Never Turn Back

by Christopher Swann

  I stand there and let him figure it out. He squints in concentration, and then his eyebrows rise. “Well, well, Gavin Lester’s nephew,” he says. “All grown up. Took a sec, but the red hair did it. This is a surprise. Need help with your car?”

  “Donny Wharton,” I say.

  Cargill frowns politely. “Sorry, who?”

  “The guy who needed your help with a cherry-red Camaro convertible about twelve years back.”

  He’s still frowning, but now he smiles. It’s like watching a piranha try to be friendly. “I’ve fixed lots of Camaros,” he says.

  “He didn’t want you to fix it. He wanted you to make it disappear.”

  Cargill’s smile broadens. “Why, that sounds like you’re suggesting something illegal. We don’t do that kind of thing here.”

  I hold my arms out to the sides. “I’m not wearing a wire,” I say. “Feel free to check.”

  Cargill brings his feet off his desk, the work boots stamping the floor with a thump, and stands. “George!” he shouts. He’s still smiling, although it’s a little fainter, which for some reason makes me feel good.

  The mechanic who was working on the pickup appears. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Faulkner here says he’s not wearing a wire,” he says. “Let’s confirm that.” He sneers. “I’d hate to have somebody try to entrap me or illegally record my voice.”

  I shrug. “It’s not illegal in Georgia. One-party consent makes it just peachy.” Cargill’s smile fades. “Thought you’d know that,” I say cheerfully. “But I’m not recording anything.”

  The mechanic frisks me like he’s done it before. Without being asked, I untuck my shirt and unbutton it, then open it and pull up my undershirt to show my bare belly. “Okay,” the mechanic says to Cargill, nodding, and then he goes back out to work on the pickup.

  “Empty your pockets,” Cargill says.

  I roll my eyes but empty my pockets—keys, phone, wallet, all in a tidy pile on Cargill’s desk. He picks up my iPhone, looks at it, then gives me a smile that’s a shade or two away from a snarl. “How’s your uncle?” he says. “Any cancer or anything? He’s gettin’ older.”

  “My sister has a PhD in manipulation, so you playing with my phone and insulting my uncle aren’t really doing it for me,” I say. “Donny Wharton. I want to know where he is.”

  Cargill looks at me. “That a fact,” he says. “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He puts my phone down on the desk. “Might. Assumin’, of course, I know who this Donny fella is.”

  I bite my tongue and wait. Guys like Cargill love to hear themselves talk and can’t keep quiet.

  Cargill laces his fingers and puts his hands behind his head. “One thing my daddy taught me was to never give away somethin’ for free if you can get paid for it.”

  “Donny Wharton shot me, right here in the arm,” I say, pointing to my right arm just below the shoulder. “Then he shot my sister, and then both of my parents. And then he and his partner Sam Bridges drove here in their Camaro and paid you to get rid of it for them. That’s accessory to murder, Brad. No statute of limitations on murder. Even if it’s accessory after the fact, you could be looking at serious prison time. So I’ll pay you by not going to the police and telling them what I just told you.”

  Cargill hasn’t moved since I said Donny shot my parents. He just keeps looking at me, although I can see in his face that he’s working out the angles, seeing how many ways he could play this.

  “I just want to know where the man is,” I say.

  Cargill unlaces his hands and sits forward, his skin almost milk white under the overhead fluorescents. “Somethin’ else my daddy told me,” he says. “If you’re lookin’ for revenge, first thing you should do is dig two graves.”

  “That’s Confucius,” I say. “And I just want to keep me and my sister safe.”

  He looks flatly at me for a few more moments. “I haven’t seen him for a long time,” he says finally. “Don’t want to, either. Man trails bad luck behind him like a stink.” He narrows his eyes. “And I’d think twice about threatening me, Ethan. If I ever wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have Donny Wharton do it. It’d be worse.”

  I resist clenching my thumbs or stomping my foot or swinging for Cargill’s jaw. Aside from feeling frustrated, I also think he’s telling the truth. If he knew where Donny is, he’d play this out more, string me along like a cat toying with a mouse before he eats it. So I simply gather my keys and wallet and phone and put them in my pockets. On my way out of the office, I pause. “If Donny does show up,” I say, “and anything happens to me or my sister? Either my uncle or I will find you. And you’d better hope it’s my uncle who finds you first.”

