Chapter Nineteen
The next day I was at work, a clerk at Truegold’s Car Wash and Detail, though I did a heck of a lot more than run the register. I was a gopher, washing rags, pouring soap solution in the vats, even washed and dried cars if that’s what was asked of me. I worked Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from nine in the morning till five. It only paid enough to cover my rent, but that was fine. I was getting grants from the government, student loans, and my parents were great at sending me regular checks of seven-hundred bucks every first of the month. I didn’t care for the job most days, but today I loved it. It was busy, as Wednesdays always are, due to half-priced hump day washes. Busy was a good thing that Wednesday, as it got my mind off of the terror that was imagining something pretty damned dark happening to my Tinkerbelle. Large chunks of the day were being eaten away every time I glanced up at the clock. Three hours felt like thirty minutes.
I was thoroughly exhausted when I clocked out at six minutes past five. I was sticky from perspiration and hesitant to smell my damp armpits.
I had only just pulled out of the parking lot onto Kern Avenue when my phone rang. I steered with my knee as I groped the phone out of my pocket with one hand and rolled up the window with the other.
I read Stanwick on the screen. I hoped Sven wasn’t calling to thank me yet again. As relieving as it was that Tinkerbelle had been safe, I was a little humiliated that it was a worry in vain. Him thanking me made me all the more humiliated.
“Hi, Sven,” I said. I took my Truegold cap off and tossed it to the passenger seat, raked back my oily hair.
“Please tell me Brooke is with you,” Juliann said desperately.
“Oh no,” I said inwardly. “No, she’s not with me.”
She sobbed. I pulled into an Arby’s parking lot and parked.
“I’m calling the police,” she said between sobs. “She’s… she’s been taken!”
I palmed my forehead, closed eyes stinging. “Lord in Heaven,” I breathed.
“I hoped it was you.” A sob. “Why couldn’t it have been you?” She ended the call.
“Please don’t let this be happening,” I said.
God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes it can be something as seemingly insignificant as a simple thought surfacing, or a memory. I had one at that moment, no more than a minute after Juliann had hung up on me. I called her back.
It was Sven who answered, and did so on the first ring. I suspect he reserved hope that I might be able to help them in some inestimable way. He said yes in a wet voice, waited for me to speak.
“What is Brooke wearing today?” I said. “Her shirt, what is it?”
“Excuse me?”
“What is she wearing?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a panic. “I don’t remember.”
“Can you remember what was she wearing yesterday when your wife found her at the playground? Was it a pink shirt? Susan B. Komen?”
He inhaled sharply. “That’s what she’s wearing! Where did you see her!”
“I didn’t, but you should call the police. Now, Sven. Call them.”
“Juliann is on the phone with them. Damnit, this can’t be happening! A friend of Brooke’s was just over here to say that a man told Brooke to follow him, and they walked away together!”
“In my premonition, or whatever it was, she was wearing that shirt. I didn’t think to mention it yesterday. Give me your address. I want to be with you two.”
I heard Juliann wail her despair in the background; it chilled me. He sputtered out an address that I had to replay in my head to get it all. He was far gone.
“In, in, your dream,” he stammered, “what happened to her?”
I heard Juliann tell Sven to come on, they were going to look for their baby.
“Listen to me, Sven,” I said firmly. “Listen to me carefully. Nothing is going to happen to your girl. Understand me? Nothing. Stay put. Don’t leave the house, you’re in no condition to drive, and you won’t find her. I’ll handle this. See you soon.”
I threw the truck in drive and floored it, sped out of the Arby’s lot like a bank robber with a fresh sack of cash, vehicle fishtailing and tires screaming as I turned onto the avenue. Almost immediately I saw red and blue lights in my rear-view mirror and couldn’t friggin’ believe it. What are the odds? Bastards are never around when you need them, and now this!
“Shit, shit, shit!”
I pulled over. The sun was directly before me, low on the horizon. Too low. I envisioned Paul walking hand in hand with Tinkerbelle along the riverbed toward the bridge. I looked in my side-view mirror at the cop who was taking his sweet damned time, hadn’t even left his cruiser yet.
“Come on, asshole!”
He was punching my license plate into his computer. He’d waste a couple minutes on that. I didn’t have time for this bullshit. I opened my door and got out with my hands up to show him I wasn’t armed. He opened his door and said to stay in my vehicle. I continued anyway.
“Sir!” I exclaimed. “Please, you have to let me go! There’s an emergency!”
Tentatively he got out of the cruiser. “What’s the problem?”
“A girl’s been kidnapped!”
“When?”
“Just now!” I closed the gap between us. “Listen, I’m a pastor, not trying anything funny here. I have to help find the girl before it’s too late.”
“What’s her name?”
“Brooke. Brooke Stanwick.”
