MalContents (18 page)

There wasn’t anybody at the front desk, but the door to the small employee back room was open so I dinged the bell on the counter and waited. After a minute, I was still alone, and decided to check out front in case the concierge doubled as a parking lot attendant or something. But aside from the encroaching night and dirty mounds of snow, there was no one in sight.

Back inside, I risked a walk around the desk and into the back room. It was empty, which could be read a thousand different ways. Maybe the guy was taking a crap, maybe he slinked off out back to have a smoke. Who knows? There was, however, a phone book sitting on a small table near a phone, so I grabbed it and decided to explain later why I’d stolen it.

Before heading back upstairs I grabbed the cards and checkers.

I used my cell phone and ordered sandwiches from a deli a block away and then called Detective Larson again while my wife and daughter played Go Fish. Their conversation had drifted to what boys Mandy was seeing. Naturally, I eavesdropped as best I could, curious as to what cretins were putting their hands on my little girl. Far as I could tell she liked some guy named Jared. All I could think of was the guy from the Subway commercials, which was comforting, because he seems pretty harmless. Larson didn’t answer.

Tick. Tock.
More thoughts. The moon rose.

The delivery boy called my cell and I went down to the lobby and paid him for our food. So where’s the bellhop, I thought. He’s still gone. Possible he’d come back and gone off again. At least that’s what I told myself.

I went back up to the room, doled out the food.

“I asked for avocado,” Mandy said, studying her sandwich.

“I told them to add it,” I replied. “Just eat it.”

Both Angie and Mandy peeled the meat and vegetables away from the bread and made little salads they ate with their hands. They usually did this at home as well, something about bread being high in carbs and making you fat. Women.

I had ordered a small cheese pizza for myself and ate four of the six slices.

When my stomach was full, I lay down on the bed and tried to wrack my brain about anything that might tell me who the man in the cowboy hat was. Could I have really forgotten about a client who dressed like that? Had I really done something to this guy to make him so nuts? No matter how hard I tried, I could not figure out who he was.

Dear God, I was spent.

Rolling over, I saw my dufflebag on the floor, and unzipped it to reveal the gun case. Knowing it was within an arms’ reach made me feel better. Slowly, my eyelids closed and sounds became muffled. Sleepiness is a common side effect of stress and I wished I’d remembered it then; I wouldn’t have even touched the bed. It’s a trigger that sets of narcoleptics, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost dozed off in the middle of being yelled at by Angie.

Figured I’d close my eyes for just a second, think about what the cops and I were gonna have to do to catch this guy. But we know

about seconds, don’t we?

A dark nothingness overtook me.

When I awoke, it was pitch black outside. Mandy and Angie were gone. The word CHOOSE was scrawled on the far wall in blood.

As I stood up, I saw my cell phone on the nightstand. The battery had been removed from the back. Mandy’s laptop was overturned on the floor between the beds, the screen broken. Without thinking, I snatched the gun case from my bag, opened it and found the gun inside. With it tight in my hand, I flung open the door and ran out into the hall. My legs were still half asleep and gave out on me, pitching me into the banister near the stairs. “Help!” I cried. “Help me!” Behind me I heard a door open. A man in a bathrobe came out into the hall.

“You all right?”

“No. Someone kidnapped my family. Call the cops. Now!”

He just stood there, dumbfounded, thinking I was nuttier than squirrel shit.

“I’m fucking serious, call the police! Go!”

He stumbled backwards, hand tracing the wall until he found his room again. The door slammed shut behind him, and I was up again, running down the stairs. The front desk was still empty, the door to the employee room still open. Where the hell was the guy who’d checked us in?

In case the frightened man upstairs was huddling under his covers, I grabbed the phone at the front desk and decided to call the cops myself. The line was dead, was probably dead in every room, so I let the headpiece fall and dangle on its cord, spinning like my mind.

