by E M Kaplan
“I’m not getting you,” she finally said. She realized how tightly she was gripping the phone, as if pressing it into her ear would make him easier to understand.
“What am I?” he said. “Am I your doctor? Am I your friend? If I’m your doctor, I’m telling you that you’re not doing what’s best for your health. I’m recommending that you get back here on the next plane that you can find. As your friend, I know there’s no freaking point in me trying to tell you that. I know you’re just going to go ahead and do what you want to do. You’d think that after what, ten, fifteen years of knowing me, you might trust my judgment a little. Don’t I have any say in anything at all? Please, borrow my common sense if you don’t have any of your own. Go ahead, do what you want, despite what I think.”
“You know what?” she interrupted.
“What?” He was almost shouting now. His voice had gotten hoarse. She listened to him breathe in and out as he struggled to control himself. The sound was intimate in her ear, as if his cheek were pressed against hers, as if he were there with her.
“I miss you.” She listened for a second, and then added, “A lot. A really, really lot.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Several minutes went by, but she could hear him breathing more deep breaths, so she knew he hadn’t hung up. “Okay,” he finally said.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“No, but maybe,” he said. “I’m still upset.”
“You’re worried? About me?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’ve been saying,” he said.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” she said. “My plane leaves in the afternoon. For the rest of my time here, I’ll stay in my room watching TV. I’ll go swim in the pool here. I’ll hang out at my aunt and uncle’s. I won’t do anything stupid, I swear.”
He was silent for a minute. She figured that he knew that she knew that she was damn well going to do whatever she wanted to. Maybe. But her intentions were good. She’d had her excitement and some badly scratched up legs to prove it. Then he said, “Benjy is still really pissed at you.”
She groaned. “Is he there?”
“He’s at my place. I’m at work right now.”
“At work?”
“I’m pulling a night shift at the hospital to cover for someone.”
“You’re in the sleeping room? The place with the cots?” She’d been in there once with him when he’d forgotten his lunch.
“Yeah, no one else is here. Otherwise my coworkers probably would have killed me by now. It’s late. They’d be sleeping.”
“You should get some sleep, too, then, if you have a long night ahead of you.”
“What I need is a freaking vacation,” he said. She almost said, Well, don’t come out here, then. But she thought better of it. Hello, counterproductive.
Instead, she said, “I’ll call you again tomorrow before I get on the plane.” They said a weird goodbye and then hung up. She sat for several minutes on the edge of the bed thinking. It took several more minutes for the flush on her face to subside. She spent a few minutes cleaning up her dinner dishes, just tidying them on the table. She repositioned the writing desk in front of the door and checked the deadbolt. In the bathroom, she quickly washed her face and brushed her teeth, but she didn’t feel comfortable enough to take off her clothes. At the bed, she turned back the covers and carefully lay on top of them, protecting the hurt side of her leg. Then, she turned out the light.
CHAPTER 26
Despite everything, Josie fell asleep. She slept like the dead except for the gruesome dream she had about being at Leann’s wedding again. Instead of Leann, it was a mostly decayed blonde-haired corpse being dragged around on the arm of Peter Williams.
Okay, she told herself, Ready to wake up at any time now.
A hard hand pressed over her mouth. The room was still dark except for an outside light shining through the large picture window. And she realized with panic that she was awake. No longer dreaming. And a hand really was covering her mouth. A big, rough hand.
Blind terror came over her. She took in as much air as she could through her nose, opened her mouth, allowing a finger of the hand that covered her mouth to slip apart from the others into her mouth. She bit down on it as hard as she could.
“Goddamn it!” a man’s voice said as the hand was wrenched away from her face. Michael Williams. In that space of a few seconds of freedom, Josie screamed at the top of her lungs and tried to thrash away. In one movement, she was flipped on her stomach. She heard the ripping sound of a strip of tape being pulled off a roll, and her hands were tied behind her. Another tearing of tape, and her feet were bound together. One more, and her mouth was sealed shut taped from cheek to cheek along with her hair. Something was jammed over her head, and then she felt them picking her up. She bucked her body at the waist, terrified.
