything.

  “I asked you a question,” he said.

  “Leave her alone,” I said. “I cut it off her. She’s not going to be a sex slave to an insecure psychopath anymore.”

  With a faint smile on his lips, Malone nodded over my shoulder. I heard footsteps behind me, and as I turned around, Big Red punched me in the ribs. I felt like I’d been broadsided by a steel girder.

  The pain in my side was instantaneous and severe; he’d broken at least one, probably a few, of my ribs. With the wind knocked out of me, I dropped to my knees in the dirt, painfully coughing.

  Malone placed his fingers on Sally’s cheek and glided them down the contours of her neck, breast, ribs and backside. Sally’s legs quaked and her eyes dilated enormously; she was experiencing an adrenaline dump.

  “I’m afraid our time together is over anyway, Sally,” he said. “Soon you’ll have a new master. But in the meantime, you will continue to serve me.”

  Slowly, I got to my feet. To say it hurt to breathe was the understatement of my life. As Malone whispered something to Sally, I stayed hunched over with my hands on my knees. I wanted Malone to think I was incapacitated so he’d feel safe approaching me.

  It worked. He strolled over.

  “As for you, Mr. Stevens,” he said, “I have—”

  As soon as he stooped over me, I sprang to my feet and unleashed a blistering uppercut—a punch so fast and devastating, Bruce Lee would have been proud. When my fist connected with his nose, I felt a soft crunch, like a chicken bone breaking, then the warmth of blood. Malone screamed, staggered backwards and fell on his ass. He sat there, bleeding. Then, smiling gruesomely, he snapped a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it on his nose. Standing up, he brushed himself off and shook his head.

  “Mr. Stevens,” he said, “you might think such antics make you seem tough, but they only make you look weak.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m not the one with a badly broken nose. Good luck looking like yourself again.”

  “Jean-Luc,” Malone said, “I want you to walk this man into the woods, shoot him in the head, and cover his body with leaves. Be sure to do it some distance off the trail so he won’t be found until spring.”

  “Gladly,” Jean-Luc said.

  Jean-Luc grinned at me again. The beauty of the fall woods made his teeth even more unsightly.

  “Dakota!” Sally whimpered.

  Jean-Luc clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “It’ll be okay, Sally,” I said.

  Big Red put his hands on his hips and stared at me. “I will deal with him.”

  “No, I need you to carry the girl,” Malone said. “Jean-Luc will dispose of him while we go back to Megan’s house and get her and Jade.”

  “Why are we bothering with them?” Big Red said. “Let’s kill him now and be on our way.”

  “Malone,” I said, “listen to me. Be smart—let Sally go and leave. Sally’s father is best friends with the Director of the FBI. Stop for a second and think. If you kidnap her, in about ten minutes the FBI and every Podunk police force in the Northeast will be combing the countryside for you. They’ll have helicopters, roadblocks, dogs, SWAT—”

  “I highly doubt it,” Malone said, giving me a pitiful look. “We will be safely across the border before that happens.”

  Jean-Luc smiled at me and wagged his eyebrows. Still digging the gun barrel into Sally’s cheek, he removed his other hand from her mouth and groped her breasts. Squealing, Sally tried to slap his hand away, and when she couldn’t, she leaned over and bit his hand. Jean-Luc yelped and let go of her. Sally staggered away from him. While everyone’s eyes were on Sally, I pressed the baton against the ground, compacting it, and slid it up my jacket sleeve.

  “The little cunt bit me!” Jean-Luc said. He sneered and jabbed the gun at her.

  “Put the gun down,” Malone said.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, Malone produced a small case, opened it, and removed a hypodermic needle. While Sally was looking in my direction and hyperventilating, Malone lifted her skirt and jabbed the needle into her butt. Sally’s eyes went glassy, her knees buckled, and Big Red scooped her up and slung her over his shoulder.

  “Excellent,” Malone said. “Now walk off the trail with her and wait in the woods near the road. I’ll get the car and meet you. Understood?”

  Big Red nodded and walked off into the woods with Sally.

  “What did you inject her with, Malone?” I said.

  “Merely a tranquilizer,” Malone said, “to calm her down. Jean-Luc, you know what to do. And remember—take him well off the trail, and cover his body with leaves. Goodbye, Mister Stevens.”

  I glared at him. “You’re making a big mistake.”

  Putting on his sunglasses, Malone chuckled, spun on his heels and strolled away. I could hear him laughing to himself as he disappeared down the trail. Holding the gun on me, Jean-Luc lit a cigarette, then motioned toward the woods with the gun. I walked very slowly into the trees off the trail, letting the compacted ASP baton slide down my jacket sleeve until its handle was concealed in my fist.