From outside near the lake I heard a scream, a hollow shrieking that was abruptly cut off in mid stream. It was Mandy, somehow I just knew it. It could have been cats fucking on a television right in front of me and it wouldn’t have convinced me otherwise. A father knows the sound of his little girl in trouble.

Having no clue where the back door was I ran out the front into the cold night. The air sandblasted me with a chill so abrasive it felt like my skin was drying and cracking open on contact. Wasn’t until my heel jammed down onto a rock that I realized I’d left my shoes up in the room, along with my coat.

“Mandy!” As I rounded the corner to the back of the property, I saw shadows, three of them, moving in the trees surrounding the lake. They were heading down to the small pier, toward the canoe rental shed. “Angie!”

“Pete!” Angie’s reply did something to me, jolted me like electricity. It was the first real connection I had to reality. There were no more maybes and what ifs. What was happening was really happening: my family was being kidnapped.

The path to the pier came into view, a dirt walkway covered in stones and pebbles and other bits of nature, segmented by railroad ties to create a semblance of steps (no wheelchair ramps in Birchville). My feet were hesitant, a matter of self-preservation, knowing that if I jammed a toe or struck a nerve on a sharp rock I was done for. So instead I speed-shuffled down the path, my breath freezing in front of me.

A gunshot echoed out across the lake, seizing me up.

“Mandy!”

“Dad!” Her voice was faint, but energetic. I screamed again and Angie’s voice answered this time. They were both alive, for now. But who’d been shot? And where? I felt faint.

Down the trail, there were two tall light posts near the canoe rental shed, casting yellow ribbons across ice at the edge of the lake and the black water beyond. The snow, intermixed with patchworks of newly fallen pine needles and dead tree branches, helped light up the edges of the faux steps as I made my way down.

At the bottom, trying desperately to ignore the pain in the soles of my feet, I saw that the canoe rental shed had a “Closed For Winter” sign on it. Beneath it was another sign reading “Check With Inn Before Ice Fishing. Thin Ice Can Kill.”

The door to the shed was open, the lock had been shot, the bullet still in the metal frame. I breathed a little easier knowing one of my girls didn’t have a bullet in them, but not much.

“Dad!” came Mandy’s voice again, from somewhere out on the lake. Now that I listened I could hear the slapping of oars against water. Just then, the clouds swept in front of the moon and the lake became so dark I couldn’t make out where the water ended and the night sky began. I knew I had no choice but to follow, tracking them aurally.

Still, I hesitated.
Tick.
A single moment flying through my consciousness: He wants you to follow, Pete. He wants you alone.
Tick.
So what? It’s my family.

Tick.

I was in the shed grabbing a canoe, my frozen fingers shaking against the metal hull. Fucking thing weighed a ton and I was forced to drag it across the dirt to the edge of the lake. Then I slid it out on the ice, just to where it started to crack. I put the gun on the bench and went back for two oars. When I returned and sat on the cold metal, my nuts shriveled into raisins and my body went into a spasm of shivers. The boat was a giant slab of frozen metal, and when it fell through the thin ice and settled in the water a second later, the bottom got even colder. Before me, the gun stared back but offered no answers. I was going to have to deal with it.

Momentarily I considered shooting across the lake at them, but knew I wasn’t a good enough shot to hit my target. Chances were I’d kill Mandy or Angie. Besides, all I had to go on was the sound of their rowing; I still couldn’t see them.

With a grunt I stuck the oars in the water and paddled, the boat moving sideways and in a circular motion. I was so frantic I couldn’t steer the damned thing. “Come on, you piece of shit!” Steadying myself, I finally managed to move in a straight line. Through the trees I could see lights on the top floor of the inn and wondered if that old guy had used a cell to call the cops or not.

The lake was maybe a quarter mile across all told, a short enough distance to swim across in warm weather if you put your mind to it. When I was halfway across, I heard Angie and Mandy yelping again, moving into the woods on the far shore. “If you hurt them I’ll kill you!” I shouted. Nobody answered.

