Last Call (17 page)

Now he withdrew the blade and held the knife out to Trish, saying, “Go ahead. Take it.”

Fearful of a trick, Trish reached for the knife with her free hand—and in the last instant he snatched it away. “Don’t go gettin’ any ideas, now,” he said, an amused lilt in his voice, like they were old pals horsing around. “You wouldn’t be the first try to pigstick ol’ Bobcat with that thing. My daddy gave me that knife, the cocksucker, so be careful with it.”

He handed it to her again and Trish took it. Sweat had begun to bead on his forehead and upper lip, and he was puffing like a steam engine now. He seized Trish’s knife hand and held the blade to the woman’s neck, the tip indenting the skin. Then he dropped his pants and Trish saw his erection.

He said, “Now when I tell you, you’re going to cut this toad’s throat. Then it’ll be over for her. Screw it up and I’ll show her hell. I’ll spend the night with her and you’ll get to watch. You follow?”

Trish nodded, tightening her grip on the jackknife.

The woman whispered,
“Kill me.”

Then Bobcat looked down at himself and Trish swung the knife, aiming for the prominent blood vessels in the man’s neck. In the last possible instant he flinched away and the blade missed its target, plunging instead into the meat of his shoulder. Bobcat shrieked and punched Trish in the face, making her drop the knife. He pulled up his pants, then bent to retrieve the weapon, saying, “Alright, that
fucks
the mood.”

He grabbed Trish’s bound wrist, pinned her hand to the jack post and chopped off her baby finger. Trish screamed and the world went dark again.

* * *

Jim sat hunched in his chair, spent and ashamed. He’d told Sally all of it and now there was only silence. From the nearby couch, Dean looked on.

Now Sally said, “I’m not surprised she found you. She just wouldn’t let it go. As soon as she could talk she started asking about you. But I always put her off.”

Jim said, “I don’t blame you.”

“She’s never lied to me before. Not about anything this big. I suppose I brought it on myself.” There was a pause and Sally said, “I’m not sure how I feel about this yet, Jim, okay? And I can’t deal with it right now. I’m very worried about her.”

Jim could hear her crying now.

“She’s headstrong, Gamble,” Sally said, “but she’s got a tender heart. If you hurt her...”

“I hear you, Sal. All I can tell you is that life is different for me now. I respect Trish, and...I love her.”

“Look, I’d better get off.”

“Will you call me if you hear anything?”

“Yeah,” Sally said. “Alright. What’s your number?”

* * *

Sally scribbled Jim’s number on a pad and hung up the phone, a part of her impressed that he’d managed to surface from so low, but a greater part already blaming him for whatever was going on with Trish. In the old days everything the man touched had turned to shit, and she saw no reason to expect any different from him now.

She was dialing Trish’s number again when the doorbell rang.

She opened the door on two police officers and felt her heart sink, their grim expressions making her legs weak. She leaned against the doorjamb to keep herself from falling and said, “Yes?”

The older cop said, “Is this the residence of Trisha West?”

Please, God, let my baby be okay.
“Yes.”

“Is she the registered owner of a brown two-thousand-five Volkswagen Jetta?”

“Yes, she is. Has there been an accident?”

The younger cop said, “Ma’am, may we come inside?”

Sick with dread, Sally let them in.

* * *

When Trish regained consciousness she was strapped to the barber chair again, facing the room, and she saw Bobcat cutting the woman down, the man cursing and raving now, blood oozing from the knife wound in his shoulder. She glanced at the aching stump of her baby finger and saw that he’d cauterized it somehow, the blunt end charred black. At least it wasn’t bleeding.

The woman had passed out, and when he freed her wrists she collapsed in a boneless heap. Dropping to one knee, Bobcat jerked her head up and scowled at Trish.

“Get ready for some real entertainment, smartass,” he said. “And while you’re watching, remember, this is on your head.”

He ran the blade along the woman’s hairline, as if to scalp her, and her eyes popped open blue and wide in her bloody face and she screamed. Sick to her stomach, Trish closed her eyes and heard him say, “I see you shut them eyes again or try to look away, I’ll blind you. Now pay attention.”

Trish opened her eyes and watched, praying to God this would all end soon.

