The Fear in Her Eyes

by Grant McKenzie

Jersey laughed. “I got your permission?”

  “Yeah, but if you find out who it is, I want to be there.”

  “You can hold my coat while I kick his ass.”

  The outreach of friendship, unbroken despite his own clumsy mishandling, brought an emotional lump to Ian’s throat. He hid it behind humor. “You mean the leather one with the anarchy symbols spray-painted on it?”

  “Too fucking right.”

  My Dearest Darling:

  I am still trembling, and I am afraid to admit to your gentle ears that it is not from fear, but rather excitement.

  If I were to accurately describe the feelings that are tingling in every pore of my flesh from toes to crown, you would surely blush and never be fully able to look at me in quite the same manner. I, of course, could not wish for such, as I never want to lose what I have always been in your eyes.

  I saw her today. The little bitch who thinks she is so clever and oh so brave. She learned nothing from her first lesson—except how to twist it for personal gain and attention.

  But she will not forget this one.

  My only disappointment was that she did not know who I was. The vehicle I drive sits so high and she so low that she could not possibly see over the hood. She believed she was safe on the sidewalk, but when metal met flesh, her scream became electric. I relished her agony when bones shattered and spilled their marrow. I adored her pain when long strips of flesh were peeled from her twisted frame and blood spread like paint.

  She became hooked in the vehicle’s undercarriage and dragged down the street like yesterday’s trash before being tossed aside for the eager carrion on the corner. It may take a week to wash it all away.

  Forgive the graphic nature of the day’s news, my darling, but I so wanted to share this special moment. I know how you loathed her for the horrible pain she caused us both.

  The excitement of the day has made me rather feverish, which shall undoubtedly please the recipient of my evening’s more disagreeable task.

  There is much to do before the last piece falls.

  Until we are together again,

  may our hearts beat as one.

  xxx

  13

  Sleep was fickle and fleeting. Cotton sheets wrestled thrashing limbs, and the lone pillow refused to smooth out its lumps. Ian finally gave up when the sun began to rise.

  With hair wet from the shower and a mug of strong tea in hand, he stared out the kitchen window. Beyond the six-foot-tall good-neighbor fence that surrounded a uniformly square patch of suburban grass, the sky blushed red in embarrassment for the dark clouds that were already beginning to fill with the promise of more rain.

  Ian finished his tea, rinsed his mug in the sink, and wondered if Molly was someplace warm and dry and … he was thinking safe, but that didn’t exist on the street. Sooner or later, everyone paid the toll.

  And if she wasn’t on the street?

  Glancing at the clock on the kitchen stove, Ian snatched up his phone and headed for the door. It was too early for the weekend to have begun, the perfect time to catch somebody unaware.

  THE BUNGALOW was four blocks from Molly’s foster home, and it still looked as empty as when he had visited it the day before. Yesterday, a neighbor told Ian the occupant worked nights at a local bottling plant. There was no car in the driveway, but the neighborhood had easy access to the main bus routes—something a fresh parolee could appreciate.

  Ian pulled out his phone and read over the man’s arrest record. The details made him shudder, and not for the first time he wished Lady Justice would occasionally lift up her blindfold to bludgeon a few of these bastards with her scales before taking her sword to their balls.

  Sliding out of the car, Ian moved up the sidewalk with purpose and hammered his fist on the front door. He could hear the knock echoing inside the home, but nobody came to investigate. He pounded the door again, then found the doorbell and jabbed it repeatedly.

  Nothing.

  He walked around the house, peering through windows, trying to catch a glimpse of anyone hiding inside. At the rear of the house, he went to his knees in the damp grass and wiped grime off a narrow basement window. But no matter how hard he cleaned, he couldn’t see inside. The interior glass, he realized, had been painted in two shades of green with random splotches of black so that to a casual observer its lack of transparency would be easily dismissed as a result of reflecting the lawn.