A large hand gripped her roughly by the back of the neck. Michael’s angry voice close to her head said, “Stay still and shut the hell up or we’ll kill you right here and now.” She shuddered in fear and became still, trying to breathe, trying to hear where they were taking her. They carried her out of her hotel room, around the pool—maybe through a back gate because the pool filter sounded loud. She heard a car door open, and then she was shoved into a back seat.
#
They drove for about twenty gut-wrenching minutes. Time was screwed up. Maybe it was closer to ninety minutes. The thing over her head was a leather jacket, which muffled everything except the jingle of the zipper tab next to her ear. All she had was the thick air under the jacket which she struggled to pull through her nose. She wasn’t even sure if the brothers were talking with each other or riding in stony, detached silence.
She was trying to work at the tape around her wrists when something heavy came down hard on her side. A fist, she figured, as she gasped in pain. “Stay still,” she heard Peter say. That meant that Michael was driving. She sucked in a breath of leathery air through her nose and exhaled slowly as the intense pain in her ribs spread, then finally dulled enough that she could think again.
The car was too quiet for her to make even the small noise of trying to wriggle her hands free. Okay, luxury car. The brothers were not talking, which meant that they already knew where they were taking her. She had a burst of fresh panic at their premeditation. Moving as little as possible, she tried again to loosen the tape and to just breathe. The task kept desperation at bay.
The car took a sharp turn onto an unpaved road. Or maybe, no road. The luxury car’s shocks were being sorely tested, jostling her badly. They were somewhere out in the desert. Something in the trunk clanged as it bumped, and Josie’s body mimicked the motion. The tumbling almost knocked the wind out of her, her own bound fists punched into her back with each jerk. After a while longer, the ride smoothed out, but still they drove.
Exhaustion pushed at the edges of her mind, but her fear kept her alert. Her heart pounded harder when the car suddenly coasted to a stop, and her eyes involuntarily widened under the jacket. She heard a door open. Then, the engine shut off and the driver’s side door opened.
The door at her feet opened. Fingers clamped around her ankles and pulled her out. The leather jacket slipped off her head, and she scraped the side of her face on the edge of the door before she hit the ground belly down. Hands turned her over, and she blinked dirt out of her eyes as she saw Peter rip the tape off her feet. He hunkered over her, keeping her lying down. Michael stepped around the back of the car and opened the trunk. From her vantage point on the ground, she saw his face illuminated upward from the light inside the trunk, like a demon. He reached in the trunk and pulled out a shovel.
CHAPTER 27
A shovel.
Real panic time.
Michael grabbed her arm and yanked upward. “Stand up,” he said roughly. “Use your legs.”
She tried and thought they would fail her. She was
unsteady, but somehow, she managed to get her legs under her and to stay upright. She got her balance, and he wrenched her forward by the elbow.
“Wait,” she tried to say through her taped mouth. It came out like a moan. A muffled, pitiful dying sound.
Michael wheeled around abruptly and stooped to peer down into her face. He picked at the duct tape on her face with his fingernail, and then ripped it free when he got a corner of it up tearing skin and hair. Pain made her eyes water.
“I don’t know anything,” she managed to say, cursing herself for sounding so reedy, so quavering, so scared, but dammit, she was. “I don’t have anything. No proof. No witnesses.”
“Well now. Isn’t that fine. She doesn’t know anything. We’ll let her go, Peter.”
“Like hell,” Peter said.
Michael sneered at her. “Oh well. Peter says no.” He smashed the duct tape to one of her cheeks and pulled it tighter than before across her mouth, almost covering her nose, too. At his brother’s impatient hand gesture, Peter started dragging her farther into the rocky desert, pulling her along at such a vicious stride that her shaking legs couldn’t keep up. They didn’t care whether or not she had proof of the murder. She was just another in a long line of females, disposable like tissues.