Daddy, please come get me...please hurry...

* * *

Jim answered the phone on the first ring. It was Sally.

“This is
your
fault, you son of a bitch. Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?”

“Sally, what—?”

“They found her car...it was still running and there was blood on the seat. She’s
gone
, Gamble. My sweet baby girl is gone...”

* * *

Later that evening a detective by the name of Dan Boland came to the halfway house and sat with Jim and Dean on the porch. The house was situated in a quiet neighborhood in downtown Toronto, and tonight a cool breeze was blowing. The ember on Boland’s cigar stitched through the dark as he raised it to his mouth, then lowered it to tell them what he thought.

“There was a series of similar disappearances last summer,” Boland said.

Dean said, “I remember.”

“Seven young women that we know of, all on or near the highway.”

Jim said, “Have any of them been found?”

“Not yet, but all seven cases are still active. When the disappearances ended last fall we assumed the guy had either relocated or retired, but there’ve been three new reports already this spring, and your daughter’s circumstances certainly fit the pattern. Who knows what triggers a guy like this: the moon, the seasons. The blood in your daughter’s car is the first evidence of a struggle we’ve seen, indicating that maybe the other disappearances weren’t simply voluntary, people for whatever reason deciding to leave their normal lives behind, jump on a plane to the South Seas, maybe, or open a restaurant in Australia. I’ve seen it happen before.” The detective took a drag on his cigar, letting the smoke waft out as he said, “We’re hoping some of the blood is his.”

“Assuming that’s what happened to her,” Dean said.

“Exactly,” Boland said. “That’s our operative assumption. We should have the Jetta stripped down by tomorrow afternoon. Jim, if you can come by the station and have a look at whatever turns up, that would be extremely helpful. Outside of that, it’s pretty much a wait-and-see proposition. Nothing tougher I can think of, but...”

Boland shrugged and stood. Jim and Dean shook hands with the man and Jim said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” They watched the detective return to his car, then went back inside.

Jim had left a pot of coffee simmering on a hot plate, and now they sat across from each other at the breakfast nook in the kitchenette, sipping the strong blend. There was a radio on in another room, tuned to a heavy metal station, and the muted thump of the bass track seemed to pace Jim’s frantic heartbeat. His nerve endings were sizzling like butter on a skillet, his sober mind serving up one horrific image after another—Trish in the hands of a psychopath somewhere—and the helplessness he felt was making him so damned thirsty—

Dean said, “She’s wrong, you know.”

“What?”

“Trish’s mom. She’s wrong. Whatever’s happened, wherever Trish is, it’s not your fault.”

Jim felt something lurch in his mind and now he was up on his feet, pelting his coffee mug against the wall, saying, “She’s fucking-A
right
is what she is. I never should’ve let Trish drive down here so early. Aw, shit, I never should’ve had anything to do with her in the first place. All my life I’ve found a way to
fuck
up everything I care about.”

Dean said, “Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help anybody,” and Jim hauled him out his seat and slammed him against the wall, saying, “Pissant. What do you know about it?”

Dean seized Jim’s thumb and cranked it hard, then bent him over and put him in a headlock, immobilizing him. Now he pressed his forehead to Jim’s temple and said in his ear, “I know I love her just as much as you do. I know she’d love
you
if you were stroked out and shitting your diaper in a wheelchair. And I know your risk of relapse right now is sky high. I don’t want to see that happen and I know Trish wouldn’t either.”

Dean let him go, shoving him away, and Jim whirled to face him. There was a tense moment, an old and still-sick part of Jim wanting to duke it out...then he shook his head and slumped back into his seat. He wiggled his thumb and winced. “Shit, kid, that was pretty good. Where’d you learn to do that?”

“I bounced a couple summers at a strip joint,” Dean said, sitting now, too.

Jim gazed out the window to the street, nothing moving out there. He said, “What are we going to do?”

Dean had no answer.

* * *

Bobcat shoved her backward into the hole. Trish spun as she fell, managing to land on her feet on the mucky bottom, but her momentum pitched her hard against the dirt wall, the sharp stump of a root gouging her shoulder, and when she touched it her fingers came away bloody. She looked up and saw him leering down at her over the rim of the pit.