“Wait here just a moment.” He returned inside his cruiser for what felt like ten minutes but was only a minute. He got out of his car at last. I was at the curb pacing around, rubbing the nape of my neck. “She was reported abducted just now. It hasn’t even been called out yet. Any idea who took her or where she might have gone?”
I could have answered both, but instead lied. A bald-faced lie. “No idea.”
“I’ll let you go, but you have to drive the speed limit. Got it? No exceptions. You’ll kill someone driving like that.”
“I will. Thank you, sir.”
He was still in his black-and-white when I pulled away from the curb at an honest speed. Once he was out of my sight I floored it. I couldn’t believe I was remembering how to get to the old bridge over the riverbed. It had been seven years since I’d been there, when I was fourteen and a real piece of work. I was making turns as I saw familiar streets. Instead of driving down the street which led to the bridge and crossed over to the old oil lease, I decided to take the path that I had watched myself leading Tinkerbelle across. The dead-end. I had to be cautious, extra careful to not be seen until I was close enough that he couldn’t escape. That’s assuming I wasn’t already too late. The sun was below the low ridge of a distant hill. It seemed later than it had been in my premonition, and that terrified me. I was easily driving sixty miles an hour down a residential neighborhood. God forbid a kid crosses the street to chase a ball.
I slowed down a good deal before arriving at the end of the road, lest home-owners call the cops or chase after me to ream me for driving like a lunatic in a neighborhood with kids at play.
I got out of my truck and ran down the dirt slope looking to the distant bridge at my left. It was nothing but a silhouette now, red and gold sky around it. It was later than it had been, I was sure of it.
A girl shrieked far away.
“You little mother fu—”
I sprinted down the rough terrain, leaping over underbrush and rocks, praying I wouldn’t sprain an ankle. Another shriek. I made it to the bottom of the riverbed and followed the contour of it, the bend that would lead me to the bridge.
She shrieked again, and this time she shouted for help. I clenched my fists. God help that boy when I reached him, for it would truly be a miracle if he escaped with his life.
“Stop it!” she cried. “You’re hurting me!”
She was closer. I knew where they were, under the bridge, in the low spot between embankment and bridge. It was black with shadows. I
was risking being spotted but it wouldn’t matter at this point. She was being abused, and in my current state I’d catch that piece of shit even if he was an Olympic sprinter.
Another shriek, a blood-curdling one; this time it was cut off. I could see in my mind’s eye Paul bludgeoning her with a blunt object to the head.
I was almost to the bridge. I could see their tangled shadows. I slanted up the gradient. Paul must have heard my footfalls by now. The girl was quiet, indicative of either something really bad or the abandonment of Paul’s attack.
“I’m going to beat the holy hell out of you!” I shouted as I breasted the bank at full speed, gasping for breath.
My right foot snared on something, then my left foot, sending me airborne before crashing down, my head smacking a rock.
I might have been unconscious. If so, I wasn’t for long. My head ached something wicked. I pressed my upper body off the ground, saw a series of low rocks in a line too neat to be a coincidence. Just then a foot kicked me in the ribs, sending me back down.
“You like that?” Paul said smugly. “How’s that for precision?” He kicked me again, this time in the left kidney. So painful it was that it rendered me motionless for some timeless moment, back arched, hand pressing against my abused kidney. He walked around me, stepping over the fishing line that had been secured to two large rocks spaced fifteen or twenty feet apart. There was a third rock at a different angle with fishing line tied to it, as well. He didn’t want to leave anything to chance. He had estimated where I might land after tripping—hence the rows of smaller rocks designed to bust my head upon.
“Brooke?” I called, panting, wincing. “Are you okay?”
From behind me Paul kicked my back. It caught between two ribs, dividing the impact, lessening what it might have otherwise been.
I felt the gravity of the situation in full, what it might mean if I didn’t put together a counter-attack that second. With a surge of adrenaline, disregarding the torrents of pain, I erected to my hands and knees and was a second away from standing when Paul’s foot thrust squarely into my crotch. Adrenaline be damned, I wasn’t coming back up from that.
“Finished yet?” Paul said. I couldn’t see his smug smile but surely it was there. “You fucked up, dude. You fucked with the wrong guy.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked as I clutched my groin.
“I doubt you’d understand. Would you believe I’m doing this because it seemed like a fun idea?”
“You’re evil.”
“Maybe. But this beats watching The Bachelor, right?” He laughed. “Or jacking off.”
“You better not have done that to her.”
“Jacked her off? What are you talking about, Mr. Mendelssohn?”
“You know what I mean.” I tried to stand but pain disrupted the attempt.
“You’re such a hypocrite, man.” He kicked me in the right buttocks. “You teach us to be virtuous and praise God, but what skeletons do you keep in your closet? Suckered a thirteen-year-old girl into screwing you in public? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, you hypocrite?”
I said nothing.