  Ian sat back on his heels, wincing at the uncomfortable sensation of an electric eel squirming deep in his bowels.

  He moved to the back door and tried the handle. Locked. He pounded on the door. No answer. He tried the basement window on the other side, but the inside glass was also opaque with camouflage paint.

  Cursing under his breath, Ian glanced left and right to note the familiar six-foot wooden fences that offered a modicum of privacy to the small yard. A few lights were on in the neighboring homes as parents awoke to the chuckles of Saturday morning cartoons and the clatter of cereal bowls. Ian remembered those mornings well—more frantic chaos than quiet contemplation. The parents likely wouldn’t notice a circus if it pitched its big top in their yard.

  Slipping off his jacket, Ian returned to the rear door. The inset window consisted of six squares of glass that allowed light to enter the rear hallway. Ian covered the glass with his jacket and cracked the bottom square with his elbow. A second blow shattered the glass completely. He brushed the jagged shards away with his jacket before reaching inside and unlatching the deadbolt.

  He was inside before the neighbors had time to contemplate whether or not they might have heard an extra snap, crackle, or pop.

  Ian quickly navigated the short hallway to the kitchen and picked up a heavy cast-iron frying pan he had spotted through the window. The arrest report said the sex offender was six-foot-two, 220 pounds, and had to be Tasered four times before the cops could get him in handcuffs. If Ian had disturbed his beauty sleep with a little unplanned B&E, he doubted the man would greet him with a smile.

  Two minutes passed without anyone barging out from the bedrooms or rushing up the stairs from the suspiciously blacked-out basement. Keeping the frying pan by his side, Ian checked the bungalow’s main floor. The house was small: two bedrooms, one bathroom, an L-shaped living room, and plain kitchen. With the exception of a widescreen plasma television—so new it still displayed the manufacturer’s stickers to boast of high-definition resolution and superior contrast ratio—the interior was decorated in left-alone-too-long grandma clutter.

  There was also a distinct odor of neglect, making Ian surmise the predator had either rented it furnished or inherited the property. None of the rooms were occupied and, apart from a rumpled quilt in the main bedroom, barely lived in.

  Ian moved to the basement door and tried the handle. It turned smoothly but the door wouldn’t budge. A shiny new deadbolt, locked by key, held it firmly in place. He pressed his ear to the wood and listened for any sound of movement, but all was quiet.

  The locked door and painted windows bothered him. Ian returned to the master bedroom to search the nightstands and wardrobe for any sign of a matching key. When he came up empty, he scoured the other rooms. Nothing.

  Frustrated, Ian returned to the door and wondered just how thick the wood could be. He contemplated the frying pan in his hand before noticing the door’s most obvious flaw: its hinges were on the outside. Such a design could prevent someone from breaking out, but not getting in.

  Ian made another trip to the kitchen, grabbed a butter knife, and used its flat tip like a chisel to remove the steel pins. With the hinge pins removed, it took only the application of shoulder grease and leverage to pry the door open from the opposite side of the lock.

  IAN DESCENDED into an impermeable gloom after his fumble for a light switch came up empty. At the bottom of the stairs, he sensed rough concrete beneath his feet. He glanced back up at the unhinged door, wishing its narrow gap of light penetrated beyond the fourth step.

 
; The darkness was thick, cold and damp, yet sweat beaded Ian’s forehead and trickled down the back of his neck. He reached out one hand in front of him to prevent walking into any blunt objects as invisible spiderwebs brushed his face and became stuck in his hair. His other hand still clutched the frying pan, although he wished it were a sawed-off shotgun loaded with #1 buckshot.

  When his phone rang, Ian clutched his heart and swore aloud. He quickly pulled it from his pocket and flicked the small switch on the side to send the caller to voicemail and change the ringer to vibrate. As he did so, he chided his own stupidity, but recalled how the phone had lit up the staircase when he descended to the cardboard village beneath Burnside Bridge the night before. He held up the phone to illuminate the path and soon saw a white string dangling from a bare bulb in the ceiling. The bulb was only forty watts, but its dull yellowish glow was as welcome as the sun on a winter’s day.