“Hope you’re satisfied,” he said. “Now I gotta find us a new toy.”

He was dragging a heavy metal plate over the opening now, the veins in his forearms bulging with the strain, and Trish felt oddly relieved, thinking she’d rather be alone down here, cold and naked in a hole in the ground, than anywhere near that murdering bastard.

Still holding the metal plate, he leaned over the hole to say, “You’re gonna learn to do what I tell you—” and the jackknife slipped out of his shirt pocket and tumbled into the pit. Trish caught it in mid air—and his whole demeanor changed, a bitter petulance coming into his voice now, Bobcat saying, “You throw that back up here now, girl. I am not fucking with you on this subject.” He dropped the metal plate, then lay on the ground and thrust his arm down at her, spreading his fingers to catch the knife. “Toss it up.”

Trish opened the blade. “Why don’t you come down here and get it?”

“Alright,” he said, standing. “Wanna play? Alright. You go ahead and hold onto it for me. It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

He covered the hole with the plate, and Trish was fearful now that the price of her small victory might be her life. She shouldn’t have provoked him. She imagined him going back to the house for a gun or flooding the hole with a garden hose, and she raised her voice to say, “Are you still there? I was just kidding, okay? Come back and I’ll give you the knife, I promise.”

She waited but he didn’t respond. At least he’d left the light on up there, thin rays of it reaching her through the air holes in the plate.

It occurred to her to try climbing to the top, but the walls sloped inward as they rose, the crumbly surface offering few handholds, only the occasional flimsy root or half-buried rock. And even if she made it all the way up, there’d be no way she could move that big metal slab.

She closed the knife and sat on a narrow dirt platform that was drier than the flooded bottom. Now that he was gone, she was glad to have the knife and would try to use it on him again if he came back.

Trish studied her surroundings in the meager light, seeing the shallow tunnel someone had dug in a vain attempt at escape, seeing fecal matter floating in the ground water and a tuft of blonde hair snagged on the splintered end of a root partway up the wall. She noticed a trickle of water seeping in through a channel in the wall above her head and opened the knife again, wedging the blade into the channel now. A few seconds later the trickle found its way into the groove in the handle, then drizzled off the butt end into thin air, the water mucky at first, then running clear. Trish opened her mouth and let the chill liquid soothe her parched lips and tongue.

Shivering now, Trish wrapped her arms around her legs and pulled them tight to her chest, trying to keep warm. Her mouth throbbed with pain and her gummy saliva tasted like copper. She was more terrified than she’d ever been.

A few minutes later she heard him come back into the barn and turn off the light, pitching her prison into the most seamless dark she’d ever experienced.

Faintly she heard him say, “Sleep well, little toad.”

Then there was nothing, save the distant chirr of crickets.

* * *

Bobcat stalked out of the barn saying, “Let you age down there a while, then feed you to the Rotties.” Nervy toad, stealing his knife like that. Where’d she think she was going with it, anyways? That knife was the only thing his daddy ever gave him, besides a beating, and as much as he hated the mean bastard, he cherished that knife very much. Every time he held it he remembered how easily it had opened the old man’s throat. If she broke that thing he’d make her eat her own kidneys.
Fuck me.
A perfect finish to a fucked up day.

He slammed the door coming into the house and Sammy yipped and spun to look at him. The little mutt had been sniffing the mess on the floor and Bobcat told him to get the fuck away from there. Sammy scooted over to his basket and curled up with his back to the room, and Bobcat blinked at the woman’s raw, tangled corpse, feeling a momentary confusion, as if seeing it for the first time. Really
seeing
it.

When he was a boy his ma used to tell him he needed to find some friends his own age and stop killing things, and sometimes he wished he’d listened. Bringing in stock for the work was one thing, but Jesus, didn’t he maybe take it too far sometimes? He couldn’t be sure. All he knew for certain was that it was a goddam messy business.

He said, “Gotta clean this shithole up, Sammy,” and the dog stood to face him in its basket, that stubby tail starting up. “Gotta clean this fucker up.”

He went into the workshop and came back with a chainsaw, a handful of heavy-duty garbage bags and a yellow hardhat with a plastic visor. He put on the hardhat, visor up, and grabbed the dead woman by the ankles.