  * * *

  WHEN I GET to my car, I sit behind the wheel and take a few breaths. Then I check the time. Over an hour until my meeting with the police downtown. I call my house to check in on Susannah, and to apologize to Caesar for not getting him good coffee and a toothbrush.

  The landline rings, then rings some more, and then goes to voice mail. I hang up, wait a few seconds, and call back. Susannah often screens her calls or ignores the phone altogether, but usually she answers after two or three tries.

  No answer.

  There are all sorts of reasons why she might not answer. She could be outside, walking Wilson. Or she could be in the shower. Although in both cases Caesar would likely have answered.

  I call Ronan’s. The phone rings, and then a happy female voice says, “Ronan’s, how may I help you?”

  “Frankie Gutierrez, please. Tell him it’s Ethan Faulkner.”

  Another minute of waiting on hold and trying to ignore the rising sense of dread in my chest. I start my car to run the AC.

  “Ethan?” Frankie says on the other end.

  “Can you call Caesar?” I say. “No one’s answering at my house.”

  “Hold on,” he says, and then I hear indistinct sounds as he fumbles with his phone. Then in the background I can hear the rush of voices and plates clinking, the sounds of lunch hour. “You’re on speaker,” Frankie says, his voice echoing slightly. “I’m texting him.”

  I pull out of Cargill’s parking lot and take a sharp turn onto Northside, heading north, away from downtown. “Hang up and call him,” I say. “Then call me back.” I disconnect and focus on driving. A minute later my phone rings and I answer, putting it on speaker.

  “He’s not answering,” Frankie says. “Where are you?”

  “I’m heading home,” I say, pulling around a dump truck and then cutting back in front of him to avoid rear-ending a slow car in the passing lane. The dump truck honks, an irritated blast.

  “Ethan, don’t go home,” Frankie is saying. “Call the police.”

  “I’ll be there before they will be.” I use my horn to encourage an SUV to move out of my way, then race under a light just before it turns red.

  “Ethan—”

  “Tell my uncle what’s going on,” I say. “I’ll call you back.” Then I hang up. I ignore the two times Frankie calls me back, instead seeing just how fast I can get my Corolla to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I reach my street eleven minutes after I hang up with Frankie, but instead of turning onto it, I drive around to the other side of the block and park in front of the house that borders my backyard. No one appears to be home. The entire street is quiet at midday—everyone is at work. The overcast sky has lowered even further, like an iron lid. I have a lug wrench in my trunk and I take it, closing the trunk as quietly as I can. Then I walk down the driveway, hoping there isn’t a bored housewife or retiree peeking at me from behind closed curtains and dialing 911.

  Thankfully these folks don’t have a fence around their backyard, and I make my way easily through a backyard that’s littered with kids’ toys—a faded yellow plastic bat, a tricycle on its side, a large sandbox in the shape of a plastic green frog with its cover askew, a puddle of rainwater inside. I realize that I don’t know the peopl
e who live here, not even their names. The thought makes me feel like even more of an intruder.

  At the edge of their backyard is a stand of trees, old pines dotted with a few tall oaks, along with a fair amount of undergrowth—an effective wall of foliage that stretches down the center of the block, separating the houses that already face away from each other. I step carefully into the trees, watching where I put my feet. The last thing I want to do is step on a copperhead. A small cloud of midges dances around my head, and I wave them away with one hand, the other gripping the lug wrench as I try to navigate around the trees.

  After a few yards, I see Tony and Gene’s house appear through the trees, a wall of brick and glass with an oiled hardwood deck spanning the entire back, a radar dish and two solar panels crowning the roof. I angle to the right, stepping over a small drainage ditch that runs down the entire length of the block. Just then my phone vibrates in my pocket, and I nearly drop the lug wrench as I snatch at my phone, trying to keep it from ringing. It rings once before I can get it, and I see it’s Johnny Shaw. I reject the call and mute my phone and put it back in my pocket. In that short pause to deal with my phone, the mosquitoes have found me, and I slap the back of my neck as I continue stepping through the undergrowth.