  My only play here was to either stay very close to Jean-Luc—within two feet so I could use the baton—or get as far away from him as I could. The gun he was holding on me, a .38 snub nose, tended to be inaccurate beyond 50 feet, so if I could put fifty feet between myself and that gun, I had a chance. First, though, I’d try to get him close to me.

  As we s
huffled through the leaves, down the back side of the ridge toward a swamp below, I pretended to trip. This triggered a jolt of pain in my ribs so intense that it felt like I’d fallen on a subway third rail. Hunched over on my knees, feigning catching my breath, I waited for Jean-Luc to get closer so I could take him down with the baton. When he was a safe ten feet away from me, he stopped and grinned.

  “Get moving,” he said.

  I reluctantly got to my feet and started walking again, faster this time to increase the distance between us. The swamp was getting closer.

  “Slow down,” he said.

  “You said, ‘Get moving,’ ” I said. “Which is it? Make up your mind.”

  Slaloming between the trees, fifty or so yards away, was the mountain biker who’d been rude to me earlier. Ahead, on the edge of the swamp, was a massive sycamore tree, a good four feet in diameter, with a couple of long branches fallen around its base. This was as good a situation as I could hope for; with that mountain biker so close, Jean-Luc would be reluctant to fire his gun. I pointed at the mountain biker.

  “Look at that punk, would you?” I said. “No respect for the rules.”

  The second Jean-Luc turned to look, I sprinted for the sycamore.

  “Hey, get back here!” Jean-Luc said.

  I grabbed a sturdy six-foot branch and ducked behind the tree trunk. As he ran toward the tree, I listened to his footsteps. As soon as I knew which way he was coming, holding the branch like a giant baseball bat I swung blindly around that side of the tree. The branch struck something, there was a grunt, and when I emerged cautiously from behind the tree, Jean-Luc was stumbling around holding the side of his head.

  Between the suitcase the other day and now the tree branch, I was batting a thousand with this guy.

  Blood trickled down his temple, cheek and chin. With a snap of my wrist that held the baton, I telescoped it to its full length and rushed him. He was still stumbling in a circle, wildly brandishing the pistol, when I reared back and swung the baton at his wrist with everything I had, like I was hitting a tennis forehand winner. The way he screamed—even worse than Knife Guy had the other day—I knew I’d shattered every bone in his wrist. The gun fell, cartwheeled across the leaves and plopped into the swamp.

  His scream stirred the bloodlust in me, and I could feel my jaw quivering with the desire to hurt him. Continuing to stagger in circles, he gingerly cradled his wrist with his other hand.

  A few feet away, some leaves smoldered where his cigarette had fallen. As Jean-Luc stumbled toward the swamp, I followed calmly behind him, squashed the cigarette out, and cracked him behind the knee with the baton. He yelled again and toppled over into the muck. When he got his head out of the water, he scrabbled around in the muck, tried to stand, and started to sink. Panic-stricken, he clawed desperately for the solid ground where I stood—a torturously close six feet away.

  “Please,” he said. “Please!”

  “Where are the girls?” I asked.

  Sinking steadily, he looked around with darting eyes.

  “What?” he said.

  “The fourteen girls you already abducted. Where are they?”

  His eyes bulged. “Quebec City. The docks. I tell you everything, just help me!”

  “When are they being smuggled out?” I said.

  He had sunk down to his chest now. “Four days, container ship!”

  “What’s the name of the ship?” I asked.

  “Al Barr! Arab name. Please!”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Dubai!”

  The muck was now up to his chin.

  “I can only imagine what sick things you did to those girls,” I said.

  “Please! I beg you!”

  I turned and walked away. Behind me, I heard him shout, but it quickly became a watery yelp and then was muffled completely. I didn’t look back. Running up the ridge, I glanced at my watch: eighteen minutes past.

  At the top of the ridge, I pulled the bottled water out of my pack and guzzled all of it. Then I sat down on a fallen tree to compose myself.

  All right, Dakota…think. Calm down and think.

  From here, the parking lot is about three-quarters of a mile away. Malone and Big Red are probably just getting back to their car. Option A: you could sprint back to your car and drive after them.

  No, scrap that. It’ll take too long.

  Okay then…Megan said her backyard abutted the south side of Walden, and that her family had blazed a trail in here from her house. Hopefully, she wasn’t exaggerating. With the road construction, it’ll take Malone and Big Red a good twenty minutes to reach Megan’s house. Which brings up Option B. Find that trail and cover the mile or so of woods before Malone and Big Red reach Megan’s by road.

