by Thomas, Lee
For a flicker of time, my chest tightened. I felt as if I was on the verge of tears, pitying my neighbor, except I didn’t want to pity him and I thought of those boys he’d killed – thought about my daddy – and my mercy evaporated. I checked on Bum in the corner and he looked ridiculous. Mouth open. Hands clapped over his ears. Eyes wide. He was near panic, and I knew he should have gone home and left this to us.
“Ben, take that blanket off his head. I’m going to start asking him questions.” Hugo delivered the order around the cigarette in his mouth. He once again pulled the knife from his pocket and opened it. Casually he walked to the head of the bed and drove the knife point into the post there.
Ben did as he was told and removed the old brown blanket. He dropped it on the floor, and the German quickly looked around the room. Blood from his brow had smeared over his scarred face, making his eyes seem impossibly white. Whatever the cause of his fear and desperation, though, it was not us. In fact, his face relaxed and I noted a twitch at the corners of his mouth as if he were trying not to smile.
“Shouldn’t you boys have given me kisses first?” he asked.
“Fuck you, queer,” Hugo said.
“And you, neighbor Tim?” the German asked, “What did Ernst ever do to you?”
“Let him go,” Bum said at my back. “Please, he didn’t do anything.”
“Shut your goddamned mouth, Craddick. You think this queer gives a shit about you? If the rest of us weren’t here, he’d already have you bent over this bed, and then he’d slit your throat.”
“No, he is too smooth and soft,” the German said. “Like a woman. Like all of you.”
Hugo leaned forward and punched the man in the mouth – three quick blows that sounded like a blade chopping ice.
“Think a woman could do that?”
The German spat a wad of blood on the mattress. “Nuh, a woman’s fist might hurt,” he taunted, though he was obviously dazed.
Hugo yanked the knife out of the bedpost and placed it against the meat high on the German’s arm. Then he pressed, slicing into the skin. Next to me Bum gasped. The German just gritted his teeth and breathed deeply through his nose fighting back a scream. After Hugo finished the cut, the German spat out another wad of bloody phlegm that hit the edge of the mattress.
“You see your leader?” the German said. “He is a coward. He is no man.”
Hugo made a second cut in the arm, this time applying more force and digging deep into the flesh. I turned away when I saw the blood welling up around the blade.
“They’re going to kill him,” Bum whispered.
“If I have to,” Hugo said. “This is war. Do you understand? War? You just going to let these fuckers come to our country and murder us in our sleep?”
“We don’t know if he did anything,” Bum protested.
“You saw him,” Hugo shouted. “You saw it as clear as day.”
“We didn’t see him kill anyone. He was just….”
“Bum, stop it,” I said.
“Don’t matter. He’s a fucking pervert. Who else is going to cut up a kid but a pervert? He’s a freak and he’s going to confess or I’m going to bleed him out like a pig.”
“I did not kill those children,” the German said. “The sheriff knows this.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a shitheel,” Hugo says. “He wouldn’t know his dick from a rattler. You killed Harold and David and Lenny, and you’re going to tell us you did it. You’re going to tell us how you snatched them and fucked them and hollowed ’em out like deer. Then we’re gonna get the sheriff and you’re going to fry for it.”
“You have made a mistake,” the German said.
“No, Kraut, you’re the one that made a mistake. You come here and think we’re just going to let you kill us? Let you fuck us and then kill us?”
“Is that what you want?” he shouted at Hugo. The outburst took all of us off guard, and I recoiled, startled. “You want Ernst to fuck you? Is that why you have me tied up so you can sit on my cock when your friends aren’t looking?”
Hugo brought the knife high, positioning it over the German’s chest. Bum stumbled back into the door, causing a racket. He shrieked and fled the room. Looking at Hugo again, I saw that his position hadn’t changed; he remained frozen with the knife poised for a killing blow.
“Go get him,” Hugo growled, without turning away from his victim. “You want him to tell everyone in the city?”
Austin headed for the door, but I beat him to it, running as fast as I could down the hall, afraid he might hurt the boy I’d dragged into this business. Bum shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and I wasn’t going to let him get hurt just because he’d been worried about me. I burst into the living room but Bum was gone. The front door had been thrown open. I hurried to the threshold and the porch beyond, and saw my friend running to the end of the block as if monsters nipped at his heels. Austin grabbed me by the collar and dragged me off the porch, through the living room, and into the hall.
“The fat boy got away,” Austin said, shoving me back into the room.
“Then we’d better make this quick,” Hugo replied.
He drew deeply on his cigarette, making the end glow orange in the gloom. Then he pressed the hot end of the smoke into the German’s leg. Tears streamed down the sides of my neighbor’s face. His body quaked and sent the bed against the wall again, wood rapping wood in a horrible syncopation, but he refused to give Hugo any greater satisfaction, refused to scream.
Hugo finished with his cigarette. He ground the butt into the German’s bedroom rug and took up his knife. Then he grabbed the German’s left hand and wrapped his hand around one of the fingers.
“In those chink Fu-Manchu movies, they use bamboo,” he mused. “You got any bamboo around here?”
