Rage Against the Dying Page 8

  Carlo went out to sand and paint the back fence and I went to the gym and worked out with the free weights, but it wasn’t enough.

  That was the day when I decided to go down to the wash to find some rocks and clear my head even though it was Africa hot. And let a homicidal rapist get me into his van.

  I pulled the same walking stick from the faux Louis Quatorze umbrella stand in the front hall that I had used when we went to find the mummies on Mount Lemmon. It’s not like I’m feeble or anything, just need the stick for balance and as protection against the occasional rattlesnake. I put a bottle of water and my garden gloves in my dusty backpack and strapped it on. Cell phone in the pocket of my cargo pants. Headed down Golder Ranch Road to the Cañada del Oro Wash that runs underneath the bridge.

  I have this little warning signal that has served me well in dangerous times. The nerve on the side of my neck sparks. I don’t know why it didn’t spark when I first glimpsed the white van, old and dirty, on the bridge, its driver leaning out the open window, staring down at the dry riverbed. Maybe my internal warning battery is wearing out.

  Intuition aside, I should have noticed the van was illegally parked and that it looked all wrong. Instead I rested my backpack near the skeleton of half a tree that had been carried down the river during some flood long ago when the rivers still ran strong. I put on the garden gloves and began poking rocks with my stick, occasionally picking up a nice piece of rose quartz or mica-encrusted granite to put in my bag.

  The van caught my attention again when it drove slowly down the packed dirt path leading off the wider road running close by the wash. As I pretended to examine more rocks it made a three-point turn to position itself for easy departure back up the steep slope. So far still not terribly suspicious; this was a public place where people sometimes exercised their dogs.

  The man who emerged from the driver’s side wasn’t the throw-stick-let-dog-run type, though. With the nerve now sparking in the side of my neck big time, and my continuing to act as if this day was only going to be about rocks, I watched him as he opened the back doors of the van, arranged something I could not see, and closed the doors without shutting them altogether. Then he turned to watch me.

  After glancing at his license plate for later reference, I refocused on the wet sand at my feet, poking my walking stick here and there to dig out smaller rocks. But I could feel him when he started to move, slipping down the bank of the wash, pretending to look around, but relentlessly coming closer and closer.

  Another nerve nestled in the pit of my stomach, one I hadn’t felt for a long time. It had been years since I was in a position like this and I was, frankly, afraid. Then I turned to him because now it was too late for fear.

  The assailant stood within about ten feet of me. He was nearly six feet tall, approximately one hundred and forty pounds, thin frame, jerky movements, red-rimmed eyes and blotchy skin indicating chronic stimulant abuse. Lank hair that was not so much long as uncut. Early thirties. A sleeveless University of Arizona track shirt, a piece of yarn around his neck, orange nylon shorts with trim that once was white. No underwear. Green flip-flops with the rubber breaking around the toe from a habit of bending it back and forth as he was now. But the most telling thing, worse than the boner that told me he wasn’t about to ask for money, was a strip of duct tape plastered against the front of his shirt.

  I prepared for his next move, which was some inane conversation about geology, with which he hoped to put me at ease. While this went on I considered my options:

  1. Run like hell and hope he didn’t catch me.

  2. Disable him here and call the cops.

  3. Find out who he was.

  I should have gone for number two. What the hell was I thinking? Maybe it was when he pulled on the yarn around his neck and drew up a foil-wrapped condom from under his shirt. That made me mad. So when he suddenly stepped forward and knocked the rock I was holding out of my hand, I decided to go for number three, try to find out how many times he had done this before and where the bodies might be hidden before he could lawyer up. There was some logic operating, you see, I wasn’t just pissed off.

  I let him wrench my arm behind my back, slap the piece of duct tape over my mouth, and force me toward the van with enough struggle to be convincing. Once inside the van I caught my breath and had second thoughts, thinking I might have done something stupid. During the trip into the van I was better able to judge his strength and balance against mine, and it was closer than I had anticipated. Plus it felt like I was about to wrestle in a phone booth.

