Trigger Finger (23 page)

35.

Today—this
evening, really—Dr. Koenig wore a suit.
 
The remnants of one, more accurately; the wrinkled trousers screamed for
a visit to the drycleaner’s and the white shirt begged to tag along.
 
He had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows,
the collar unbuttoned, the red and blue striped tie loosened to reveal the
collar of a crewneck undershirt.
 
When he
shifted in his chair, the faintest outlines of a sweat stain showed through
around the white collar.
 
It was April
now, and growing warmer every day.
 
The
blast-furnace days of summer stirred in the near future.

He started in
about me not bringing Allie almost right away, but he stopped when I told him I
had a plan for ending all this.
 
I told
him I’d sent her and Abby to Pennsylvania.
  
Now he crossed one leg over the other and
tapped his pen on his legal pad, frowning.
 
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

I nodded.
 
“It’s the
only
idea.
 
He won’t hurt them if they’re not
home.”

“This is the
man—the creature, really—who makes golems and sends them after you.”

I nodded.

“What makes you so
sure he won’t send golems after them?”

“Because he’s had
a million opportunities to do that and he hasn’t tried it,” I said.
 
“I get up in the morning and I go to
work.
 
I stay at the office all day,
sometimes part of the night.
 
We live out
in bumfuck, so if he wanted a shot at them…”

I turned my palms
up to the ceiling and shrugged.

“…then I couldn’t
stop him.
 
It’s always been like
that.
 
He wants us all together.
 
Because this…
thing
he wants to do only has power if I’m there to watch.
 
He doesn’t just want to destroy my family,
Doc.
 
He wants to destroy my soul.
 
Everything I am.
 
He wants this to be
my
fault.
 
He wants to
show
me.
 
Because I am defiant.”

“So your plan is…”

“I’m going to
throw down,” I said.
 
“Tonight.”

Southern Rifleman
, another tight little
tube.
 
I had switched plastic covers to
one less clear, but also less clingy.
 
The translucent but textured plastic cover allowed me to roll it any way
I wanted and it wouldn’t bind.
 
I rolled
it now.

“I’m going to lock
and load and I’m going to sit on my stairs and I’m going to say game on, bitch,
bring it.
 
Don’t send your people out
here, you pussy, you come out here yourself.”

“And he’s just
going to…come?”

I raised my head
and lowered it in a slow but certain nod.
 
It did sound a little crazy, spoken aloud—but I believed it.

“He is.”

“How do you know
this?”

“You ever have a
gut feeling about something and you know you’re right, you just can’t put your
finger on
how
you know you’re
right?
 
Like, have you ever had a patient
and before you’ve talked to him five minutes, you know he’s crazy?”

The stare he gave
me in reply told me very clearly that I was just such a patient.

“That’s it,” I
said.
 
“I’ve been having this rape dream
for months, but only recently have I woken up
remembering
it.
 
And I can’t
help but feel like he’s coming to do it soon.
 
It’s just a feeling Doc.
 
Call me
psychic.”

He folded his arms
and studied me.
 
I didn’t much care for
the way he looked at me, because I’d looked at Brandon Cross that same way when
he first told me about sliding.
 
When he’d
told me he was a Navy fighter pilot with a recurring nightmare that he was a
retarded kid in Burlington.

“I want her in
here,” Dr. Koenig said, completely ignoring what I’d just said, “but you’ve
kind of ruined that for me by repeatedly not bringing her.
 
So why don’t we call her and conference her
in on the rest of today’s session?”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s
driving.
 
I don’t want her talking on the
cell phone and driving at the same time.”

“I see,” Dr.
Koenig said.

“You see
what?
 
There’s nothing to see.
 
She’s on I-95.
 
You’re a Yankee; you should appreciate
somebody not wanting his wife yakking on the cell on a road like 95.”

“It’s just
interesting to me how you keep coming up with these reasons to not bring your
wife to our sessions.”

“No offense,” I said,
“but I have other things to worry about right now other than making you happy.”

April showers
bring May flowers; the kiss of spring comes in the rain, not cold but cool, the
vanguard of nature’s awakening.
 
I had
never minded spring rain nor the gray skies that normally sent me into a
depressive tailspin, because they heralded winter’s permanent departure.
 
The gray skies and rain meant no more frozen
mornings.
 
April served as a mop-up
operation, locating and neutralizing the remnants of January and February.
 
So I could deal with April showers.
 
I could deal with them just fine.

But I had a wife
and child on the road that afternoon, so on that night, April showers made me
worry.
 
After dinner, the idea that they
would get in a car accident possessed me, which led me to call Allie eight
times between the hours of twelve and three.
 
When she didn’t call back, I resorted to text messages.
 
Like the telephone calls, these grew
progressively more desperate as the hours wore on.
 
By the time my phone finally beeped at 7, my
nerves had frayed so much that I jumped out of my office chair.

A text from Abby’s
phone.

We’re here.
 
Im on Abbys phone.

Why didn’t U answer my calls?
 
I texted back.

My phone died.
 
U on your way home yet?

Still @ office.

B careful.
 
ILY.

I actually typed
my response all the way.

I love you too.

I arrived home
that night later than usual.
 
The house
stood in total darkness, no windows glowing, no exterior lights burning.
 
Inside, I found only silence.
 
I stood in the kitchen and listened to it.

“I’m home!”
 
I called out.

No one answered,
of course; I had sent my family away for their own safety.
 
Tonight, it was just me.
 
Me and this big, isolated, silent house.

This is what it would be like
, I
thought,
if I’d hesitated.
 
If I’d let those fuckers win.

But I hadn’t let
them win.
 