  Then my own house looms ahead, the tiny strip of fescue that masquerades as a backyard, the dilapidated garage to the right. The back door to the kitchen is shut. I tighten my grip on the lug wrench and prepare to step out of the trees when I see something in the grass to my left. Then I’m out of the trees and I walk over to the thing in the grass and drop to one knee. It’s Wilson’s rope bone. My heart sinks with dread. He rarely takes it outside, and he never leaves it in the yard. I stand, peering into the trees that loom at the edge of the yard. “Wilson,” I call in a stage whisper.

  “That his name?” a voice says.

  I stand and spin around, the lug wrench in my hand. A pistol pointed at my face from two yards away stops me. The man holding the pistol has shaved his head, but I recognize him the way you recognize a familiar nightmare. Ponytail. Donny Wharton.

  “Not a sound,” Donny says. He motions at me with his free hand, the one holding the pistol unmoving. “Drop that.”

  I drop the lug wrench onto the grass next to Wilson’s rope bone.

  Donny smiles tightly. “Good boy,” he says. A red rage spurts through me and I ball my fists, causing Donny to move the pistol closer to my forehead. “Easy,” he says. “Come on. Over to the garage.”

  I walk toward the garage, keeping my eyes on him. He’s wearing a khaki shirt and dark-green work pants, like someone working for a lawn service company. Which, I realize, would be a great way to blend into a neighborhood. “Where’s my sister?” I ask.

  “She’s fine,” Donny says. “Having a little time-out. So’s her bald black buddy.”

  My heart sinks at hearing about Caesar. “Did you hurt my dog?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

  “Fucker ran away,” he says. “Gave him a good kick. Wouldn’t stop yapping.”

  I am at the point where I’m willing to take a bullet to the face if first I can take a swing at this guy, but as if he can read my mind, he takes one step away from me, his pistol still trained on my forehead.

  “Marisa,” I manage to say. “Why’d you kill her?”

  He shakes his head. “That bitch,” he says. “Sniffing after me like a bloodhound. You and your sister, though, you’ve been following me for years.”

  We walk around the corner of the garage, and I see a BMW backed up to the entrance of my garage. My heart, already low, drops another foot when I recognize the car—it belongs to Tony, my next-door neighbor. I stop. “What did you do to Tony?”

  Donny presses the muzzle of his pistol against the back of my head, a cold circle that may very well be the last thing I feel. “Didn’t tell you to stop,” he says.

  “This is my neighbor’s car,” I say. “What happened to him?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “I stole it out of his garage.” He taps me on the back of the head with the pistol. “Get in the trunk.”

  “No.”

  He jams the pistol into the back of my head hard enough to leave a bruise. “I won’t ask again.”

  “You’re going to drive way out somewhere and shoot me and dump me in a ditch,” I say. “Might as well shoot me here.”

  The pistol doesn’t let up. “One last chance,” he says, and he sounds bored, as if I’m failing to amuse him.

  I want to move; in fact, part of my brain is screaming at me to move. It’s not that I’m paralyzed, although finally seeing Ponytail after all these years is terrifying. The fuck? he said, and then blew my family away. I’ve replayed that scene in my head so many nights, my bedsheets twisted and sweaty, my pillow hot as a brick from an oven. It’s like my own personal zombie has finally shown up at the door, grinning and savage, ready to eat me. Maybe it’s because I know he will kill me, but I’m not going to do what he wants me to. He may hit me over the head with his gun and throw me into the trunk, but he’ll have to do that. So I stand facing the trunk of the car and don’t make a move.

  With a muttered curse, Donny shoves me to the side, his pistol tracking me. “Your sister’s in here,” he says. “So you need to get in, or I’ll start hurting her. Don’t need a gun for that, but I’ll use it if you force me to.” He reaches for the trunk latch.

  “Don’t hurt my sister,” I say.

  He lifts the trunk lid to reveal my sister lying on her side, mouth gagged, hands tied together in front of her. Her eyes are open and she stares directly at me.

