There were the sounds of heavy footsteps coming from behind her, and when they did that fearful expression returned. Jesse looked over her shoulder to see a fireplug of a man coming their way. He was in a dirty blue work shirt that had been pulled out of darker blue work pants. He had on blackened work boots, the laces untied. The laces slapped the floor as he walked. He had thick arms, a thick neck, and a nasty face. The main feature of which was a bent nose covered in gin blossoms. As he got close, Jesse could smell sweat and alcohol coming off him in waves. Jesse wasn’t exactly disgusted by the smell of alcohol since he stopped drinking, but he was now very sensitive to its odor coming off other people.
He said, “This the cop?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “No, it’s one of those male strippers dressed as a cop, come to give me a birthday greeting from my girlfriends.”
He snickered an ugly snicker. “Well, shit, it ain’t your birthday and you don’t have any friends, so he must be a real cop.”
Jesse introduced himself again. That got another ugly snicker out of the stepfather of the year.
“The kid ain’t here. Didn’t she tell you that already?”
“She did.”
“Then what are you still doing here? You,” he said to his wife, grabbing her by the arms where those fading bruises were and shoving her behind him, “go finish doing what you was doing. I’ll handle this.”
She didn’t protest, about-facing and heading down the hall without acknowledging Jesse.
The husband leaned against the open front door. “Listen, Chief, she lets the kid get away with murder. Yeah, she’s way too lenient with him and maybe should’ve smacked him around a little more when he was younger, but I’m sure he never did anything serious. He’s weak and too much of a pussy.”
Jesse was getting angry with him, so pulled a card out and handed it to him. “Please give that to Chris when he gets home and let him know I just want to talk with him about Heather.”
“Yeah, whatever,” the stepfather said, waving a dismissive hand. He made to shut the door.
Jesse stopped him, holding his hand against the door. “Do it, because otherwise I’ll be back, and I’d hate to interrupt your drinking every night. Do we understand each other?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cops are all the same.”
He slammed the door shut. As Jesse walked back to his Explorer, he realized that his chasing Chris through the cemetery probably wasn’t the only reason the kid wasn’t anxious to come home.
Twenty-one
Arakel stood at the door, duffel bag in hand, waiting for her to answer. He had called her before killing the boy. In spite of the vodka Stojan and Georgi had practically forced down his throat, his hands were still shaking. He felt, as the English say, legless. Paradoxically, his shooting Chris felt simultaneously unreal and like the most real thing he had ever done. Since squeezing the trigger, he had told himself a thousand times he had done it for the kid’s own good. That the two thugs enjoyed inflicting pain so much, they would have kept him alive if only to keep hurting him. But none of his rationalizations could chase away his guilt or extinguish that little piece of himself that felt perverse exhilaration. He had proven himself, finally. He had done something no one thought him capable of, and while he was mostly disgusted by what he’d done, he was also proud of it. He wanted to rush back to the warehouse and have Stojan and Georgi describe to Mehdi in detail how he had put a bullet into Chris Grimm’s chest and one in his head.
See, partner, I am not weak like you think. Ask these two pigs. They will tell you. I am strong.
He was so caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t notice the door had pulled back and that the woman he had come to see was standing just inside the doorway, bathed in darkness.
“Come up,” she said. “Hurry.”
Arakel followed her up the stairs, taking note of her pleasing shape and how the grassy fragrance of her perfume filled up his head.
Once he stepped inside her flat, she quickly closed the door behind him. The apartment was dimly lit, but he had been there once before and knew the layout.
“Please, Mr. Sarkassian—”
“Arakel. Call me Arakel.”
“Arakel.” She tried smiling at him but failed. “I can’t do what you ask, not again.”
He stroked her cheek. “Of course you can. You have already done it once.”
“But—”
For the second time that night, he did something he had never done before. He swung his fist into her abdomen. The air went out of her in a rush and she fell to her knees. He grabbed her by the hair and put his lips close to her ear.
“You will do exactly as you are told.”
“But the girl,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Yes, it was a shame about the girl. That was the boy’s fault. We chose badly with him. We must make a better choice with the new person.”
The woman was sobbing. “I can’t.”
“You can, darling. And you will. You will do anything I tell you to do.” He got down on his knees next to her, removing his phone from his pocket as he did so. He showed her the picture of Chris Grimm’s battered, bloodied body. “This can just as easily be you.” She tried to stand and run, but he yanked her down and pushed her onto the floor. “But I have no desire to threaten you. There are better reasons for you to do as I wish.”
He let go of her and reached into the stash bag. He came out with a prescription vial. He shook it. The woman stopped crying, as if a turnoff switch had been thrown and the circuit broken. Arakel removed one of the green pills with 80 stamped into it from the vial and held it in his palm for the woman to see. She grabbed at it, but he snatched it away, closing his fingers around the pill.
“This vial will be yours after we discuss the candidates and you make the call.”
She didn’t argue, but asked for the pill in his palm as a gesture of good faith.
“No. First we do as I say, then the pills.”
An hour later, she had fulfilled her obligations as he had described them. He had chosen the candidate to replace the Grimm boy.
“Now?” she asked, clicking off the phone and placing it down on the counter.
“No,” Arakel said, still feeling the rush of his newfound strength. “Come here and get on your knees.”
She opened her mouth to object, but he shook the vial of pills. When he did, she strode over to him and got down on her knees. She didn’t need to be told what to do. The doctor in Boston had made her do the same. She pulled his zipper down and reached into his pants, but just as she was about to put him in her mouth, he pushed her away. He wasn’t going to become a killer and a rapist on the same night. He tossed the vial into the air and she lunged for it as if it were a newborn baby tossed from a burning window. She clutched the vial to her chest.
“The other pill,” she said. “The one you put in your pocket. Can I have that one, too?”
He reached into his pocket and handed it to her. She reached onto the counter, grabbed a homemade pill crusher, and got to work.
“Remember,” he said, “those pills and those pills only are for you. We have made a very careful inventory of what is in the stash bag. We expect every other pill and package accounted for. Do you understand?”
But the woman had made fast work of the crushing and had already snorted some of the pulverized Oxy. He walked over to her, grabbed her hair, and put his face very close to hers.
“Do you understand?”
She nodded.
He took out his phone again. “Good, because I would hate to see you in that chair. You get the supply line up and running again in this town within two days and maybe there will be another reward.”