Head turned, eyes wide, the German looked at the position of Hugo’s blade at his fingertip and realizing his captor’s intent began shouting in German. His voice was an incomprehensible storm of growls and grinding syllables, spoken at machine-gun speed and rising and falling from a terse tenor register to the deepest baritone. His muscles tensed violently as if in spasm, but he could not free himself from the ropes.
“Where’s Little Lenny Elliot?” Hugo asked.
The German continued his harsh barrage, shouting like a madman at Hugo Jones. Spit flew from his lips in rabid flecks, splattering his shoulder and arms with froth. No one seemed concerned with neighbors hearing the man’s shouts now. Hugo had been right: the next house on the road wasn’t that close.
“Where is he?” Hugo demanded.
When the German responded with nothing more than his continued rage, Hugo drove the knife downward between the German’s fingernail and the soft flesh beneath. The nail peeled back with a wet ripping sound, and Hugo finally received the scream he’d been waiting for.
This wounding was more awful than the cuts Hugo had made in the German’s arm, because I could feel the knife at my own fingertip, and it was too much to bear. My stomach recoiled and I covered my mouth, trying to keep from vomiting on the German’s floor. The hand at my collar loosened, and I heard Austin Chitwood say, “Gross,” before I fled the room. I made it to the bathroom and retched, head spinning as if being filled with roiling swamp water. Oily and acidic, the vomit burned my throat. It coated my tongue, and my stomach convulsed again, and the murky and fluid thoughts in my head boiled faster. I shouldn’t have been there. Bum had said this shouldn’t be happening, and I suddenly knew he’d been right.
Once my belly was empty and my nerves recovered, I looked up to see Hugo Jones standing in the bathroom doorway. He gazed down on me with a sympathetic expression, as though he were genuinely concerned.
“This is what they’re doing to your daddy right now,” Hugo said. “That queer fucker’s friends are peeling back his nails and cutting him, trying to get your daddy to rat out his command.”
Sickness and confusion worked to make me mute.
“This is the only way
we’re going to find out what happened to those boys, and since Bum high-tailed it, and he’s probably shooting his mouth off right now, we have to get the information fast. Now, you’re just a kid so I don’t expect you to watch any more.”
I nodded my head and felt the tide of foul swamp water slosh against my skull.
“You go up front with Ben and keep an eye on the street. Austin and I are going to continue questioning the prisoner.”
By now, Bum would have found help. He’d probably run to a neighbor’s house and told them what was happening on Dodd Street, and they would call Sheriff Rabbit, and he would be on his way across town. All I knew was that I wanted the night to end. I prayed for it to be over, but this turned out to be a night of unanswered prayers.
Twenty-Three: Sheriff Tom Rabbit
“Sheriff, we have to go,” Rex Burns called.
The tone in his deputy’s voice made it clear that Tom should get to his feet and start moving before he began to question why he was moving. He rose from the chair and made his way into the front office of the sheriff’s station. Rex was already at the door, holding it open.
“The Cowboy just snatched a kid off Bennington,” Rex said. “We’ve got a witness that saw a black Ford drive right up to the kid. The driver got out and lifted the boy off the sidewalk and all but threw him in the car. Then he turned the Ford around and headed north.”
“When did this happen?” Tom asked, following Rex out to the Packard.
“Now,” Rex said. “It’s happening now. I was talking to Regina, she lives at Bennington and Crosby, and she saw this kid running like the devil down the sidewalk when the Ford comes swooping across the street at him. The kid froze in the headlights and the guy just snatched him.”
“Any chance this is a parent retrieving their kid after curfew?”
“He was wearing a gray Stetson and duster, Tom.”
“Shit,” Tom said. “You better drive. You got better night eyes than I do.”
He tossed the deputy his keys and ran to the passenger side. Once the Packard was moving west, Tom picked up the microphone of the two-way radio and began instructing his men to proceed to Bennington.
“Walter already got the word out,” Rex said. “With any luck this fucker is already face down in the dirt.”
Tom doubted it. They only kept two patrol cars running at night, and Bennington was a long street, spanning the city from the southern border to the farm road cutting the upper edge of the city. Tom pictured the corner of Crosby Street and knew the Ford would already be north of Main by now. Then he considered the neighborhood, realizing Ernst Lang lived two blocks from the intersection where the crime had occurred. But Lang’s car was a 1937 Buick 8, cream-colored and rusting around the fender, and according to Regina the vehicle had been traveling south, toward Dodd Street, and then had turned in the other direction.
“Did Regina say anything else about what she saw?”
“Honestly, I didn’t give her much time,” Rex said. “I figured we needed to move.”
“Sure,” Tom said. “There’s Bennington.”
“Yes, sir,” Rex said.
He took the corner tight and the wheels cried against the pavement. Then Rex gunned the engine and sped down the nighttime road, headlights revealing gray pavement framed by brown grass. In the distance, Tom saw the twin red eyes of running lights.