  Ian returned the phone to his pocket to free up his hands and looked around. The cellar was divided into three areas. The main area where he stood was largely empty except for some scrap wood, tins of used paint, a pile of moldy boxes, an old washer and dryer, and a cat’s litter box filled with lumpy gray gravel.

  The area against the far wall appeared to have been recently divided into two rooms of equal size. The outside of each room was painted black and had a closed door. Judging by the location, each would contain a window with a ground-level view of the backyard if they hadn’t been painted over.

  Holding the frying pan by his side, Ian tried the door on the left. It was unlocked. Inside, he found a light switch and flicked it on. The room was incredibly bright, the walls painted sky blue with toy airplanes zooming through fluffy clouds. A small bed lay against the wall, its soft comforter continuing the aviation theme but with more wear and tear. The comforter had been washed recently, but the cheap soap used in the machine hadn’t managed to erase all traces of a large stain that looked disturbingly like blood.

  Dangling from the bed’s metal frame was a leather strap that still bore teeth marks from where someone had tried to free his or her tiny, trapped wrist. The painted window was secured by thick iron mesh. In the opposite corner stood a sturdy metal tripod designed to hold a professional video camera.

  Ian’s stomach lurched and blood boiled behind his eyes as his teeth crashed together with the biting force of a steel bear trap. He broke from the room in a blind rage and rushed to the next one. Yanking open the door, he hoped to find the monster responsible, but also despaired finding poor Molly strapped to a bed.

  The room—identical to the first, but painted pink with a teddy bear motif—was empty.

  WHEN IAN returned to the main floor, he contemplated burning the house to the ground. It would be simple. The stove was natural gas and flammable material was abundant. All it would take was a nick and a flick and whoosh! But unless the predator was inside, tied and gagged to one of those damn beds, the gesture would be pointless.

  There was nothing to suggest that Molly had been inside the house or had become mixed up in the monster’s twisted games, but just the thought of him living so close and being allowed to breathe the same air filled Ian with a Hulk-sized fury. If Molly wasn’t his prey, someone else’s child was.

  Ian stormed into the living room and unleashed his aggression by slamming the frying pan directly into the man’s new plasma TV. If it had been his skull, the predator would be dead before the second blow.

  Leaving the frying pan embedded deep within the shattered electronics, Ian found the house phone and dialed the emergency operator to report a break-in. He made sure to mention the perpetrator was still in the basement. The official discovery of the rooms should be enough to send the predator back to prison—unless he did have Molly, and Ian found him first.

  14

  After moving his car a discreet distance down the street, Ian called up his voicemail to listen to the message that had jolted his heart in the basement of the predator’s lair.

  “Rolando has agreed to meet. Call me.”

  Ian didn’t recognize the phone number that Helena left. Her life was moving on independently of his. Their only connection in the present was quickly becoming the past.

  Keeping one eye on his rearview for the arrival of the police, Ian dialed.

  “I didn’t wake you when I called, did I?” Helena asked when she answered.

  “No, I was driving around.”

  “It’s early.”

  “For you, too.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  There was a moment of silence, but unlike the day before in her office, this felt surprisingly okay. It reminded Ian of those early years before they became anxious parents, when the two of them would share the same space, yet they were content in their own worlds.

  Ian often strummed his guitar and jotted down notes for songs he would never finish, while Helena flipped through the latest law journals and simultaneously used Google to research clients and peers. They could have been in separate rooms, but it always felt better just knowing that other person was nearby, close enough to occasionally catch a glance and share a smile.

  “Have you seen a doctor?” Ian asked. “They have these little blue pills—

  “I don’t miss it,” said Helena dismissively. “I’d rather be awake.”

  A smile entered Ian’s voice. “You used to love sleeping in on the weekends. Remember when you begged me to teach Emily how to use the wireless headphones so she could watch her cartoons without waking you up?”