“Where?” Peter asked his brother. Michael tipped his chin toward some creosote trees and scraggly brush. With every step, Josie thought her legs would fail. But what did it really matter? She almost laughed out loud. Why did it matter if she walked or not? Her legs wouldn’t be any use to her after she was dead. Yet it wasn’t until another fifteen minutes of stumbling had gone by, with her wrists still tied behind her and her muscles loose with exhaustion, that Michael stopped them.
“Here,” he said. He jerked her wrists toward him and began to strip off the tape. Her arms ached when they suddenly sprang free. Her wrists were raw, both bloody and gummy. She thought numbly that she didn’t need to worry about them healing up. Or getting infected. Because that took time. And she was out of time.
“Take the fucking shovel, you stupid bitch,” Peter shouted at her. He had been holding it out. She looked at him, surprised to see that his face was tear-streaked. Why was he crying, she wondered. Not from remorse over her. Maybe over Leann? Was he drunk like at the bar when he’d grabbed her? She took the shovel from him, her sore hands barely able to grasp the thick wooden handle. Peter gave her a shove from behind, and she stumbled with the shovel, almost falling into the dirt.
“Start digging,” Peter said. “Dig your own damn grave.”
She took it and made a feeble first scrape at the dirt. She could hardly take in enough air through her nose—the duct tape still tightly on her mouth. Her hands started to shake, but she kept shoveling. The ground was hard here—petrified in parts. Kind of like her. She puffed air out of her nose in a hysterical near-laugh.
“Hurry up,” Peter shouted, menacing her with his huge body. “Hurry the fuck up. I got places to be.” He burst out laughing and loomed closer again. Back and forth like a fighter about to strike. “Unlike you,” he whispered into the back of her neck, his breath in her ear.
Michael was standing back. He had lit a cigarette. Its smoke caught the moonlight in the still night as it drifted upward.
Peter paced, taunting her. “This’ll teach you to keep out of people’s way. Stay out of their business, fucking whore.”
Behind her, Michael chuckled coldly. “Yes, Peter, this will teach her.”
Peter laughed hoarsely, encouraged. He leaned into her again. “So. Hurry. The. Fuck. Up.”
Her vision blurred again. Her hands seemed far away, grasping the wooden shovel handle. The hole she dug was still shallow.
Peter suddenly struck, giving her a shove backward that sent her sprawling. The shovel fell away to the side and bounced. The back of her head struck the ground. A tremble ran through her arms and chest as she waited for another blow, but Peter stalked off in the other direction. She sat for a while, trying to catch her breath through her nose, the duct tape still covering her mouth. She watched his retreating form, fearing he would suddenly turn around and come at her at a full run—and then, she would be done. He disappeared into the shrub brush, and then she heard the sound of him relieving himself.
The entire time, Michael had been lounging in the shadow of a tree watching her quietly. Now he came over. He squatted down next to her and leaned in so closely that she could feel his breath on her face and smell the alcohol on it. He examined her closely for a few seconds, as if she were a hurt dog. Or an insect.
#
“You are a nosy little thing,” he said finally. “I wonder who you think you are, poking your nose in other people’s business. Just what exactly did you think you were going to accomplish out here?” He studied her for a minute.
“Peter tells me that you were at the house this morning. Did you find anything of interest?” The tape over her mouth prevented her from denying or confessing anything. It didn’t matter anyway—Michael was satisfied to continue his monologue. He was in lecture mode, enjoying his own theories and captive audience. “Were you in my house, rifling around in my undergarments, I wonder,” he continued. “Perhaps looking for clues, little Miss Sherlock Holmes, little Miss Nancy Drew, little Miss Murder, She Wrote? And just what did you plan to do with all of your precious information once you’d gotten in? Perhaps break out of your pathetic food critic rut and become a real journalist? Became a little ambitious, did you?” He snorted and looked away, his high forehead catching the moonlight.