“Breaking into cars, stealing phones and money. How do you want to become a pastor? That’s all religious people are: hypocrites. You preach the gospel for tithings, so you can buy shit. You’re the piece of shit, not me.”
He stepped on my hand with his heel, crushed it with a turn. I yelped.
“I hate you people. I really do.” He knelt beside me.
“Paul,” I breathed, coughed. “Just let Brooke go. That’s all I ask. Don’t do anything to her.”
“Who’s holding her back? She’s free to go. And just what are you implying, that I would rape a little girl? That’s fucking disgusting. You would automatically think that’s what a boy my age would do. A boy our age. You were what, fourteen? Takes one to know one, huh?”
“Brooke?” I called in her direction. I couldn’t see any more than a darker shadow assumed to be her. “Hun? Tinkerbelle?”
“Oh,” he said and snapped his fingers melodramatically. “I may have accidentally hit her over the head with a rock.”
“You’re going to burn in hell,” I said.
“Wrong! I’m going to come out of this better than you think!”
I rolled over to my back slowly and began to sit up. When he wound his foot back to kick me, I held my hand out pleadingly, gesturing that I wasn’t going to attempt to escape, but simply sit up. He allowed it. Sitting was a painful event. My insides were on fire around the kidneys and liver, testicles swollen and throbbing.
“How did you know to set up the fishing line?” I asked. “How’d you know I was coming and where’d I come from? How do you know so much?” Desperation was imbedded in every syllable. “Tell me, I have to know.”
“I could ask you the same question. How did you know I would be here with Brooke?”
“I saw it. That’s all. I don’t know, Paul. That’s the truth.”
“Yeah, I think you have unique friends. That’s what I think. Maybe I have my own. Ever think about that?”
“Who?”
He walked around to my backside. I went rigid in anticipation of him kicking me. A tense second later I craned my head back. He feigned kicking me. I moaned and writhed. He laughed. He dug the toe of his shoe in the dirt and flung it at me.
“You’re a pussy,” he said. “You know that? Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to let you live. And your sweetheart Brooke. Yeah I hit her on the head, but she’ll get over it. Here’s what you’re going to do in return: Sunday you are going to get up there before the entire Calvary Chapel congregation. Tell that douchebag pastor Denny that you have an important message for them, because that’s the damned truth. You’re going to tell everyone there what you did when you were fourteen, and in explicit detail. You’re going to tell how you tricked a girl no older than half the kids in Sunday school to screw you under the bridge. You’ll also say that you stole money from an old lady’s purse. Feel free to add more confessions in there. The truth will set you free—isn’t that what that black dude said to Neo in The Matrix? You’re going to do that Sunday, or else.”
“You’ll be in juvenile hall come then,” I said. “Are you so arrogant that you can’t see that? You’re in serious trouble. Unless you have it in you to kill us both, which I don’t believe you do, you’re going to be imprisoned.”
“Don’t tempt me. You’d be surprised what I have in me. The reason why you’re going to do what I just said, and why you won’t report me to the police, is because I’m letting you both go. This is a get-out-of-death free card. You only have one. If you don’t specifically do what I just said, I’m going to kill not you—no, I’m not going to kill you; I want you to live through what’s going to happen—I’m going to create some tragic end to your Tinkerbelle. I would say rape and kill her, but that would be a lie. I wish I had it in me to do that, but I don’t. She’s a fucking kid, for chrissake. If she were a little older, yeah, I’d do that just to piss you off. But I will kill her, Aaron; that I will do. And you’ll have to live with yourself knowing that your actions led to that precious thing,” he intoned, “getting murdered. Could you live with that? I know you have a hard-on for her, and probably have ideas of being her first lay, so I doubt you’d want that.”
I shook my head in disgust. I wanted to puke from both the pain and this lunatic’s presumptions.
“Do we have an understanding?” he asked. “Do it this Sunday, or else. And if you mention my name to anyone, it’ll be the same outcome. Death of an angel, a little blonde-haired angel. Once you do as I say, I’ll be done with you. I hear Los Angeles is fun, I might go check it out.”
It was dark out, so I wasn’t sure if he saw me nod. I said we have a deal. But only if he answered one question for me.
“I already told you, dude, a friend. That’s all you need to know.”
“No, not that,” I said. “Why me? Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do
to you?”
“Nothing at all,” he said sincerely. “I do hate you, but that’s only a recent hatred. I suppose you’re wondering why I went to your Sunday school classes. Because I was asked to.”
“By your friend,” I surmised.
“I’ll be sitting in the front row this Sunday. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Remember, you have only one chance at this. Do you believe me when I say I have the resources to ensure Brooke’s death? Because you better damned believe that I do. That fishing line that tripped you up, that’s a small example of how much smarter I am than you, and how I know things.”
“I believe you,” I conceded.
“Shake on it?”
He rounded me, thrust out a hand to shake. I put mine in his. Upon shaking it, he kicked me with a knee to the side of my head. Lights out.