And their boss man, the Bald
Man—I wouldn’t let him win, either.
 
Instead of climbing the stairs to change, I headed directly into the
basement.
 
I opened the gun safe and took
out the AK-47.
 
I sat down at the bar and
stripped it down, the way Bobby had showed me.
 
Then I cleaned it.

Clean it good,
Bobby said.
 
Or the
shit’ll jam on you.
 
All you need is one
hung-up shell casing to end your game.

I put it back
together.
 
Not a single speck of dust
remained.

Looks good,
he commented.

“Thanks,” I
replied.

Now lock and load.

I had two
magazines for the AK-47, and now I loaded each with thirty rounds of
ammunition.
 
I didn’t expect to need all
of them, but a man never knew.
 
I
suspected no one in history had ever ended a fight thinking
damn, I brought too much ammo.

Like the Boy Scouts say
, Bobby said,
be prepared.

“Damn skippy,” I
replied.

When I’d loaded
each magazine, I slammed one into the receiver and chambered a round.
 
Then I headed upstairs to the ground floor.
 
I stepped out on the porch and stood there
with the door open behind me.

There was no
breeze.
 
There where my yard ended and
the woods began, the trees stood stock-still, silently crowding the gravel
drive down to 62.
 
I looked at the place
where the drive disappeared into the darkness and pictured the bald man.

Game on, bitch
, Bobby said.

I licked my
lips.
 
My right hand tightened on the
rifle’s pistol grip, my left on the barrel.
 
My eyes narrowed.

“All right,
motherfucker,” I said.
 
“Bring it.”

36.

He didn’t
come.
 

37.

“So,” Dr. Koenig
said at the start of our next session.
 
“Is it all over?
 
Did you have
your big showdown with the Bald Man?”

I had just seen
him yesterday, but he wanted to see me again today.
 
I didn’t ask why; it really didn’t matter.

And, honestly,
given everything going on, I needed this extra session.
 
The Bald Man hadn’t shown up last night, but
I had woken up on the couch in the basement with my fully-loaded AK-47 clutched
across my chest like some kind of fucked-up teddy bear.
 
I woke up that way because I carried the
rifle everywhere I went in the house.
 
Right now, I had it in the trunk of my car.
 
So, if my therapist wanted me to come in for
a few extra sessions, I felt it entirely appropriate.

“He didn’t show
up,” I muttered.

“Your gut feeling
was wrong.”

“No,” I said.
 
“Just premature.
 
I didn’t say I knew when it would be; just
that it would be soon.”

“Ah.”

I scowled at that—
ah,
like I’d just lied to him.
 
I reminded myself that I had told this man I
believed I hadn’t ever killed a single human being, but rather golems conjured
by the Devil personified.
 
I had to
understand that I’d given him just cause for skepticism.

“Allie and Abby
still in Pennsylvania?”

“Yes.
 
It’s a long drive.
 
Not exactly a place you go overnight and then
come back.”

“You told me
yesterday that you sent her and Abby there to get them away from the Bald Man,”
he said.
 
“Why didn’t you just send them
down to Jacksonville
to stay with Bobby and Kate?”

“Bobby works,” I
answered.
 
“Kate works.
 
They’re gone all day.
 
Besides, Bobby’s my brother, not
Allie’s.
 
It made more sense to send her
to her family’s house.”

He pursed his lips
and nodded once, like he’d known I would say that.
 
It irritated me.

“If you don’t mind
me asking, Doc,” I said next, “what’s up?”

“Why don’t we give
her a call?
 
Let’s call her right now and
conference her in.”

“It’s two in the
afternoon.
 
I’m sure she has things going
on.”

He shrugged his
narrow shoulders.
 
“So?
 
Big deal.
 
Give her a call.”

“I left my phone
at the office.”

“Use mine.”
 
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out
an iPhone just like Abby’s.

“That’s no good,”
I said.
 
“Her cell reception sucks at her
parents’ house.”

“Call the land
line.”

“I don’t know
it.
 
It’s in my phone.”

“You don’t know
your in-laws’ home phone number?”
 
He
asked.
 
“You’re married to this woman for
fifteen years and you don’t know her parents’ number?”

“Like I said,” I
told him, keeping a lid on my patience.
 
“It’s in my phone.
 
People don’t
dial numbers anymore, Doc.
 
You program a
number into your phone and push a button when you want to call it.
 
I don’t know Abby’s number off the top of my
head, either.
 
All that’s in my
phone.
 
If that’s really chapping your
ass, I’ll try to remember the phone next time, okay?”

He leaned forward
and rested his face in his hands.

“Listen,” I said,
“things have changed here.
 
Something’s
going down.”

He looked up,
although he didn’t sit up.
 
His face was
drawn, old and tired.

“Last night I went
out on my porch with my rifle and I said come on, you bald-headed fuck.
 
Bring it, bitch, game on.
 
I’m not running from you, I’m not sliding out
of this.
 
You bring it, because I’m here.
 
Let’s see what you got, you punk-ass,
bald-ass motherfucker.”

He winced at all
the profanity, but I felt no embarrassment.
 
I was, I realized, channeling Bobby.
 
And that was okay; Bobby was one hard son of a bitch.

Like me.
 
The whole time I’d sat in here, I hadn’t
removed my issue of
Southern Rifleman
from my briefcase; I hadn’t, if fact, removed it all day.
 
The time for security blankets had passed.

“And what makes
you think he’s coming tonight, given that he failed to appear the night
before?”

I breathed in
through my nose.
 
Ki
breath.

“I’m going to
unlock all the doors and windows,” I said.
 
“And I’m going to let myself fall asleep.”