He was silent for moment. He drew on his cigarette.
Then he said, “I was meeting them for breakfast at the Castle Ranch. Peter was still in the shower. Leann was sitting in a lounge chair in the shade watching me with those big, brown pathetic cow eyes of hers.” He smiled to himself, and then looked back at Josie. “Why is it so enjoyable to control those who are lesser than we are? I think it makes us godlike, perhaps.”
Josie cast a glance over in Peter’s direction, but he hadn’t made any move to return yet. “I walked by some plants, and a bee landed right on the cuff of my sleeve of my Oxford shirt. Right here.” He leaned back and pointed delicately to his left wrist. He was in a short-sleeved shirt tonight, so his finger touched right above his shining wristwatch. “I lifted my arm up so that I could look at it. It was just a tiny bee. Not one of those big threatening bumblebees with the impressive buzzing. Just a little, tiny drone.” He looked back at her and leaned toward her again.
She forced another breath through her nose. A strand of her hair had fallen across her face, and her breath sent the strand up and down, up and down. He reached forward and brushed it out of her face carefully, almost gently. But she knew better.
“And then, I took this tiny bee fellow closer and closer to my face. Watching him very closely. But he wasn’t moving at all.” He showed her how he raised his wrist to examine his face. “And I caught him in my mouth.” He looked at her, smiled a grim smile that stretched his face, and quoted in a whisper, “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour, and gather honey all the day from every opening flower. How skillfully she builds her cell. How neat she spreads the wax and labors hard to store it well with the sweet food she makes. In works of labor or of skill I would be busy too for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” His eyes were shining in the darkness—they caught the moonlight, innocuous in the night sky, but distorted in the insane gleam in his eyes. A light dawned in Josie’s mind, albeit belatedly as he toyed with her, that he was a complete fucking sociopath.
He went on, “Leann was still sitting in her lounge chair watching me. She had a hat and sunglasses on, those moronic movie star sunglasses. I think we were going out to the Desert Museum later that day. I’ll have to go out there again before I leave town or I’ll regret that I missed it. But I’m sure she couldn’t see what I had done. Otherwise, she might have at least said something.” He thought about that for a second. “Perhaps she might have.
Then again, perhaps not.”
“And I went over to her, and kissed her on the mouth. Quite passionately.” He stared at Josie for a second, then leaned in and kissed her, long and hard over the duct tape that covered her own mouth now. One hand held the back of her head as he ground his lips into the tape. He stank of sweat and cigarettes. She couldn’t stop her eyes from rolling in disgust, and a deep growl formed in the back of her throat. He pulled away, wiping his mouth, and said, “She took it better than you did. In fact, she didn’t notice the bee at first, stupid cow. All she had to do was open her mouth. But when she did finally notice that she had something fluttering around in her mouth, she still held her mouth shut. Her eyes got large, like eyes on children on the comic page of the newspaper. Big circles with little black dots for pupils. She was just like that. I could tell that she’d been stung at that point. And she reached into her purse for her Epi-Pen.”
He looked at his fingernails. “Why is it that women carry purses? Do you want to emphasize that you are beasts of burden?” He smiled terribly. “If it’s personal possessions that you love to carry around, then why,” he leaned in again, pausing after each word, “do you leave your purses around for people to look through them?”
“You should have seen her face when she saw that the Epi-Pen had been discharged already. She was trying to panic—she looked a little bit like you do now, eyes rolling around in fear. Exquisite, sometimes, how fear can change the face of a woman.” He reflected for a minute. “But then, I was sitting on the chair next to her. Chatting with her, as far as anyone looking at us could tell. Her face was starting to look a bit funny—splotchy and puffed up like a fish—and her breathing became more labored. Then, strangely, she became calm, just watching me. As if she’d finally learned her lesson. Though I doubt it. Always struggling against me, stupid girl. I’ll never understand it.”
