Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds (37 page)

Jimmy and Lukas sat down hard, their laughter making them choke. Long moments passed before they were able to return to their own version of normality. Frank was frowning, but you could tell he really wanted to smile.

"You done?"

Lukas nodded and grabbed a beer.

"Yep."

"Good, help me carry this boat to the shore. My back hasn't been the same since our little rock climbing expedition three years ago. My back
still
hurts and I had to wear that cast for four months. When a subway rattles by, I can feel it straight through my spine."

"Fun as hell though, right? You felt more alive than ever? Come on, Frank. You have to take some risks, man. It's the risks that separate us from the animals. Better to be dead than a coward, you know?"

"Okay. Okay. It was fun," Frank said, grabbing his end of the boat. "But I can't keep from thinking of that Clint Eastwood film
The Outlaw Josey Wales
. This bounty hunter says to him, '
I aim to kill you. Bounty Huntin' is what I do for a living
.' Then Clint says, '
Dyin' ain't much of a living
,
boy
.'"

Jimmy laughed, his belly shaking like a mound of lumpy mashed potatoes during an earthquake.

"I love that movie. I like the ones with the monkeys better, though. It's fuckin' amazin' what they get them monkeys to do. What the hell are they called?"

"You gotta be fucking kidding me, Jimmy. You like Clint Eastwood's monkey movies more than you like
Josey Wales
? My God, man, I don't even know what the hell to say. Why don't they just put a fucking monkey in every movie, that way you'll be sure to enjoy it?"

Jimmy nodded. "Actually, that ain't a bad idea. If you think about it, you can't go wrong if you put a monkey in your movie. Things is always more entertainin'." Jimmy kept his voice dry, but Frank knew that his friend was merely playing it up. "Clint Eastwood is cool and all, but if you put a monkey with him, he's even cooler."

"Clint is the fuckin' man," Lukas said. Then his eyes widened considerably and he ran towards the truck. "Jesus, I almost forgot it!"

Frank glanced over at Jimmy, cocking an eyebrow.

"Watch this," Jimmy said.

Frank was reminded of a redneck joke that he had heard as he observed his friend scampering back to the truck. It was said that anytime you heard a redneck say,
Watch this
, chances were you'd never see him alive again.

Lukas returned with a large, bizarre stick clutched in his fist. More than a stick, it was a staff about six feet long. Instead of wood, however, it seemed as if someone had stacked about a dozen Budweiser cans on end and then welded them together. At the very top end of the stick, like a large diamond-encrusted jewel, sat a broken bottle, wickedly embedded. Just below this, hanging upon thick wires, were a dozen bottle caps falling like fringe and jingling as Lukas moved.

"What the fuck is that?" Frank asked, wondering if his friends had finally degenerated into the insane, nose-picking country bumpkins the rest of the world believed them to be.

"This here is the Bitch-Be-Quick Stick," Lukas proclaimed, placing the staff in the boat as if it were made of glass. "My cousin Judd gave it to me for Christmas. Says it's good luck. Helped him out of a jam once."

"That the same cousin that got bit in the dick by a rattlesnake?" Frank asked.

"Yep," Lukas said.

Frank sighed and climbed into the boat. "Oh wonderful."

By Yvonne Navarro

PROLOGUE

T
he things the
y did in the dark to the baby were unspeakable. The older one had been watching crime shows on television, and so he knew about things like fingerprints and bits of skin that might be found under fingernails. It was high summer in the poorer part of Cicero, Illinois, hot and green, and beneath the heavy, pre-thunderstorm clouds and the whine of insects buzzing in the humid air, everything around the yard was open—the garage, the rickety gardening shed, the side door to the house. They’d gone scavenging in secret and picked up things like a couple of sets of dirty gardening gloves, rusty trimming shears, a hand-sized hoe fork, a partially used roll of duct tape and a flashlight from the garage. Then, while the mother was in back hanging the wash on the line—trying to save electricity and keep the ancient dryer from dumping more heat into the small, shabby house— they went into the house and took the eighteen month old girl from her crib.

And when they saw that the mother had left the five year old girl to watch over the toddler… Well, they took her, too.

H
e is w
aiting for the woman in the hallway of her building when she gets home. It is, he thinks, as if the universe has conspired to make this, his little act of revenge, easy for him. The building where she lives is an old brick three flat and her apartment is on the second floor, but he is not concerned with that. What he does find helpful is the foyer, which is shallow but wide, with a deep, handy “blind spot on each side of an entry door that only has glass in the top half and bears a lock that is pathetically easy for him to slip. There are heavily frosted windows to each side of the door, but they aren’t wide enough to cause any problem—he can easily stand beyond where his shadow might show against the outside glass.

His emotions are a mixture of cool calculation and anger…no,
r
age
.
It expands and contracts inside him like a red spider working long, prickly legs every time he hears the words she said to him on the telephone that last time—

“Listen,
you lying son of a bitch, because this is the last time I’m going to tell you this. Don’t call me, don’t talk to me, don’t even
think
a
bout me. If I pick up the phone and it’s you just one more time, I’m going to call the police. They’ll take care of you once and for all.”

—and then the r
ed spider inside him actually bites down, filling him with venom at the memory of the final words she said before she slammed down the phone—

“I don’
t know you, and I don’t want to. You are one sick fuck.”

No,
he thinks as the door opens and she comes inside, you don’t know me at all. The door eases shut behind her and she is looking toward the mailboxes on the west side of the foyer, so she doesn’t see where he waits a few feet away, like a giant, silent version of the vicious spider inside his mind. There will be a second or two when the spider, this dark, vengeful side of himself, is visible to all in the window of the entry door, but that cannot be helped. The mailboxes have doorbells below each and he must move her to avoid the chance that she will slap her hand against one of them as he performs his task.