“Any chance that’s our guy?” Rex asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Tom said. He lifted the microphone again and relayed their position. One of the patrol cars had been on the Farm Road when Walt called in the abduction, and they were approaching from the north. The other was still working its way back from Mitch’s Roadhouse where another brawl had broken out. Tom told them to keep their eyes open for a black Ford, even though that was about the most common car in the country. “Walter,” he said into the mouthpiece, “I want you to go pick up Regina Mason and show her the make and model catalogues to see if we can’t narrow down the model and year of the Ford, and get as much information about the suspect as you can. Height. Weight. Anything. Radio back when you have information.”
“Regina knows men better than cars,” Rex said.
“Let’s hope she was paying some attention to both. Any idea about the victim?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Hold on, the guy’s turning.”
Rex had done a good job of catching up to the car in front of them, and had narrowed the distance between them to three blocks. The car completed the turn and for a split second Tom saw it in profile. “Black Ford,” he shouted, his heart tripping in his chest. “Son of a bitch. Stay on him.”
Tom got back on the radio and redirected his men, and then leaned back and braced himself as Rex whipped around the corner, sending Tom halfway across the seat in the process.
“It’s a Tudor sedan,” Tom said. “Looks to be a thirty-nine or forty.”
“Yes, sir,” Rex said, “And he’s seen us coming.”
The Ford made a hard left ahead, and Tom caught the sound of its squealing tires. Rex kept on the gas pedal.
“Where’s the plate?” Tom asked.
“Doesn’t have one. Son of a bitch took it off.”
They followed the car on a circuitous route through the neighborhoods north of downtown, Tom sliding across the street or slamming into the passenger door, depending on which direction his deputy turned the Packard. On a particularly tight right turn, Rex jumped the curb and Tom flew into the air. Dropping back to the seat in a moment of disorientation, he checked the road ahead and saw the driver’s door of the Ford opening.
“What’s he doing?” Rex asked.
Tom didn’t know. The driver’s door remained open, though how it stayed open with the Ford moving at such a speed he didn’t know. A pale form emerged and seemed to hover above the running board, and then it dropped to the road like a bag of feed, rolling and bouncing before coming to a stop in the road to be captured in the headlights of the Packard.
“Shit,” Rex spat.
The view in the windshield blurred before Tom realized Rex had cranked the wheel to the left. He cracked his shoulder against the door, and the Packard flew across the street and hopped the curb, punching through a white picket fence at the front of a yard before rocking to a halt.
“You all right?” Rex asked.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Tom asked.
Rex was already opening the door when he replied, “He threw the kid out, Tom. He tossed the kid into the street.”
Tom turned in his seat and cast frantic looks through the windows, searching for proof of what Rex had told him. And there not far from the curb he saw a lump in a pale blue shirt and dungarees, and his heart tripped double-time in his chest as he reached for the door handle.
They ran to the boy, who lay curled like a caterpillar in the road. Neighbors began to emerge from their houses, and a woman screamed, and Tom called for everyone to stay back. Then he told Rex to get on the radio to phone for an ambulance. After that he instructed his deputy to let the other patrols know which direction the Ford was headed but they should focus the search on the areas northwest of town. That’s where the driver had been heading before noticing Tom and Rex on his tail. Logic dictated that was the direction the driver had wanted to go. Then Tom turned his attention to the boy.
He was young, years younger than either Harold Ashton or David Williams. Blood covered what little of the front of the boy’s shirt Tom could see. Carefully he rolled the kid onto his back, and saw the neat cut, angling down from the left ear. He didn’t recognize the boy, but he was in bad shape. The driver had opened his throat. Blood pulsed from the gash, and Tom took the handkerchief from his pocket, pressed it to the wound, and prayed it wasn’t too late. The plump boy’s chest showed no sign of respiration, but when Tom leaned in, he felt the gentlest of breaths on his cheek.
“He’s alive,” Tom shouted. “Get the ambulance here fast.”
Holding the cloth to the wou
nd, Tom looked at the crowd gathering in the street. Something fouled his vision. Men and women hugged one another against the terrible sight in the road, but the faces appeared blurred as if he looked through a faulty lens, only the very center of which showed true.
Tom stood back when the ambulance arrived and let the medics do their job, and then he rode with the boy to the county hospital, frequently questioning the medic about the boy’s condition. In addition to the cut at his throat, he’d sustained a broken arm, and a severe blow to the head, plus a number of abrasions from rolling across the pavement. The only question the medic couldn’t answer was the most important question in Tom’s mind. “Is he going to make it?”
At the hospital, they took the wounded boy down a hallway, leaving Tom alone. He asked the nurse if he could use her phone for police business, and she lifted it onto the counter for him. He radioed the station to see if there had been an arrest.
“They lost him,” Walter said. “They’re driving around north of town, but the guy is probably laying low someplace.”
“Wake everyone up,” Tom said. “I want every deputy and patrolman on the streets. One man to a car so we can cover more ground. You get Muriel out of bed and have her cover the office so you can join them. In the meantime, put together a list of everyone you know in town that owns a black Ford Tudor – thirty-nine or forty – and have it waiting for me. Did you get any more information from Regina?”