  But Black Ops Baxter’s training kicked in. The man grabbed for the dowel that I was holding toward him like you do with a snarling dog, and cut his hand on the blade attached to the bottom. When he recovered from his surprise and charged at me, I was concentrating so hard I could feel the air he displaced. I feinted to one side, so he hit the back of the van. I twisted faster than he’d expected, buying time to get some distance and leverage to use my stick in a way that would do more good.

  He managed to roll to one side where his tools were held against the wall and pulled the pliers off. If he got one good shot at me with those I’d be done.

  My blade got there before he could secure his grip, as I hooked the tool through the joint and popped it out of his way. Now it was his turn to stop and regain his breath. Unlucky for me, when we had stopped moving he was still blocking the door.

  “Round and round we go, where we stop nobody knows,” he said. He sucked at his palm and seemed to lose focus for a moment, as if fascinated by the taste of the blood.

  I started to speak and realized the duct tape was still hanging from one corner of my mouth. I loosened it and grimaced with the pain as it reluctantly gave up my cheek. I slapped its sticky side against the metal wall, then reached up and fingered a tendril of my white hair which had fallen when my hat came off in the struggle outside. Put him off guard, get some information. “You were attracted to this, were you? You like older women?”

  “Actually you’re a little young for me,” he said, in a crouch, swaying. “This time is different.”

  “How old do you usually like?” I asked, doing a little swaying of my own so I wouldn’t stiffen in the cramped van.

  “Old enough so when they go missing people don’t do AMBER Alerts and put them on milk cartons. Women no one will miss.”

  “Ever tell anybody what you do?” I asked.

  He shook his head with what looked like regret. “Not lately, unless you count the Internet. But nobody takes you seriously there. Everybody talking all kinds of shit, mostly.” He opened his mouth to speak again, then shut it.

  So it was my turn. “How do you do it?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Sure do.”

  He whistled like this time really was going to be different. He didn’t know the half of it, but my admission had made him chatty. “You know how most guys do stuff that gets messy? Okay, I might get a little blood, you saw it on the floor, but mostly I don’t do that. I break their bones instead.”

  “You break their bones. That sounds familiar.”

  “Can’t be. I’m the only one who does that. It’s my ‘signature.’”

  “Unique,” I said to encourage him.

  “Totally. You know, you’ve got some balls for an old broad. This is going to be more fun than I figured.”

  “It’s clever, too, that you’ve got your setup here in the van.”

  “Yeah, want to know what I call it?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Squeals on wheels.” He laughed. He was uncharacteristically talkative for a serial killer, like it felt good for him to share this with someone.

  I smiled as if impressed by his wit. “You could do me right here and no one would know.”

  The man shook his head, shifted to a more comfortable position. “Fuck no, that would be too risky. I … wait … you think I’m stupid. It’s not like you’re going to get out of this. You’re the stupid o
ne.”

  “You may be right. But how can you be sure?”

  “Number one, we’re still in my van, and, number two, I’m bigger than you are even if you did get lucky with that blade just now.”

  While he had been talking, I had begun circling the bladed stick with one hand while the other, fingers up and thumb out, framed him. There was enough head room for me to rise up on one knee while the blade circled slowly, smoothly, in a slow-motion way that focused me to the point where I could feel the weight of the air between us. I was killing a little time while I figured out how best to disable him. Distract him with one or two more minor cuts and then break his collarbone, I decided.

  He watched me, thoughtfully wiping his palm on his nylon shorts as he said, “Hey, those look like ninja moves. Get it? Old lady ninja. Ha!”

  “I’ll give you old,” I whispered and darted forward. I swear I hadn’t intended to do this, but he rose up at the same time and my blade sliced at just the wrong spot on his thigh. He watched like a rubbernecker at his own accident as the arterial spurt shot a good six inches and pooled in the grooves of the floor. “Oh shit,” I said.

  “Help me,” he groaned as he fell back against the door and passed out.