Keys in hand, she is reaching for her own mailbox when he darts forward and clamps his left hand hard across her mouth. Her keys drop as he drags her backward and spins her toward the interior entry, bending low to avoid the window in the door behind him, using her body weight and momentum to slam her against the wall on the opposite side. There is a narrow wooden table there and the jarring movement bounces it away from the wall and leaves an eighteen inch space; she is too stunned to resist as he forces her to bend over the tabletop, pressing against her from behind as he shoves her head and shoulders down and into the gap, keeping her pinned against the wall. He lets go of the back of her head, quickly reaches into the deep right pocket of his black windbreaker, and brings out his weapon. The knife is a beautiful K2K Folder with a drop point and a serrated edge, slightly more than two and a half inches of deadly stainless steel blade. Revenge would be, as they say, a much sweeter thing if he had the time to enjoy it; he does not and so without wasting any more movement he reaches under her neck and draws the blade left to right across her throat.

She thrashes and goes deeper into the space, voiceless, and he holds her there, keeping the spray of blood directed toward the left outside corner of the foyer and away from his clothes, sees it splatter against the wall like an abstract scarlet painting. Warmth covers his hand, seeping through the heavy latex glove he’s stretched up and over his wrist to protect the cuff of his windbreaker. When her struggling stops, he lets her fall, not caring about the awkward position of her body or the leather purse that drops to the side of it. He backs away, pleased when he sees that he hasn’t stepped in any blood and so he won’t have to use the bottle of ammonia in his other pocket to wash away any footprints. There is an arc of ruby colored liquid climbing across the wall and ending midway on the east pane of frosted glass, so he wipes the blade of his knife with
the glo
ved, bloodied fingers of his left hand and puts it away, then reaches up with his right and loosens the dim, bare bulb overhead.

The foyer drops into darkness and he stands at the door for a moment, studying the sidewalk out front. It is dark and comforting, lined with thick-leafed maples that rustle in the pleasant fall evening and scatter the already weak glow of the overhead streetlights. No one is out there and he quietly pushes the door open and slips onto the porch, quickly stripping the latex gloves inside out and pocketing them before descending the stairs and strolling, unconcerned, to where he’s parked his car beneath the elevated train tracks only a block to the west.

T
he trauma team at Illinois Masonic Medical Center was waiting when the Chicago Fire Department ambulance, lights flashing and siren screaming, careened into the driveway and lurched to a stop beneath the protective overhang at the entrance to the emergency room. The men and women—two doctors and two trauma nurses—were experienced and capable, and no one among them had been with the group for less than a year, plus they’d gotten a heads up from the driver, so they all knew what was coming, had all the equipment ready.

That she was alive, still, was a shock.

“Female, early twenties, knife wound to the throat!” one of the EMTs shouted as he and his partner propelled the Gurney out of the back of the bus and into the half dozen reaching hands. There was blood everywhere, and beneath an oxygen mask the victim’s face was as white as the marble cross that hung in the chapel in another wing of Illinois Masonic. Over the past several years, Dr. Ireta Tansey had seen that cross many times,
too
man
y, and she had also seen this young woman before.

“Ready the suture tray,” Dr. Tansey ordered. As the patient was rushed into the ER, she paused only long enough to shoot a question back to the paramedics who stood stripping off blood-soaked gloves and looking disgusted at the mess inside their vehicle. “ID?”

The older one jerked his head toward a police car swinging over to the curb at street level. “Randall’s got it.”

The doctor gave a crisp nod. “Tell him to bring it in, stat. This girl’s been here before and we can look up her records, save time on the blood type.”

He tur
ned and headed toward the cop as she slammed back through the ER doors and followed the trail of blood into chaos.

The trauma team had put the woman in the crash room, on the right and closest to the entrance. Everyone was moving at once, juggling IVs, hooking up blood pressure and pulse sensors, hands changing off holding a wad of scarlet soaked gauze in place over the gaping, happy mouth of a wound that nearly circled her throat as tasks were switched back and forth.

“Pulse is fifty nine, respiration is steady, and blood pressure is holding at…one-twenty over seventy?” Jeremy, one of the trauma nurses, scowled. “What the—that
can’
t
be r
ight!”

Before the doctor could make her way up to the examination table, everyone in the room just… stopped. And stared.

“Move your asses, people,” Dr. Tansey snapped as she strode forward. “Unless you want this girl to bleed to death in front of you!”

“I don’t think so, doctor,” said Camila, the other nurse. Still, at least the others were moving again, if only to step forward and peer at the ivory-skinned girl lying quietly on the table. The other doctor, a young man named Sajag Bharat, looked back and forth from the monitors to the patient, then cautiously lifted his gloved hand from her throat. It came away filled with sopping red gauze, but there was no fresh red pulse behind the material. “She’s stopped bleeding on her own.”

“W
hat?”
Dr
. Tansey scooted in closer and leaned over the victim. The cut on her throat was fresh and deep, the edges separated enough to show muscle and the thin, creamier colored layer of adipose tissue. If it hadn’t been for the steady
bee
p beep beep
of the hear
t monitor, Tansey would have thought the girl was dead—at least that would have explained the abrupt halt of the blood flow.

“Her name is Hannah Danior,” the charge nurse called from the doorway. Dr. Tansey glanced over and saw the older woman flipping rapidly through a bunch of cards obviously just handed to her by a policeman a few feet away. “Here—she’s got an IM card. I can pull up her data on the computer.” She shoved the rest of the cards back into the policeman’s hands and disappeared down the hallway.