  Remember, though—uneven, wooded terrain is twice as tiring as flat ground, so it’s going to feel like two or three miles.

  Dakota…this is the race of your life.

  I put away the empty water bottle, got out the orienteering compass and took a bearing. Due south was the hill in the woods where I’d seen the mountain biker earlier. Once I reached that spot, I would run east, where I hoped to find the path that would lead me to Megan’s. I put the water and compass away, re-shouldered my pack, and started running.

  Here was the payoff for keeping myself in such great shape. With my breathing and stride perfectly synced, I gracefully hurdled logs and old stone walls, dodged stumps, leapt across ditches. Aside from the lightning bolts of pain in my ribs, I felt like a perfectly tuned machine. I felt like I was seventeen years old again, running cross-country through the woods at the Millbrook School. The difference was, I was stronger, better trained and had more endurance now than I had as a teenager.

  As long as I stayed focused, nothing was going to prevent me from making it to Megan’s and rescuing Sally.

  Nothing.

  Hang in there, Sally. I’m coming for you.

  When I reached the top of the hill, I took another reading with the compass. Then, off to my right, I heard the mountain bike. He was about 50 yards away diagonally and pedaling fast along a trajectory that intersected with mine at the bottom of a short hill. I needed that bike. I sprinted straight ahead.

  He and the mountain bike dipped into a gully and were temporarily out of sight, but I could hear his chain rattling and knew we were on a collision course. Then the mountain bike launched off a rise, and as soon as the tires hit the ground, I broadsided him with a body check that knocked him off the bike. While he groaned and struggled to his feet, I hopped on the bike and turned south.

  “You asshole!” he yelled. “Who the hell do you think you are? Get back here! I’m calling the cops!”

  “Harvard Fellow!” I shouted back, and rode away.

  Pumping the pedals, I was able to cover the rugged, hilly terrain through the woods twice as fast as I had by running. Turning east, I rode for a few hundred yards, constantly checking south for some kind of trail. I was about to turn around when I spotted a narrow stripe of dirt through the trees. At first I thought it might only be a game trail, but as I turned down it, I noticed the remnants of shoe prints in the dirt—shoe prints of various sizes and soles, going in both directions, as if people had entered the Walden woods and returned along the same route. I kept following the path south.

  When the path reached a stream, I forded it by walking rock-to-rock and carrying the bike on my shoulder. On the other side, the path became very faint as it traversed a meadow, but after riding in circles for a minute, I picked it up again and kept going. Finally I reached a stand of birches. Through breaks in the trees I glimpsed the backyard of a white Colonial—with black shutters. Sighing with relief, I raced the bike down the rest of the path, dumped it on the lawn and, heaving to catch my breath, staggered to a sliding glass door.

  The door, and the entire house for that matter, vibrate
d with the sound of dance music with a bass-heavy beat. I rapped on the glass. Nobody came. I rapped again, harder this time, and peered inside. A perfect Martha Stewart kitchen sneered back at me. I ran around the house to the front door, opened it and went inside.

  The music was coming from a doorway to my right. Stepping into the room, I glimpsed floor-to-ceiling bookcases crammed with books, framed photos and knickknacks. In my periphery, a light-colored blob squirmed around on a brown object. The brown object was a leather sofa, and the squirming blob was Megan and Jade. Stripped to their underwear, they were making out on said sofa. Averting my eyes, I located the stereo and shut it off.

  “A-hem!” I said.

  “Dakota!” Megan said. They sat up and covered themselves. “What the hell! Get out of here!”

  “Be quiet and listen,” I said. “Malone kidnapped Sally, and they’re headed here.”

  At first they gave me looks of disbelief, but then their eyes flicked across me—the mud on my shoes, the twigs in my hair, and my generally sweaty, disheveled appearance.

  “What?” Jade said. “How do—”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Megan, what’s the most secure room in the house?”

  “I don’t know…my dad’s office maybe.”

  “Good. Go barricade yourselves in, and call the police.”

  “All right.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Is there a gun in the house?”

  Megan slipped on a T-shirt. “My parents are Massachusetts liberals, Dakota.”

  “So, no gun? Not even a twenty-two?”

  “Nope.”

  Across the room was a fireplace with a set of brass fire tools. I grabbed the poker. It felt solidly constructed. Emblazoned on the handle, however, was “MADE IN CHINA,” which hardly inspired confidence.

  “What are you going to do, Dakota?” Jade asked.

  “Get Sally back.” Outside I heard the distant crunch of tires on the stone driveway. “All right, you two—go lock yourselves in, call the police and be quiet until help comes. Go!”