  “What do I look like, a paramedic?” I said to no one, but threw his body down flat, tore the yarn from around his neck, shook off the condom, and formed a tourniquet around his thigh above the wound. My garden gloves made tying the string difficult but instinct kept them on. With some effort I rolled him over on his back and sat cross-legged beside him on the shower curtain to avoid getting slimed by the blood pooled on the floor.

  He was coming around slowly, still alive but too groggy from the plunge of blood pressure. I didn’t have time to waste on the usual EMT process. Instead, I snapped the bone in his little finger and he bounded back with a shout.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it? Listen,” I said. “I’ve accidentally severed your femoral artery. No, don’t bother to look. I put a tourniquet around your leg to slow the loss of blood, but if I don’t tie off that artery within,” I checked my watch, “thirty minutes you’ll die anyway. Now tell me where you put the bodies.”

  “I’m bleeding to death.”

  “Yes, but slowly. Tell me where the bodies are.”

  “There, there’s a sewing kit up on that shelf.”

  “First talk, and I’ll keep you from losing your leg. I know how, but you’re going to have to work with me.”

  “They’ll get you for this.”

  I considered that he might be right, but he didn’t need to know. “It’s self-defense. Or at worst accidental manslaughter. Tell me where the bodies are.”

  “I’ll say you attacked me.”

  “Look at you. Then look at me.”

  The man groaned.

  “I’m getting pissed and you’re dying. Not a good use of time. Now tell me where you threw the bodies, you sick fuck.”

  “Bodies…” he paused as if considering what to say. Then he started to whimper something and I leaned forward, close enough to be repelled by the sour smell of stale beer, to hear something that sounded like, “Yer dead…”

  Which seemed fairly confident for a man in his condition. But I had overestimated his weakness and let down my guard. He lurched to his left side and head-butted me, making me see a flash of tiny lightning. While I shook myself, he managed to roll over, pinning me under his weight, but couldn’t do much more than that. His hands tried to hold me, but weakened by his injury, they couldn’t get enough purchase to do any good. His teeth the only weapon left to him, he clamped down on my upper arm. I shrieked but was pinned against the wall, legs crossed, no way to throw him or get out of the way. The coarse denim of my blouse wouldn’t hold long to keep him from breaking the skin. I needed to do something fast, but the pain was distracting me as, in the way of a coral snake, he ground his jaws.

  Already mentally counting the cost of my deed, already mourning the loss of the peace I’d found in the desert, I moaned with regret as I twisted to force my upper body down toward his legs.

  I allowed myself one whispered “goddamn,” then held my breath and closed my eyes and mouth tightly, in anticipation of the blood that would gush when I reached down with two free fingers and pulled the tourniquet away from his leg.

  I’ve done it again, I thought afterward, and this time I don’t even have a badge. I’m fucked.

  Thirteen

  What was it made me take a chance like that? Questioning him before he got a safety net in the criminal justice system and Miranda rights, that logic dissipated in the smell of warming blood. Logic. That’s right, I was trying to find out where he’d put the bodies. Or was it also, just a little, wanting to reassure myself that I was still physically strong enough to take down a guy like this without help?

  Plenty of time to think about all that later. For now I crawled to the back of the van where I could avoid the blood still running through the grooves in the floor and allow myself to recover from a mild shock, concentrating on bringing my breathing rate down so my heart would follow suit. Trusting there was no one outside the confines of the van to hear me, I screamed as loudly as I could, which settled me some. Then it was time to face the music. I hate music.

  First taking off my blood-soaked garden gloves and hooking them over the top of my cargo pants, I unsnapped my side pocket and pulled out my cell phone. It was important to appear cool and in control of the situation, like I was still a professional. I cleared my throat and practiced a couple times, “Hi, Max? This is Brigid Quinn. Hi, Max? This is Brigid Quinn,” until I could say it without choking. Max was programmed in, and my thumb shook over the Call button for a moment, thinking of how to spin this.

