I can see the right front of the house and the back of the Mercedes. I can’t see any movement inside the house or the car. There’s not much more I can do. I came prepared to wait for hours and now it seems I may just be doing that. I have to remain focused. Remain sharp. I have to trust everything is okay. If I believed otherwise I’d be believing there’s no point in carrying on.
I start to grow restless, fidgety. The minutes slip by like lost nights. This is the first evening Landry has ever missed since being born. A few people are out and about. Some are walking dogs. Others are power walking, thrusting their arms in front of them in self-defense movements to stay fit. Nobody pays any attention to me. I probably look like a reporter. Or a cop. Both would have perfect justification to be sitting here. Both wouldn’t look out of place with cuts and bruises on their faces. I consider reading the newspaper again, but it’s too dark now. I want to get out and stretch a few of my aching muscles. I adjust my position in the seat. I look into the rearview mirror. My jaw where Landry hit me is getting darker. The swelling has gone down and the bruising has darkened. I run my finger along the line of the bruise. It feels soft, like a small balloon of water is trapped underneath.
I look up at the sky and wonder if it will rain tonight. When my cell phone rings I can’t find it. I fumble through my vest pockets, forgetting which one I put it in, swearing every time my fingers come up empty. When I get to it I check the display. The number is blocked. I flip it open and answer it.
“Why aren’t you at home, partner?” Cyris’s voice crackles through the earpiece.
“Didn’t want you changing your mind and deciding to kill me instead.”
Cyris says nothing as he thinks about it. So I say nothing. A minute goes by in which it seems we’re setting a trend.
“You got the money?” he asks.
“I got it.”
“Fifty grand.”
“What?”
“You’re pissing me off, buddy. It’s fifty grand now. It’s not free to dial a cell phone.”
No, but it doesn’t cost ten thousand dollars either. “I only have forty.”
“Forty will only get you eighty percent of her, and I decide which eighty.”
At least he’s sharpening up. “Fine,” I finally say. “Fifty grand.” This isn’t going to come down to money. It’s going to come down to me killing him.
“Meet me back out at the cabin.”
“No way.”
“What?”
“We three go out there and only you come back. Tell me if I’m wrong. It has to be somewhere more public.” I’ve been giving it some thought. “The pier. New Brighton.”
It seems like a good location. Not too many people, but enough so Cyris won’t try anything. He says nothing as he thinks this through. Jo could already be dead and he just wants the money. Or she could be alive and he’s thinking about the location, about how he has to change his plans. He’s thinking that maybe he won’t be getting the chance to kill us tomorrow night after all. So he’s still saying nothing. But now he’s realizing he knows my address, my details. He’s figuring he can kill me later on. In his own time. At his own leisure. He can afford to drive on over one night after mowing his lawn, rip me apart, and pick up dinner on the way back. So the idea of a public place isn’t looking too bad. In a public place I can’t try anything against him. In a public place we all walk away alive.
“Midnight,” he says.
Only he’s wrong. I’m happy to try something in a public place. I have more to lose than him. Everything to gain.
“Ten o’clock,” I counter. “More people.”
I wince as I wait for a reply or for the phone to hang up.
“Don’t forget the money, asshole. I’ll cut her pretty little head off no matter how many people are around.”
“Let me talk to Jo.”
“She’s busy.”
“I need to know she’s okay.”
“She’s okay, asshole.”
“I need proof of life,” I say, which is something I’ve heard people say in movies and documentaries.
“I’m going to give you proof of death instead, partner,” he says, and with that he hangs up.
CHAPTER FORTY
Agitated. He knows he’s agitated, and the phone call hasn’t helped. His stomach hurts, but so does his head and he wants to lash out, wants to strike out at everything and anything. He grips his stomach and wonders why he ever threw away those painkillers. He contemplates smashing the phone against the edge of the desk, but that would accomplish nothing.
At least he sure as shit feels better today than he did yesterday.
The last few days have been hell. He was taught in the army that there would be days like this. Weeks. Months. He never saw combat, but he was trained for it. He knew how to kill people. His wife knew how to kill people too. It’s where he met her. They trained together. They socialized. They fell in love. That was ten years ago. Then five years ago they got married. Then four and a half years ago there was a training accident and now his wife is a former shell of the person she used to be. It was a helicopter accident. The thing about helicopters is that at the best of times they fly, and at any other time they don’t. They’re not like planes. Planes can get into trouble and they can glide. Planes have a chance of landing. They can stay level enough to jump out of with a chute. Helicopters don’t glide. They fall. They crash. The pilot was killed. Two corporals were killed. Macy, his wife, ended up losing both of her legs, her left one just above the knee, her right one just below.
So she was given a medical discharge. It was going to be a new life. She went through multiple surgeries. She spent weeks where she would just cry. It was three months until he could bring her home. Things got better. They got worse. They got better again. She got counseling. She was going great. Then she tried to kill herself. He had gone to work. She tied a rope around a beam in the garage and tied the other end around her neck. She got out of her wheelchair and sat herself up on a workbench. Then she jumped. The wheelchair fell over. Then Cyris came home. He’d forgotten his sunglasses. He found her in the garage. Her jaw had clamped. She’d bitten off a chunk of her tongue and blood was running down her neck. He cut her down. He called an ambulance. He got her jaw open, but her mouth kept filling with blood from her severed tongue. He tried to resuscitate her, but there was too much blood. The ambulance arrived. They were lucky-there had been a false call two blocks away so there was an ambulance at his house within ninety seconds of him calling. The paramedics took over.
Everybody thought she was going to die. The doctors guessed she must have been hanging between two and three minutes. Her brain had been starved of oxygen. They resuscitated her, but there was brain damage. She would never be functional. That was the word the doctor used. Functional. Like she was the remote control to his TV. There were payments from the army to help with her rehabilitation from her severed legs, but there was nothing extra for the brain damage. Insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. She had tried to kill herself. They weren’t in the business of helping people who had tried to die. She needed full-time care. The army helped for four years because of her legs, then a year ago they stopped paying. It was cutbacks. Everywhere had cutbacks. The economy was in the toilet.
He walks through to his wife. She’s lying in bed watching the TV. She likes cartoons. She’s seen this particular one well over a thousand times. It’s on a DVD and it’s on repeat and he knows every word, every sound effect, and at night he leaves the TV running for her and the volume off. She looks up at him and smiles. “Side Russ,” she says. That’s his name now, thanks to about a quarter of her tongue hitting the garage floor.