  There was no smile in return. “What I wouldn’t give for those hours back with her.”

  Ian winced. “Sorry, I—

  “It’s OK. I know you feel the same.” She cleared her throat, signaling a change in topic. “Can you meet us at ten?”

  “Us?”

  “I have an interest in this, too.”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “Rolando’s office. It’s—

  “I know it. Want me to pick you up a Memphis Mafia from Voodoo on the way?”

  This time he got a laugh. “Don’t even tease. I won’t be able to get the thought of banana chunks and cinnamon sugar out of my head.”

  “You forgot about the chocolate frosting, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. It’s your favorite.”

  “Now you’re just being cruel.”

  Ian enjoyed hearing the chuckle in her voice; it was a sound so natural that it was painful to know how easily it could be lost.

  “How about a coffee then?”

  “I’ll be fine, Ian.” Like that. A switch thrown. Laughter gone. “Just meet me there.”

  A police cruiser rushed by in full-combat mode, its siren’s ear-piercing squeals making all the windows in Ian’s tin box on toy wheels visibly shudder.

  “What’s going on there?” Helena asked.

  “Cops are cleaning up some trash.”

  As he hung up, Ian glanced at the clock and wondered if the officers would be even remotely surprised to find that the burglar had more than ample time to flee.

  AFTER A quick stop at Voodoo Doughnut, Ian dropped into the Portland Justice Center to inquire if Detective Jersey Castle had started his shift. When the attractively plump receptionist shook her head, Ian held up a box of doughnuts and asked if he could deliver them to homicide.

  “Those from Voodoo?” The woman’s voice spiked an octave in sudden interest.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Any Grape Apes or bacon maple?”

  Ian grinned. “Sorry, I went with a basic assortment. But I do have plain maple if you want it.”

  The receptionist grinned back, exposing a pair of adorably cheeky dimples. “You sure?”

  Before Ian could answer, the woman left her desk and rushed the counter. He had barely lifted the cardboard lid before she reached in and snatched out a frosted maple bar.

  “You know where homicide is?” The question was pushed through a mouthful of sweet fried dough as she gave his laminated Children First ID a cursory glance.
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  “Fourteenth floor.”

  The receptionist flashed him a thumbs-up and returned to her desk with a newfound bounce in her step.

  On the fourteenth floor, Ian found his way to Jersey’s desk and placed the box beside his phone. As he was looking for a piece of paper to leave a note, a large shadow fell on his shoulders. He turned to see a thick-bellied cowboy with a face as rough as the snakeskin boots that added to his already intimidating height.

  Wearing a western-cut suit and Stetson cowboy hat, the man looked as out of place in rainy Portland as a left-wing conservative in Texas.

  “Castle don’t need more doughnuts,” said the man in a Texas drawl. “Not if he wants to keep that plus-size girlish figure of his. There’s only so much a girdle can control.”

  “It’s a bribe,” said Ian dryly.

  The man sniffed the air. “No maple bacon?”

  “I didn’t want to cause offense. I know how sensitive some officers can be to any swine products.”

  The large man’s mouth twitched. “What about one of those Texas rings?”

  “Too big to fit in the box.”

  “I hear that all the time. What you got, then?”

  Ian opened the box and offered up its contents. The man chose a chocolate ring and took a bite. He gave a nod of approval and moved to a nearby desk with a brass name plaque that read: Det. D. Preston.

  “Nice bribe. You kill someone?” Preston asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Preston grinned. “If you’d brought some decent coffee, we’d likely let you get away with it, too.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Preston chuckled. “I’ll let little drummer boy know you stopped by. He’ll know who you are?”

  “If there’s at least one doughnut left when he gets here, he’ll know.”

  Preston shrugged. “I don’t like the fruity ones. Can’t speak for anyone else.”

  Heading back to the elevator, Ian heard the detective noisily sucking icing off his fingers.