  Then I thought, maybe not call Max first, maybe call Carlo instead. Explain everything to Carlo right off the bat before anyone else got to him and gave him the wrong notion of what had happened here, of what I had done in self-defense. I paused further, immobilized by the thought of Carlo coming down to the wash and seeing me awash in blood.

  No, that wouldn’t work. Instead, I thought, I could sneak home, get cleaned up, and then, without the blood, explain rationally and calmly what had happened in self-defense.

  I paused yet again.

  In that pause, while I sat on the floor of the van gazing at the filthy dead thing, I remembered the moment when Paul, of the cello and truffle oil, looked at a crime scene photo and told me he couldn’t bear to have me in his world.

  I’m sure there are other people who have experienced The Moment themselves. The kind where you’ve been one sort of person up to this point in your life. Then you’re in a doctor’s office, or at home, or at work, and someone, someone you might have always trusted, walks into the room and makes what is likely an offhand remark they’ll never remember, but the comment rocks you at your deepest, unhinging whatever you had been. You think you’re so tough, never realizing how fragile you are until you break. It happens that easily, that quickly. Paul was one of the moments. This was another, and beyond that, nothing can explain or justify what I did.

  With an unbearable ache in my gut I thought about losing Carlo, and thought I would not, could not, survive the loss of the one happy thing in my entire existence. I’d waited too long for him and I would not drive him away the way I’d driven away every other civilian in my past. If I lost my husband I would not survive, and I would not take that chance. It would be so much simpler not to tell Carlo or anyone else about this.

  How about I just say I panicked? And I went a little nuts. I tore my eyes away from the body, closed the phone that made the same soft click as a permanently closing door, and put it back in my pocket. And I put into play what was arguably the stupidest mistake of my life.

  I considered my options, came up with three, decided. Made a plan.

  Phase one: I opened the doors of the van and peered out. After the murky interior the light bouncing off the sand blasted my eyes. Then the wash came back into focus. I hopped out, unkinked my bac
k, and got the liter bottle of water out of my backpack. I took off my gloves and dropped them in the sand. I washed some of the blood spurt off my face, then poured water over my blouse to spread the blood evenly through it, so it looked like darker denim. Rather than doing it in the sand I did this over a bit of scrub bush under the shelter of the bridge to hide the trace evidence in case they did a careful scene processing. Picking up my hat from where it had dropped in the struggle, I gathered up my bloodied hair into it. It didn’t take a mirror to tell me that anyone seeing me now, at least from a distance, would merely see a bedraggled woman, wilted from the heat.

  A car drove over the bridge heading west but didn’t slow.

  Phase two: I put my gloves back on, climbed in through the back of the van expecting to have to search the body for the keys, but I was in luck. He had left the keys in the ignition to make his getaway faster. I checked above the visors and in the glove compartment for a wallet, insurance card, vehicle registration, anything that might identify him and raise questions. All I found was an eight-by-ten manila envelope slid between the driver’s seat and the transmission console, which I tossed on the ground outside the van so I wouldn’t risk getting any blood on it.

  Going back into the rear of the van, I opened the latch of a small cupboard attached to the wall. Among the contents was a pink Barbie Doll lunch box which I tried not to think about as I nosed around inside to find a box cutter. That would do nicely. I flicked up the blade of the box cutter, dabbed it in the man’s blood, made a couple experimental cuts in his wrists, and tossed it near the body to make it look like he sliced his own artery.

  I nearly missed my walking stick, lying in one of the grooves, the raw wood stained now with blood that would never come clean.

  Knowing every second was a chance taken, I looked around the interior as best I could trying to spot any other clues that I’d been there. It seemed clean enough.

  Phase three: I got into the driver’s seat and peered through the front windshield to see if anyone had been watching me. Finding the coast clear, I turned on the engine and turned the van onto a dirt road that ran along the top edge of the wash. Luckily the wash and the road veered hard left, and I traveled around the curve until I felt the van would be well out of sight from the bridge where I was known to do my rock hounding. Also luckily, here the river had caused a higher drop from the edge where the water had rushed around the bend in times past, carving out the sand at the curve.