  Donny smirks. “You people live in a different world,” he says, and he reaches for Susannah’s eyes.

  A red star ignites in the trunk. Susannah rises up, the star burning in her hands, and she thrusts it into Donny’s face. With a cry he stumbles back, away from the roadside flare, one hand raised to his face and the other bringing the pistol around. Before he can bring the pistol to bear on Susannah or me, I tackle him, and we fall to the concrete, me on top, the pistol knocked away and skittering into the corner of the garage.

  Donny’s nose is an angry, raw red and his right cheek is charred and he is screaming and bucking underneath me. His burnt face smells like a hot dog dropped into an open fire. I nearly gag at the stench. Then he pops me in the ear with his fist and I fall off him, then scramble to my feet. He is weeping and cursing, the right side of his face like a bloody flank steak that’s been pressed to a hot grill, but he pulls out a switchblade and staggers toward me. I back into the garage and grab the lid of a recycling can, holding it in front of me like a shield. The switchblade stabs through the thick plastic of the lid, inches from my face, and then Donny withdraws it and stabs again and again frantically, so all I can do is hold up the lid. I try to duck and kick at him, and he swings down, cutting with a white-hot heat across the top of my right arm.

  I step back, glancing past Donny at Susannah. She has dropped the flare to the concrete and is sitting up in the trunk, trying to untie the rope around her wrists. Then Donny thrusts the switchblade at my face and I duck just in time, the blade slicing the right side of my head above the temple. First it’s ice-cold, and then the cut burns. Blood flows down the side of my head, threatening to run into my eye.

  I crouch and then thrust forward and up with the lid, catching Donny on the chin and shoving him back. It gives me enough time to wipe the blood out of my right eye, but then he bellows and advances again, his switchblade stabbing in the gloom of the garage. The plastic lid has several holes in it. I try to let him stab the lid and then use the lid to wrench the knife away, but he’s too fast, plunging the knife down again and again. I grope behind me on the wall, looking for anything to hit him with or throw at him. My hand seizes on a broom handle.

  He swings down hard with the switchblade, slicing straight through the lid and gouging my left hand, which is gripping the lid handle. His switchblade is buried in the lid handle. He angrily shakes it to free the bl
ade, and I let go of the lid. When he flings the lid to the ground, I thrust the straw end of the broom straight into his face, hard, knocking his head back.

  With a yell, I run forward, using the broom to help me shove him back and out of the garage. My left hand is slick and doesn’t quite work, so I can only swing the broom with my right hand. I hit him once with it, and then he tears it out of my hand and throws it away. Bleeding in three places, I step back as Donny raises the knife, his burnt face hideous with a rictus grin as he comes at me.

  There is a sharp thock and Donny’s head snaps to the side and he collapses, revealing Caesar behind him, a loose brick in his hand. Caesar’s other hand is clutched to his belly, which is clearly bleeding, and his left eye is swollen shut, but he still manages to raise an eyebrow.

  “You look terrible,” he says.

  Behind him, Susannah finally gets through her knots and tries to climb out of the trunk, half falling to the concrete. Then she runs to me and grabs me in a hug. “I’m sorry,” she babbles, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Caesar steps over to the car and sits down, making even that movement look graceful, his back against one of the tires. “I need an ambulance,” he says.

  Blood is running down my right arm, the right side of my head, and my left hand, but somehow I disentangle myself from my sister and manage to get my phone out of my pocket. “Call nine-one-one,” I tell Susannah, thrusting the phone at her. As she does, I take a better look at Donny. The back of his head is bloody where Caesar hit him. I glance at Caesar, who is looking at me. “Why were you in prison?” I ask.

  He blinks slowly. “This is what you need to know right now?” he says. “While I bleed to death in your driveway?”

  “Just before the police come,” I say.

  He looks at me for another moment or two. “My sister’s husband was beating her,” he says. “So I threw him out a window.”

  I nod. “So if you killed … Donny here,” I say, stumbling over Ponytail’s actual name, “that might be problematic for you, from a legal perspective.”