The smell of mud disappeared for a few minutes, then kicked up again as the shore came into view. I barely remember rowing my mind was so frazzled. My arms and legs were shaking so badly now I was sure hypothermia was setting in. Even if I found my family, we’d be ice sculptures before we could run for help.

Creaking tree limbs sang to me as I forcefully cut the canoe through the thin ice along the bank. To my left, I could see the other canoe against the shore, half on and half off the ice. This was the risky part—if I jumped out and the ice was too thin, I’d fall in. That would mean game over. Instead, I took the oar and whacked it against the ice, three times. It didn’t crack. Considering what was at stake, I decided to risk it.

When my shaking feet hit the ice I slipped and went down hard, smashing my elbow. The gun popped from my hand and slid toward the water. I righted myself and dove after it, missing it by a fraction of an inch.

It fell into the black water with a
kerploop
.

“Shit! Shit!”

There was no time to worry about it. I heaved myself up and skittered across the ice, found my footing on the cold sand of the shore and cocked my head. Faintly, I could hear heavy breathing coming from the darkness of the woods before me. As far as I knew, the woods spread out about two hundred acres in all directions, the land too rocky and hilly to build on. The townsfolk used it for hunting instead. It was dense and dark, and without a light I was bound to get lost.

At the edge of the tree line, I found a good-sized branch, hefted it like a batter winding up for a pitch, figured if I could sneak up on this psycho I could crack his skull open. “Angie?”

No answer. But I could still hear the heavy breathing moving through the woods. “Mandy?”

Faintly, a response: “Daddy.”

Not Dad, but Daddy, as if she’d fallen back into her childhood, in need of my help. It made my heart slam against my chest, and without thinking I tore into the woods. Twigs and rocks, blanketed in freezing snow, lanced my soles as I trudged on.

It didn’t take long to find them. After a mere fifty feet or so I could see Mandy’s face in the darkness. The man in the cowboy hat turned toward me, a slice of moon cascading down through the leafless treetops, highlighting his suit. His head was down and I still couldn’t see his features. Mandy and Angie were standing on either side of him with their backs against big maple trees. The bastard had a gun, pointing it back and forth at them, the same one he’d used on me in the store.

“Please don’t,” I said.

“Oh, I won’t, Mr. Baker, this is your job, not mine. You are going to kill one of them.”

“I’ll kill you first.”

“Now now, Mr. Baker, your bravado will not help you here. We’re alone, no one to help you. No pesky police and no pizza delivery boys. You may as well drop your weapon, it’ll do you no good.” He raised his wrist and looked at his watch. “We’ve only got a couple of minutes left. Have you made your choice?”

He was close enough I could throw the branch at him and get him, maybe even hurt him, but not before he shot somebody. That helpless feeling in my gut was growing stronger and more desperate. Instead of doing something stupid, I tried to reason with him. “You can take me instead. Let them go.”

“Don’t want to kill you, Mr. Baker, I want you to kill one of them. That’s the idea here.”

“Tell me . . . tell me what this is all about. Maybe we can come to a deal, maybe I can help you.”

Mandy took a step forward, one of her arms coming up as if to run to me, and the man backhanded her in the head with the gun. She threw her arms up to protect herself and leaned against the tree again, crying. Angie screamed bloody murder but it didn’t last long; the man whacked her in the head as well. They were both groaning and huddling like beaten dogs now.

Tears drifted down my swollen, red cheeks, practically freezing by the time they crested my upper lip. “Stop. Please. Don’t hurt them,” I begged. “Just tell me what I did, I’ll make good on it.”

“Will you now?”

“I promise. I promise I will. Tell me what I did to you?”

“It will do you no good.”

“Please just tell me. Please!”

“Alrighty. You remember a man come into your store about this time last year, wore a red baseball cap and heavy flannel shirt. Had a salt and pepper beard that was unkempt, covered up the scar of his cleft palette surgery. He had a winking tic, too. Ringing a bell yet?”